34. New York Succumbs to Independence

The Declaration of Independence had been proclaimed and the colonies were now united states. But New York had not yet signed! Surely it would not hold out against all the other American colonies; and yet, its ruling landed oligarchy—the Livingstons, Jays, Duanes, Schuylers et al.—were set against independence. The New York Left had been effectively silenced, and as late as April 1776 archconservatives, a large bloc of whom strongly opposed independence, swept the New York elections, defeating radicals selected by the New York Committee of Mechanics.

The revolutionary cause was fortunate in having the Continental Army stationed in New York from mid-April on to defend New York City from the expected British attack. In the course of his stay, Washington was able to cow the province’s Tories and to pressure the Central Committee of Safety into prohibiting supplies to British ships.

Congress’s antiking resolution of May 15 made little impression on New York. However, in early June the New York Provincial Congress approved Congress’ plan for an enlarged army to fight the war and pledged its support to Washington. The provincial congress also appointed the Committee of Seven to investigate, prosecute, convict, and imprison suspected Tories aiding the enemy. This committee was eminently conservative, including as it did Philip J. Livingston, John Jay, and Gouverneur Morris, but the very imminence of the British military threat necessarily drove them to more radical anti-Tory measures. New York was faced with the specter of a mighty British invasion fleet carrying nearly 35,000 troops, which appeared off New York in mid-June. And on June 22 David Mathews, the royally appointed mayor of New York City, was arrested for being secretly in league with Governor Tryon, recruiting Tories for enlisting in British arms, and plotting to kidnap Washington. The action against the Tory Mathews implied recognition of American independence. Furthermore, New York collaborated with Washington in arresting Tories in Ulster, in suppressing armed Tories on Long Island, in raising a patriot militia to cow the Tories of Dutchess County, and in billeting 500 troops on the numerous Tories of Queens County.

Even so, an outright move for independence was extremely difficult for most of the New York aristocracy. Their Whig peers, however, displayed here, as on later occasions, a shrewd ability to compromise with the spirit of the times in order to keep control of affairs at home; by the end of May, Jay, Morris, Livingston, and John Morin Scott were beginning to move cautiously toward independence.

On the other hand, the New York Committee of Mechanics was ardently for independence from Great Britain. On May 27, the provincial congress began cautiously by decreeing the dissolution of the old royal government in New York. Still the Congress dallied, refusing to hurry its instructions to their delegates on the burning issue of independence. New province-wide elections at the end of June secured a large majority of supporters of independence, and on July 9, the Fourth New York Provincial Congress, meeting at White Plains, sedately voted unanimously to join the Continental Declaration of Independence. New York’s acceptance was read to the Continental Congress on July 15 and occasioned the angry resignation of New York’s John Alsop, an arch-conservative, irreconcilable to the last.

In the course of providing for June elections to the Fourth Provincial Congress, the conservatives in control of the third congress had made sure that any new constitution written by the new congress would not have to be ratified by the people, but would go automatically into force. This decision provoked a heated protest from the New York Committee of Mechanics, which pioneered in America in asserting the right of the people to vote on any constitution in a referendum; such a referendum was “the only characteristic of the true lawfulness” of government, a requirement that derived from a God-given right of all men.

If New York moved in measured steps toward independence, affairs were not nearly so placid in New York’s proclaimed northeast, the New Hampshire Grant Lands that were to become Vermont. The first flush of common enthusiasm for the war against Britain could not long obscure the basic conflict between New York land monopolists and Vermont settlers. New York continued to claim the Vermonters’ land, and the presence of Duane, Livingston, and other New Hampshire grantees in the Continental Congress did nothing to allay Vermont’s suspicions. On January 16, 1776, representatives of westside Vermont towns met at a convention in Dorset; the meeting agreed to petition the Continental Congress to agree that their loyalty to the American cause did not include fealty to New York as well. The westsiders asked Congress to tell New York to refrain for the duration of the war from imposing its authority on the New Hampshire Grant Lands. The petition was presented to the Congress in early May by Capt. Heman Allen, brother of Ethan. The congressional answer was to counsel the Grant region to submit loyally to New York rule until the end of the war, with all land quarrels to remain meanwhile in abeyance. This recommendation greatly alarmed Allen, for he and his brother Ira had already quietly conceived a grand design for preserving the settlers’ property intact against depredations: the creation of a free and independent republic of the Grant Lands. To advance this goal, the Grants must not acknowledge New York rule; agilely Allen withdrew his petition on the suddenly invented ground that he had neglected to bring various vital documents. Thanks to this strategem, the Vermonters retained freedom of action.

Meanwhile, the Vermont eastsiders were also growing restive, and a meeting of eastside committees of safety at Westminster at the end of June hinted that they might prefer shifting their allegiance from New York to Massachusetts. A westside convention received news of the Declaration of Independence at the end of July with great interest. The Declaration, coming after Congress’ resolution of May 15, was so clearly applicable to the Vermonters’ own conditions that they could not fail to get the idea. Led by Ira and Heman Allen, Dr. Jonas Fay, and the canny farmer Col. Thomas Chittenden, the Dorset meeting moved slowly toward independence by pledging loyalty to the new United States, but also expressing its distinct lack of enthusiasm for association with New York. The meeting then proclaimed the Grant area a “separate district.” These sentiments were embodied in the articles of association which were sent to all the towns of the Grant district for endorsement.

It was now unanimous; all the states were united on independence. The Declaration of Independence was proclaimed throughout the land; toasts rang out to liberty and to the union of states, to freedom and independence; the royal arms were everywhere stripped and burned. An effigy of the king was paraded through Baltimore, and a lead statue of King George in New York City was happily toppled and melted down into bullets.

Predictably, the Declaration of Independence gladdened libertarians in Europe and deeply angered the conservatives. The French government warmly approved of the fact of independence, but the French people were enthusiastic over the libertarian philosophy as well. The great French liberal Marquis de Condorcet put the case well. Here was theory put into practice: it is not enough that the rights of man “be written in the books of philosophers and in the hearts of virtuous men; it is necessary that... men should read them in the example of a great people—America has given us this example. The act which declares its independence is a simple and sublime exposition of those rights so sacred and so long forgotten.”*

English reaction to the Declaration was predictably hostile; although the brilliant young liberal Charles James Fox declared that the Americans “had done no more than the English had done against James II.” The virtually official reply to the Declaration was written by the barrister John Lind, who largely devoted himself to refuting the “calumnies” against the king. As for the philosophy of the Declaration, Lind thought it sufficient to make the penetrating observation that these doctrines “put the axe to the root of all government,” since every existing or conceivable government alienates some of these supposedly inalienable rights—in short, that the logical conclusion of the natural rights philosophy was anarchism.

*See Carl L. Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), pp. 230–31. Sir George Otto Trevelyan wrote of the reaction of the European masses to the Declaration: “The depressed and underprivileged classes in a feudal society... hailed with delight from across the ocean that audacious proclamation of their own silent hopes and lurking sympathies.” George Otto Trevelyan, The American Revolution (New York: McKay), p. 301.