Firmness of the Council and Selectmen

McDougall was regarded as a martyr. "The imprisoned sailor," says John C. Hamilton, in his biography of his father, General Alexander Hamilton, "was deemed the true type of imprisoned commerce. To soften the rigors of his confinement, to evince the detestation of its authors, and in his person to plead the public wrongs, became a duty of patriotism. On the anniversary of the repeal of the stamp act, his health was drank with honors, and the meeting, in procession, visited him in prison. Ladies of distinction daily thronged there. Popular songs were written, and sung under his prison bars, and emblematic swords were worn. His name was upon every lip. The character of each individual conspicuous in the great controversy became a subject of comment; and the applause which followed the name of Schuyler, gave a new value to the popularity his firmness had acquired."

McDougall was emphatically a "man of the people." He thoroughly sympathized with those classes in society--the working men and women--who are generally weak in social and political influence where, as then in New York, an aristocratic class bears rule, because of their inability to make their voices heard by those in authority. Without any of the spirit of a demagogue, he was a popular leader, because the people saw that his whole soul was enlisted in his efforts in their behalf, and like every really earnest man, the utterances of his convictions carried with them great weight. He was a true type of what is generally known as the "common people"--the great mass of citizens who carry on the chief industries of a country--its agriculture, commerce, manufactures and arts.