USA > New York > Dutchess County > The revolution and the common man : farm tenants and artisans in New York politics, 1777-1788 > Part 16
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After the return to the city in 1793, the mechanics revived their demand that city officials be elected. Alder- men and their assistants were elected in the city of the 1730's, but the Recorder, Sheriff, Coroner, and above all, the Mayor, were appointed by the state Council of Appoint-
sent:
not until 133- did the mayoralty become elective.
A
petition of March 14, 1735, signed by over 350 New Yor's City residents, requested the state government to make all offices in the city elective. Petitioners stated that "the very reasons which Induced the British government to place the appointment of these officers in the Crown, most clearly evinces the propriety of our requesting to have that power now lodged in the hands of the people. "> of ninety-nine
40 New York Gazette: or the Weekly Post-Boy, Jan. 1, 1770, Abr. 3, 1776; New Yor's Journal, June 13 and 20, 1770. 47 Senate Legislative Papers, X, Box 1, N.Y. S. L.
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mechanics who attended the meetings of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen from 1785-1788, twenty-five signed this petition. Of 122 merchants who attended meet- ings of the Chamber of Commerce between April 1784 and the end of 1785, only four signed. The mechanic signers included the three presidente of the Mechanics' Committee in the Re- volutionary Era: Daniel Dunscomb, Henry Bicker, and Robert Boyd.
This difference between merchant and mechanic over the form of city government was further embroiled by the hostility of refugee mechanics toward "Tory" merchants and lawyers, previously described. Thus a "Mechanic", writing in the spring of 1784, called Alexander Hamilton "the con- fidential or ridiculous earwig of our late worthy General the little, pompose, stripling delegate -- the Jack-Daw ·
. Fox instead of Phocion." You, he of public affairs . continued, "cannot feel for the distresses of your fellow- soldiers; -- nor offer a sympathizing pang for the accumulated misfortunes and calamities of your fellow-citizens, borne down and depressed by the iron hand of war and depredation, and on those spoils your new-acquired friends and associates have fattened. «48 "Phocion" had compounded his sins in mechanic eyes by opposing trade unions as monopolies. "All attempts at profit through the medium of monopoly or violence, " the future father of the Bank of the United States advised
48"Mechanic" to "Phocion, " New York Journal, Mar. 25, Apr. 1, 1784.
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them, 'will be as fallacious as they are culpable. .49
It is not surprising that the mechanics were slow to accept the Federalist leadership of Hamilton and his associates. A raw class-consciousness exploded in the city press in controversies during 1785 and 1786 over incorporation of the Mechanics' Committee, and the propriety of mechanic representatives in the state legislature. "Beware of Law- yere! Beware of Lawyers! , ' warned 'An exiled Mechanic. ' 'We have a powerful mercantile interest to struggle with, and we should be extremely careful of adopting a single measure that will tend to support it." Mechanics, the writer continued, should judge their friends and foes by their posi- tions on "our dear child the incorporation bill. 150 Conser-
vatives openly alred their fears that the mechanics, if incorporated, would take over governmental power "in this city at least, ' and use it to raise wages, and exclude foreign products, foreigners, and out-of-state mechanics. "What merchant indeed would be hardy enough to disobey them?, ' the writer concluded, clearly betraying for whom he spoke. 51 Another conservative thought discretion the better part of valor. 'There is no man of reason but must admit, ' said he, 'it is less dangerous to incorporate a body of men by law, then suffer them to coment with an idea of having received an injustice. '52 These conservative attitudes
49A Letter from Phocion, 11. 50 New York Packet, Apr. 7, 1785. 51New York Packet, Feb. 24, 1785. Ibid,
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angered radical Hugh Hughes. 'I should be glad to know, " Hughes wrote to Tillinghast, whether gentlemen of that turn of mind "would consider themselves endanger'd by a Combina- tion of the Mechanicks to extinguish the Flames of their Houses, were they on fire, or if any one of the Faith was drowning whether he would reject a Mechanick's hand to save him ?-- And are not those honest Men, the very Persons, who, principally, extinguish all Fires, and, in Conjunction with the Country, have saved the State? #53
The bill for mechanic incorporation was lost, and in 1ts wake, class bitterness reached & peak in election con- trovereies over mechanic representation. It was customary in the post-war city for slates of candidates to be expli- citly balanced so as to represent all "classes, " or "orders. 154 Prior to 1785, however, no mechanic had been elected. Hence a mechanic's query as the 1785 election approached: "Are there no men worthy of our confidence but merchants and lawyers? Being of opinion, " he continued, 'that the pedan- tic lawyer, the wealthy merchant and the lordly landholder, have already had their interests sufficiently attended to, and think[ing] the respectable mechanics and carmen are not only adequate, but entitled to the reins of government, " a list of twenty-six shoemakers, smiths, tavern-keepers,
53Hughes to Tillinghast, Mar. 7, 1785, Lamb Papers.
54See for example, A CITIZEN, To the Electors of the City of New-York, Dec. 26, 1783, broadside, N. Y. H. S. ; New York Daily Advertiser, Mar. 22, 1786; New York Packet, Apr. 4 and Apr. 7, 1785.
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hatters, printers, block-makers, sailmakers, carmen, carpen- ters and tailors was offered for consideration. "> And when the polls closed, the Mechanics' Committee had not only elec- ted all but one of its nominees, but among them were the blacksmith Robert Boyd and the shoemaker William Goforth.
The mechanics' success led only to a greater storm the following year. If conservative William Duer was admitted to have been too abusive as an Assemblyman, 50 Boyd and Go- forth had been, it was charged, as dumb as wax-works. The Assembly had passed paper money while defeating a Federal impost, and the mechanics were blamed. Hamilton himself en- tered the lists as an Assembly candidate. A barrage of news- paper propaganda endeavored to clear his path by ridiculing the mechanic legislators. This note had been struck before: in 1784, for example, a correspondent had referred to a cer- tain "City Member, of immense learning, acquired partly in a haberdasher's shop. '57 But the volume of such comment multiplied in the first three weeks of April 1786. "We ought," wrote "Nobody, " "to invest no man at this critical period with that important trust, but such whose firmness, integrity and ability are sufficiently ascertained. I am very sensible that the application of reasoning of this na- ture will have little avail, if the mechanics of the city are
55 New York Packet, Apr. 14, 1785.
56On Duer, see Philip Schuyler to John Lansing, Feb. 20, 1787, Lansing Papers, N. - Y. P.S.
57New York Gazetteer, Nov. 23, 1784.
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allowed to fill up the appointments of statesmen. 58 "Somebody" waxed satiric on the same theme:
Mon who have spent the prime and vigour of their days in reading and contemplating the rise, progress and declension of states and empires; -- men who study Grotius, Puffendorf, Montesquieu and Blackstone. . Away with such legislators! we will neither be able to comprehend the laws they may make, nor to practice them when they are made. But the laws of the mechanics, like the makers of them, will be simple and unperplexed. . Therefore let us haye mechanics, and mechanics only for cur legislators. 59
'Let the mechanics tarry at home, " echoed "Two Shoes, " "and follow their different employments, as I think they will not be able to do both at once. . 60 "Censor" railed against "those narrow contracted, self-taught politicians who are for selecting out of each class of citizens a person to represent them, whether he is to be found competent or not, and think none would serve them honestly but those of their own body. How can they expect, " this writer continued, 'that men, such as the laborious mechanic, whose whole study and progress in life has been to secure a maintenance for himself and family . . are calculated to frame laws for a large and commercial community. 461 All these correspondents appeared in the organ of the conservative merchants, the Daily Advertiser. So did one final writer, who summed up for all of them: "A very vul- gar idea seems to pervade the generality of citizens, that
58New York Daily Advertiser, Apr. 1, 1786. 59New York Daily Advertiser, Apr. 5, 1786. 60 Ibid., Apr. 14, 1786. 61Ibid., Apr. 15, 1786.
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none but mechanics are fit to be representatives in the legislature for the interest of the mechanics. 162
Another very vulgar idea was also in the air in 1785- 1786: the idea that the mechanics of the entire nation had a common interest, and should act together to support it. Cn August 20, 1785, the Tradesmen and Manufacturers of Bos- ton addressed their New York counterpart, the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen. Assistance was desired, the letter ran, so that unity might take place as between "a band of brothers, whose interests are connected. ' The formation of a general mechanics' committee 18 suggested, 80 that 'each man becomes interested not only in his own branch but in those of his brethren. " Finally, the hope 18 ex- pressed that 'a general harmony will prevail throughout the whole manufacturing interest of this country. 103 "When our views like our wishes are combined, ' replied the New Yorkers, dour petitions to the Federal legislature will assume the tone and complexion of the public wishes, and will have a proportionate weight and influence. : 04
Into the burgeoning self- and class-consciousness of the mechanics, the need for alliance with the merchants ran head-on. Throughout the pregnant summer of 1785, newspaper correspondents addressed themselves directly to this problem. Merchant and mechanics, said one, must bury 'all old causes
o2Ibid., Apr. 17, 1786.
63 New York Packet, Sept. 12, 1735.
o4Quoted in Earl and Congdon, Annals, 12-13.
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of difference in eternal oblivion. ,65 'A Friend to the Community" expressed the sentiment forcibly. "The present insettled state of our trade and commerce is truly alarm- ing, " he began,
and much depends on the exertions of the merchants and mechanics among us. . However secure either may feel with respect to their own strength and con- sequence -- however determined they may be to abide by the resolutions formed by their own particular class, unless the merchants and mechanicks mutually request and obtain the assistance of each other, their attempts to subvert the machinations of our enemies will prove entirely futile and abortive. . . Thus . we shall see the mechanic look with pleasure on the prosperity of the merchant, and the merchant will view with a smile of approbation the system which shall be adopted to promote the interest of the honest mechanic.
Farmer, merchant and mechanic, it was said, had united in 170 to withstand their common foes; they must do so again. ?? And they did.
Let us follow in detail the formation of the coalition. In February 1785, each group was still acting by itself: while the mechanics (as described carlier) wrote the Contin- antal Congress expressing hopes that its power would be aug- mented, the Chamber of Commerce memorialized the state As- sembly to the same end. 08 The New York legislature's rejec- tion of a Federal impost later in the spring led to the formation, on March 31, of a committee to protest the Senate
05 New York Journal, June 16, 1785.
66Ibid., June 2, 1785.
57 New York Packet, Nov. 10, 1795.
68Minutes of the New York Chamber of Commerce, photo- stat, N. Y. P.L.
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vote and correspond with the counties. The committee in- cluded former Sons of Liberty Isaac Sears, John Broome, Isaac Ledyard and William Malcom, along with conservative businessmen William Duer and William Constable. The
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mechanic-manufacturer White Matlack was also a member. Soon after a Chamber of Commerce committee, earlier men- tioned, was created to respond to an appeal for joint ac- tion from the Mercantile Committee of Correspondence of Boston. On May 23, this committee reported back to the full Chamber that in its unanimous opinion the Chamber of Commerce should consult other citizens before acting. Approval of thie motion opened the door for the inclusion of mechanics. 'No partial or limited determination upon such ques- tions, " the Chamber committee asserted, 'could produce sub- stantial Effects. " Hence, following repeated "Consultations with several Citizens of different professions and Ranks, ' including two conferences at the coffee-house, a meeting was called for June 15. At this meeting, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, a committee of twenty-five was created. It included three prominent mechanics -- silversmith William Gilbert, carpenter Anthony Post, and ropemaker Thomas Ivers -- , together with some new faces from the old Sons of Liberty: Jacobus Van Zandt and Nathaniel Hazard. " The committee proceeded to memorialize the rest of the state. Again it was observed that farmer, merchant and mechanic, whose
09 New York Journal, Apr. 7: 1785.
70New York Journal, June 23, 1785.
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united effort had won the Revolution, should join hands to save the country. "We have therefore to request, " the let- ter concluded, ' that you will be pleased to lay this letter . . . before the inhabitants of the several districts in your county, and that you will unite in giving pointed in- structions to your representatives. '71
John Broome, president of the Chamber of Commerce, was the first chairman of the committee of twenty-five. In Sep- tember, when it was again called together, its chairman was William Constable. 72 In March 1786, when the Federal impost again hung in the balance in the New York legislature, a general meeting of city inhabitants unanimously approved the impost, and left copies of a petition at three taverns for signature.73 The impost was again defeated. In the ensuing election, Alexander Hamilton became a member of the state Assembly, and led the merchant-mechanic phalanx into more direct political activity.
Had the mechanics really been (a la Beard) "politically non-existent," and were Spaulding correct in saying that 'the lower middle and lower classes in the towns were generally disfranchised by the high property qualifications, "74 it would be puzzling indeed that so much attention was given by
71Broadside of the Committee of Correspondence of the . Chamber of Commerce of New York City, n.d., N. Y.P.L.
72New York Packet, Sept. 5, 1785.
73Ibid,, Mar. 27, 1786.
74g. Wilder Spaulding, 'The Ratification of the Federal Constitution, ' History of New York, V, 32.
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hard-headed New York City politicians to winning mechanic support. In fact, contemporaries took it for granted that mechanics made up the majority of the city's voting popula- tion. Mechanics, said an election broadside of 1783, "un- doubtedly constitute a great majority of the citizens"; another added that the mechanics had always been able to carry an election; a third contemporary observed that this was more so since the lowering of the Assembly suffrage in the state constitution of 1777.75 The closest recent stu- dent of post-Revolutionary New York comes to the same con- clusion. 'Almost all artisans and tradesmen of the 'mid- dling sort' 4, writes Alfred Young, 'could vote in Assembly elections .. 7º
How many mechanic voters were there? A hard question to answer. The number of voters in Assembly elections be- tween 1783 and 1787 was relatively small, never exceeding about 1000, less than one-eighth of the adult white male population at the end of the decade. 77 In 1788, the Assembly
7New York Packet, Feb. 24, 1785; To the Worthy and Industrious Mechanics of this State [Dec. 1783], broadside, N. Y. H. S. ; To the Mechanics and Free Electors of the City and County of New-York, Dec. 23, 1783, broadside, N. Y. H. S.
76 Alfred Young, "Democratic-Republican Movement, ' 379-880.
77 The highest vote for any candidate in the election of December 1783, was 249; in the election of April 1785, it was 566; and in the election of April 1786, it was 532 (New York Packet, Jan. 1, 1784; New York Journal, May 5, 1785 and May 4, 1786). The total number of voters was of course higher than the highest vote for any candidate, for as many as forty candidates might receive votes in an Assembly elec- tion for nine seats (New York Journal, Apr. 27, 1786); but not a great deal higher, for there was a definite tendency
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vote Jumped to over 1500, possibly due to the introduction of the secret ballot the previous year, more likely the result of interest aroused by the ratification debate that spring. 76 If the "mechanic vote" was roughly equivalent to the support for the mechanic candidates, Goforth and Boyd, in the class-conscious election of 1785, then the mechanic voters were indeed a majority of New York City Assembly electors : for the two men polled 560 and 623 votes, respec- tively. 79
Was the mechanic vote manipulated or "bought"? Before 1787, Assemblymen were elected viva voce at the City Hall and opportunity for corruption must have been great. 80 Dur -
ing the struggle over the impost in 1786, merchants were urged to "go about the wards as they used to do to see who are for the Congress impost and who are against it. "81 In-
troduction of the secret ballot may not have automatically eliminated corruption, for in some city wards as much as half of the electorate was illiterate ; 82 and in 1787 when the
toward the selection of the whole of one of two rival 'slates, " with candidates not on either slate picking up very few votes. Hence the estimate of 1000 for the number of Assembly voters between 1783 and 1787.
78New York Journal, June 5, 1788. 79Ibid., May 5, 1785. 80For voting regulations, see New York Gazetteer, Dec. 10, 1783, and Pomerantz, New York as an American City, 04-75.
81New York Daily Advertiser, Mar. 23, 1786.
82 Alexander Hamilton and William Malcom agreed on this figure in the Assembly debates reported in ibid,, Jan. 29, 31, 1787.
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sented the genuine sentiment of the mechanics.
The election activities of the Mechanics' Commilice testified to the reality of a mechanic vote. After 1785, however, the Committee seems to have lost control of its own constituency. In December 1783, every one of the Assem- blymen nominated by the Mechanics' Committee had been elec- ted, and in 1785, eight of nine. In 1786, however, the figure slipped to six, in 1787, to two. 86 In 1788, although Boyd and Gilbert were nominated for the ratifying convention, only merchants and lawyers represented the city at Pough- keepsie: 87 in South Carolina, by contrast, three artisans sat in the state ratifying convention. Contrary no doubt to their intentions, the mechanics discovered that in sup- porting the merchants' program, they had also to accept the merchants' candidates.
Conclusion
Years before the ratification debate of 1787-1788,
the Federalists had won to their cause not only most of the old radical leaders, but the bulk of the mechanic rank-and- file. In 1785, Hugh Hughes observed that a 'coalition" had been formed between all parties in the city. 'I could not discover, " he said, "that there were any, unless a few honest Mechanicks, who were opposed to it. "88 when
86New York Packet, Apr. 24, May 1, 1786; New York Journal, Apr. 26, May 31, 1787.
87 New York Journal, Feb. 28, Mar. 13, 1788.
88Hugh Hughes to Charles Tillinghast, Mar. 7, 1785, Lamb Papers.
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Alexander Hamilton ran for the New York Assembly in 1786, his father-in-law commented that "some of the Mechanics are for him,' a striking change since 1784. 89 Already in these years the Anti-Federalist leaders had become generals with- out an army. Melancton Smith, principal Anti-Federalist spokesman in 1783, was rejected by the Mechanics' Committee when he ran for the Assembly in 1785, and when he ran (along with David Gelston) for the Senate in 1787.90 This shift in mechanic sentiment brought pressure to bear on every city Anti-Federalist who hoped for a political future. Smith and Samuel Jones would heed that pressure during the rati- fication convention; earlier, on the eve of elections for the convention, Marinus Willett was said to have "become a proselyte, declaring it ( the proposed Constitution] might be right -- since it appears to be the sense of a vast zajor- 1ty. . 91 The newspaper debates of 1787-1788 on which so much attention has been lavished were (so far as New York City 18 concerned) the froth cast up by a wave which had done its work.
59philip Schuyler to Stephen Van Renselaer, quoted in S. Wilder Spaulding, New York in the Critical Period, Ill.
9New York Packet, Apr. 25, 1785; New York Daily Ad- vertiser, Apr. 20, 1787.
-Morgan Lewis to Margaret Beekman Livingston, May 4, 1788, Robert R. Livingston Papers.
PART III CLASSES, SECTIONS AND THE CONSTITUTION
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CHAPTER XI
TENANT FARMERS AND ARTISANS IN THE RATIFICATION STRUGGLE: 1787-1788
What did the United States Constitution mean to the te- nant farmers and mechanics of New York? What was the common sense of ratification for the common man? And what light do these lower-class attitudes throw on the Beardian controversy and on the Revolution: ry Era as a whole?
The evidence pre ented in the foregoing chapters makes possible tentative answers to these questions. In these con- cluding pages we will consider, first, the tenant farmers of Dutchess County, and second, the mechanics of New York City.
Domo and Aristo
Anti-landlordism was the kernel of Dutchess County radi- callem. Revolution brought to Dutchess tenants a series of hardships and crises not so very different from the trials of peace. The struggle between tenant and landlord, "Demo and Aristo#1 vas chr was chronic in the county from the mid-century through the end of the war. The same groups, often the same leaders, con- fronted each other in the tenant rising of 1766; the radical electoral victories of 1768 and 1769; the wartime struggle over price-fixing and land-confiscation; and finally, the ratifica- tion of the United States Constitution. Dirck Brinckerhoff, who
-Henry Livingston to Walter Livingston, Apr. 24, 1785, Robert R. Livingston Papers.
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took Robert R. Livingston's Assembly seat in 170%, led the war- time struggle for the confiscation of Loyalist lands; Egbert Benson, who opposed Brinckerhoff in 1779-1730, was the leader of Dutchess Federalism a decade later; John DeWitt, Gilbert Livingston and John Bailey, active in the price-fixing committees of 1779, became Anti-Federalists; and Jac bus Svartwout and Jona- than Akin, the two Dutchess delegates who voted against the Con- stitution at the New York ratif ing convention, came from the area of the tenant riots of 170c.
That the Handlins, referring to Massachusetts, call the "mossy conception of two-party continuity, " was therefore a sim- ple fact in Dutchess County. There were "two clear-cut camps." The groupings on any one lesue between 1750 and 1790 were 'coter- sinous with chose on another. 12
Further, the nature of the contentin groups was unquestio- nably grounded in social position and differential access to the ownership of land. Forrest McConeli has stated that "economic Interpretation of the Constitution does not work, " and that "the dynamic groups favoring and opposing the Constitution were essen- tially noneconomic groups struggling for political power, who sought and received support primarily through appeals to the eco- nomic self-interest of the voters. "> It is quite true that the radical Leadership of Cuteness County was economically and socially a cut above the walk-and-file, even that many of the lenders
-Oscar and Mary Handlin, "Radicals and Conservatives in Massachusetts after Independence, " New England Quarterly, XVII (19. 4), 343-355.
3.McDonald, He, The People, 711, -05.
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were themselves landlords and land speculators. But no one in Revolutionary Dutchess would ever have confused these men of "middling rank" with the great patrician landlords who called the political tune because they had the economic power: with a Philip Schuyler who (as his army chaplain put it) "has never been accustomed to seeing men that are reasonably well taught and able to give a clear opinion and state their grounds for it, who were not also persons of some wealth and rank" ; 4 or with a Robert R. Livingston who told his fellow-officers of the Cincinnati on Independence Day, 1787, "you are not formed to follow the lead of those you despise. "> There was a well- defined economic difference between the conservative leaders and the radical leaders, and a yawning economic gulf between the conservative leaders and the radical voters.
This interpretation 1s economic. But it differs from Beard's in that it stresses not so much the economic gains and losses which the Constitution seemed to offer its individual promoters and critics, as it does the struggle for power between contending economic groups. Both Beard and his critics too often regard economic interests as so many disparate calculations of monetary gain and 1088. So they are, perhaps, in a stable political situation where legislation centers on the allocation of a pork barrel of discrete economic advantages among different
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