It

to hang the usurper and reign in his stead. Leisler's rule had been in many respects an enlightened one, and years afterward his adherents succeeded in having his dishonored bones dug up and honorably reinterred. was in this town, and at the instance of this earnest but ill-balanced and despotic champion of the poor, that the American Colonies took their first step toward concerted action, their objective being the overthrow of the French at Montreal.

The most striking characteristic of New York has always been its cosmopolitanism. As Governor Roosevelt points out in his capital review of the city's history, no less than eighteen different languages and dialects were spoken in the streets so long ago as the middle of the seventeenth century. The Dutch, the English and the Huguenot refugees from France predominated, but there were many Walloons and Germans, and a large body of black slaves. The riffraff of the Old World was to be found here, as well as the nobly adventurous; and, in fact, at all times since, the proportion of foreign-born residents has been very large.

In the period immediately preceding the

Revolution, the desire for independence was far less general in New York than in Massachusetts or Virginia. The large land owners and leading merchants were mainly members of the Church of England; and while there

cluded not only the Anglican clergy and almost all the laity, but even an influential section of the membership of the Dutch Reformed Church. It included such families as the De Peysters, the De Lanceys and the Philippses in the city and its suburbs; and the Johnsons, who

dominated central New York.

There were Tories even on the Committee of Fifty-one that first authoritatively proposed the assembling of a Continental Congress. In no other colony was the Tory element so numerous

and powerful; in

none other were the patriots op

posed by so active a spirit of loyalty to the Crown, and SO vast a bulk of indifference on the part of property owners, SOlicitous for nothing but the

security of their

possessions. At

first the Schuy

ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

lers, the Living

stons, and Ham

ilton, Jay and Morris found their support almost wholly among the masses, who rose not only against England, but also against the domination of the classes, which was more

oppressive in the aristocratic city of New York than in the democratic town of Boston, or in Philadelphia. Thus, it was the so-called Sons of Liberty that had led in the agitation which made the Stamp Act a dead letter, so far as this colony was concerned, and a decade later prevented the landing of taxed tea on New York wharves. And their demonstrative radicalism found little response in the minds of some of the ablest civil and military leaders contributed by this colony to the work of liberation and reconstruction. But the violence of the mob could not blind

such men to the essential justice of the American cause, and the actual beginning of the war found a large majority of the best people of the colony definitely committed to a patriotic course. So when Washington and his army were driven hither from Brooklyn and hence to New Jersey, in 1776, New York was no longer the populous place it had been before their sympathizers fled from the terrors of hostile military rule.

For the next seven years this remained the chief British stronghold in America. If the eastern and southern colonies could be split apart by English control of the Hudson, the

backbone of the colonial federation would be broken-as the backbone of the Confederacy was broken, nearly a century later, by Sherman's march to the sea. So every energy was bent toward dislodging the Continentals from this dividing-line. This was the immediate object of Arnold's treachery, as well as of many an overt movement from south and north. But Washington outgeneralled the enemy and kept the federation intact, till the capture of Yorktown made New York no longer tenable by the foe. The city was wellnigh ruined by its experiences during these seven terrible years; and the outlying country to the north-Westchester County-suffered no less severely, being exposed to raids from the opposing bodies of regulars, and to constant marauding at the hands of freebooters, who pretended affiliation with one side or the other, sometimes in good faith, but often merely as a pretext for lawless depredations.

On

The most joyously celebrated event in the annals of Manhattan was the city's evacuation by the British at the close of the war. the day that this occurred, November 25, 1783, General Washington arrived in town and dined at Fraunces's Tavern; and hither