** There were twenty-one iron eighteen-pounders and some smaller cannon on the battery. Alexander Hamilton, then a student in King's (now Columbia) College, was among the citizens on that occasion. He had organized a corps for artillery discipline among his fellow-students, and fifteen of them were now with him. Among their trophies were two six-pounders, which they buried in the earth on the College Green, despite the menaces of Dr. Cooper, the Tory president. These two cannons may yet (1852) be seen at the entrance gate of the College Green, fronting Park Place.
*** The Continental Congress, on the sixth of October, recommended the several Provincial Congresses and Committees of Safety to seeure every person believed to be inimical to the Republican cause. No doubt this recommendation hastened Tryon's flight.
**** The members in attendance were Oliver Delancey, Hugh Wallace, William Axtell, John Harris Cruger and James Jauncey.
* (v) James Rivington was a native of London, well educated, and of pleasing deportment. He came to America in 1760, established a bookstore in Philadelphia the same year, and in 1761 opened one near the foot of Wall Street, in New York, where his Royal Gazetteer * was established in April, 1773. No man was more thoroughly detested by the Whigs than Rivington, for he held a keen and unscrupulous pen. His good nature often pointed his severest thrusts. When, in 1781, he perceived the improbability of success on the part of the British, he made a peace-offering to the Americans, by furnishing the commander-in-chief with important information. By means of books which he published, he performed his treason without suspicion. He wrote his secret billets upon thin paper, and bound them in the cover of a book, which he always managed to sell to those who would carry the article immediately to Washington. The men employed for this purpose were ignorant of the nature of their service. While thus playing into the hands of the Republicans, he unceasingly abused them, and kept Clinton, Robertson, and Carleton in blissful ignorance of his perfidy. When the Loyalists fled, and the American army entered the city in the autumn of 1783, Rivington remained; a fact which has puzzled those acquainted with his course during the war. Others, not a tithe so obnoxious, were driven away; in his secret treason lies the explanation. His business declined, and he lived in comparative poverty until July, 1802, when he died at the age of seventy-eight years. The portrait here given is from a fine painting by Stuart, in the possession of Honorable John Hunter, of Hunter's Island, New Rochelle. The signature is half the size of the original. Mr. Hunter remembers Rivington as a vivacious, companionable man, fond of good living, a lover of wine, and a perfect gentleman in his deportment.
* There were three other newspapers printed in the city when Rivington's press was destroyed, namely, Gaine's New York Mercury, in Hanover Square, established in 1752; Holt's New York Journal, in Dock (Pearl) Street, near Wall, commenced in 1766; and Anderson's Constitutional Gazette, a very small sheet, published for a few months in 1775. at Beekman's Slip. Hugh Gaine was a time-server. He was a professed patriot until the British took possession of New York in 1776, when he returned to the city after a brief exile at Newark, became a moderate Loyalist, and, on making an humble petition to the State Legislature at the close of the war, he was allowed to remain. This petition was the subject of one of Freneau's best satirical poems. Gaine kept a bookstore under the sign of the Bible and Crown, at Hanover Square, for forty years. He died on tin: twenty-fifth of April, 1807, at the age of eighty-one years. Previous to the meeting of the first Congress, Holt's paper contained the Snake device (see page 508, volume i.) at its head; in December, after its session, it bore the annexed significant picture as a vignette. This is half the size of the original. Upon the body of the serpent were these words.
"United, now, alive and free,
Firm on this basis Liberty shall stand,
And thus supported ever bless our land,
'Till Time becomes Eternity."
After the destruction of his press, Rivington went to England. When the British took possession of New York, he was appointed king's printer, and in October, 1777, he resumed the publication of his paper, under the original title. On the thirteenth of December, he changed the title to "The Royal Gazette," and published it semi-weekly. During the occupation of the city by the British, a paper was issued every day but one; Gaine's Mercury on Monday; Rivington's Gazette on Wednesday and Saturday; Robertson's, Mills', and Hicks' Loyal American Gazette on Thursday; and Lewis's New York Mercury and General Advertiser on Friday. Rivington alone assumed the title of "printer to the king."—Thomas's History of Printing, ii., 312.