Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [233]
Second, it was wrong to think that these “diffusive and established characters”—in New York City, this meant the merchant elite—would be unable to comprehend “the interests and feelings of the different classes of citizens.” They had to stand for election, after all, and would always want to pay close attention to the “dispositions and inclinations” of the voters. Also, by virtue of their ties to all segments of the laboring population, merchants had a very clear picture of what was good for the mass of their fellow citizens. Indeed, honest tradesmen knew that “the merchant is their natural patron and friend; and they are aware, that however great the confidence they may justly feel in their own good sense, their interests can be more effectually promoted by the merchant than by themselves. They are sensible that their habits in life have not been such as to give them those acquired endowments, without which, in a deliberative assembly, the great natural abilities are for the most part useless.”
But for many New Yorkers it was a third contention of The Federalist that must have clinched the case: ratification of the Constitution was indispensable to their future prosperity. By giving Congress the exclusive power to regulate foreign commerce, “Publius” declared, the Constitution would permit the United States to extract “commercial privileges of the most valuable and extensive kind” from Great Britain—above all to reopen the lucrative West Indian markets that had anchored the city’s economy before independence. Similarly, allowing Congress to create a navy “would enable us to bargain with great advantage for commercial privileges” in the event of war between European nations; it would also provide employment for seamen as well as for the many artisans engaged in building and outfitting ships. A string of other powers bestowed on Congress—to borrow and coin money, to establish post offices, to fix the standard of weights and measures, to make uniform laws of bankruptcy—would meanwhile remove annoying obstacles to the expansion of domestic markets. The only alternative to ratification, in fact, was national ruin. “Poverty and disgrace would overspread a country which, with wisdom, might make herself the admiration and envy of the world.”
VOX POPULI
By January 1788, when the regular session of the legislature got underway, five states—Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Connecticut—had ratified the Constitution, and conventions were deliberating in several others. After stalling for several weeks, the Clintonian legislature called for a ratification convention to meet in Poughkeepsie in mid-June. The election of delegates would take place at the end of April. Each county would send as many delegates as it had assemblymen. And—in an unusual but noncontroversial move—existing property requirements would be waived so that all free male citizens aged twenty-one and over would be entitled to vote.
During February and March upstate Antifederalists organized a network of county committees that distributed literature, nominated candidates, and aroused voters in anticipation of the election. In New York City, though, they moved hesitantly at best. Public opinion there was running strongly in favor of the Constitution, and news that Massachusetts had ratified in early February was greeted with spontaneous demonstrations and a parade. John Lamb, Melancton Smith, Marinus Willett, and other city Antifederalists finally set up a committee in April, but it stuck to dispatching essays and pamphlets to Antifederalist committees throughout the northeast and didn’t even bother to get up a proper municipal ticket for the Poughkeepsie convention. Most of the key Manhattan leaders put their names up in Ulster, Dutchess, and Queens counties, where they were almost certain of victory. By contrast, the New York City “Federal Committee