The Epic of New York City (30 page)

New York City also became the capital of the new nation when Congress convened here on January 11, 1785. For five years the city served as the seat of the federal government, such as it was. At first there was no constitution, there was no president, and Congress sat as a single chamber. The nation was like a crazy quilt of thirteen patches, each of these thirteen states loosely stitched together by the
Articles of Confederation. Jealous of one another and behaving like arrogant little republics, the states tugged in different directions and frayed the slight threads holding them in one piece. Until the federal government was reorganized under the Constitution in 1789, Congress rarely was attended by twenty-five members, although it was entitled to ninety-one representatives.

For some time after the Revolution, blackened bricks and jack-strawed timbers bore witness to the two fires that had ravaged New York while the British held it. Shipping having been throttled, wharves sagged and rotted. Dogs and pigs picked their way through badly paved, poorly lighted streets and fought over garbage, just as the town's 12,000 inhabitants quarreled among themselves. Lawsuits multiplied as people vied for property and trade. Vice flared in the tented area called Canvas Town. As many as 6 criminals were hanged at once from gallows inside a painted Chinese pagoda within City Hall Park.

However, the city's magnificent harbor, its fine business reputation, and its cosmopolitan atmosphere attracted people from the northern part of the state, from New Jersey, from New England, and even from Ireland. Two hundred foreigners were naturalized in New York the first year after the war. The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick was organized by Irish Catholics—and Presbyterians. Unlike the British, eighteenth-century Americans accepted Catholics at face value.

The first priest to officiate regularly in New York was a Jesuit, the Reverend Ferdinand Steenmayer. During the war he donned a disguise, called himself Mr. Farmer, and slipped into the city to minister secretly to Catholics in a house on Wall Street. When the British left, he appeared openly, gathered his scattered flock, and celebrated mass in a loft over a carpenter's shop on Barclay Street, then in the suburbs. In 1784 the state legislature repealed the law of 1700 banning “Papish priests and Jesuits,” and the next year New York's first Catholic church was incorporated. On October 5, 1785, the cornerstone was laid for St. Peter's Church at Barclay and Church streets. By this time 2,000 Catholics lived here.

As Catholic prospects brightened, Trinity Corporation dimmed. The state legislature disestablished the Church of England and put all religious sects on an equal footing. The Revolution had all but extinguished Trinity Parish because most of its clergy and parishioners had been loyalists. A change of name and form seemed necessary, so Trinity became a Protestant Episcopal Church within the Anglican
community, which included the Church of England. But Trinity still owned valuable Manhattan real estate and in time struggled back to power. However, it lost its influence over King's College, which reopened as Columbia College.

Commerce was crippled now by many adverse factors. Trade between New York and the West Indies was cut off by English regulations. American goods could not enter British ports except in English ships. Britain dumped its manufactures here.

Casting about for new markets, New Yorkers sent a ship, called the
Empress of China,
to Canton and opened up trade with the Orient. Then too, Alexander Hamilton established the Bank of New York, the first bank in this city and the third in the nation. Its first home was the Walton Mansion, called the most beautiful house in America and located near what today is the western end of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Chamber of Commerce, born in 1768 and staunchly loyalist throughout the war, was reorganized as the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. A young Scotsman, named Duncan Phyfe, later to become America's best cabinetmaker, labored amid wood shavings as an apprentice to a local coachmaker.

Even as New Yorkers pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, they found time for fun. Incredible though it may seem, buffalo hunts were held in New York City with buffalo imported from Kentucky.

Visiting Europeans marveled at the speed of the city's postwar recovery. Most of the city still lay to the east of Broadway. Pearl Street (then Queens Street) had buildings from four to six stories high along its mile and one-half length. Most new houses were “framed buildings with brick or stone fronts and the sides filled in with brick.” Luxuriously dressed damsels took the afternoon air in painted carriages, flocked to the theater, and doted on dances.

They were the daughters of the landed gentry who now controlled the city. For the time being, land remained the chief source of wealth. Then, in historic progression over the next many decades, economic power passed from landlords to shipping merchants to bankers to railway magnates to industrial trusts. In the era immediately after the Revolution rich property owners tried to prevent the laboring class from having any say in government. Not until 1804 was the city charter amended to allow all male New Yorkers paying twenty-five dollars' rent a year to vote for aldermen. Not until 1833 could these citizens vote for their own mayor.

The situation bred discontent. In 1785 journeymen shoemakers
went on strike, and a General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen was formed. Its members were butchers, hatters, potters, carpenters, masons, tallow chandlers, sailmakers, coachmakers, coopers, rope-makers, stonecutters, tailors, cutlers, tanners, bookbinders, saddlers, bakers, and ship carpenters.

Even though Philadelphia was still the largest city in the country, New York's population doubled between 1783 and 1786. However, in 1788, 1 out of every 7 men in the city was jailed for debt. The next year, at a dinner given by the mechanics' society, loud applause greeted this ominous toast: “A cobweb pair of breeches, a porcupine saddle, and a hard-trotting horse to all the enemies of freedom!” In 1790 only 1,303 of the 13,330 male residents of the city owned enough property to entitle them to vote for governor.

No formal political party existed, the people being loosely grouped into the rich and the poor. Each group had its own idea of what freedom meant. This class struggle colored the question of what kind of federal government Americans should have.

Congress—poorly attended, lacking money, without the means of raising revenue—degenerated into a debating society. A speaker in the Massachusetts house of delegates actually spoke of Congress as a foreign government. The new nation was coming apart at the seams. To avert this catastrophe, our forefathers drafted a federal Constitution, calling for a strong central government. It had to be ratified by nine of the thirteen states before it could become effective. Thorny questions were posed: How could the rights of man be reconciled with the protection of property? Did the Constitution assure government strong enough to save the Union without destroying the states?

The debate over ratification became so intense that two political factions arose. Adoption of the Constitution was urged by the Federalist party, representing the rich and wellborn. This party was led by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and John Jay. The Anti-Federalist party, headed by Thomas Jefferson, drew its strength from the poor and humble. It insisted that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution should be reserved to the states.

Most citizens of New York City favored the Constitution. However, Governor Clinton, a majority of state legislators, and most up-staters preferred a confederation. The entire state bubbled with political fermentation. The campaign for ratification was fought largely in newspapers. On October 27, 1787, New York's
Independent
Journal, or Weekly Advertiser
published the first of a series of articles explaining and defending the Constitution. A total of eighty-five essays were printed, each signed Publius but actually written by three men—Hamilton, Jay, and James Madison. These
Federalist Papers
are considered the most important contribution to political thought ever made in America.

Before enough states had ratified the Constitution to make it the law of the land, the doctors' riot broke out here. In 1788 the town's only shelter for the ill was New York Hospital, a three-story structure atop a small hill west of Broadway between Duane and Reade streets. However, it was still not used as a hospital because British troops occupying it during the war had left the building in a sorry condition. Medical professors from nearby Columbia College had converted two of its rooms into a dissecting laboratory for their students. Human corpses were needed for this work. Although it was illegal to possess any part of a body, the students dug up corpses from city cemeteries—public and private alike. As more and more graves were violated, townspeople hired guards to protect their dead the first few nights after burial. Rumor distorted facts, excitement mounted, and every physician in town fell under suspicion.

Such was the mass mood one April morning in 1788, when some boys began playing in the rear of the nearly deserted hospital. Looking up, one lad saw a huge sausage dangling at a laboratory window. Looking more closely, he realized it was a human arm. With a scream like ripping silk, he fled. The other boys looked, screamed, and ran. Clattering through the streets, they told everyone they met about the fearsome thing they had seen. Soon startled men took up their cry. Individuals clustered into knots, the knots merged into a crowd, and the crowd churned into a mob that marched up the hill to the hospital. The rabble broke in and found that the boys had told the truth.

Enraged men now fell on doctors and students. They tore the laboratory apart. They smashed valuable medical equipment. Respectfully, they scooped up bits of human organs and arms and legs. Staff members were saved from death only by the timely arrival of Mayor Duane, Sheriff Robert Boyd, and other city fathers. For their own safety they were hustled off to jail in City Hall Park. Then city officials persuaded the mob to bury the specimens of human flesh and to disperse. No blood was shed.

The next morning, however, a muttering crowd again gathered
near the hospital. As more and more people arrived, the muttering rose to hoarse shouts. One man cried that the hospital should searched a second time. Another suggested that other cadavers were being used in Columbia College. So the mob swarmed into the hospital. Next, the college was combed. Now someone shouted that corpses were being hidden by doctors in their own homes. Shrieking people fanned throughout the city and broke into private dwellings. Some rowdies passed the residence of Sir John Temple, the British consul general. Mistaking “Sir John” for “surgeon,” they ransacked his home.

That afternoon the mob converged on the jail to chant threats against the physicians and medical students who had found asylum behind bars. Voices roared, “Bring out your doctors! Bring out your doctors!” Frenzied citizens tore down a fence surrounding the jail, smashed its windows, and battered its stout oak doors. They screamed that they would kill every doctor in town. Up scurried Mayor Duane and other officials to plead with the mob, only to be howled down. The mayor then called for the militia. A dozen helmeted musket-carrying militiamen arrived on the double, but the maddened throng drove them back down Broadway under a shower of stones and brickbats. The mayor sent for reinforcements. Eighteen more militiamen responded, faltered, and fell back.

Now the panic-stricken doctors and students at the jail windows hammered at hands trying to drag them to their death. All was turmoil, noise, madness. Alexander Hamilton tried to reason with the mob, but he may as well have debated with a hailstorm. The governor stumbled over his own sword and hurt himself. John Jay, the dignified Secretary of Foreign Affairs, was bashed on the head with a rock. Baron Friedrich Von Steuben, inspector general of the army under Washington, bellowed like a Prussian drillmaster, but without effect.

The mayor, shouting to make himself heard, ordered out a troop of regular soldiers, who marched toward the rioters. Reluctant to shed blood, Duane hesitated about commanding them to fire. More bricks and stones arched through the air. One laid open the baron's scalp. As he fell, he screamed, “Fire, Duane! Fire!” The mayor barked an order. Muskets belched. Bodies slumped to earth. Groans soured the afternoon. Five persons were killed, and about eight wounded. Before a second volley could be fired, the rest of the crowd scattered.

After quiet had been restored, the beleaguered doctors and students were slipped out of prison and sent to the country for a time. The
next year the state legislature passed the first American law regulating the practice of anatomy. Doctors could experiment on the bodies of executed murderers, arsonists, and burglars, but the corpses of respectable citizens had to be left alone. In 1791 New York Hospital opened with eighteen patients; but for years thereafter the place was regarded as a chamber of horrors, and because many mistrusted physicians, people turned to quack remedies.

Meantime, the new federal Constitution was ratified by state after state—but not by New York. Tempers flared as Governor Clinton and his followers dragged their heels. Federalists and Anti-Federalists vilified one another in newspapers and pamphlets, on street corners, and in social gatherings. Local Federalists threatened to secede the city from the state unless New York's constitutional convention took positive action. When New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution on June 21, 1788, New York had either to unite with the majority or to withdraw from the Union.

On July 23 townspeople staged a great parade, honoring the adoption of the Constitution. The procession began at 8
A.M
. and lasted until 5
P.M
., despite showers. Then 5,000 celebrants sat down to an open-air banquet in the Bowery. Three days later New York became the eleventh state to ratify the Constitution.