WEBVTT

NOTE 12. New York Fumbles in the Crisis

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.920
Volume 4, Chapter 12, New York fumbles in the crisis.

2
00:00:06.920 --> 00:00:12.600
The major weapon of American pressure on Great Britain at the time of Lexington and Concord

3
00:00:12.600 --> 00:00:19.160
had been the Continental Association, and after the shooting started, this boycott weapon

4
00:00:19.160 --> 00:00:23.280
continued its work with redoubled force.

5
00:00:23.280 --> 00:00:31.700
In mid-May 1775, Congress resolved on an absolute boycott of trade with those English colonies

6
00:00:31.700 --> 00:00:39.180
that had not joined the association, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, St. John's Island,

7
00:00:39.180 --> 00:00:44.720
the Floridas and Georgia, with the exception of radical St. John's parish, which sent

8
00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:51.160
Dr. Lyman Hall as an accredited delegate to the Second Continental Congress.

9
00:00:51.160 --> 00:00:57.760
The boycott succeeded in injuring Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the Floridas, but British

10
00:00:57.760 --> 00:01:01.120
exports soon made up the gap.

11
00:01:01.120 --> 00:01:07.080
The news of Lexington and Concord sparked the local governments into circulating defense

12
00:01:07.080 --> 00:01:12.860
associations, a more radical extension of the Continental Association.

13
00:01:12.860 --> 00:01:19.700
In New York and New Jersey, signers of these mass statements agreed to support any measures

14
00:01:49.700 --> 00:01:57.900
New Jersey, Maryland and South Carolina. The new, more radical Defense Associations understandably

15
00:01:57.900 --> 00:02:05.380
superseded the Continental Association in the support of the public. The New York Associations

16
00:02:05.380 --> 00:02:13.100
responded to the electric dues of Lexington and Concord on April 23rd by immediately putting

17
00:02:13.100 --> 00:02:19.380
Leadership into the Hands of the Leaders of the Radical Forces, Isaac Sears and John

18
00:02:19.380 --> 00:02:20.860
Lamb.

19
00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:26.700
Organizing parades in the towns, Sears and Lamb called on the people of New York to arm

20
00:02:26.700 --> 00:02:31.540
themselves in defense of their injured rights and liberties.

21
00:02:31.540 --> 00:02:36.460
Shipments of provisions for General Gage's forces in Boston were quickly stripped by

22
00:02:36.460 --> 00:02:40.420
a mob led by Sears, Lamb and Peter Levinson.

23
00:02:40.420 --> 00:02:46.860
Sears and Lamb also broke into the City Hall arsenal and seized and distributed the muskets

24
00:02:46.860 --> 00:02:54.660
and gunpowder inside. Armed citizens patrolled the streets and Sears and Lamb hastily drilled

25
00:02:54.660 --> 00:03:02.900
their followers. Revolutionary popular rule prevailed. Hated Tory printer James Rivington

26
00:03:02.900 --> 00:03:08.640
was forced to flee to the safety of a British warship. The Reverend Miles Cooper and other

27
00:03:08.640 --> 00:03:15.680
The former Tory Anglican clergyman of New York went into hiding, and an armed mob, led

28
00:03:15.680 --> 00:03:21.960
by Sears, forced the collector of customs to surrender the keys to the customs house,

29
00:03:21.960 --> 00:03:28.480
which was promptly shut down. Sears ordered no ships to be cleared for Halifax or British-occupied

30
00:03:28.480 --> 00:03:35.600
Boston and even went so far as to close the port of New York. The old predominantly radical

31
00:03:35.600 --> 00:03:42.240
Committee of Sixty, after failing in its bid to run the city, organized a citywide election

32
00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:48.620
for a Committee of One Hundred as the city's government. Elections were also called for

33
00:03:48.620 --> 00:03:56.240
provincial congress to unify the whole province. In the election of April 29, two slates contested

34
00:03:56.240 --> 00:04:03.560
for the twenty city delegate positions and for the Committee of One Hundred. Sears, Lamb,

35
00:04:03.560 --> 00:04:16.280
The election was a victory for the conservative wigs of Robert R. Livingston's wing of the

36
00:04:16.280 --> 00:04:23.760
landed oligarchy and a blow to the Sears-Lamm radicals, who had been weakened by the growing

37
00:04:23.760 --> 00:04:32.200
conservatization of the third member of the once great radical triumvirate Alexander McDougall.

38
00:04:32.200 --> 00:04:37.360
The conservatives swiftly moved to tame and bolderize the revolutionary movement in New

39
00:04:37.360 --> 00:04:43.960
York City. At a conservative-run mass meeting immediately following the election, headed

40
00:04:43.960 --> 00:04:50.220
by Isaac Lowe and Robert Livingston, a defense association drafted by the highly conservative

41
00:04:50.220 --> 00:04:57.600
James Duane, John Jay, and Peter Van Schaak pledged to carry out the measures of the Continental

42
00:04:57.600 --> 00:05:04.760
and Provincial Congresses. This was a seemingly bold and sturdy step, but actually it channeled

43
00:05:04.760 --> 00:05:11.560
the revolutionary movement in New York into passive legal measures and shunted aside the

44
00:05:11.560 --> 00:05:18.400
extra-legal activities of Sears and Lamb. The newly elected Committee of 100 quickly

45
00:05:18.400 --> 00:05:24.000
resolved to offer this defense association to every citizen of the city and to record

46
00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:38.560
The Committee of 100 also mobilized and drilled the militia of the city, and sale of arms

47
00:05:38.560 --> 00:05:47.720
to Tories was prohibited. The swift military mobilization performed two functions, one revolutionary,

48
00:05:47.720 --> 00:05:54.520
The other, repressive. On the one hand, the militia prepared against an expected British

49
00:05:54.520 --> 00:06:02.640
invasion of New York City. On the other, its actual concrete function was the centrist one

50
00:06:02.640 --> 00:06:09.480
of keeping the Sears-Lamm radicals under wraps. The meeting of the first New York Provincial

51
00:06:09.480 --> 00:06:15.680
Congress on May 22 marked the first highly significant expansion of the revolutionary

52
00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:20.280
Revolutionary Movement from the city to the whole province, which had until then been

53
00:06:20.280 --> 00:06:24.780
conspicuously lacking in revolutionary fervor.

54
00:06:24.780 --> 00:06:31.220
The Congress expanded the Defense Association of April 29 to the entire province, and county

55
00:06:31.220 --> 00:06:36.880
committees were selected to offer the association to every inhabitant.

56
00:06:36.880 --> 00:06:44.680
Although no penalties except public obloquy were attached to non-signers, by September

57
00:06:44.680 --> 00:07:14.680
The patience of the Provincial Congress had worn thin. It resolved on September 1 that although this Congress have a tender regard for freedom of speech, the rights of conscience and personal liberty, the public safety required a stern crackdown upon those withholding allegiance not only from the Provincial and Continental Congresses, but even from county and district committees, all of which were

58
00:07:14.680 --> 00:07:21.800
for Extralegal and Spontaneously Created Bodies. In two weeks, the Provincial Committee of

59
00:07:21.800 --> 00:07:29.440
Safety, the Provincial Congress' executive arm, pressed further to force the disarming

60
00:07:29.440 --> 00:07:38.280
of all non-signers of the Association, who were presumed to be ipso facto rejectors of

61
00:07:38.280 --> 00:07:44.460
the authority of the revolutionary bodies. While this step was too radical for the Congress

62
00:08:14.460 --> 00:08:22.220
and the conservative neo-Tory sentiment, thereby playing into Tory hands. Outright Tory were

63
00:08:22.220 --> 00:08:30.500
the Delancy Wing of the landed oligarchy, the Anglicans concentrated in New York City,

64
00:08:30.500 --> 00:08:37.840
and oppressed tenants whose landlords were Whigs, for example Livingston, and who hoped

65
00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:44.180
to gain by opposing their masters. Thus the inner contradictions of New York's drive for

66
00:08:44.180 --> 00:08:50.940
for Liberty that acquiesced in oppression of tenants arose to plague the revolutionary

67
00:08:50.940 --> 00:08:57.260
cause. When the association was circulated throughout New York, it was found that Tories

68
00:08:57.260 --> 00:09:03.940
were in a majority on Long Island, overwhelmingly so in Queens and Richmond counties, where

69
00:09:03.940 --> 00:09:10.100
they prevented the election of deputies, and very strong in parts of Westchester, Albany

70
00:09:10.100 --> 00:09:16.340
and Duchess Counties and in New York City. The military effort of New York was thereby

71
00:09:16.340 --> 00:09:23.420
gravely crippled and few men or supplies and no money could be furnished by New York for

72
00:09:23.420 --> 00:09:30.180
the crucially important invasion of Canada. While outright Tories were unusually strong

73
00:09:30.180 --> 00:09:36.500
in New York, even the dominant conservative Livingston Whigs were eager for reconciliation

74
00:09:36.500 --> 00:09:45.380
with England. Only in New York was it credible that as late as the end of May 1775, the Provincial

75
00:09:45.380 --> 00:09:53.060
Congress should adopt the reconciliation report of the highly conservative Governor Morris.

76
00:09:53.060 --> 00:09:59.500
Morris's principals, obsolete elsewhere in the colonies, approved Britain's right to

77
00:09:59.500 --> 00:10:05.340
regulate American foreign commerce, but not domestic affairs, and moved along the lines

78
00:10:05.340 --> 00:10:10.700
of Galloway's Old Defeated Plan of Union with Great Britain.

79
00:10:10.700 --> 00:10:16.400
So timorous were the Livingston Whigs that at the end of August when Lamb, under provincial

80
00:10:16.400 --> 00:10:22.780
Congress authority, attempted to strip the battery port of royal authority and a British

81
00:10:22.780 --> 00:10:30.400
ship opened fire, the Whigs totally succumbed to Governor William Tryon's demand and left

82
00:10:30.400 --> 00:10:41.480
When the Continental Congress recommended jailing all persons inimical to the American cause

83
00:10:41.480 --> 00:10:48.200
and especially royal officials, the Whig rulers of New York City hastened to assure royal

84
00:10:48.200 --> 00:10:55.780
governor Tryon of his permanent safety. Further, in early November, when the Continental Congress

85
00:10:55.780 --> 00:11:04.060
urged New York to seize all British military stores in the city. The Whigs flatly refused.

86
00:11:04.060 --> 00:11:10.000
What sort of a Revolutionary War was this? New York was clearly a pest hole for Revolutionary

87
00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:17.000
activities. Rendered desperate by the dead hand of the ruling Whigs, the New York radicals

88
00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:23.380
decided they had to carry on the Revolution by themselves. In early June, before Montgomery

89
00:11:23.380 --> 00:11:29.460
Montgomery and Shuler marched for Montreal. Marinus Willett defied the Provincial Congress

90
00:11:29.460 --> 00:11:35.420
and raided the baggage train of the royal governor embarking for England. An ordinance

91
00:11:35.420 --> 00:11:42.500
warehouse was looted and a royal barge burned. Sears, backed by Montgomery, decided to seize

92
00:11:42.500 --> 00:11:49.520
Tryon and take him to Connecticut in the summer of 1775, but he was overruled by the oligarchs

93
00:11:49.520 --> 00:12:19.520
Schuller and Washington

94
00:12:19.520 --> 00:12:25.560
Like so many other American leaders at the Battle of Quebec. Meanwhile, the third radical

95
00:12:25.560 --> 00:12:32.680
triumvir, Alexander MacDougall, the last remaining in New York, continued to shift ever more

96
00:12:32.680 --> 00:12:40.800
steadily rightward into the Livingston camp. Thus, with their great leaders gone or recreant,

97
00:12:40.800 --> 00:12:47.260
New York radicalism and the Sons of Liberty were dealt a staggering and decisive blow,

98
00:12:47.260 --> 00:12:56.260
A blow which such new leaders as Daniel Dunscum and William Goforth could not hope to repair.

99
00:12:56.260 --> 00:13:03.620
New York was now deprived of a left and remained only with a strong Tory right and a conservative,

100
00:13:03.620 --> 00:13:06.500
Saint-Harded, Livingston, Centre-Right