250 and Counting

Category: New York History

  • Delegates Start Getting Their Orders–May 23, 1776

    Cover art for May 23, 1776: portrait of James Duane by John Trumbull, 1805.

    Once the preamble to Congress’ resolution had been written and unanimously approved back on May 15, it really was just a matter of when, rather than whether, America was going to formally declare itself as a separate state from England.

    The hardest part was getting all the ducks in a row, as the expression goes. The biggest reason that independence hadn’t already been declared is that anything that came out of the Continental Congress had to pass unanimously, so they could speak with a single voice. Now, at the delegate level, they didn’t all have to vote the same way, but once a majority of the delegates from a given colony voted a certain way, then the colony voted that way as part of the larger body.

    Some colonies had the green light to vote in the affirmative, as long as a different colony brought up the question. Georgia was rather split within the state, and was also more concerned with the skirmishes they were having at the border with Florida. So they mostly didn’t care. New York delegates, as we mentioned yesterday, arrived with instructions not to vote on Independence at all. Even when they finally did vote, it was technically against their orders.

    But one of the more passionate sets of orders came from a group in Boston. Put your earbuds in and learn about how florid writing can really get your point across.

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  • The Third NY Provincial Congress–May 22, 1776

    Cover art for May 22, 1776: portrait of Major-General Charles Lee. Engraving created in 1860 by H.B. Hall & Sons of New York.

    When the Third NY Provincial Congress convened on this day, chances are that nobody really got their hopes up.

    By this point, that body had already met a few times, so it was generally known where they stood when it came to the Independence Question. And sure enough, when they sent delegates to the Continental Congress, they sent those delegates with instructions to oppose Independence. Rather than do that, however, the New York delegation typically just remained on the sidelines, appearing to neither favor nor oppose the notion. This went on for several weeks, and while it didn’t necessarily hinder the cause, neither did it really help matters.

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  • Simon Fraser–May 20, 1776

    Cover art for May 20, 1776: Pre-1826 painting of Simon Fraser by unknown artist in Bennington Museum, Vermont. uploaded to Wikipedia by user Objectivesea (Erik Bjørn Pedersen).

    Simon Fraser was born in Hoosick, New York, which is close to where New York’s border meets with those of Vermont and Massachusetts. He was the youngest of eight children.

    He moved to Montreal when he was 14 and worked with his uncles in the fur trade, apprenticing to the North West Company the following year. Now, the North West Company had already commissioned someone to find a river route to the Pacific Ocean. That may did find a route that worked for fur sources but wasn’t especially good as a trade route. Fraser was given the responsibility for extending operations to the west, and he did it by establishing trading posts along the way, essentially taking possession of that part of the continent. This led to further exploration and either establishing or expanding fur trade along the way.

    In 1814 he got caught up in a dispute in the Red River Valley area, between the North West Company and Thomas Douglas, a controlling shareholder of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which had established the Red River Colony. By 1816 this dispute ballooned into the Battle of Seven Oaks, in which twenty people were killed. Fraser wasn’t involved in the battle but he was arrested anyway by Douglas. He was eventually acquitted of any charges, but that was pretty much the end of his involvement in the fur trade industry, though he remained an active menber of the North West Company until his death in 1862. Because his wife died the next day, the pair were buried in a single grave in a cemetery near their home in Cornwall, Ontario.

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  • Valentine Efner–May 5, 1776

    Cover art for May 5, 1776: a cropped photo of the old Blenheim Covered Bridge, spanning Schoharie Creek, River Road. Photo by Jet Lowe and available via the Library of Congress.

    Given the fact that Valentine Efner (sometimes spelled “Effner”) skipped so many roll call votes in Congress, it’s a wonder he ran for Representative in the first place.

    We have to think that Efner was an informal kind of representative, and being in the rarefied air of Congress had him missing the farm life, to which he returned immediately after his term of office had ended.

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    PS Pardon the brief notes, we had a veterinary emergency here that ate up most of my night. Fortunately our dog is well.

  • Washington Cracks Down–May 3, 1776

    George Washington was good at what he did because he’d studied military discipline, among other things. He read a lot about tactics and famous battles, and the importance of a well-trained army, and then he would meet with veterans and engage with them to learn what they thought.

    During the Seven Years’ War he asked to use some of those techniques with the men under his command. Sometimes, but by no means all the time, was he able to enact some of his ideas.

    So when Washington took over the Continental Army in July of 1775, he had some ideas about what that army should look like. And he had generally good counsel coming from other people who’d been through much of the same things as him.

    But the problem was that the recruits of the early days of the Revolution weren’t committed to anything more than a single year. They didn’t get much time to learn the things they should have, and as a result they left before they could learn everything they should have, or they did learn what was needed and left anyway. And those who were left behind were still pretty new, and had little sense of military discipline.

    So Washington decided he needed to get a little tougher.

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  • Washington Writes A Protest Letter–April 17, 1776

    Cover art for April 17, 1776: detail of the letter from Washington to the NY Committee of Safety. via Village Preservation, a group dedicated to preserving the heritage and cultural history of the Greenwich Village area.

    One of the things I really appreciate about reading documents from this era is just how polite they were; George Washington’s letter to the NY Committee of Safety, when you read between the lines is an admonition wondering if that august body had lost their damn minds.

    One of the best examples of this is the Declaration of Independence itself. As Aaron Sorkin describes it in an episode of The West Wing:

    [N]ever has a war been so courteously declared. It was on parchment with calligraphy, and “Your Highness, we beseech you on this day in Philadelphia to bite me, if you please.”

    However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves; that doesn’t happen for another couple of months (and not when you think!).

    At any rate, Washington was correct in his assessment that it didn’t make a ton of sense for New York to supply the British while at the same time opposing them. At the same time he didn’t accuse them directly; he played it very cool and suggested that the NY Committee of Safety could get a lot of credit if they’d do as he suggested.

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  • Washington Arrives In New York–April 13, 1776

    Cover art for April 13, 1776: a 1776 map of New York City and the immediate area (detail). Fort Stirling would be just above the "A" in "Acroasis"; Fort Defiance is off the edge of the map to the south. via Library of Congress.

    When George Washington arrives in New York, things aren’t quite the way he’d like them to be, but he doesn’t really have time to worry about that.

    Construction of Fort Defiance had already begun, and before long the building of Fort Stirling would commence. Even though they were outmanned and outgunned, Washington was going to make sure that if a British victory were to happen in New York, it was going to be a Pyrrhic victory.

    About Fort Stirling: like Fort Defiance, nothing remains of the original structure. When the British evacuated the city in 1783, the locals destroyed whatever remained of the fort. It was originally named Fort Half-Moon because of its shape but it was renamed in honor of William Alexander, who was also known as Lord Stirling.

    There remains a historical marker in the ground for this fort, at the intersection of Clark Street and Columbia Heights; when traveling west on Clark Street it will be on your right, protected by an iron fence (it’s right behind the fence and easy to see). When the park was created and dedicated in 1925, the Fort Greene Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution donated the granite tablet that marks the fort’s site.

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  • A Fort Grows in Brooklyn–April 10, 1776

    Cover art for April 10, 1776: a contemporary map of Brooklyn. Red Hook is in the center of the picture, just below the "rt" in "Fort".

    The construction of Fort Defiance in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn made perfect sense. That part of the peninsula sticks out into New York Harbor and provides an excellent view of anything that might be sailing in or out.

    Red Hook comes from the Dutch Roode Hoek, “hoek” translating to “point”, which can still be seen in modern-day maps. The whole area, what we now call Red Hook and Gowanus, was settled by the Dutch in the 1630s.

    Red Hook was some swampy land when the Dutch moved in. But the Dutch know something about swampy land, and they got straight to work, filling in lakes and re-channeling waterways. They began farming the land, including orchards of fruit trees.

    After the war broke out and the Continental Army drove the British from Boston, George Washington sent Brigadier General William Alexander to Brooklyn to see what could be done defensively. A plan was developed to build two forts along the Brooklyn Heights, about a mile and a half apart. Fort Greene would be the furthest east, Fort Defiance would be the furthest west. Across the channel on Governor’s Island, another fort would be built, so that British ships could be fired on from both sides.

    Now, when we say “fort,” we’re not talking about something made of wood or stone. Plenty of those did exist, but not here. This was more like a breastworks built of earth and stone, which had a few cannons near the top. There were three of these breastworks connected by trenches, and they took up most of the island on which they stood. (Incidentally, Mike was correct about the island not existing anymore; the space was filled in and is now part of the larger land.) This took only a few days to put together; the fort at Governor’s Island was more like what one would expect to see.

    By the time the British arrived, the Continental Army was quite ready from a defensive standpoint. But the British were much larger in number and had a Navy besides. Stay tuned; it’s going to be an exciting summer.

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  • William Tryon Isn’t Popular–March 22, 1776

    Cover art for March 22, 1776: "Governor Tryon and the Regulators." Alexander Bobbett's 1877 line engraving based on an earlier illustration by the prominent American artist Felix Octavius Carr Darley (F.O.C. Darley) in 1876.

    To be perfectly clear, William Tryon was never popular on this side of the pond.

    When he was appointed Lieutenant Governor in North Carolina in 1764, he wasn’t able to move into the usual housing for a man of that title because the previous inhabitant refused to move out.

    When the Stamp Act was enacted in 1765, there was a great deal of opposition in North Carolina, so he refused to allow meetings of the Assembly in order to prevent them from voting for a resolution formally opposing it.

    When he was appointed Royal Governor, he made plans for an elaborate new Governor’s Mansion that cost twice the amount of money allotted for it. Then he hired laborers from Philadelphia to construct it, saying that North Carolinians didn’t have the necessary skills.

    The 1771 Regulator Uprising that Mike talks about in today’s episode was the last straw for William Tryon in North Carolina, and many historians view it as the first sign that a true revolution was coming. Within a month of that event, he left North Carolina and headed for New York, where things, as you’ll hear, didn’t go any better.

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  • Helping New York Help Itself–February 21, 1776

    Cover art for February 21, 1776: "Bowling Green, Broadway," by artist James Dakin and engraved by the firm Barnard and Dick, 1831. The house on the left became Washington's headquarters when he came to New York.

    There’s a line in the play 1776 about how everyone in the New York Legislature is very loud and talks very fast and as a result nothing ever gets done. This was likely a side effect of the fact that New York was so politically mixed at the time. Everyone hollering at rather than talking to each other means that nobody is truly connecting with anyone else. Thank goodness we’ve moved past THAT! <eyeroll>

    But New York and the Hudson Valley in particular held great strategic value for the various parties involved in the conflict we call the American Revolution. Britain taking that area would separate New England from the other Colonies. What’s more, George Washington knew it. So he devoted a lot of energy into ensuring that that territory remained defended, even while the British were nowhere in sight, because he knew it was a matter of time.

    And he was right: the British did show up ready for battle. It didn’t happen when he expected it to happen, and we’ll talk about that when things start heating up.

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