Founding the Chamber > Conservative Revolutionists
IN 1771, the merchants welcomed the newly appointed governor, William Tryon, with an ingratiatory note. “Attached, from Principle, to our most gracious Sovereign and our happy Constitution,” they wrote, “we promise ourselves the utmost Happiness under the Government of your Excellency, distinguished for your Services to both.” Their letter’s open flattery masked a latent threat: Tryon would be welcome so long as he maintained their liberties and furthered their prosperity – and not for a moment longer. His answer was keyed to the same timbre. “I accept with grateful respect,” he wrote, “your kind Assurances of contributing to the ease of my Administration.”
This may have read like epistolaries at dawn, but between the lines the tension was easily overcome – and for the same reason that the King had granted the Chamber a charter just as its members were boycotting British importations – the merchants and the government were in agreement on most questions concerning the wealth of the Province. Their mutual interests were a commonplace; Governor Tryon’s predecessor had “disgraced … himself in a drunken tirade” when informed of his reassignment to Virginia, so lucrative was the opportunity for riches in New York.
The next year, the British army occupied Manhattan, while the navy commanded the crucial waterways of the harbor. Many elites fled the City; others retired to neutrality. But, more than half of the merchants became active Tories. And, the sentiments of the Chamber’s leaders were even more pronounced; of the twenty-three surviving men whose names were listed in the organization’s inaugural session, one went on to sign the Declaration of Independence, but fifteen others sided with the Crown.
For four years, the Chamber of Commerce ceased to exist. Then, in 1779, Isaac Low – still president – reconvened the institution. The meeting minutes resumed with the bland explanation that “the state of public affairs [had] been such as not to require a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce at an earlier period.” Business was picking up. The port had become “the principal deposit and Magazine of all military as well as Mercantile Stores and Provisions from Great Britain and Ireland.” War had always benefited New York’s merchants, and loyal traders who had remained were again prospering off of the spoils of conflict.
New York was under martial law, and for the remainder of the “unnatural rebellion” the reconvened Chamber served the British as the de facto civil administration. Experiencing the usual distresses of a city in wartime, New Yorkers suffered as the price of “good flour” rose to the unprecedented level of three pounds per hundredweight. Hoarding and profiteering of “Butter, Tallow, Candles, Soap and other articles” were rampant. The Chamber of Commerce combated these problems, improving the quality of life for the residents of the town. But, they also intervened in military matters, regulating the storage of gun powder and repeatedly petitioning for stronger harbor defenses.
As they had prior to the war, the members were mainly concerned with championing their prerogatives as colonial traders within the boundaries of the British Empire. But now the main threats to their prosperity came from men who had formerly been colleagues and peers. Privately armed vessels represented a serious risk to the busy port; “the best Cruizing Ground for the Enemy, perhaps in the World, is within a small distance of Sandy Hook,” merchants informed a British Admiral, “more Property has constantly been captured by their Privateers within Fifty Leagues of that Place, than perhaps upon all the rest of the Atlantic Ocean.”