Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [213]
The ruins of Trinity Church, 1776. (© Collection of The New-York Historical Society)
Perhaps the only really good news was that the Continental Congress had decided to meet in New York pending the selection of a permanent seat for the national government. Congress arrived in the spring of 1785 and took up quarters in City Hall at the head of Broad Street. It was a tight fit: the building already housed the Common Council, the state legislature, and a school. Desperate for space, a rare commodity in the wardamaged city, Congress eventually occupied parts of various other public buildings as well and leased rooms in Fraunces Tavern.
RADICAL RESURGENCE
For the first year or two after Evacuation Day, it appeared that New York’s future in these parlous times, if indeed it were to have a future, would be determined by the same radical Whigs who had been driven out by the British in 1776. Their return to power began when the Council for the Southern District, a provisional government set up by the state legislature for the formerly occupied counties, scheduled Common Council elections for mid-December 1783. Revived by rumors that Tories would attempt to cast ballots—thousands still remained in town, and even conservative Whigs like Robert R. Livingston worried about their intentions—the Sons of Liberty mobilized working people to ensure a substantial margin of victory for radical Whig candidates. Concurrently, a “Committee of Mechanicks” put forward a slate of nominees for the Assembly and Senate elections to be held later that same month. Again there were warnings that Tories might try to participate.
Polling began at City Hall on December 29 and closed a week later, with the Mechanics Committee candidates—including Marinus Willett, John Lamb, and Isaac Sears (who had just moved back from Boston)—winning by a four-to-one margin. Instructions for the new assemblymen soon followed from a committee of “late exiled Mechanics, Grocers, Retailers and Innholders.” The committee, whose members included a tallow chandler, a saddler, and a pewterer, demanded that Tories be explicitly disfranchised and excluded from all “advantages of trade and commerce.”
Early in 1784 the Council of Appointment tapped the rich and conservative James Duane for the job of mayor. At first glance this looked like a setback for the radicals, but they raised no complaint. Duane was a proven patriot, after all, and following his inauguration in February, he demonstrated that he was public-spirited as well by donating money earmarked for the customary entertainment, some twenty guineas, to the poor. A Committee of Mechanics, Grocers, Retailers, and Innholders made a special point of complimenting the new mayor on his good judgment.
Duane’s ability to influence the course of events was limited, in any case. Under the terms of the Montgomerie Charter (reaffirmed by the 1777 state constitution) he presided over the Common Council, the Mayor’s Court or Court of Common Pleas (for civil cases), and the Court of General Sessions (for criminal cases). He was clerk of the markets, he appointed subordinate officials such as the high constable and marshals, and he licensed all butchers, tavern keepers, scavengers, cartmen, and porters. The powers of the Common Council, however, were at least as extensive. It regulated all markets and trades in town. It set the terms under which the mayor granted licenses and made appointments. It also had a fair number of lesser municipal offices at its disposal, and it could change the mayor’s compensation by raising or lowering the various