USA > New York > Dutchess County > The revolution and the common man : farm tenants and artisans in New York politics, 1777-1788 > Part 15
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ng. " The Stone Masons rhymed, "The foundation is firm, the materials are good, Each Pillar cemented with patriot's blood"; so did the Chair Makers (rather more euphoniously) with their, "The fed'ral States in union bound, D'er all the world our chairs are found." "Forge me strong," chanted the Blacksmiths, "finish me neat, I soon shall moor a Federal fleet," as sturdy members of the trade, riding the float, hammered away at an anchor.
On they came. The Ship Joiners, with their motto: "This federal ship will our commerce revive, And merchants and shipwrights and joiners shall thrive." The humble Cart - men, saying: "To every craft she cives employ, Sure Cartaen have their share of Joy. " The Brush Makers, who proclaimed: "Ya . love and unity support our trade, And keep out those who would our rights invade. " And after these, the Cordwainers, Carpenters (the largest trade, with 392 marchers ), Hatters, Cabinet Makers, Coholsterers, Sall Makers, Riggers, Gold Smiths, Tobacconists, Saddlers, Harness and Whip Makers, Tallow Chandlers, Dyers, Chocolate Makers, Potters, Pewterers, Tin Plate Workers, Founders, Copier Smiths, Coach and Coach- Harness Makers, Carvers and Engravers, Mathematical Ir strument Makers (like John amb's father, Anthony), Horse-Doctors, Printers and Book-Sinders and Stationers, Pilots, Block- and Pump-Makers, Paper Stainers, Lace and Fringe Weavers, Drum Makers, Ivory Turners and Musical Instrument-Makers, Painters and Glaziers, Confectioners, Cutlers, Butchers, White Smiths, Artificial Florists, Furriers, Tanners and Curriers, and last but not least the Tailors, with their magnificent slogan:
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"And they sewed fig leaves together. "- It was, commented an observer, a procession to testify to the "animated joy" of "all ranks and degrees of the community. " "It was remembered, " he continued, "that the great object of exultation was not the ratifying of the Constitution by any one particular State; but the already present existence of an aera in the history of man, great, glorious, and unparalleled, which opens a variety of new sources of happiness, and unbounded prospects of national prosperity! In2 Here was a Spirit of 138 fit to match its more illustrious predecessor.
What had caused this transformation in the "restless mechanics" of 175 .. 7
Was There a Depression?
The cause of the transformation in mechanic politics cannot be In doubt. It was the depression of the mid-1780's. The spring of 1785 saw a general uneasiness about trade star- nation suddenly grow acute and urgent. Then, as Jay wrote, Federal Ideas began to thrive: the early summer of 1785 pro- duced in every major American city a merchant-mechanic alliance on behalf of commercial revival.
The process has been most closely examined in Charles- ton. There the depression caused a Munity in misery" leading to the formation of a "not completely natural" alliance of "New Yor .: Packet, Aug. 5, 1739.
2Ibid. William Duer, who saw the parade as a small boy, recalled it when an old man ag one of the great events of his life.
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merchants and mechanics.> In Philadelphia, too, the onset of depression enabled the city's conservatives to win sub- stantial mechanic support for the first time since the end of the war. In the fall elections of 1735, the "pendulum began to swing back toward conservatism. "" In broadly simi - lar fashion, merchant-mechanic coalitions were formed in Baltimore and Boston. 5
The very existence of a depression during the Critical Period was denied by some contemporaries, and certain gubse- quent scholars have upheld their dissent. The difference of opinion, both at the time and later, turns partly on one's definition of the word "depression. " Clearly what happened In the 1780's was not the kind of crisis typical in an indus- trialiced capitalist economy, when business grinds to a halt and much of the labor force is thrown onto the streets. Mor was it a financial panic, suc :: as America experienced on a major scale in the 1930's, if not before. What happened was, rather, a sharply adverse trend in the balance of trade caused by the inflooding of British exports at the end of
"Walsh, Charleston's Sons of Liberty, 123, 13c.
"Brunhouse, Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 1770- 1792 (Harrisburg, 1942), 175-177.
>See, in general, Beard, Economic Interpretation, +5. The creation of merchant-mechanic coalitions in other cities was fully reported in the New York City press, e. g., New York Packet, June 2, Aug. 22, Oct. 10, Nov. 21, 1785 and Mar. lo, 1786; New York Journal, Yay 19, June 9, Sept. 1 and 12, Oct. 13 and 27, 1785; New York Gazetteer, May 31, 1785.
Most recently Forrest McDonald, We, The People, 29c- 297.
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the war. The most obvious symptoms were an acute shortage of money and a steady fall in prices. It was a crisis of capitalism in its mercantile rather than industrial phase of development, and is best explained in the language of the mercantilist economists. Thus, the effect of the crisis was not the sudden cessation of economic activity but a stagna- tion, the immediate result of the departure of what James Cavenant (using the same liquid metaphor) called its fradi- cal moisture": mone :. Experience, according to Maurice Jobb, had taught the mercantilist entrepreneur that " when money be plentiful in the realm', not only was credit more plentiful, but markets were more brist, and this meant bet- ter and quicker sales and a shorter period between production and sale for which provision had to be made. " The American entrepreneur in the mid-180's was struggling with the inverse of these conditions: a credit shortage, sluggish markets, difficulty in paying and collecting obligations.
That a depression in this sense occurred during the 1780's is clear beyond a shadow of doubt. It may be, as Forrest McDonald arques, that the volume of shipping through New Yor's harbor did not decline. Certainly imports of such items as rum, wine, tea, coffee and cocoa continued from 1785 through 1793 at about the level reached in 1784. (Y) But prices
Maurice Cobi, Studies in the Development of Capitalism, 215.
Estimates of William Constable in a letter to Gouver- neur Morris, Dec. 0, 1788, Industrial and Commercial Corres- gondence of Hamilton, ed. A. H. Cole, 155-158.
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of beer, pork and wheat declined steadily from 1785 to 1788.9 Wheat and corn alone constituting a quarter of the value of exports through New Yor's City, 1º the drop in farm prices com- plicated the trade imbalance which would, in any case, have resulted from the inflow of European goods. Whereas in 1765 the port of New York had exported 277, 140 of goods, and in 1788 and 1789 would export well over =500,000 of goods per annum, exports for the entire three year period, March 1784 through April 1787, amounted te only :162, 5544. As imports during the same three-year period were valued at more than twenty times this amount, 14, 326, 312, the unfavorable balance was the stammering sum of $4, 503, 757. 11 This was an amount twenty times greater than the income of the New Yor : Custom House during the same three years; 150 times greater than the stock of the Bank of New Yor' in the years 1785-1783; 200 times greater than the total income of New York City be- tween December 1783 and September , 1785. 12 Duties on
Arthur H. Cole, Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700-18c1 ( Cambridge, 1938), 79, 34-85, 87-88.
10of $2,000, 000 of exporte from New York City in 1739, wheat represented $322,000, corn $73, 090 (Monaghan and Lowenthal, This Was New York, 70). The proportion would have ben somewhat greater in previous years.
Ilwalter Livingston, "Exports and Imports, Port of New Tors, 1765-1737," Robert A. Livingston Papers, Box 15. For substantial confirmation of Livingston's accuracy, see, for the pre-war years, George W. Edwards, New York as an Elch- teenth Century Municipality, 1731-1766 (New York, 1917), 02, for 1789, Monaghan and Lowenthal, This Was New York, 69.
12Earl and Congdon, Annals, 3-9, give the city receipts ; the bank stock is revealed by its papers; Livingston gives the custom duties.
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imports were approximately equal to the total value of ex- ports. Nor was there an inflow of money in the form of capital investment or fees for services (such as shipping) sufficient to counter-balance the outflow of money in payment for imports. Contemporary testimony as to the reality of the shortage of money is overwhelming.
In addition to the generally depressing impact of this extreme imbalance between exports and imports, specific imports struck at specific New York City manufactures. For example, 30,000 hats and 97,000 pairs of shoes poured into the city during the three years covered by Livingston's figures. No wonder, then, that the mechanics as they paraded in 1788 re- called the years just past as hard times.
Mercantile correspondence indicates that an adverse econo- mic trend set in early in 1783, as soon as European firms were once again able to ship to America. In April of that year William Duer's Philadelphia correspondent reported that goods were falling, and advised him to 'rid your store of all possible Clothing, as speedily as you well Can & allmost at any rate" [italics in original]. 13 Another leading businessman, William Constable, instructed his British agents in May and June to stop shipments until further ntoice, for "the immense quanti- ties of all kinds of Merchandizes which daily arrive puts it out of our power to make sales of anything even at first
13John Holker to William Duer, Apr. 22, 1783, Duer Papers.
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cost. #14 James Beekman, New York City importer, sent simi- lar directions to England in the fall of 1734, mas Trade seems at present rather stagnated, our Markets being over- stocked with Merchandise of all kinds"; that same fall John 3. Church commented from England that "the Merchants and Tradesmen are much sour'd by the frequent American failures which take Place with great Rapidity. "!) Here was hardly the lustily thriving net nation of Merrill Jensen. As Tom Paine put it at the end of June 1783, "the last half year has been very much against the shop-keepers. "10
As stated earlier, 1785 brought a sharp change for the worse. The volume of economic complaint markedly increased. 17 The New York City form of Jores and Stewart told a Philadel- ohla arent in January that "cash never was known so scarce as it is at present. . There will be terrible times amongst some people here & in Philadelphia for Indorsing 3111s. Oceans of them nave come back: protested. #18 At the
14Constable to Edward Jones, May 29, 1783, to Gabriel Tegelaar, June 8, 1733, and to Henry Budde, June 1, 1733, Letter Book, 1732-1790, Constable-Pierrepont Papers.
15James Beekman to Cooke, Ralph, and Barnardiston, Cov. 2, 1784, Beekman Mercantile Papers, III, 998; John 3. Church to Hamilton, Sept. 25, 1735, Hamilton Papers, Columbia
-Opaine to W. Wallace, Jr., June 30. 1733, Writings, ed. Foner, II, 1221.
-7The best published source in which to observe this trend is the Beekman Mercantile Papers, III.
18Jones and Stewart to William Stewart, Jan. 27, 1785, Letter Book, Aug. 14, 1784-Sept. 27, 1790, Stewart and Jones Papers.
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February meeting of the city Chamber of Commerce, Constable proposed a committee to memorialize the New York legislature regarding "the very unfavorable State of our Commerce at large," and on March 3 the Chamber duly called the state Assembly's attention to the fact that "trade . is daily on the decline. 119 The New Yor's City merchant John Thurman summed up the state of commerce in 1735 this way: "Many of our new merchants and shopkeepers set up since the war have failed. We have nothing but complaints of bad times. In Philadelphia it is worse. 4 20
for, despite the contrary assertions of many scholars, is the evidence for trade revival before 1782 very impressive ( at least in New York). The Firm of Murray, Mumford and Bowen informed its Rhode Island agent in February, 1786, that #tea is dull, indeed there is no Sale for that or any thing else at present. The stoppage of Discts. at Bank has Stagnated business very much. 2. * 21 In June, 1730, the city press reported that "scarcity of money, stagnation of trade, dearness of provisions and the burden of taxes are the common copicks of conversation"; in August 1787, according to the same source, not a vessel of any kind was being built in New York City. 22 Bankruptcies continued high through 1788. In
19Minutes of the New York Chamber of Commerce, photo- stat, I. Y.P.L .; Assembly Papers, Box 43, N. Y. S. L.
"Quoted in T.E. V. Smith, The City of New York, S.
2-Murray, Mumford and Bowen to Christopher Champlin, Feb. 21, 1780, Champlin Papers, N. Y. S. L.
LZNew York Journal, June 1, 1786; New York Daily Ad- Vertiser, Aug. 28, 1787.
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1787, such well-known city personalities as Garret Rapalje ( "one of the oldest Merchants" of the state, as he correctly described himself on his petition of insolvency ) , Abraham ?. Lott, and former Assemblyman William Joforth, went bankrupt. 25 In 1783, the year of the adoption of the Constitution, one out of every seven adult males in New York City was jailed for debt. 24
The villain in the piece was again, of course, England. Lord Sheffield's Observations on the Commerce of the American States gave Americans good reason to believe that England was seeking deliberately to destroy American trade. The British prohibition of American trade with the British West Indies infuriated, if it ild not baffle, even the wily William Con- stable, who evaded it b" every trick from outright smuggling to purchasing ships in London for the trade. 25 "Where for- merly, " stated Stewart and Jones, "Cne American Vessell fre- quented . . any of the American Ports, there is now Ten and every place is over Run & Glusted owing to our not having liberty of the English West India Trade. #23 Everyone znew
23Petitions of Abraham 3. Loti, Feb. 1; and Apr. 3, 1787, Senate Legislative Papers, IX, and XI, Box 1, N.Y. S.L .; petition of Garret Rapalje, Jan. 25, 1737, Senate Legislative Papers, IX; announcement of meeting of Goforth's creditors, New Yor's Daily Advertiser, Aug. 25, 1787.
24Monaghan and Lowenthal, This Was New Yor's, 70.
25See, e.z., Constable to James Seagram, Nov. 11, 1733, same to Messrs. McLeon & Moore, Dec. 4, 1783, Letter 300k 1782-1790, Constable-Pierrepont Papers.
20Jones and Stewart to William Stewart, Apr. 13, 1795, Letter Book, Aug. 14, 1734-Sept. 27, 1780, Stewart and Jones Papers, !. Y.P.L.
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what ships were bringing in the hated imports. of the ton- nage of foreign vessels clearing the port of New York from November 1735 to November 1786, the British was almost twice that of all other foreign countries combined, and more than four times the tonnage of the next largest foreign shipper, France. 27 Even in 1789, of 1107 vessels entering the port, 308 were British ( and only five French). 28
As early as 1793, thoughtful men had warned that Eng- land might recover by economic means what her arms had lost. The fear was shared by radicals and conservatives allke. John Vorin Scott wrote to Duane: "what most immediately and deeply impresses me is the apprehension that a Treaty of Amity and Commerce may be consorted with Great Britain, which may ultimately sap and overturn the Independence of these united States. " Reciprocity, Scott continued, would be no real equality. 'I am, " he concluded, "for having no more Connection with her than the Necessities of Commerce will constrain. 123 The Lord of Livingston Manor wrote in similar terms : "I do hate the nation more and more. . . . It would please me to have no connections with them"; yet, lize so many others, he expected to resume relations with English merchants, was they will continue to be generous and give us good Ceras. 130 Likewise the radical "Mentor," warning
17 Cochran, New York in the Confederation, 105 n. 29 Monaghan and Lowenthal, This Was New York, 5 ;. 29 Scott to Juane, Aug. 0, 1733, Duane Papers. 30 Robert Livingston, Jr. , to Duane, Sept. 12, 1793, 161d.
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"Phocion" of English merchants who planned to settle in America and usurp its trade, compared Britain to a landlord who wanted nothing from America but the "substantial revenue" of a tenant farm. 31
Some scholars believe that by 1765 or 1780 the British Order in Council prohibiting the West Indian trade had become a "lead letter, "32 yet it seemed real enough to merchants at the time. Until the British allowed Americans "to trade to their West Indian Islands on the Same footing as we did for- merly, to enable us to make remittances & Supply ourselves with Salt Rum Sugar molasses etc. in our own bottoms, Robert Livingston, Jr., believed, American trade would 'dwindle soon to little or nothing. "33 Secretary of State John Jay agreed that the British insistence on repayment of old debts, while Forbidding Americans to obtain means of payment from the West Indian trade, had placed merchants of the newly-independent nation in an intolerable vise. 34
Nothing more convincingly witnesses to the reality of
31Mentor's Reply to Phocion's Letter, 12, 1- fr.
32Thus Edward Channing, A History of the United States (:'ew York, 1940), III, 411-421, who has been followed more recently by Verrill Jensen. Yet some of Channing's asser- tions are contradictory. At ibid., 422-423, he states that the West Indian trade was not growing from 1786 to 1782. Channing's fragmentary statistics, moreover, indicate that In 1766 59% of ships coming to America from the West Indies, came from the British islands, while in 1738 only 40% did so (1bid., 417) .
3Robert Livingston, Jr., to Walter Livingston, Fec. 4, 1735, Robert R. Livingston Papers.
24Jay to Adams, Sept. o, 1785, Correspondence and Pub- Lic Papers of Jay, III, 165.
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the British economic threat at this time than the testimony of men like Jay and John Adams, who, as Secretary of State and Ambassador to England, respectively, were best in a posi- tion to know. In that same summer of 1785 when American merchants and mechanics were combining to protect their eco- nomy, Adams fretted the ozone over the English channel with fiery letters to the minister to France, Thomas Jefferson. "The designs of ruining, if they can our carrying Trade, and annihilating all our Navigation, and Seamen is too apparent, " Adams wrote. He who had fought for the Massachusetts cod in the peace negotiations of 1782, was in no yielding mood.
If the English will persevere in excluding our Ships from their Weet India Islands, Canada, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland . . . we must adopt in all the States the Regulations which were once made in England. . I should be sorry to adopt a Monopoly. But, driven to the necessity of it, I would not do Business by the Halves. . We must not, my Friend, be the Bubbles of our own Liberal Sentiments. If we cannot obtain reciprocal Liberality, We must adopt reciprocal Pro- hibitions, Exclusions, Monopolies, and Imposts. 35
The New York legislature, not waiting for the results of Adams' negotiations, had begun to retaliate against Eng- land almost from the moment New York City was re-occupied. In March 1784, Isaac Sears brought in a bill to lay import duties on ships belonging to British subjects. 30 In the fall of 1784, import duties on liquor brought in by British ves- sels were doubled, and in the spring of 1785 the measure was
35Adams to Jefferson, July 18, Aug. 7, Sept. 4, 1785, The Adams Jefferson Letters, ed. L. J. Cappon ( Chapel Hill, 1959), I, 43, 50-51, 61.
36 Assembly Journal (New York, 1794), 71.
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extended to all dutiable goods. The same session, the legis- lature struck at British factors by an additional levy of 1 1/2 per cent on goods brought into the state by foreigners and not consigned to New York citizens. 37 But laws passed
by one state only were clearly inadequate. The object of the merchant-mechanic committees formed in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charlestor. in 1765 was, first, to press for a stronger Federal power to regulate trade, and second, to reinforce legislation -- as in Non-Importation days -- by the moral sentiment and direct action of local communi- ties. The first concern is illustrated hv a petition to the Continental Congress from the "Artificers, Tradesmen and Mechanics1 of New York City, early in 1785, which stated that 'we sincerely hope our Representatives will coincide with the other States, in. augmenting your power to every exigency of the Union"; the second concern, by the resolve of the Prila- delphia cordwainers not to buy, sell, repair, let be repaired by an employer, or wors for employers who bought, sold or re- paired, imported European boots or shoes. 38
Imported manufactures, of course, brought the menace of British economic power directly home to the mechanics. Here again was an echo of "the ever-memorable period of the Stamp-Act": for now ae then, the encouragement of native manufactures seemed a part of the struggle for independence. "When the minds of the people of America were really virtuous, "
37 Laws of New York, Eighth Session, ch. 7, Cr .. 34, Ch. 68. 38New York Journal, Feb. 24 and Var. 24, 1785.
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wrote a newspaper correspondent in 1795, "at the beginning of the late contest, every man was convinced of the neces- sity of our encouraging manufactures, and employing our own people, that we might be truly independent. "39 The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen struck the same note. European imports, the Society told its Boston counterpart, "are not only highly unfavorable to every mechanical in-
provement, but nourish a spirit of dependence which tends in some degrees to defeat the purpose of our late Revolution. 140 Men of all classes rejoiced that, toward the end of the 120's, articles such as nails, oil, linens and glass were more cheaply manufactured in America than abroad. " Macicals Robert Boyd and Peter Curteniue, conservatives John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Richard Varies, Robert Troup, joined in promoting the all-important iron industry; by 1787, Curteniug ' Air Furnace could offer iron articles from tea settles to the heavy pots and rollers used in sugar-refineries and glitting-mills, "equal to any imported from Europe, and the Price less"; by 1791, America's steel consumption totalled 300 tons a year. 42
39New York Packet, Sept. 1, 1785.
"OLetter of Nov. 13, 1788, quoted in Earl and Congdon, Annals, 12-13.
41New York Journal, Nov. 9, 1780; Robert A. Livingston to Luzerne, May 7, 1788, Robert R. Livingston Papers.
42#Articles of Agreement of the associated Manufactur- ing Iron Company of the City and County of New York, " filed Aug. 26, 1786, Hamilton Papers, Columbia U .; advertisement for Peter Curtenius' Air Furnace, 1787, broadside, N. Y.P.L .; Nathaniel Hazard to White Matlack, Mar. 9, 1791, Industrial
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Federalism, therefore, presented itself to the mechan- ics of New Yor's City as simple patriotism. £ Economic interest aside, it was natural for those who prided themselves on zeal in persecuting Tories to respond to this anti-British agita- tion. We shall fail to understand the alliance of mechanics and merchants unless we grasp that, to the mechanics, it seemed a direct continuation of the independence struggle. 1 Is it any breach of charity, " asked a writer, "to suppose, that those men who oppose the increase of the power of Cor .- gress for regulating our commerce -- or who oppose laws for Imposing duties on British goods -- are under the influence of British principles or connections7 43 When the Chamber of Commerce appointed a committee to deal with the situation, it was presented to the public as a step "to break the fetters and restraints which we have camely suffered the British to fix on our trade. """ 3y thus fusing the old radical anti- British sentiment with the conservative interest in a stronger central government, the merchants destroyed what- ever nope there might have been for Anti-Federalis= in New York City. ~ 5
and Commercial Correspondence of Hamilton, ed. A. H. Cole, 09.
43"Andrew Marvel, " New Yor's Journal, June 1c, 1785. -LIbia., May 20, 1735.
45It was no help to the Anti-Federalists that their spokesman in the state legislature, Samuel Jones, was a notorious ex-Tory. See the attacks of "Peolopodas, " "Leo, ' and "Mercator, " New York Daily Advertiser, Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 22, 1787.
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Building a Coalition
A considerable heritage of bitterness had to be over- come before merchant and mechanic could wor': together to meet common economic and national problems. The mechanics, 88 the majority of the city population, had long been asso- ciated with democratic demands which the more conservative merchants resisted. Prior to the evacuation of New Yor's City in 1770, the Sons of Liberty had demanded the secret ballot, and the Mechanics' Committee had called for the eloc- tion of municipal officers and Justices of the Peace, ratifi- cation of the proposed state constitution by popular vote, and popular election of delegates to the Continental Congress."
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