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The Phelps and Gorham lands east of the Genesee River that had not already been sold were also acquired by Robert Morris in August 1790 -- some 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km˛) -- who re-sold them to the Pulteney Association

A combination of continued racial strife (such as that in Crown Heights in 1991), an extremely weak economy (in January, 1993 the city's unemployment rate reached 13.4 per cent, the highest level of joblessness seen there since the Great Depression) and terrorism (the first World Trade Center bombing on February 26, 1993) caused Dinkins' popularity to seriously decline (including a threat by residents of Staten Island to secede from the city), and he was defeated by Giuliani in a rematch of the candidates in the 1993 election.

As in all fifty states, the head of the executive branch of government is a Governor. The legislative branch is called the Legislature and consists of a Senate and an Assembly. Unlike most States, the New York electoral law permits electoral fusion, and New York ballots tend to have, in consequence, a larger number of parties on them, some being permanent minor parties that seek to influence the major parties and others being ephemeral parties formed to give major-party candidates an additional line on the ballot.

New York, then the nation's second largest city, was briefly the capital of the new United States of America, in 1789 and 1790, and George Washington was inaugurated as President in New York on the steps of Federal Hall. In 1792 a group of merchants began meeting under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street, beginning the New York Stock Exchange, while a yellow fever epidemic that summer sent New Yorkers fleeing (north) to nearby healthful Greenwich Village

Serious efforts to protect this land began in 1882, when businessmen in New York began to be concerned about the effects of widespread logging. Without trees, the many steep slopes on the mountains in the region were likely to erode, and the silt from the slopes could conceivably have silted up the Erie Canal, choking off New York State’s economic backbone.

Critics argue, however, that the drop in crime came at the price of greater friction between police and some of the city's ethnic groups, and less concern for civil liberties, while others point out that other cities achieved similar drops in crime. Supporters of the former mayor reply that crime in the city fell more rapidly during Giuliani's term than in most other major U.S. cities, such as Detroit or Los Angeles

In the Sixteenth Century, the island was part of a larger area known as Lenapehoking that was inhabited by the Lenape, an Algonquin people also called the "Delaware". The band that occupied the southern part of the island was called the Raritans. To the Lenape, the island was called "Aquehonga Manacknong" and "Eghquaons" (Jackson, 1995).

Wall Street is the name of narrow thoroughfare in lower Manhattan running east from Broadway downhill to the East River. Considered to be the historical heart of the Financial District, it was the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange.

By far the least populated, most ethnically homogeneous, and most remote borough of New York City, Staten Island is sometimes the object of humor by residents of the other boroughs as being somewhat enigmatic and rustically suburban. Indeed, much of the central and southern sections of the island were once dominated by farms, primarily dairy and poultry farms, some of which were still in existence as recently as the early 1960s.

Four of New York City's five boroughs are on the three islands at the mouth of the Hudson River Manhattan Island, Staten Island, and Long Island.

On-going efforts have been made to re-introduce native fauna that had been lost in the park during earlier exploitation. Animals in various stages of re-introduction include: Beaver, Fisher, American Marten, Moose, Lynx, and Osprey. Not all of these restoration efforts have been successful yet.

At the onset of the Revolutionary War, there lay a vast tract of land from the upper Mohawk River to Lake Erie, that was thinly occupied by the Iroquois and virtually unknown to the colonists. Since the colonial charters of both Massachusetts and New York granted unlimited westward expansion, the claim to this tract was disputed.

Although the first Dutch settlement of the New Netherlands colony was made on Manhattan in 1620, Staaten Eylandt remained uncolonized by the Dutch for many decades. From 1639 to 1655, the Dutch made three separate attempts to establish a permanent settlment on the island, but each time the settlement was destroyed in the conflicts between the Dutch and the local tribes.

Raw, unregulated capitalism created large middle, upper-middle and upper classes, but its need for manpower encouraged immigration into the city on an unprecedented scale, with mixed results. The famed melting pot was brought into being, from which multitudes have since arisen in the successful pursuit of "the American Dream". But countless others failed to rise, or entire generations were forced to plough themselves under for their children or grandchildren to rise.