Governors of the Republic of the State of New York:
1789-1837: Alexander Hamilton (Whig) [1]
def. 1789 George Clinton (Democracy)
1798-1801: Connecticut Valley War between New England Alliance and New York
1821-1823: New Jersey War sees New Jersey split between New York and Columbia
1824: New York Assembly ratifies Treaty of Boston, leading to the foundation of the Third Continental Congress
1837-1841: de jure: Alexander Hamilton (Whig), de facto: Maarten Van Buren and William L. Marcy (Whig) Leading Albany Regency [2]
1841-1862: Maarten Van Buren (Van Burenite Whig/Equal Rights then Locofoco Whig) [3]
def. 1841 William L. Marcy (Marcyite Whig), Robert D. Owen (Working Men's/Radical), Charles Paine (Green Mountain)
1849 Constitutional Referendum:57% Yes, 43% No [4]
[1] Alexander Hamilton remade New York in his image following the failure of the Philadelphia Convention, a centralized Republic under his iron fist. Various underlings came and went, but the Governor remained, making sure he was indispensable. However, as time wore on, Hamilton’s grip on the political landscape loosened, and a series of simmering conflicts began across various regions including but not limited to, the Renssalaerwyck Rent War, the Champlain Rebellion, the Salt City Uprising, and the Clamdigger Revolt.
[2] After Hamilton suffered a stroke in 1837 that left him bedridden, there were rumbles of an attempt to declare him incapable of governance, but because no one in the Whigs wanted to be the one who knifed the Old Man and the Governor was a lifetime appointment, he remained Governor. And so, a ‘Regency’ was formed, led by the two major players in the Whig Apparatus to enforce the Old Man’s increasingly disconnected diktats.
[3] When the Old Man died, a power struggle broke out between Marcy’s Tammany Hall Old Guard and Van Buren’s Reformists, and the eventual result was two Whig Tickets. This would normally be an excellent opportunity for the Democracy Party, but they also split, between the Radicals advocating for mass Land Reform and Redistribution and John Slingerlands’ Moderates who simply sought the abolition of the Patroons and expansion of the Franchise. The Radicals would eventually support Robert Owen’s Utopian Candidacy, and the moderates would endorse Van Buren, and given the final vote’s narrow margin, there is no doubt, the Equal Rights label won him the election.
[4] The Second Constitution of the Republic of the State of New York was a dramatic departure for the Republic, but the major changes were thus: Abolition of the Autonomous Regions, expansion of the Franchise to Universal Male Suffrage, and turning New York from a Unitary State to a Federal one.