USA > New York > Dutchess County > The revolution and the common man : farm tenants and artisans in New York politics, 1777-1788 > Part 18
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37 George Rude, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford, 1959), 178; see also Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revo- lution, tr. R. R. Palmer (Princeton, 1947), 98.
38Beard, Economic Interpretation, 25, 26.
"The Era of the American Revolution, ed. Morris, 289.
40 Eugene P. Link, Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790- 1800 (New York, 1942), 22.
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to extrapolate backward, and so for both to suppose that the 1780's was as full of class conflict as the decades just before and after. So Link cited Morais, Morais cited Pomerantz, and Pomerantz instanced one meeting of the Sons of Liberty, in March 1784. 42 But unfortunately for the Link-Morais thesis, there were no others.
Neither of the conceptions of the Constitution dominant in recent years easily found room for mechanic Federalism. If, as has traditionally been supposed, the Constitution was simply the work of high-minded patriots responding to national needs, a forcible mechanics' movement was superfluous. While if, on the Beardian supposition, the Constitution was essentially a coup d'etat engineered against the people's will by a capita- list elite, important lower-class support for that document became embarrassing. Hence neither foes nor friends of the Beardian view have been eager to explore the implications of the mechanics' position.
Jackson T. Main had now pinned down the problem of mechanic Federalism so firmly that it will, henceforth, be more diffi- cult to evade. "The most serious of all objections to an in- terpretation based exclusively on an alignment along class lines, ' Main writes, 'is the complete absence of a division of opinion in the towns. Where there should have been the most feeling, the least existed. " 42
41pomerantz, New York, 82-83.
42 Main, Antifederalists, 266.
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Now, this "should" is interesting. Why should the mechanics have opposed the Constitution, according to a class interpretation? Certainly the class interpretation of Karl Marx does not require it, for Marx wrote of the working-class in a voung capitalist society that "at this stage . . . the
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proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the land- owners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. that Main really is saying at this point is that according to Charles Beard's particular version of class interpretation, which contraposed "poor guys" and "rich guys" throughout Ame- rican history and left it at that, the artisans should have been Anti-Federalist. Once again we confront the fatal error of regarding Beard's as the only possible economic interpre- tation.
The evidence presented in this study suggests that the politics of the mechanics stemmed partly from class considers- tions, partly from sectional ones. Dependent on commerce for their livelihood, urban artisans could not view with indiff- erence the prospect of high tariffs and a strong navy. 44
John Adams, Main reminds us, defined the "Mercantile Interest" to include "Mechanicks" and "Labourers" as well as merchants, 45 and insofar as mechanic politics reflected their dependence on this
43Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "The Communist Manifesto, ' Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feuer (Garden City, 1959), 15.
"See especially Monaghan and Lowenthal, This Was New York, 63-69. 45 40 Main, Antifederalists, 270.
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network of national and international commerce, sectional rather than class interests certainly were dominant. Inevi- tably the mechanic was more nationalistic than the man with a hoe up-river. It was altogether natural for the artisan to view a strong Federal government as an indispensable tool wherewith to safeguard and complete the American Revolution, to see it (in the words of Tom Paine) as "our anchor in the world of empires. .40
The mechanics, of course, were followers not leaders, constituents not conspirators. It was a 'small and active group" 47 of wealthy men and their professional associates who Sathered in Philadelphia to make a constitution, and "paid no more regard to their orders and credentials than Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon. .48
Yet the mechanic contribution to ratification, at least in the state of New York, was by no means so negligible as Beard supposed. One scholar after another scholar has conclu- ded that ratification in New York owed much to the threat of secession by the southern portion of the state, in the event the Constitution was rejected by the New York convention. 49 Hamilton and Robert R. Livingston, the leading Federalist speakers at the convention, both portrayed the threat in lively
46Works, 9d. Foner, II, 341.
47 Beard, Economic Interpretation, 324.
48"Essays on Various Political Subjects, ' Yates Papers.
49See, most recently, the evidence collected by Main, Antifederalists, 238-239. This is one of the few points on which Beardians like Spaulding and anti-Beardians like Forrest McDonald are in complete agreement.
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colors.50 The city's leading newspaper referred to secession a8 & possibility 'dally discussed by many of our citizens. .51 Evert Bancker witnessed to the fact that small men as well as Federalist strategista were thinking of the possible secession of New York City and environs. Rejection of the Constitution, Bancker wrote, would mean 'an exclusion of trade with the United States, but I do believe if the Convention Exclude this State out of the Union, that this City & County will not; nor West Chester, Long Island & Staten Island, and will desire the protection of the United States therein. .52
Had the city mechanics been opposed or seriously divided on the Constitution, this threat could never have been made. To work as a 'credible deterrint," the threat of secession assumed general knowledge at the convention that all classes in the city - rich and poor, merchant and mechanic - stood solidly behind the Federalist program.
Even before the convention assembled, Hamilton had con- cluded that the threat of secession had led city Anti-Federalists toward compromise. They did not, he thought, want the con- vention to reject the Constitution outright. "The views of the leaders in this city," Hamilton wrote Madison, 'are pretty well ascertained to be turned towards a long adjournment say till next spring or summer. Their incautious ones observe, that
50Debates of July 17, Gilbert Livingston Papers; undated debates, Mckesson Papers.
51New York Daily Advertiser, June 14, 1788.
52Evert to Abraham Bancker, July 24, 1788, Abraham Bancker Papers.
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this will give an opportunity to the State to see how the government works and to act according to circumstances." This Anti-Federalist strategy seemed to Hamilton the natural consequence of their knowledge that immediate rejection of the Constitution would lead to immediate secession by New York City. 53
Hamilton had no reason to deceive his most intimate po- litical associate, and other evidence supports his analysis. Thus Marinus Willett, as mentioned above, was reported ready to accept the Constitution on the eve of the convention. 54 Melancton Smith likewise was accused in the Dutchess County press of having "grown cool' in his Anti-Federalism after
ratification by Massachusetts. .55 After the convention, all the leading city Anti-Federalists (Lamb, Jones, Willett, Gel- ston, Charles Tillinghast, James Hughes, Jonathan Lawrence, Ezekiel Robins and Solomon Townsend) supported Smith's drama- tic reversal at Poughkeepsie. 56 Thus it seems quite likely that Hamilton was correct in his opinion that the 'radicals" of New York City were prepared for compromise even before the accession of New Hampshire and Virginia. And if the pressure of commercial farmers helps to explain the votes for ratifi- cation of the delegates from Long Island and Poughkeepsie, surely mechanic pressure must be pertinent to the reversal of
SHamilton to Madison, June 8, 1788, Works, ed. J. C. Hamilton, 454 455.
54Morgan Lewis to Margaret Beerman Livingston, May 4, 1783, Robert R. Livingston Papers.
55[Poughkeepsie] Country Journal, Mar. 4, 1788.
50 Letters to other countries and states of the Federal Re- publican Club of New York City, Nov. 4, 1788, Lamb Papers.
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Melancton Smith and his New York City associates.
As in the case of Dutchess tenants, class as well as sectional factors entered into the politics of the artisans. The New York City artisans were the most consistently demo- cratic group in the state throughout the Revolutionary Era. If the pre-Revolutionary Sons of Liberty were to some extent 57 the post- a tool in the hands of aristocratic leaders,
Revolutionary mechanics' movement, we have shown, supported mechanics for office, and instructed them as to the legisla- tion they were expected to support, in a deliberate attempt to unseat 'aristocratic" control of city and state. Mechanic support for the Constitution does not justify the picture of "a lower class more interested in its economic welfare than in constitutional forms, and likely to support either Liberal or Conservative, Whig or Tory, revolution or counterrevolution as might seem best. . 58 Before the merchant-mechanic coalition of 1785, mechanics campaigned for such democratic reforms as the popular election of city officials. And the moment the Constitution had been adopted, spokesmen for the 'middling or lower class of people" re-opened the contention, asserting that if those groups had "any regard to their independence and liberty, parties must be formed, and a contention arise between the different classes. . 59
57 Champagne, "Sons of Liberty,' 507.
58Robert A. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (Princeton, 1959), I, 138.
59 "Temon, " New York Journal, Sept. 25, 1788.
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In appraising the meaning of mechanic Federalism, 1t 18 essential to remember how novel in the English-speaking world of the 1780's was the participation of workingmen in politics. Fifty years after New York City artisans had been elected to the state legislature, the London Times stated that to admit workingmen to Parliament would be to return to "that state of savage nature in which the natural rights of men might be exercised by everyone who was strong enough to oppress his neighbor, "60 and a generation later still, Prime Minister Palmerston observed that workingmen M. P. 's would waste time in discussions of "the grievances of journeymen bakers, who disliked night wor's," and other matters "which did not lie within the province of legislation. : 01 Even the term "class" was freely used in New York politics at a time when it was hardly known in England. 02 In the context of the time, again, the American mechanic movement was by no means immature. There is no avoiding the conclusion that workingmen supported the Constitution after cool and careful consideration, be- lleving that it served both their own interest and the inter- est of the nation as a whole as seen from where they stood.
The alliance of merchants and mechanics was always, as Walsh says of Charleston, somewhat "unnatural. " The mechanics
Elle Halevy, The Triumph of Reform, 1830-1841, 2nd ed. ( London, 1950), 296 n.
ElE. L. Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815-1870 (Oxford, 1949), 155.
02Asa Briggs, 'The Language of 'Class' in Early Nine- teenth-Century England, " Essays in Labour History in Memory of G. D. H. Cole, ed. Asa Briggs and Jonn Saville (London, 1900), 51-53.
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Conclusion
Scholarly appraisals of the Constitution have tended to veer between uncritical panegyric and shallow debunking. It is peculiarly difficult, even today, to regard the /me- rican Revolution as a force which hammered out new chains as it broke old ones, which closed off some possibilities while it liberated men for others, which destroyed good along with bad and created bad as well as good. Yet it was such a force; and the existence of the mechanics - Federalist but also class-conscious, pro-capitalist but also anti- aristocratic - compels us to recognize it.
The Founders were indeed bourgeois men, laying the foundation of a bourgeois society. But the mechanics accep- ted this. In their agitation, there was no hint of economic desires going beyond the wish for an expanding capitalist economy in which all might prosper. The 'levelling" tenants of Dutchess County, similarly, wanted nothing so much as farms of their own.
But if the Constitution was middle-class it was also, in the context of its day, democratic. It rejected direct demo- cracy but turned away from monarchy as well, constructing a representative republic for the nation and guaranteeing it to the states. The Constitution represented a conservative con- solidation of the Revolution, but not its betrayal. The Declaration of Independence, too, was drafted by well-to-do men fearful (as they twice said in that document) af popular insurrection. Had the Constitution ben fundamentally
INDEX OF NAMES
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INDEX OF NAMES
AKIN, Jonathan. Farmer, Dutchess Anti-Federalist delegate to 1788 ratifying convention, voted against Constitution.
ALSOP, John. New York City merchant, first president of Chamber of Commerce after var.
BEEKMAN, Henry Jr. Largest Dutchess County landowner before Revolution and Assemblyman until 1761.
BEEKMAN, James. New York City merchant.
BENSON, Egbert. Prominent Dutchess lawyer and Federalist.
BICKER, Henry. Hatter, first chairman of Mechanics' Committee after var.
BOYD, Robert. Metal-worker, in 1785 elected first chairman of General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, Assemblyman 1785~6.
BRINCKERHOFF, Dirk. Wealthy Fishkill farmer, defeated Robert R. Livingston, Sr., in Assembly elections of 1768 and 1769.
BROOME, John. Merchant, Son of Liberty, president of Chamber of Commerce during most of Critical Period, Federalist.
CONSTABLE, William. Prominent merchant and speculator, Federalist. DE WITT, John. Moderate Dutchess Anti-Federalist.
DUANE, James. Leading conservative, lawyer, Mayor of New York City during Critical Period.
DUER, William. Prominent merchant and speculator, Federalist. DUNSCOMB, Daniel. Chairman of Mechanics' Committee before Revolution.
GELSTON, David. Long Island merchant, leading Anti-Federalist. JOFORTE, William. Shoemaker, Assemblyman 1785-6.
HAZARD, Nathaniel. Merchant, Son of Liberty, leading spokesman in Critica, Period for merchants indebted to England.
JONES, Samuel. Lawyer, Tory, prominent Anti-Federalist but voted for ratification.
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LAMB, John. Radical Son of Liberty, Customs Collector for Port of New York in Critical Period, key Anti-Federalist.
LEDYARD, Isaac. Advocate of harshness toward Tories after war under pen-name 'Mentor."
LIVINGSTON, Gilbert. Poughkeepsie lawyer, rent-collector for uncle Robert G. Livingston, moderate Anti-Federalist.
LIVINGSTON, Henry G. Exacting Dutchess landlord, son of Robert G. Livingston.
LIVINGSTON, Margaret B. Large Dutchess landowner, mother of Robert R. Livingston, Jr.
LIVINGSTON, Peter R. Fourth Lord of' Livingston Manor.
LIVINGSTON, Robert, Jr. Third Lord of Livingston Manor.
LIVINGSTON, Robert G. Notoriously harsh Dutchess landlord. LIVINGSTON, Robert R., Jr. Leading conservative, Chancellor of New York, prominent Federalist spokesman in 1788.
LIVINGSTON, Robert R., Sr. Judge, defeated in Assembly elections of 1768 and 1769.
MALCOM, William. New York City merchant, Son of Liberty.
MORRIS, Roger. One of three heirs to Philipse Patent in southern Dutchess.
PAINE, Ephraim. Farmer and lawyer of eastern Dutchess, radical legislator, defeated as candidate for governor in 1783.
PATTERSON, Mathew. Merchant of southeastern Dutchess, Anti- Federalist.
PLATT, Zephaniah. Poughkeepsie Judge, Anti-Federalist.
PRENDERGAST, William. Leader of Dutchess County tenant rising in 1706, sentenced to death but pardoned.
ROBINSON, Beverly. Aggressive south Dutchess landlord, one of three heirs of Philipse Patent.
SCOTT, John Morin. Son of Liberty. defeated as candidate for governor in 1777, pushed radical legislation during war.
SEARS, Isaac. Merchant, radical Son of Liberty. SETON, William. Loyalist, first cashier of Bank of New York.
SMITH, Melancton. Dutchess merchant before and during Revolution, leading New York City Anti-Federalist after var.
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SMITH, William. Loyalist, historian, under house arrest at Livingston Manor 1776-1778.
SWARTWOUT, Jacobus. Fishkill farmer, general in Revolution, Anti-Federalist delegate in 1788 and voted against Const- itution.
TAPPEN, Peter. Poughkeepsie doctor, Anti-Federalist.
TILLINGHAST, Charles. New York City distiller, Anti-Federalist.
TILLOTSON, Thomas. Doctor, brother-in-law of Robert R. Livingston, Jr., Federalist.
VAN KLEEK, Leonard. Successful Dutchess candidate for Assembly in 1768 and 1769.
VAN ZANDT, Jacobus. New York City merchant, Son of Liberty. VAN ZANDT, Wynant. New York City merchant.
WILLETT, Marinus. Radical Son of Liberty, sheriff of New York City during Critical Period, Anti-Federalist.
YATES, Abraham, Jr. Albany lawyer and politician, leading Anti- Federalist pamphleteer.
YATES, Robert. Delegate to United States Constitutional Conven- tica, Federalist candidate for governor in 1789.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
ESSAY ON MANUSCRIPTS
The history of New York in the Revolutionary Era 18 a much-studied story, and really new insights are likely to come only from the discovery and creative use of new manus- cript sources.
The papers of the New York conservatives constitute the most important manuscript source. These men saved their letters, and recently, systematic effort has begun to bring together the papers of the most significant figures. The Robert R. Living- ston Papers at the New-York Historical Society must be supple- mented by the Livingston-Redmond collection at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library and other, smaller collections (the best bibliography of Livingston family manuscripts 18 in Joan Gordon, "Kinship and Class, " unpublished Ph. D. thesis, Columbia University, 1959). George Dangerfield's Chancellor Livingston 18 a stimulating first draft on the wealth of the Robert R. Livingston collection, but much more remains to be exploited. The papers of Alexander Hamilton are being published by the Columbia University Press under the editorship of Harold C. Syrett. At this writing, the published volumes come only to 1781 and material for later dates must be consulted in manuscript at the office of the Hamilton Project. Columbia University 18 also assembling, although not for publication, the complete papers of John Jay. Even the University's Iselin Collection of
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Jay Papera, although long available, has not been sufficiently explored by scholars, who have relied on Jared Sparks' heavily- edited version of Jay's correspondence with Gouverneur Morris, and on Henry Johnston's edition of Jay's letters and public papers. Columbia University has also recently acuired a collection of Gouverneur Morris Papers which, while repro- senting only a part of that brilliant man's output, contain a valuable series of manuscript essays on wartime economic prob- leas. Philip Schuyler's papers are in a scattered and unsatis- factory state: a biography soon to be published by the Univer- gity of Nebraska Press will make possible systematic use of Schuyler's papers, a long-overdue project. The James Duane Papers at the New-York Historical Society have also been made the basis of a biography, but contain much neglected material on the work of that pivotal figure in the Continental Congress. Some day, one hopes, a collective biography of this brilliant galaxy of New York conservatives will reveal their full contri- bution to the scaping of the new nation. The present study, necessarily, has glanced at them only peripherally.
Many of the records of the government of. New York during the Revolutionary War were destroyed by the great fire at the New Yor :. State Library. Nonetheless, several volumes of charred but legible Assembly and Senate Papers remain, comprising prin- cipally petitions. The volumes of Revolutionary Manuscripts at the state library are also helpful.
Local records are often scattered in several repositories, when they exist at all. Yet it is also true that the search for the kind of tax- and election-records which Robert E. Brown
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used so successfully in Massachusetts, has hardly begun for New York. An instance of the buried treasure waiting to be found and used is the complete tax register for New York City, in two different years of the 1790's, at the New-York Historical Society. Election returns for units smaller than the county will probably always rezain fragmentary for the Revolutionary Era. Contemporaries, however, often made surprisingly detailed estimates of both political and commercial statistics, which can yield fruit if Interpreted cautiously. In the case of Cutchess County, complete records of the sales of confiscated Loyalist lands were found both at the New-York Historical Society and at the Dutchess County Clerk's office; extensive manuscript tax records turned up at the Adriance Memorial Li- brary and at the New York State Library; and perhaps two dozen petitions of Dutchess County farmers were discovered in various libraries. In addition, the correspondenco of the Dutchess Commissioners for Forfeited Lands (at the New-York Historical Society), some scattered papers of Samuel Munroe (the tenants' attorney in the 1700's) in the same library, and the corres- pondence of two county officials ( Henry Livingston, whose papers are at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library; and Gilbert Livingston, whose papers are at the New York Public Library), helped bring bare statistics to life. There seems to be no good reason to assume that other counties would yield less.
New Yor's City politics are illumined by the minutes of the Chamber of Commerce ( in photostat at the New York Public Library) and the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen ( typescript
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at the Society's library in New York City) . The Bank of New York in New York City also has a rather rich store of papers, partially utilized by Robert A. East and Broadus Mitchell. Helpful political correspondence is available in the well-known papers of John Lamb at the New-York Historical Society (which, however, have not been sufficiently consulted for the years be- fore 1727-1788), and in the same library'6 collections for Alexander McDougall, John Smith, John Mckesson, William Duer, and the several Banckers. Commercial correspondence 18 best approached by way of the New York Public Library's collections for William Constable, Wynant Van Zandt, and the firm of Stewart and Jones. The splendid broadside collection of the New-York Historical Society 18 particularly rich for the election of December 1783; the collection of the New York Public Library also contains many valuable items.
Perhaps the most exciting single source explored in the course of the present study was the Abraham Yates, Jr. Papers at the New York Public Library. The letters in this collection have long been known and used, but the manuscript 'Rough Hewer" essays and the other political and historical manuscripts ( inclu- ding an unpublis :: ed history of the movement for the United States Constitution), appear to be the single best source in the country for the study of the Anti-Federalist mind. Here, too, only a beginning has been made in the present work.
It seems hardly an exasperation to assert that properly detailed study of New York in the Revolution has barely begun. The world (as Milton said of Adam and Eve at the gates of Paradise) 's all before us.
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SECONDARY SOURCES
I. Works Dealing With Dutchess County
Bayne, Martha Collins. County at Large. Poughkeepsie: £ 1937. Benton, Charles E. Troutbeck: A Dutchess County Homestead. Poughkeepsie: 1916.
Desmond, Alice Curtis. "Mary Philipse: Heiress." New York History, XXVIII (1947). Pp. 22-32.
Dutchess County Historical Society. Yearbook. I (1914-1915) -- dats.
Federal Writers' Project American Guide Series. Dutchess County. Philadelphia: 1937.
Gordon, Joan. "Kinship and Class: The Livingstons of New York." Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, Columbia University, 1959.
Haacker, Frederick C. "Early Settlers of Putnam County, New York. ' Typescript at New York State Library: 194c.
Handlin, Oscar. "The Eastern Frontier of New York. " New York History, XVIII (1937). Pp. 50-75.
Hasbrouck, Frank, ed. The History of Dutchess County, New York. Poughkeepsie: 1909.
Historical and Genealogical Register, Dutchess and Putnam Counties, New York. Poughkeepsie: 1912.
Suntting, Isaac. History of Little Nine Partners of North East Precinct, and Pine Plains, New York. 2 vols. Amenia: 1897.
Johnson, Willis Fletcher. Colonel Henry Luddington: A Memoir.
New York: 1907.
Kinkead, George B. "Gilbert Livingston and Some of his Des- cendants." New York Genealogical and Biographical Regis- ter, LXXXIV (1953) and LXXXVI (1955).
Lynd, Staughton. "Anti-Federalism in Dutchess County, New York: A Study of Class Conflict and Democracy in the Revolutionary Era." Unpublished Master's essay, Columbia University, 1960.
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