Conceived in Liberty (78 page)

The Iroquois had plagued and ravaged the French settlers, as well as the more peaceful Indians in the northeast, for decades. During the 1640s the Iroquois plundered the French and drove out friendly tribes, but in the course of another war, were able to reestablish their position. We have observed that Governor Dongan urged the Iroquois to attack the French during the 1680’s. The Iroquois’ went unerringly to the heart of the matter: the fur trade. After the Iroquois had driven the peaceful fur-trading Hurons from the St. Lawrence, the latter settled in the Great Lakes areas as far west as Wisconsin, and a direct fur trade with the French was established from there. Now, in the mid-1680s, the Iroquois invaded Huron country and by 1686 were able by force of arms to break the vital chain between the Great Lakes fur trade and the French. After the French made a feeble attempt to oust the Iroquois and restore the fur trade, the Iroquois began mercilessly to ravage the French settlements on the St. Lawrence, even to the environs of Montreal itself. The raids reached a peak in the summer of 1689. When the venerable Comte de Frontenac resumed his old post as governor of New France that fall, his obvious task was to try to preserve the colony from the Iroquois menace.

Now that England had declared war on France, Frontenac did not have to respect the status of privileged sanctuary with which the English had cloaked the Iroquois. Seeing English military strength weakened by the overthrow of the Dominion, the French and allied Indians executed a daring raid on February 9, 1690, upon the upstate New York trading post of Schenectady. The raiders burned the town, massacred a large portion of the inhabitants, and captured the rest. Two other daring and successful raids with similar results were engineered by Frontenac against Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, and Falmouth, Maine, on Casco Bay.

Ever since the previous December (1689), Jacob Leisler had been in control as the temporarily recognized ruler of the New York colony. But Albany still proved recalcitrant. Now, with Albany frightened by the raid on Schenectady, Leisler made a determined move to assume control.

Leisler had lost no time in transforming the revolution in New York into a virtual duplication of the old power. The old Committee of Safety was now made Leisler’s Council. It quickly decreed the Revenue Act of 1683 to be still in force, and went so far as to order Delanoy to collect back taxes as well. Seeing the liberalism of the revolution vanish, a group of angry merchants issued a Declaration of the Freeholders of New York in protest. Leisler’s order was torn down and the declaration substituted.
Leisler by decree prohibited defacing his orders. He also established a new Court of the Exchequer to try to collect revenue. Still, Leisler had enormous difficulty in collecting taxes. Like many another tyrant, Leisler then decided that this was the result of a subversive “hellish conspiracy” and he ordered a summary search of all suspect houses and the arrest of his opponents. By February there were numerous arrests of people caught speaking contemptuously of his government, and also of suspected “papists.”

Leisler’s imposition of a despotism in order to levy taxes was a fateful step. Before then the Leisler movement had been truly a people’s revolution; its only opponents had been members of the discredited ruling oligarchy. But now the liberals, who had been his staunchest supporters, began to leave the Leisler cause in droves. In mid-May 1690, merchants and other leading citizens of New York drew up a Humble Address to the King protesting Leisler’s “slavery,” “arbitrary power,” and “ruling us by the sword.” The authors included such prominent merchants and great leaders of the revolution as Leisler’s former fellow militia captains: DePeyster, Lodwyck, and Stuyvesant. The petition also complained of Leisler’s confiscation of goods—even as far as Elizabethtown, New Jersey—plundering of homes, and searching of mails.

Jacob Leisler’s frenzy to collect taxes was largely because of his determination to seize Albany and then to mount a giant intercolonial invasion to conquer New France. He had always been a hard-liner on “papist” New France, and now the war and the massacre at Schenectady gave him his long-awaited opportunity. The higher taxes and the rigorous enforcement were to pay for Leisler’s cherished invasion plans.

By the end of February, Leisler decided to call a representative assembly in New York to make the raising of taxes more palatable to the increasingly restive populace. The Assembly finally met at the end of April. Suffolk County (except for Hempstead) refused to send any delegates. Suffolk still hoped to join Connecticut and also balked at the high-tax program. Leisler barred from voting all those who had not taken what was, in effect, an oath of allegiance to himself. Therefore, the election, especially in the upstate anti-Leisler county of Ulster, was not truly free. The Assembly dutifully imposed a new property tax of three pence per pound, but tried to win the support of the farmers and the New York masses by ending the hated New York City flour monopoly, the New York port monopoly, and the Albany fur monopoly. Abolition of the three hated monopolies was highly welcome to the people. Leisler, though, was angered by the growing popular movement for release of his political prisoners. He brusquely dissolved the Assembly for even daring to
receive
the petitions of the people urging him to free the prisoners.

The popularity that Leisler could have earned by ending the monopolies never materialized because of his taxes and confiscations to finance his unrealistic dream of the conquest of French Canada. To confiscate
supplies for an expedition against the French, Leisler imposed on grain exports an embargo, which allowed him to seize the grain for military purposes. Ending the flour monopoly did little good when farmers and merchants could not export the grain at all. Moreover, by decree Leisler embargoed all exports of pork and confiscated all private stores of pork meat. He also searched all suspected places without bothering about a warrant. Stocks of cloth in the city were also confiscated.

Other foci of resistance to Leisler were New Rochelle, where the newly settled Huguenots objected to a tax burden for his needless expedition, and traditionally antitax Suffolk County, which Leisler had to force to “submit to him.” An East Hampton meeting in May, for example, was evenly split between accepting Leisler’s authority on condition of some redress of grievances, or not submitting at all without further word from England.
No one
at the meeting advocated unconditional submission to Leisler’s authority.

Despite an increasingly restless home base behind him, Leisler proceeded on his course of seizing Albany and then mounting an invasion of Canada. As soon as Leisler acquired legitimacy in December, he ordered Albany to submit and to hold new municipal elections. But the Albany convention refused, and was backed by the Connecticut militia, sent there to aid against the French. The Schenectady massacre, however, changed the situation. Leisler was now able to blame Albany’s recalcitrance for the poor preparation against the attack. Furthermore, the Albany oligarchy was now beginning to face numerous internal and external troubles. First, Leisler conscripted a militia and ordered it to seize Albany and Ulster counties. Second, the people of Albany, fearful of a French attack, began to ship their goods downriver to New York City; the Albany convention ordered all such shipments stopped. And finally, Connecticut withdrew its troops and advised Albany to submit to Leisler, while Massachusetts, as fellow revolutionaries against the Dominion, inclined toward Leisler and joined in this plea.

Connecticut and Massachusetts were entreated by Albany and Ulster to support them and to send more troops. Leisler demanded that Connecticut put its troops under his command. Albany’s chief agent to Connecticut and Massachusetts in the spring of 1690 was Robert Livingston, perhaps Leisler’s most determined enemy among the Albany oligarchy. Leisler sent agents to urge Connecticut to arrest “this rebel Livingston.” Connecticut did finally decide to remove its troops from Albany, but refused to arrest Livingston. New York’s comrade in revolution, Massachusetts, almost did arrest Livingston, but he was able to save himself by citing the friendship of the Iroquois to the Albany oligarchs.

Under pressure from all sides, Albany could only give in; it submitted to Leisler on March 20. Leisler appointed three commissioners to govern Albany, including Jacob Milborne. Esopus (Kingston) also submitted, and
Milborne imposed Leisler’s authority there. As opponents of Leisler began to flee Albany, the commissioners issued an order prohibiting any male from leaving the city. They also forced into submission several burghers who had previously refused to obey the militia. Generally, though, Leisler conciliated the oligarchy by reappointing existing officials. The exception was Livingston, who was still in Connecticut and whom Leisler attempted to try for “treason.”

With Albany secured, Jacob Leisler proceeded to the second stage of his grand design: the united colonial conquest of Canada. Leisler called a great intercolonial conference at Albany for May 1, 1690. He assured the various governments that New York would contribute 400 men to such an expedition (260 of whom were already in arms) and the Iroquois had promised 1,000. Virginia refused the invitation and Quaker Pennsylvania, again in a state of anarchism, simply ignored it. The Jerseys, unfriendly to New York anyway, and a haven for many of Leisler’s enemies, also ignored the invitation. Maryland was sympathetic but was now in the midst of Coode’s rebellion, and had little time or men to spare. This left the New England colonies, which appeared at the conference and pledged a total of 355 men for the expedition, to be conducted under a supreme commander named by Leisler. Sixty men were pledged by Plymouth, Massachusetts promised 160, and Connecticut 135. Rhode Island sent no delegates and would conscript no men, but it agreed to contribute 300 pounds to help finance the campaign. Massachusetts had itself proposed an intercolonial conference concerning an invasion of Canada, and had in fact scheduled a New England conference at Newport before the New York meeting was called.

It was the attempt to finance and supply this mammoth campaign that led to the despotic exactions and confiscations, and to the rising opposition to Leisler in New York. The raising of the militia aggravated resentments still further. One Westchester realist pointed out that “they was fools if any of them did go and said who would give them a leg or arm if they lost them.” Kings and Queens counties were restive and desertions from the conscript militia began to mount.

In accordance with the decision of the Albany conference, Leisler named his righthand man Jacob Milborne to be supreme commander. It was decided that a naval attack on Quebec would be coordinated with a land assault on Montreal. But the other colonies had never really been enthusiastic about the Leisler expedition and had only joined under pressure of popular enthusiasm in New England for Leisler’s promised conquest of New France. Plymouth now withdrew its commitment, pleading poverty and lack of resources. And Massachusetts threw its resources instead into the naval expedition headed by Sir William Phips to capture Quebec. Moreover, Massachusetts found that its citizens refused en masse to be drafted into the militia, much less to volunteer. Only Connecticut now remained a direct ally of Leisler; and Connecticut
—guided by such enemies of Leisler as Secretary John Allyn (whom Leisler had wanted arrested as a Jacobite) and Robert Livingston—took advantage of the situation to take over the expedition. Connecticut now insisted that Milborne be replaced as supreme commander by Fitz-John Winthrop of Connecticut, a close friend of Livingston’s. Finally, at the end of June, Leisler was forced to yield, and appointed Winthrop head of the expedition.

While Leisler’s military plans were beginning to crumble, the mounting opposition to his rule at home culminated in an armed revolt on June 6. Sparked by an attempt of the relatives of Nicholas Bayard to release him from a Leisler jail, the rebels assaulted Leisler. But the governor was saved by the people and thirteen of the rebels were arrested. When the tumult died down the prisoners were released upon paying a fine.

Although his support was crumbling on all sides, Leisler stubbornly determined to press on with the invasion. The expedition, begun on August 1, was a study in absurdity. The enmity between Winthrop and Livingston on the one hand and Leisler on the other could not have been more intense. To cap the picture, of 1,000 warriors promised by the Iroquois, only seventy Indians appeared, and they accomplished virtually nothing. And yet, despite the evident folly of the attempt, Winthrop set forth with 500 men—less than half the number (1,200) Frontenac rapidly raised to defend Montreal. After wandering around in the woods of New York for two weeks, short of canoes and supplies, Winthrop ignominiously returned home. Phips’ naval attack on Quebec in October was bungled so disastrously that he did well to get most of his men back to Boston. The grandiose attempt to conquer French Canada had proved a fiasco. Massachusetts characteristically met its failure by clamping a tight censorship on any criticism of the regime.

Phips had succeeded, however, in capturing Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia) on an expedition the previous spring. The motivations for Phips’ expedition were incisively set forth in a diary of the conquest: “May 11—the fort surrendered; May 12—went ashore to search for hidden goods. We cut down the cross, rifled the church, pulled down the high altar, and broke their images. May 13—kept gathering plunder all day; May 14—the inhabitants swore allegiance to King William and Queen Mary.”

Having pursued his goal of invasion with single-minded fanaticism, Leisler now looked around paranoiacally for a scapegoat for the debacle. He fastened, naturally enough, upon Fitz-John Winthrop. Leisler promptly put Winthrop and some of Winthrop’s officers under arrest, along with the leading burghers of Albany. Leisler intended to court-martial Winthrop for failure—or rather, for plotting to ruin the invasion. Finally, Leisler was forced to release Winthrop under pressure of Connecticut and especially of the Iroquois. But he continued to snarl to the last, accusing Allyn of being part of the so-called sabotage plot and charging Winthrop with being a “tool” of Livingston. Connecticut’s refusal to grant further military aid was greeted by the irascible Leisler with the
charge that the men of Connecticut were responsible for the failure of the invasion, and he termed them “fiends” and “hypocrites.”