De Witt Clinton and the Rise of the People's Men

Graham Adams, Jr., is a professor of American history at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick.

Politics in the United States began with two opposing parties: Alexander
Hamilton’s Federalists and Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans. By 1800,
the Republicans had triumphed so decisively that they reduced the
Federalists to a permanent minority status. Yet new economic, political,
and cultural forces that arose during the early decades of the 19th
century eroded Republican supremacy and ushered in a second American
party system—this one dominated by Jacksonian Democrats and Whigs.
Craig and Mary Hanyan examine New York State during this period of
transition.

Regular Republicans controlled New York politics. Championed by U.S.
Senator (and later President) Martin Van Buren, they favored the
interests of farmers, mechanics, and artisans, and practised
well-disciplined party regularity. While they extended the franchise to
include most white males, they nevertheless insisted that selection of
presidential electors remain exclusively in the hands of the state
legislature.

Dissident Republicans, known as the People’s Men and led by former
Governor De Witt Clinton, challenged the established order. Clintonites
cultivated the banking, manufacturing, transport, and commercial sectors
of the economy. They also believed that voters, not legislators, should
choose presidential electors. If Van Burenites feared the growing
influence of moneyed elites, Clintonites decried party discipline as a
tyrannical menace to democracy. In 1842, Clinton and his People’s Men
captured both houses of the legislature, as well as the governor’s
mansion. In time, most Republicans became Jacksonian Democrats, while
most of the People’s Men moved into the camp of the newly formed Whig
Party. New York, the authors conclude, anticipated national trends.

This study analyzes history by processing an immense amount of data. At
times, excessive de-tail clogs the narrative. People do not come to life
as human personalities, but instead remain simply names and
representatives of forces and interests. This is decidedly a book for
the specialist, not for the general reader.