While all this was pending, and though Bunker Hill had been fought, and the war was in full progress round Boston, New York yet maintained what might almost be described as an attitude of armed neutrality. The city was so exposed to the British war-ships in the bay, and the surrounding population was so doubtful, that the patriot party dared not take the deciding steps, especially as so many of its members still clung to the hope of a peaceful settlement. Morris announced frankly that he did not believe in breaking the peace until they were prepared to take the consequences. Indeed, when the few British troops left the city to join the garrison in Boston, he strongly opposed the action of the Sons of Liberty, who gathered hastily together, and took away the cartloads of arms and ammunition that the soldiers were taking with them. The Congress, to their honor, discouraged, to the best of their power, the rioting and mobbing of Tories in the city.
In fact, New York's position was somewhat like that of Kentucky at the outbreak of the Civil War. Her backwardness in definitely throwing in her lot with the revolutionists was clearly brought out by a rather ludicrous incident. General Washington, on his way to take command of the continental army round Boston, passed through New York the same day the royal governor, Tryon, arrived by sea, and the authorities were cast into a great quandary as to how they should treat two such kings of Brentford when the one rose was so small. Finally they compromised by sending a guard of honor to attend each; Montgomery and Morris, as delegates from the Assembly, received Washington and brought him before that body, which addressed him in terms of cordial congratulation, but ended with a noteworthy phrase,--that "when the contest should be decided by an accommodation with the mother country, he should deliver up the important deposit that had been confided to his hands."
These words give us the key to the situation. Even the patriots of the colony could not realize that there was no hope of an "accommodation"; and they were hampered at every step by the fear of the British frigates, and of the numerous Tories. The latter were very bold and defiant; when Congress tried to disarm them, they banded themselves together, bade the authorities defiance, and plainly held the upper land on Staten Island and in Queens County. New York furnished many excellent soldiers to the royal armies during the war, and from among her gentry came the most famous of the Tory leaders,--such as Johnson and De Lancey, whose prowess was felt by the hapless people of their own native province; De Peyster, who was Ferguson's second in command at King's Mountain; and Cruger, who, in the Carolinas, inflicted a check upon Greene himself. The Tories were helped also by the jealousy felt towards some of the other colonies, especially Connecticut, whose people took the worst possible course for the patriot side by threatening to "crush down" New York, and by finally furnishing an armed and mounted mob which rode suddenly into the city, and wrecked the office of an obnoxious loyalist printer named Rivington. This last proceeding caused great indignation, and nearly made a split in the revolutionary camp.