Fresher and more immediate than any European examples, however, the traders of New York recalled their own achievements in coordinating resistance to British impositions. In 1765, when the royal governor had attempted to enforce the Stamp Act, a mob had marched to the Bowling Green, burnt his effigy, and threatened violence to the Fort. The leading citizens – and eventual founders of the Chamber – had interceded between the authorities and this “Prodigious Concourse of People of all Ranks,” taking possession themselves of the stamps, and dispersing the crowds. “If the unorganized cooperation of the merchants of the city could produce such important results,” the founders reasoned, “it was evident that a formal and close-knitted body could produce even greater results in the promotion of the peaceful pursuits of commerce.”
To that end – on April 5, 1768 – they gathered in Fraunces Tavern, on Pearl Street, an “ancient and famous inn … proverbial for its good Madeira.” Between slices of “Bread and Cheese,” and amid clouds of pipe smoke, twenty-four leading citizens of the province – including a ship captain, an auctioneer, a banker, and several merchants – drafted the official arrangements for the Chamber of Commerce. The next month, their number doubled; by December, the Secretary was able to announce in the local gazette that “A considerable number of merchants of New-York [had] formed themselves into a society in May last, and have since been joined by the greater part of the other merchants in the city.”
During the Stamp Act crisis, the leading men of New York had literally stepped between defiant colonists and their imperial rulers. In the following years, they retained this intermediary function as relations between the Chamber and the Crown continued to career between extremes. In 1769, the traders in the province were the most militant in the Colonies in their commitment to boycott British goods, hewing more steadfastly to the embargo than the elites of any other city. The very next year, King George III rewarded this apparent unruliness with a royal charter, officially recognizing the group as the “Chamber of Commerce of the City of New York in America.” Despite their grievances and insubordinations, the Empire could not afford to lose the loyalty of its merchants.
For as long as possible, the Chamber kept politics in the background. At monthly meetings, its members regulated the quotidian affairs of business, adjudicating disputes, organizing commercial standards, fining one another for tardiness – acceptable excuses included “not well,” “in Connecticut,” “gout” – and attending to colonial administration.
