The age-herald., 1898-01-23

selves The remainder were captured and twenty-one were shot, hung or burned at the stake Again, in TAI, incendiary fires were started all over the city A con- whites was uncovered. It was rebuked by the execution of four whites the hanging of twenty blacks and the burning at the stake of fourteen others. The only subse- quent occasion when the negroes figured prominently was in the draft riots of 1863, when 200 were massacred.
 The turbulence of the populace was felt In the riots that precipitated the war of the revolution. Broils and bloodshed be- tween sailors and the soldiers were nu- merous. At the last events moved rapidly. The frigates bearing the obnoxious stamps were greeted with flags at half mast, and they were not allowed te land them. The cargoes of the tea vessels were emptied overheard. and then came the real outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord. The mob, which had acted with such pre- cipitation before it became an issue of ar- mics in the field, contributed nothing to the final result. Its members became camp followers in the rear of both armies, pill laging whig and tory impartially.
 The Tory Element.
 There was a larger tory element in New York than in any other colonial community and the city was slow to take the irrevo- cable step. But it's patriot leaders took the loreinoSt part III the large operations Wnlcn made the revolution a success, and sup piled the initiative for the calling of the first continental congress. When the war actually began the tories were put into the background. either leaving the city or talk ing, under duress the oath of allegiance.
 No state north of the Carolinas was so harried during the revolution. After the defeat of the British before Boston the patriot army came to New York ten thou sand strong. In the lower bay formida- ble English armament, with 900 fighting men aboard, gradually assembled. Half of these Lord Howe landed, and at the battle of Long Island he totally defeated the Americans. This was in August of 1776. The evacuation of New York city fol- lowed, but a day later Washington turned on the victor at Harlem Heights and drove him behind his intrenchments. Gradu- ally Howe forced the American army back. At last, reduced by defeat and desertion to only 5000 men, the patriots retired to New Jersey, where. at the battles of Tren- ton and Princeton, in the darkest hour of the war, Washington again struck home suddenly. Those were the last important engagements in this vicinity.
 For seven years New York was held as a British garrison, the troops being quar- tered in the churches, and the patriot pris- oners being immured In the sugar houses and the noisome hulks of Wallabout bay. More than twenty thousand soldiers died
 
 troops withdrew in 17S3 they carried with them 12,000 loyalists who abandoned this country forever.
 The historians are agreed that the two decades succeeding the revolution were the brightest and most significant in the annals of the city, from the standpoint of national interests New York came to the front in the effort to unite the colonies into a strong central government, and its influ- ence was paramount in the wears swher' fife young and -plerstc gu. ernment was fixing t.t5,5e institutions which have survived the shock of more than a century. When, later, the questions of slavery and seces- sion arose, New England, and afterward the west, assumed the primacy in the na- tional arena. But the inauguration of the constitution and the definition and con firmation of governmental institutions were in large sense the achievement and crowning glory of this city. It is more than coincidence that the first president was here inaugurated.
 It was here that the federalist party had its origin. Under Hamilton and Jay it disputed the ground successfully until 1901 with the democratic party, which was led by Aaron Burr, George Clinton and the Livngstons. When it was finally overthrown, federalism declined and died all over the country. Since Aaron Burr carried the city in 1901 by the tactics of a skilfu politician, New York has, with spasmodic exceptions, remained consist ent democratic stronghold.
 Immigration.
 The one great fact of the present cen tury so far the metropolis is concerned, has been the successive inundations of im- migration. For two score of years after the revolution it was chiefly from New England. Then the tide set in from abroad. 10000 immigrants arriving here in 1918 and 1819 By 1920, the city had pop ulation of 125,000. It doubled again almost instantly on the opening of the Erie canal in 1895. Five years later the movement history. Its two largest factors were the Roman Catholic Irish and the Germans, impelled hither by the potato famine and the revolutions on the continent.
 The colonial Irish were of the Protestant faith and not until the war was over was the first Roman Catholic church estab lished here. But in 1926 the adherents of that religion comprised one-f1fth of the city's population. When this immigration began to dwindle the Slavonic and Latin peoples of southern Europe were set in mo- ton, until now the Irishman is the excep- ton in whole East side districts which were his strongholds.
 This mingling of the nations was the cause of the numerous race riots in the period before the civil war. Out of 1t is- sued also the reign of political corruption which eliminated in the plundering dynas-
  in 1871. The foreign element was not con- spicuous for it's loyalty during the civil war. It was his understanding of it's tenn per that led Mayor Fernando Wood to sug gest to the aldermen in 1861 that the city secede from the union, and, with Staten Island and Long Island, form an independ- ent commonwealth to be known as Tri-In- sula It was the foreign element-"the volcano under the city''-that arose in July of 1863 while the union troops were meeting the confederates at Gettysburg. and in the sangunary draft riots tcrrorized for days a metropolis of S00,000.
 The government just inaugurated Is a return step toward the centralized govern ment from which the city has advanced since Stuyvesant's time. After the revolu tion the mayors were appointed by the gov ernor until 1922. Thence until 1884 they were chosen by the municipal council and thereafter by popular vote. The franchise was dependent on property qualification until 1926, when 1t was superseded by man. had suffrage The negroes were gradually emancipated from 1799 to 1S27 The era of street railroads and aldermanic-granted franchises began in 1850. The political dom inance of the great families, such, ended with the war of 1872.