Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [168]
In April 1766 as many as two thousand insurgents massed at King’s Bridge, which linked northern Manhattan and Westchester. Calling themselves true “Sons of Liberty,” they made ready to march into New York City, join forces with “the poor people there,” and pull down the town houses of big landowners. If anyone got in the way, they warned, they would “kick their Arses as long as we think fit.” Even the king would get such treatment, declared William Prendergast, one of their leaders, “for Kings had been bro’t to by Mobs before now.”
But the city’s poor didn’t respond as hoped. Nor did the Sons of Liberty, who, after some initial stirrings of sympathy, recoiled from the farmers’ more radical egalitarianism. Governor Moore called out the militia and drove them away without bloodshed.
REPEAL
Grenville had meanwhile quarreled with the king, who replaced him with the marquis of Rockingham. Rockingham, eager to disentangle his new government from Grenville’s controversial policies, promptly abandoned the Stamp Act. Parliament passed a repeal bill in March 1766, and George III signed it into law a month later.
When word of the repeal reached New York on May 20, the town went berserk with joy. Crowds of merrymakers surged through the streets, roaring out their approval against a background of clanging church bells, exploding firecrackers, and sporadic musket fire. The Common Council added its voice to the festivities by appropriating funds to erect a statue of George III in Bowling Green.
Grander festivities followed on June 4, the king’s official birthday. A throng of thousands gathered in the Common to devour, at public expense, two barbecued oxen, twenty-five barrels of “strong Beer,” and a hogshead of rum. While a band played “God Save the King,” a flagstaff was erected with the standard of George III and a banner with the word LIBERTY in large letters. Near the flagstaff went up a liberty pole—ancient symbol of popular defiance to tyranny—with a dozen tar and pitch barrels suspended from the top. A “Grand illumination throughout the city” followed in the evening, after which the day “ended in Drunkeness, throwing of Squibbs, Crackers, firing of muskets and pistols, breaking some windows and forcing off the Knockers off the Doors.”
Royal Navy transports arrived in June with two regiments—three or four thousand men in all—to reinforce the British garrison, and General Gage promptly dispatched one of the two to mop up what remained of the tenant insurgency. His redcoats arrested scores of rebels, dispersed them at gunpoint, and caused considerable property damage in the process. A special court—consisting of Chief Justice Daniel Horsmanden and seven associate justices, including Oliver De Lancey, assisted by lawyers John Morin Scott and William Smith Jr.—met in July 1766 to hear the cases of some seventy men charged with riotous assault. Most received stiff fines and jail terms. William Prendergast, denied counsel, was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. The king pardoned him six months later, but the court’s harshness wasn’t forgotten. Scott’s role in it remained a sore point with the insurgents for years.
After much discussion about forming a permanent political club, the Sons of Liberty decided to suspend operations until such time as the rights of America were again in danger. That time was nearer than most realized. For even as it repealed the Stamp Act, Parliament had also passed a little-noticed Declaratory Act, reaffirming its right to tax the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”
Nothing, in short, had been settled.
14
The Demon of Discord
During the summer of 1766 New York’s prospects grew more dismal. Parliament passed a new Revenue Act that not only failed to lift the burdens of the 1764 Sugar Act but actually made them heavier. Thousands of redcoats were now pouring into town too, and