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The Crisis of Authority in the Antebellum States: New York, 1820–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

L. Ray Gunn
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Extract

The American states experienced an extraordinary political transformation in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. For more than a generation state governments had stimulated economic development by subsidizing agriculture and industry, investing in private enterprise, constructing internal improvements at public expense or lending the public credit for such purposes, and granting special privileges to private companies. By the mid-1840's, however, the states had begun to assume a more passive role. Accompanying this withdrawal from economic activity and associated with it was a general restructuring of state political systems. New state constitutions, the most visible evidence of such change, lowered suffrage requirements, stripped legislatures of the appointing power, and extended the elective process to more state offices. They also curtailed legislative authority in economic policy areas by prohibiting certain types of activity; requiring general incorporation laws in place of special charters; establishing detailed procedures for managing state debts and public works; and, in some instances, mandating specific policy actions.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , April 1979 , pp. 273 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1979

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References

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25 New York State constitutions of 1777 and 1821; for a fuller discussion of these themes, see Gunn, L. Ray, “The Decline of Authority: Public Policy in New York, 1837–1860” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1975), pp. 67–109Google Scholar.

26 Figures on legislative experience compiled from Hough, Franklin B., The New York Civil List (Albany, 1855)Google Scholar, and Hutchins, S. C., comp., Civil List … of New York (Albany, 1869)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the theoretical implications of such instability, see Polsby, Nelson W., “The Institutionalization of the House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review, 62 (1968), 144–168CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Harlow, Ralph V., The History of Legislative Methods in the Period Before 1825 (New York, 1927) for a discussion of early legislative structuresGoogle Scholar.

27 This paragraph is based on an examination of New York session laws between 1820 and 1850.

28 New York State Constitution of 1821, Art. V, Sec. 1.

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40 Lincoln, Charles Z., Constitutional History of New York, 5 vols. (Rochester, 1906)Google Scholar, is the best modern account of constitutional revision in the state. Also useful, however, is Dougherty, J. Hampden, Constitutional History of New York State from the Colonial Period to the Present Time, vol. 2 of Legal and Judicial History of New York, ed. Chester, Alden, 3 vols. (New York, 1911)Google Scholar.

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43 New York State Constitution of 1846, Arts. III, VII, VIII. For the debates in the convention see Croswell, S. and Sutton, R., Debates and Proceedings in the New York Convention for the Revision of the Constitution (Albany, 1846)Google Scholar.

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