FROM "GENTLEMANLY RULE" TO "POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY": THE REPUBLICAN TURN IN NEW YORK STATE ELECTORAL POLITICS, 1787–1806

Between 1787 and 1806, electoral politics in New York State underwent a significant transformation. The property qualification system and the Council of Appointment established by the state constitution of 1777 provided institutional guarantees for the domination of the gentlemanly class. However, the internal fragmentation of the gentlemanly class, disputes over electoral procedures in practice, and the Republican Party's systematic development of campaign mobilization techniques gradually altered the operation of electoral politics. In the 1792 gubernatorial election, the disqualification of ballots from Otsego and two other counties exposed the vulnerability of electoral procedures to political manipulation and undermined the supposed impartiality of the gentlemanly class. In the 1800 legislative election, the Republicans, organized by Aaron Burr, achieved a breakthrough that delivered New York's twelve electoral votes to Jefferson, making it the decisive event of that year's presidential election. Yet the Republican victory did not establish stable "popular sovereignty." After 1800, the party rapidly split into the Burrites, the Clintonians, and the Livingstons. The emergence of the "Quid" label in the 1806 assembly election marked the institutionalization of factional division. By 1806, property qualifications had not yet been abolished at the institutional level, but the mode of electoral politics had fundamentally changed.