The Shaping of the Radical Consciousness in Provincial New York

Abstract

THE history of Revolutionary New York has settled into an uneasy ambiguity. Carl Becker's elucidation of revolutionary factionalism has been seriously challenged, but his challengers offer little in the way of a reasoned alternative.' It is now argued, contrary to Becker's estimate, that the suffrage was broad and representative, but at the same time the contending factions represented no particular constituencies. The politicos are described as self-serving opportunists; still the issues that divided them are certified as bona fide. The contrariness of such recent scholarship finally resolves itself into a negation of revolutionary factionalism in which scholars are asked to believe that the Revolution in New York was merely an episode in the long-standing rivalry of the Livingston and De Lancey parties.2 Histo-