Old New York, or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years : being an enlarged and revised edition of the anniversary discourse delivered before the New York historical society, (November 17, 1857) / by John W. Francis.

  • Francis, John W. (John Wakefield), 1789-1861.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Old New York, or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years : being an enlarged and revised edition of the anniversary discourse delivered before the New York historical society, (November 17, 1857) / by John W. Francis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    which transpired in this citj'’ at that time : the po]3ular excitement and hustle, the liberty cap, the entree of citizen Grcnet, the Ked Cockade, the song of the carmagnole, in which with childish ambition I united, the rencontre with the Boston frigate, and the commotion arising from Jay’s treaty. Though I cannot speak earnestly from actual knowledge, we must all concede that these were the times when political strife assumed a for- midable aspect, when the press most flagrantly outraged individual rights and domestic peace— when the impugners of the Washington admin- istration received new weapons with which to inflict their assaults upon tried patriotism, by every arrival from abroad, announcing France in her progress. The federalists and the anti-federal- ists now became the federal and the rejDublican party ; the carmagnole sung every hour of every day in the streets, and on stated days at the Bel- videre Club House, fanned the embers and en- kindled that zeal which caused the overthrow of many of the soundest principles of American free- dom. Even the yellow fever, which from its novelty and its malignancy struck terror in every bosom, and was rendered more lurid by the absurd jireventive means of burning tar and tar barrels in almost every street, afforded no mitigation of party animosity, and Greenleaf with liis Argus, Freneau with his Time Piece, and Cobbett with his Porcu-
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