USA > New York > Dutchess County > The revolution and the common man : farm tenants and artisans in New York politics, 1777-1788 > Part 13
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The term "mechanic" was thus used in a loose way which might refer to a dockhand living in a miserable waterfront shanty or to a genuine proletarian in the area of industrial enterprises ( furnaces, potteries, breweries, tanneries, rope- walks, distilleries) south and cast of the "Collect, " which
54Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, 283.
55, New York Packet, Aug. 5, 1782.
5°Ibid., Sept. 1, 1785.
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was to become the notorious Lower East Side; 57 and which might refer to a prosperous silversmith like William Gilbert, the assessed valuation of whose property was over L5000; 58 but which usually signified an artisan who owned his tools and had been apprenticed to a craft. The mechanic, there- fore, was the urban equivalent of the rural "yeoman."
It follows that the group consciousness of the mechanics of the '80's, although intense, was not the class-conscious- ness of the 1890's or even the 1830's. Strikes were not unknown in New York City: printers, Journeymen shoemakers and journeymen carpenters can be glimpsed fighting for wage increases, or resisting wage cuts, during the decade. 59 But the average mechanic must be imagined as aspiring to become & small businessman. This aspiration was well expressed by the seal which the General Society of Mechanics and Trades- men adopted on its formation in 1785-6: "an aged woman, with a pair of scales in one hand, and a nest of young swallows in
57For the area near the pond called the "Collect, " see William Duer, New-York As It Was (New York, 1867), 13, and Monaghan and Lowenthal, This Was New York, 30; for living conditions among the very poor, Alfred Young, "The Democratic Republican Movement,' 55-56.
58Anne Barus Seeley, "A Comparative Study of Federalist and Republican Candidates for State Office from New York City, 1790-1799' (unpublished Master's essay, Columbia U .. 1959), 38 and Appendix. Miss Seeley puts the average assessed valuation of the property of mechanics who ran for office in the 1790's at about L1, 160.
"Monaghan and Lowenthal, This Was New York, 77 n. ; New York Packet, Sept. 12, Sept. 15, 1785.
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the other, fed by the old one. "00 The image, pointing to exact equality on the one hand, the need for mutual succor on the other, quite catches the tone of mechanic statements in the 1780's. If fifty years later the "workingman's move- ment" of New York City was still essentially middle-class in outlook, º- how much more so was this true in 1784.
Yet a distinct sense of hostility existed between mechanics and merchants in post-war New York City, and as the persecution of outright Loyalists went out of fashion, the language of anti-Toryism came to be applied to this do- mestic conflict. It was easy enough for the artisan to see an enemy in the merchant who Imported manufactured goods from England. Only a small further step was required to see in him also a Tory, even when, as in the case of Alexander Hamilton, the butt of such attacks had fought valiantly for the Revolution. In part, the mechanic simply grasped at the most convenient epithet wherewith to belabor men who sneered at his lack of education and refinement. In part, also, the term "Tory, ' while literally ridiculous, expressed a not un- realistic awareness of the role men like Hamilton and Duane were playing in protecting the property, collecting the debts, and seeking the votes, of persons who were indeed Tories.
Annals of the General Society of Mechanics and Trades- men, ed. Thomas Earl and Charles T. Congdon (New York, 1882), 12.
01 See Walter Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the Work- ing Class: A Study of the New York Workingman's Movement, 1829-1837 (Stanford, 1956). For a general view of the mech- anic movement in the Revolutionary Era, consult Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (New York, 1947), especially 193-207.
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Duane resumed his pre-war business of collecting debts for British creditors. 02 Hamilton, who led the legal battis against the Trespass Law, had so many clients seeking pro-
tection from the anti-Tory laws that he wrote: "legislative folly has afforded so plentiful a harvest to us lawyers that we have scarcely a moment to spare from the substantial business of reaping. 3
Mechanics were prominent in the anti-Tory movement from the beginning. When on the eve of entering the city, a 'large and respectable number of inhabitants (lately re- turned from a seven years exile)" met to plan the triumphal parade, the gathering -- which asked all who had been in the city during the war to leave -- was chaired by the hatter Henry Bicker, and included the silversmiths William Gilbert and Ephraim Brasher, the hatter Thomas Le Foy, the uphol- sterer Henry Kipp, and several other mechanics. " The com- mittee of "late exiled Mechanics, Grocers, Retailers and Innholders" formed after the refugees' return to press their grievances against Tories, included, in addition to Bicker ( again the chairman), the tallow chandler Hugh Walsh, the
62 Correspondence of James Duane with Messrs. Pipping and Crowley, Sept. 2, 1760, with George Brown of Glasgow, Nov. 7, 1766, and with Phyn and Ellice of London, Aug. 18, 1784, Duane Papers.
63Alexander Hamilton to Egbert Benson, Feb. 18, 1784, and to Gouverneur Morris, Feb. 21, 1784, Hamilton Papers, Columbia U. John Lawrence, Morgan Lewis and Richard Varick were three other conservativa Whigs who acted as lawyers for Tories (Lawrence, Lewis, Varick and Hamilton to Thomas Mifflin, Dec. 8, 1783, 1bid,).
04 Independent New York Gazette, Nov. 22, 1783.
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pewterer William J. Ellsworth, and the saddler John Young. "> The committee's program already included, in addition to anti- Tory measures, the mechanic demands which would dominate after 1735: repayment of the public debt; import duties on British manufactures; retaliation against British vessels; and "a serious attention to the mercantile interest, convinced, that on this principally depends, the welfare and importance of this city. 100
The unsettled economy of the post-war city sharpened the latent social antagonism between "Whig" mechanic and 'Tory" merchant. Noah Webster once commented on the New York City tradition of friendly intercourse between social classes. " The principal families,' he wrote, 'by associating, in their public amusements, with the middling class of well-bred citi- zens, render their rank subservient to the happiness of soc- lety, and prevent that party-spirit, which an affectation of superiority in certain families in Philadelphia, has produced in that city. " But Webster noted that the Revolutionary War had worked a change. "Several causes, ' he continued, 'have operated to diminish the sociability of the citizens of New York, particularly the change of inhabitants and the loss of property, during the ravages of war, and the unfavorable state of business since the establishment of peace. ?? The
05New York Packet, Feb. 19, 1784.
OOIndependent Gazette, Jan. 29, 1784.
07 "Description of New York, " The American Museum, March 1782.
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wealth per capita in the West Ward was $oo, in the East Ward $131.73 Much of the west side had been burned in the great fire of 1775 which took one thousand homes. After the war, the area was new and unfinished, partly unpaved, with "infer- lor homes" and much cheaper land prices than further south and east: on the eve of the Whig re-entry, Gouverneur Morris recommended this neighborhood to Robert Morris as the best part of the city in which to speculate. 74 Not surprisingly. the tax rolls of the west side read like an inventory of New York City mechanics. 75
Adolescent gangs and adult voters in New York City di- vided east and west. 70 The old Song of Liberty had made their headquarters on the upper west side, at 317 Great George Street near the corner of Murray and Broadway.
77 AT -
ter the war, the West Ward elected silversmith Willian Gilbert
73For the electoral census, see New Yor' Daily adver- tiser, Jan. 15, 1791.
?"Duer, New-York As It Was, Il. For land prices, see Monaghan and Lowenthal, op. cit., 72-73; T.E. V. Smith, op. cit., 27-28. Their figures indicate that a square foot of building lot on the upper west side cost one-third to one- half as much as a square foot on the lower east side. For Morris' recommendation, see Gouverneur Morris to Robert
Morris, Nov. 22, 1783, Gouverneur Morris Papers, Columbia J.
75" Tax-Payers of the City and County of New York, 1793," N. - Y. H. S. Thus the mechanic names of William Gilbert, Robert Manley, Thomas LeFoy, James Kip, John Middelburger, Garret DeBow and William Mooney jump to the eye on the first page of the roll for the Fourth Ward (upper west side) .
76For the gangs, see William Juer, New-York As It Was, 5 n.
77m. E.T. Smith, City of New York, 11.
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as alderman every year until, in 1788, Gilbert moved up to the state Assembly. In the conservative landslide of 1784, the West Ward alone "was almost unanimous in favor of the list nominated by the Sons of Liberty. "78 The political contrast of east and west may be illustrated by the follow- ing returns from this election : 79
East Ward
West Ward
Highest candidate ló
Conservative slate Highest candidate ?3 Lowest candidate 57 Lowest candidate 11
Radical slate
Highest candidate 30
Highest candidate 74
Lowest candidate 25 Lowest candidate 67
The mechanics' sense of separateness was expressed through their Mechanics' Committee. Because the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen was founded only in No- vember 1785, historians have failed to recognize that a general committee of mechanics existed and functioned through- out the previous two years. The committee of mechanics which from 1774 till the Whig exodus from New York had re- placed the Sons of Liberty as the leading radical organiza- tion, 80 reappeared as soon as the Whigs returned to the city in November 1783. It met in December 1783 and several times in the spring of 1784. 81 The committee's quest for incor-
78 New York Journal, Apr. 29, 1784. 79Independent Journal, May 1, 1784.
30Carl Becker, Political Parties, 120.
8-Broadside of Mechanics' Committee, Dec. 27, 1783, V. - Y. H. S. ; New York Packet, Jan. 15, 1784; New York Journal, Mar. 18, 1784; Independent Journal, May 12, 1784; New York Packet, May 31, 1784. The Mechanics' Committee was one of several groups forming the committee of exiled mechanics,
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poration, a burning political issue early in 1785, began a year earlier when Henry Bicker and others petitioned the legislature for incorporation on May 7, 1784.82
Conclusion
The issue of mechanic incorporation, and the larger question of the place of mechanics in society which the issue symbolized, were by 1785 very nearly all that remained of the anti-Tory hysteria which dominated New York City politics in the first year of peace. In October, 1784, a newspaper correspondent sounded the old note by remarking: "The law for tarring and feathering is not repealed, but only suspended. You know the season is not too far advanced, for geese are in their prime about Michaelmas. #33 Typical of the advancing mood, however, was Abraham Bancker's letter of the following month: 'Your remarks with respect to Com- mittees 1s very just. There is little to be got by such Business. I have turn'd my thoughts to other matters, which have a more promising aspect which is the mercantile line. . 34
Three things were forthcoming in 1785-86 to solidify this mood into a merchant-mechanic alliance: the conversion
grocers, retailers and innholders, mentioned earlier; Henry Bicker was chairman of both groups.
32Assembly Journal (New York, 1784), 162. 33 New York Gazetteer, Oct. 26, 1784.
84 Abraham Bancker to Abraham 3. Bancker, Nov. 3, 1784, Abraham Bancker Papers, N. - Y. A.S.
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of a majority of the radical leaders to the Federalist pro- gram; a depression; and a similar conversion of the mechanic rank-and-file.
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CHAPTER IX
NEW ALIGNMENTS: BANKS, DEBTS AND PAPER MONEY IN THE POLITICS OF THE CRITICAL PERIOD
The fragmentation of the old Sons of Liberty leader- ship in 1785-1786 was the more remarkable because that party had held together so firmly through the previous twenty years. When in December 1783 "A Battered Soldier" asked the "Whig Mechanicks' of the city to vote for men who had been "faithful from the ever-memorable period of the Stamp- Act, " these were not idle words. - For example, the follow- ing leaders of the radical party in city politics in 1783- 1735 had opposed the resumption of importation of British goods in 1770: the blacksmith Robert Boyd, the silversmith William Gilbert, the brewer White Matlack, the manufacturer Isaac Stoutenburgh, the ropemaker Thomas Ivers, the shoe- maker William Goforth, the upholsterer Alchard Kip, and the merchants John Lamb, Isaac Sears, William Malcom, Peter T. Curtenius, Thomas Hazard, Hugh Hughes, and John Broome. Others who appeared on the anti-importation list of 1770 and figured prominently in the mechanics' movement of the 1780's were Ephraim Brasher, Garrit DeBow, Daniel Dunscomb, John Burger, Nicholas Anthony, John Quackenboss, William Ellsworth. 2 Here was a formidable continuity in personnel. 1Broadside, Dec. 27, 1783, N. - Y. H.S.
-New-York Gazette: or, Weekly Post-Boy, July 23 and 30, 1770, lists names favoring and opposing importation,
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Moreover, as suggested earlier, the radical Whig re- fugees from New York City continued true to form during the Revolutionary War: thus John Lamb stirred up grievances among the common soldiers, and William Malcom agitated for a more democratic state constitution. Marinus Willett favored strong price controls, believing a virtuous private trader "as rare in this day as the Phoenix. = 3 Robert Boyd,
future chairman of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, was accused of leading the refugees from New York City in a campaign for higher taxes and closer ties with the Continental Congress.4 4 The rank-and-file of refugee mechan- ics were active, too: more than once we hear of the carpen- ters building ships for the army putting pressure on the state legislature. 5
One did not break away lightly from a group of political
with some indication of profession. These invaluable lists, published at the request of the Sons of Liberty, were called to my attention by Robert J. Christen. A good indication of prominence in the mechanics' movement of the '80's is atten- dance at the founding meeting of the General Society of Me- chanics and Tradesmen, Nov. 17, 1785; see the list in Earl and Congdon, Annals, 10-11.
Marinus Willett to John Jay, Dec. 17, 1777, Jay Papers, Columbia U.
"Published correspondence of Robert Boyd and Robert Palmer, New York Packet, Apr. 13 and 20, 1750. These letters were called to my attention by Robin Brooks.
5See Robert R. Livingston to John Jay, Apr. 20, 1779, referring to "[John Morin] Scotts desire to satisfy the ship carpenters of Poughkeepsie" (Robert R. Livingston Papers) ; and Jay to Schuyler, July 21, 1777: 'The ship carpenters have come down very clamorous and much dissatisfied" (Ban- croft Transcripts, Schuyler, N. Y.P.L. ).
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"friends" forged on the anvils of so many contests. When in 1787 William Malcom voted to repeal certain anti-Tory laws, he apologized at length for differing from those with whom he was accustomed to think and act, and was roundly rebuked by the Sons of Liberty for his pains .? Such deser- tions were much lamented by those hard-core radicals who became Anti-Federalists. 'I see too great a disposition, " Tillinghast wrote Hugh Hughes in 1785, "in those who call themselves Whigs to connect with Tories. "
The forging of political connections between merchants who but yesterday had bitterly opposed each other as Whigs and Tories, proceeded the more naturally because everyday life threw them so much together. These rival leaders did not, like the mechanics, live in separate neighborhoods; rather, their homes were Inter-mixed. Of the Sons of Liberty and Anti-Federalist leadership, John Broome lived in Hanover Square, John Lamb on Wall Street, Isaac Sears, Marinus Will- ett, Nathaniel Hazard and Jonathan Lawrence on Water Street: all in the fashionable southeastern sector of the city.º Radical and conservative leaders never ceased to associate in such bodies as the trustees of Trinity Church, the state branch of the Cincinnati, and the anti-slavery movement. The trustees of the property of Trinity Church included
"New York Journal, Feb. 15, June 14, 1787. ?Tillinghast to Hughes, 1765, Lamb Papers. BT. E. V. Smith, City of New York, 33, 34, 38-39; William Duer, New-York As It Was, 11 n.
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conservative James Duane and radical Isaac Sears. 9 John Lamb narrowly missed election as President and again 88 Assistant Treasurer of the New York Cincinnati in June 1783;10 he chaired a meeting of the Cincinnati of the Southern District in March 1784;11 still more remarkable, Lamb and Marinus Willett were put on the Committee of Funds of the state Cincinnati in July 1787 with -- Alexander Hamil - ton. 12 As for abolitionism, a petition to the New York
legislature in 1786 to outlaw the export of slaves was signed by almost every public figure in the city, including John Jay, Robert R. Livingston, James Duane, John Lamb, Velancton Smith, Marinus Willett, John Broome, William %. Gilbert and Alexander Hamilton. 13 Melancton Smith and Jonathan Lawrence, who as New York's delegates to the Con- tinental Congress voted on different sides of the impost question, yet served together in 1787 on the standing com- mittee of the Society for the Manumission of Slaves. 14
Socially, therefore, the different factions of politi- cal leaders were not strangers to each other. They shared common military memories, common interests in the fields of religion and reform. They saluted one another in the streets; dined together at the coffee-houses; together attended monthly
9 Independent Gazette, Jan. 29, 1784. 10Memorandum of votes in Mcdougall Papers. 11 Independent Journal, Apr. 3, 1784.
12New York Journal, July 5, 1787.
13New York Daily Advertiser, Mar. 14, 1786.
14New York Journal, May 24, 1787.
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meetings of the Chamber of Commerce, as the minutes of that body show.
Yet it was not social bonds which underlay the Feder- alist "coalition" of 1785-1788. Powerful economic interests first divided, then drew together, the merchants of New York City. Edmund Morgan has observed that the principles which the Founding Fathers carried to Philadelphia would not have fitted in their pocketbooks. Perhaps not; but the ideolo- gical baggage of the ordinary, sharp-eyed, hard-nosed New York City merchant very often had its origin precisely there.
Debte to England
One of the clearest cases of a distinct economic "interest" in post-war New York City is that of the merchants who owed pre-war debts to England. Thomas C. Cochran 1s in error when he states that 'in the records of the merchants to which we have access there is no indication of any large accumulated indebtedness of New York concerns to their Eng- lish correspondents. . 15 On the contrary, that indebtedness was estimated L135,885 sterling in 1784, and L200,000 ster- ling in 1787.16 Merchants up to their eyes in debts to England literally covered the waterfront in New York City. The case of James Beekman was summarized previously. Con- servative merchants heavily indebted to England included
15Thomas C. Cochran, New York in the Confederation, 165-ló6.
16 Memorandum, 'Amount of the Petitioning Merchants Debts, " N. Y. S. L. ; speech by Alexander Hamilton in the New York Assembly, Mar. 20, 1787, Hamilton Papers, Columbia U.
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Robert G. Livingston and William Constable. Among the 17 radicals, Samuel Broome and Jeremiah Platt were obliged in 1786 to ask a three-year moratorium on debts over L60, while in the same year Isaac Sears escaped his creditors only by first pleading immunity as an Assemblyman, and then fleeing the country . 18 A petition of merchants indebted to England in 1784 was signed by Henry Remsen, Samuel Broome, Daniel Phoenix, Eleazer Miller, Jr., Jacob Morton, Abraham Lott, John Broom, Viner Van Zandt, Peter Ketteltas, Archibald Currie, William Nielson, Woodward and Hip, Gerard G. Beck- man, Jr., Isaac Moses, Thomas Crabb, Peter T. Curtenius, Van Vleck & Ilp, John Hunt, Leonard Kip, James Beekman, John I. Roosevelt, Christopher Duyckinck, Peter and Evart Byvanck,
Joseph Blackwell, Nathaniel and Thomas Hazard, Jacobus Van
17For Livingston, see Robert G. Livingston to Messrs. Nathaniel and Robert Denison, May 29, 1784, Livingston Fam- lly Papers, N. Y. P. L.
For Constable, see the letters of Alexander Ellis and James Phyn (of Phyn and Ellis, a British firm), John Portius (Constable's representative in England), and Constable, William Constable Letters 1774-1791, Constable-Pierrepont Papers.
Constable, according to his own account, risked his life on a trip to the West Indies in 1783 attempting to get money to pay his British debts (Constable to Portius, Apr. 14, 1785). In 1787, he had succeeded in paying 80% of the principal, but none of the interest (same to James Phyn, Dec. 24, 1787). The tone in which Phyn and Ellis addressed one of the principal businessmen in America is suggested by this extract from one of their letters to Portius: "we will agree to receive it in four not exceeding six years in equal payments with interest provided Mr. Constable will find suf - ficient security for the performance of any such engagement, but on no other condition, we can no longer be put off" (Portius to Constable, Nov. 18, 1787).
18petition of Samuel Broome and Jeremiah Platt to Connecticut legislature, 1786, "Insolvent Debtors, ' 272-273; petition of Henry Chapman and others to New York legislature in regard to Isaac Sears, Jan. 31, 1786, Senate Legislative
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Zandt, Henry Van Vleck, Cornelius Ray, Mary Beekman and Peter Vandervoort -- a veritable "Who's Who" of the city docks. 19
The case of the merchants indebted to England was a strong one. "The influence of the Merchants," they pointed out, "was principally relied upon at the commencement of the late dispute with Great-Britain. . . Our Committees had consisted principally of them. " "At the commencement of the late war, almost every person attached to the princi- ples of liberty, left his habitation [and] took refuge in the country, " these merchants included. There, agreeable to the orders of Congress, they had received the Continental currency at par for goods sold and for debts due to them, to the amount (so the merchants claimed) of 1;98, 383, or more than three times the face value of the debts owed by them to English creditors in 1784. During the war they had "suffered innumerable hardships, ' but when peace came, "great as their sufferings had been, they were, when those of all others had ceased, still but just beginning.' For the merchants returned to the city only to find "heaps of rubbish, and half ruined houses," and their trade in other hands, and to discover agents of British creditors waiting
Papers, XI, Box 1, N. Y. S. L. ; New York Daily Advertiser, Feb. 4, 1786. I owe the first of these references to Robert J. Christen.
19Petition dated Feb. 13, 1784, Senate Legislative Papers, XI, Box 2, N. Y.S. L. For other petitions of these merchants in 1784, see Assembly Journal (New York, 1784), 135, 167-168.
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to recover pre-war debts. 20
This seemed unbearably unjust. Americans owing pre- war debts to persons behind the British lines in America had been permitted to settle these obligations by paying one- fortieth of the amount due into the state treasury. Tories Whose property had been confiscated by the United States were being compensated by the British government. Only the Ameri- can debtor to a creditor in England, it seemed, would be left unaided. "Our humble Request," Nathaniel Hazard, their prin- cipal spokesman, wrote to Hamilton in 1786, "is but to be heard before ruined, and that we are dragged to Prison, by hungry british Agents who are fast collecting from Philadel- phia and other Quarters as the Session of the Assembly draws to a Close, and hover like Cormorants over the devoted Car- casses of their captive Debtors We would wish, Sir, that such a Man as Coll. Remsen, once so independent, a worthy Citizen, ever humane, benevolent and public spirited, may not have his House sold by execution, and his Family turned into the Streets. #22
Here was political capital lying in wait for the first
20, This composite account is drawn primarily from two presentations by "Citizen" [Nathaniel Hazard] : Address to the New York legislature, Mar. 9, 1786, broadside, N. - Y. H.S., and Observations on the peculiar case of the Whig Merchants indebted to Great-Britain at the Commencement of the Late War (New York, 1785).
215ge Assembly Journal (Fishkill, 1782), 60, 74-75, 77-78.
22Nathaniel Hazard to Alexander Hamilton, Apr. 21, 1786, Hamilton Papers, Columbia U.
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party to make use of it. For different reasons, however, Anti-Federalist and Federalist both turned a deaf ear. Abraham Yates was especially prominent in opposition to the merchants' claims, 23 while Hamilton, never wishing to satisfy one group of public claimants until their united strength could be used to promote a stronger Federal government, con- fesged himself an opponent of Nathaniel Hazard's "corps. #24 So the state legislature equivocated. Acts of 1782, 1793, 1784 and 1785 prevented executions on the principal of the debts until three years after the evacuation, and as this period of grace expired, the legislature and Congress passed the issue back and forth without decisive action. 25
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