Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Crown and for Robert Livingston to produce naval stores, a product about
which they knew nothing. There they were forbidden to engage in the one
thing they did know: farming.
On the first leg of their journey, three thousand were herded into ten
ships, with fully one-fourth of the passengers dying en route. When they
landed, the unhappy Palatines were kept on Nutten Island (now Governor's
Island) in New York Bay for five months while their fate was being decided.
The Palatines were originally scheduled to go to the Mohawk Valley, but
after they arrived in New York in early 1710, it was suddenly discovered that
the Mohawk land was unsuitable for naval-stores production. Governor Hunter
thereupon purchased 6,000 acres of Livingston manor for the Crown, as well
as rights to some pine trees on Livingston land. Livingston also profited not
only by wider markets for the products of his manor, but more directly by
obtaining the victualing contract for the Palatines as well as an appointment
as their inspector. The Crown and Livingston had joined to exploit the labor
of the Palatines, but Livingston's gains were seemingly more certain and
immediate.
And so the Palatinate peasants, trustingly fleeing from devastation in Germany
to a supposed haven in England, now found themselves in remote
upstate New York surrounded by pine trees and forced to produce naval
stores for the Crown. As if this were not enough of a cross to bear, neither
Livingston nor the government was particularly conscientious about feeding
the Palatines. When Livingston found that a supply of his beef was spoiling,
he quickly shipped two months' supply to the Palatines—with the full
connivance of the New York government. On the job, the unfortunate Palatines
were worked in labor gangs under strict supervision; moreover, the children
of those who had died at sea were forcibly separated from their remaining
relatives and sent by the government to be apprenticed far away in other
colonies. And even children of living parents were seized in the same way.
The Palatines, understandably, began to grow restive at this treatment. Led
by John Conrad Weiser, they threatened to mutiny, that is, to leave their
wretched circumstances. Governor Hunter, failing to persuade the Palatines to
become resigned to their fate, sent for an armed troop, disarmed the Palatines,
ordered them treated as the "Queen's servants," and appointed a court to dictate
their affairs. And troops were sent in periodically to try to force the Palatines
to keep working. Thieves fall out, however, and Livingston was betrayed
by his own partner—the royal government—in the oppression of the Palatines.
The government refused to pay Livingston's victualing account. Furthermore,
the artificially encouraged naval-stores program was going very badly and the
Crown officials decided to heap all the blame on Livingston. Governor Hunter's
pet naval-stores project was collapsing and what with the squabbling over the
victualing account between the government and Livingston, the Palatines began
to raid Livingston's storehouse to obtain food.
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