New York in the Revolutionary Era was cosmopolitan, multilingual, and deeply mercantile. Because New York City had deep commercial ties to Britain, New York was among the most Loyalist of all the colonies and one of the slowest to embrace independence. The Stamp Act crisis sparked the first broad popular resistance, with violent street reactions from the Sons of Liberty standing in sharp tension with a wealthy merchant class whose livelihoods depended on British trade. The Battle of Golden Hill in 1770—sparked by British soldiers competing with colonists for jobs—preceded the Boston Massacre and was very much a New York story of two opposing groups forced to live in close proximity. The colony's thriving print culture, with Patriot printer John Holt and Loyalist James Rivington as contrasting voices, was essential to the circulation of Revolutionary ideas. New York State comprised very different worlds: the dense commercial port at Manhattan's southern tip, and the vast western interior where the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, known to the British as the Six Nations, had tremendous influence.
Interviewees
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Julie Golia
- Linda May Uris Director, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Library, New York Public Library
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Meredith Mann
- Interim Charles J. Liebman Curator of Manuscripts, New York Public Library
