V.

thirty-seven barrels of flour as their remittance to CHAP. the poor of Boston. Cheered by the universal sym- 1774. pathy, the inhabitants of that town "were deter- July. mined to hold out and appeal to the justice of the colonies and of the world;" trusting in God that "these things should be overruled for the establishment of liberty, virtue, and happiness in America."

CHAPTER VI.

CHAP.

VI.

AMERICA RESOLVES TO MEET IN GENERAL CONGRESS.

JULY, 1774.

GEORGE THE THIRD ranked "New York next to Bos

ton in opposition to government." There was no 1774. place where a congress was more desired, and none July. where the determinations of the congress were more sure to be observed. The numerous emigrants from New England brought with them New England principles; the Dutch, as a body, never loved Britain. Of the two great families which the system of manorial grants had raised up, the Livingstons inclined to republicanism, and uniting activity to wealth and ability, exercised a predominant influ ence. The Delanceys, who, by taking advantage of temporary prejudices, had, four years before, carried the assembly, no longer retained the public confidence; and outside of the legislature, their power was imperceptible.

After being severed from Holland, its mother country, New York had no attachment to any European State. All agreed in the necessity of resisting

VI.

1774.

the pretensions of England; but differences arose as CHAP. to the persons to be intrusted with the direction of that resistance; and as to the imminence and extent July. of the danger. The merchants wished no interruption to commerce; the Dutch Reformed church, as well as the Episcopalians, were not free from jealousy of the Congregationalists, and the large land-holders were alarmed by the levelling spirit and social equality of New England. The people of New York had destroyed consignments of the East India company's tea; but from them the British ministry had borne the insult without rebuke; striving only by bland language to lull them into repose. The executive officers had for several years avoided strife with the assembly, listening patiently to its complaints, and seeking to comply with its importunities; so that no angry feeling existed between the provincial legislature and the royal governors. The city had, moreover, been the centre of British patronage, and friends had been won by the distribution of contracts, and sometimes by commissions in the army. The organs of the ministry were to cajole, to favor, or to corrupt; above all, to give a promise on the part of the crown of a spirit of equity, which its conduct towards the province seemed to warrant as sincere. Besides, the assembly had Edmund Burke for its agent, and still hoped that his influence in public affairs would correspond to their just estimate of his fidelity. The lovers of peace, which is always so dear to a commercial community, revolted at the thought of an early and unavoidable "appeal" to arms, caught eagerly at every chance of an honorable escape from the certain miseries of a desperate conflict, and exerted them

VOL. VII. 7*

July.

CHAP. selves strenuously to secure the management of affairs VI. to men of property. For this end they relied on 1774. the ability of John Jay, a young lawyer of New York, whose name now first appears conspicuously in the annals of his country. Descended from Huguenot refugees, educated in the city at its college, of the severest purity of morals, a hard student, an able writer, a ready speaker; recently connected with the family of Livingston by marriage; his superior endowments, his activity and his zeal for liberty, tempered by a love for order, made him for a quarter of a century distinguished in his native state. At that time he joined the dignity of manhood to the energy of youth. He was both shy and proud, and his pride, though it became less visible, suffered no diminution from time. Tenacious of his purposes and his opinions, sensitive to indignities and prone to sudden resentments, not remarkable for self-possession, with a countenance not trained to concealment, neither easy of access, nor quick in his advances, gifted with no deep insight into character, he had neither talents nor inclination for intrigue; and but for his ambition, in which none exceeded him, he would have seemed formed for study and retire

ment.

On Monday, the fourth day of July, it was carried in the committee of fifty-one, that delegates should be selected to serve in the general congress. Sears, who was still foremost in the confidence of the mechanics, seconded by Peter Van Brugh Livingston, a man of great intelligence, proposed John Morin Scott and Alexander MacDougal. Fitter candidates could not have been found; but they were both passed over by

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1774.

July.

a great majority, and the committee nominated Philip CHAP. Livingston, Alsop, Low, Duane, and Jay for the approval of the people. Of these five, Livingston as yet dreaded the thought of independence; Alsop was incompetent; Low was at heart a tory, as at a later day he avowed; Duane, justly eminent as a lawyer, was embarrassed by large speculations in Vermont lands, from which he could derive no profit but through the power of the crown. The mass of the inhabitants resolved to defeat this selection. On Wednesday, the sixth of July, many of them, especially mechanics, assembled in the Fields, and with MacDougal in the chair, they recommended the Boston policy of suspending trade, and approved a general congress, to which, after the example of Virginia, they proposed to elect representatives by a colonial convention.

It has been kept in memory, that on this occasion a young man from abroad, so small and delicate in his organization, that he appeared to be much younger than perhaps he really was, took part in the debate before the crowd. They asked one another the name of the gifted stranger, who shone like a star first seen above a haze, of whose rising no one had taken note. He proved to be Alexander Hamilton, a West Indian. His mother, while he was yet a child, had left him an orphan and poor. A father's care he seems never to have known. The first written trace of his existence is in 1766, when his name appears as witness to a legal paper executed in the Danish island of Santa Cruz. Three years later, when he had become "a youth," he "contemned the grovelling condition of a clerk,"