Historical Background

The American Revolution waged against British rule proceeded along two fronts. First, there was fighting and a war to be won. General George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was the primary actor here, though in an effort that enlisted the service of almost 300,000 men, not to mention the contributions and sacrifices of their families. Second, there was governance—of colonies, of states, and of a nation aborning—with more ink spilled than blood, but in rhetorical conflicts just as important to the outcome.

How did the colonies, later states, govern themselves, collectively, not individually, during the eight years of war (1775–83)¹ and the first years of peace, before the Constitution was written and sent to the states for their approval (1787–88)? More by happenstance than by design, it might be said.

In response to the Boston Tea Party (December 1773),² the British Parliament passed a package of laws known as the Coercive Acts; and in response to these laws, the thirteen colonies sent delegates to a meeting in Philadelphia to express their disappointment and displeasure (September–October 1774). The meeting came to be called the First Continental Congress; its successor, the Second Continental Congress, was scheduled for the following May.

This is where accident enters. For by the time the Second Continental Congress convened, fighting had already broken out at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts (April 1775). Faced with the new reality of combat and the likelihood of more to come, the Second Continental Congress stayed in session as the effective wartime government of all the colonies; and one of its first acts was to encourage the colonies to write their own constitutions, reorganizing themselves as independent states. The Second Continental Congress—the name often shortened to Continental Congress, or just Congress³—felt a similar need to establish its legal authority, which it did by writing a constitution for the nation, denominated the Articles of Confederation. The Articles was approved by Congress in 1777, but not until 1781 did it receive ratification by all the states (and unanimity was required). By March 1781 the American nation had its first constitution and its first legitimate government.

How well did the Congress perform? It certainly had its defenders and champions, persons who appreciated the Articles' loose confederation of states, where most power was exercised locally. It also had its detractors. With no real taxing power, Congress was left to requisition (in essence, request) payments from the states, which as a rule were more unobliging than compliant; as a result, Congress was quite unable to raise funds sufficient to equip the army or pay down massive wartime debt. Congress could not effectively and exclusively regulate commerce between the states (which laid tariffs on each other) or between states and foreign countries. Congress could not enforce its laws, either because it had no enforcement power, as some suspected, or because enforcement required coercing whole states, not their individual citizens—and to coerce a state would likely mean war. And after the army was disbanded (largely unpaid), in November 1783, Congress could not protect the states against riot and insurrection. The alarm was sounded when debtors in western Massachusetts rose up in rebellion. This was Shays' Rebellion, occurring during the winter months of 1786–87. It convinced many that a tighter union with a stronger central government was essential.

Already plans were in place for a convention in the spring to amend the existing Articles.⁴ Virginia led the way, and its delegation to the Constitutional Convention presented a plan of government on the third day after making a quorum. The Virginia Plan, so called, envisioned a national government divided into three branches (legislative, executive, judicial), its legislative branch divided into two chambers (lower and upper, later named House of Representatives and Senate), an executive empowered to veto legislation, nominate officials, command armies, etc., and an independent judiciary consisting of a supreme and appellate courts. The departure from the Articles was radical—no mere set of amendments was this proposal—for Congress then was a single-chambered body, the executive was mostly nonexistent, and the judiciary, far from independent, was routinely supplanted by the legislature.

Much of the early debate concentrated on representation in the Senate: would states be represented—have votes—proportionate to their populations, or would they possess equal votes as was presently the case? After a month of heated debate, the Convention decided on equal representation in the Senate, balanced against proportional representation in the House. The Great Compromise this was called.

But proportional representation, even if only in the House, meant that slavery became a national issue, for counting enslaved people in the represented population would augment the representation of some states (Southern states) at the expense of others (Northern states). The compromise here was to count slaves as three-fifths of free inhabitants and to lay taxes at the same rate. (Although the representation–taxation compromise, which also included commerce, addressed one aspect of the country's relationship with the institution of slavery, it did not address the more fundamental irony of a newly "freed" nation not granting freedom to a significant and growing population in chains. Some delegates did speak to this irony, but to little effect, because Southerners made it clear that their states would not join a union that put their plantation economies at risk.)

While these two extended debates were under way, the Convention intermittently took up the issue of the executive: how to elect the executive, or president, to what term of office, and whether the president would be eligible for reelection (among other issues). The Virginia Plan, after some revisions, specified election by the national legislature to a single, seven-year term. Though the proposal was reaffirmed several times in convention, an alternate plan gradually emerged, built around an electoral college as the electing body. The problem facing the delegates was this: a president elected by the national legislature and eligible for reelection would become the creature of the body that determined his fate. For the sake then of executive independence, a president must be confined to a single term. But a one-term president might abuse his powers before losing them or neglect the duties of his office if denied the chance of keeping it; at all events, the country would be deprived of continued use of his talents and experience. The electoral college seemed to be the solution to these difficulties. Because the college would be a temporary body, chosen just before the election and disbanded thereafter, and because it would gather not in one place but in separate state capitals, it eliminated the danger of a sitting president, seeking reelection, bribing the legislature or being extorted by it. On recommendation by a committee, the Convention, close to its end, adopted the electoral college as the mode of electing the president.

Besides senatorial representation, slavery, and the organization of the executive—perhaps the three most contentious and complicated issues—the Convention debated myriad other constitutional provisions, too numerous to mention, much less discuss here.

Work on the Constitution was finally completed after nearly four months of painstaking deliberation. September 17, 1787, was the date when thirty-nine delegates to the Constitutional Convention put their names to the finished document. Three other delegates refused to sign, however, and their opposition was a warning that ratification might face a hard road ahead.

The Constitution was taken north from Philadelphia by the Convention secretary, who on September 20 laid it before Congress, meeting in New York City. The Convention asked Congress to transmit the document to the states; Congress's endorsement, while welcome, was not required and, in the end, was not provided. Opponents in Congress objected: they cited the illegality of the Constitution (more than a set of amendments to the Articles of Confederation as authorized by Congress),⁵ they complained of being rushed, and they wanted changes. But supporters were in the majority, many of whom had been members of the Convention. On September 28, after two days of debate, the parties agreed unanimously to transmission without recommendation, instructing state legislatures to submit the Constitution "to a convention of delegates, chosen in each state by the people thereof."

Most states set to work immediately, with either their legislatures already in session and able to organize elections for ratifying conventions or with their governors willing to call special sessions of the legislatures to accomplish the same. Pennsylvania provided the most interesting case. Its legislature was then in session, meeting in the same building that hosted the Constitutional Convention (Philadelphia's State House, later renamed Independence Hall). The legislature, though, was set to adjourn on September 29. Being so near the business of constitution making, it was the first to see the text of the Constitution (on the 19th, printed in the Pennsylvania Packet). But not until the document had traveled to New York and returned with Congress's blessing, could the legislature authorize a ratifying convention. On the 29th, by express rider, the Constitution arrived back at the State House. With only hours to spare, the legislature set November 6 as the date for elections and November 21 as the start date of its convention. In Georgia a special session of the legislature was called by the governor for September, but it made a quorum only in October. It set December 4 as the date for elections and December 25 as the start date of a convention.

The pattern of eager legislatures and governors scheduling quick elections and conventions was broken in New York, however. For the governor of New York, George Clinton, was a known, if undeclared, adversary of the Constitution. New York waited until January 1788 when the next regular meeting of the legislature was scheduled to convene. The delay was calculated on the governor's part: linger and assess; hope that ratification would fail elsewhere and the issue would just fade away, without offense given or enemies made. But as of January, the results were positive in all states—five of them thus far (see the Chronology below). The issue wasn't going away, and New York would have to declare itself willing or unwilling to call a convention.

As it turned out, opposition to a ratifying convention proved negligible; the only points of contention were whether the legislature's instructions would include a censure of the Philadelphia Convention for having exceeded its authority and whether the right of proposing amendments would be explicitly stated. The motions lost on mostly close votes in both chambers, whereupon both chambers, by comfortable margins, approved the original proposal, which was to schedule elections for April and a ratifying convention for June.

But the citizens of New York, at least those of a literary bent, were not so patient as to wait until spring before being heard on the subject. The newspaper war began much earlier. Opening shots were fired in the summer of 1787 while the Convention still sat. These were of a personal nature with charges of usurpation and demagoguery hurled back and forth.

The more serious fighting arose after arrival of the Constitution in late September. The first entry, writing for the opposition, was "Cato," widely suspected to be Clinton himself. Cato warned against consolidated union on a continental scale, as this would require despotic power at the center to hold the disparate parts together. Effective government over a large territory would threaten liberty, Cato argued, while ineffective government would tempt insurrections destructive of peace. Cato was answered by "Caesar," widely suspected to be Alexander Hamilton, who had started the verbal fisticuffs with an attack on Clinton in July. Caesar prophesied darkly that General Washington would either serve as president of a united country or as generalissimo in a divided one. For if the Constitution failed, the country would split into separate, quarreling confederacies, each prioritizing its own defense against distrusted neighbors. Supporting Caesar were "Americanus," "A Citizen of Philadelphia," "Giles Hickory," "Rough Carver," and "Timon," with essays published mainly in The New-York Daily Advertiser. Supporting Cato were "Cincinnatus," "A Countryman," "A Republican," "Expositor," "Rough Hewer," and "Columbian Patriot," with essays published mainly in The New-York Journal. The moderate middle had its representative in a writer aptly named "Medium." The wits also chimed in, adopting pseudonyms like "Roderick Razor" and "One of the Nobility," and authoring satirical doggerel like the "Newsmonger's Song," which read in part:

Come on brother scribblers 'tis idle to lag,

The Convention has let the cat out of the bag,

Write something at random, you need not be nice,

Public Spirit, Montesquieu, and great Dr. Price

Down, down, down, derry, down.

Talk of Holland and Greece, and of purses and swords

Democratical mobs and congressional lords;

Tell what is surrendered, and what is enjoy'd,

All things weigh alike, boys, we know, in a void

Down, down, down, derry, down.⁶

While partisan skirmishing occupied the lesser combatants, the main battle, involving detailed explication of the text of the Constitution,⁷ was carried on by the three big guns: "Publius," writing The Federalist in support of the Constitution; "Brutus" and "The Federal Farmer," writing eponymous essays in opposition. The big guns supplied the arguments, their minions added the venom.

Preparing for the April election meant taking account of certain political facts on the ground. As of 1788, the settled portions of New York State were divided into thirteen counties (plus one in the process of being organized). The southern counties consisted of New York (Manhattan), Richmond (Staten Island), Kings (Brooklyn), Queens (central Long Island), Suffolk (eastern Long Island), and Westchester (Bronx and above). Upcountry from these, and filling the Hudson River Valley, were Orange, Dutchess, Ulster, Columbia, Albany, Washington, and Clinton (named after the governor and just carved out of Washington at the top of the state but voting with Washington for now). The one, great western county, geographically as large as all the others combined and reaching to the Finger Lakes region, was Montgomery (previously called Tryon after the last colonial governor).

By comparison, the election that month was a tame, if pell-mell, affair. Without formal parties in place, the nominating process was determined on the run. Individuals and citizen groups, hiding behind pseudonyms, published lists of candidates in local newspapers for consideration by readers. Such lists began appearing in February and proliferated thereafter. Some order was imposed in April and in the city, when the Federalist campaign committee, the New York City Federal Committee, offered its own list, promoted by repeated publication, broadsides, and a poetic mnemonic:

Mr. [John] Jay, Col [Alexander] Hamilton, [Richard] Harrison, [Nicholas] Low,

Are honest, good patriots all of us know;

Mr. [Robert] Livingston, [Isaac] Roosevelt, his Worship the Mayor [James Duane],

Will look to your interests with very great care.

Judge [Richard] Morris and [John Sloss] Hobart are true to the cause,

They'll preserve us from ruin by strength'ning our laws.⁸

Endorsement by some of the city's ethnic and trade associations (Germans in the former category, and carpenters and mechanics in the latter) gave the list a semi-official status.

The Anti-Federal Committee, centered in Albany, appended a list of endorsed candidates to its party platform, titled "A Manifesto of a Number of Gentlemen from Albany County," that cataloged the committee's many objections to the Constitution. Ulster County Antifederalists staged a rally in one town and convened a meeting of district representatives in another to settle on its list. Other counties, to varying degrees, followed this pattern.

Dirty tricks were not out of the question: Antifederalists in New York City submitted a counterfeit Federal Committee list with Governor Clinton's name included; and Federalists in Ulster nominated a phony list of Antifederalist candidates to confuse the voters.

Voters cast their votes by ballot (a recent innovation in the state)⁹ for as many candidates as there were delegates allotted to the county. Candidates ran on party tickets.

Voting in late April extended over four days and into early May. Delivery, tabulation, and reporting of the votes extended into early June. The result, once in, was a decisive victory for the Clinton faction, which carried all but four counties and which returned more than two-thirds of the delegates, 46 to 19. No county split its delegation,¹⁰ and the margins of victory were quite high in most. The tally is shown in the table below.