History of the Great American Fortunes Part 2

Similarly, another area, the entirety of what is now the State of Maine, went to the individual owners.h.i.+p of Sir Fernandino Gorges, the same who had betrayed Ess.e.x to Queen Elizabeth and who had received rich rewards for his treachery.[13] The domain descended to his grandson, Fernando Gorges, who, on March 13, 1677, sold it by deed to John Usher, a Boston merchant, for 1,250. The ominous dissatisfaction of the New Hamps.h.i.+re and other settlers with the monopolization of land was not slighted by the English government; at the very time Usher bought Maine the government was on the point of doing the same thing and opening the land for settlement. Usher at once gave a deed of the province to the governor and company of Ma.s.sachusetts, of which colony and later, State, it remained a part until its creation as a State in 1820.[14]

These were two notable instances of vast land grants which reverted to the people. In most of the colonies the popular outcry for free access to the land was not so effective. In Pennsylvania, after the government was restored to Penn, and in part of New Jersey conditions were more favorable to the settlers. In those colonies corrupt usurpations of the land were comparatively few, although the proprietary families continued to hold extensive tracts. Penn's sons by his second wife, for instance, became men of great wealth.[15] The pacific and conciliatory Quaker faith operated as a check on any local extraordinary misuse of power.

Unfortunately for historical accuracy and penetration, there is an obscurity as to the intimate circ.u.mstances under which many of the large private estates in the South were obtained. The general facts as to their grants, of course, are well known, but the same specific, underlying details, such as may be disinterred from Bellomont's correspondence, are lacking. In New York, at least, and presumably during Fletcher's sway of government in Pennsylvania, great land grants went for bribes. This is definitely brought out in Bellomont's official communications.

VAST ESTATES SECURED BY BRIBERY.

Fletcher, it would seem, had carried on a brisk traffic in creating by a stroke of the quill powerfully rich families by simply granting them domains in return for bribes.

Captain John R. N. Evans had been in command of the royal wars.h.i.+p Richmond. An estate was his fervent ambition. Fletcher's mandate gave him a grant of land running forty miles one way, and thirty another, on the west bank of the Hudson. Beginning at the south line of the present town of New Paltry, Ulster County, it included the southern tier of the now existing towns in that picturesque county, two-thirds of the fertile undulations of Orange County and a part of the present town of Haverstraw. It is related of this area, that there was "but one house on it, or rather a hut, where a poor man lives." Notwithstanding this lone, solitary subject, Evans saw great trading and seignorial possibilities in his tract. And what did he pay for this immense stretch of territory? A very modest bribe; common report had it that he gave Fletcher 100 for the grant.[16]

Nicholas Bayard, of whom it is told that he was a handy go-between in arranging with the sea pirates the price that they should pay for Fletcher's protection, was another favored personage. Bayard was the recipient of a grant forty miles long and thirty broad on both sides of Schoharie Creek. Col. William Smith's prize was a grant from Fletcher of an estate fifty miles in length on Na.s.sau--now Long Island. According to Bellomont, Smith got this land "arbitrarily and by strong hand." Smith was in collusion with Fletcher, and moreover, was chief justice of the province, "a place of great awe as well as authority." This judicial land wrester forced the town of Southampton to accept the insignificant sum of 10 for the greater part of forty miles of beach--a singularly profitable transaction for Smith, who cleared in one year 500, the proceeds of whales taken there, as he admitted to Bellomont.[17] Henry Beekman, the astute and smooth founder of a rich and powerful family, was made a magnate of the first importance by a grant from Fletcher of a tract sixteen miles in length in Dutchess County, and also of another estate running twenty miles along the Hudson and eight miles inland.

This estate he valued at 5,000.[18] Likewise Peter Schuyler, G.o.dfrey Dellius and their a.s.sociates had conjointly secured by Fletcher's patent, a grant fifty miles long in the romantic Mohawk Valley--a grant which "the Mohawk Indians have often complained of". Upon this estate they placed a value of 25,000. This was a towering fortune for the period; in its actual command of labor, necessities, comforts and luxuries it ranked as a power of transcending importance.

These were some of the big estates created by "Colonel Fletcher's intolerable corrupt selling away the lands of this Province," as Bellomont termed it in his communication to the Lords of Trade of Nov.

28, 1700. Fletcher, it was set forth, profited richly by these corrupt grants. He got in bribes, it was charged, at least 4,000.[19] But Fletcher was not the only corrupt official. In his interesting work on the times,[20] George W. Schuyler presents what is an undoubtedly accurate description of how Robert Livingston, progenitor of a rich and potent family which for generations exercised a profound influence in politics and other public affairs, contrived to get together an estate which soon ranked as the second largest in New York state and as one of the greatest in the colonies.

Livingston was the younger son of a poor exiled clergyman. In currying favor with one official after another he was unscrupulous, dexterous and adaptable. He invariably changed his politics with the change of administration. In less than a year after his arrival he was appointed to an office which yielded him a good income. This office he held for nearly half a century, and simultaneously was the inc.u.mbent of other lucrative posts. Offices were created by Governor Dongan apparently for his sole benefit. His pa.s.sion was to get together an estate which would equal the largest. Extremely penurious, he loaned money at frightfully usurious rates and hounded his victims without a vestige of sympathy.[21] As a trader and government contractor he made enormous profits; such was his cohesive collusion with high officials that compet.i.tors found it impossible to outdo him. A current saying of him was that he made a fortune by "pinching the bellies of the soldiers"--that is, as an army contractor who defrauded in quant.i.ty and quality of supplies. By a mult.i.tude of underhand and ign.o.ble artifices he finally found himself the lord of a manor sixteen miles long and twenty-four broad. On this estate he built flour and saw mills, a bakery and a brewery. In his advanced old age he exhibited great piety but held on grimly to every s.h.i.+lling that he could and as long as he could. When he died about 1728--the exact date is unknown--at the age of 74 years, he left an estate which was considered of such colossal value that its true value was concealed for fear of further enraging the discontented people.

EFFECTS OF THE LAND SEIZURES.

The seizure of these vast estates and the arbitrary exclusion of the many from the land produced a combustible situation. An instantaneous and distinct cleavage of cla.s.s divisions was the result. Intrenched in their possessions the landed cla.s.s looked down with haughty disdain upon the farming and laboring cla.s.ses. On the other hand, the farm laborer with his sixteen hours work a day for a forty-cent wage, the carpenter straining for his fifty-two cents a day, the shoemaker drudging for his seventy-three cents a day and the blacksmith for his seventy cents,[22]

thought over this injustice as they bent over their tasks. They could sweat through their lifetime at honest labor, producing something of value and yet be a constant prey to poverty while a few men, by means of bribes, had possessed themselves of estates worth tens of thousands of pounds and had preempted great stretches of the available lands.

In consulting extant historical works it is noticeable that they give but the merest shadowy glimpse of this intense bitterness of what were called the lower cla.s.ses, and of the incessant struggle now raging, now smouldering, between the landed aristocracy and the common people.

Contrary to the roseate descriptions often given of the independent position of the settlers at that time, it was a time when the use and misuse of law brought about sharp divisions of cla.s.s lines which arose from artificially created inequalities, economically and politically.

With the great landed estates came tenantry, wage slavery and chattel slavery, the one condition the natural generator of the others.

The rebellious tendency of the poor colonists against becoming tenants, and the usurpation of the land, were clearly brought out by Bellomont in a letter written on Nov. 28, 1700, to the Lords of Trade. He complained that "people are so cramped here for want of land that several families within my own knowledge and observation are remov'd to the new country (a name they give to Pennsylvania and the Jerseys) for, to use Mr.

Graham's expression to me, and that often repeated, too, what man will be such a fool as to become a base tenant to Mr. Dellius, Colonel Schuyler, Mr. Livingston (and so he ran through the whole role of our mighty landgraves) when for crossing Hudson's River that man can, for a song, purchase a good freehold in the Jerseys."

If the immigrant happened to be able to muster a sufficient sum he could, indeed, become an independent agriculturist in New Jersey and in parts of Pennsylvania and provide himself with the tools of trade. But many immigrants landed with empty pockets and became laborers dependent upon the favor of the landed proprietors. As for the artisans--the carpenters, masons, tailors, blacksmiths--they either kept to the cities and towns where their trade princ.i.p.ally lay, or bonded themselves to the lords of the manors.

ATTEMPT AT CONFISCATION THWARTED.

Bellomont fully understood the serious evils which had been injected into the body politic and strongly applied himself to the task of confiscating the great estates. One of his first proposals was to urge upon the Lords of Trade the restriction of all governors throughout the colonies from granting more than a thousand acres to any man without leave from the king, and putting a quit rent of half a crown on every hundred acres, this sum to go to the royal treasury. This suggestion was not acted upon. He next attacked the a.s.sembly of New York and called upon it to annul the great grants. In doing this he found that the most powerful members of the a.s.sembly were themselves the great land owners and were putting obstacle after obstacle in his path. After great exertions he finally prevailed upon the a.s.sembly to vacate at least two of the grants, those to Evans and Bayard. The a.s.sembly did this probably as a sop to Bellomont and to public opinion, and because Evans and Bayard had lesser influence than the other landed functionaries. But the owners of the other estates tenaciously held them intact. The people regarded Bellomont as a sincere and ardent reformer, but the landed men and their following abused him as a meddler and destructionist.

Despairing of getting a self-interested a.s.sembly to act, Bellomont appealed to the Lords of Trade:

"If your Lords.h.i.+ps mean I shall go on to break the rest of the extravagant grants of land by Colonel Fletcher or other governors, by act of a.s.sembly, I shall stand in need of a peremptory order from the King so to do."[23] A month later he insisted to his superiors at home that if they intended that the corrupt and extravagant grants should be confiscated--"(which I will be bold to say by all the rules of reason and justice ought to be done) I believe it must be done by act of Parliament in England, for I am a little jealous I shall not have strength enough in the a.s.sembly of New York to break them." The majority of this body, he pointed out, were landed men, and when their own interest was touched, they declined to act contrary to it. Unless, added Bellomont, "the power of our Palatines, Smith, Livingston, the Phillips, father and son[24]--and six or seven more were reduced ... the country is ruined."[25]

Despite some occasional breaches in its intrenchments, the landocracy continued to rule everywhere with a high hand, its power, as a whole, unbroken.

HOW THE LORDS OF THE SOIL LIVED.

A glancing picture of one of these landed proprietors will show the manner in which they lived and what was then accounted their luxury. As one of the "foremost men of his day," in the colonies Colonel Smith lived in befitting style. This stern, bushy-eyed man who robbed the community of a vast tract of land and who, as chief justice, was inflexibly severe in dealing punishment to petty criminals and ever vigilant in upholding the rights of property, was lord of the Manor of St. George, Suffolk County. The finest silks and lace covered his judicial person. His embroidered belts, costing 110, at once attested his great wealth and high station. He had the extraordinary number of one hundred and four silver b.u.t.tons to adorn his clothing. When he walked a heavy silver-headed cane supported him, and he rode on a fancy velvet saddle. His three swords were of the finest make; occasionally he affected a Turkish scimeter. Few watches in the colonies could compare with his ma.s.sive silver watch. His table was embellished with heavy silver plate, valued at 150, on which his coat-of-arms was engraved.

Twelve negro slaves responded to his nod; he had a large corps of bounded apprentices and dependant laborers. His mansion looked down on twenty acres of wheat and twenty of corn; and as for his horses and cattle they were the envy of the country. In his last year thirty horses were his, fourteen oxen, sixty steers, forty-eight cows and two bulls.[26] He lived high, drank, swore, cheated--and administered justice.

One of the best and most intimate descriptions of a somewhat contemporaneous landed magnate in the South is that given of Robert Carter, a Virginia planter, by Philip Vickers Fithian,[27] a tutor in Carter's family. Carter came to his estate from his grandfather, whose land and other possessions were looked upon as so extensive that he was called "King" Carter.

Robert Carter luxuriated in Nomini Hall, a great colonial mansion in Westmoreland County. It was built between 1725 and 1732 of brick covered with strong mortar, which imparted a perfectly white exterior, and was seventy-six feet long and forty wide. The interior was one of unusual splendor for the time, such as only the very rich could afford. There were eight large rooms, one of which was a ball-room thirty feet long.

Carter spent most of his leisure hours cultivating the study of law and of music; his library contained 1,500 volumes and he had a varied a.s.sortment of musical instruments. He was the owner of 60,000 acres of land spread over almost every county of Virginia, and he was the master of six hundred negro slaves. The greater part of a prosperous iron-works near Baltimore was owned by him, and near his mansion he built a flour mill equipped to turn out 25,000 bushels of wheat a year. Carter was not only one of the big planters but one of the big capitalists of the age; all that he had to do was to exercise a general supervision; his overseers saw to the running of his various industries. Like the other large landholders he was one of the active governing cla.s.s; as a member of the Provincial Council he had great influence in the making of laws.

He was a thorough gentleman, we are told, and took good care of his slaves and of his white laborers who were grouped in workhouses and little cottages within range of his mansion. Within his domain he exercised a sort of benevolent despotism. He was one of the first few to see that chattel slavery could not compete in efficiency with white labor, and he reckoned that more money could be made from the white laborer, for whom no responsibility of shelter, clothing, food and attendance had to be a.s.sumed than from the negro slave, whose sickness, disability or death entailed direct financial loss. Before his death he emanc.i.p.ated a number of his slaves. This, in brief, is the rather flattering depiction of one of the conspicuously rich planters of the South.

THE NASCENT TRADING CLa.s.s.

Land continued to be the chief source of the wealth of the rich until after the Revolution. The discriminative laws enacted by England had held down the progress of the trading cla.s.s; these laws overthrown, the traders rose rapidly from a subordinate position to the supreme cla.s.s in point of wealth.

No close research into pre-Revolutionary currents and movements is necessary to understand that the Revolution was brought about by the dissatisfied trading cla.s.s as the only means of securing absolute freedom of trade. Notwithstanding the view often presented that it was an altruistic movement for the freedom of man, it was essentially an economic struggle fathered by the trading cla.s.s and by a part of the landed interests. Admixed was a sincere aim to establish free political conditions. This, however, was not an aim for the benefit of all cla.s.ses, but merely one for the better interests of the propertied cla.s.s. The poverty-stricken soldiers who fought for their cause found after the war that the machinery of government was devised to shut out manhood suffrage and keep the power intact in the hands of the rich. Had it not been for radicals such as Jefferson, Paine and others it is doubtful whether such concessions as were made to the people would have been made. The long struggle in various States for manhood suffrage sufficiently attests the deliberate aim of the propertied interests to concentrate in their own hands, and in that of a following favorable to them, the voting power of the Government and of the States.

With the success of the Revolution, the trading cla.s.s bounded to the first rank. Entail and primogeniture were abolished and the great estates gradually melted away. For more than a century and a half the landed interests had dominated the social and political arena. As an acknowledged, continuous organization they ceased to exist. Great estates no longer pa.s.sed unimpaired from generation to generation, surviving as a distinct ent.i.ty throughout all changes. They perforce were part.i.tioned among all the children; and through the vicissitudes of subsequent years, pa.s.sed bit by bit into many hands. Altered laws caused a gradual disintegration in the case of individual holdings, but brought no change in instances of corporate owners.h.i.+p. The Trinity Corporation of New York City, for example, has held on to the vast estate which it was given before the Revolution except such parts as it voluntarily has sold.

DISINTEGRATION OF THE GREAT ESTATES.

The individual magnate, however, had no choice. He could no longer entail his estates. Thus, estates which were very large before the Revolution, and which were regarded with astonishment, ceased to exist.

The landed interests, however, remained paramount for several decades after the Revolution by reason of the acceleration which long possession and its profits had given them. Was.h.i.+ngton's fortune, amounting at his death, to $530,000, was one of the largest in the country and consisted mainly of land. He owned 9,744 acres, valued at $10 an acre, on the Ohio River in Virginia, 3,075 acres, worth $200,000, on the Great Kenawa, and also land elsewhere in Virginia and in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Kentucky, the City of Was.h.i.+ngton and other places.[28] About half a century later it was only by persistent gatherings of public contributions that his very home was saved to the nation, so had his estate become divided and run down. After a long career, Benjamin Franklin acquired what was considered a large fortune. But it did not come from manufacture or invention, which he did so much to encourage, but from land. His estate in 1788, two years before his death, was estimated to be worth $150,000, mostly in land.[29] By the opening decades of the nineteenth century few of the great estates in New York remained. One of the last of the patroons was Stephen Van Rensselaer, who died at the age of 75 on Jan. 26, 1839, leaving ten children. Up to this time the manor had devolved upon the eldest son. Although it had been diminished somewhat by various cessions, it was still of great extent. The property was divided among the ten children, and, according to Schuyler, "In less than fifty years after his death, the seven hundred thousand acres originally in the manor were in the hands of strangers."[30]

Long before old Van Rensselaer pa.s.sed away he had seen the rise and growth of the trading and manufacturing cla.s.s and a new form of landed aristocracy, and he observed with a haughty bitterness how in point of wealth and power they far overshadowed the well-nigh defunct old feudal aristocracy. A few hundred thousand dollars no longer was the summit of a great fortune; the age of the millionaire had come. The lordly, leisurely environment of the old landed cla.s.s had been supplanted by feverish trading and industrial activity which imposed upon society its own newer standards, doctrines and ideals and made them uppermost factors.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] "Land Nationalization,":122-125.

[10] Colonial Doc.u.ments, vii:654-655.

[11] Colonial Doc.u.ments, iv:673-674.

[12] "A Short History of the English Colonies in America":402.

[13] Yet, this fortune seeker, who had incurred the contempt of every n.o.ble English mind, is described by one of the cla.s.s of power-wors.h.i.+pping historians as follows: "Fame and wealth, so often the idols of _Superior Intellect_, were the prominent objects of this aspiring man."--Williamson's "History of Maine," 1:305.

[14] The Public Domain: Its History, etc.:38.

[15] Pennsylvania: Colony and Commonwealth:66, 84, etc. Their claim to inherit proprietary rights was bought at the time of the Revolutionary War by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 130,000 sterling or about $580,000.

[16] Colonial Doc.u.ments, iv:463.

[17] Ibid.:535.

[18] Ibid.:39.

[19] Colonial Doc.u.ments, iv:528. One of Bellomont's chief complaints was that the landgraves monopolized the timber supply. He recommended the pa.s.sage of a law vesting in the King the right to all trees such as were fit for masts of s.h.i.+ps or for other use in building s.h.i.+ps of war.

[20] "Colonial New York," 1:285-286.