Unnatural Rebellion

Loyalists in New York City during the Revolution

Ruma Chopra

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780813931166
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire des débuts de l'Amérique

Thousands of British American mainland colonists rejected the War for American Independence. Shunning rebel violence as unnecessary, unlawful, and unnatural, they emphasized the natural ties of blood, kinship, language, and religion that united the colonies to Britain. They hoped that British military strength would crush the minority rebellion and free the colonies to renegotiate their return to the empire.

Of course the loyalists were too American to be of one mind. This is a story of how a cross-section of colonists flocked to the British headquarters of New York City to support their ideal of reunion. Despised by the rebels as enemies or as British appendages, New York's refugees hoped to partner with the British to restore peaceful government in the colonies. The British confounded their expectations by instituting martial law in the city and marginalizing loyalist leaders. Still, the loyal Americans did not surrender their vision but creatively adapted their rhetoric and accommodated military governance to protect their long-standing bond with the mother country. They never imagined that allegiance to Britain would mean a permanent exile from their homes.

1

NATURAL RIGHTS AND NATURAL TIES

Britons in New York City

We (colonies and England) grew rich together. She immensely so by the monopoly of our commerce; and we flourished by her credit; by the fertility of our soil, our natural advantages, and our own labour.

—William Smith, “Notes for Mr. Hamilton on the American Dispute,” November 1775

The royal colony of New York protected British interests in mainland North America. Governor Bellomont’s 1699 reflections on the strategic position occupied by New York still held sway six decades into the eighteenth century: he declared that New York “ought to be looked upon as the Capital Province or the Citadel to all the others; for secure but this and you secure all the English colonies, not only against the French but also against any insurrections or rebellions against the Crown of England, if any such should happen, which God forbid.”¹ Located astride the Hudson River–Lake Champlain water route toward Canada, New York provided a barrier against French invasion from the north. It served as a vantage point from which the empire could monitor the political pulse of other colonies. In 1755, the British established their central post office in North America in New York City. Prior to 1763, the only British regular troops stationed in the mainland colonies in peacetime garrisoned New York, which attests to Whitehall’s recognition of the strategic importance of the colony to the British empire in North America.²

An energized point in the British North Atlantic trading network, New York City served as the royal and economic center of New York province. Located at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, the city was compact, about a mile in length and on average, a half mile in width. It enjoyed vigorous growth from the second quarter of the eighteenth century and became the commercial entrepôt and cultural nexus for Manhattan Island, western Long Island, southern Westchester, Staten Island, and eastern New Jersey. A network of roads and waterways connected these communities and provided markets for merchants, farmers, importers, and artisans.

In 1756, New York Councillor William Smith Jr. observed that “our Merchants are compared to a Hive of Bees who Industriously gather Honey for others.”³ Although the city’s trade was smaller than that of Philadelphia, diverse entrepôt activities allowed New York merchants to maintain a favorable balance of trade with the mother country. Most significantly, the nearly continuous state of war between Britain and France provided New York merchants with valuable contracts from the British government. During the eighteenth century, New York’s overseas trade superseded its intercolonial trade. Involved in the redistribution of imports and the warehousing of goods for overseas shipment, New York City served as the entrepreneurial center of the province and boasted a local merchant and artisan community of skill and ambition.⁴

As the political center of the colony, New York City was home to the royal governor and his entourage of royal officials. Fort George, at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, included the governor’s residence as well as barracks that could accommodate two hundred soldiers. Fort George rendered the city imperial as much as colonial and reminded New Yorkers of the protection the empire gave them. The governor administered the colony with the advice of an appointed council and the consent of an elected provincial assembly. He had authority to prorogue the assembly and to veto bills, to command the colony’s militia and enforce the navigation acts, and to preside over chancery courts and review fraudulent land titles. In addition to naming the attorney general, receiver general, and surveyor general, the governor also chose the mayor, recorder, and common clerk for New York City’s common council.⁵

Leading New Yorkers knew they had much to gain from the governor’s favors. But the governor also needed the support of provincial leaders to enforce British policies. He could not directly control the elected legislative bodies in the colony or the city: the provincial assembly and the city council, respectively. The assembly had acquired the means of hampering and sometimes obstructing the king’s government in the colony because the salary of the governor and chief justice, as well as funds for other civil offices, depended on the assembly’s appropriation.⁶

The selective adoption of British legal culture illustrates New Yorkers’ understanding of their strategic position in the periphery of the empire. They used the flexibility of British constitutional culture to aggrandize their position within the colony. Key to maintaining autonomy was limiting His Majesty’s prerogative in the colony. In 1749, in response to the question, “What is the constitution of the Government?” New York’s governor George Clinton replied that the constitution “is founded on His Majesty’s Commission & Instructions to his Governor.” However, under advisement of his closest advisor, Cadwallader Colden, Clinton complained that New York’s assembly “have made such Encroachments on his Majesty’s Prerogative by their having the power of the purse that they in effect assume the whole executive powers into their own hands & particularly claim the sole right of Judging of and rewarding all Services, as well as fixing Sallaries on the Officers annually, and by rewarding particular contingent Services.”⁷ New York’s elite jealously guarded against Crown encroachment over the governance of the city and the colony. Yet they well understood that association with the royal governor and council, and thereby with the London ministry, signified social and political prestige.

Other than the position of governor and lieutenant governor, the council was the highest colonial office. Compared with New York’s governors, who on average served for only three years, the councillors served almost ten years. They amassed political capital, learned an imperial vocabulary, and gained the respect of New Yorkers and governors. Their role as unofficial advisors to newly arriving governors assured them an incomparable recognition, both at home and abroad. Placed in a position to benefit from and influence the governor’s distribution of patronage, New York councillors gained high standing. Assemblymen stood when a councillor entered a meeting, and New Yorkers honored councillors with glorified obituary notices in the New York newspapers. Awarded lucrative government contracts during the eighteenth-century wars, the councillors used their position to strengthen the clients beholden to them for employment, land, and positions. The majority guided policies favoring commercial interests. Their overseas ties gave them a keen sense of English politics, and their urban residence made them sensitive to transatlantic trading interests.⁸

James DeLancey typifies the imperial connections required for appointment to the exclusive council. The son of the late seventeenth-century Huguenot immigrant to New York Stephen DeLancey, who had amassed a fortune in commerce, James DeLancey was groomed for success. Sent to Corpus Christi, Cambridge, and Lincoln’s Inn in the 1720s, DeLancey became one of a handful of New Yorkers who was professionally trained in law and had powerful connections in England. Upon his return, DeLancey became a member of the New York Council in 1729 at the age of twenty-six, chief justice of the New York Supreme Court in 1733, and served as lieutenant governor from 1753 to his death in 1760. After James DeLancey’s death, his brother, Oliver DeLancey, occupied his seat on the New York Council. These men served as middlemen of an energetic and prosperous empire.⁹

Like other colonists, New Yorkers generally saw themselves as British subjects and treasured the British constitution as a guarantee of public order. Indeed, they believed that the constitution of the colony mimicked in miniature the constitution of Great Britain. They trusted the conservatism of the British constitution because it rested on the revered Magna Carta and because it had long protected the rights of Englishmen. They believed that American liberty rested on the supremacy of the British Crown, the maintenance of the English system of government, the particular glory of which was its perfect balance of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Sovereignty did not reside only with the king but within a mixed structure that included the king, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. New Yorkers insisted that government in New York was congruent to Great Britain’s because the governor represented the king, the council the House of Lords, and the assembly the House of Commons. The distribution of power among three branches served as a bulwark against tyranny by any one branch.¹⁰

New Yorkers believed the empire’s fluid constitutional framework, with its mixture of common-law traditions, written statutes, and customary liberties such as trial by jury and representative government, permitted an ideal relationship between the colonies and the British government. They could maintain their local autonomy while participating fully in the empire’s transatlantic trade and culture. Their belief in the integrative quality of the constitutional relationship with the empire created the confidence they needed to sustain an autonomous political culture within the colony.

In general, New York’s legislative procedures followed the precedents set by the English Parliament. The assembly initiated bills, which required the consent of the council and the governor. But there were divergences. Although modeled after Parliament, New York’s legislative structure dispersed local power at the county level. For example, New York’s assembly had no dedicated home but shared City Hall with the common council of the city. Likewise, judicial power in New York emanated from a single supreme court instead of the three high courts of England (the King’s Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer).¹¹

In comparison with Boston or Philadelphia, a higher number of New Yorkers were eligible to vote in the city. At least two out of every three free adult males had the franchise in New York City, compared with less than half in Boston and Philadelphia. Both freeholders (men who owned at least 50 acres in the city) and freemen qualified to vote, but freemen made up the majority of the New York electorate. Bricklayers, masons, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, weavers, bakers, sailmakers and rope makers, goldsmiths and silversmiths, and other artisans of highly specialized crafts tended to be freeholders.¹² Most freemen were artisans, cartmen, porters, boatmen, mariners, and others who bought political privileges for a few shillings.

Because of the widespread franchise, members of the elected legislative bodies required popular support to maintain political influence and authority. New Yorkers elected twenty-seven members to the provincial assembly, four of whom came from New York City. The city’s voters also annually elected fourteen aldermen and assistants, seven assessors, and sixteen constables to the city’s common council.¹³

Of those elected to the municipal government between 1761 and 1771, over 57 percent were mechanics.¹⁴ But this number is deceptive because the number of mechanic officeholders declined in proportion to the importance of the position to be filled. New Yorkers needed more than ability and ambition to gain the most eminent positions. Merchants and landholders with close ties to the royal government or transatlantic commerce dominated the New York assembly and council.¹⁵

The ethnic and religious diversity in the city prevented any overriding sense of identity comparable to that of Boston. Residents of New York City included diverse immigrants from western and northern Europe, grandchildren of the immigrants wooed to settle in Dutch New Amsterdam during the mid-seventeenth century. By 1664, when the English conquered the city and renamed it New York, the Dutch West Indies Company had attracted a diverse and cosmopolitan society of Dutch, German, French, English, Scandinavians, and at least 375 Africans.¹⁶

By midcentury, slaves and free black people comprised 20 percent of the population, a larger proportion than in any other city in the northern colonies of British America. Most of New York City’s slaves came from the sugar islands of Barbados, Antigua, and above all, Jamaica. The slaves came in very small numbers, just a handful on any given ship, almost always on the return leg of voyages made by New York–based trading vessels.¹⁷ In 1750, 30 to 40 percent of all white households in the city owned one or two slaves.¹⁸ In addition to royal officials, shopkeepers, and professionals, prosperous bakers, bolters, brewers, and butchers also owned slaves.¹⁹ Slaves worked predominantly in the maritime sectors of the New York economy, toiling with mechanics as wagoners, dockers, and cartmen. They also performed general domestic services.²⁰

Changing patterns of immigration affected the ethnic composition of New Yorkers by the middle of the eighteenth century. Between 1700 and 1775, about 585,000 immigrants entered the thirteen North American colonies, with just under half entering from Africa as slaves. The 1707 Act of Union encouraged Scots to take advantage of opportunities for career advancement in the colonies.²¹ Approximately 35,000 Scots entered the mainland colonies in the eighteenth century, of whom 20,000 came between 1768 and 1775.²² Administrators, ministers, and merchants crossed from Scotland to take advantage of opportunities in the port of New York City. Born of a Presbyterian minister in southeastern Scotland, Dr. Cadwallader Colden arrived in New York in 1718 under the patronage of Governor Robert Hunter, converted to Anglicanism, and served in prominent political positions in New York for almost four decades, until 1776.²³ An important member of the American scientific community, Colden corresponded regularly with associates such as Benjamin Franklin.²⁴ Colden would serve as the most royalist of Crown officeholders in New York for five decades prior to the American rebellion. Born of Scottish descent in Ireland, Anglican Reverend Charles Inglis immigrated to the colonies at the age of twenty-one and become assistant rector of New York City’s Trinity Church by 1765.²⁵ As a member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Inglis s...