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On the Road to Democracy

By Victoria Welsh, Sarah Brock, William Gibney, Rachel Hayes, Jonathan Levin, Olivia Pause, and Caroline Tahany

Samuel William Jones’ diary sheds light on the cultural and political anxieties of America’s second generation in New York.

In August 1824, Samuel W. Jones (1791–1855) of Schenectady, New York, recorded the news that the Marquis de Lafayette had completed his visit to New York City,
part of a longer multi-city tour of the United States. Lafayette’s trip was timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the American Republic, a country that was in transition, working to define its culture and political system in the wake of its independence. Jones noted in his diary that he was unsurprised to learn that in Manhattan, the Revolutionary War hero had drawn a “concourse of People…never before equaled upon any public occasion in this country.”

A native of Cold Harbor Springs, Long Island, Jones lived in Schenectady and was deeply committed to the well-being of the community. Perhaps it was his pride in his adopted hometown that led Jones to work so actively to bring Lafayette to Schenectady. It was on his motion (he reported) that the city extended an invitation to Lafayette. When Lafayette did not promptly respond, Jones headed to Hudson, New York, to meet Lafayette “on his way up the River and ascertain positively when he would visit us.” Jones recorded that Lafayette apologized for not responding sooner, and “promises to visit us next Spring”—a promise kept in June 1825. In the meantime, Lafayette rewarded Jones’ fandom, granting him a “personal interview” as the men traveled together by steamboat to Albany. Jones wrote no details of this interview, noting only that the general was “a good looking man.”

Jones’ enthusiasm for Lafayette’s visit to Schenectady masked a deeper anxiety about New York State’s shifting political culture. The details of Jones’ excursion to Hudson follow several entries in which he laments the declining patriotic spirit of his time. In July of 1822, he complained of how “it has become very difficult to produce any excitement of patriotic feeling among our citizens on this day.” He also chronicled the deaths of Revolutionary heroes. In 1823, Jones gave an Independence Day oration to the Schenectady community in which he critiqued the emerging system of political patronage in New York’s Democratic Party, citing this political development as proof of the “superiority of our public officers during the revolution.” In July 1824, he noted with disappointment that the town’s military parade “was superior to that of any former occasion but scarce any of the citizens joined it.” Jones marked the passing of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in July 1826, at the fiftieth anniversary of Independence. With stoicism, he wrote: “they have fulfilled their career of usefulness arrived at an old age loaded with honor and seen their country flourish beyond the example of any other of which History furnishes a record.”

New Era
Jones understood that with the passing of the Revolutionary generation, America was entering a new political era, moving from republicanism to democracy. But was this generational change a crisis or an opportunity? Jones was uncertain, and so he confided his hopes and fears (but mostly fears) in his diary. On the one hand, his personal circumstances inclined him to conservatism. He was highborn, wealthy, well-educated, and connected by blood and marriage to New York’s judicial elite, including Chancellor of New York Samuel Jones Jr. (1825–1828), his uncle, and Judge James Duane, his father-in-law, who had served as a delegate to the Continental Congress. On the other hand, Jones was a product of his age, excited by the opportunities available to young people in the fast-growing Empire State. New York society and politics were changing rapidly in this era, and Jones’ diary entries from the 1820s and 1830s chronicle how he moved from apprehension to acceptance as he found his footing in New York’s democracy.

In 1821, Jones correctly anticipated that the state’s political future would be determined at the upcoming constitutional convention, an innovation of the Bucktails, a populist faction within New York’s Democratic Republic Party. The Bucktails had spearheaded a popular movement for this convention, promising to enact radical constitutional changes with the goal of expanding democracy in New York State. For Jones, the Bucktails embodied a rising spirit of populism and partisanship that he found distasteful, and he directed much of his anxiety about political change at the Bucktails, whom he routinely depicted as foils to the Revolutionary ideal. In his diary, Jones bemoaned the prospect of the 1821 Constitutional Convention, which he described as “a favorite measure with the bucktails”—and presumably no one else.

As New Yorkers prepared to send delegates to the convention, Jones noted with relief that he saw little evidence of “Party Spirit” at the meeting of his own Second Ward in Schenectady. He also freely expressed his disdain for Schenectady’s Bucktail delegates, including Mayor Henry Yates Jr. and John Titus, described by
Jones as “a man on whom no dependence can be placed as he always endeavors to get on the strong side” and “a violent Democrat,” respectively. Notwithstanding his misgivings about the endeavor, Jones attended the convention as a spectator. From the balcony, he listened as the delegates discussed abolishing the Council of Appointment and expanding the electorate by reducing the property qualifications for voting, a motion that Jones fervently opposed but also called “a great and important principle.”

Strained Relationships
Family letters indicate that Jones’ preoccupation with local and state politics strained his relationship with his family and friends on Long Island. His sisters Susan and Cornelia periodically rebuked him for his seeming neglect. His sister Cornelia reminded him in 1819 that “you have a sister [who] lives on the South side of Long Island who wishes to know if she has the same brother that used to take such an interest in her. If she has, don’t let another week pass without an answer to this letter.” In a letter from July of 1821, Susan wrote to him about the death of their grandmother, an event he regretfully recounted missing in his diary. “I hope you will make it convenient to come down this fall. You can come with so much ease,” she told him. Susan’s accusation was implicit. Improvements in the state’s transportation system, notably the expansion of turnpikes and the steamboat, made the journey much more feasible for many New Yorkers. The Jones women knew from experience that the journey between Schenectady and Cold Harbor Springs was inconvenient but not impossible, if only Samuel would make the time. In 1839, Susan levied a similar accusation against him, this one much less subtle. She closed out her letter by telling him “do write and tell me how you all are. I have felt very badly for some time that we never hear from you, and there is little communication between us.” She added, “I am sure it is not my fault.”

It is not clear if Jones made amends with his sister, but his diary entries show that he did make peace with the rise of democracy in New York State. There was no obvious turning point, but rather a slow acknowledgement that democracy had not been an unmitigated disaster for New York or for Jones. The surge in popular political engagement and grassroots activism that followed the 1821 Constitutional Convention had made the new Democratic Party of New York State—which Jones had disdainfully labeled “the People’s party” in the 1820s—a political juggernaut by 1833. In April 1836, he noted with surprise in his diary that the Democratic Party had swept all the local offices. “The Mayor, Recorder, and Alderman are all of one party  which was never the case before since I have been in the city.” Jones adapted accordingly. In the 1830s, he would hold multiple elected or appointed offices, including alderman, judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and even mayor. He lost the 1837 election to represent Schenectady in the New York Assembly only when, in the depths of a national economic depression, the “Democratic party sustained the most complete route [sic] at the late election that was ever sustained by them.”

Presidential Visit
Nevertheless, Jones was now a partyman through and through. In 1839, President Martin Van Buren embarked on a “grand tour” of New York State, and on July 31, Jones received the president “on behalf of the citizens” of Schenectady. Jones noted with quiet pleasure that while in Schenectady the president “made a few calls on his acquainteances [sic] (at my house among others).” He wrote of Van Buren’s visit with the same enthusiasm that he had written of Lafayette’s visit fourteen years earlier. According to Jones, the president was widely welcomed by “citizens from every part of our county on horseback and in carriages where a procession was formed more than a mile in length.”

In 1825, Jones looked longingly on the past. By 1839, he had adapted to the future—a future made more democratic in his own lifetime. His diary is exemplary of a New Yorker who came to embrace a more democratic future represented in a new political system. In fact, while he did not acknowledge it in his diary, Jones profited from constitutional change in New York State. In 1845, he was appointed a Schenectady County Court judge, and two years later was popularly elected to the same position, according to the provisions of the 1846 New York Constitution. As he forged a path for himself in the transition to democracy, Jones remained a principled conservative— anti-slavery, pro-liberty—but also accepting of the democratic values championed by his party. In the 1840s, his diary became less anxious as, confident in his place in the new order and in his community, he turned his attention to the weather and the wonders of the cosmos, frequently recounting low temperatures and displays of the northern lights. With a growing nation comes change, and while Jones commented greatly on these changes, we can see now thathe, too, was a part of them. 

The Archives Connection

The Samuel Jones Family Letters, which includes his diary, are housed in the Grems-Doolittle Library at the Schenectady County Historical Society (SCHS). Digital copies are available on the New York Heritage website. The New York Public Library has the papers of Jones’ uncle, Samuel Jones Jr., for whom Jones clerked. Historic newspapers verified Jones’ accounts of the Lafayette and Van Buren visits. History of the County of Schenectady, N.Y., from 1662 to 1886, edited by George Rogers Howell and John H. Munsell, and blog entries published by the SCHS staff shed light on the local political context. Numerous books recount Lafayette’s tour of America, including Lafayette in America Day by Day by James Bennett Nolan (1934) and more recently, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825: Journal of a Voyage to the United States by Auguste Levasseur (2006).

View Digital Copy of the
Samuel Jones Family Letters and Diary

The authors were students enrolled in Siena College’s HIST 266: New York State History (Spring 2024), Professor Jennifer Hull Dorsey.

For more on the history of the New York State Constitution, see “In Convention”
by Laurence M. Hauptman, Spring 2022.

For more on the work of history students at Siena College, see “Getting to Write History” by Jennifer Hull Dorsey, Winter 2015