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Illustrated Episode · Volume IV, chapter 12 · 23 April 1775

Muskets for all comers

Two stout men in shirtsleeves stand in a smashed stone doorway handing long muskets to a crowd of artisans and sailors whose hands reach up, while the first men walk off with guns on their shoulders.
New York, April 23, 1775. News of Lexington has barely arrived when Isaac Sears and John Lamb break into the arsenal in City Hall and hand out muskets and powder to the people. Rothbard sees New York's radicals taking power at once, before conservative Whigs took the movement away. Chapter 12 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

New Yorkers learned of Lexington and Concord on Sunday, April 23, and the city's two radical leaders, Isaac Sears and John Lamb, seized the moment. They paraded the town calling on citizens to arm in defense of their "injured rights and liberties", stripped the provisions ready for General Gage's troops in Boston, and broke into the arsenal in City Hall, where the colony's muskets and powder were kept. Something like six hundred muskets with bayonets and cartridge boxes went out the door, and every man who took one signed for it. A Royal Navy captain reported the arsenal broke open and its arms given to the mob. For a few days the city belonged to its people. Armed citizens patrolled the streets, Sears closed the port, the Tory printer James Rivington fled to a warship, and the customs house was shut. Then came the election of April 29, and the conservative Whigs of the Livingston wing took charge, with a defense association drafted by Duane, Jay and Van Schaack that shunted the extralegal activists aside. In Rothbard's telling, New York's revolution was seized by its people and then tamed by its landlords. The next November, Sears would have to ride in from Connecticut with armed men to do what the city would not.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. IV, ch. 12, 'New York Fumbles in the Crisis', pp. 1172-1179. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. 'New York Armory Raid', Wikipedia (accessed 2026-10-02): 23 April 1775; Willett and Sears leading; 600 muskets, bayonets and cartridge boxes from the City Hall armory; the Old City Hall at Wall and Nassau streets. Secondary source
  3. 'How the Colonies Outside New England Reacted to Lexington and Concord', Journal of the American Revolution (2025; accessed 2026-10-02, through a fetch summary): Sears, Lamb and Donald Campbell parading 'with drums beating and colours flying'; the forced entry into the City Hall arsenal; hundreds of muskets, bayonets and cartridge boxes and over a thousand pounds of powder; Captain James Montagu of HMS Kingfisher: the arsenal 'broke open' and arms 'distributed to the Mob'. Secondary source
  4. 'Federal Hall', Wikipedia (accessed 2026-10-02): the first City Hall of 1699-1703, two storeys with wings east and west of a recessed central section, built of the stones of the Wall Street fortification; library, firehouse and debtors' prison. Secondary source