And now, Gentlemen, seeing we are debarred the privilege of Public Ground to erect the Pole on, we have purchased a place for it near where the other stood, which is full as public as any of the Corporation Ground. Your Attendance and countenance are desired at one o'clock on Tuesday morning, the 6th instant, at Mr. Crommelin's Wharf, in order to carry it up to be
raised.
By Order of the Committee
New York, February 3, 1770.
The Liberty Boys had had quarters at Burns's and also at Montagnie's, both on Broadway; but the latter was now let to the opposite party for the anniversary celebration of the nineteenth of March. Not to be balked by the action of the recreant Montagnie, the club bought a house in the Spring
Garden, corner of Ann Street and Broadway, where Barnum's Museum stood long
afterward, and named it Hampden Hall in honor of the great English patriot. On the forty-fifth day of the year (February fourteenth) they marched to the New Jail, where McDougal, one of their leaders, was in prison, and in order to compliment him gave forty-five cheers, drank forty-five toasts, and ate forty-five beef-steaks. This number had for them a peculiar significance; for it was on the forty-fifth page of the journal of the Assembly that the proceedings against McDougal were entered. On the nineteenth of March they paid another visit to their leader at his place of temporary imprisonment.
A party of British soldiers, who were on the point of leaving for Pensacola, vowed that they would take a piece of the pole with them as a trophy; and so, on the twenty-ninth of March, they made another attempt upon it. Their effort to unship the topmast was discovered and the alarm given. Upon the rallying of the Liberty Boys the soldiers retired to their barracks
where they received reinforcements and forced the patriots to retire to Hampden Hall, which the soldiers swore they would burn. The alarm bells were rung and the citizens flew to arms; while the British officers, fearing a repetition of Golden Hill, drove their men back to the barracks. A strong guard was placed about the pole; and after the departure of the soldiers on the third of May, the pole remained unmolested until 1775.
During the anniversary celebration of the Stamp Act repeal in that year, Sergeant William Cunningham and a companion made an assault upon the patriots gathered about the pole. They were driven off; and Cunningham, who had been a Liberty Boy himself before joining the army, was severely whipped. That whipping was dearly paid for in the lives of eleven thousand
American prisoners who died during the British occupation of the city under the treatment of the vengeful provost-marshal, Captain William Cunningham. One of the earliest of his acts after the occupation of the city by the British, in September, 1776, was to order the
liberty pole leveled to the ground. It probably seemed to him a visible reminder of the humiliation of the whipping he had received. In 1897, the Mary Washington Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, caused a tablet to be placed in the post-office to commemorate the erection and maintenance of the liberty-pole from 1766 to 1776.
The Liberty Pole Riot
2 The British troops in garrison naturally disliked the
townsfolk, on whom in turn their mere presence acted as an irritant. The soldiers when out of barracks and away from the control of their officers were always coming into collision with the mob, in which the seafaring element was strong; and the resulting riots not infrequently involved also the respectable mechanics and small traders, and even the merchants and gentry. The great source of quarrel was the liberty pole. This had been erected on the anniversary of the king's birth, June 6, 1766, to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act; there was a great barbecue on the occasion, an ox being roasted whole on the common,-while hogsheads of punch and ale were broached, bonfires were lit, and amid the booming of cannon and pealing of bells a flag was hoisted with the inscription, "The King, Pitt, and Liberty,"-the colonists being enthusiastically devoted to their two great parliamentary champions, Pitt and Burke.
The liberty pole was an eyesore to the soldiers in the fort, and its destruction or attempted destruction became one of their standing pastimes. Several times they succeeded, usually when they sallied out at night; and then the liberty pole was chopped down or burnt up. The townsfolk, headed by the Sons of Liberty, always gathered to the rescue. If too late to save the pole, they put up another one, and stood guard over it; if in time to attempt a rescue, a bloody riot followed. In the latter part of January, 1770, parties of soldiers and townsfolk fought a series of pitched battles in the streets, the riot lasting for two days. It began by a successful surprise on the part of the soldiers, who cut down the pole early one morning.
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