Knollenberg Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution: 1766-1775
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etly. When the first tea ship anchored below Castle William, its captain was
summoned before the Boston committee of correspondence, where he was or-
dered by Adams and other committeemen to bring his ship up to the Boston
wharves and land all the cargo except the tea on pain of being tarred and feath-
ered by the Liberty Boys....In Philadelphia, where there was no Sam Adams
to evolve a desperate scheme to destroy the tea, the ships were ordered by the
Sons of Liberty to anchor below the port in order that the cargo might not be-
come liable to port duties.”³
More recently () Clifford K. Shipton has written, “When he [Hutchin-
son] heard the wind begin to rise he decided to keep the ships below the Castle
so that they could be sent back to England without clearance. Adams, how-
ever, saw to it that the ships were brought up to the town so that duty would
have to be paid, or the Governor would himself have to override the law.”⁴
No contemporary evidence has been adduced to support these statements,
and there is strong contemporary evidence that they are untrue.
In the first place, if the alleged order by the consignees to the master of the
Dartmouth to enter and the Committee’s countermanding order had in fact
been given, would not these probably be mentioned in the Dartmouth’s log for
November or ? But the log mentions no such orders; the only non-routine
matter mentioned is that “at at night [November ] two Customs-House
officers were boarded upon us by the Castle, we being the first ship ever
boarded in this manner....”⁵
Also, when the master of the Dartmouth, James Hall, some weeks later (Feb-
ruary, ) testified before the Privy Council concerning the whole tea affair,
would he not have mentioned so interesting and material a circumstance as
these orders?⁶ Yet no such orders are mentioned.
Furthermore, if these alleged orders had been given, would they not have
been at least mentioned, if not stressed, by Hutchinson in a letter of Decem-
ber , , from him to Governor William Tryon of New York, concerning the
recent arrival of the Dartmouth and in other surviving letters written by him
soon after the destruction of the tea?⁷ But there is not a word concerning them
in any of these letters.
The conduct of the Boston radicals after the Dartmouth’s arrival also has
some bearing on their probable action before she entered port. According
to Hutchinson himself, writing in January, , Boston radicals “tried every
method they could think of to force the tea back to England.”⁸
There is contemporary evidence that when the Dartmouth came into port, a
Boston committee ordered it to tie up at a designated dock;⁹ but this was after
the tea on board had become subject to duty by entering the port.¹⁰
While questioning the statements of others, I take occasion to correct one
of my own. In my “Samuel Adams,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society
Vol. Part () p. , I stated that “Hutchinson was pleased that the con-
signees did not send back the tea to England before it became liable to duty.”
This statement was based on a letter of Hutchinson as published in Richard
Frothingham’s “Tea Party,” in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for
–, reading:
“The day before [a meeting of the provincial Council] one of the ships ar-
rived with chests of tea, and is [italics added] below the castle....They
[those opposing the landing of the tea] resolved that the tea should be sent back
to England....The friends of old Mr. [Richard] Clarke...pressed his sons
and the other consignees to a full compliance; but they could obtain no more
than an offer to suspend the sale of the tea until the East India Company could
be made acquainted with the state of affairs....I hope the gentlemen will con-
tinue firm, and should not have the least doubt of it, if it was not for the solic-
itation of the friends of Mr. Clarke [p. ].”¹¹
I later discovered, upon reading the letter in manuscript, that Hutchinson
had not said the vessel “is” below the Castle,¹² i.e., had not yet entered the Port
of Boston at the time his letter was written. He had, in fact, written that the
vessel “anchored” below the Castle, i.e., had anchored there when she first ap-
proached Boston, not that she was still there at the time he was writing. Hence,
Hutchinson’s letter does not justify my statement that even while the Dartmouth
was still outside the port, he preferred to have her enter port, thus subjecting
the tea on board to liability for duty, rather than have her return, with the tea
intact, to England.
ELECTION OF DELEGATES
FROM PENNSYLVANIA
T P A’ to send delegates to the Conti-
nental Congress was the culmination of proceedings extending over a period
of more than two months.
The committee of nineteen chosen at the mass meeting in Philadelphia on
May , referred to in Chapter , was instructed to ask Governor John Penn
to call a special meeting of the Pennsylvania Assembly, which would not oth-
erwise meet until after the date proposed for the assembling of the projected
congress.¹
It is not clear what action, if any, the committee had taken on this instruc-
tion when, on June , Governor Penn was handed a petition signed by “near
nine hundred respectable Freeholders in and near the City of Philadelphia.”
The petition denounced the Boston Port Act and asked the Governor to call a
special session of the Assembly “to devise measures to compose and relieve the
anxieties of the people” over this act.² On the advice of his Council, the Gov-
ernor replied that calling the Assembly to meet at this time was neither expe-
dient nor consistent with his duty.³
On June a mass meeting in Philadelphia, presided over by Thomas Wil-
ling and John Dickinson, passed a resolution denouncing the act closing the
Port of Boston as “unconstitutional, oppressive to the inhabitants of that town
[and] dangerous to the liberties of the British Colonies.” The meeting further
resolved that “a Congress of Deputies from the several Colonies in North
America is the most probable and proper mode of procuring relief”; and chose
a committee consisting of sixteen of the original committee and twenty-eight
additional members to take measures “for procuring this Province to be rep-
resented at the said Congress....”⁴
Before this enlarged committee had taken action, the Governor, on June ,
referring to reports of an Indian outbreak on the Pennsylvania frontiers, sum-
moned the Assembly to meet in Philadelphia on July .⁵ Nevertheless, the
committee decided to call a convention, and on June , issued a circular let-
ter proposing the election of delegates to a convention to meet in Philadelphia
on July , three days before the Assembly was to meet.⁶
This decision probably was prompted by fear that, because of the grossly
disproportionate influence of Quakers over the Assembly,⁷ it would either
choose delegates to the congress who could be counted on to oppose any mea-
sures that might lead to British retaliation and eventually to war,⁸ or give the
delegates instructions to this same purpose.
The call for a convention was highly successful: seventy-five delegates from
all eleven counties of the province and the City of Philadelphia assembled at
the Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia on the appointed day⁹ and immediately
resolved that “there is an absolute necessity that a Congress of Deputies from
the several Colonies be immediately assembled...to form a general plan...
[for] obtaining redress of our grievances. . . .” The convention further resolved
that “it is our earnest desire that the Congress should first try the gentler mode
of stating our grievances, and making a firm and decent claim of redress...,
yet, notwithstanding, as an unanimity of counsels and measures is indispensa-
bly necessary for the common welfare, if the Congress shall judge agreements
of non-importation and non-exportation expedient, the people of this Prov-
ince will join...in such an Association of non-importation from, and non-
exportation to, Great Britain, as shall be agreed on at the Congress.”¹⁰
On July , the members of the convention approved, and in a body pre-
sented to the Assembly, a document requesting it to “appoint a proper number
of persons to attend a Congress of Deputies from the several Colonies,” with in-
structions “to agree to any measures that shall be approved by the Congress.”¹¹
Two days later, the Assembly elected its Speaker, Joseph Galloway,¹² and
six other of its members—Samuel Rhoads, Thomas Mifflin,¹³ Charles Hum-
phreys, John Morton, George Ross, and Edward Biddle—as delegates to the
proposed congress, with instructions to join with those from the other colonies
in endeavoring “to form and adopt a plan which shall afford the best prospect
of obtaining a redress of American grievances, ascertaining American rights,
and establishing that union and harmony which is most essential to the welfare
and happiness of both countries,” but “to avoid every thing indecent or disre-
spectful to the mother state.”¹⁴
NEW YORK POLITICS AND
THE NEW YORK DELEGATION
TO THE CONGRESS
T N Y A did not sit from March , , to January ,
, and, so far as is known, neither its Speaker, John Cruger, nor any other
member of the Assembly made any effort to call a convention to elect delegates
to the proposed Continental Congress.
The initiative for the election of a New York delegation was taken by the
New York City Committee of Fifty-One, referred to in Chapter , which,
on July , , nominated Philip Livingston, John Alsop, Isaac Lowe, James
Duane, and John Jay to represent the City and County of New York,¹ (here-
after referred to as the City) at the proposed Congress. This slate, supported by
a “Committee of Mechanics,”² was elected on July .³
The Committee of Fifty-One then sent a circular letter to correspondents
in the other thirteen counties of the colony giving the names of the City’s del-
egates and inviting the respective counties to elect delegates of their own or au-
thorize the City’s delegates to represent them.⁴
In response to this letter, four of the counties authorized the City’s delega-
tion to represent them, and three others elected delegates of their own—Simon
Boerum of Kings County, William Floyd of Suffolk County, and Henry Wisner
and John Haring of Orange County. But six of New York’s fourteen counties
failed to elect any delegate or to authorize the City delegation to represent
them.⁵ Furthermore, not one of the City’s large delegation was a member of
the Assembly and only one of the other delegations (Boerum) was.⁶
This peculiarity in the inception and composition of the New York delega-
tion stemmed from a train of events reaching back to the dissolution of the
New York Assembly on January , , and the ensuing general election of a
new Assembly—the Assembly still in office in .
The dissolution of the Assembly in was occasioned by its adoption
on December , , of resolutions virtually denying the authority of Parlia-
ment to pass the New York Suspending Act of (described in Chapter )
and instructing the Speaker of the Assembly to make a favorable reply to the
Massachusetts circular letter of February, (described in Chapter ).⁷
Two days later, the colony’s Crown-appointed Governor, Sir Henry Moore,
dissolved the Assembly, stating, “The extraordinary nature of certain resolves
lately entered on your journals, some flatly repugnant to the laws of Great
Britain and others, with an apparent tendency to give offence...have put it
out of my power to continue this Assembly any longer.”⁸
It was suggested (by whom is not clear) that all the old members for New
York City—Philip Livingston, James De Lancey, Jacob Walton, and James
Jauncey⁹—having lost office for supporting colonial liberty, should be reelected
without opposition. But this proposal was not acceptable to a group of Dis-
senters, who, on January (the day after the dissolution of the old Assembly),
held a meeting described in the following letter from William Smith, a leading
Presbyterian of the City, to Robert R. Livingston:
“Tuesday evening [ January ] upon a talk that the four old members were
to be Set up, there was a Meeting of Delegates of all the Dissenting Churches—
a Card was Sent to the other Party consenting that they may Set up two
Churchmen & we two dissenters. They answered yesterday at Eleven that they
could not comply....”¹⁰
I have found no evidence as to who attended this meeting or who were the
“two dissenters” whom the attendants at the meeting had in mind. One prob-
ably was John Morin Scott, a prominent lawyer who had polled a large vote,
but was defeated in the election of .¹¹ Be that as it may, two rival tickets
were put forward.
One consisted of the old members, De Lancey, Walton, and Jauncey, and
a fourth, John Cruger,¹² connected by marriage with De Lancey and Walton,¹³
the other of Livingston, Scott, Livingston’s brother, Peter Van Brugh Living-
ston, and Theodorus Van Wyck. De Lancey and Walton were members of
the Church of England, Jauncey was a Presbyterian, and Cruger a member of
the Dutch Reformed Church.¹⁴ All four of the “Livingston” ticket were Dis-
senters. Philip Livingston was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church,¹⁵
and so was Van Wyck.¹⁶ Scott and Peter Van Brugh Livingston¹⁷ were leading
Presbyterians.
All four members of the so-called “Church” or “De Lancey” ticket were
elected. De Lancey, who headed it, polled votes to for Philip Living-
ston, who polled the largest vote of those on his ticket. Even Jauncey, who ran
last on the Church ticket, defeated Livingston by over votes.¹⁸
The victory of this ticket was attributed largely to the disgust of many vot-
ers over the attempt of the other ticket to make political capital out of the cur-
rent furor over a projected Anglican episcopate,¹⁹ described in the appendix to
Chapter . But, apparently, an important factor in the victory of the De Lancey
ticket was the support given it by what Governor Moore described as “a licen-
tious set of Men who call themselves the Sons of Liberty.”²⁰
So far as is known, the organized body of Sons of Liberty formed at the time
of the Stamp Act controversy in –²¹ no longer existed in New York
City at the time of the election in January, .²² But Isaac Sears,²³ who had
been a leader of the Sons of Liberty at the earlier time²⁴ and publicly supported
the De Lancey ticket in the recent election,²⁵ presumably was among those re-
ferred to by Moore. Who else were the Sons he had in mind is obscure. Prob-
ably he used the term in a general way to describe those whom he considered
overzealous in their opposition to unpopular British measures.
Such zealots would naturally be drawn to the De Lancey ticket on the
strength of the voting record of De Lancey, Walton, and Jauncey, compared
with that of Philip Livingston and his co-candidates on the only two divisions
in the Assembly in related to the controversy between Great Britain and
the colonies.
The first of these divisions stemmed from a demonstration in New York
City in November, , against Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts
and Stephen Greenleaf, sheriff of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, for having
tried to evict tenants of a building in Boston to provide quarters for British
troops sent there under the circumstances described in Chapter .²⁶ Governor
Moore offered a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of
the ringleaders of the demonstration, and asked the Assembly for a grant of
funds to pay the reward.²⁷ A motion in favor of the grant was carried by a vote
of to .²⁸
The five members voting against the grant included De Lancey, Walton,
and Jauncey. (The other two were John Thomas of Westchester County and
Daniel Kissam of Queens County.)
The second vote was on a motion by De Lancey to sharpen the resolution
against the New York Suspending Act of , mentioned above, by denounc-
ing this act as “a high infringement of the freedom of the inhabitants of this
colony.”²⁹
The motion was defeated to .³⁰ The six members voting for the motion
again included De Lancey, Walton, and Jauncey. (The other three were Thomas,
John De Lancey of Westchester Borough, and Eleazor Miller of Suffolk County.)
On the first of these divisions, Philip Livingston, who was presiding as
Speaker of the House, did not vote. (When presiding as Speaker, he could
vote only to break a tie.) But his nephew, Peter R. Livingston of Livingston
Manor,³¹ and two of Philip’s connections by marriage, Abraham Ten Broeck
of Rensselaerwyck Manor and Pierre Van Cortlandt of Cortlandt Manor,³²
voted with the majority.
On the second, these three again voted with the majority and were joined
by Philip Livingston, who could now vote because the Assembly was sitting in
Committee of the Whole, chaired by another member.
Thus, in the only two divisions in the Assembly bearing on the con-
troversy with Great Britain, James De Lancey, Walton, and Jauncey had, in
each instance, supported the pro-colonial side, while the Livingston partisans
had supported the other.
In the first (April) session of the Assembly elected in there were no
votes bearing on the controversy with Great Britain. But one of the votes was
interesting in foreshadowing the line-up in the second (October) session of a
Livingston group on one side and a group headed by the four New York City
members—James De Lancey, Walton, Jauncey, and Cruger—on the other.
Though Philip Livingston was defeated for reelection as a member for
New York City, he appeared in the new Assembly as the member for Living-
ston Manor, Peter R. Livingston having stepped aside for reelection as mem-
ber for the Manor in the hope that Philip would be reelected Speaker of the
Assembly.³³ This hope proved to be ill-founded (Cruger got the plum),³⁴ and an
even greater blow to the Livingstons soon followed.
A few weeks after the April session opened, a motion was made to oust
Philip Livingston from the Assembly as ineligible to sit for the Manor under a
New York act providing that a member must be a resident of the constituency
for which he is elected. This motion was carried to .³⁵
The six members voting in favor of seating Livingston were Ten Broeck,
Van Cortlandt, Philip Schuyler, Jacob Ten Eyck, Jacobus Myndertse (or Myn-
derse), and Charles De Witt. James De Lancey did not vote on this motion, but
the other three members for New York City were among those voting in favor
of the ouster.
Even before Philip’s ouster, Peter R. Livingston, as evidenced by a letter
from him to Schuyler, was contemplating the possibility of forcing a new elec-
tion in which the Livingston partisans might regain their ascendancy in the As-
sembly. Philip’s cousin, Judge Robert R. Livingston, had been defeated for re-
election as a member of Dutchess County,³⁶ and the letter referred only to the
Judge. But now that Philip, too, had been unseated, there was all the more rea-
son to try to force the new election contemplated by Peter in the hope of all three
Livingstons, Philip, Robert R., and Peter, securing election to the Assembly.
“I am extreamly sorry,” said Peter, “the Judge³⁷ did not suceed owing
to all the Tenants of Beeckman [Henry Beekman] & R G Livingston’s voting
against him not withstanding all the pains was taking with them that could be
thought necessary.³⁸ He is determined to try again when ever an opportunity
offers which may be soon if properly managed as no doubt given [giving] the
Money so often to the Soldiers will beat up a brise soon, as I am informed some
folks say they will not be for given any more, which properly improved may an-
swer the End of another Dissolution. The Money we granted [at the ses-
sion of the Assembly]³⁹ has been expended these two months past, and £
in advance.”⁴⁰
Peter evidently had in mind that if the Assembly refused to vote any more
funds for furnishing the British troops quartered in New York with the supplies
required by the British Quartering Act (described in Chapters and ), the
Governor would be practically forced to dissolve the recently elected Assembly
and call for the election of a new one. This would, of course, give the Liv-
ingstons another opportunity for possible election.
In November, , Cadwallader Colden, who had recently become Act-
ing Governor of New York upon the death of Moore, requested the Assembly
to provide funds for additional supplies required by the Quartering Act.⁴¹ For
the past two years, without dissent, the Assembly had voted funds in the trea-
sury for these supplies.⁴² But it now voted to grant the supplies⁴³ exclusively out
of currency to be issued under a pending bill for the issuance of paper cur-
rency,⁴⁴ which Colden could sign only by violating the Currency Act of
(described in Chapter ). The proposal to grant the required supplies only as
thus conditioned was, therefore, in effect a refusal to grant them, a refusal that
would virtually make it necessary for Colden to dissolve the Assembly and call
for the election of a new.
Before final action on the proposed grant of supplies as thus conditioned,
Assemblyman William Nicoll of Suffolk County moved (December ) for a
substitute bill providing for a grant of £,, half to be paid in the proposed
new currency, but the other half out of funds already in the provincial trea-
sury.⁴⁵ This motion to grant £, from funds available in the treasury was
carried by votes to , as follows:
()
Jacob Walton N.Y. City and County
James Jauncey N.Y. City and County
Captain [ James] De Lancey N.Y. City and County
Mr. Speaker [ John Cruger] N.Y. City and County
Simon Boerum Kings County
John Rapalje Kings County
Frederick Philipse Westchester County
John Thomas Westchester County
Col. [Benjamin] Seaman Richmond County
Christopher Billop Richmond County
William Nicoll Suffolk County
Leonard Van Kleeck Dutchess County
()
Abraham Ten Broeck Rensselaerwyk Manor
Pierre Van Cortlandt Cortlandt Manor
Jacobus Myndertse Schenectady District
John De Lancey Westchester Borough⁴⁶
Nathaniel Woodhull Suffolk County
John De Noyelles Orange County
Samuel Gale Orange County
Jacob Ten Eyck Albany County
Capt. [Zebulon] Seaman Queens County
Charles De Witt Ulster County
George Clinton Ulster County⁴⁷
Schuyler did not vote on Nicoll’s motion to grant the £, for supplying
the troops. But the other five members who had voted to seat Philip Livingston,
namely, Ten Broeck, Van Cortlandt, Myndertse, Ten Eyck, and De Witt, voted
against the motion, and, on a later proceeding on the bill, Schuyler voted with
them.⁴⁸ On the other hand, James De Lancey and the other New York City
members, including Cruger, voted solidly in favor of the motion.
The line-up on Nicoll’s motion remained almost the same on the final vote
on the supply bill, which was carried (December ) by a vote of to .⁴⁹ The
only changes on the final vote were that John De Lancey switched sides; Daniel
Kissam of Queens County, who had not voted on Nicoll’s motion, now voted