USA > New York > Dutchess County > The revolution and the common man : farm tenants and artisans in New York politics, 1777-1788 > Part 10
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In Dutchess County, too, 1 ?- 0-1791 was a perilous time which seemed to rival the extremity of 1779-1780. Abraham Yates later recalled the distress of that winter, when "the Enemy (was] in possession of two thirds of the States" and " the Inhabitants d's. intented and worn out with Militia Duty, " when there had been "near 400 habitations destroyed by the Enemy the preceding campaign" and "the troops without pay or provisions. #27 Taxes, frequent militia duty, and the burden of fugitives, Robert A. Livingston wrote George Washington in January 1791, were iriving the common people to desperation: "sore and dissatisfied their discontents begin to break out in complaints against their rulers in committees and instruc- cions. "
9. 428 Wash1 Washington's reply informed Livingston of mutinies in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey line, and in ais habitual solid manner spoke for every American conservative in adding:
The Committees now forming, are at this crisis, die- agreeable things; & if they cannot be counteracted, or jiverted from their original purposes, may outrun the views of the well meaning members of them, and plunge the Country into deeper distress and confusion than it has hitherto experienced . . . . There can be
20Robert Morris to Philip Schuyler, May 29, 1781, Ban- croft Transcripts, Schuyler, N. Y.P.L.
27 " Speeches to Delegates in Congress, 179c," Yates Papers.
28 Robert A. Livingston to George Washington, Jan. 8, 1731, Robert A. Livingston Papers.
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no radical Cure, till Congress 18 vested by the several States with full and ample Powers to enact Laws for general purposes - and til the Ex- ecutive business is placed in the hands of able Men, & respectable characters. 29
Committees (which most historians assume to have died in 1777) were indeed forming, just as in 1779. "The people are clamorous, ' Livingston wrote Morris, "the whole County of Dut- chess have chosen precinct & County committees to instruct their members etc. - some districts in Albany have gone fur- ther & chosen members for a State convention";20 and Abraham Yates confirmed this in recalling that "the coals of discon- tent were daily blown up it was even in contemplation to set aside the Constitution and recommence acting by commi- trees. " Late in January, committees from all Dutchess pre- cincts met and a county-wide committee was formed, again with a future Anti-Federalist (John Bailey) as chairman. The 32 grievances of these committees are not quite clear. Thus & meeting of 3-400 tenants at Livingston Manor on January 6, under the supervision of several Livingstons, condemned a pro- hibition on selling grain to the French army, while the meeting in Dutchess supported that prohibition as essential to the winning of the war. 33 What signified most to conservatives
29 Washington to Livingston, Jan. 31, 1781, Robert R. Livingston Papers.
3ºLivingston to Morris, Jan. 18, 1781, 1bid, 31 As cited in n. 27. 32 New York Packet, Jan. 25, Feb. 1, 1781.
33see the resolves of the Livingston Manor meeting in New York Packet, Jan. 13, 1781; Walter to Robert R. Livingston, Jan. 7, 1781, Robert R. Livingston Papers; and Dangerfield, Chancellor Livingston, 130-132.
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was the bare fact that committees were once a:ain threatening to take the place of duly constituted representative bodies. What William Smith once called "infinity of lawgivers" had never been popular among the L100 freeholders. 34
The rumored state-wide convention of committee delegates did not materialize. On Febraury 4, 1781, Hamilton wrote to his friend John Laurens :
I promised to give you [an account of ] the pro- Eress of the disquiets in this state. More Judicious [ men] have in several counties diverted the malcon- tents from the project of a convention which was no doubt of tory origin to subvert the present government and introduce confusion; but petitions and remonstran- ces to the legislature on the grievances which the people suppose they labour under will be universal. I hope however these little commotions will for the pre- sent subside without any dangerous consequences.
Hamilton and his friends also desired a convention, but of a very different kind. His letter continued :
I have just received a letter from General Schuy- ler in which he tells me of a motion made by him and which he had no doubt would be carried, to invite the several states to a meeting in Convention [as] possi- ble for the purpose of finally concluding a solid con- federation to give sufficient powers to Congress for calling forth the resources of the country The plan for a new state will greatly assist our friends. ">
This plan for a convention also misfired, of course. Radicals lacked the ability to force through their plans in the state, conservatives were similarly hampered in the natio- nal Congress. The stalecate continued into 1782-1783.
34william Smith, Historical Memoirs, 149.
35 Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens, Feb. ~ , 1731, Papers of Hamilton, II, 549-550.
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1722-1783
Ve hear little of Dutchess County in the correspondence and press reports regarding the last two years of the Revo- lutionary War. Already, apparently, the fundamental solution of the problem of tenancy had started the county on its transition to normalcy, as described at the end of the pre- ceding chapter. The old radical Ephraim Paine continued to denounce profiteering merchants as "fine folks" exploiting the common people. 30 Gut essentially the county had become a political backwater.
Nationally, the administration of Robert Morris repaired the financial disasters of 1779-1781, at least temporarily; in the spring of 1782, Hamilton reported that Morris was "conci- listing fast the support of the moneyed men. "37 Building on this success, Hamilton found more and more support in conser- vative circles for his statist philosophy. He expressed it forcefully that same spring in his fifth "Continentalist" essay :
There are some, who maintain, that trade will regulate itself, and is not to be benefited by the encouragements, or restraints of government. Such persons will imagine, that there is no need of a common directing power. This is one of those wild speculative paradoxes, which have grown into credit among us, contrary to the uniform practice and sense of the most enlightened nations.
And Hamilton concluded: "Unless we can overcome this narrow disposition and learn to estimate measures, by their general tendency, we shall never be a great or a happy people, if we
30New York Packet, Apr. 11, Apr. 15, 1792.
"Hamilton to Vicomte de Noailles, [ Apr. June, 1782], Hamilton Papers, Columbia U.
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remain a people at all. . 38
As Receiver of Continental Taxes in the state of New Yor's, Hamilton was continually confronted by a legislature which during the following decade would be (from Hamilton's point of view) notorious for its "narrow" outlook. In this post he spent much of his time lobbying for measures sugges- ted by Morris. Hamilton sent on the newspapers, estimated the influence of the various leaders, and sketched the poll- tical temper of the people at large. The latter, he conclu- ded, had been about half Tory in the early years of the war. "There still remains," he wrote Morris, "I dare say a third whose secret wishes are on the side of the enemy; the remain- der sigh for peace, murmur at taxes, clamour at their rulers, change one incapable man for another more incapable. ª39
Abraham Yates, who had wanted the job of Receiver him- 1, 40 Later later found dark designs in this aspect of the Morris regime. The conservatives, he thought, had deliberately adopted a scheme
to make the financier the center of communication and to put all the officers that had any connection with the Treasury under his controul, and to try to Introduce and to get the appointment of some Influ- ential officers in Every state and they also under the controul of the Financier; so that Congress by means of the Financier and these officers might keep up a correspondence & by acting in Concert they might be Enabled to influence the several Legislatures in
38 "The Continentalist No. V, " Hamilton Papers, Columbia U. 39Hamilton to Morris, Auz. 13, 1732, ibid.
" Abraham Yates, Jr., to James Duane and Ezra L'Hommedieu, Oct. 19, 1782, copies in both Yates Papers and Duane Papers.
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favour of Congressional Measures and so get the powers of Congress augmented.
It was true enough that Morris sought through Hamilton and other allies to repeal state legislation for paper money which made such issues a legal tender, and which made it a crime not to receive the bills. 42 In New York, an additional target was the system of taxation created in that same fall session of 1779 which decreed the permanent confiscation of Loyalist lands. 43
The radical approach to taxation, like the radical approach to price regulation, placed power in the hands of local commit- tees. Rather than taxing property at a fixed rate per pound of assessed valuation, the law gave elected county officials - the supervisors who set the quota for each township, and the assessors who distributed the township quota among individuals - complete discretion. "The whole business," as Hamilton put it, "appears to be thrown into the hands of the County treasurers."
44 He continued: "The exterior figure a man makes, the decency or meanness of his manner of living, the personal friendships, or dislikes of the assessors have much more share in determining what individuals shall pay, than the proportion of property. .45
"l"Essays on Various Political Subjects, " Yates Papers. -2. 'See Benson to Livingston, July 3, 1780, Robert R. Living- ston Papers; Livingston to Gouverneur Morris, Apr. 3, 1781, ibid .; Robert Morris to Schuyler, June 25, 1731, Schuyler Papers. ヒマ - See Cochran, New York in the Confederation, 20-47.
"WHamilton to Robert Morris, [June 17, 1732], Hamilton Papers, Columbia U.
45 Same to same, Aux. 13, 1787, ibid.
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In Dutchess County, committeemen like John Dewitt iid Indeed take advantage of the system to settle some old scores. Before 1779 was out, Robert R. Livingston's mother wrote him:
John DeWitt is as arbitrary as a Bassha - Radley is taxed 1900 while Bogardus who is Clerk to the Assessore is Txd L100 . I am assessed L1500 in Rhinebeck precinct & Dewitt told Tillotson that I was to be assessed in pawlding & Beekmans. I am taxed in the Manor L2050 & you &30 :0, Cozen Robert L1o0. 40
Two years later Mrs. Livingston was still complaining of De itt's taxes. 47 The conservatives were unsuccessful in their efforts to abolish the assessment system in 1782-1783, and (as will appear below) in the spring of 1784 it was applied to New York City in the same discriminatory fashion.
Another example of the way politics entered into Hamil- ton's work as Receiver of Taxes is his effort to curtail the influence of the radical New York City merchant William Mal- com. In 1782, Hamilton described Malcom to Morris as one of the three most influential men in the state legislature. 48
As early as 1779 Hamilton had noted that the radical refugees from New York City were meeting regularly in hope of democra- tizing the state constitution, and had suggested to Jay that Malcom be given some office which would take him outside the state. 49 Jay thought the proposal unwise but remarked that
46Margaret Beekman Livingston to Robert a. Livingston, Cec. 30, 1779, Robert R. Livingston Papers.
" Same to same, July 15, 1782, ibid.
4oHamitton to Morris, Aug. 13, 1782, Hamilton Papers.
49Hamilton to Jay, June 20, 1779, Papers of Hamilton, II, 32-83.
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"some other mode of diverting them may offer. '50 In 1782, 88 agent for Morris, Hamilton returned to the matter. "He has it in his power," wrote the Receiver, "to support or perplex measures, as he may incline, and it will be politic to make it his interest to incline to what is right. It was on this principle I proposed him for a certain office. . 51 Malcom, however, remained in New York and played a leading part in post-war radical politics.
In the fall of 1782, the New York conservatives tried their own hand at state convention-calling. In June 1782, a meeting of public creditors took place in Philadelphia. A similar gathering met at Albany in September, with Schuyler in the chair, and issued a call for counties to form commit- tees and send delegates to a state convention at Poughkeepsie on November 19.52 Once again, however, the state's sluggish Inertia frustrated the nationalists' plans. The convention (so far as the evidence shows ) never mot.
Then, with peace at hand, Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris made their desperate bid to utilize the army's demand for pay in forcing through the conservative program. Here if anywhere in the story of the adoption of the United States Constitution, the term "conspiracy" 18 absolutely fitting.
SOJay to Hamilton, Sept. 18, 1779, Papers of Hamilton, II, 182.
51Hamilton to Robert Morris, Aug. 13, 1782, Hamilton Papers, Columbia U.
52New York Packet, Oct. 24, 1782.
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"You and I, my friend, " Gouverneur Morris wrote to Jay as he launched the campaign (in a passage omitted by Sparks in his life of Morris, and never before printed), "know by Ex- perience, that when a few Men of Sense and Spirit get together, and declare that they are the Authority, such few as are of a different Cpinion may easily be convinced of their mistake by that powerful Argument the Halter. . 53
Hamilton's language in the crisis breathed a similar spirit. 1I confess," he wrote to the reluctant Washington, " could force avail I should almost wish to see it employed. " He went on to suzcest the same device employed by the Pres- byterians in Parliament in England in the 1640's: divide the
arcy. 54 In another letter to Washin ton he reverted to the same metaphor employed by Robert F. Livingston si years before when that gentleman thought that he could "guide the torrent, and bring order perhaps even good out of confusion. "> Washington's refusal to play Cromwell reflected hia first-hand knowledge of the temper of the army as well as his personal inte rity. The officers, he replied to Hamilton, would not consent to be separated. The army suspected it was being used by Robert and Gouverneur Morris as 'mere Puppits to establish Continental funds. " The General concluded: "the
Gouverneur Morris to John Jay, Jan. 1, 1783, Gouverneur Morris Papers, Columbia U.
5 Hamilton to Washington, Mar. 25, 1783, Hamilton Papers, Columbia U.
55Same to same, [Feb. 13, 1783], 1bid,
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Army (considering the irritable state it is in, its suffering and composition) is a dangerous instrument to play with. "5º
Eight years before, Robert R. Livingston had complained to John Jay that the New York City radical John Lamb was ruining discipline in the army. "The people that compose our army, " Livingston wrote,
think so much for themselves that no general dare oppose their sentiments if he was so inclined. You cannot conceive the trouble our zenerals have had, petitions, mutinies & requests to know the reason of every maneuver without a power to suspend or punish the offender Lamb is a good off1- cer but so extremely turbulent that he excites mis- chief in the army.
Lamb ani his like had done their work well. No more in March- April 2733 than in December 1775 dared a general oppose the sentiments of the soldiers, whatever he might be inclined. The common soldier as well as the Commander in Chief saved America from dicta'ors !. p in the last days of the war.
Conclusion
So the stalemate continued. And if we ask, Thy did the nationalists succeed in 1-97-1793 while they failed in 1731- 17837, attention turns naturally to a group which made itself felt at the end of the decade but was scattered and dispersed when it beran. This was the urban wor :ing-class: a group Charles Beard regarded "outside the realm of politics, "> but which we shall arque was the force that finally tipped the scale.
SoWashington to Hamilton, Apr. +, Apr. lo, Apr. 22, 1783, Hamilton Papers, Columbia C.
57 Livingston to Jay, Dec. 5, 1775, Jay Papers, Columbia U.
-8Seara, Economic Interpretation, 25.
PART II
THE ARTISANS OF NEW YORK CITY
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The Collect
Chatham St.
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Nassau St.
William St.
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Wall St.
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Broad St.
Hanover 5g.
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NEW YORK CITY (c. 1785)
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CHAPTER VII
THE EVACUATION OF NEW YORK CITY: 1783
A struggle as to who should rule at home raged in the midst of the War for Independence; the struggle for home rule continued after the peace was signed. Fighting had ended, but independence, formally granted, had now to be secured on the field of political economy. "The American war la over," wrote a newspaper correspondent in 1786, but this is far from being the case of the American revolution. "-
The Whigs' return to New York City brought back togeth- er, and so into state politics, the refugee artisans of the city. Their role was crucial. The artisans made up the bulk of New York City's population; 2 any successful politi- cal program would have to capture, or at least divide, their support. Throughout the Revolutionary Era the artisans were the most consistently democratic social group in the state. But when, after 1785, they temporarily shelved their demo- cratic objectives in order to labor together with the city merchants for more vigorous economic measures by a stronger
1 New York Packet, June 15, 1786.
2In the 1788 parade celebrating the adoption of the United States Constitution, mechanics of more than fifty trades were represented. The marchers of twenty-two trades alone amounted to 2218 men. (New York Packet, Aug. 5, 1788). The 1790 Census put the city's white male population above 16 at just over 8000. See also Chapter XI, below.
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central government, the balance of power in state politics tipped away from the Clintonians.
The return to New York City, conceived in bitterness and dedicated to the proposition that Tories should 'mako room" for Whigs, did not at once inaugurate a period of class collaboration. Indeed the temper of New York City politics in 1783-1785 was as bitter as at any time during the Revolutionary Era. Class conflict was sharpest in Re- volutionary New York not during the celebrated ratification struggle of 1787-1788, but earlier, in 1779-1780 and 1783- 1785. The theme of the late '80's was not dissension but a growing unity. 'Federal ideas begin to thrive in this city, " Jay wrote to Lafayette early in 1785.' From that date on they continued to spread, engulfing the bulk of the old Sons of Liberty by 1786, the town of Poughkeepsie and Long Island during the ratification debate, and Kingston, principal town of the Anti-Federalist stronghold Ulster County, during the early 1790's.
The evacuation of New York City and the anti-Tory hysteria which followed have been persistently misunderstood as a contest between 'liberal" and "humane" figures such as Jay and Hamilton, and radical extremists. This is a most superficial view. Conservative Whigs could be as blood- thirsty toward Tories as anyone. "I think, " Gouverneur Morris wrote to Schuyler in 1777, 'the Tories should as the common Enemies of Mankind be treated like the Savages. That
3Jay to Lafayette, Jan. 19, 1785, John Jay Papers, Columbia U.
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is to say their Houses etc. should be burnt and they them- selves destroyed. " 4 Schuyler, advocate of forbearance toward Tories in 1784, in 1783 had brought into the New York Senate (with an inflammatory speech, according to one critic) a bill to confiscate the property of many of his later New York City political associates, "in Order, " he said, "to eradicate every Hope which the former Proprietors of forfeited Estates may still entertain, that some future Legislature will be prevailed on to make Restitution of the same. = 5 The contradiction between such sentiments and the subsequent conciliatory attitude of the New York conserva- tives toward erstwhile Tories, needs to be explained.
The struggle which underlay the difference between those who favored harshness toward the Tories, and those who stood for leniency, has been well suggested by Sidney Pomerantz. 'The anti-Tory hysteria, ' writes Pomerantz, "was not purely emotional in its inspiration, but the ac- companiment of an effort to wrest political and economic power from those who because of wealth, position, and ex- perience were most likely to wield it. . 6 The latter, of
4 Gouverneur Morris to Philip Schuyler, Aug. 29, 1777, Gouverneur Morris Papers, Columbia U.
Senate Journal (Poughkeepsie, 1782), 147, 154-155; "Cato" in New York Daily Advertiser, Apr. 24, 1789. Among those whose property Schuyler's bill would have confiscated, were Richard Harrison, Theophilus Bache, three Waltons, two Laights, and two Ludlows.
It is possible, however, that Schuyler in this instance put himself at the head of a sentiment, which he could not avert; see his letter to Alexander Hamilton, May [4], 1783, Alexander Hamilton Papers, Columbia U.
OSidney I. Pomerantz, Now York, An American City,
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course, were the representatives or associates of the great families, whether Whig or Tory: Duane, who became Mayor of the post-war city, springs at once to mind. The intensity with which these men were opposed by the old Sons of Liberty cannot be explained without a grasp of the terrible economic loss which the war had visited on all but the most well-to- do Whig refugees from New York City.
The total economic loss of the Whig inhabitants who fled New York City in 1776 was estimated by Alexander Mc- Dougall at 62,207,000. Estimating that three-fifths of the citizens became refugees, McDougall calculated their loss of seven years' house rent at 1987, 000, and their loss by fire at L1, 220,000.7 And these were not the only forms of loss. Merchants who put all their savings into Continental secur- ities only to find themselves dunned in 1784 for pre-war debts to British merchants, complained long and loudly throughout the 1780's, as will appear below. Mechanics suffered also, although their complaints are not so readily available. Thus Daniel Dunscomb, chairman of the Committee of Mechanics before the war, lost not only two houses which he had pledged for security in borrowing £500 from the state Loan Commissioners, but also L500 of ironware removed to Peekskill and Mamaroneck and captured while Dunscomb attended the Provincial Convention, and L300 of furniture and country 1783-1803 (New York, 1938), 79.
7HcDougall Papers, N. - Y. H. S. Memorandum misplaced in Box 1 and called to my attention by Robert J. Christen.
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goods destroyed when the British burned Kingston. 8 Henry Bicker the hatter and Thomas Ivero the rope-maker, two political leaders of the post-war mechanics, petitioned the legislature on behalf of city tenants whose proprietors had refused to let them resume leases which, when the war began, had not yet expired. 9 The currier John Fargo and the shoe- maker John Stephens, describing themselves as 'Master Work- men . . . unable to renew their former occupations, ' asked to be made inspectors of leather. 10 So-called Tories vere among the sufferers, too. The merchant John Turner had left New York City with a family of fifteen in July, 1776. After selling 61500 of dry goods at Philadelphia for a loss, he bought two farms, but learned he could not hire labor because of the frequent militia calls. At the end of 1778 be re- turned to New York City, only to discover his house torn to pieces. After collecting one-twentieth of his debts, Turner at war's end found himself (at least according to his own statement ) owed 1800 but owing L1900.11
Dozens of such case histories fed the bitterness of the New York City exiles as, after their seven lean years, they received the news of the preliminary treaty with Eng- land in March, 1783. "Peace is the topic, " wrote Christopher
Petition Jan. 20, 1784, Senate Legislative Papers, X, Box 2, N. Y. S. L.
9Petition Apr. 9, 1784, ibid., X, Box 1. 10Petition Jan. 27, 1784, ibid., IX.
ilpetition Feb. 22, 1784, ibid., X, Box 2.
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to Evert Bancker, "every Yorker anticipating the pleasure they will enjoy stan Restored to their Possession in the City. . 12 But it was not to be quite that simple.
A British City
The return to New York City by the American army under George Washington, who a few days afterwards bid his officers farewell at Fraunces Tavern, is one of the great moments of American history and a many-times-told tale. It is a tale full of sound and fury, which signified everything in set- ting the stage for the politics of the post-Revolutionary city.
New York City was the heart of the British effort in America. Even before the British occupation, it was the stronghold of American Loyalism. Only in New York City was the mercantile class predominantly Tory. 13 It was estimated in the early years of the Revolution that two-thirds of the property in the city and its suburbs belonged to Tories. 14
The seven-year British occupation, from September 1776 to liovember 1783, enhanced the city's reputation, in Whig minds, as the Babylon of American Toryiam. During the spring
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