New York ratified the Articles of Confederation in 1778, and when Maryland refused to ratify unless those States asserting claims to territory west to the Mississippi agreed to surrender them, New York was the first to do so. But under the leadership of George Clinton, governor in 1777-95, the State jealously guarded its commercial interests. This led to determined opposi tion to the new Federal Constitution. In support of the Con stitution, however, there arose the Federalist party under the able leadership of Alexander Hamilton. When a majority of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had approved of the new Constitution, Hamilton alone of the three New York delegates remained to sign it ; and when, after its ratification by eight States, the New York Convention met at Poughkeepsie (June 17, 1788) to consider ratification, two-thirds of the members were opposed to it. But others were won over by the news that it had been ratified by New Hampshire and Virginia or by the telling arguments of Hamilton, and on July 26 the motion to ratify was carried by a vote of 3o to 27.
The Constitution having been ratified, personal rivalry among the great families—the Clintons, the Livingstons and the Schuylers—again became dominant in political affairs. The Livingstons, piqued at Washington's neglect to give them the offices they thought their due, joined the Clin tons, but the Federal patronage was used against the anti-Federal ists or Republicans with such effect that in 1792 John Jay received more votes for the governorship than George Clinton, although the latter was counted in on a technicality. Jay was elected in 1795 and re-elected in 1798, but in 18o1 the brief Federalist regime in the State came to an end with the election of George Clinton for a seventh term. The Republican leaders straightway quarrelled among themselves, thus starting the long series of factional strifes which have characterized the party politics of New York State. The leaders of the several Republican groups were Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, Aaron Burr, then vice-president, Governor George Clinton and his nephew, De Witt Clinton, who in 1802 was elected United States senator. The first break came in the spring of 1804 when Burr, who had incurred the enmity of his Republi can colleagues in i8o0 by seeking Federalist votes in the electoral college at Jefferson's expense, became an independent candidate for the office of governor against Morgan Lewis. Hamilton's action in counselling Federalists not to vote for Burr just as he had counselled them not to support Burr against Jefferson in 1800, was one of the contributary causes of Burr's hostility to Hamil ton which ended in the duel (July 1804) in which Burr killed Hamilton. Hamilton's death marked the end of the Federalists as a power in New York. New York, whose growing shipping interests had suffered by the Embargo of 1807, was as a com mercial State opposed to the war of 1812 with Great Britain. Politically this opposition had the effect of temporarily reviving the Federalist Party, which secured control of the legislature, and gave the electoral vote of the State in 1812 to De Witt Clinton, whom the Federalists had accepted as a candidate to oppose Madison for re-election on the war issue. During the war New Yorkers served with the regular troops at Niagara, Plattsburg and other places on the western and northern frontiers of the State. For some years after the war political contests in New
York State as in the rest of the country were not on party lines. De Witt Clinton was elected governor and, largely through his efforts, the Erie canal was begun.
election of Martin Van Buren as governor in 1828 marked the beginning of the long ascendancy in the State of the "Albany Regency," a political coterie in which Van Buren, W. L. Marcy, Benjamin Franklin Butler (1795-1858) and Silas Wright were among the leaders. Thurlow Weed, their bitterest opponent and the man who gave them their name, declared of them that he "had never known a body of men who possessed so much power and used it so well." Thurlow Weed owed his early political advancement to the introduction into State politics of the anti Masonic issue (see ANTI-MASONIC PARTY), which also brought into prominence his co-worker W. H. Seward. As the anti-Masonic wave subsided, its leaders and most of its adherents found a place in the newly organized Whig Party which was powerful enough in New York to elect William H. Seward governor in 1838, and to re-elect him and to carry the State for W. H. Harrison against Van Buren in 1840. It was during the first administration of Governor Seward that the anti-rent agitation in the Hudson river counties began. Vast estates in Albany, Rensselaer, Columbia, Schoharie, Delaware, Sullivan and other counties were the seats of disturbance. Besides rent, many of the tenants were required to render certain services to the proprietor, and in case a tenant sold his interest in a farm to another he was required to pay the proprietor one-tenth to one-third of the amount received as an alienation fine. Politically, the anti-rent associations which were formed often held the balance of power between the Whigs and the Democrats, and in this position they secured the election of Governor John Young (Whig) as well as of several members of the legislature favourable to their cause, and promoted the pas sage of the bill summoning the Constitutional Convention of 1846. In the new Constitution clauses were inserted abolishing feudal tenures and limiting future leases of agricultural land to a period of 12 years. The courts pronounced the alienation fines illegal. Under the pressure of public opinion the great landlords rapidly sold their farms. Up to the election of Seward as governor, New York had usually been Democratic, largely through the predomi nating influence of Van Buren and the "Albany Regency." After the defeat of Governor Silas Wright in 1846, however, the Demo cratic Party split into two hostile factions known as the "Hunkers," or conservatives, and the "Barnburners," or radicals. The factions had their origin in canal politics, the conservatives advocating the use of canal revenues to complete the canals, the radicals insisting that they should be used to pay the State debt. Later when the conservatives accepted the annexation of Texas and the radicals supported the Wilmot Proviso the split became irrevocable. Only once between 1846 and the Civil War did the Democratic Party regain control of the State—in 1853-55 Horatio Seymour was governor for a single term. A succession of Republi can governors then held office until 1862 when discouragement in the north with respect to the Civil War brought a reaction which elected Seymour governor.