Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [87]
In retaliation, anti-Leislerian saboteurs reportedly tried to blow up the fort, and one day in June 1690 thirty-odd anti-Leislerian merchants set upon Leisler himself, shouting “Kill him, kill him!” “I will not suffer this to happen,” cried sixty-year-old John Langstraet, a prominent carter, who jumped into the fray, giving Leisler time to draw his sword and escape. While his outraged followers flooded into town to protect him against further attempts, thirteen of the plotters were arrested, including Major Thomas Willett. Inexplicably, they were all soon released. Willett returned to his home in Queens, where he raised a small body of troops and marched back toward New York. Milborne rallied the city militia and drove the Long Islanders off after a brief skirmish near Newtown. Willett escaped to New England, and Milborne’s militiamen contented themselves with looting his house. Seven of his captains were subsequently convicted of treason and rebellion at a court-martial in Flatbush.
In the spring of 1690 Leisler ordered elections for a new Assembly, which proceeded to raise taxes and strike down the monopolies and trade regulations with which every governor since Nicolls had favored New York City and its merchants. At a second session in the fall of the same year, the Assembly demanded the return of all disaffected persons who had fled the colony and provided heavy fines for those refusing civil or military employment in Leisler’s government.
The striking thing, under the circumstances, was what the Assembly didn’t do—how utterly it failed to address the piled-up political and social grievances that had plunged New York into near-chaos. Leisler himself bore a large share of responsibility for what happened. He never really wanted to deal with a legislature, it seems, and when talk at the first session turned to things like fundamental rights and liberties, he angrily sent the delegates home. If Leisler’s rebellion was to become a revolution, he wasn’t the man to lead it.
Besides which, Leisler had his hands full. To suppress the grandees’ strong and active opposition, he relied more and more heavily on arbitrary arrests, oppressive taxation, and confiscations, with the result that some of his most trusted collaborators lost their nerve and began to drift away. Then, too, there loomed the problem of French Canada. In February 1690, six months after the outbreak of the War of the League of Augsburg (known as King William’s War in the colonies), a mixed force of French and Indians burned Schenectady and slew some sixty of its citizens and their slaves. Leisler promptly began to organize a retaliatory strike against Montreal, but after months of time-consuming, often acrimonious preparations the attack failed to materialize. Had he not been confronted with so serious an external threat to the entire colony so early in his regime—or had he not chosen to respond with such single-mindedness—it is arguable that his fate might have been different.
“FOR THEY HAVE DEVOURED JACOB”
New York’s grandees had better connections at court than did Ensign Stol, the Leislerian emissary. Over the summer of 1690 they convinced King William to disavow Leisler. Colonel Henry Sloughter was commissioned governor and given a council consisting of Philipse, Van Cortlandt, Bayard, Willett, and other oligarchs. Proclaiming his intention to rid New York of Leisler and the “rabble,” Sloughter set sail for New York toward the end of 1690.
The first contingent of English troops, commanded by Richard Ingoldsby, reached the city in March 1691. With several hundred well-armed followers, Leisler and Milborne barricaded themselves in the fort and refused to surrender until shown Sloughter’s commission. A tense six weeks passed, punctuated by exchanges of gunfire, as both sides waited for Sloughter himself to arrive. When Sloughter finally turned