In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3 DeliberationandCivilprocedure 1787–1795  It is an incontrovertible principle in the science of politics that whenever the constitution or government of a state is fixed and established, nothing short of the most pressing necessity should induce a recurrence to the origin of civil and political rights.This is loosening the bands which connect society and ties the arm of the strong from oppressing the weak and the virtuous. It is inviting the usurpations of ambition, and holding out the strongest temptations to the passions of human nature. —Columbianus in the Hudson Weekly Gazette, Sept. 13, 1792 For the Columbian Mercury. Citizen Phinney, The Democratic Society of Canaan far from claiming any unequal and exclusive precedence of censorship and the like: claim only the natural and constructional right of discussion, speaking, writing, etc. which we expressly assert belongs to the people in general and to each in particular equally[. T]o the exercise of this we applied ourselves and invited others, and should be highly gratified if all our fellow citizens would freely and attentivelyexercise it.Our society admits none but Democrats and cannot invite all of that description, for more than a house-full cannot deliberate[. B]ut wewould fondly have others of like sentiment form other Democratic Societies, Aristocrats Aristocratical Societies, and Monarchists Tory Societies etc. And all freely discuss and publish as we do or as they might choose, that the views of each might be made manifest and bear their proper weight with an enlightened and orderly people. . . . —Columbian Mercury, and Canaan Repository of Rural Knowledge, Oct. 1, 1794 It was a damp day in June 1792 when three companies of the Kinderhook militia mustered at a tavern in the Pomponick neighborhood, going through a few drills before the rain began to pelt down. As the men and spectators from Kinderhook and Canaan took shelter, an officer from another company arrived at the muster field and “read off in a loud voice” a series of toasts to the 96 ) The Revolutionary Settlement state and to Governor George Clinton, newly reelected in a close and hotly contested race. He then focused on this controverted election, toasting the “independent electors,” “unawed by the menaces of aristocrats” and the bold verdict of the election canvassers against the legalityof votes sent from Otsego County, not “intimidated by the threats of disappointed faction.” His toasts were marked with cannon fire and cheers and huzzahs from the crowds sheltering from the rain.1 This officer was Lieutenant John A. Van Buren, who had begun his public life with his appointment as an ensign in Abraham Van Buren’s militia company in 1790; he would rise to the command of this company in 1796 and would be a stalwart of the Clintonian-Jeffersonian cause for the next decade. Certainly his sentiments on the Otsego crisis were shared by Abraham and his wider Van Buren relations. The Otsego election crisis of 1792 was a profound test of the evolving civil fabric of the state of New York, as procedures of deliberation , election, and lawmaking settled into a stable post-Revolutionary routine. Between the chartering of the county in April 1786 and the ratification of the constitution of a new federal national government in late July 1788, citizenship was redefined in relationship to both local structures and a new national identity. This redefinition developed in a series of struggles culminating with the contest over the 1792 election. At stakewere the procedures by which consent was manifested in public life, by which the opinion and interest of members of a public were translated into binding constitutional and statute law. As the routines of a new national revolutionary settlement began to emerge along the upper Hudson in the early 1790s, the new privileged centers of a liberal civil society—city, press, associations—had to reach accommodation with and redefine the operating principles of popular and oligarchic politics, Henry Livingston’s Demo and Aristo.2 FACTION AND LEGITIMATE PROCEDURE IN THE NEW COUNTY The oligarchic forces in Columbia County had high hopes for the cause of state retrenchment and continental consolidation in 1786 and 1787, following their victories in the April 1785 election. They gained little in the short term. The 1786 legislature established an emission of paper money through the state’s new loan office, and even Alexander Hamilton’s election to thewinter 1787 house failed to achieve the approval of an impost for the Confederation . The nationalists prevailed in the appointment of Hamilton and Chancellor Robert R...

Share