Naturally there was no hope of any compromise of this sort. The British ministry grew more imperious, and the Colonies more defiant. At last the clash came, and then Morris's thorough Americanism and inborn love of freedom and impatience of tyranny overcame any lingering class jealousy, and he cast in his lot with his countrymen. Once in, he was not of the stuff to waver or look back; but like most other Americans, and like almost all New Yorkers, he could not for some little time realize how hopeless it was to try to close the breach with Great Britain. Hostilities had gone on for quite a while before even Washington could bring himself to believe that a lasting separation was inevitable.
The Assembly, elected as shown in the previous chapter, at a moment of reaction, was royalist in tone. It contained several stanch patriots, but the majority, although unwilling to back up the British ministers in all their doings, were still more hostile to the growing body of republican revolutionists. They gradually grew wholly out of sympathy with the people; until the latter at last gave up all attempts to act through their ordinary representatives, and set about electing delegates who should prove more faithful. Thereupon, in April, 1775, the last colonial legislature adjourned for all time, and was replaced by successive bodies more in touch with the general sentiment of New York; that is, by various committees, by a convention to elect delegates to the Continental Congress, and then by the Provincial Congress. The lists of names in these bodies show not only how many leading men certain families contributed, but also how mixed the lineage of such families was; for among the numerous Jays, Livingstons, Ludlows, Van Cortlandts, Roosevelts, Beekmans, and others of Dutch, English, and Huguenot ancestry appear names as distinctly German, Gaelic-Scotch, and Irish, like Hoffman, Mulligan, MacDougall, Connor.[1]
[1] The habit of constantly importing indentured Irish servants, as well as German laborers, under contract, prevailed throughout the colonies; and the number of men thus imported was quite sufficient to form a considerable element in the population, and to add a new, although perhaps not very valuable, strain to our already mixed blood. In taking up at random the file of the _New York Gazette_ for 1766, we find among the advertisements many offering rewards for runaway servants; such as "three pounds for the runaway servant Conner O'Rourke," "ten pounds for the runaway Irish servant, Philip Maginnis," "five pounds apiece for certain runaway German miners--Bruderlein, Baum, Ostmann, etc.--imported under contract;" all this mixed in with advertisements of rewards of about the same money value for "the mulatto man named Tom," or the "negroes Nero and Pompey." Still, in speaking of the revolutionary armies, the word "Irish" must almost always be understood as meaning Presbyterian Irish; the Catholic Irish had but little hand in the war, and that little was limited to furnishing soldiers to some of the British regiments. The Presbyterian Irish, however, in the revolutionary armies, played a part as manful and valiant as, and even more important than, that taken by the Catholic Irish soldiers who served so bravely during the great contest between the North and South. The few free Catholic Irish already in America in 1776 were for the most part heartily loyal; but they were not numerous enough to be of the least consequence.