Triumvirate by Bruces Chadwick

Author:Bruces Chadwick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2010-03-11T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

NEW YORK: THE FINAL ROUND IN THE TINY VILLAGE OF POUGHKEEPSIE

The presses attack and defend the [Constitution] with spirit; whether it will be adopted or not must rest with the conventions: I wish to see some government, for I declare I am sick of anarchy…

—Ebenezer Hazard, Postmaster General of the United States

New York in 1788 was one of the most unusual states in America. It was huge, over 29 million acres, yet, with its 340,120 residents it was only fifth in population, behind Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. Almost all of the people lived in New York City or in small towns along the banks of the Hudson River just north of it; just twenty thousand lived on the vast western frontier lands. The unbalanced population was caused by New York’s longstanding and controversial upstate manor lord system, under which a small number of wealthy men were given gigantic land grants by the king. They leased their land to others with high rents; few moved there.

Geographically, New York was two separate regions. The city of New York was the most densely populated in the country, with 33,131 people living on what is today the lower quarter of Manhattan Island (Philadelphia, with 28,522, was second, Boston third). The counties around it, which make up the boroughs of New York City today, were reasonably populated, as were Long Island, Westchester, and Dutchess counties. Along the Hudson River were numerous villages and the city of Albany, with 10,000 residents. Montgomery County, which covered the entire western half of the large state, had few residents.446 The New York City area residents were the richest in the state and paid more than 60 percent of the state’s various personal income and business taxes.447

There was considerable resentment between New York City residents and their neighbors upstate, whom some New Yorkers derisively referred to as “a set of ignorant Dutchmen.” The two areas were wholly unlike each other and their differences had grown since the Revolution.448

The state had been immensely patriotic during the Revolution, when it suffered deprivations at the hands of the British. New York City was occupied by the British army for seven years of the war, as were other New York towns. Prior to its defeat at Saratoga, Burgoyne’s army occupied and marched through upstate New York. The British navy shelled several communities on the banks of the Hudson. New Yorkers, under war governor George Clinton, never lost faith in the Revolution, though, prompting George Washington to admire its people and to tell the governor that New York “considering the situation, has done everything that could be expected of it.”449

Yet New York had its problems with the Confederation government after the war. It never paid all of the taxes it owed and constantly criticized Congress, which sat in New York City, for permitting Vermont, then part of New York, to consider forming its own state. New Yorkers raged for years that Congress did not order British troops out of the five forts it ceded to the United States at the end of the war.

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