6 -
Hillfield & the New Constitution
Given the
predominance of Quakerism at its inception, New Jersey has enjoyed a
particularly ignominious place among the original thirteen states regarding
matters of race. New Jersey’s first state constitution, adopted in a desperate
effort to protect itself following George Washington’s 1776 defeat in New York,
had granted the vote to all free citizens who met the property requirements,
including blacks. That codicil, however, would fall by the wayside in 1807
when, for the sake of party politics, the Republican state government passed a
bill restricting the vote to free white males. It had passed a law of gradual emancipation
as early as 1804, but slaves were kept as late as 1865. New Jersey did not even
ratify the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments until the 1870’s.
At a time when every northern state was hurling itself toward the end of “the
peculiar institution,” New Jersey notoriously dragged its feet. One of its most
intolerable episodes occurred with the adoption of New Jersey’s new
constitution in 1844.
For years the
manufacturers in the north of the state and the farmers in the south had choked
within the stranglehold New Jersey’s railroad interests held over the powerful
state legislature. At that point the state’s constitution bore little
resemblance to its national counterpart. The divisions between branches of
government were amorphous if not wholly absent, and it lacked a bill of rights.
But what most galled the rich and wannabe-powerful was that New Jersey’s
governor, a then practically impotent figure, was elected by the state
legislature, not its citizenry. New Jersey’s most wealthy and ambitious had
been spoiling for a greater say in how the state was governed, and Hillfield
soon found itself a key player in the adoption of a new and controversial state
constitution.
Hillfieldian Hugh
Giggley was at that time one of the most powerful men in South Jersey. He had
built his initial wealth in farming, but soon branched into transportation,
owning or at least possessing a controlling interest in many steamboat and
ferry operations running between the state interior and Philadelphia, New York,
Baltimore, and Washington D.C. Subsequently he was instrumental in greatly
expanding New Jersey’s system of canals, which made transporting his own crops
even more economical. These investments brought him untold wealth, but they
also brought him into direct competition with the railroad interests in North
Jersey. Already established as the transportation method of the age, the
railroads had coffers deep enough to stymie Giggley’s efforts to create one
all-encompassing concern dedicated to off-land travel. Giggley watched as the
railroads employed nothing short of sabotage and intimidation to scare off his
investors, and with the majority of New Jersey’s Whig legislature stuffed deep
in their pockets, they remained immune from prosecution.
Hugh Giggley may not
have been able to identify the direction in which the winds of change were
blowing, but that did not stop him dreaming on a large scale, and he now
dreamed of unseating the railroad interests’ control of the Whig government.
Constitution reform had been a topic of debate for several years, but was
always neglected in the hands of the Whigs. Giggley knew that reform was
necessary to wrest control away from the railroad tycoons, and he enjoined his
fellow wealthy farmers to marshal the political forces at their disposal. They
shared his sentiments, but they knew any chance of reform would be futile and
potentially disastrous without public support. When the Broad Seal War broke in
1838, Giggley recognized it as the opportunity to galvanize public disgust with
the Whigs.
The Broad Seal War
was the popular term designated to the controversy surrounding the 1838
election to the U.S. Congress. Following the election, both the Whig and
Democratic commissions applied for admission to Congress, but then-governor William
Pennington – a Whig – determined the Democratic commissions null and void.
Everyone knew that the Whigs had rigged the election, but it remained unproven
until Giggley sprang into action. In December of 1839 two men employed by the
county clerks offices in Middlesex and Cumberland counties presented a number
of returns that had been obviously ignored by the county clerks. These returns
gave the Democrats a majority in the House of Representatives. The two men were
Hugo von Daniken and Cotswallop Strange. Von Daniken had family employed by
Abraham Browning on his Cherry Hill Farm, and several members of Strange’s
family were employed at the Crippled Bear Farm owned by Linus Braggart. Both
Browning and Braggart were well known friends of Hugh Giggley.
The outcry over
the fraudulent election was more than Giggley and company could have hoped for.
The next state elections saw the Democrats seize control of the state
legislature. Giggley was even able to place his own Democratic waterboy, Daniel
Haines, in the governor’s office. Drafting a new constitution became the state
government’s first order of business. But the people of New Jersey paid a
horrific price.
Over the years,
the Whigs had managed to control the state through more than just the war chests
of the railroad interests. They had appealed directly to the hearts and minds of
New Jersey’s underprivileged inhabitants: women, blacks, and immigrants. As
previously stated, the Republicans of the first decade of the nineteenth
century had managed to rob these people of the few rights allowed them by the
standing constitution. The Democrats of the 1840’s found themselves in
opposition to those same beleaguered people and made it clear to Giggley and
his cohorts that there would be no quid pro quo in Trenton unless the women,
blacks, and immigrants were allowed to be constitutionally disenfranchised. And
so, when the state constitution of 1844 was adopted, those people were rendered
as powerless as ever.
The irony, of
course, is that Hugh Giggley and his compatriots were impelled by their disgust
with corruption, and subsequently bequeathed to New Jersey a state so corrupt
it long enjoyed the dubious distinction of being, “the Georgia of the North.”
It was a distinction it would have to endure until long after the Civil War.
Next:
Vote
for Goat
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