Within the borders of New York, and among her members, had originated the greater number of the measures which had led to the War of the Revolution; and, inspired by her example, and encouraged by her success—not unfrequently, also, directed by her popular leaders—her twelve associates had learned, at an early date, to look to her as to a leader, in the assertion of their own political rights, as well as in the more decided opposition which, from time to time, they had made to the representatives and to the measures of the sovereign.
In the protracted struggle for independence which had ensued, her inhabitants had suffered more from the enemy, and during a longer period, than those of any other state; and her territory—which had been held by the Sovereign of Great Britain from an early day, by right of conquest—was the last which had been abandoned by the royal forces—nor, even then, had it been fully and formally surrendered, in the mode which had been prescribed by the military usage of that day.
Of the thirteen members of the sisterhood of states, after the war had been terminated in an honorable peace, New York alone had discharged all her financial obligations to the United States; and when the failure of her sister states to meet the requisitions of the Federal Congress had produced disaster, and had threatened the worst results, she had not hesitated to make still further payments into the Foederal treasury, in anticipation of future requisitions—her people, meanwhile, sustaining her government in its devotion to the Union, and the inhabitants of her extended territory, from the wrecks of their fortunes and from the current fruits of their labors and of their enterprise, as promptly supplying the means for the consummation of her purposes.
At length, wearied with the continued shortcomings of her sister states, and, probably, aroused by the frequent insults and threats of dismemberment which had been freely indulged in by more than one of her immediate neighbors—all of whom had envied her rising greatness,