The Municipal Heritage:

Alternative Roots of Localism in the Colonial History of New York

Phillip Quintero Professor Paul Ross Spring 2011

One of the most effective forces for social and cultural cohesion is representative government. By establishing a process whereby local needs are referred to a central legislature, and whereby central control in turn may be extended outward, representative government encourages both interdependence and a degree of intercommunication among all sections and interests. The benefits of an orderly governmental network were recognized at an early stage in all of the colonies except one.
-Patricia Bonomi1

There is a common rhetoric that characterizes American patriotism. To even be legible as patriotism, an expression must appeal to the concepts that are essential to American national identity. We can glean these concepts from the words of political leaders, and see that there is an appeal to a certain Americanness that is supposed to be both advantageous and unique. In his 2008 inaugural address, Barack Obama spoke, It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of thingssome celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and

Patricia Bonomi, A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 28.
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freedom. 2 The appeal to the anonymous multitude of hard-working American citizens is a ubiquitous trope. Hard-working here is an individuals quality that enables the American identity as self-made and independent. This identity is one that is used quite effectively to nationalize various political conditions. It is invoked as justification for American power and prosperity; i.e., the superlative living conditions in the United States are well deserved if they were earned through hard work. Similarly, in this light national and global economic inequalities are explicable and just. Obama doesnt cite prosperity alone as the result of hard working individuals. Freedom is equally the reward. Freedomin this context understood as the product of the representative democracy through which the American federal republic governs itselfis itself hard work. Twenty-seven years earlier, Reagan said in his inaugural address that, We are a nation that has a governmentnot the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people.3 These contemporary expressions of self-identity and self-esteem are shaped, in part, by the tradition of patriotic rhetoric dating back to the founding of the country. There are countless quotations, which are often repeated, that affirm this. Political leaders are expected to be well versed in the ideas of past presidents. The founding of the nation is a key part of standard American History education. Even The Tea Party rallies of the past several years employ a narrative of returnreturn to a less
2 3

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/obama.asp Accessed May 13, 2011 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/reagan1.asp Accessed May 13, 2011

interpretive reading of the American Constitution, and a return to the republicanism of the Founding Fathers. Take, for example, the image of a sign held up at one Tea Party rally, with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those would not.4 I find the notion that a successful democracy is based on individual qualities to be a troublesome ideal. The idea is and unhelpful one for questions of how democracy can be successful today. The founding of the United States is often called in as a model for emerging polities. Yet, based on the rhetoric describing why America is uniquely successful would suggest that the key is simply hard work. This does little in the way of answering questions of how a community can institute democratic governance, or how in America we can recover some of the democratic spirit that seems to have been quieted in modern times. The problem is that attributing the success of the American model to the characteristics of Americans leaves little room for said model to do any useful work. Perhaps this is unfairmany theorists provide characterizations of American democratic founding that are conceptually much more rich than the superficial reading of patriotic aphorisms that I have just given. Hannah Arendt, for one, considers the founding of the American republic to be an example of the kind of political action that is a prerequisite for political freedom. What she identifies as the atrophy of active political participation can, she hopes, be corrected by looking to the

http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/frugal-blog/frugal-cafe-blogzone/wpcontent/uploads/2009/09/tea-party-signs-marines-democracy.jpg Accessed May 13, 2011
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inspiration of the revolutionary spirit of the founders. She contributes to this in On Revolution by giving her reading of Jefferson, Madison, Paine, and others. While her study does provide a compelling explanation of how the unique intellectual perspective of these revolutionary thinkers led to the implementation of a republican model, I wonder if there are not more concrete historical explanations as well. This paper will conclude with my thoughts about how her study and the one I am putting forth in the paper can complement one another. Thus, in a way, the project at hand aspires to scour empirical sources so as to provide a foil to the most promising contemporary theories of democracy. I will be looking at the history of New York State, which is uniqueparticularly in its commercial heritage and unstable relation to colonial powers. I will be bracketing the histories of New York City and Albany, as they have their own rich particularities that would be well beyond the scope of this paper to discuss, and are often exceptions to the model I will be reconstructing. I will proceed by framing a barebones timeline of sorts, followed by an analysis of structures and procedures, which will in turn enable some level of assessment. The goal, if we can understand New York to be the first example in a line of investigations, is to see what systemic, structural, or material histories might inform the inherited intellectual history I have described to this point.

Settlement
In 1609, Henry Hudson claimed as New Netherland the area that is more or less coextensive with what is now New York, New Jersey, Delaware and

Connecticut.5 A Dutch province, the area was originally settled by a group of traders who secured a charter from the Dutch government as the New Netherland Company.6 English immigrants originally settled parts of Long Island, while Dutch traders first inhabited most other areas. By all accounts, political organization was scarce in the early years of Dutch settlement. 7 Between 1609 and 1621, under the charter of the New Netherland Company, community organization was primarily commercial. Settlements consisted of a few fortified ports connected by a network of isolated trading outposts. There was little to speak of in the way of political life outside of New Amsterdam, and even there political structures were corporate. Colonial government began to take shape in 1621 with the charter of the Dutch West India Trading Company. The Company was given wide-reaching powers, such as the making of alliances, establishment of forts, maintenance of systems of military and civil officers, and responsibility for expansion and settlement. While the Dutch state retained oversight and appointed governors, most affairs were dealt with at the discretion of the director of the company and his selected council of five persons, which, with himself, was to have supreme executive, legislative and judicial powers.8

The history of New York I will be dealing will be limited to its European history. What is now New York was, however, inhabited as early as 10,000 BCE. By 1100 CE, the Iriquois and Algonquin had developed as significant cultures. The relations between the indigenous peoples and the Dutch and English are not unimportantparticularly for analyses of cultural or military histories, but they will not play a part in the present analysis. 6 Albert E. McKinley, The English and Dutch Towns of New Netherland, The American Historical Review, Vol.6 No. 1 (Oct., 1900): 1. 7 All of the historians referred to in this paper agree on this point. 8 McKinley, 2
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Cities and towns continued to be populations concentrated around points of trade, notably the fur and timber trade that ran up and down the Hudson River. Rural areas were owned by a small number of patroons, recipients of land grants from the trading company, who are usually depicted as neo-feudal agricultural lords who set up an aristocratic social structure that would have longstanding influence. Indeed, the aristocratic model is often cited as the determining factor for many of the social and political characteristics that would define NY even through the present.9 Organization consisted exclusively of the Dutch West India Trading Company and the patroons until 1638, when the Dutch government demanded that the company take steps to enable more widespread, individual settlement. This included provisions for opening up trade relations and providing protection for new settlers. This act of the Dutch States General in 1638 properly laid the grounds for local government, after the Dutch model, but this influence was not left to develop uninterrupted. England, which had a longstanding colonial presence to the north in New England, issued a resolution to annex and took control of New Netherland in 1664. There was not much in the way of military resistance from the Dutch. In fact, other than securing the preservation of freedom of religion in the Articles of Transfer, Director-General Stuyvesants surrender was unconditional. The Dutch took the area back by naval force in 1673, and then re-ceded it as they were losing a multi-front
9 A large part of Patricia Bonomis project is motivated by the idea that the influence of the patronaristocratic model is given too much weight in scholarship of the colony.

war in Europe. In 1674 and it was English again, and it stayed that way. I will neglect a deeper discussion of these international disputes to instead focus on the implications for the roots of local government.

Townships, Precincts and Counties

We have identified two key features of New York Colonial history that might inform its local political developments. The first is the commercial heritage of its settlement. The second is the hybrid heritage of English and Dutch models. What is the impact of New Yorks commercial foundation? Jon C. Teaford contends in his 1975 study that, before the 1730s and 1740s the American Borough, like its British ancestor, was primarily a commercial community governed by commercial participants for the service of trade and industry.10 Teaford locates commercial interest as the explanation for a surprisingly wide array of the aspects of local government in the colonies, from size (towns were trade depots more than metropolitan communities) to the electoral process. This latter point is an interesting one. Teaford tells us that in the colonies, By 1600 the municipal corporation generally awarded freeman status only to children of freemen, persons apprenticed in a trade, or those who paid an admission fee. Whereas a political voice in rural Britain rested on landholding, in the [American] boroughs this privilege depended on the commercial property of vocational skill or hard cash.11 This is a slightly different idea than the traditional picture of how class dictates politics. In

Jon C. Teaford, The Municipal Revolution in America: Origins of Modern Urban Government 1650-1825 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975), 16 11 Teaford, 4
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most European countries, land ownership was a prerequisite for the right to vote. Land ownership was likewise a qualification to vote in all 13 colonies at the state level through 1850. The argument generally given for the land-ownership requirement is that citizens should have a stake in the community in order to vote. It is interesting, then, that from a commercial point of view, any sort of capital whether it be skilled labor or cashwas reason enough to be allowed participation. New England, by contrast, did not share this free-enterprise approach to political participation: they brought the traditions of class status with them from the Old World, and residents of the colonial Massachusetts town were classified as proprietors, freemen, and inhabitants. Those without official status were disallowed from holding office, or from establishing permanent residence in a town.12 This suggests to me that experience with political life was more widespread in the towns and boroughs than elsewhere due to the fact that these communities were organized around commercial purposes. It is not only the electorate that was shaped by the commercial bent of New Yorks colonial settlement. Teaford tells us that it was usual for the majority of municipal council membersthe men who drafted Americas ordinances and bylawsto be merchants, and that municipal leaders were generally successful businessmen.13 This is a departure from the more properly English towns of New England, in which many towns began as religious communities.14 Here again, the

Brian P. Janiskee, Local Government in Early America (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 17 Teaford, 25, 26 14 Teaford 35
12 13

entry requirement to participation in governance was more accessible in the colonies than in Europe where rigid class structures and inheritance were dominant factors. The other crucial feature we have identified about New York is the hybrid inheritance of Dutch and English models of local government. Governance before 1691 mirrored that of rural communities in Holland, which is to say rule by appointed council. The colonial directors selected schepens (councilmen) and a schout, which acted much like a sheriff. The schepens both passed acts and ordinances, and sometimes served as court. In such cases, the schout would serve as a prosecutor. Upon annexation, the so-called Dukes Laws of 1665 renamed these positions with their English equivalents of sheriff, mayor, and aldermen, but their duties remained much the same. 15 In this category of relation between political structures implemented by central powers and the bottom-up organization of small communities, there is another difference between what was happening in New York and other colonies. In New England, for instance, until the Town Act of 1636, towns were not recognized by the colonial authorities, and instead were considered parts of larger boroughs, which were tightly managed by colonial directors. Of settlement even after 1636, Brian Janiskee writes, Contrary to the popular image, settlement of the Massachusetts frontier was highly regulated. Adamant in their desire to avoid the establishment of a plantation economy, the founders of the colony constructed a system of land

ibid, 52. Albany and New York City were exceptions that I am bracketing out of the current discussion. They were granted charters that gave them a level of official autonomy, though due to their importance they were in much closer dialogue with the English presence.
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distribution designed to establish a network of small-scale farms.16 Thus both the middle colonies like New York, and the colonies of New England were established with conditions beneficial to localized government. New York, however had neither the political mentality and planning, nor central oversight of the New England colonies. New York, then, is a better example of the republican ideal of limited central government, whereas New England demonstrates a prototypical federal model. Both of these models are reflected in the federal republicanism of the United States.

Localism and State Structure Patricia Bonomi, whose work is still highly useful, concludes from these facts that in the earliest days, local government in New York was a random growth.17 She, however, attributes this to the fact that requests, and then demands, for a colonial legislature [were] shunted aside until the colony was granted its first general assembly in 1691sixty-seven years after the settlement of the colony. Brian Janiskee corroborates her conclusion, telling us that, Prior to 1691, the development of local government grew in fits and starts from an uneven mix of manors, boroughs, towns, precincts, and cities.18 It is interesting that in her impressively researched 1971 work, she attributes the rise of localism to a lackspecifically the lack of formal legislative structures. I find conflicting information regarding this point. First, it is not fully truthful

Janiskee 14 Bonomi, 28 18 Janiskee, 53 citing Bonomi article Local Government in Colonial New York
16 17

to place the first legislative assembly in 1691. For instance, the colonial charter of 1664 established a governing council. However, in 1673, when the colony was recaptured by the Dutch, the assembly was probably disbanded.19 Again in 1683 a constitutional assembly was organized, but the political organization of the colony was overhauled shortly after and in 1685 the colony became a royal province when the Duke of York was crowned King James II. The new king did not approve the new constitution, and the assembly that drafted it did not meet again. So, while Bonomi is correct that the colonial governors frequently denied popular requests for a general assembly,20 and Janiskee is correct that the local settlements of New York had heterogeneous origins, neither of them addresses directly the concrete political foundations when citing the lack of a general assembly as an explanation for the widespread localism. Rather than challenge Bonomi, I bring up this critique in order to clarify what it is she wants out of a colonial legislature, permanent assembly, or representative assembly, as she variously refers to her target. To lend her some more precise language, we can conclude that Bonomi attributes the patchwork character of colonial government in New York prior to 1691 to the lack of a centralized, representative, elected, permanent, democratic body vested with legislative powers otherwise technically belonging only to the royal colonizing power. She reveals her criteria variously with qualifiers like permanent, representative, and central.21

19 I have been unable to locate any record of such an act by the Dutch, but at any rate there is not evidence that significant legislative work was done in NY in these years. 20 Governors Stuyuvesant and Nicolls in 1653 and 1655, respectively (see New York Senate, http://www.nysenate.gov/timeline Accessed May 15) 21 Bonomi, 29

This seems to make sense, as 1691 corresponds to the arrival of Governor Sloughter, and marks the beginning of the uninterrupted state of the colonial assembly through 1776. Nonetheless, the weak legislative continuity does support Bonomis argument that before 1691, localism took root and flourished in all parts of the colony.22 It also strengthens the point I have made about the potential that commercial-minded settlement and political disruption on an imperial scale can be understood as having consequences for local government. Bonomi actually considers this a hindrance to more centralized forms of government that would have been better in later years when a broader vision was required.23 This thought presents a difference to the democraticspecifically republicanthinkers that I have mentioned, both in the colonial period and today, who celebrate localism.

Intellectual Production and the American Revolution

Primary sources of colonial intellectual production before the famed founding fathers are hard to come by, but Jarvis Morse wrote a summary of the materials he had access to in 1942.24 In the article, Morse compiles bibliographic information on people in the colonies who were keeping historical records. He contends that even after the English conquest in 1664, Dutch accounts were more abundant and of superior quality than anything in English records. Of note among these colonial

ibid., 28 Bonomi 39 24 Jarvis Morse, Colonial Historians of New York in New York History: v23:4. October 1942, p.395
22 23

historians is the trend of resistance. In 1650, for instance, a Lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck was removed from public office for espousing the cause of the people agains the misgovernment of the West India Company.25 Earlier, sometime between 1632 and 1644, David Petersen de Vries, a Dutch sea captain, wrote critically of the colonial officials. Morses suggestion that there is a richer colonial record to be found in Dutch than in English is interesting, as it challenges some of the most dominant sources of such material. I suspect this is largely due to the fact that the English-speaking heritage of America tends to favor the English records. One of the most commonly referred-to early descriptions of New York, for instance, is a pamphlet written by the Enlgishman Daniel Denton in 1670. In his Brief Description, which is supposed to be the first printed description of New York in English, is very much an advertisement of the region as a land of natural prosperity and commercial success.26 Dentons account was an attractive one, promising wealth to prospective settlers. Part of the picture painted is one where settlers are free to pursue prosperity privately, without the meddling of the greater authorities. Morse contends that this idyllic account was less informed than the more critical ones posed by the Dutch writers, and we can suppose that Morse thus considers Dentons account less accurate. Another interesting accountand the one Morse considers to be the best from the periodwas written by William Smith over several years. The first volume was

Morse, 397 Denton, A Brief Description of New York Formerly Called New Netherlands in Historic Chronicles of New Amsterdam, Colonial New York and Early Long Island, ed. Cornell Jaray (New York: Ira J. Friedman Inc 1865)
25

26 Daniel

published in 1757. In it, Smith writes of the poor governance in the later colonial years. Particularly, Governors Fletcher (gov. 1692-1697), Cornbury (gov. 1702-1708), and Cosby (gov. 1732-1736), as demagogues.27 This kind of resistance was fomenting long before the infamous rebellion leading to the Revolution. We can also see thatespecially in the later yearsthe appeal to colonial powers was in large part a formality for municipal governance. We can certainly see the formal difference between pre- and post-revolutionary legislation. Take, for example, the lawmaking that accompanied the laying of public roads in Ulster county. In 1771, the power of a precinct commissioner to establish a new open road three rods wide was claimed by virtue of an Act of the General Assembly of this Province of New Yor (sic) Passed in the sixth Year of his Present Majestys Reign Entitled and Act for the Better Clearing mending and further Laying out Public high Roads.28 Even an act passed in response to a petition from citizens of the precinct is possibleformallythrough the autonomy granted to the county commissioners by the general assembly and by will of his majesty. A similar act in 1779, however, claims its legitimacy according to We Commissioners of High Ways for the Precinct of New Windsor, in the County of Ulster and State of New York duely elected, and chosen by a majority of the Freeholders and Inhabitants of said Precinct at their annual town meeting on the first Tuesday in April last past, in pursuance to the directions of a certain Act of the Legislature of the State aforesaid entitled an Act for the better laying out, regulating and keeping in Repair all common and public
27

Morse 407

Records Survey, 1940) p. 27

28 Records of the Road Commissioners of Ulster County, vol.2 1769-1795 (Albany: Historical

High Ways and private Roads, in the Counties of Ulster, Orange, Dutchess, Charlotte and Weschester, Passed the eleventh Day of March 1779.29 The implication here is that the day to day maintenance of local communities was very much autonomous, and by the time these communities were well established, the comings and goings of larger political powers had little effect on them.

Implications for Contemporary Democratic Theory

The History of New York provides an interesting look at the actual, extended founding of our democratic republic. It raises enough questions that similar investigations are merited for the other colonies. Specifically, the empirical information about the effects of commercialism and political instability on the legacy of political localism in New York is a useful complement to theoretical accounts of the merits of democratic republicanism. One of the most interesting trends I see in otherwise-promising political theories is the inability to reconcile the specific democratic principles and practices that are conducive to political freedom with society on a modern scale. Hannah Arendt, John Dewey, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Walter Lippmann, among others, haveas I read themagreed that the most desirable traits of democratic governance are lost in large-scale scenarios. This is why looking to localism is fruitful.

29 ibid., 83

For such theories, it is important to recognize that democratic institutions and forms are not good in themselves, but only to the extent that they provide for political freedoms. The ability to participate actively in collective self-governance becomes more and more difficult as democracies become too large. On this side of the governing structures, growth brings more bureaucracy, representative layers, communication barriers, and conflicting interest. For the citizen, being part of a large democracy makes it unrealistic to be an informed political actorthe amount of time and effort it takes to familiarize oneself with even the most superficial aspects of the contemporary American democracy, for instance, is often a prohibitive cost. To restate the problemthe ideal of political power as the active, informed, enthusiastic sharing of problems and responsibilities among persons living together (broadly construed), seems to be directly opposed to the trends of growing social systems. The consequence is that what we call democracythat collection of ideas and practices in which we place much trust and hopemay either be obsolete or unrecognizable in the face of the inevitable march towards a global society. It is not hard to confirm this trendcorruption, spectacle politics, and growing disenfranchisement are all symptoms. These symptoms are results of (and hard to deal with because of) the large scale of modern democracies. From a theoretical standpoint, one of the most promising solutions to this impasse turns upon the notion of pluralitya notion that finds its way into the writing of most of the theorists mentioned above. The question is, how can a society institute greater political participation from the bottom up? It is in search of a model

of democratic plurality in practice that I share Hannah Arendts interest in the founding of the United States of America. I find that Arendts theoretical writing become clearer and more useful if we understand it through the example of local government. As is well known, Arendt spends many pages extolling the American Revolution in a conspicuously nostalgic mode, lamenting the loss of its noble political spirit. Arendt claims that the American revolutionaries understood the goal of political freedom, which necessitated the formation of a new or rather rediscovered form of government; it demanded the constitution of a republic.30 Arendts notion of plurality is, in my reading, the key feature recommending the American Revolution as a model for the foundation of democracy. It is not readily apparent, however, what she means. Margaret Canovan has done this work for us: [Arendt] means that all human beings are of the same species, and are sufficiently alike to understand one another, but yet no two men are ever interchangeable as individuals, nor are the points of view from which they see the common world ever the same. Each is capable of acting in relation to his fellows in ways that are individual and original, and in doing so of contributing to a network of actions and relationships that is infinitely complex and unpredictable.31 Arendt uses the American founding, as an example where the most impactful political actors and thinkers were aware of the role plurality must play. This, she explains, is why the
30 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1963), 23 31 Margaret Canovan. The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt (J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 1974), 59

revolutionary spirit of the time led to the founding of a stable democratic republic, which, she suggests, may have been a miracle. Arendt illustrates this spirit of revolutionary politics (a spirit I interpret as expressing the recognition of plurality) by referring to the political theory of the Founding Fathers. Thomas Paine, she says, understood the point that, A constitution is not the act of government, but of a people constituting a government.32 Arendt cites the bottom-up nature of the drafting of the Articles of Confederation as evidence here. The articles were vetted through many levels of representative government, down to the municipal level. I would suggest that Arendts analysis stops short here. It is only through empirical investigation that we can identify how this democratic process was possible. In my example of New York, commercial foundations and unstable colonial presence account for the widespread experience with self-governance that enables representative structures such as those used in the drafting of the US constitution. Thus, the democratic spirit Arendt seeks to recover did not begin with the revolutionary thinkers, but was learned by the colonists through the colonial experience. On the level of practice and the erection of institutions, Arendt tells us later on, we may best turn to Madisons argument.33 She is of course referring to the notion of Federalism. The thoughtcontentious at the timeis that the state governments stand to gain power, rather than relinquish it by forming a national government. The fear of adopting such a system was that the new territory was 32 Arendt 136. Arendt is quoting Paine from The Rights of Man 33 Arendt 144

simply too large for republican government. Arendt laments that this fear has been realized in the 20th century due to the founders failure to institutionalize stronger local government, probably on the level of the county as Jefferson suggests with his proposal of ward republics. The ward republic is a democratic local government. It is precisely the kind of political organization that arose from historical conditions like the ones in colonial New York. Indeed, similar mini-republics were wide-spread in New England as well, and their particular conditions bear further investigation. While I am critical of Arendts narrow reading of the sources of democratic foundations in America, I believe her prescription is the right one. The strengthening of local democratic structures and their relation to State and Federal governments is the first concrete step towards fostering political participation. I believe, however, that such theories are in need of specificity, of empirical bolstering. Arendts analysis of the idea of pluralism expresses the same valuesautonomy, participation, vested interestthat I recognize in the bottom-up localism of the colonial history of the state of New York. The structures and practices of colonial political organizations are examples of the kind of democracy that is so often mourned today.