USA > New York > Dutchess County > The revolution and the common man : farm tenants and artisans in New York politics, 1777-1788 > Part 12
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60 with a vengeance. 2
The inter-dependence of all urban economic Interests was seen the more readily because most men had irons in more than one economic fire.
William Goforth, for example, 18 described in book after book as a "shoemaker," but he also sold rum and dry goods. ' The ironmonger Peter Goelet also carried saddles and playing cards. 4 Wynant Van Zandt, who called himself a 'blockmaker, " dealt also in beef and rye.' Stewart and Jones, a firm of ship chandlers ( suppliers), dealt heavily in such un-nautical items as wine, raisins and bricks, besides buying an interest in numerous ships and serving as general commer- cial correspondents for certain out-of-town merchants. 6
In keeping with such diversified entrepreneurial ac- tivity, most creditors were also large debtors, and exporters to the West Indies typically used the proceeds to buy goods from Europe. Indebtedness after a disastrous war and a seven-year exile, by 1784, had been the common lot among refugees. Peter VanBrugh Livingston had lost L20,000 during
2The question of whether a depression really occurred in the 1780's, and how serious it was, will be discussed in Chapter X.
3New York Journal, Dec. 2, 1784. 4 Frank Monaghan and Marvin Lowenthal, This Was Now York (Garden City, 1943), 71. The authors comment: "The few specialized concerns dealt chiefly in furs or sugar. '
5 " An Account of Monies & Produce Received of Sundry People, " Wynant Van Zandt Papers, N. Y.P. L.
Letter book, Aug. 14, 1784 - Sept. 27, 1786, Stewart and Jones Papers, N. Y. P.L.
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the war, he told a city Loyalist, "and they all make similar complaints. "7 James Beekman, a wealthy importer of British goods, owed British merchants L2, 220 for pre-Revolutionary debts. His assets were considerable but largely frozen: 64, 300 tied up in real estate, 14, 640 in government securi- ties, and 17, 620 in pre-war debts owed to him (only £2,500 of which he was ever able to collect). After failing to obtain a hoped-for 66, 000 of back rent under the Trespass Act, Beekman borrowed L2,000 from nine sources between 1783 and 1785; and in 1799, when he retired from business, he was not entirely out from under these obligations. Later wo 8 will see that some of the wealthiest merchants went to the wall in 1785, and that at the time of the ratification of the Constitution some Whig merchants, like Peter Curtenius, had still not recouped their war-time 108868.
Patterns of foreign commerce showed the same many- sidedness. Thus Philip Livingston, managing the trading enterprises of the Manor and Clermont Livingstons, counted on shipping rum and sugar obtained from the West Indies (where a member of the family resided permanently to handle that end of the commerce) to England in exchange for dry goods. 9 James Beekman, specializing in imports from England,
7Iconography of Manhattan Island, V, 1161.
White, Beekmans of New York, 497-530.
9Philip Livingston to Robert R. Livingston, Sept. 1, 1783, Robert R. Livingston Papers, N.Y. R. S. For the Living- stons deep concern in the West Indian trade, see also Robert Livingston, Jr., to James Duane, Mar. 30 and Aug. 7, 1784, Duane Papers, N.Y. H.S .; same to Walter Livingston, Feb. 4,
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nonetheless ventured into West Indian voyages during the Poder hard times of the mid-1780's." 10 Federalist and Anti-Federalist merchants did not divide neatly into merchants trading with England and West Indian merchants. If John Lamb imported wine from the Azores and Canaries, so did the former Loyalist, now cashier of the Bank of New Yor's, William Seton; if Charles Tillinghast, the Anti-Federalist, distilled rum, 80 did a Federalist delegate at the New York ratifying conven- tion, Isaac Roosevelt; if radical David Gelston advertised West Indian goods, so did conservative Daniel Phoenix; while the most notorious of the radical merchants, "King" Isaac Sears, specialized in imports from England. All these zen were influenced not so much by the prospects in particular branches of trade, as by general commercial conditions. It is true, as will be shown, that none of the Anti-Federalist merchants of 1783 were primarily importers from England (Sears died in 1786) ; but we shall argue that they were West Indian merchants because they were outsiders, not outsiders because they were West Indian merchants.
As the story of New York City politics in the 1780's unrolls, therefore, the reader will be well advised to look not for the particular occupations or commercial specialties of the actors on the stage, but for each man's position in
1785, Robert R. Livingston Papers; Robert R. Livingston to John Jay, Sept. 12, 1782, Correspondence and Public Papers of Jay, II, 337, and same to same, Jan. 25, 1784, ibid., III, 108.
10White, Beekmans of New York, 522.
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the structure of economic power in the city. If any one economic distinction divided businessmen in post-war New York City, it was the ease with which they obtained access to capital. Conservative businessmen who, like the Waltons, Laights and Ludlows, had remained in the city during the war, had an advantage over the returning refugees. They capitalized on this advantage by creating the Bank of Now York. Some of this group could also mobilize out-of-town capital to sustain them through a series of difficult years: thus William Constable, with Robert Morris standing behind him, could continue in the trade with England when less wealthy rivals went down under one or two bad seasons. 11 Anti-Federalist merchants like Melancton Smith and David Gelston were newcomers to the city, and lacked inter-state business connections. Still a third group were Whig refugees like John Broome who, although at first hostile to the Loyal- ist merchants, drifted into Federalism as the decade pro- gressed because their economic interests were increasingly at one with those of the merchants who had stayed in New York City for the duration.
Finally, there were the mechanics, just as desperate for capital to set up a shop or finance an inventory as the
11See William Constable to James Phyn, Dec. 8, 1787: Robert Morris "had put in -10, 000 for Himself & Gouverneur, & offerd us his Countenance & support . . notwithstanding the American trade had been so unprofitable in general" (Letters 1774-1791, Constable-Pierrepont Papers, N. Y. P. L. ). Constable was also a pioneer in the China trade and never gave up his considerable trade with the West Indies.
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promoters of more substantial business ventures. The bitter struggle over the incorporation of a Mechanics' Society was not unrelated to the fact that one purpose of the Society was to lend funds, a circumstance hitherto overlooked. Likewise the celebrated political struggle over paper money can be understood, in this same context of the search for capital, as an effort on the part of those who lacked private means of investment, to obtain them through governmental action.
The Politics of Exclusion
It was a few weeks after the grand entrance of the refugees, on November 25, 1783, before the storm of anti- Tor: sentiment gathered force. At first the coffee houses swarmed with returning patriots 'shaking hands with one another as joyfully as if they were arrived from the dead. #12 There has not been the slightest disturbance, Robert R. Livingston wrote to John Jay on the 29th. The Tories' 'shops were opened the day after we came in, & Rivington himself James Rivington, a notorious Tory printer] goes on as usual. . 13 All was peaceable in New York City, John Lansing reported to Philip Schuyler so late as December 15: more Tories had remained than was expected. 14
The calm was temporary. William Malcom, in that
12 Abraham Beekman, quoted in White, Beekmans of New York, 495.
13Livingston to Jay, Nov. 29, 1783, Correspondence and Public Papers of Jay, III, 98.
Lansing to Schuyler, Dec. 15, 1783, Schuyler Papers, N. Y. P. L.
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indiscreet conversation with McDougall and Richard Lewis, asserted that if the council' appointed by the legislature for the temporary government of the city did not get rid of the twenty or thirty more obnoxious Tories, he and his friends would find a way to do so. 15 Four days later Charles Tilling-
hast wrote to John Lamb that their mutual friends were asking for the old Son of Liberty; and when, on December 11, Isaac Sears returned from Boston, all the old firebrands -- Lamb, Sears, and Marinus Willett -- were together again, ready for business. 16 "I confess to you, " Livingston wrote Gouverneur Morris on Dec. 20, "my apprehension that a storm 18 gathering which if it should burst upon us will tear down all the bar- riers which our weak unsettled government can oppose. We have many people who wish to govern this city and who had acquired influence in turbulent times which they are unwill- ing to loose in more tranquil times.' .17 Lansing, too, had changed his tune. He wrote to Schuyler on the 26th that Lamb, Willett and Malcom were all concerting plans for ven- geance. 'They say they will in the first place submit the Consideration of what they suppose proper to the Legislature & if they do not comply with their wishes they must try their Hands. "18
15See above, Chapter VII, n. 57.
16Tillinghast to Lamb, Nov. 29, 1783, Lamb Papers; Roger James Champagne, "The Sons of Liberty and the Aristo- cracy in New York" (unpublished Ph. D. thesis, Wisconsin U., 1960), 478.
17 Robert R. Livingston to Gouverneur Morris, Dec. 20, 1733, Robert R. Livingston Papers.
loLansing to Schuyler, Dec. 26, 1783, Schuyler Papers,
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As if to confirm these prophecies, a handbill appeared addressed to the Tories of the city: "The Whigs take the liberty to prognosticate that the calm, which the enemies of Columbia at present enjoy, will ere long be succeeded by a bitter and neck-breaking hurricane. #19 And on the evening of December 29, 1783, forty-eight hours after the American army had withdrawn to West Point for discharge, 20 a mob led by Sears, Lamb and Willatt assaulted the Tory printer, James Rivington. The campaign of Tory persecution had begun.
There can be little doubt that the grievances felt against the city Tories were, at the nub, economic. They took many forms. Did a refugee need a home? Owners of land where the British had built barracks refused to turn the buildings over to the army Quartermaster General; Marinus Willett and Jonn Lasher, charged with the custody of for- feited lands and houses, were forbidden to appropriate structures held by contract from any person before the
British withdrawal. 21 Did he seek to re-establish his bus1- neas? He was likely to find that a Loyalist had been li- censed ahead of him. 22 If he attended the first meeting of N. Y. P. L.
1Pennsylvania Gazette, Jan. 7, 1784, reporting a meeting of Dac. 17.
20This point was made by the New York Journal, May o, 1784.
-Timothy Pickering to George Clinton, Dec. 1, 1783, quoted in James Wilson, Memorial History, II, 563; Howard Thomas, Marinus Willett (New York, 1954), 154-155.
22Statement of committee of refugee "mechanics, gro- cers, retailers and innholders," Independent Gazette, Jan. 24, 1784.
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the Chamber of Commerce to be held after the evacuation, on January 20, 1784, he found three of the five officers elected in the previous meeting (Gerard and William Walton, Robert Waddell) of May, 1783, present, along with other Loyalists such as William Lowther, John Miller and William Laight. 23 Did he wish to borrow capital? When the proposed Bank of New York published its list of officers later in the spring, he saw another Tory, William Seton, as treasurer, and two more, Daniel McCormick and Joshua Waddington, on the Board of Directors.
No wonder, then, that one refugee protested that 'ye never had so much to fear from their arme, as from their in- "luence and wealth, ' and that meetings of the Sons of Liberty and Whig Society called not only for the political disfran- chisement of Tories, but also for their exclusion from "ad- Vantages of trade and commerce. #24 The leaders of the agita- tion, according to Alexander Hamilton, sought 'to inlist a number of people on their side by holding out motives of pri- vate advantage to them; to the trader they say, you will be overborn by the large capitals of Tory merchants; to the Mechanic, your business will be less profitable, your wages less considerable by the interference of Tory workmen. "25
23Minutes of the N. Y. Chamber of Commerce, photostat, N. Y. P. L.
24 Independent Gazette, Mar. 11, 1784; New York Gazet- teer, Mar. 31, 1784; New York Journal, Apr. 3 and June 10, 1784. 25A Letter from Phocion to the Considerate Citizens of New-York, 10-11.
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battle we have had with the democracy. .29 Frankly anti- democratic, also, was Gouverneur Morris' comment at the time: "I think the superior advantages of our constitution will now appear in the repressing of those turbulent spirits who wish for confusion, because that in the regular order of things they can only fill a subordinate sphere. # 30
Most refugees, as Alexander Hamilton later remarked, favored action against the Tories "not indeed in the shape of mobs and riots, but of law; banishment, disfranchisement, and the like. "31 They turned, therefore, to the state govern- ment, which by its policies in such fields as taxation, trade regulation, and suffrage legislation, could greatly influence the struggle for power in New York City. In December, 1783, barely a month after the refugees' return, seven men were elected to represent the city and county of New York in the state Assembly. Few but refugees dared to vote. " The chosen seven were Sears, Lamb, Willett, Henry Rutgers, John Stagg, William Malcom, Robert Harpur, Hugh Hughes, and Peter Van Zandt: every one a radical Son of Liberty, every one a nominee of the Mechanics' Committee. 33 Their selection
29Robert Troup to Rufus King, Apr. 4, 1809, quoted in Dixon Ryan Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York (New York, 1919), 107-108.
30 Gouverneur Morris to John Jay, Jan. 10, 1784, Cor- respondence and Public Papers of Jay, III, 104.
31 Hamilton writing as H --- ---- , New York Daily Ad- vertiser, Mar. 17, 1789.
32Colonel Hamilton's Second Letter from Phocion (New York, 1784), 35.
33See the broadside of the Mechanics' Committee,
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followed a hot exchange of broadsides. "A Battered Soldier" urged the "Whig Mechanicks" of the city to choose men who had been "faithful from the ever memorable period of the Stamp- Act." "On your Union," the battered soldier continued, depends the future fate of the Whig Interest in this City and County: And if you fail herein, you may depend on it, that you and your Children, will soon become Hewers of Wood,, and Drawers of Water, to the Tories in this State.
Much has been made of the harshly anti-Tory legislation passed by this New Yor's legislature of early 1784; but in view of the temper of the times, what was remarkable was its mildness. The confiscation and immediate sale of Tory lands merely implemented the laws of 1779-1780, whose application to the Southern District of the state had been delayed pend- ing its reoccupation. 35 Discriminatory taxation, likewise, represented simply the application to the city and county of New York of a system already in operation elsewhere in the state. A considerable portion of the L100, 000 assessment never was collected. 36 od . 36 The celebrated Trespass Act, em- powering refugee property-owners to collect rent and damages from Tories who had occupied their properties, was nullified Dec. 27, 1783, N. - Y. H.S.
34Broadside, Dec. 23, 1783, N. - Y. H.S. See also the broadside entitled, To the Mechanics and Free Electors of the City and County of New-York, and one signed "Cincinnatus," both for the same date and in the same collection.
35 See the New York Assembly's action on Mar. 19, 1782.
36 See the petitions of the unfortunate collectors of this tax, Senate Legislative Papers, XI, Box 2, N.Y.S. L.
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in August by the decision of the Mayor's Court of New York City in Rutgers v. Waddington. 37 The one really substantial stop taken by the spring legislative session of 1784 was the passage of a rigorous election law, which rejecting the re- quirement of a loyalty oath as inadequate, specified six kinds of acts as constituting Tory1sm, with consequent dis- franchisement. 38 But even this law did not permit the radi- cal ex-refugees to retain their Assembly seats, for they were cne and all defeated in the next election of May, 1784! Banishment, with attendant new confiscations, was much talked of in public meetings, but apparently never even suggested in the state legislature.
If at any time in the Revolutionary Era a genuine social overturn was possible, this was the moment. Why, then, no Jacobins in New York City? If the most recent student of the pre-war Sons of Liberty is right in saying that the city in 1776 was on the verge of radical upheaval, and 'only the timely invasion of Long Island by the British saved the aris- tocrats from & political crisis of an explosive character, '39 what blunted the radical sword when the Sons of Liberty re-
"The critical question was whether damages could be collected for occupation under a British military order.
3omThis law of May 12, 1784, also merely re-asserted a previous law, passed March 27, 1778 (Laws of New York, First Session, Ch. 16). However, aluce another law (passed Mar. 26, 1781; Laws of New York, Fourth Session, Ch. 36) enacted during the war was more lax in its requirements, the statute of 1784 served the purpose of resolving an ambiguous situation in the direction of severity. For illuminating comment, see Address to the Citizens of this city (Apr. 23, 1784), broadside, N. - Y. H. S.
39 Roger Champagne, "Sons of Liberty," 452, 508.
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turned to New York City?
The answer is partly that the old radical leaders had- grown fat and changed. Alexander McDougall was now openly aligned with the conservatives, who used him as a figurehead for the Bank of New York. Isaac Sears, on his return to Now York City, moved into No. 1 Broadway, the residence formerly occupied by the British general, Henry Clinton. 40 John Lamb
and Marinus Willett received political plums, the posts of Customs Collector and Sheriff, and like their counterparts in Charleston thus became, unnaturally for them, "duty-bound to oppose riots. . 41 Paper money 16 sometimes considered the kernel of radical law-making in the Critical Period. It 18 a remarkable fact that when the mechanics of New York City petitioned their Assemblymen in March, 1784, for the issuance of bills of credit, every one of their "radicalª representa- tives opposed it!42
More important as a deterrent to social revolution was the preoccupation with private affairs. "Mentor, " in reply- ing to "Phocion, " had warned: 'Let us consider the indigence
Robert J. Christen, "Isaac Sears" (unpublished Master's essay, Columbia U., 1953), 50.
41. Richard Walsh, Charleston's Sons of Liberty (Columbia, 1959), 121. This may have been the intention. It was a familiar practice in Stuart England, e.g., in February 1626 Charles I "called a new parliament, first taking care to ap- point leading opposition members in the previous parliament . as sheriffs so as to disqualify them from election" (Maurice Ashley, England in the Seventeenth Century [ Balti- more, 1954], 58). 42 Assembly Journal (New York, 1784), 74, 108. It should be noticed that Lamb and Willett were no longer members of the city representation at this time, having retired when appointed to public office.
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which the ravages of a long and accursed war have created In the other party (the refugees], which must cause them assiduously to attend to their own private concerns. . In a little time the last spasms of the republican spirit will be over, the meager ghost of poverty, with all her train of evils, being constantly before them, every other consider- ation will yield to the spur of necessity. "43 It was only too true. In February, Constable found "no business nor any appearance of it,' but newspaper correspondents called the Sons of Liberty to turn their attention to commerce; in March, it was reported that the people wanted only regular govern- ment and courts "of judicature to be settled, in order to make it a flourishing city for trade. "44 Many hands set to work to create a representation expressive of this mood, and for weeks before the May elections Whigs warned each other in the press of the audacity of Tories and the sinister dcoalitions" being formed. 45 In vain. After the conserva- tive victory, Robert R. Livingston commented zellowly:
During the last election in the City the Contest was warm & the issue was what naturally might have been expected when one of the parties was so jealous of power as to endeavour to exclude property & abili- ties from the weight that they must & will have in
45Mentor's Reply to Phocion's Letter (New York, 1784), 11.
William Constable to Richard Carson, Fob. 3, 1784, Constable Letters, 1774-1791, Constable-Pierrepont Papers; New York Packet, Feb. 26, 1784; New York Gazetteer, Mar. 22, 1784.
45Independent Gazette, Feb. 20, 1784; Independent Journal, Apr. 21, 24, 28, 1784; New York Journal, Mar. 18, Apr. 22, 1784.
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every society. 46 „ Things are settling down upon their old foundation.
In like key Alexander Hamilton told Egbert Benson early in June: "Nothing new here except that the Whigs by way of eminence (as they distinguish themselves) are degenerating fast into a very peaceable set of people. . 47
The decision in Rutgers v. Waddington raised a tem- porary storm: see the protest of a committee headed by Melancton Smith. 48 But that same fall the first Tory was elected to political office in post-war New York City, Nicholas Bayard defeating Thomas Ivers as alderman for the Out Ward. A year later it was said that Tories voted and were elected equally with Whigs. 19
As late as the elections to the ratifying convention of 1788, some politicians would attempt to rally votes with the cry of "sheltered aliens and strangers, "" but the slo- gan had lost its mass appeal years before. New issues, new alignments, were by the middle of 1784 thrusting themselves into the scene. The language of anti-Toryism was used to articulate the emerging conflict of merchant and mechanic.
4ºRobert R. Livingston to Charles DeWitt, May 9, 1784, Robert R. Livingston Papers.
47 Alexander Hamilton to Egbert Benson, June 8, 1784, Hamilton Papers, Columbia U.
48 New York Packet, Nov. 4, 1784.
49New York Journal, Sept. 29, 1785.
50Once More For The Liberties of the People of America, Apr. 2, 1788, broadside, N.Y.H.S .; New York Journal, May 1, 1788.
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Restless Mechanics
"You have, " the Lord of Livingston Manor wrote the Mayor in March, 1784, 'a number of restless macannicks who wish to see all their craft out of it, that they might ingross all to themselves. "51 The restless mechanics were the backbone of radical Whiggism in 1784, just as before the Revolution they were the group most uniformly identified with the Sons of Liberty. 52 Indeed in every American city, the artisan class was the most consistently radical group throughout the Revolutionary Era. 53 Espousing neither the Federalism of wealth nor the rural parochialism of Anti- Federalism, the mechanic class stood for both nationalism and democracy, an ideology memorably expressed by the former staymaker, Tom Paine. Alone among the social groups of the new nation, the mechanics were in the forefront both of the struggle for home rule, and the struggle over who should rule at home.
The contemporary term 'mechanic" has caused some dif- ficulty, because it was applied both to wage-laborers and to petty entrepreneurs. As Carl Bridenbaugh puts it: 'Artisans, shopkeepers, and tradesmen and their families, composed per- haps two thirds of the inhabitants of each Northern community [ city] and a little less than half of Charles Town. They
51Robert Livingston, Jr., to James Cuane, Mar. 22, 1784, Duane Papers.
52See Roger Champagne, 'Sons of Liberty, 4 3.
53For Charleston, consult Richard Walsh, Charleston's Sons of Liberty, 135.
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were somewhat contemptuously branded 'Mechanicks' and 'Tradesmen' by the upper classes. "54 While 'mechanics" who had time and money to go into politics -- for example, in New York City, William Gilbert, William Goforth, Robert Boyd and Thomas Ivers -- were likely to be entrepreneurs rather than laborers; and while, too, mechanics' committees and societies seem to have been limited to employers; nonetheless there can be no question that the majority of those called 'mechanics" were laborers, not employers. Judging from the published lists of mechanics who marched in the parade celebrating the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1788, perhaps a third of the mechanics were master workmen, another third Journeymen, and the remaining third apprentices. Among the cabinet-makers in the procession there were In master workmen, 20 Journeymen and 30 apprentices; among the coopers, 138 mas- ter workmen and Journeymen, and 55 apprentices. 55 The 'mech- anic" was sometimes also distinguished from the 'laborer, " as a craftsman rather than a mere roustabout. 50
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