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By Root 7277 0

gathered a crowd and headed for the East River docks, where they emptied two ships of provisions intended for the British forces. Willett then led a second raid on the City Hall arsenal, removing nearly six hundred muskets, bayonets, and cartridge boxes for distribution among the patriots. Next day, April 24, a crowd of some eight thousand people—roughly a third of New York’s population—assembled in front of City Hall to hear from the Committee of Sixty. Crossing the line between resistance and revolution, the Sixty proposed that all New York patriots subscribe to a General Association, that a Provincial Congress assume control of the colony, that government of the city be turned over to a new Committee of One Hundred, and that immediate steps be taken to defend the city from a British attack—a distinct possibility, given that Gage’s position in Boston was clearly untenable. “People here are perfectly fearless,” Robert R. Livingston told his wife, Mary.

Nominations and elections for the Committee of One Hundred took place within a few days. Though dominated by moderates, its members included such radicals as Daniel Dunscomb, chairman of the Mechanics Committee, whose presence helped push the committee to widen its authority. At a mass meeting of city residents on April 29, the One Hundred promulgated Articles of Association drafted by James Duane and John Jay. Those who signed pledged “never to become Slaves” and to obey the measures of the Continental Congress, the Provincial Congress, and their local committees.

Three hundred and sixty armed men, led by Isaac Sears, meanwhile seized the keys of customs collector Andrew Elliot. Sears declared the port of New York closed until further notice. For another week or two, Sears’s house on Queen Street seemed to be the effective seat of government and headquarters for the company of militia that nightly patrolled the city. William Smith Jr. could hardly believe what was happening. “It is impossible,” he wrote on April 29, “fully to describe the agitated State of the Town since last Sunday, when the News first arrived of the Skirmish between Concord and Boston. At all corners People inquisitive for News. Tales of all kinds invented believed, denied, discredited. .. . The Taverns filled with Publicans at Night. Little Business done in the Day.. . . The Merchants are amazed and yet so humbled as only to sigh or complain in whispers. They now dread Sears’s Train of armed Men.”

This was revolution—“total revolution,” in the words of one Tory. Even if Great Britain and the colonies did manage to compose their differences—the Continental Congress continued to insist that the colonies weren’t seeking independence—the legitimacy of colonial political institutions had boiled away. Governmental power was passing to a network of committees that responded to, and included representatives of, what another Tory called “the lower class of people.” The city is now ruled, said yet another, “by Isaac Sears & a parcel of the meanest people, Children & Negroes.”

Isaac Low, Abraham Walton, and a handful of other prominent Tories, still clinging to the hope of a peaceful solution, remained in New York to take part in the Provincial Congress. Most took flight. James De Lancey, merchant John Watts, and Colonel Roger Morris scrambled to get on the May 4 packet to England. Printer James Rivington fled to the protection of a British warship in the harbor. Governor Golden retreated to his Flushing estate, writing to Lord Dartmouth that “Congresses and committees are now established in this Province and are acting with all the confidence and authority of a legal Government.”

President Myles Cooper of King’s College left town as well, chased from his bed one night in May by “a murderous band.” A student named Alexander Hamilton is said to have helped Cooper escape by delaying his pursuers with a lengthy “harangue” on Cooper’s front porch. Hamilton, who had come up to New York from the West Indian island of Nevis only two years earlier, was already the author of two highly regarded pamphlets supporting