Peck Slip

Part II: War & Occupation

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Shortly after the British captured New York, the largest fire in the city’s history destroyed at least 20 percent of it — well below the devastation intended. Understanding its strategic importance, Gen. Washington had asked the Continental Congress if he could burn all of New York, to deny the British a foothold in the colonies. They refused. But the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Patriots lit the inferno. Much worse followed.

Peck Slip

  • War radically changed life in New York. The waterfront survived the Fire. But the Revolution ground its commerce to a halt. With more than a third of all the war’s battles occurring nearby, refugees also poured into the city by the tens of thousands. That included persecuted loyal and neutral colonists, and rebel sympathizers, too, victimized by each army or simply caught in-between.

    Among this number were 10,000 former slaves, running to British promises of emancipation. As many as 20,000 escaped their masters during the Revolution, fleeing to “islands of freedom” like New York.

    But even the wealthy faced hardship under the occupation government. The vast majority struggled through nearly a decade of increasing homelessness, sickness, and hunger. As British military headquarters, New York saw much greater rates of poverty and violence than it had ever known during the Imperial Crisis.

    New York lived under martial law far longer than any other region. And the British established a governance model here that they would use in every conquered area in all thirteen colonies. The British disempowered the loyal, elite merchants and landowners in government, over their protests, viewing them as unable to stop the rebellion. Over time, they granted more and more power to low-ranking functionaries to administer business and social welfare, hoping to win over the neutral. Rebels commanded an estimated 40 percent of the colonial population — far less, the British thought at first. But in New York, as elsewhere, the increasingly desperate material conditions gradually undermined whatever support they may have enjoyed at first.

    Here at Peck Slip, the ancient ferry landing where New Yorkers from across the region gathered to exchange goods and information, we start Part II of the tour, War & Occupation, by surveying what the Revolution meant for New York’s many diverse peoples.

Dinah Archey

In 1777, Dinah Archey escaped slavery in Virginia, making her way to New York with another 518 Black recruits after learning the British army promised freedom. She lived in the occupied city for six years, most likely in “Canvas Town,” a refugee camp established in the ruins of the Great Fire.

But in 1783, after more than a year in which slaveowners from all over the US descended on this “island of freedom” to retrieve the families or single men and women that fled during the war, a New Yorker claimed her as his property. By then, as many as 10,000 runaways slaves were living in the region — half the current estimated total — and Black people were stricken by fear that slave-catchers might kidnap and return (or introduce) them to bondage. Faced with this prospect, the 42-year-old woman, missing an eye from her time in slavery, appealed directly to Guy Carleton, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces. She persuaded Carleton the claim was false and won her freedom, demonstrating a knowledge of military procedure and the law, but also the newfound “boldness” that slaveowners complained about because of this “first emancipation.”

Peck Slip was a meeting-place and trade depot for centuries, built on Indigenous footpaths connecting Long Island and Manhattan. It was also the site of New York’s first produce market and ferry landing. You can find an historic marker on the esplanade pictured in the distance — which fails to mention either point, or to note that Washington’s army disembarked here after making the escape from Brooklyn that allowed the Revolution to survive.