WEBVTT NOTE 15. Suppressing Tories in New York 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Volume 4, Chapter 15, Suppressing Tories in New York 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:15.000 New York, as we have indicated, was a hotbed of Toryism, and even the Whigs were dominated by highly conservative oligarchs. 3 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:21.000 The colony was therefore held in understandable suspicion by the other colonies, 4 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:27.000 and Isaac Sears, the leading New York radical who had left in disgust for Connecticut, 5 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:36.000 was one of the first to realize that any radical action in New York would have to be accomplished from outside its borders. 6 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:45.000 In late November, Sears, appointed a military commander by the Connecticut Assembly, collected 100 men from Connecticut 7 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:53.000 and conducted a daring raid into New York City, smashing the Tory print shops. 8 00:00:53.000 --> 00:01:00.280 They seized three leading Westchester Tories, including the Rev. Samuel Seabury, and hauled 9 00:01:00.280 --> 00:01:02.920 them back to New Haven. 10 00:01:02.920 --> 00:01:08.640 Only Suffolk County in eastern Long Island, part of Ulster County and New York City, were 11 00:01:08.640 --> 00:01:11.000 largely revolutionary. 12 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:17.240 But even in those places the action meted out to the local Tories was negligible. 13 00:01:17.240 --> 00:01:23.880 Indeed, of 104 merchant members of the Chamber of Commerce of New York City, no fewer than 14 00:01:23.880 --> 00:01:31.880 78 were Tories. Westchester County was largely Tory, and Dutchess County predominantly so. 15 00:01:31.880 --> 00:01:39.000 Indeed, in Dutchess, the loyalists armed themselves openly, condemned the Continental Congress, 16 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:46.240 interfered with the regular militia, and openly enlisted men for the British armed forces. 17 00:01:46.240 --> 00:01:53.120 The Tories were the river men who used their boats to convey enlistees to the British forces 18 00:01:53.120 --> 00:02:00.960 and threatened to carry the leading rebels off as well. During October, 1775, many Tories of the 19 00:02:00.960 --> 00:02:07.600 lower Hudson Valley were planning to join the British forces, some in the Peekskill area, 20 00:02:07.600 --> 00:02:12.160 tried to rise up in arms, but were quickly disarmed by the local militia. 21 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:20.240 The heavily Tory Staten Island sent no delegates to the Provincial Congress and was embargoed 22 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:26.120 by the adjoining area of New Jersey for its unfriendly disposition toward the liberties 23 00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:28.120 of America. 24 00:02:28.120 --> 00:02:34.040 But the staunchest Tory region in New York was Queens County, covering most of western 25 00:02:34.040 --> 00:02:35.400 Long Island. 26 00:02:35.400 --> 00:02:40.840 The Queen's towns not only refused to send delegates to the Provincial Congress, but 27 00:02:40.840 --> 00:02:46.880 What Passed Loyalist Resolutions in Defiance of the Revolution? 28 00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:54.600 In the November 1775 elections to the Provincial Congress, the Free Holders of Queens County 29 00:02:54.600 --> 00:03:00.160 voted by three-and-a-half to one against sending a delegate. 30 00:03:00.160 --> 00:03:05.840 The following month, the bulk of the county's voters declared their neutrality in the war 31 00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:09.160 and decided to arm in their own defense. 32 00:03:09.160 --> 00:03:14.780 The British fleet proved more than willing to supply them with arms. Rising Tory activity 33 00:03:14.780 --> 00:03:21.720 in Queens so alarmed even such Conservatives as Jay and MacDougall that the latter held 34 00:03:21.720 --> 00:03:28.640 it imperative to disarm the Tories of the county. Even the Conservative Provincial Congress 35 00:03:28.640 --> 00:03:34.920 recommended embargoing these counties that continued to refuse to send any delegates. 36 00:03:34.920 --> 00:03:40.220 However, the Congress refused to agree to the urgings of its Committee of Safety to 37 00:03:40.220 --> 00:03:43.800 disarm all the provinces' Tories. 38 00:03:43.800 --> 00:03:49.640 The Continental Congress, however, angrily resolved to smash this resistance movement 39 00:03:49.640 --> 00:03:56.860 and declared the virtual outlawry of Queens County, denouncing its citizens as incapable 40 00:03:56.860 --> 00:04:00.480 of resolving to live and die free men. 41 00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:05.880 It declared that the Queen's Tories should be disarmed, the dangerous ones imprisoned, 42 00:04:05.880 --> 00:04:09.240 and the names of all be published throughout the country. 43 00:04:09.240 --> 00:04:14.680 No inhabitant of Queens was to be allowed to leave the county without a passport issued 44 00:04:14.680 --> 00:04:17.180 by the New York Committee of Safety. 45 00:04:17.180 --> 00:04:23.020 It was clear, however, that any chastening of Queen's Tories would have to be accomplished 46 00:04:23.020 --> 00:04:25.520 from outside the province. 47 00:04:25.520 --> 00:04:30.680 With the Continental Congress's direction, Nathaniel Heard of New Jersey was sent into 48 00:04:30.680 --> 00:04:40.120 New York with 1,200 men in late January 1776. Heard succeeded in disarming 600 armed but 49 00:04:40.120 --> 00:04:46.700 disorganized Queen's Tories without a fight. Seventeen Tory ringleaders were marched off 50 00:04:46.700 --> 00:04:53.440 to prison in Philadelphia. Succeeding Heard was that great scourge of Tories in Toryism, 51 00:04:53.440 --> 00:04:59.760 General Charles Lee, increasingly in use as a radical military troubleshooter. 52 00:04:59.760 --> 00:05:05.480 With the Canadian campaign heading toward defeat and the siege of Boston moving towards 53 00:05:05.480 --> 00:05:11.820 victory, it was becoming ever more clear that the next problem was the expected transfer 54 00:05:11.820 --> 00:05:19.480 of the British Army from Boston to some more congenial spot on the Atlantic seaboard. 55 00:05:19.480 --> 00:05:21.980 Probably they would pick New York City. 56 00:05:21.980 --> 00:05:28.060 From there they might, in a combined pincers movement with forces in Canada, try to split 57 00:05:28.060 --> 00:05:35.060 the colonies in two. And riddled with Tories and Neo-Tories as it was, New York might prove 58 00:05:35.060 --> 00:05:40.980 a hospitable haven for the British troops. Lee was among the first to press for more 59 00:05:40.980 --> 00:05:47.980 radical and vigorous measures against the British and the Tories. By the summer of 1775 60 00:05:47.980 --> 00:05:54.060 He was advocating the independence of America and wondered why, in the name of Satan, New 61 00:05:54.060 --> 00:06:00.740 York's Governor Tryon had not been seized. During the autumn, Lee urged McDougall to 62 00:06:00.740 --> 00:06:06.340 seize Tryon and to inform the British naval captain in New York Harbor that, if he had 63 00:06:06.340 --> 00:06:13.260 bombarded the city, the first house he sets on fire shall be the funeral pile of his Excellency 64 00:06:13.260 --> 00:06:20.000 In short, triumph should be held as hostage for British good behavior. 65 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:27.660 In October 1775, Lee pioneered in proposing two radical steps, that the war be partly 66 00:06:27.660 --> 00:06:34.060 financed by the confiscation of Tory property, and that American ports be thrown open to 67 00:06:34.060 --> 00:06:40.020 all European commerce, defiantly shedding the last American allegiance to the British 68 00:06:40.020 --> 00:06:42.380 laws of trade. 69 00:06:42.380 --> 00:06:49.700 In early January 1776, deeply worried about New York, Lee urged Washington to allow him 70 00:06:49.700 --> 00:06:56.500 to raise a body of Connecticut volunteers in Jersey militia in order to cleanse New York 71 00:06:56.500 --> 00:07:04.040 City of Tories and to fortify it. Washington hesitated for political reasons, but finally 72 00:07:04.040 --> 00:07:09.540 agreed when John Adams approved the plan. Lee promptly went to Connecticut and there 73 00:07:09.540 --> 00:07:15.620 There collected twelve hundred men recruited by Isaac Sears, whom Lee hailed and picked 74 00:07:15.620 --> 00:07:21.480 as his assistant for the expedition, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Approaching 75 00:07:21.480 --> 00:07:27.660 the border, Lee was met by hysterical pleas not to cross into the city, lest the British 76 00:07:27.660 --> 00:07:34.200 navy bombard it. He characteristically replied that if they did, the first house set in flames 77 00:07:34.200 --> 00:07:45.320 His arrival in New York in early February coincided with the arrival of British General Sir Henry 78 00:07:45.320 --> 00:07:51.060 Clinton. In the harbor with several hundred troops, Lee took command and successfully 79 00:07:51.060 --> 00:07:56.360 threatened the British that opening fire on the town would mean the death of one hundred 80 00:07:56.360 --> 00:08:02.160 Tories. He also cut off the supplies that the New Yorkers had been generously furnishing 81 00:08:02.160 --> 00:08:04.160 The British 82 00:08:04.160 --> 00:08:09.160 The New York Provincial Congress protested with particular bitterness at the hard treatment 83 00:08:09.160 --> 00:08:15.160 Lee was meeting out to the Tories. It is curious that the Congress took time out in the midst 84 00:08:15.160 --> 00:08:22.160 of a dire revolutionary crisis and a fight for survival to complain about the fact that 85 00:08:22.160 --> 00:08:29.160 the Tory, Samuel Gale, had been imprisoned by Lee in Connecticut and his property invaded. 86 00:08:29.160 --> 00:08:41.920 Or perhaps it is not so curious when we reflect that Gale was an English surveyor allied to the landed New York oligarch and highly conservative Whig, James Dwayne. 87 00:08:41.920 --> 00:08:51.160 Lee paid no attention to the carping. Instead, he sent out the eager Isaac Sears to tame the Tories of Queens County. 88 00:08:51.160 --> 00:08:59.160 Sears swept through Queens denouncing the New York Congress and forcing a strong public oath of allegiance upon everyone. 89 00:08:59.160 --> 00:09:04.160 All non-compliers were arrested and sent to Connecticut. 90 00:09:04.160 --> 00:09:14.160 Lee was soon called elsewhere, but his activities did have the effect of shoring up the patriots and chastening the Tories. 91 00:09:14.160 --> 00:09:18.160 An indigenous New York left could not be restored, however, 92 00:09:18.160 --> 00:09:30.160 and the raid provoked such a storm of conservative New York protest that the Continental Congress and Army weakly withdrew from suppressing Tories. 93 00:09:30.160 --> 00:09:40.160 New York was where the British first tried to exploit another contradiction within American society, the disaffected Indians on the frontier. 94 00:09:40.160 --> 00:09:47.360 In any conflict between English and Americans, the tendency of the Indians would be to side 95 00:09:47.360 --> 00:09:53.000 with Britain, for it was the land grabbing American settlers who constituted their supreme 96 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:59.880 enemy, whereas the British had played a relatively mollifying role with the Indians, for example 97 00:09:59.880 --> 00:10:04.740 in decreeing the proclamation line of 1763. 98 00:10:04.740 --> 00:10:11.040 The most that the Americans could hope for, therefore, was Indian neutrality in the war. 99 00:10:11.040 --> 00:10:16.220 It was that promise that General Schuller had gained from the Iroquois in the summer 100 00:10:16.220 --> 00:10:18.380 of 1775. 101 00:10:18.380 --> 00:10:25.380 Fortunately, for the American cause, Sir William Johnson, Indian trader, superintendent of 102 00:10:25.380 --> 00:10:34.380 Indian Affairs at Albany, and uncrowned king of the Iroquois, had died in 1774. 103 00:10:34.380 --> 00:10:40.100 But Johnson's nephew and son-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson, succeeded him, and William's 104 00:10:40.100 --> 00:10:47.700 son, Sir John Johnson, ruled an enormous estate in upcountry Tryon County, with the aid of 105 00:10:47.700 --> 00:10:54.980 a fierce private army of his tenant, Highland Scots. Furthermore, Tryon County, covering 106 00:10:54.980 --> 00:11:01.460 most of upcountry New York, was predominantly Tory, and rumors persisted of a plan for the 107 00:11:01.460 --> 00:11:08.460 Johnson Highlanders to join pro-British Iroquois and march down the Hudson Valley, raising 108 00:11:08.740 --> 00:11:15.140 Tories as they came. But the order of the several thousand pro-British Iroquois was 109 00:11:15.140 --> 00:11:22.140 dampened by the British themselves in the spring of 1775, when General Carlton, fearful 110 00:11:22.560 --> 00:11:29.440 of provoking an American invasion of Canada, advised them to lie low for the time being. 111 00:11:29.440 --> 00:11:37.040 In January 1776, General Schuler took several thousand militiamen into Tryon County in a 112 00:11:37.040 --> 00:11:43.340 surprise attack, thoroughly disarming Johnson's Scots and shipping six of their leaders to 113 00:11:43.340 --> 00:11:50.720 prison in Philadelphia. Thus, by early 1776, the rebels, with the use of surprise and skilled 114 00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:58.120 organization, had managed to disarm the Tories in the areas of their greatest support. Many 115 00:11:58.120 --> 00:12:03.280 Many of the Highland Scots, along with most of the other Tories of Upper New York, fled 116 00:12:03.280 --> 00:12:11.400 to Canada, there to work for vengeance in return. Back home, their property was confiscated, 117 00:12:11.400 --> 00:12:18.980 and the Tories who remained behind were imprisoned, flogged and sometimes executed. Sir John Johnson 118 00:12:18.980 --> 00:12:25.540 managed to hold Fort Stanwix at the extreme western point of the Mohawk River until late 119 00:12:25.540 --> 00:12:31.940 Spring of 1776 when he was forced to abandon his properties and flee to Canada.