Volume 3, Chapter 46, Conflict in New York
Boston was not the only place where armed conflict exploded between the citizens and
British troops. We remember that the New York Assembly had been forced by British threats
to comply with the British Mutiny Act and therefore voted to supply British troops in
in New York in June 1767. At the end of 1768, the Assembly, under pressure from the Sons
of Liberty and coming under control of the radical liberals, resumed its resistance and
bravely refused to vote for the supplies during 1769. Finally, the Assembly yielded in mid-December
by a thin majority. The agitation of the people, aggravated by the economic depression of the
day, was led by the Sons of Liberty. Spearheading the attack was the merchant Alexander McDougall,
one of the radical leaders of the Sons of Liberty of New York. McDougall, in the pamphlet
to the Betrayed Inhabitants of New York attacked the assembly's capitulation and urged imitation
of the deeds of the brave Bostonians. At a popular meeting of 1,400 people, led by John
Lamb of the Sons of Liberty, a committee of sons was appointed to pressure the assembly.
The assembly lashed back at the McDougal broadside as a false, seditious and infamous libel and
and called for the author's arrest.
Lamb and Benjamin Prince, a friend of McDougall's, were accused of authoring libel, but the assembly
could find no evidence against them.
In mid-January 1770, resentment against the British soldiery came to a head.
Since 1766, the British troops in New York had repeatedly cut down the Liberty Pole,
which had been built by the Sons of Liberty to commemorate repeal of the Stamp Act. One
of the grievances against the British soldiers was that they offered themselves as cheap
civilian labor, thus undercutting the regular laborers. This was a major reason for the
clashes between ropewalk laborers and soldiers, who sometimes worked as civilians there at
Low Rates in the days before the Boston Massacre. In New York, the Sons of Liberty on January
16 issued an attack on those who employed British soldiers and called a meeting at the
Liberty Pole. The soldiers promptly cut down the pole and contemptuously deposited the
pieces at the doors of the Sons of Liberty. The enraged sons held a mass meeting of 3,000
In the late 19th century, a group of 3,000 people who protested the destruction of the Liberty Pole and the employment of British troops in laboring work.
In retaliation, the British troops issued a hand bill denouncing the Sons of Liberty as dangerous enemies of the country.
As some soldiers tried to post the leaflet on January 19, they were seized by Isaac Sears and a group of Liberty boys and taken to the mayor's office.
An attempt by the British to effect a rescue led to a clash between the troops wielding
bayonets and the crowd armed only with chains and sticks. Several citizens were wounded
at this, the Battle of Golden Hill. A clash with occupying troops thus antedated
Bostons by nearly two months, but the consequences were considerably different. New York was
was ruled not by popular leadership of radical liberals, but by factions of a conservative,
land-based oligarchy. In New York, the Sons of Liberty were not the vanguard of a dominant
movement, but a radical group trying to work its way into position to crack open an oligarchic
power structure. The armed clash, instead of cementing libertarian control here, intensified
conservative backlash and made the conservatives determined to crush the Sons of Liberty.
Broad sides appeared, supporting the granting of money to the British troops and ridiculing
the Liberty Boys, MacDougall being attacked as an Irish upstart, his authorship of the
seditious pamphlet criticizing the Assembly having been betrayed by an informer. Alexander
Mr. McDougall was arrested by the assembly during February and turned over to the common
law courts to be indicted for seditious libel. Consciously emulating the courage and career
of John Wilkes, McDougall remained in jail rather than post bail and was visited by adoring
crowds and hailed as the Wilkes of America. The radicals even used the talismanic Wilkite
Number 45. To the New York Conservatives, MacDougall was indeed a Wilkes who sought
to trample down all legal authority and shake the government to the foundation. He was defended
by John Moran Scott as well as by the Liberty Boys. But with the prosecution's major witness,
the informer, dying, the government decided not to press the case further. MacDougall
MacDougall was released from prison to great popular rejoicing. His freedom was short-lived.
At the end of the year, MacDougall, on the same charge, was hauled before the vindictive
assembly, acting by its own authority. First, the assembly tried to force MacDougall to
testify against himself. When he refused, it threatened him with torture to force him
When MacDougall still refused, the assembly sentenced him to indefinite imprisonment for
for High Contempt and ordered the sheriff, as in the Smith-Moore case in Pennsylvania
in the 1750s, to disregard any writ of habeas corpus. Only five members of the assembly
voted against this brutal suppression of freedom of criticism by a government body that acted
as its own complainant, judge and jury. McDougall was finally released at the end of the assembly
session in April 1771, with the government dropping all charges against him.