Albany, New York, and the American Revolution: The Crossroads of Independence

Long before the first shots of rebellion echoed at Lexington and Concord, Albany occupied a position of extraordinary strategic importance in colonial North America. Situated at the head of navigation on the Hudson River, where ancient trails branched westward into Iroquois country and northward toward Canada along the Lake George–Lake Champlain corridor, the city was less a sleepy Dutch trading post than a nerve center of empire. When the colonies broke with Britain, Albany's geographic centrality transformed it into something no other American city quite became: the logistical heart of the northern war, a staging ground for invasion, a bulwark against counter-invasion, and a political crucible where the Revolution's survival was debated, organized, and very nearly lost. To understand how the United States won its independence, one must understand what happened in and around Albany between 1773 and 1783.

Albany's role as a cradle of intercolonial cooperation, however, predates the Revolution by more than two decades. From June 19 to July 11, 1754, representatives from seven British North American colonies met daily at the Stadt Huys—Albany's city hall—to discuss better relations with the Native American tribes and common defensive measures against the French.

The delegates spent most of their time debating Benjamin Franklin's Albany Plan of Union to create a unified level of colonial government.

Franklin's proposed plan drew on his observations of the Iroquois and their system of common government. Though the plan was rejected, it was a forerunner for the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution.

The Albany Congress provided a model that came into use in setting up the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, as well as the First Continental Congress in 1774, which were preludes to the American Revolution. Albany had thus served, a generation before independence, as the very place where Americans first formally discussed acting as one.

The seeds of Albany's radicalism, however, were watered by a bitter experience during the French and Indian War itself. Only in Albany, New York did the British commander Lord Loudoun resort to forcibly quartering his troops in private homes.

Quartering played a large role in why Albany became a Patriot stronghold. The military occupation of Albany during the French and Indian War showed the Albanians what close imperial rule might mean. The Army had effectively muted the Albanians' political and legal voice. British officers had interfered with the governance of their community and their ability to conduct diplomacy with the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois peoples. This firsthand taste of unchecked military authority left a deep impression that predisposed Albany's leaders toward resistance when Parliament reasserted its prerogatives in the 1760s and 1770s.

The city's revolutionary politics crystallized early. The Albany Committee of Correspondence, Safety, and Protection—its full official name—was not formed in 1773 as was once commonly stated, but rather was formed over the winter of 1774-1775 to mobilize local opposition to the so-called Intolerable Acts.

Although some business was transacted during the latter half of 1774, the committee's first public meeting was held at Cartwright's Tavern on January 24, 1775. Abraham Yates, Jr. was unanimously elected chairman. Yates was an unlikely revolutionary chieftain— the ninth child born to Christoffel Yates, a prosperous farmer and blacksmith, and Catelyntje Winne —but he was a shrewd, self-taught lawyer and former sheriff of Albany County whose personal experiences with the inequities of colonial governance had radicalized him. Beginning in that year, he was elected to represent Albany in each of the four New York provincial congresses. Commuting between Albany and New York City, Yates attended the congress as it fled before the British in 1776, served as its temporary president, and chaired the committee that produced the first New York state constitution.

Albany's committee was no rubber stamp. Its members were wealthy patroons, Dutch Reformed merchants, and ambitious lawyers who understood that breaking with the Crown meant risking fortunes built over generations of fur trade, land speculation, and river commerce. Within a year, it would take over for an increasingly inadequate Albany Corporation which had governed the city since 1686. Although city-based, over the next two and a half years, the Albany Committee extended its authority and influence throughout Albany County and beyond.

The committee was composed of delegates representing each of the county's seventeen diverse and far-flung districts. However, virtually all of its leaders were prominent patriots who resided in the city of Albany.

The colonial city council met increasingly infrequently during 1775 and not after March 25, 1776. By June, Mayor Cuyler was a prisoner of the revolutionaries. This was Abraham C. Cuyler, Albany's British-appointed mayor, who refused to sign the Association's pledge to ongoing revolution, was found to be "Unfriendly to the Cause of Freedom," and was disarmed.

Among the leading patriots was Abraham Ten Broeck, a member of one of Albany's oldest families, who would serve as both mayor of the city and brigadier general of the Albany County militia. Ten Broeck served in the New York Provincial Congress from 1775 to 1777 and was its chairman of its Committee of Safety in 1777. After the death of Mayor John Barclay, Ten Broeck was appointed Mayor of Albany in 1779, remaining in office until 1783. Ten Broeck embodied a pattern common in the Hudson Valley: elite men who might have hedged their bets chose instead to commit fully to the patriot cause, pulling their extensive networks of tenants, laborers, and kinsmen along with them.

In June 1775, Albany's military importance vaulted to an entirely new level. The Northern Department of the Continental Army was formed with its headquarters in Albany. Major General Philip Schuyler from Albany was appointed as commander of the army headquarters.

When war came, Schuyler sided with the Patriots and was commissioned a Major General on June 19, 1775. He was one of only four men given that rank in the entire Continental Army. Schuyler Mansion, located at 32 Catherine Street in Albany's historic South End, served as the Albany Headquarters for the Northern Department of the Continental Army at the outset of the American Revolutionary War. From this elegant Georgian house—known to the family as "The Pastures"—Schuyler planned the 1775 invasion of Canada, coordinated supply lines, managed relations with the Six Nations Confederacy, and operated a network of spies out of his home that fed intelligence to Washington and the Continental Congress. Philip Schuyler's Albany home and war work depended on enslaved and paid labor — the mansion was also home to more than fifty enslaved laborers, servants, and artisans over that span —a fact that complicates but does not diminish the historical record of the household's centrality to the patriot cause.

Albany also contributed one of the first Continental Army regiments to the war effort. The 2nd New York Regiment was authorized on May 25, 1775, and formed at Albany from June 28 to August 4 for service with the Continental Army under the command of Colonel Goose Van Schaick. Van Schaick, born in Albany in 1736, was the son of a former mayor and a veteran of the French and Indian War who showed his sympathy with the revolutionary movement in his membership in the Sons of Liberty in 1766, and he was an early member of the Committee of Correspondence in Albany. His regiment served in the ill-fated invasion of Canada, saw action at Valcour Island, and participated in the Saratoga campaign. Van Schaick's 1st New York Regiment had a reputation as one of the best-drilled and disciplined regiments in the Continental Army.

The Albany Committee of Safety was instrumental in forming 17 militia units throughout the Capital District. About 8,000 soldiers would join these units.

Albany's role as a transit point for war matériel was underscored dramatically in the winter of 1775–76, when Colonel Henry Knox passed through the city on one of the most celebrated logistical feats of the entire war. In the winter of 1775–76, young bookseller Henry Knox undertook a nearly-impossible feat in just 56 days: transporting 62 tons of artillery from Fort Ticonderoga in New York over 300 arduous miles to the Continental Army's encampment outside Boston. Knox wrote to General Schuyler in Albany from Lake George, coordinating the route and arranging for river crossings. With that artillery in place, General George Washington's forces were able to force the evacuation of British troops and capture the city of Boston, the Continental Army's first victory of the war. Albany was a critical waypoint on Knox's route—his trail ran right along the Hudson waterfront—and the city's resources helped sustain the expedition during its passage through the region.

Meanwhile, Albany-born Philip Livingston was carrying the city's revolutionary spirit into the Continental Congress itself. Philip Livingston was born in Albany, New York in January of 1716. A Yale-educated merchant who had become one of New York's wealthiest men, he was a delegate from New York to the Stamp Act Congress, the First Continental Congress, and the Second Continental Congress.