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By Root 7326 0

the last bastion of Federalist power in New York, the Common Council. Federalists had controlled the council more or less continually since the mid-1780s, thanks in large part to ancient constraints on political participation. Under the city charter, voting in elections for the Common Council was restricted to freeholders owning property worth at least twenty pounds (fifty dollars) and to residents of the city admitted as freemen. In 1790, out of sixty-seven hundred adult white males in New York, only eighteen hundred (28 percent) were qualified to vote in municipal elections. Federalists likewise benefited from the old practice of viva voce voting. Voters in charter elections declared their preferences aloud in the presence of election inspectors; the Federalist-controlled council naturally took pains to see that at least two of the three inspectors in each ward favored that party. The candidates were there too, making careful note of who voted for whom. Journeymen, small shopkeepers, carters—men whose livelihoods might well depend on the patronage of big merchants or successful master craftsmen—needed more than a little courage to stand up for what they believed when doing so could cost them their jobs.

The formal case for changing all this was laid out by James Cheetham, an admirer of Tom Paine who fled England in 1798 and become a political journalist. His landmark Dissertation Concerning Political Equality and the Corporation of New York, published in 1800, argued with clarity as well as conviction that the city charter violated the Spirit of Seventy-six and broke every precept of republican government. The time had come, Cheetham announced, for the popular election of mayors, for secret balloting, and for the extension of the suffrage in municipal elections to every resident who could vote in assembly and congressional elections—by 1801, an estimated 62 percent of adult city males compared to the 23 percent currently eligible.

The political stakes were evident. The excluded body of voters embraced small shopkeepers, mechanics, and journeymen who were by this time overwhelmingly Democratic-Republican; if they took part in charter elections, nothing would save the Federalists from defeat. Predictably, the Federalist council refused all appeals to democratize the charter. When Democratic-Republicans turned to the state legislature for help, Federalists objected strenuously to legislative interference with the ancient “rights and privileges of the Freeholders.” One newspaper writer warned less high-mindedly that liberalizing suffrage requirements would hand the municipality over to “Irishfreemen.” A reform bill passed the Assembly in March 1803, only to be tabled in the Senate.

Then, in the summer of 1803, an audit of the federal attorney’s office in New York revealed the disappearance of some forty-four thousand dollars. The head of that office was Mayor Edward Livingston. Although his own integrity was not in question, Livingston resigned both posts and moved to New Orleans. In his place the Council of Appointment named De Witt Clinton, who only the year before had been sent to the United States Senate by the state legislature. As Clinton told his uncle George, being mayor was the better job because its influence in presidential elections made it “among the most important positions in the United States” (besides, it was worth as much as fifteen thousand dollars a year).

Clinton’s return to New York helped break the deadlock over democratizing the municipal charter. In April 1804 a compromise reform bill passed both houses of the legislature. While rejecting suffrage for all taxpayers, the bill enfranchised twenty-five-dollar renters and introduced the secret ballot into municipal elections. It also defined “freemen” as all freeholders and rentpayers eligible to vote—to all intents and purposes abolishing freemanship as a privilege distinct from the ownership of property. Cheetham hailed the new law as a “Second Declaration of Independence to the Citizens of New York.” And in that year’s more democratized municipal