Who founded New York State?
New York City was the capital of the newly-formed United States from 1788 to 1790. In the 19th century, the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 enabled New York to overtake Boston and Philadelphia in economic importance, and local politics became dominated by a Democratic Party political machine known as Tammany Hall that drew on the support of Irish immigrants. The New York Draft Riots during the American Civil War were suppressed by the Union Army. In later years known as the Gilded Age, the city’s upper classes enjoyed great prosperity amid the further growth of a poor immigrant working class; it was also an era associated with economic and municipal consolidation of what would become the five boroughs in 1898.
