'Impost Begat Convention:' Albany and New York Confront the Ratification of the Constitution

Abstract

Abstract.

    The critical framework for the 1788 debates over ratification ofthe U.S. Constitution by New York was set by the debates overwhether the tax on imports through New York harbor, then calledthe “impost,” would be a national or state tax. New York had vetoedthe 1783 proposal to allow a national impost. The defeatedproponents of the 1783 impost became the Federalists in favor ofthe Constitution in 1788 in New York, and the party that haddefeated the 1783 impost remained intact to become the Anti-Federalists in opposition to the Constitution in 1788. In the end agroup of delegates elected as Anti-Federalists, most prominentlyMelancton Smith, the New York delegate to the Articles ofConfederation Congress, moved over to ratification to allow NewYork to avoid secession from the Union. “United We Stand, DividedWe Fall” won both the Revolution and the Constitution.The New York debates serve as synecdoche for the ratificationdebates as a whole. The first mission of the Constitution was togive Congress a tax of its own to maintain payments on the debts ofthe Revolutionary War. In the next and inevitably coming war,Congress would need to borrow from the Dutch again. TheConfederate form of government, a mere league of friendship amongsovereign states, would plausibly have survived, had New York notvetoed the 1783 impost. As Hamilton put it: “Impost begatConvention.”