Abraham Yates, Jr., a civil servant most of his life, supported the rights of the common man and gave voice to the anti-Federalist viewpoint during the 1780s. Yates’s father, a blacksmith, apprenticed young Abraham as a cobbler, but Yates yearned for more. By his late 20s, Yates was working at the law office of Peter Silvester, where he read for the bar and discovered the writings of John Locke and other thinkers of the English Enlightenment. With the support of Robert Livingston, Jr., Yates won appointment as sheriff of Albany County in 1754. During his five years in this position, Yates became increasingly aware of the disparity between both colonists and British subjects back in England and inequalities that existed between the colonists themselves. Having to remove poor squatters from land held, but not used, by wealthy titleholders forced Yates to confront the issue of the rights of the poor. Yates also served as sheriff during the early years of the French and Indian War (1754-63), giving him many opportunities to witness how British officers treated colonists. While serving as sheriff, Yates won election to Albany’s Common Council in 1753. As a man who had worked hard to obtain his economic and political status in the community, Yates found many supporters in Albany who reelected him every year to the council until 1773. From 1774 to 1776 he was a member and chairman of the Albany committee of correspondence.
With the start of the Revolutionary War (177583), Yates’s political fortunes grew beyond city and county positions to statewide prominence. In 1775 he was elected to represent Albany at New York’s provincial congress and continued in that capacity until the dissolution of the congress in 1777, serving as president pro tem in 1775 and
1776. While in the provincial congress, Yates also served as a member of the Council of Safety. He chaired the convention committee that produced the first New York State constitution, a document ratified by state convention in April
1777. (See also constitutions, state.) Yates was in the New York State Senate from 1778 to 1790, where he supported Governor George Clinton’s legislative program. In 1783 Yates was also given the distinction of becoming the first postmaster of Albany.
During the 1780s, Yates’s concern for the equitable rights of all citizens increased, especially after the cessation of war with Great Britain. Yates opposed what he saw as a privileged elite trying to gain control of the Second Continental Congress and attempting to centralize governmental power. Writing under the pseudonyms, “Cato,” “Sydney,” and “Rough Hewer,” Yates defended the sovereignty of the 13 states and represented the anti-Federalist point of view. He served in Congress in 1787-88 and wrote several unpublished manuscripts on New York history, highlighting examples of instances when aristocrats had repressed the common man. In 1790 Yates was elected mayor of Albany, a position he held until his death.
Further reading: Stefan Bielinski, Abraham Yates, Jr. and the New Political Order in Revolutionary New York (Albany: New York State American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, 1975).
—Heather Clemmer
World History
