The Epic of New York City (17 page)

He and his staff were charged with treason. They also were accused of murder for firing on the king's men and thereby causing wanton destruction of life. After a week's trial Leisler, Milborne, and six others were found guilty and sentenced to death. However, the six subordinates were pardoned, leaving Leisler and Milborne to pay the supreme penalty. Although Sloughter considered them knaves unworthy to live, he hesitated about signing their death warrants because an appeal had been sent to the king by Leisler's adherents. The anti-Leislerians invited the new governor to a wedding feast and plied him with liquor until he put his shaky signature to the execution papers.

On a dark and rainy May morning Leisler and his son-in-law were led to gallows erected at what was to become the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge. A large crowd gathered despite the bad weather. To many of the frightened onlookers Leisler still was a hero, the man who had saved them from Popery and aristocratic rule. Other witnesses
gloated at the spectacle of this tyrant about to meet the fate he deserved.

In his final moments Leisler behaved with dignity. Granted the chance to make a speech, he said in part, “So far from revenge do we depart this world that we require and make it our dying request to all our relations and friends, that they should in time to come be forgetful of any injury done to us. . . .”

The trapdoors were sprung. The two men fell, danced on the air a few moments, and then perished. Their enemies cried in exultation. Their friends groaned in sorrow, women fainting and men weeping. Then Leisler's faithful followers dashed to his broken body to snatch up souvenirs to keep the rest of their lives.

Chapter 6

J
ACOB
L
EISLER'S
death that rain-swept day of May 16, 1691, was not in vain. However much he may have overreached himself, he taught the poor and oppressed not to kneel before the rich and royal. He divided the electorate into two parties—popular and aristocratic. Agreeing on practically nothing, they split the city for years to come. But their everlasting quarrels prevented the British governors from gaining undisputed mastery of the colony.

Governor Henry Sloughter's first act after Leisler's arrest and before his execution was to issue writs for the election of a representative assembly. It met in a Pearl Street tavern on April 9, 1961. This date marks the beginning of continuous constitutional government in New York.
The party opposing Leisler won a majority of representatives, and the governor named as members of his council the most bitter enemies of Leisler.

Sloughter died so suddenly the following July that it was rumored he had been poisoned. Six doctors examined his body; this was the first autopsy ever held here. Finding a high alcoholic content in the corpse and learning that the governor suffered from delirium tremens before his death, they concluded that he had died after a drunken debauch.

The council chose Major Richard Ingoldsby to take charge of things until the arrival of the new governor, Benjamin Fletcher. Heavyset, florid, and greedy, Fletcher did not appear until August of the following year. Anti-Leislerians welcomed him with a great parade. From that year, 1692, dates New York's custom of honoring notables and celebrating important events with impressive parades.

After Fletcher had taken office, his handsome six-horse carriage was seen everywhere, carrying Mrs. Fletcher and her daughters, gowned in the latest European finery. The new governor was an opportunist, little concerned about the colonists. At the time the chief source of riches was land, and Fletcher gave property to his favorites. By bribing him, a wealthy man could get any real estate he wanted. Because only propertied men could vote, Fletcher not only swindled honest people out of their land but also reduced most of them to tenant farmers.

During his regime the city lost its bolting monopoly. In 1678, when the first Bolting Act was passed, the city owned only 3 ships, 7 sloops, and 8 small boats, while the city revenue came to only 2,000 pounds a year. In 1694, when the last act was repealed, the city boasted 60 ships, 62 sloops, and 40 boats. Then too, its annual revenue had risen to 5,000 pounds, and the number of houses had doubled.

As the result of pressure from other communities, the manufacture and packaging of flour and bread were thrown open to all competitors. Within two years bread became scarce in the city. Bakers couldn't buy flour cheaply enough to bake it for their customers at the former prices. An inventory revealed that only a week's supply of wheat, flour, and bread was on hand for the city's nearly 7,000 inhabitants.

Such was the genesis of three significant trends: (1) Strife between Leislerians and anti-Leislerians split the citizens into popular and aristocratic parties. (2) Fletcher's venality inaugurated a corrupt alliance between bad politics and big business. (3) The Bolting Acts
and their repeal set city against country and country against city.

Most prominent families were related by marriage—sometimes doubly and trebly connected. Class distinctions were emphasized by clothing. A gentleman might bedeck himself in green silk breeches trimmed with silver and gold thread, a gold-embroidered blue coat, a lace shirt, scarlet and blue hose, a powdered and pompadoured wig, and a silver-hilted sword. Even upper-class schoolboys owned three pairs of gloves and wore gold or silver buttons and blue or red stockings. New York's gaudy fashions contrasted sharply with the drab garb of New England Puritans.

A Boston gentlewoman visiting New York at this time had a sharp eye for ladies' fashions. She considered the local Englishwomen more chic than their Dutch counterparts. The Dutch
vrouws
favored loose gowns with unlaced waists. Wealthy Dutch females prided themselves on their ornamental headdress, the jewels on their fingers, and their earrings.

New Yorkers loved fun. They whipped about the countryside in sleighs during the winter, enjoyed drinking in smoky taverns, almost entirely ignored the Sabbath, and consumed huge quantities of good food. A delicacy of the day was orange butter, made according to this recipe: “Take new cream two gallons, beat it up to a thicknesse, then add half a pint of orange-flower-water, and as much red wine, and so being become the thicknesse of butter it has both the colour and smell of butter.” Drunkenness was common. At a City Hall dinner honoring Mayor Stephanus Van Cortlandt, he became so intoxicated and merry that he snatched off his hat and wig, skewered them on the tip of his sword, set fire to them, and waved them happily over the banquet table.

Despite the heavy drinking done by men, divorce was rare. A very few divorces did occur in the 1670's, but in the century preceding the Revolutionary War not a single divorce was granted in the colony of New York. In fact, there was no way of dissolving a marriage except by a special act of the legislature. Most weddings were performed by justices of the peace instead of by ministers.

In 1693 the Church of England became the colony's official religion. Two years later, though, a local Anglican chaplain complained that only 90 families adhered to the English Church. There were 20 Jewish families, 260 Huguenot families, 45 families of Dutch Lutherans, 1,754 families subscribing to the Dutch Reformed Church,
and 1,365 families of English Dissenters. Dissenters meant all Protestant groups disputing the authority of the Anglican Church.

Only six Catholics lived here in 1696. For more than three-quarters of a century after the flight of Dongan, Nicholson, and the Jesuit fathers, the few remaining Catholics lacked a place of worship and lived in fear of persecution. The war between England's Protestant king and France's Catholic king so agitated New Yorkers that in 1691 they banned “Romish forms of worship” here. Even worse was to come.

Fearful that the French would descend from Canada and attack New York, the British in America, helped by the colonists, launched expeditions against New France in 1693, 1709, and 1711, only to fail each time. The British knew that many leading French explorers were Jesuit priests and believed that they tried to incite Indians against the English colonies.

Because of this, on August 9, 1700, the province of New York enacted a law that all Jesuits, priests, or any other ecclesiastics ordained by the Pope must leave before November 1, 1700. Any who remained after that date, taught Catholic doctrines, used Catholic rites, or granted absolution “shall be deemed and accounted an incendiary and disturber of the public peace and safety and an enemy to the true Christian religion and shall be adjudged to suffer perpetual imprisonment.” Any Jesuit who escaped from prison and then was recaptured would be put to death. Any citizen who knowingly hid a priest could be fined 200 pounds.

This cruel law was really passed for political and military reasons. As one historian said, “In directing severe penalties against the priests, the legislators fancied they were warding off the blows of tomahawks.”

Upstate New York from the Hudson westward to the Genesee River was the home of a powerful Indian confederation, known to the French as the Iroquois and to the English as the Five Nations. It consisted of Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes. In 1715 the Tuscarora tribe, fleeing northward from the Carolinas, was admitted to limited privileges within the confederation, which then became known as the Six Nations.

About 1700 the Five Nations stood at the peak of their power. They watched the growing Anglo-French rivalry for control of North America. New York was most directly affected because of its long border along the southern edge of New France. The Iroquois chiefs,
skilled in diplomacy, realized that they held the balance of power and tried to play the British and French off against each other, winning first this concession and then that.

New York City took part in these abortive invasions of Canada. In 1693 the city sent 150 soldiers to Albany, and although the expedition failed, the men were received with honors when they returned. In 1709 supplies were gathered here; men, ships, horses, and wagons were requisitioned; and 20 carpenters built boats and canoes. Although this project was abandoned, New York had to issue paper money to pay the debts accumulated. Again in 1711, preparations for war whipped the city into a frenzy, markets being taken over for the construction of boats, but this invasion, too, came to nothing.

In 1693 the lower tip of Manhattan was named the Battery. A battery, of course, is an emplacement where artillery is mounted. To defend the city, Governor Fletcher constructed an emplacement on the rocks along the waterfront from what is now the foot of Greenwich Street to the corner of the present Whitehall and State streets. This southwestern tip of the island commanded the approach to the Hudson River. Ninety-two cannon were mounted in firing position. Fletcher also ordered the fort repaired once again. Decade after decade the fort needed attention because it was maintained by men ignorant of military engineering and because funds earmarked for the stronghold often were spent on other projects.

Turning from war to peace, Fletcher helped the first printer set up shop in New York. He had heard of a Quaker, named William Bradford, the official printer of Pennsylvania. Bradford got into trouble in Philadelphia because of a book he published. Tried and acquitted, he was so harassed by authorities that he decided to return to England. When Fletcher learned of this, he induced the New York council to pass a resolution offering forty pounds a year to a royal printer of the colony of New York. Bradford accepted the position.

He began operating New York's first printing press at 81 Pearl Street on April 10, 1693. Besides printing city laws, he published lawbooks and other volumes. One of his first was a fifty-one page booklet entitled
A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman Leaving the University, Concerning His Conversation and Behavior in the World.
This was an odd choice because New York contained no college, let alone a university.