IN 1609, Samuel de Champlain, a Frenchman, explored southward along the valley of the lake later named for him, and Henry Hudson, an Englishman in Dutch employ, sailed northward up the river later named for him. These two expeditions, occurring within two months of each other and penetrating to points only about 100 miles apart, prefigured a century and a half of struggle for control of a North American empire.
In 1614 Fort Nassau was built by the Dutch on Castle Island, south of the present city of Albany, to serve as a fur-trading post; after it was destroyed by a spring freshet in 1617, a new fort, Fort Orange, was erected on the west bank of the river near the present site of Albany. In 1621 the West India Company came into being. About 30 families, mostly Walloons, were transported in 1624 to New Netherland, as the area was called, and a majority of them formed the first permanent Dutch settlement at Fort Orange. The first substantial settlement on the island of Manhattan was made the following year; and after a fort was built there, the families at Fort Orange were moved down temporarily to enjoy its protection.
In order to encourage colonization, in 1629 the West India Company offered a large estate, or patroonship, in the new colony to each of its members who within four years would settle 50 colonists on the tract assigned to him. The only patroonship to survive Colonial times was Rensselaerswyck, a large area on both sides of the upper Hudson, of which the site of Albany was the approximate center; it was settled by its absentee owner, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, with Dutchmen, Germans, Danes, Norwegians, Scots, and other nationals. The nonresident patroon, through his agents, enjoyed complete suzerainty over his domain and retained ownership of the land, letting it out principally on leases. He financed the settlers and was repaid slowly over a long period. The Fuyck, enjoying the protection of Fort Orange on the west bank of the Hudson, became the principal settlement. A quarrel over jurisdiction was ended in 1652 by the establishment of a new court at Beverwyck, which included Fort Orange and the Fuyck. This tribunal immediately overshadowed and finally absorbed the patroon’s court in 1665. Other settlements in the upstate area were made during the Dutch period at Wiltwyck (Kingston) and several other points along the Hudson, and at Schenectady on the Mohawk. The settlement on Manhattan Island was designated as the city of New Amsterdam and given burgher government in 1653.
The Dutch West India Company, in common with other early trading and colonizing groups, looked upon its colony as a source of dividends. It bound the settlers by contracts that prohibited trade, change of residence, and the transfer of property; and it imposed heavy taxes, including taxes on imports, that discouraged enterprise, aroused antagonism, and insured minimum returns. It shirked all obligations of a social character, throwing on the Dutch Reformed Church the burden of education and care of the sick and the poor. This shortsighted policy, aggravated by the greed and ineptness of its officials in the Colony, brought the company to virtual bankruptcy. The Directors General of New Netherland—Minuit, Van Twiller, Kieft, Stuyvesant—had trouble, much of it of their own making, with the company’s business agents, with the clergy of the Reformed Church, with Van Rensselaer’s agents, with the New Englanders encroaching in Westchester and on Long Island, and especially with their own people, who demanded an effective voice in the government and wider freedom.
In 1664, when Colonel Richard Nicolls at the head of a British fleet demanded the surrender of New Amsterdam, Director General Stuyvesant found himself with little support and was obliged to capitulate. The Province and the principal settlement were renamed New York, Beverwyck became Albany, and Wiltwyck, Kingston. In 1673 the Dutch recaptured the Colony, but in 1674 it was restored by treaty to the English, who promptly resumed their sway.
The terms of surrender in 1664 were highly favorable to the Dutch. Land titles were confirmed, including that of Rensselaerswyck; toleration was granted to the Dutch Reformed and other Protestant churches. Transition to English political institutions was slow; in the Albany district and along the wharves of New York City the Dutch language persisted for generations. In 1683 the Province of New York was divided into 12 counties, two of which, Dukes and Cornwall, later passed to Massachusetts and Maine; the boundaries of Albany County extended north, west, and east without fixed limits. In 1686 charters were granted to the cities of New York and Albany.
The forced abdication of James II and the accession of William and Mary (1688–9) brought discontent to the surface. Following the lead of New England, Jacob Leisler, with strong support from the common people, seized power in New York City and governed, though in Albany his authority was at first not recognized. After the arrival of Governor Sloughter in 1691, Leisler and his chief lieutenant, Jacob Milborne, were hanged for treason; but their names were later cleared in England, and for a generation the memory of Leisler served as a symbol for the discontented.
The war between Britain and France that began in 1689, known in America as King William’s War, was the first of a series of four conflicts that ended in 1760 with the British conquest of Canada. In these wars, because of geography and Indian relations, the Province of New York played a strategic role. In the days when natural waterways were the principal means of transportation, its lakes and rivers, connecting the Atlantic with the Great Lakes, the Mohawk and the St. Lawrence with the Susquehanna and the Delaware, and the Hudson with the Allegheny and the Ohio, made it the great crossroads of the East. The nations comprising the Iroquois Confederacy, which controlled the carries and the headwaters of this far-flung system of water routes, held the balance of power in the struggle. Albany was Montreal’s successful rival in the fur trade, which, together with the routes to the interior, would be controlled by the side that won the friendship or the submission of the Iroquois.
On February 8, 1690, Schenectady was destroyed by one of three French and Indian war parties sent out by Frontenac, governor of Canada. Fearful lest Albany be taken and their western boundaries be opened to attack, in May of that year the English Colonies sent representatives to the first intercolonial congress in New York, at which a plan for military co-operation was made; but only Connecticut and Maryland joined New York in an abortive campaign against Montreal, the New England colonies busying themselves in an equally fruitless expedition by sea against Quebec. The New York legislature, absorbed in its controversy with Leisler, failed to provide adequate defense for the Albany-Schenectady frontier, and the population in that district fell off by a third. Credit for the preservation of the Iroquois friendship in these crucial days is due Peter Schuyler of Albany, who performed heroic service in defending the frontier, in pursuing French and Indian raiding parties, and in counteracting the solicitations of French agents in the Iroquois councils. But after the first French war the English Colonies never enjoyed the unanimous and wholehearted support of the Five, later Six, Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.
After the Treaty of Ryswyck (1697) an important trade sprang up between Albany and Montreal; and the interested Albany and New York merchants were influential enough to stress the policy of neutrality in subsequent defensive wars. New England, which suffered the brunt of the attack during Queen Anne’s War (1702–13)—the American phase of the War of the Spanish Succession—complained bitterly that the French Indians were shooting its people with guns bought in Albany. But Peter Schuyler learned from visiting Indians of contemplated attacks and forewarned New England authorities, and New York contributed its quota of men and money to the abortive expeditions of 1709 and 1711 against Canada.
During the 30 years of peace that followed the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), while the French strengthened their position by constructing a system of fortifications at strategic points, including Niagara (1726) and Crown Point (1731), the English Colonies went their individual ways. New York’s advantage in the contest for supremacy lay in the preference of the Indians for Albany goods in the barter for furs, but that advantage was sacrificed by the direct sale of those goods to the French. In King George’s War (1744–8), which grew out of the War of the Austrian Succession, New York again inclined toward a policy of neutrality, but it took part in the ineffective expedition against Canada in 1746.
During the six-year interval between the third and fourth French wars the trade of the British Colonies and their prestige with the Indians declined further. There was much to alienate the Iroquois: their business as middlemen in the fur trade was spoiled by the commerce of the western tribes directly with Montreal, made possible by the Albany trade with the French merchants; France seemed to have the upper hand in a military sense; the long sojourn of the Joncaires, father and sons, among the Seneca had won that strong nation’s friendship for the French; and the English were neglecting to send the Indians the customary gifts. The Albany Congress of 1754 was called in an effort to secure united Colonial action and to conciliate the Iroquois, but failed to do either. Like Peter Schuyler in the earlier period, during the last two French wars Sir William Johnson possessed the confidence of the Iroquois and was able to keep them active in the British cause, or at least, in the darkest days, neutral.
The French and Indian War, the last British-American conflict with the French, begun in 1754 with the clash at Great Meadows, was marked in 1755 by Braddock’s defeat and the failure of expeditions against Niagara and Crown Point. Though he did not take Crown Point, Sir William Johnson succeeded in holding the Lake George area by defeating Dieskau, for which achievement he was made a baronet and presented with £5,000 by Parliament. By taking Oswego and gaining control of the Great Carrying Place (the site of Rome) in 1756, the French dominated the important Mohawk River-Oneida Lake waterway. After these reverses all the Iroquois became neutral, with the exception of the Mohawk, who were kept loyal to the English by the efforts of Sir William Johnson. After Montcalm captured Fort William Henry and hostile Indians made successful raids on the English frontier in 1757, it required all of Johnson’s influence to keep the Iroquois from going over to the enemy.
The year 1758, with William Pitt in power, proved the turning point in British affairs in North America. Encouraged by Pitt’s promise of reimbursement, New York raised its quotas of men and money. The train of disasters was completed by Abercrombie’s failure to take Ticonderoga (July 8), but in the same year Bradstreet with little effort captured Fort Frontenac (August 27), on the site of Kingston, Ontario. That victory enabled the English to establish themselves at Fort Stanwix (Rome) and revived the confidence of the Iroquois. As in a dramatic tragedy, once the climax was passed, the events of the dénouement piled up rapidly. In 1759, while Wolfe was taking Quebec, Amherst compelled the French to abandon Ticonderoga (July 26) and Crown Point fell to his hands (July 31), while Johnson captured Niagara (July 25) and reoccupied Oswego. In 1760 Amherst took La Galette, now Ogdensburg, and at Montreal accepted the surrender of all Canada to the British. In a council at Detroit in 1761, Johnson persuaded 13 Indian tribes formerly allied with the French to sign a treaty with Britain. Though peace was not signed in Europe until 1763, for New York the menace of the French and the Indians was over, and the Province was ready to begin its rapid progress to pre-eminence.
During the English period the Colony developed slowly. The Dutch occupied the Hudson and spread into the Mohawk Valley; English from New England settled along the east bank of the Hudson; Scots and Scotch-Irish settled on the west bank, in Cherry Valley, in northern New York, and in the vicinity of Johnstown, to which they were attracted by Sir William Johnson. In 1677 a small party of Huguenots settled New Paltz; in 1689 another group founded New Rochelle. The Palatines, comprising the largest mass immigration of the English period, came first to the Hudson Valley to produce naval stores, but with the failure of that enterprise many of them finally settled in the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys. In 1760 the frontier settlements extended to about 40 miles north of Albany along the Hudson and about 80 miles west of Albany on the Mohawk. In that year New York ranked seventh in population among the thirteen Colonies.
Historians give three chief reasons for this retarded growth. The threat of French and Indian raids prevented expansion northward and westward; the Iroquois showed their displeasure at every effort to appropriate more of their land; and the prevalent system of large estates, with long-term leases preferred by the manorial lords to outright sales, discouraged settlement by immigrants to whom independence meant above all ownership of the soil they plowed.
WHITEFACE MOUNTAIN FROM COPPERAS POND
Photograph by Roger L. Moore
Photograph by E.M. Newman from Wide World Photos, Inc.
NIAGARA RIVER, RAPIDS AND FALLS (American Falls, left; Horseshoe Falls, right)
Photograph by Milton J. Washburn
HUDSON RIVER FROM BEAR MOUNTAIN
Photograph by courtesy of the New York Bureau of State Publicity
Photograph by Fred T. Loomis
Photograph by the Woodward Studio
Photograph by courtesy of the New York Bureau of State Publicity
Photograph by Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc.; courtesy of American Automobile Association
ROLLING FARMLAND, MONROE COUNTY
Photograph by Josef Schiff
Photograph by Roger L. Moore
Social and economic organization still reflected the medieval inheritance. The manor was an almost self-sufficient unit, its basic agriculture supplemented by handicraft and the importation of indispensable goods; the leaseholder paid his rent in kind, and was influenced by a personal loyalty to the lord of the manor that was transmuted by the latter into political power; and the manor house was the social center of the community, in which the humble leaseholder vicariously lived a fuller life. Labor was regularly hired by contract for a term of years, and the custom of apprenticeship was widely followed. In the cities, keeping shop and practicing trades were limited to freemen; ‘freedom’ could be purchased, the cost to merchants being about double that to tradesmen and handicraftsmen; apprentices to freemen were admitted by registration. Negro slaves made up more than 10 per cent of the population.
In the light of subsequent Revolutionary history, the most significant aspect of the political life of the Provincial period was the struggle for supremacy between the governor, representing the prerogative of the Crown and usually supported by the council, and the assembly, representing Provincial interests. It was not at the time a struggle for democracy but rather an effort by the Provincial aristocracy to achieve political power and by Provincial business and commerce to avoid taxation and throw off the restrictions of the mercantile system. The issue was settled by control of the public purse strings. At the end of the period the assembly had established a body of precedents that gave it control of finance and established it as the dominant element in the Provincial government.
It is not necessary to rehearse the conflicts between imperial policy and local self-interest and between British and Colonial theories of political rights, nor the series of specific clashes, that culminated in the American Revolution. In New York, as in other Colonies, the situation was complicated by the effort of the propertyless class—mechanics, laborers, and tenant farmers—to bend events toward the realization of a higher economic and social level for themselves, and, at the other extreme, by the presence of a large number of Loyalists who, while willing to plead with the Mother Country, refused to follow the Patriot party into armed rebellion. About 40,000 Loyalists left the State during and after the Revolution.
The steps involved in the actual accomplishment of revolution—the establishment of an effective insurgent government and the administration and financing of the war—were undertaken by a system of local committees. These appointed delegates to a Provincial convention, which in turn sent representatives to the Continental Congress. Until the establishment of State and local governments, the committees ‘had to enact law and enforce it, perform judicial and police duties, suppress the Loyalists, raise funds, recruit soldiers, furnish military supplies and perform a thousand other duties.’
On July 9, 1776, the Provincial Congress of New York, meeting at White Plains, ratified the Declaration of Independence, and on the next day named itself ‘the Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York.’ The first State constitution was adopted and proclaimed in Kingston on April 20, 1777. That document represented a victory for the aristocratic group of the Patriot party in that it set up property qualifications for the franchise. George Clinton, chosen by the ballots of freeholders, took the oath of office as first governor of the State on July 30; and on September 10 in the Kingston courthouse the House of Assembly of the State of New York began its initial session. In the interval affairs were administered by an extralegal Council of Safety. Local governments were set up under the supervision of the Revolutionary committees.
In the military history of the Revolution, New York State bulks large: ‘. . . out of the 308 battles and engagements of the Revolution, 92, or nearly one third, took place on New York soil.’ In the spring of 1775 Ethan Allen captured Ticonderoga, Seth Warner took Crown Point, and Arnold made a dash on St. Johns, Canada. The artillery captured at Ticonderoga was transported by General Knox to Boston and enabled Washington to drive the British from that city. Later in the same year Montgomery took Montreal. In the unsuccessful attack on Quebec on December 31, 1775, Montgomery was killed and Arnold was wounded.
In 1776, in the northern part of the State, Carleton defeated Arnold in the Battle of Valcour Island (October 11), one of the first engagements between a British and an American fleet, and thereby regained control of Lake Champlain, but failed to take Ticonderoga. In the southern part of the State, Howe drove Washington from Long Island and Manhattan and followed him northward. After the Battle of White Plains, Howe captured Fort Washington. Thereafter the scene of the campaign shifted to New Jersey. The British held New York City until the end of the war.
Under the British plan of campaign for 1777, Burgoyne was to move south along Lake Champlain and the upper Hudson; St. Leger was to land at Oswego, take Fort Stanwix, and march down the Mohawk Valley; Howe was to ascend the Hudson from New York City; and the three forces were to meet at Albany, thus establishing control over New York and separating New England from the other Colonies. St. Leger was halted at Fort Stanwix (Rome) and settled down to a siege. On August 6, General Herkimer and his Tryon County militia, marching to relieve the fort, were ambushed at Oriskany, six miles east, but held the field against a Loyalist, British, Hessian, and Indian force in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. On the same day Colonel Marinus Willett made a bold sortie from Fort Stanwix into St. Leger’s camp. This successful resistance, together with the arrival of reinforcements under Arnold, caused St. Leger to raise the siege on August 22 and retreat to Oswego. Arnold was left free to join in the campaign against Burgoyne.
Burgoyne moved south along Lake Champlain in June, took Ticonderoga (July 6), and advanced to Skenesborough (Whitehall) at the head of the lake. His continued advance was slowed by his heavy baggage trains and by Schuyler’s strategy of obstructing the road by every possible means. During the delay the defending force was strengthened by thousands of volunteers, especially after the murder of Jane McCrea (see Tour 22). At Walloomsac, in the Battle of Bennington (August 16), Stark defeated two detachments of German dragoons on their way to take the supplies stored at Bennington. In the first Battle of Saratoga, at Freeman’s Farm on September 19, the British held their ground; but in the second battle on October 7 they were defeated, largely by an assault, in defiance of orders, led by Benedict Arnold and powerfully supported by Daniel Morgan’s sharpshooting riflemen. Burgoyne fell back to Schuylerville, where, finding his retreat cut off, he surrendered on October 17.
In the meantime Howe, not having received specific orders to move up the Hudson, went south to take Philadelphia. Sir Henry Clinton started up the Hudson on October 3 and advanced as far as Kingston, which he burned on October 16; but his messages to Burgoyne were intercepted, and, upon hearing of Burgoyne’s surrender, he returned to New York.
Within 24 hours after receiving the news of Saratoga, the French Government decided to come to the aid of the Colonies and to declare war on Great Britain.
The years 1778 and 1779 saw a deadlock between Washington, defending West Point, and Clinton, holding New York City, neither strong enough to attack the other. The events of those years in New York took place on and beyond the frontier. In 1778 Loyalist and Indian bands under Sir John Johnson (Sir William’s son), John Butler and his son Walter, and Joseph Brant—names that are to this day anathema to central New York State residents—raided a number of frontier settlements. In 1779 the carefully planned Sullivan-Clinton campaign, a punitive expedition into the central and western Iroquois country, struck a blow at the Confederacy from which it never fully recovered, though in 1780 retaliatory raids were made in the Schoharie and middle Mohawk Valleys. On October 25, 1781, six days after Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, Willett checked a combined force of British, Loyalists, and Indians in the Battle of Johnstown. In the pursuit after the battle, on October 30, Walter Butler was killed.
Following the surrender of Cornwallis, Washington made his headquarters at Newburgh until after the peace was signed. Here he rejected a crown offered him by a military faction, and here he prevented an uprising by the disgruntled Army. In the intervals he found time to make a tour of the battlefields in the upper Hudson and Mohawk Valleys and to invest in New York real estate. On May 6, 1783, he met with the British commander to plan the evacuation of New York; on November 25 he marched into the city.
The final act of the drama in which a unified Nation was molded was the adoption of the Federal Constitution. In New York the sharp conflict between the Clintonian faction, opposed to ratification, and the Hamiltonian faction, in favor of it, reflected the clash of interests between tenants and their manorial lords, between workers and their employers, and between the agricultural back country, which preferred State autonomy, and the city with its dominant commercial interest, which desired a strong central government to support commerce and provide a sound currency. The campaign for election of delegates to the ratifying convention was the occasion of the writing of the Federalist papers by Hamilton, Jay, and Madison. Two thirds of the delegates, elected by universal free male suffrage, were committed to vote against the Constitution; but the Federalists were aided by the march of events. The convention met in Poughkeepsie in June 1788. After New Hampshire ratified as the ninth State, and Virginia as the tenth, the fear of losing the lucrative trade with the other States, of the possible secession of the southern New York counties, and of having land claims in the present State of Vermont invalidated by the Federal Government, swung the convention over to ratification. The final vote, after more than a month of bitter debate, was 30 to 27. Four delegates, including Clinton, failed to vote.
After the Revolution, settlement extended northward and westward. The menace of the Indians was gone; the State purchased the titles to their lands and sold them to speculators: land speculation became the favorite form of financial gambling. In 1789–90 the Military Tract of more than 1,500,000 acres east of Seneca Lake, reaching from the southern tip of that lake to the shore of Lake Ontario, was set aside for Revolutionary veterans; but many of them sold their allotments to speculators. The classical names assigned to the townships of the Military Tract form a well-known characteristic of central New York.
Title to the western area of the State was disputed between New York and Massachusetts. By the Hartford Treaty of 1786, Massachusetts was awarded ownership and New York jurisdiction of the land west of the Pre-emption Line drawn through Seneca Lake. In 1788 Massachusetts gave two speculators, Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, an option on the entire tract; but they obtained Indian title to only the land east of the Genesee River and about 200,000 acres on its western shore up from its mouth, and surrendered their option on the rest. They sold a large part of their holdings in 1790 to Robert Morris of Philadelphia, who resold it to the London Associates, headed by Sir William Pulteney. Morris bought the remaining land from Massachusetts in 1791 and sold all but a tract along the Genesee River to a Dutch group known as the Holland Land Company, which became the proprietor of about 3,300,000 acres in western New York. After Indian title was obtained in 1797, the company sent surveyors under Joseph Ellicott to mark out townships, and sales began at the land office in Batavia in 1801.
In the North Country the Macomb Purchase, 1791, including nearly 4,000,000 acres, was soon divided into smaller tracts. The Delaware, Susquehanna, and Champlain Valleys, and the territory north and south of the Mohawk River were taken up by innumerable small purchases.
A few pioneers had settled on some of these lands immediately after the Revolution, but once clear titles were available the migration took on the proportions of a stampede. A large majority of the settlers came from New England by way of the Mohawk and Cherry Valley routes, transporting their belongings—many now treasured in historical museums—by water and in large, boat-shaped covered wagons. Some came up the Delaware Valley from New Jersey, others up the Susquehanna from Pennsylvania. Eastern New Yorkers in large numbers sought their fortunes on the new western lands; and when the Holland Tract was opened up, some moved from central New York for a fresh start. New Englanders, French Canadians, and French émigrés settled the North Country.
The years just preceding and following the turn of the century were New York’s frontier period. Many of the trail blazers, some of whom have become part of local folklore, moved farther west before the wave of permanent settlers. Clearings were made in the forests, log cabins were erected, and the land was brought under the plow. Gradually the clearings were enlarged and the homes improved. The New Englanders built villages in the image of Lexington and Concord. Churches were formed; schools were erected, then academies were organized, and finally colleges were founded. By 1820 the population of the new settlements totaled 500,000, and that of the State 1,372,812, representing an advance since 1790 from fifth to first place among the States.
In the first years the new settlers could produce no more than enough to meet their own needs. Then the demand for supplies during the War of 1812 brought a period of prosperity, for which trade with the enemy was responsible in a substantial degree.
Most of the land fighting of the War of 1812 occurred along the Canadian border within the State. Repeated invasions of Canada failed because of the inefficiency of troops and their commanders, aggravated by the difficulties of co-operation between the State militia and the National Army. In 1813 the Americans burned York (Toronto), and the British burned Lewiston, Black Rock, and Buffalo; but the end of the war found the opposing armies holding almost their original positions along the Niagara frontier. The British attack on Plattsburg (September 11, 1814) was turned back by Macdonough’s naval victory on Lake Champlain.
Long before the War of 1812, the need for improved means of transportation was recognized, and by the time of the war the construction of turnpike roads was in full swing. But the war provided vivid proof that land haulage was too costly: it cost $400 to haul a gun weighing about three tons from the place of manufacture to Sackets Harbor. Prohibitive transportation rates made it impossible for farmers in the Finger Lakes and Genesee Valley regions to compete with those along the Hudson and the Mohawk. Without an available market for its products, western New York was retarded in its development. Surplus grain was turned into the more portable form of whisky, of which large quantities were consumed on the spot. Crop surpluses were also used to raise livestock, and for a period of years drovers clogged the turnpikes with herds bound for the slaughterhouses of Albany and New York. The commerce of the central and western parts of the State followed the natural waterways to market—down the Delaware to Philadelphia, down the Susquehanna to Baltimore, and down the St. Lawrence to Montreal. Farsighted leaders like De Witt Clinton saw that a canal connecting the Hudson with the Great Lakes would provide relief for the western farmer and, by deflecting the commerce of the area down the Hudson, would make the State an economic unit and raise New York City to commercial pre-eminence. But when the bill authorizing construction of the Erie Canal was up for passage in 1817, the representatives of the city in the legislature, uninterested in ‘upstate’ improvements, voted against it as one man. The bill, however, was passed, the canal was dug, and the stream of commerce thus stimulated became the decisive factor in determining the rapid growth of New York City. Before the canal was opened in 1825, the cost of hauling a ton of freight from Buffalo to New York City was $120; on the canal it was reduced to $14.
The canal and its feeders created a strong economic bond between the eastern and western sections of the State to the profit of both. The drastic reduction in transportation costs opened the eastern market to western grain, and a prosperous west bought the products of eastern factories, to which more capital was steadily drawn. Inland ports grew up along the canal, serving as transportation and shopping centers and providing local markets for agricultural products.
As the influence of the canal extended beyond the borders of the State and accelerated the development of the Great Lakes region, especially Ohio, midwestern grain entered the eastern market and New York farmers turned to dairying, truck gardening, and fruit-growing; and the cities, aided by inventions, available capital, an adequate labor supply, and access to power sources and markets, became industrial centers.
The railroads, extending their lines in the years following the completion of the canal, hastened the process of change; the Erie reached Lake Erie at Dunkirk in the fifties, supplying the Southern Tier with modern transportation for its products to New York City.
By 1850 the State had achieved a pre-eminent rank in industry and commerce and was still among the leaders in agriculture. In that year ‘New York possessed one seventh of the true valuation of the property of the whole country.’
The twenties, thirties, and especially the forties (the period of the Great Irish Famine and abortive revolution on the continent) were marked by a large foreign immigration, principally Irish and German. The former dug the canals, then remained to build the railroads, and finally settled in large numbers in the urban centers. The Germans provided skilled workers and professional people and became a stimulus to an expanding cultural life.
Coincident with this economic development arose a struggle for political democracy. The Revolution and the ratification of the Federal Constitution left the landed aristocrats and commercial princes in power, and political leadership was largely identified with names like Van Cortlandt, Schuyler, Livingston, Hamilton, Jay, Morris, Van Rensselaer, and Clinton. The Hamiltonian principle of government by the propertied class for the protection of property prevailed, and the franchise was accordingly limited by property qualifications. But democratic doctrine had been rapidly gaining strength, especially in the newly settled western and northern counties and among the mill and factory workers of the cities. The constitution of 1821 represented substantial progress toward universal male suffrage, and the subsequent series of democratic reforms was completed by the constitution of 1846, which provided for direct election to high State executive and judicial offices. Other evidences of the growth of the democratic spirit were the gradual abolition of slavery; the organization of a Working Men’s Party that demanded a mechanics’ lien law, abolition of imprisonment for debt, and universal education; and the antirent wars, in which leaseholders on the large estates resorted to force in resisting the feudal inequities of the leasehold system of land tenure.
The same period was characterized by an epidemic of reform movements concentrated in central and western New York and probably attributable to the New England antecedents of the population. A strong antislavery sentiment expressed itself in political organization and in the activities of the Underground Railroad. The woman’s-rights movement began in Seneca Falls. Temperance societies multiplied rapidly in the twenties and thirties, and total abstinence was endorsed by the State temperance society in 1835. The anti-Masonic movement was another western growth. And a number of novel religious sects, including the Mormons and the Millerites (Seventh Day Adventists), sprang up.
The detailed history of the political strife of the period is characterized by the multiplication of factional groups brought about by conflicts of personalities, interests, and issues. The robust nature of the politics is suggested in the names of the factions—Coodies, Bucktails, Hunkers or Hard Shells, and Barnburners or Soft Shells. The Native American Party gave expression to antiforeign, anti-Catholic sentiment in the State, caused mainly by the economic pressure arising from the new immigration. The anti-Masonic party developed in the western counties out of the disappearance of one Morgan, who had threatened to expose the secrets of the order. In the Albany Regency and in the political leadership of Thurlow Weed, New York State gave the country early examples of the thorough efficiency of the modern political machine based on patronage. The Tweed Ring, the Canal Ring, and the Railroad Lobby were active in Albany.
Its population and wealth made New York a pivotal State in national elections, enabling it to play a significant role in national politics. By 1850 it had given the Nation two Presidents, five Vice Presidents, and many cabinet officers and ambassadors. The slavery issue in the Civil War period crystallized political lines into the present Republican and Democratic Parties. To the Union cause in the Civil War New York State contributed its full share of men and money: the total number of New York troops engaged was nearly 500,000, of whom about one tenth were killed.
In the Civil War period industrial capitalism was introduced, with machine production, absentee ownership, corporate management, and the wage laborer. The railroads brought the raw materials to the industrial centers and carried away the finished products; the canals declined in importance, and many an inland port, once bustling and prosperous, became a sleepy milk station and a Saturday-afternoon shopping center for farmers. The factories attracted young people from the country, and the cities grew rapidly at the expense of the rural areas. Later, as the heavy industries moved closer to the sources of raw materials, New York State turned to the manufacture of intermediate products and consumers’ goods. In the recent past the State gained new industries resulting from scientific advance, especially the production of radio equipment, electrical supplies, chemicals, and airplanes. New York City became the center of the Nation’s banking, finance, and wholesale and retail merchandising; and Wall Street became the barometer, and to a growing extent the control center, of the Nation’s business. In recent years the city has developed into the greatest seaport in the world. While agriculture in the State remained economically important, its character changed: cultivation of grain was superseded by dairying and the growing of fruits and vegetables for markets close at hand. Thus the wealth of the State today, unsurpassed in the Union, is securely founded on eminence in specialized agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce.
Urbanization and industrialization created problems that became the political issues of the post-Civil War period. In the late seventies bad harvests in Ireland drove thousands of Irish to New York. In the eighties began a stream of immigration, ending only with the World War, that brought new racial elements in large numbers to the State—Italians, Poles, Russians, and others, all from southern and eastern Europe—and that created new problems in economics and citizenship. The growing cities needed workers to lay streets, sidewalks, and sewers and to construct water, light, power, and rapid transit systems. Politicians in control of political machines were able, in granting contracts and franchises, to enrich themselves by betraying the public interest to the contractor or the public-utility promoter. Through the boss, Big Business controlled politics. The temptation of proffered graft was too strong to be universally resisted by elected representatives. Tilden achieved national renown, and all but won the Presidency, as a result of his exposure of the Tweed Ring and the Canal Ring. Conditions reached such a pass that a reputation for honesty and steadiness in local administration was sufficient, as in the case of Grover Cleveland, to place a public figure in the White House. Charles Evans Hughes first attracted wide public attention as a result of his investigations into gas and electricity rates and the financial practices of insurance companies.
In the World War, New York State contributed to the military and naval service more than 500,000 men, about 10 per cent of the entire national force. The number of casualties was about 55,000, including 14,000 deaths. Its financial and industrial contributions were commensurate with its wealth.
In the twentieth century the rapid development of machine industry and the recurring cycle of prosperity and depression gave emphasis to another set of social problems: women and children in industry, conditions of work in factories, workmen’s compensation, the rights and duties of organized labor, unemployment insurance, and old-age security. In many of these fields New York State legislation has served as a model for other States. The same period saw a rapid extension of State activity and support in the fields of roadbuilding, education, conservation, and the care of its wards in penal institutions and asylums. Through its financial policy of offering grants-in-aid to local units for schools, highways, and public welfare, the State has been able to secure adoption of its standards by local governmental bodies. State expenditures increased from $59,000,000 in 1916 to $396,000,000 in 1938–9; but its credit has remained strong throughout the years of depression.
Early efforts to regulate public utilities by special legislative acts failed. The principal activities of the Public Service Commission in recent years have been regulation of gas and electric rates and of bus lines and elimination of railroad grade crossings. The problems of determining a just valuation of utility property as a basis for rate-making purposes and of exercising an effective control over holding companies are still largely unsolved. Public ownership as a substitute for regulation in New York State has largely been restricted to waterworks; some of the smaller cities, notably the city of Jamestown, Chautauqua County, own their electric generating and distributing systems.
In the determination of policy in regard to the State’s water-power resources the issue was clear-cut between State development and operation, espoused by Governors Alfred E. Smith, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Herbert H. Lehman, and private development under State supervision, supported by the Republican majorities in the legislature. In 1930, after a long struggle, possession of the State’s water power was reserved to the people; but the issue was reopened by the constitutional convention of 1938. The campaign for the development of the potential power of the St. Lawrence River has not yet been brought to a decision.
As it extended the sphere of its activities, the State government expanded into an unco-ordinated mass of bureaus and departments without centralized responsibility; and reorganization became another issue. The political conflict was complicated by opposition between the metropolis and the upstate area and by the demand for city home rule. The present system of representation, adopted in 1894, prevents New York City, though containing more than half of the population of the State, from securing a majority in the legislature. In 1927, largely as the result of the efforts of Governor Alfred E. Smith, all administrative functions were consolidated in a small number of departments, with final responsibility in the hands of the governor; in 1929 the executive budget system was instituted, with responsibility again vested in the governor. Since 1938 the governor is elected for a term of four years. On November 8, 1938, Governor Herbert H. Lehman was re-elected to serve the first four-year term in the history of the State.
National interest in New York politics is always large; the governor of a State that has 47 votes in the Electoral College is always a potential candidate for the presidency. In recent years this national interest has been increased by the careers of Governors Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both men fought for popular programs—Governor Smith for reorganization of the State government, workmen’s compensation, a six-day week for all workers, health insurance, improved hospitals and penal institutions, a better and larger State park system, and repeal of the prohibition amendment; Governor Roosevelt for old-age pensions, reform of local government and the courts, relief for agriculture, and public control of hydroelectric power: and the opposition of one or both of the houses of the legislature, Republican-controlled, served as a sounding-board to arouse Nation-wide interest in these programs and their sponsors. The administration of Governor Herbert H. Lehman has followed the same pattern, with, however, a more circumspect opposition from the Republican Party.
The history of the State of New York illustrates the history of the Nation in all its stages; in some aspects the history of the State is well nigh coextensive with that of the Nation. The mingling of the peoples of the world; the development from wilderness to metropolis; the baptism of war; the conflicts of politics; internal improvements and revolutions in transportation and communication; the trend away from agriculture to manufacturing and commerce, though with agriculture retained as a basic activity; the growth of corporations and the multiplication of new industries; the domination of finance and the spread of foreign commerce; the ever-widening responsibility of government in social welfare; and the achievement of cultural self-consciousness and self-expression—in all these aspects the history of New York comprises a large and important share of the history of the Nation. One of 48 politically equal States, ranking twenty-ninth in area, New York in 1929 contained 10 per cent of the country’s population and more than 12 per cent of its wage-earners, and made 14 per cent by value of its manufactured products. It is the Nation’s greatest financial, mercantile, and cultural center. It lives up to every connotation of the name given it by common consent—the Empire State.
