1776: The Launch of Journeys of the Working Class
A version of this article ran in the January 14, 2026 issue of the Northern and Southern Dutchess News / Beacon Free Press.
By Bill Jeffway
The July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence announced the creation of a nation based on a radical premise at the time: that all men are created equal and possess unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This stood in stark contrast to the European world most colonists had come from—a world of an inherited monarchy (and inherited poverty) with its fixed economic and social ranks.
The promise of equality was heard by many as including economic fairness and equal economic opportunity. They challenged the new nation to dismantle the old systems that kept wealth, land, and power in the hands of a few, and started to remove the barriers that made poverty permanent.
Yet long before 1776, those old systems were deeply rooted locally.
With the 1706 creation of the Little Nine Partners Patent to the north, just over a dozen wealthy men owned and controlled virtually all the land in what was or would become Dutchess County. This is just less than a century after the 1609 arrival of Henry Hudson on behalf of the Dutch.
Four years later, in 1710, more than twelve hundred impoverished German Palatine immigrants—the largest single migration to the colonies up to that time—settled at what is now Germantown, on Livingston Manor, then making up northernmost Dutchess County. They arrived with hopes of economic fairness and opportunity. Instead, they found the same European feudal system.
Under this system, a great landowner held full title to the land and leased farms to tenants in exchange for annual rents, often paid in wheat or fowl. The tenant could improve the farm buildings and land but never own them. Because voting rights were tied to property ownership, this system excluded most working class and farmers from political power. Without ownership, there was little chance to build lasting wealth.
On top of this, the Palatine settlement’s original economic purpose—producing tar and turpentine from pine trees for the British Navy—failed immediately because the local pines were the wrong species.
Violent tenant uprisings in the 18th century in the Philipse Patent in what was then southern Dutchess (today’s Putnam County), and in both the 18th and 19th centuries at Livingston Manor, reveal just how deep and persistent these grievances were. Although the American Revolution swept away the legal titles of lords and manors, it did not immediately eliminate the landlord–tenant system itself. In Dutchess County, the last major remnant of this structure survived until 1889, when twenty-eight farms totaling 4,000 acres in the Little Nine Partners Patent were finally sold off at auction. Many tenant farmers could not afford to buy the farms their families had been on for generations. Still, by the time the Declaration of Independence was published, expectations of fairness and opportunity were already in the air. In this period, the term “mechanics” was used broadly to describe the entire working class: artisans, laborers, and tradesmen. On May 29, 1776, just weeks before the Declaration of Independence, Lewis Thibou, chairman of the General Committee of Mechanics of New York City, presented what became known as the Mechanics’ Declaration of Independence, demanding justice from those “whose dominions have been made rich by our commerce.” The country’s founding documents were being literally adopted and used to advance working class rights.
Progress came slowly and unevenly. In New York State, property requirements for white male voters were finally eliminated with the 1822 constitution but were retained for Black citizens until the 1870 adoption of the 15th US Constitutional Amendment made them illegal.
Imprisonment for debt was abolished in 1831. Child labor laws requiring three months education of children emerged in 1836.
So called “Liberty Limits” were very tightly defined walking areas connected to the courthouse and jail, in this instance at the corner of Market and Main Streets, Poughkeepsie. Debtors prison for the luckier persons meant they were free to walk very specifically within its bounds. It is interesting to note that the eastern-most north/bound street is Mechanic Street, and parallel to that is Liberty Street (1834 map by E. Whitfield, DCHS Collections, with annontations).
Early reformers included radical voices, such as Frances Wright. She argued that inherited wealth itself should be abolished. In her vision, every person would begin life with equal resources. Children would be educated uniformly, even removed from their families, to prevent inequality from reproducing itself. These ideas were too extreme for most Americans—but they reveal how deeply some people believed the social order itself needed to be rebuilt.
A local man, Rhinebeck’s Nathan Darling (1802–1866), cast an important vote in 1830 in the burgeoning labor movement in New York City to push the effort to a more moderate middle ground. Born into deep poverty, Darling moved to New York City and worked as a house painter. In 1830, he became a delegate in the organized mechanics’ labor movement at a critical moment. When the movement was at risk of being defined by proposals that were too radical to win broad support, Darling cast a pivotal vote that helped shift the program toward achievable political and economic reforms. That moderation allowed the workingmen’s movement to grow rather than fracture. Darling later went on to a successful military and political career and built the 1858 home that still stands today.
The Working Man’s Advocate of October 19, 1844 reported on a meeting in the town of Clinton at Salt Point. Labor advocates argued at the gathering that Dutchess County contained “7,000 landless slaves,” explaining that in Dutchess County for every one landowner there are seven who are landless. The moral urgency behind the movement remained unmistakable. In 1845, the Working Man’s Advocate declared: “The right of an oppressed and down-trodden man to labor and enjoy what it produces, must finally triumph!” The article asked, in anguish, why “these savage hovels” stood beside “vast and gorgeous palaces,” and why ignorance persisted amid supposed provisions for education. The writer was standing at a place overlooking what was Livingston Manor and northern Dutchess County.
In 1850, Dutchess County had a disproportionately high concentration of councils of the Order of United American Mechanics with groups organized in Poughkeepsie, Rhinebeck, Hyde Park, Fishkill Landing, Schultzville (Clinton), and Pine Plains. DCHS Collections.
Education itself became one of the great battlegrounds. The long struggle to establish free public education culminated in a statewide system by the 1860s. This was preceded by efforts to create free circulating libraries and reading rooms to make knowledge accessible to all.
In 1849, Jesse Torrey Jr. announced that Poughkeepsie would serve as the base for his American School Library, a national effort to push away the dominant use of British schoolbooks for American children. It is most revealing that the appendix to his 1828 book Mental Museum for the Rising Generation, includes the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and his own plans for free circulating library—clearly seeing them as parts of the same democratic project.
By the time of the American centennial progress had been made. But the emerging industrial age was bringing a whole new set of workplace challenges. Meaningful child labor laws were still a generation away. But the journeys to working class equality and economic fairness have clear roots in the 1776 American Revolution’s promise.
New York Mechanics Declaration of Independence, May 29, 1776
To the Honourable Representatives of the Province of New-York, in Provincial Congress convened.
The humble Address of the General Committee of Mechanicks in union, of the City and County of New-York, in behalf of themselves and their constituents:
GENTLEMEN: We, as a part of your constituents, and devoted friends to our bleeding country, beg leave, in a dutiful manner, at this time to approach unto you, our Representatives, and request your kind attention to this our humble address.
When we cast a glance upon our beloved continent, where fair freedom, civil and religious, we have long enjoyed, whose fruitful field have made the world glad, and whose trade has filled with plenty of all things, sorrow fills our hearts to behold her now struggling under the heavy load of oppression, tyranny, and death. But when we extend our sight a little farther, and view the iron hand that is lifted up against us, behold it is our King; he who by his oath and station, is bound to support and defend us in the quiet enjoyment of all our glorious rights as freemen, and whose dominions have been supported and made rich by our commerce. Shall we any longer sit silent, and contentedly continue the subjects of such a Prince, who is deaf to our petitions for interposing his Royal authority in our behalf, and for redressing our grievances, but, on the contrary, seems to take pleasure in our destruction? When we see that one whole year is not enough to satisfy the rage of a cruel Ministry, in burning our towns, seizing our vessels, and murdering our precious sons of liberty; making weeping widows for the loss of those who were dearer to them than life, and helpless orphans to bemoan the death of an affectionate father; but who are still carrying on the same bloody pursuit; and for no other reason than this, that we will not become their slaves, and be taxed by them without our consent,-therefore, as we would rather choose to be separate from, than to continue any longer in connection with such oppressors, We, the Committee of Mechanicks in union, do, for ourselves and our constituents hereby publickly declare that, should you, gentlemen of the honourable Provincial Congress, think proper to instruct our most honourable Delegates in Continental Congress to use their utmost endeavors in that august assembly to cause these United Colonies to become independent of Great Britain, it would give us the highest satisfaction; and we hereby sincerely promise to endeavour to support the same with our lives and fortunes.
Signed by order of the Committee, Lewis Thibou, Chairman
