Conceived in Liberty (251 page)

Neighboring Delaware also came under the control of the conservative forces, although its constitution, passed in September 1776, was moderately conservative and undistinctive. Independence advocate Caesar Rodney, the man who saved the day for Delaware’s vote on independence, was defeated as delegate to the constitutional convention, at which the lead was taken by the opponent of independence George Read. The constitution established a powerful council as upper house, with the right to veto legislation; a privy council was to be elected by the legislature to advise the similarly elected president of the state. A Christian test oath was required of all legislators, but any religious establishment was forbidden and clergymen were barred from civil office. The further importation of slaves was also forbidden. The most distinctive feature of Delaware’s constitution was its formulation by a special constitutional convention separate from the ordinary legislature; Delaware was the first state to adopt this procedure of making constitutions.

In New Hampshire, the radicals, predominant in the western towns, objected bitterly to the conservative temporary constitution of early 1776 and agitated for a new constitution. The abolition of property qualifications and of the upper house veto, and provision for a fair proportionate representation, lower taxation, and a bill of rights, were some of their demands. We have seen that these western towns decided to secede and
join Vermont, only to be finally rebuffed. Radical polity in New Hampshire was seen in the unique provision of election of delegates to the Continental Congress by the voters themselves rather than by the legislature. Finally, in 1778, a convention was called and a constitution proposed the following year, but the provision that three-fourths of the voters had to ratify the new constitution insured its defeat.

*
Douglass,
Rebels and Democrats,
pp. 171–73.

If Pennsylvania provided the paradigm in the revolutionary period of a radical constitution, New York provided the model of a highly conservative one. The provincial congress, or convention, meeting in July 1776, appointed a committee to draft a constitution for New York. The major drafters on the committee proved to be three archconservative oligarchs: John Jay, the young son-in-law of William Livingston, Gouverneur Morris, the young lord of Morrisania Manor, and Robert R. Livingston. The drafting was delayed by New York’s military troubles and the occupation of New York City, but by March the draft was ready. The conservative drafters proved to be heavily influenced by John Adams’
Thoughts on Government.

The conservatives had to consider mass opinion in New York, and were divided on how many concessions to make. Gouverneur Morris led an ultraright assault on the committee draft on the floor of the convention, and succeeded in restoring property requirements which the draft had eliminated. The property qualifications for voting for the assembly were, it is true, lower than in colonial times, and at Jay’s instigation this part of the suffrage was amended to include all freemen of Albany and New York City. This was not a momentous concession, however, since only a small fraction of the urban adult populace were freemen. But New York provided a unique example of a conservative schema in splitting property qualifications for voting, setting far higher property requirements—over twice the amount of the colonial freehold provision—for voting for governor and for senators than for other officeholders. This presumably was to insure an aristocratic executive and upper house. Morris succeeded in
striking from the draft the provision for a secret ballot, but his usual ally Jay led a drive that succeeded in obtaining at least a constitutional endorsement for it.

The New York constitution established a bicameral legislature, and, after a struggle, an electoral college for the election of senators was replaced by direct election of senators every four years. Property qualifications for most officeholders were low, but were high for senators. The judiciary was made an oligarchy independent of the electorate by providing indefinite terms on good behavior, i.e., virtually for life. A particularly important conservative provision was the constitution’s validation of all royal land grants, thus fastening the quasi-feudal land system in the Hudson Valley upon the tenants of the state. Jay and Morris could not persuade the convention to provide for the abolition of slavery in New York.

The most important and pioneering conservative provision, however, was the aggrandizement of executive power. Morris pressed for massive power in the elected governor (who was to have a long term of three years) but his veto power was diluted into a plural executive consisting of the governor, chancellor, and the three supreme court judges in a council of revision. The council had veto power over legislation, which could only be overridden by a vote of two-thirds of
both
houses. This governor was to be commander of the state’s armed forces, and was empowered to convene and dissolve the legislature, and even to recommend legislation. Patronage of executive appointments was vested in a council of appointments that included the governor and four senators. New York’s unique executive veto powers, so redolent of the power of royal governors, provided inspiration for the executive veto power later inserted in the U.S. Constitution.

The constitution provided for full religious freedom, and clergymen were not eligible for office; but this provision was only secured by the deist Morris over the objections of John Jay, who fought for the virtual outlawry of the practice of Roman Catholicism in New York state. Ulster, Orange, and Tryon counties upstate supported Jay, but the more sophisticated and populated counties of Albany, New York, and Dutchess backed Morris. Apart from religion and provision of trial by jury, a bill of rights for the individual was conspicuously absent in the New York constitution.

This constitution was finally adopted on April 20, 1777, with only Peter R. Livingston dissenting to it as dangerously radical. The convention appointed the top executive officials in the state, and the right wing triumphed as Jay was chosen chief justice of the supreme court and Robert R. Livingston chancellor, both by a close vote over the erratic John Morin Scott, who had again veered to the leadership of the radical forces.

For the June elections for governor, the conservatives nominated one of their least attractive leaders, Gen. Philip Schuyler. Scott was the candidate
of the left, and in the left-center, there arose a war hero and veteran leader of upstate prewar radicalism: the blunt Gen. George Clinton, yeoman and lawyer from Ulster County. The election results were of momentous import, for Clinton’s victory meant that for the first time in a century the landed oligarchy was no longer in control of New York state. Now, with the mighty financial oligarchies of Pennsylvania and New York suddenly out of control of their states, these oligarchs became committed to a drive for a powerful national government, which they hoped to control and exploit.

Ironically, Schuyler’s defeat may be attributed to the defection of the tenants of Livingston Manor. Their revolt crushed the previous month, they demonstrated that no longer could their votes be taken for granted. The tenants certainly had no use for either Clinton or Scott, both their long-time enemies. But on election day they abstained
en masse
and Schuyler attributed his defeat to the low vote in his supposed stronghold of Albany County.

With the monumental victory of Clinton, there came to the fore throughout the state a resurgent new left, a radical movement considerably to the left of the governor. In landlord-ridden Dutchess County, for example, more polling places and a secret ballot helped carry Clinton to an unexpected and large victory over Schuyler; it also led to a social and political revolution
within
Dutchess County. Since the beginning of the 1770s, the top posts in the county had gone, by appointment of the royal governor, to the right: sheriff had been Philip J. Livingston, and chief justice of the county, Beverly Robinson of Virginia, one of the leading landlords in south Dutchess County, who quickly became a Tory. These were ousted in the 1777 elections and replaced by Melancton Smith and the Reverend Ephraim Paine, leaders of the embattled left in Dutchess County. In contrast to their predecessors, young Smith had begun life as a retail clerk, and Paine was a self-educated son of a farmer and blacksmith. No one can deny that this was a true internal social upheaval. Moreover, these two cases were not exceptions. For eleven years after, not a single member of the old landlord ruling class either sought or held an appointed or elective office in Dutchess County.

Also typical of the new men of the left emerging with the Clinton revolution of 1777 was Abraham Yates of the city of Albany. A typical radical of the middle class, this lawyer saw himself as a spokesman of the independent yeomen as well as of the town burghers. His becoming chairman of the Albany committee and member of the New York Senate challenged the dominion of the landed oligarchs of Albany County, appropriately headed by Philip Schuyler who sneered at him as an “old booby” and a mere “cobbler.” Yates was a highly articulate intellectual of this internal revolution in New York. In an unpublished paper, he squarely
demonstrated how the patroon and later land grants had stolen the land of the Albany settlers, and he saw “a similarity in the revolutions of 1688 and that of 1776....”
*

An historian of the Revolution, Yates maintained that the democratic features of the New York constitution of 1777 were forced upon the convention by mass pressure; had it not been for that pressure, the constitution would have been far more conservative. Much of the pressure came from the great disaffection of the New York militia. This was particularly true of the feudal tenant militia of south Dutchess and of Livingston Manor. While militia colonels earned a salary of $75 a month, privates received less than $7. This wage amounted to little more than slave labor, with the greatest hardships being suffered by the poor. Heavy desertions ensued, forcing the draft rate to be cut in 1777 and concessions to be made to the masses in the constitution.

The characteristic form of right and left in New York State was now taking shape; the conservative forces were wealthy, influential, educated and articulate, cohesive, interrelated, and tightly knit—all of which made for influence and effectiveness far beyond their number. The more numerous radicals, on the other hand, were far less wealthy, and locally based; while strong and well organized within each county, there was no real organization or cohesion between the counties or regions. That was their chief disadvantage, which would be exploited in later years.

*
On the internal revolution of 1777 in New York, see the illuminating works of Staughton Lynd: “The Revolution and the Common Man” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1962), Part I;
Anti-Federalism in Dutchess County, New York: A Study of Democracy and Class Conflict in the Revolutionary Era
(Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1962); “The Tenant Rising at Livingston Manor,”
op. cit.

After the Battle of Saratoga and French entry into the war, British war strategy changed. No longer was a quick victory looked for. Instead, Clinton was to base himself at New York City and nearby areas; from there, he and the navy were to conduct a war of harassment and terror raids, blockading, burning, raiding. An open and direct confrontation with Washington’s army was to be sought, but not counted upon. In the West, the British were to lead Indian terror raids on the frontier and try to capture the land west of the Appalachians. But the main theatre of war was to shift to the South. Lightly populated and filled with Tories and restive slaves, the South was now seen as the Achilles heel of the United States. Starting with southernmost Georgia, the plan was to roll north, attracting new governments by resurgent Tories as they went. New England and other northern states would thereby be isolated, cut off from the great export staples of the South, blockaded, starved out, and forced into surrender or at least subordination to Great Britain. As in the earlier years of the war, the plan relied on an overestimation of Tory strength and effectiveness, but with this difference: whereas Britain had previously overlooked the need to organize Tories because of overconfidence, now they relied excessively on Tory forces as against their own. In doing this, the British found that since the masses support the Revolution, as in other battles against revolution, that counter-revolution must reduce to sporadic raids against the people and rely increasingly on naked terror against their persons and property.

The remainder of the Revolutionary War in the north followed essentially this pattern of indecisive skirmishes and sorties. The most important
thrust occurred after a cessation of fighting of almost two years. Clinton moved up the Hudson with 6,000 men at the end of May 1779 to capture forts at Stony Point and Verplanck’s Point. Washington was stationed in a ring around New York City, and Clinton tried to draw him into a general action or else into leaving his camp exposed. He sent expeditions on terror raids into Connecticut to burn the coastal towns, specifically New Haven, East Haven, Fairfield, Greens Farms, and Norwalk. Particularly exuberant in inflicting terror and devastation was the former New York Royal Governor William Tryon. But in all this Washington was not lured into coming to Connecticut’s defense. Instead, he cleverly decided upon a surprise attack to retake Stony Point. Washington sent on the expedition a newly formed elite corps of riflemen and light infantry, the American Light Infantry. Headed by General “Mad Anthony” Wayne, these 1,200 men boldly and successfully stormed Stony Point on July 15. Although Wayne had to withdraw from Stony Point when Clinton approached, Clinton soon had to conserve men by evacuating the two forts.