The work of the convention concluded, a motion for the passage of the Constitution as a whole developed only eight votes in the negative, though twenty-four members, including the eight delegates from Albany and Columbia Counties, four from Montgomery, Jonas Platt of Oneida, and Peter A. Jay of Westchester, because it extended and cheapened suffrage, refused to sign it. Other objections were urged. Ezekiel Bacon of Utica, explaining his affirmative vote, thought it worse than the existing Constitution of 1777; yet he approved it because the provision for amendment afforded the people a means of correcting defects with reasonable facility, without resorting to the difficult and dangerous experiment of a formal convention.

The Constitution, however, in spite of the opposition, was overwhelmingly ratified. The vote for it was 74,732; against it 41,043. And it proved better than even its sponsors prophesied. It abolished the Councils of Appointment and of Revision; it abolished the power of the governor to prorogue the Legislature; it abolished the property qualification of the white voter; it extended the elective franchise; it made a large number of officers elective; it modified the management of the canals and created a canal board; it continued the Court of Errors and Impeachments; it reorganised the judicial department, making all judges, surrogates, and recorders appointive by the governor, with the advice and consent of the Senate; it made state officers, formerly appointed by the Council, elective by joint ballot of the Senate and Assembly; and it gave the power of veto exclusively to the governor, requiring a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to overcome it. No doubt it had radical defects, but with the help of a few amendments it lived for a quarter of a century.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SECOND FALL OF CLINTON

1822

The new Constitution changed the date of elections from April to November, and reduced the gubernatorial term from three years to two, thus ending Governor Clinton's administration on January 1, 1823. As the time approached for nominating his successor, it was obvious that the Bucktails, having reduced party discipline to a science and launched the Albany Regency upon its long career of party domination, were certain to control the election. Indeed, so strong had the party become that a nomination for senator or assemblyman was equivalent to an election, and the defeat of John W. Taylor of Saratoga for speaker of the Seventeenth Congress showed that its power extended to the capital of the nation. Taylor's ability and splendid leadership, in the historic contest of the Missouri Compromise, had made him speaker during the second session of the Sixteenth Congress; but Bucktail resentment of his friendly attitude toward Clinton, in 1820, changed a sufficient number of his New York colleagues to deprive him of re-election. It was not until the Nineteenth Congress, after the power of the Albany Regency had been temporarily broken by the election of John Quincy Adams to the Presidency, that Taylor finally received the reward to which he was so richly entitled.

At this moment of the Regency's domination, Joseph C. Yates showed himself the coming man. Though it was the desire of his party that he take the nomination for governor in 1820, the cautious, modest Justice of the Supreme Court had discreetly decided not to sacrifice himself in the year of DeWitt Clinton's greatest strength. Conscious of his own popularity with the people, he was prepared to wait. But he had not to wait long. During the last two years of Clinton's administration, Yates had distinguished himself in the Council of Revision, by voting for the bill creating a constitutional convention—a vote which was applauded by Van Buren, although overcome by Clinton; and when the time approached for the selection of another gubernatorial candidate, he rightly saw that his hour was come. Yates was not cut out for the part which a strange combination of circumstances was to allow him to play. He was a man of respectable character, but without remarkable capacity of any kind. He had a charming personality. He was modest and mild in his deportment, and richly gifted with discretion, caution, and prudence. Vindictiveness formed no part of his disposition. The peculiar character of his intellect made him a good Supreme Court judge; but he lacked the intellectual energy and courage for an executive, who must thoroughly understand the means of getting and retaining public support.

A majority of the leading politicians of the party, appreciating Yates' mental deficiencies, ranged themselves on the side of Samuel Young, who enjoyed playing a conspicuous part and liked attacking somebody. Young was not merely a debater of apparently inexhaustible resource, but a master in the use of parliamentary tactics and political craft. His speeches, or such reports of them as exist, are full of striking passages and impressive phrases; and, as an orator, full, round and joyous, with singularly graceful and charming manners, he was then without a rival in his party. But his ultra-radicalism and illiberal, often rude, treatment of opponents prevented him from obtaining all the influence which would otherwise have been fairly due to his talents and his political and personal integrity.

There were, also, other aspirants. Daniel D. Tompkins, preferring governor to Vice President, was willing to be called; and Peter B. Porter, Erastus Root, and Nathan Sanford, figured among those whose names were canvassed. The contest, however, soon settled down between Yates and Young, with the chances decidedly in favour of the former. People admired Young and were proud of him—they thoroughly liked Yates and trusted him. If Young had possessed the kindly, sympathetic disposition of Yates, with a tithe of his discretion, he would have rivalled Martin Van Buren in influence and popularity, and become a successful candidate for any office in the gift of the voters; but, with all his splendid genius for debate and eloquent speaking, he was neither a patient leader nor a popular one. When the Republican members of the Legislature got into caucus, therefore, Joseph C. Yates had a pronounced majority, as had Erastus Root for lieutenant-governor.

Young's defeat for the nomination left bitter enmity. A reconciliation did, indeed, take place between him and Yates, but it was as formal and superficial as that of the two demons described in Le Sage's story. "They brought us together," says Asmodeus; "they reconciled us. We shook hands and became mortal enemies." Young and Yates were reconciled; but from the moment of Yates' nomination, until, chagrined and disappointed, he was forced into retirement after two years of humiliating obedience to the Regency, Samuel Young spared no effort to render his late opponent unpopular.

Although Clinton's canal policy, upon the success of which he had staked his all, was signally vindicating itself in rapidity of construction, and the very moderate estimate of cost, his friends did not hesitate to advise him that his re-election to the governorship was impossible. It was a cold proposition for a man to face who had inaugurated a system of improvement which would confer prosperity and wealth upon the people, and enrich and elevate the State. For a time, like a caged tiger, he bit at the bars that seemed to limit his ambition. But his friends were right. Through his management, or want of management, the Clintonians had ceased to exist as an organisation, and his supporting Federalists, as evidenced by the election of delegates to the constitutional convention in 1821, had passed into a hopeless minority. "Governor Clinton, though governor," said Thurlow Weed, "was much in the condition of a pastor without a congregation." It was striking proof of the absence of tact and that address which, in a popular government, is necessary for one to possess who expects to succeed in public life. Clinton had now been governor for five consecutive years. His motives had undoubtedly been pure and patriotic, and he had within his control the means of a great office to influence people in his favour; yet a cold exterior, an arrogant manner, and a disposition to rule or ruin, had cooled his friends and driven away the people until opponents took little heed of his existence.

No doubt Clinton had good reason to know that the statesmen of that time were not exactly what they professed to be. He was well aware that many of them, like John Woodworth, Ambrose Spencer, and James Tallmadge, had played fast and loose as the chances of Bucktail and Clintonian had gone up or gone down; and, although he gracefully declined to become a candidate for re-election, when convinced of the utter hopelessness of such a race, his brain was no less active in the conception of plans which should again return him to power. As early as October, 1822, he wrote Post: "The odium attached to the name of Federalist has been a millstone round the neck of true policy. It is now almost universally dropped in this district, in the district of which Oneida County is part, and in the Herkimer County meeting. I hail this as an auspicious event. Names in politics as well as science are matters of substance, and a bad name in public is as injurious to success as a bad name in private life. The inferences I draw from the signs of the times are: First, the ascendancy of our party from the collisions of parties. In proportion as they quarrel with each other they will draw closer to us. The last hate being the most violent will supersede the former antipathy. Second, the old names as well as the old lines of party will be abolished. Third, nominations by caucuses will be exploded. Fourth, Yates, Van Buren, etc., will go down like the stick of a rocket. Our friends are up and doing in Ulster."

It is impossible not to feel admiration for the indomitable courage and the inexhaustible animal spirits which no defeat could reduce to prostration. Furthermore, Clinton had written with the inspiration of a prophet. Not only were the old names and the old party lines soon to vanish, but the last legislative caucus ever to be held in the State, would be called in less than two years. Within the same period Yates was to fall like the stick of a rocket, and Van Buren to suffer his first defeat.

In the absence of a Clintonian or Federalist opponent, Solomon Southwick announced himself as an independent candidate. His was a strange story. He had many of the noblest qualities and some of the wildest fancies, growing out of an extravagant imagination that seemed to control his mind. Among other things, he opened an office for the sale of lottery tickets, reserving numbers for himself which had been indicated in dreams or by fortune-tellers, with whom he was in frequent consultation. Writing of his disposition to hope for aid from the miraculous interposition of some invisible power, Hammond says: "He was in daily expectation that the next mail would bring him news that he had drawn the highest prize in the lottery; and I have known him to borrow money of a friend under a solemn pledge of his honour for its repayment in ten days, and have afterward ascertained that his sole expectation of redeeming his pledge depended on his drawing a prize when the next lottery in which he was interested should be drawn."[220]

[Footnote 220: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 2, p. 101.]

Southwick was undoubtedly a man of genius, as his work on the Albany Register, the Ploughboy, and the Christian Visitant clearly indicates; but erroneous judgment and defective impulses resulted in misfortunes which finally darkened and closed his life in adversity if not in poverty. As a young man he had been repeatedly elected clerk of the Assembly, and had afterward served as sheriff, as state printer, and, finally, as postmaster. In the meantime, he became the first president of the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank, making money easily and rapidly, living extravagantly, giving generously, and acquiring great political influence. But his trial for bribery, of which mention has been made, his removal as state printer, and his defalcation as postmaster, prostrated him financially and politically. In the hope of retrieving his fortunes he embarked in real estate speculation, thus completing his ruin and making him still more visionary and fantastic. Nevertheless, he struggled on with industry and courage for more than twenty years, occasionally coming into public or political notice as a writer of caustic letters, or as a candidate for office.

In 1822, the wild fancy possessed Southwick of becoming governor, and to preface the way for his visionary scheme he applied to a bright young journalist, the editor of the Manlius Republican, to canvass the western and southwestern counties of the State. Thurlow Weed at this time was twenty-six years old. He had worked on a farm, he had blown a blacksmith's bellows, he had shipped as a cabin-boy, he had done chores at a tavern, he had served as a soldier, and he had learned the printer's trade. For twenty years he lived a life of poverty, yet of tireless industry, with a simplicity as amazing as his genius. The only thing of which he got nothing was schooling. His family was an old Connecticut one, which had come down in the world. Everything went wrong with his father. He was hard-working, kind-hearted, and strictly honest, but nothing succeeded. With the hope of "bettering his condition," he moved five times in ten years, getting so desperately poor at last that a borrowed two-horse sleigh carried all his worldly goods, including a wife and five children. Joel Weed was, perhaps, as unfortunate a man as ever brought an illustrious son into the world. He was neither shiftless nor worthless, but what others did he could not do. He never took up land for himself because he had nothing to begin with. A neighbour who began with an axe and a hoe, entered fifty acres, and got rich.

If Joel Weed lived as a beggar, Thurlow thought as a king. He revelled in the mountains and streams interspersed along the routes of the family's frequent movings; his taste for adventure made the sloop's cabin a home, and his love for reading turned the blacksmith shop and printing office into a schoolroom. As he read he forgot that he was poor, forgot that he was ragged, forgot that he was hungry. In his autobiography he tells of walking bare-footed six miles through the snow to borrow a history of the French Revolution, and of reading it at night in the blaze of a pitch-pine knot. Men found him lovable. He was large and awkward; but even as a boy there was a charm of manner, a tender, sympathetic nature, a sweet, sparkling humour, and a nobility of character that irresistibly drew people to him. In many respects his boyhood resembled Lincoln's, and, though he lived in some of the evil days of the last century, his youth, like Lincoln's, escaped pollution. At the age of twelve, as an apprentice in a weekly newspaper office at Onondaga Hollow, he read and filed every exchange paper, familiarising himself with discussions in Congress, and imbibing a deadly hatred of England because of Indian barbarities excited by British agents, and cruelties to American seamen impressed by British officers. With the true instinct of his fine nature, he made his friends and companions among the wisest and highest of his time, although he loved all company that was not vicious and depraved. He knew Gerrit Smith in 1814; a few months' stay, as a journeyman printer, at Auburn, forged a lasting friendship with Elijah Miller, the father-in-law of William H. Seward, and with Enos T. Throop, afterward governor. His intimacy with Gorham A. Worth, a financier of decided literary tastes, and for thirty years president of the New York City Bank, began in Albany in 1816. Thus, in whatever town he worked or settled, the prominent men and those to grow into prominence became his intimates. He had women friends, too, as wisely chosen as the men, but Catherine Ostrander was the star of his life. He tells a touching little story of this Cooperstown maiden. Their engagement occurred in his seventeenth year, but her parents, objecting to the roving, unsettled youth, he proposed three years of absolute separation, and if then no change had come to her affections she should write and tell him so. In his hours of poverty, he was cheered by the thought of her, and when, at last, her letter came, he hastened to claim her as his bride. At the conclusion of the ceremony, he had money enough only to take them back to Albany.

Weed began the publication of the Manlius Republican in June, 1821. For three years previously the Agriculturist, published at Norwich, in Chenango County, had given him proprietorship, some reputation, and less money; but it had also classified him politically. He had never been a Federalist, nor could he be called a Clintonian, although his belief in canal improvement led him to the support of Governor Clinton and earned for him the opposition of the Bucktails. Like his father he worked without success, and then moved on to Albany; but he left behind him a coterie of distinguished Chenango friends who were ever after to follow his leadership. At Albany, he began to earn eighteen dollars a week as a journeyman printer on the Argus. The Bucktails forced him out and he went on to Manlius, resurrecting the Times, an old Federalist paper, which he called the Republican.

It was at this time that Southwick sought him. "He was insanely anxious to be governor," says Weed, "and all the more insane because of its impossibility. He had been editing with great industry and ability the Ploughboy and the Christian Visitant, and beguiled himself with a confident belief that farmers and Christians, irrespective of party, would sustain him. He provided me with a horse and wagon, and gave me a list of the names of gentlemen on whom I was to call, but I soon discovered that my friend's hopes and chances were not worth even the services of a horse that was dragging me through the mud. Years afterward I learned that in politics, as almost in everything else, Mr. Southwick was blinded by his enthusiasm and credulity."[221]

[Footnote 221: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 86.]

But Southwick was not the only blinded one in 1822. On the 10th of January, Governor Clinton wrote Henry Post "that Yates and Van Buren are both prostrate, and the latter particularly so."[222] Later in the year, on August 21, he declared: "Yates is unpopular, and Southwick will beat him in this city and in Schenectady."[223] In the next month, September 21, he is even more outspoken. "Yates is despised and talked against openly. Savage and Skinner talk plainly against him, and he is the subject of commonplace ridicule."[224] Clinton was the last person to abandon hope of Yates' defeat; and yet Yates' election could, without exaggeration, be declared practically unanimous.[225] Republican legislative candidates fared equally well. Clintonians and Federalists were entirely without representation in the Senate, and in the Assembly their number was insufficient to make their presence appreciable.

[Footnote 222: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in Harper's Magazine, Vol. 50, p. 507.]

[Footnote 223: Ibid., p. 565.]

[Footnote 224: Ibid., p. 565.]

[Footnote 225: Southwick received 2910 out of a total of 131,403 votes cast.—Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]



CHAPTER XXIX

CLINTON AGAIN IN THE SADDLE

1823-1824

The election in the fall of 1822 was one of those sweeping, crushing victories that precede a radical change; and the confidence with which the victors used their power hurried on the revolution prophesied in Clinton's clever letter to Post. The blow did not, indeed, come at once. The legislators, meeting in January, 1823, proceeded cautiously, agreeing in caucus upon the state officers whom the Legislature, under the amended Constitution, must now elect. John Van Ness Yates, the Governor's nephew, was made secretary of state; William L. Marcy, comptroller; Simeon DeWitt, surveyor-general, and Alexander M. Muir, commissary-general. The caucus hesitated to nominate DeWitt because he was a Clintonian; but forty years of honourable, efficient, quiet service finally appealed to a Republican Legislature with all the force that it had formerly appealed to the Skinner Council. There was more of a contest over the comptrollership. James Tallmadge suddenly blossomed into a rival candidate. Tallmadge, like John W. Taylor, won his spurs as a leader of the opposition to the Missouri Compromise. He had been an ardent supporter of Clinton until the latter preferred Thomas J. Oakley as attorney-general; then he swung into communion with the Bucktails. He was impulsively ambitious, sensitive to opposition, fearless in action, and such an inveterate hater that he could not always act along lines leading to his own preferment.

Under the new Constitution, county judges, surrogates, and notaries public were selected from the dominant party with more jealous care than by the old Council; and if Yates failed to observe the edict of the Regency, the Senate failed to confirm his appointees. Hammond, the historian, gives an instance of its refusal to confirm the reappointment of a bank cashier as a notary public because of his politics. But the really absorbing question was the appointment of Supreme Court judges. Though there was no objection to Nathan Sanford for chancellor, since he would not take office until the retirement of James Kent, in August, by reason of age limitation, the spirit shown in the constitutional convention, toward the old Supreme Court judges, pervaded the Senate. The Governor, who had served with Ambrose Spencer since 1808, and with Platt and Woodworth from the time of their elevation to the court, was prompted, perhaps through his kindly interest in their welfare, to nominate them for reappointment, but the Senate rejected them by an almost unanimous vote. If the Governor had now let the matter rest, he would doubtless have escaped the serious charge of insincerity. The next day, however, without giving the rejected men opportunity to secure a rehearing, he nominated John Savage, Jacob Sutherland, and Samuel R. Betts. The suddenness of these second nominations seemed to indicate a greater desire to continue cordial relations with the Senate than to help his former associates. Whatever the cause, though, Ambrose Spencer never forgave him; nor did he outlive Samuel Young's criticism of playing politics at the expense of his old comrades upon the bench.

With the exception of Ambrose Spencer, who was destined to be remembered for a time by friends and enemies, the old judges of the Supreme Court may now be said to drop out of state history. Spencer lived twenty-five years longer, until 1848, serving one term in Congress, one term as mayor of Albany, and finally rounding out his long life of eighty-three years as president of the national Whig convention at Baltimore in 1844; but his political and public activity, as a factor to be reckoned with, ceased at the age of fifty-eight. The close of his life was spent in happy quietude among his books, and in the midst of new-found friends in the church, with which he united some six or eight years before his death. Jonas Platt returned to Clinton County, and, for a time, practised his profession with great acceptance as an advocate; but as a master-politician he, like Spencer, was out of employment forever. At last, he, too, retired to a farm, and with composure awaited the end that came in 1834. William W. Van Ness was destined to go earlier. Not seeking reappointment to the bench, he settled in New York, with apparently forty years of life before him, his genius in all the glow of its maturity marking him for greater political success than he had yet achieved; yet, within a year, on February 27, 1823, death found him while he sought health in a Southern State. He was only forty-seven years old at the time. Disease and not age had thrown him. Born in 1776, he had won for himself the proudest honours of the law, and written his name high up on the roll of New York statesmen.

Governor Yates had thus far travelled a difficult and dusty road. In the duty of organising the government, which, under the new Constitution fell to him, and in making appointments, he received the censure and was burdened with the resentment of the mortified and disappointed. His opponents, with the hearty and poorly concealed approval of Young's friends, made it their business to create a public opinion against him. They assailed him at all points with ridicule, with satire, with vituperation, and with personal abuse. They seemed to lie in wait to find occasion for attacking him, exaggerating his weaknesses and minimising his strength. But the blunder that broke his heart, and sent him into unexpected and sudden retirement, was his opposition to a change in the law providing for the choice of presidential electors by the people. The demand for such a measure grew out of a divided sentiment between William H. Crawford, then secretary of the treasury, John Quincy Adams, secretary of state, and Henry Clay, speaker of the national House of Representatives, the leading candidates for President. There was, as yet, no real break in the Republican party. No national question had appeared upon which the nation was divided; and, although individuals in the South took exception to protective duties, the party had made no claim that the tariff system of 1816 was either inexpedient or unconstitutional. The selection of a candidate for President had, however, become intensely personal, dividing the country into excited factions equivalent to a division of parties. In New York, Van Buren and the Albany Regency favoured Crawford; James Tallmadge, Henry Wheaton, Thurlow Weed and others preferred Adams; and Samuel Young, Peter B. Porter and their friends warmly supported Clay. The heated contest extended to the people, who understood that the choice of Crawford electors by the Legislature would control the election for the Georgian, while a change in the law would give Adams or Clay a chance. To insure such a change, the opponents of Crawford, calling themselves the People's party, made several nominations for the Assembly, and among those elected by overwhelming majorities were Tallmadge and Wheaton.

If Tallmadge was the most conspicuous leader of the People's party, Henry Wheaton was easily second. Though seven years younger, he had already made himself prominent, not merely as a politician of general ability, but as a reporter of the United States Supreme Court, whose conscientious and intelligent work was to link his name forever with the jurisprudence of the country. During the War of 1812, Wheaton had edited the National Advocate, writing a series of important papers on neutral rights; and, subsequently, he had become division judge-advocate of the army, and justice of the marine court of New York City. From the constitutional convention of 1821, he stepped into the Assembly of 1824, where, in the debates over the choice of electors by the people, his ready eloquence made him a valuable ally for Tallmadge and a formidable opponent to Flagg. His ambition to shine as a statesman, and an extraordinary power of application, equipped him with varied information, and made him an authority on many subjects. He joined Benjamin F. Butler in the revision of the statutes of the State, and was associated with Daniel Webster in settling the limits of the bankruptcy legislation of the state and federal governments. Just now he was still a young man, only in his thirty-ninth year; but those who had seen his keen, clever articles on neutral rights, polished and penetrating in style, and who heard his skilful and fearless advocacy of the people's right to choose electors, were not surprised to learn of his appointment, in later life, as a lecturer at Harvard, or to read his great work on the Elements of International Law, published in 1836. As a reward for the part he took in the election of 1824, President Adams sent him to Denmark, from whence he went to Prussia—these appointments keeping him abroad for twenty years.

John Van Ness Yates urged his uncle to recommend a change in the law regulating the choice of electors; and if the Governor had possessed the political wisdom necessary in such an emergency, he would doubtless have taken the suggestion. But Yates thought it wise to follow the Regency; the Regency thought it wise to follow Van Buren; and Van Buren opposed a change, as prejudicial to Crawford's interests. The result was a bungling attempt on the part of the Governor to evade the direct expression of an opinion. Finally, however, he said that as Congress was likely soon to present an amendment to the Constitution for legislative sanction, it was inadvisable "under existing circumstances" to change the law "at this time."[226] This was neither skilful nor truthful. Congress had no thought of doing anything of the kind, and, if it had, men knew that an amendment could not be secured in time to operate at the coming election. Yates' message, therefore, was pronounced "a shabby dodge," a trick familiar to many statesmen in difficulties.

[Footnote 226: Governors Speeches, Aug. 2, 1824, p. 218.]

When the Legislature convened, in January, 1824, a bill authorising the people to choose electors naturally excited a long and bitter debate, in which Azariah C. Flagg represented the Regency. Flagg was a printer by trade, the publisher of a Republican paper at Plattsburg, and a veteran of the War of 1812. He was not prepossessing in appearance; his diminutive stature, surmounted by a big, round head gave him the appearance of Atlas with the world upon his shoulders. His voice, too, was shrill and unattractive; but he suddenly evinced shrewdness and address in legislative tactics that greatly worried his opponents and pleased his friends. A majority of the Assembly, however, afraid of their excited and indignant constituents, finally passed the bill. When it reached the Senate, the supporters of Crawford indefinitely postponed it by a vote of seventeen to fourteen.

The defeat of this measure raised a storm of popular indignation. People were exasperated. Newspapers, opposed to the Van Buren leaders, published in black-letter type the names of senators who voted against it, while the frequenters of public places denounced them as "traitors, villains, and rascals," with the result that most of them were consigned to retirement during the remainder of their lives. "The impression here is that Van Buren and his junto are politically dead," wrote DeWitt Clinton to Henry Post on the 17th of February, 1824. "The impression will produce the event."[227]

[Footnote 227: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in Harper's Magazine, Vol. 50, p. 568.]

In the midst of this excitement, came the selection of a candidate for governor, to be elected in the following November. Yates had done the bidding of the Regency and Flagg demanded his renomination, but the men who supported a change in the mode of choosing electors declared that Yates was the original opponent of the people's wishes, and that, if renominated, he could not be re-elected. "If the Governor is to be sacrificed for his fidelity," retorted Flagg, "I am ready to suffer with him." From a sentimental standpoint, this avowal was most creditable and generous, but it had no place in the councils of politicians to whom sentiment never appeals when the shrouded figure of defeat stands at the open door. Just now, too, their fears increased as evidence accumulated that Samuel Young would certainly be offered a nomination by the People's party, and would certainly accept it, if he were not quickly nominated by the Regency Republicans. When the legislators went into caucus on the 3d of April, 1824, therefore, the friends of Van Buren were ready to throw over Yates and to accept Young, with Erastus Root for lieutenant-governor.

Three days afterward, the most influential and active friends of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay decided that a state convention—consisting of as many delegates as there were members of the Assembly, to be chosen by voters opposed to William H. Crawford for President and in favour of restoring the choice of presidential electors to the people—should assemble at Utica, on September 21, 1824, to nominate candidates for governor and lieutenant-governor. It had long been a dream of Clinton to have nominations made by delegates elected by the people. That dream was now to be realised, and the door to a new political era opened.

Though Clinton had announced a determination to support Andrew Jackson, he displayed no zeal in the state contest, and contented himself with writing gossipy letters to Post and in watching the rapid growth of the Erie canal. As early as 1819, the canal had been opened between Utica and Rome, and from the Hudson to Lake Champlain. The middle section, recently completed, was now actively in use between Utica and Montezuma. In little more than a year, the jubilee over the letting in of the waters of Lake Erie would deaden the strife of parties with booming of cannon and expressions of joy. Throughout all the delays and vexations of this wonderful enterprise, DeWitt Clinton had been the great inspiring force, and, although for several years the board of canal commissioners had been reorganised in the interest of the Bucktails, not a whisper was heard intimating any desire or intention to interfere with him. When it was known, however, that James Tallmadge had been agreed upon as the candidate of the People's party for governor, the Regency, in order to split his forces, determined upon Clinton's removal from all participation in the management of the canal. If Tallmadge voted for such a resolution, reasoned the Van Buren leaders, it would alienate the political friends with whom he was just now acting; if he voted against it, he would alienate Tammany.

It was a bold game of politics, and a dangerous one. The people did not love Clinton, but they believed in his policy, and a blow at him, in their opinion, was a blow at the canal. Nothing in the whole of Van Buren's history exhibits a more foolish disregard of public sentiment, or led to a greater disaster. But the Regency, blinded by its overwhelming victory at the last election, was prepared to pay a gambler's price for power, and, in the twinkling of an eye, before the Assembly knew what had happened, the Senate removed Clinton from the office of canal commissioner, only three votes being recorded for him. Thurlow Weed happened to be a witness of the proceeding, and, rushing to the Assembly chamber, urged Tallmadge to resist its passage through the house. "I knew how bitterly General Tallmadge hated Mr. Clinton," he says, "but in a few hurried and emphatic sentences implored him not to be caught in the trap thus baited for him. I urged him to state frankly, in a brief speech, how entirely he was estranged personally and politically from Mr. Clinton, but to denounce his removal during the successful progress of a system of improvement which he had inaugurated, and which would confer prosperity and wealth upon the people and enrich and elevate our State, as an act of vandalism to which he could not consent to be a party. I concluded by assuring him solemnly that if he voted for that resolution he could not receive the nomination for governor."[228]

[Footnote 228: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 109.]

But Tallmadge remained dumb. Gamaliel H. Barstow, formerly a Clintonian, walked out of the chamber. Other old friends showed indifference. Only Henry Cunningham of Montgomery, entering the chamber while the clerk was reading the resolution, eloquently denounced it. "When the miserable party strifes shall have passed by," he said, in conclusion; "when the political jugglers who now beleaguer this capital shall be overwhelmed and forgotten; when the gentle breeze shall pass over the tomb of that great man, carrying with it the just tribute of honour and praise which is now withheld, the pen of the future historian will do him justice, and erect to his memory a monument of fame as imperishable as the splendid works that owe their origin to his genius and perseverance."[229] One or two others spoke briefly in Clinton's behalf, and then the resolution passed—ayes sixty-four, noes thirty-four. Among the ayes were Tallmadge and Wheaton.

[Footnote 229: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 110.]

Had Clinton been assassinated, the news could not have produced a greater shock. Scarcely had the Assembly adjourned, before the citizens of Albany—rushing into the vacant chamber and electing the old and venerable John Taylor, the former lieutenant-governor, for chairman—expressed their indignation in denunciatory speeches and resolutions. In New York City, a committee of twenty-five, headed by Thomas Addis Emmet, called in person upon Clinton to make known the feeling of the meeting. Everywhere throughout the State, the removal awakened a cyclone of resentment, the members who voted for it being the storm-centres. At Canandaigua, personal indignities were threatened.[230] "Several members," says Weed, "were hissed as they came out of the capitol. Tallmadge received unmistakable evidence, on his way through State Street to his lodgings, of the great error he had committed. His hotel was filled with citizens, whose rebukes were loudly heard as he passed through the hall to his apartment, and as he nervously paced backward and forward in his parlour, 'the victim of remorse that comes too late,' he perceived both the depth and the darkness of the political pit into which he had fallen."[231]

[Footnote 230: Ibid., p. 114.]

[Footnote 231: Ibid., p. 113.]

Immediately, the tide began setting strongly in favour of Clinton for governor. Clintonian papers urged it, and personal friends wrote and rode over the State in his interest. Clinton himself became sanguine of success. "Tallmadge can scarcely get a vote in his own county," he wrote Post on the 21st of April. "He is the prince of rascals—if Wheaton does not exceed him."[232]

[Footnote 232: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in Harper's Magazine, Vol. 50, p. 569. Clinton seems to have taken a particular dislike to Henry Wheaton. Elsewhere, he writes to Post: "There is but one opinion about Wheaton, and that is that he is a pitiful scoundrel."—Ibid., p. 417.]

Meanwhile, a sensation long foreseen by those in the Governor's inner circle, was about to be sprung. Yates was not a man to be rudely thrust out of office. He knew he had blundered in opposing an electoral law, and he now proposed giving the Legislature another opportunity to enact one. The Regency did not believe there would be an extra session, because, as Attorney-General Talcott suggested, the power to convene the Legislature was a high prerogative, the exercise of which required more decision and nerve than Yates possessed; but, on the 2nd of June, to the surprise and consternation of the Van Buren leaders, Yates issued a proclamation reconvening the Legislature on August 2. It was predicated upon the failure of Congress to amend the Constitution, upon the recent defeat of the electoral bill in the Senate, and upon the just alarm of the people, that "their undoubted right" of choosing presidential electors would be withheld from them. Very likely, it afforded the Governor much satisfaction to make this open and damaging attack upon the Regency. He had surrendered independence if not self-respect, and, in return for his fidelity, had been ruthlessly cast aside for his less faithful rival. Yet his purpose was more than revenge. Between the Clintonian prejudice against Tallmadge, and the People's party's hatred of Clinton, the Governor hoped he might become a compromise candidate at the Utica convention. The future, however, had no place for him. He was ridiculed the more by his enemies and dropped into the pit of oblivion by his former friends. Nothing in his public life, perhaps, became him so well as his dignified retirement at Schenectady, amid the scenes of his youth, where he died at the age of sixty-nine, leaving a place in history not strongly marked.

Yates' extra session lasted four days and did nothing except to snub the Governor and give the eloquent Tallmadge, amidst tumultuous applause from the galleries, an opportunity of annoying the Regency by keeping up the popular excitement over a change in the choice of electors until the assembling of the Utica convention. As the days passed, the sentiment for Clinton became stronger and more apparent. Thurlow Weed, travelling over the State in the interest of Tallmadge, found Clinton's nomination almost universally demanded, with Tallmadge a favourite for second place. This, the eloquent gentleman peremptorily refused, until an appeal for harmony, and the suggestion that Adams' election might open to him a broader field for usefulness than that of being governor, produced the desired change. Probably Tallmadge felt within himself that he was not destined to a great political career. In any case, he finally accepted the offer with perfect good humour, giving Weed a brief letter consenting to the use of his name as lieutenant-governor. With this the young journalist arrived at Utica on the morning of convention day.

There were one hundred and twenty-two delegates in the convention, of whom one-fourth belonged to the People's party. These supported Tallmadge for governor. When they discovered that Tallmadge's vote to remove Clinton had put him out of the race, they suggested John W. Taylor; but a delegate from Saratoga produced a letter in which the distinguished opponent of the Missouri Compromise declined to become a candidate. This left the way open to DeWitt Clinton, and, as he carried off the nomination by a large majority, with Tallmadge for lieutenant-governor by acclamation, many representatives of the People's party walked out of the hall and reorganised another convention, resolving to support Tallmadge, but protesting against the nomination of Clinton—"a diversion," says Weed, "which was soon forgotten amid the general and pervading enthusiasm."[233]

[Footnote 233: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 120.]

The election of governor in 1824 passed into history as one of the most stirring ever witnessed in the State. In a fight, Samuel Young and DeWitt Clinton were at home. They neither asked nor gave quarter. There is no record that their fluency or invective did more than add to the excitement of the campaign; but each was well supplied with ready venom. Young was rhetorical and dramatic—Clinton energetic and forceful. People, listening to Young, rocked with laughter and revelled in applause as he pilloried his opponents, the ferocity of his attacks being surpassed only by the eloquence of his periods. With Clinton, speaking was serious business. He lacked the oratorical gift and the art of concealing the labour of his overwrought and too elaborate sentences; but his addresses afforded ample evidence of the capacity and richness of his mind. In spite of great faults, both candidates commanded the loyalty of followers who swelled with pride because of their courage and splendid ability. The confidence of the Regency and the usual success of Tammany at first made the friends of Clinton unhappy; but as the campaign advanced, Young discovered that the Regency, in insisting on the choice of electors by the Legislature, had given the opposition the most telling cry it could possibly have found against him; that the popular tumult over Clinton's removal was growing from day to day; and that his opponents were banded together against him on many grounds and with many different purposes. Two weeks before the election, it was evident to every one that the Regency was doomed, that Van Buren was disconcerted, and that Young was beaten; but no one expected that Clinton's majority would reach sixteen thousand,[234] or that Tallmadge would run thirty-two thousand ahead of Erastus Root. The announcement came like a thunderbolt, bringing with it the intelligence that out of eight senators only two Regency men had been spared, while, in the Assembly, the opposition had three to one. In other words, the election of 1822 had been completely reversed. Clinton was again in the saddle.

[Footnote 234: DeWitt Clinton, 103,452; Samuel Young, 87,093.—Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

Samuel Young's political fortunes never recovered from this encounter with the illustrious champion of the canals. He was much in office afterward. For eight years he served in the State Senate, and once as lieutenant-governor; for a quarter of a century he lived on, a marvellous orator, whom the people never tired of hearing, and whom opponents never ceased to fear; but the glow that lingers about a public man who had never been overwhelmed by the suffrage of his fellow-citizens was gone forever.



CHAPTER XXX

VAN BUREN ENCOUNTERS WEED

1824

Political interest, in 1824, centred in the election of a President as well as a Governor. Three candidates,—William H. Crawford of Georgia, John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, and Henry Clay of Kentucky,—divided the parties in New York. No one thought of DeWitt Clinton. Very likely, after his overwhelming election, Clinton, in his joy, felt his ambition again aroused. He had been inoculated with presidential rabies in 1812, and his letters to Henry Post showed signs of continued madness. "I think Crawford is hors de combat," he wrote in March, 1824. "Calhoun never had force, and Clay is equally out of the question. As for Adams, he can only succeed by the imbecility of his opponents, not by his own strength. In this crisis may not some other person bear away the palm?"[235] Then follows the historic illustration, indicating that the canal champion thought he might become a compromise candidate: "Do you recollect the story of Themistocles the Athenian? After the naval victory of Salamis a council of generals was held to determine on the most worthy. Each man was to write down two names, the first and the next best. Each general wrote his own name for the first, and that of Themistocles for the second. May not this contest have a similar result? I am persuaded that with common prudence we will stand better than ever."[236]

[Footnote 235: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in Harper's Magazine, Vol. 50, p. 568.]

[Footnote 236: Ibid., Vol. 50, p. 586.]

But the field was preoccupied and the competitors too numerous. So, getting no encouragement, Clinton turned to the hero of New Orleans. "In Jackson," he wrote Post, "we must look for a sincere and honest friend. Whatever demonstrations are made from other quarters are dictated by policy and public sentiment."[237] He grows impatient with Clay, indignant at the apparent success of Adams, and vituperative over the tactics of Calhoun. "Clay ought to resign forthwith," he writes on the 17th of April, 1824; "his chance is worse than nothing. Jackson would then prevail with all the Western States, if we can get New Jersey."[238] Four days later he was sure of New Jersey. "We can get her," he assures Post, on April 21. "I see no terrors in Adams' papers; his influence has gone with his morals."[239]

[Footnote 237: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in Harper's Magazine, Vol. 50, p. 568.]

[Footnote 238: Ibid., p. 568.]

[Footnote 239: Ibid., p. 569.]

But by midsummer Clinton had become alarmed at the action of the candidate from South Carolina. "Calhoun is acting a treacherous part to Jackson," he says, under date of July 23, "and is doing all he can for Adams. Perhaps there is not a man in the United States more hollow-headed and base. I have long observed his manoeuvres."[240] A week later Clinton speaks of Calhoun as "a thorough-paced political blackleg."[241] In August he gives Adams another slap. "The great danger is that there will be a quarrel between the friends of Jackson and Adams, and that in the war between the lion and the unicorn the cur may slip in and carry off the prize."[242]

[Footnote 240: Ibid., p. 569.]

[Footnote 241: Ibid., p. 569.]

[Footnote 242: Ibid., p. 569.

"Clinton's presidential aspirations made him a very censorious judge of all who did not sympathise with them. The four competing candidates, Crawford, Clay, Calhoun, and Adams, could hardly be paralleled, Clinton being judge, by an equal number of the twelve Caesars of Suetonius. Crawford is 'as hardened a ruffian as Burr'; Calhoun is 'treacherous', and 'a thorough-paced political blackleg.' Adams 'in politics was an apostate, and in private life a pedagogue, and everything but amiable and honest', while his father, the ex-President, was 'a scamp.' Governor Yates is 'perfidious and weak.' Henry Wheaton's 'conduct is shamefully disgraceful, and he might be lashed naked round the world.' Chief Justice Ambrose Spencer is classed as a minus quantity, and his son John C., 'the political millstone of the West.' Peter B. Porter 'wears a mask.' Woodworth 'is a weak man, with sinister purposes.' Root is 'a bad man.' Samuel Young 'is unpopular and suspicions are entertained of his integrity.' Van Buren 'is the prince of villains.' The first impression produced is one of astonishment that a man capable of such great things could ever have taken such a lively interest, as he seemed to, in the mere scullionery of politics."—John Bigelow, in Harper's Magazine, March, 1875.]

Though Clinton and Jackson had long been admirers, there is no evidence that, at this time, so much as a letter had passed between them. One can easily understand, however, that a man of the iron will and great achievement of the Tennesseean would profoundly interest DeWitt Clinton. On the other hand, the proud, aspiring, unpliant man whose canal policy brought national renown, had won the admiration of Andrew Jackson. In 1818, at a Nashville banquet, he had toasted Clinton, declaring him "the promoter of his country's best interests;" and one year later, at a dinner given in his honour by the mayor of New York, Jackson confounded most of the Bucktail banqueters and surprised them all by proposing "DeWitt Clinton, the enlightened statesman and governor of the great and patriotic State of New York." The two men had many characteristics in common. Neither would stoop to conquer. But the dramatic thing about Clinton's interest just now, was his proclamation for Jackson, when everybody else in New York was for some other candidate. The bitterness of that hour was very earnest. Whatever chance existed for Jackson outside of the State, there was not the slightest hope for him within it. Nevertheless, Clinton seemed indifferent. He was a statesman without being a politician. He believed in Jackson's star, and it was this prescience, as the sequel showed, that was to give him, in spite of opponents, a sixth term as governor.

Clinton's resume of the political situation, written to Post, also showed his unfailing knowledge of the conditions about to be enacted at Albany. The Legislature which assembled in extra session, in November, 1824, for the appointment of presidential electors, was the same Assembly that had favoured the choice of electors by the people, and the same Senate which had indefinitely postponed that measure by a vote of seventeen to fourteen. The former struggle, therefore, was immediately renewed in the legislative halls, with Martin Van Buren confident of seventeen Crawford votes in the Senate, and enough more in the Assembly, with the help of the Clay men, to give the Georgian a majority on joint ballot.

The Adams men had less confidence, but no less shrewdness and skill. A new Richmond had arrived on the field. Since his visitation through the State two years before, in behalf of Solomon Southwick's candidacy for governor, Thurlow Weed had been growing rapidly in political experience. He left Manlius without a penny in the autumn of 1822 to find work on the Rochester Telegraph, a Clintonian paper of small pretensions and smaller circulation. Under its new manager, and with the name of John Quincy Adams for President at the head of the editorial page, it soon became so popular and belligerent that the business men of Rochester sent Weed to Albany as their agent to secure from the Legislature a charter for a bank. Upon his arrival at the capital, the friends of the New England candidate welcomed him to the great political arena in which he was to fight so long, so brilliantly, and with such success.

It was at this period in his history, that Thurlow Weed's connection with public life began, developing into that wonderful career which made him one of the most influential writers and strongest personalities of his day. He was not an orator; he was not even a public talker. One attempt to speak met with failure so embarrassing that he never tried a second time; but he was a companionable being. He loved the company of men. He had suffered so much, and yet retained so much of the serenity of a child, that he was ever ready to share his purse and his mantle of pity with the unfortunate, brightening their lives with a tender sympathy that endeared him to all. It was so natural for him to guide wisely and noiselessly that he seemed unconscious of his great gifts. Men in high places, often opulent and happy in their ease, deferred to him with the confidence of pupils to a beloved teacher. But he possessed more than philosophic wisdom. He was sleepless and tireless. It was his custom to attend political gatherings in all parts of the State, and to make the acquaintance of men in that "inner circle," who controlled the affairs of party and the destiny of aspiring statesmen. In 1822 he had toured the State in the interest of Solomon Southwick. From April to December, in 1824, he attended two extra sessions of the Legislature and a meeting of the Electoral College, besides travelling twice throughout the State in behalf of the candidacy of John Quincy Adams. Traversing New York, over rough roads, before the days of canals and railroads, in the heavy, lumbering stage coach that took five or six days and nights, and, in muddy seasons, six days and seven nights of continuous travel, to go from Albany to Buffalo, made a strenuous life, but Weed's devotion to party, and fidelity to men and principles, sent him on his way with something of the freshness of boyhood still shining on his face. He had his faults, but they were not of a kind to prevent men from finding him lovable.

When Weed came to Albany, in November, 1824, as the advocate of John Quincy Adams, the only hope of success was the union of the friends of Clay and Adams, since only two electoral tickets, under the Constitution, could be voted for. In the Senate, Crawford had seventeen votes, and Adams and Clay seven each; in the Assembly, the first ballot gave Crawford forty-three, Adams fifty, and Clay thirty-two. Until some combination was made, therefore, a majority could not be obtained for any candidate. To make such an union required fine diplomacy between the Adams and Clay men; for it appeared that Clay must have at least seven electoral votes from New York in order to become one of the three candidates to be voted for in the House of Representatives, should the election of President be thrown into Congress. Fortunately for the Adams men, the Crawford people also had their troubles, and to hold two senators in line they placed the names of six moderate Clay men on their ticket. Thereupon, at a secret meeting, the Adams and Clay leaders agreed to support thirty Adams men and the six Clay men upon the Crawford ticket, the friends of Adams promising, if Clay carried Louisiana, to furnish him the needed seven votes. Naturally enough, the success of this programme depended upon the utmost secrecy, since their ticket, with the help of all the Clay votes that could be mustered, would not exceed two majority. The better to secure such secrecy Weed personally printed the ballots on the Sunday before the final vote on Tuesday.

There was another well-kept secret. Thurlow Weed had had his suspicions turned into absolute evidence that Henry Eckford of New York City, a wealthy supporter of Crawford, had furnished money to influence three Adams men to vote for the Georgian. He had followed their go-between from Syracuse to Albany, from Albany to New York, and from New York back to Albany; he had heard their renunciation of Adams and their changed sentiments toward Crawford; and he knew also that the Adams ticket was lost if these three votes, or even two of them, were cast for the Crawford ticket. Weed straightway proposed that the dishonourable purposes of these men should be anticipated by an immediate declaration of war; and, upon their appearance in Albany, Henry Wheaton faced them with the story of their dishonour, threatening an exposure unless they voted a ballot bearing the initials of himself and Tallmadge. Conscious of their guilty purposes, the timid souls consented to Wheaton's proposition and then kept their pledges.

In the meantime, Van Buren's confidence in the weakness of the Adams-Clay men was never for a moment shaken. Of the thirty-nine Clay supporters in the Legislature, Crawford only needed sixteen; and these, Samuel Young and his Clay friends, had promised to deliver. There is no evidence that Van Buren had any knowledge of Weed's management at this time; it so happened, by design or by accident, that in their long careers they never met but once, and then, not until after Van Buren had retired from the White House. But the Senator knew that some hand had struck him, and struck him hard, when Lieutenant-Governor Root drew from the box the first union ballot. Instead of reading it, Root involuntarily exclaimed, "A printed split ticket." Thereupon Senator Keyes of Jefferson County, sprang to his feet, and, in a loud voice, shouted, "Treason, by God!" In the confusion, Root was about to vacate the speaker's chair and return with the senators to their chamber, when James Tallmadge, in a stentorian voice, called for order. "I demand, under the authority of the Constitution of the United States," he said, "under the Constitution of the State of New York, in the name of the whole American people, that this joint meeting of the two houses of the Legislature shall not be interrupted in the discharge of a high duty and a sacred trust."[243] This settled it. The count went on, but, so nearly were the parties divided that only thirty-two electors, and these on the union ticket, received votes enough to elect them. On the second ballot, four Crawford electors were chosen. "Had our secret transpired before the first ballot," says Weed, "such was the power of the Regency over two or three timid men, that the whole Crawford ticket would have been elected."[244]

[Footnote 243: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 127.]

[Footnote 244: Ibid., p. 127.]

Writing without full information of the agreement made in the secret caucus, Hammond[245] intimates that the Adams men did not keep faith with the Clay men, since the four votes taken from Clay and given to Crawford on the second ballot made Crawford, instead of Clay, a candidate in the national House of Representatives. Other writers have followed this opinion, charging the Adams managers with having played foul with the Kentucky statesman. But Weed and his associates did nothing of the kind. The agreement was that Clay should have seven electoral votes from New York, provided he carried Louisiana, but as Jackson carried that State, it left the Adams men free to give all their votes to the New Englander. What would have happened had Clay carried Louisiana is not so clear, for Weed admits that up to the time news came that Louisiana had gone for Jackson, he was unable to find a single Adams elector who would consent to vote for Clay, even to save his friends and his party from dishonour.

[Footnote 245: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, p. 177.]

The failure of the people to elect a President in 1824, and the choice of John Quincy Adams by the House of Representatives, are among the most widely known events in our political history. New York remained, throughout, the storm-centre of excitement. After a large majority of its presidential electors had declared for Adams, thus throwing the election into Congress, the result still depended upon the vote of its closely divided delegation in the House. Of the thirty-four congressmen, seventeen favoured Adams, sixteen opposed him, and Stephen Van Rensselaer was doubtful. The latter's action, therefore, became of the utmost importance, since, if he voted against Adams, it would tie the New York delegation and exclude it from the count, thus giving Adams twelve States instead of the necessary thirteen, and making his election on a second ballot even more doubtful. This condition revived the hopes of Van Buren and gave Clinton a chance to work for Jackson.

Stephen Van Rensselaer,[246] born in 1764, had had a conspicuous and in some respects a distinguished career. He was the fifth in lineal descent from Killian van Rensselaer, the wealthy pearl merchant of Amsterdam, known as the first Patroon, whose great manor, purchased in the early part of the seventeenth century, originally included the present counties of Albany, Rensselaer, and Columbia. Stephen inherited the larger part of this territory, and, with it, the old manor house at Albany. His mother was a daughter of Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his wife a daughter of Philip Schuyler. This made him the brother-in-law of Alexander Hamilton.

[Footnote 246: Thurlow Weed, in his Autobiography, says (p. 461): "Of his estimable private character, and of the bounties and blessings he scattered in all directions, or of the pervading atmosphere of happiness and gratitude that his lifelong goodness created, I need not speak, for they are widely known and well remembered."]

Stephen began filling offices as soon as he was old enough. For several years he served in the Assembly and in the Senate. In 1795, he became lieutenant-governor for two terms. George Clinton defeated him for governor in 1801; but before Jay's term expired, he made him commander of the State's cavalry. In 1812, at the outbreak of hostilities with England, Governor Tompkins promoted him to be chief of the state militia—an office which he resigned in disgust after the disgraceful defeat at Queenstown Heights on the Niagara frontier, because his troops refused to follow him. In 1810, he became a member of the first canal commission, of which he was president for fifteen years. Later, he served as a regent and chancellor of the State University, and, in 1824, established the Troy Polytechnical Institute. It was at this time he went to Congress, and while serving his first term, held the casting vote that would elect a President of the United States.

Rensselaer had been a Federalist of the Hamilton school, and, although the Federal party had practically ceased to exist, he owed his election to its former members. This was sufficient reason to believe that he would not support Van Buren's candidate, and that his predilections would incline him to take a President from the North, provided Adams was persona grata to the old Federalists. The latter had never quite forgiven Adams for deserting them; and, having been long excluded from power, they were anxious to know whether, if elected, he would continue to proscribe them. Finally, when Daniel Webster removed their doubts on this subject, Van Rensselaer still hesitated on account of Clinton. He had a strong liking for the Governor. They had served as canal commissioners, and their association in the great work, then nearing completion, filled him with admiration for the indomitable spirit exhibited by the distinguished canal builder. His probable action, therefore, kept men busy guessing. The suspense resembled that of the Tilden Hayes controversy of 1877, for the result meant much to the several factions in the State. Crawford's election would continue Van Buren and the Regency in power; the choice of Jackson must make Clinton the supreme dispenser of federal patronage; and Adams' success meant a better opportunity for Thurlow Weed to form a new party.

Van Rensselaer did not talk. Experience had accustomed him to outside pressure, and he now kept his head cool when Clinton and other influential New Yorkers overwhelmed him with prayers and petitions. At last, on the morning of February 9, 1825, he walked leisurely into the hall of the House and took his seat with the New York delegation. Every member of the House was in his place, except one who was sick in his lodgings. The galleries were packed with spectators, and the areas thronged with judges, ambassadors, governors, and other privileged persons. After the formal announcement, that no one had received a majority of electoral votes for the Presidency, and that the House of Representatives must elect a President from the three highest candidates, the roll was called by States, and the vote of each State deposited in a box by itself. Then the tellers, Daniel Webster and John Randolph, opened the boxes and counted the ballots.

The report of the tellers surprised almost every one. A long contest had been expected. Friends of Crawford hoped the House would weary itself with many ballots and end the affair by electing him. But the announcement gave Crawford only four States, Jackson seven, and Adams thirteen—a majority over all. Then it was known that Van Rensselaer's vote had given New York to Adams, and that New York's vote had made Adams the President. For the moment, Van Buren was checkmated, and he knew it.



CHAPTER XXXI

CLINTON'S COALITION WITH VAN BUREN

1825-1828

The election of John Quincy Adams as President of the United States staggered the Regency and seriously threatened the influence of Martin Van Buren. It was likely to close the portals of the White House to him, and to open the doors of custom-houses and post-offices to his opponents. More injurious than this, it established new party alignments and gave great prestige at least to one man before unrecognised as a political factor. The successful combination of the Adams and Clay electors was the talk of the State; and, although Thurlow Weed's dominant part in the game did not appear on the surface, Van Buren and every intelligent political worker understood that some strong hand had been at work.

The absence of available candidates, around whom he could rally his shattered forces, cast the deepest shadow across Van Buren's pathway. He had staked much upon Samuel Young's candidacy for governor, and everything upon William H. Crawford's candidacy for President. But Young fell under Clinton's overwhelming majority, and Crawford exhibited a weakness that surprised even his inveterate opponents. In the House of Representatives Crawford had carried but four out of the twenty-four States. This seemed to leave Van Buren without a man to turn to; while Clinton's early declaration for Andrew Jackson gave him the key to the situation. Although Jackson, for whom eleven States had given an electoral plurality, received the vote of but seven States in the House, the contest had narrowed to a choice between Adams and himself, making the popular General the coming man. Besides, Clinton was very active on his own account. On the 26th of October, 1825, the waters of Lake Erie were let into the Erie canal, and navigation opened from the lake to the Hudson. It was a great day for the Governor. A popular jubilation extended from Buffalo to New York, and, amidst the roar of artillery and the eloquence of many orators, the praises of the distinguished canal builder sounded throughout the State and nation. To a man of intellect far lower than that of Martin Van Buren, it must have been obvious that forces were at work in the minds and hearts of people which could not be controlled by Regency edicts or party traditions.

But the Kinderhook statesman did not despair. In the election to occur in November he desired simply to strengthen himself in the Legislature; and, with consummate skill, he sought to carry Republican districts. National issues were to be avoided. So ably did Edwin Croswell, the wise and sagacious editor of the Albany Argus, lead the way, that not a word was written or spoken against the national administration. This cunning play renewed the old charge of "non-committalism,"[247] which for many years was used to characterise Van Buren's policy and action; but it in no wise disconcerted his plans, or discovered his intentions. All he wanted now was the Legislature, and while the whole State was given up to general rejoicing over the completion of the canal, the Regency leaders, under the direction of the astute Senator, practised the tactics which Van Buren had learned from Aaron Burr, and which have come to be known in later days as a "political still-hunt." When the contest ended, the Regency Republicans had both branches of the Legislature by a safe working majority. This result, so overwhelming, so sudden, and so entirely unexpected, made Clinton's friends believe that his end had come.

[Footnote 247: "'I heard a great deal about Mr. Van Buren,' said Andrew Jackson, who occupied a seat in the United States Senate with him, 'especially about his non-committalism. I made up my mind that I would take an early opportunity to hear him and judge for myself. One day an important subject was under debate. I noticed that Mr. Van Buren was taking notes while one of the senators was speaking. I judged from this that he intended to reply, and I determined to be in my seat when he spoke. His turn came; and he arose and made a clear, straightforward argument, which, to my mind, disposed of the whole subject. I turned to my colleague, Major Seaton, who sat next to me. 'Major,' I said, 'is there anything non-committal about that?' 'No, sir,' said the Major."—Edward M. Shepard, Life of Martin Van Buren, p. 151.

"In Van Buren's senatorial speeches there is nothing to justify the charge of 'non-committalism' so much made against him. When he spoke at all he spoke explicitly; and he plainly, though without acerbity, exhibited his likes and dislikes. Van Buren scrupulously observed the amenities of debate. He was uniformly courteous towards adversaries; and the calm self-control saved him, as some great orators were not saved, from a descent to the aspersion of motive so common and futile in political debate."—Ibid., p. 152.]

Van Buren, however, had broader views. He knew that Andrew Jackson, as a candidate for the Presidency, had little standing in 1824 until Pennsylvania took him up, and he now believed that if New York supported him, with the Keystone State, in 1828, the hero of New Orleans must succeed Adams. To elect him President, therefore, became the purpose of Van Buren's political life; and, as the first step in that direction, he determined to make DeWitt Clinton his friend. The Governor was Jackson's champion. He had declared for him in the early days of the Tennesseean's candidacy, and to reach him through such an outspoken ally would give Van Buren an open way to the hero's heart.

Accordingly, Van Buren insisted upon a conciliatory course. He sent Benjamin Knower, the state treasurer and now a member of the Regency, to inform Clinton that, if the Van Buren leaders could control their party, he should have no opposition at next year's gubernatorial election. Clinton and Bucktail, like oil and water, had refused to combine until this third ingredient, that Van Buren knew so well how to add, completed the mixture. Whether the coalition would have brought Clinton the reward of success or the penalty of failure must forever remain a secret, for the Governor did not live long enough to solve the question. But in the game of politics he had never been a match for Van Buren. He was a statesman without being a politician.

Just now, however, Clinton and Van Buren, like lovers who had quarrelled and made up, could not be too responsive to each other's wishes. To confirm the latter's good intentions, the Regency senators promptly approved Clinton's nomination of Samuel Jones for chancellor in place of Nathan Sanford, who was now chosen United States senator to succeed Rufus King. It was bitter experience. The appointment rudely ignored the rule, uniformly and wisely adhered to since the formation of a state government, to promote the chief justice.

Besides, Jones had been a pronounced Federalist for a quarter of a century. Moreover, he was a relative of the Governor's wife, and to some men, even in that day, nepotism was an offence. But he was an eminent lawyer, the son of the distinguished first comptroller, and to make their consideration of the Governor's wishes more evident, the senators confirmed the nomination without sending it to a committee.

A more remarkable illustration of Van Buren's conciliatory policy occurred in the confirmation of James McKnown as recorder of Albany. McKnown was a bitter Clintonian. It was he who, at the Albany meeting, so eloquently protested against the removal of Clinton as a canal commissioner, denouncing it as "the offspring of that malignant and insatiable spirit of political proscription which has already so deeply stained the annals of the State," and the perpetrators as "utterly unworthy of public confidence."[248] But the Senate confirmed him without a dissenting vote. Later, when a vacancy occurred in the judgeship of the eighth circuit by the resignation of William B. Rochester, it seemed for a time as if the coalition must break. The Regency wanted Herman J. Redfield, one of the seventeen senators whose opposition to the electoral bill had caused his defeat; but the eighth district was Clinton's stronghold, and if he nominated Redfield, the Governor argued, it would deprive him of strength and prestige, and seriously weaken the cause of Jackson. The Regency, accustomed to remain faithful to the men who incurred popular odium for being faithful to them, found it difficult, either to reconcile the conditions with their wishes, or to compromise upon any one else. Nevertheless, on the last day of the session, through the active and judicious agency of Benjamin Knower, John Birdsall of Chautauqua County, a friend of Clinton, was nominated and confirmed.

[Footnote 248: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 2, p. 164.]

In the meantime, Van Buren had returned to his seat in Congress. He entered the United States Senate in 1821, and, although observing the decorum expected of a new member of that body, he displayed powers of mind that distinguished him as a senator of more than ordinary ability. He now became a parliamentary orator, putting himself at the head of an anti-Administration faction, and developing the tact and management of a great parliamentary leader. He had made up his mind that nothing less than a large and comprehensive difference between the two wings of the Republican party would be of any real use; so he arraigned the Administration, with great violence, as un-Republican and Federalistic. He took a definite stand against internal improvements by the United States government; he led the opposition to the appointment of American representatives to the Congress of Panama, treating the proposed mission as unconstitutional and dangerous; and he charged the Administration with returning to the practices of the Federalist party, to which Adams originally belonged, declaring that the presidential choice of 1825 was not only the restoration of the men of 1798, but of the principles of that day; that the spirit of encroachment had become more wary, but not more honest; and that the system then was coercion, now it was seduction. He classed the famous alien and sedition laws, of the elder Adams, with the bold avowal of the younger Adams that it belonged to the President alone to decide upon the propriety of a foreign mission. Thus, he associated the administration of John Quincy Adams with the administration of his father, insisting that if the earlier one deserved the retribution of a Republican victory, the latter one deserved a similar fate.

Van Buren's language had the courteous dignity that uniformly characterised his speeches. He charged no personal wrong-doing; he insinuated no base motives; he rejected the unfounded story of the sale of the Presidency to Adams; he voted for Clay's confirmation as secretary of state, and, as a member of the senatorial committee, he welcomed the new President upon his inauguration; but from the moment John Quincy Adams became President, the Senator from New York led the opposition to his administration with the astuteness of a great parliamentary leader, determined to create a new party in American politics. Van Buren also had some strong allies. With him, voted Findlay of Pennsylvania, Holmes of Maine, Woodbury of New Hampshire, Dickerson of New Jersey, and Kane of Illinois, besides twelve Southern senators. But, from the outset, he was the leader. His speeches, smooth and seldom impassioned, were addressed to the intellect rather than to the feelings. He was the master of the art of making a perfectly clear statement of the most complicated case, and of defending his measures, point by point, with never-failing readiness and skill throughout the most perplexing series of debates. He talked to make converts, appealing to his colleagues with a directness well calculated to bring to his side a majority of the waverers.

Van Buren's opposition to the Adams administration has been called factious and unpatriotic. It was certainly active and continuous, and, perhaps, now and then, somewhat more unscrupulous than senatorial opposition is in our own time; but his policy was, unquestionably, the policy of more modern political parties. His tactics created an organisation which, inside and outside of the Senate, was to work unceasingly, with tongue and pen, to discredit everything done by the men in office and to turn public opinion against them. It was a part of his plan not only to watch with jealous care all the acts of the Administration, but to make the most of every opportunity that could be used to turn them out of office; and when the Senate debate ended, the modern Democratic party had been formed. Adams recorded in his now famous diary that Van Buren made "a great effort to combine the discordant elements of the Crawford and Jackson and Calhoun men into a united opposition against the Administration." He might have added, also, that the debate distinctly marked Van Buren's position in history as a party-maker in the second great division of parties in America.

Van Buren's coalition with DeWitt Clinton, however, came perilously near prostrating them both. At their state convention, held at Utica, in September, 1826, the Clintonians and the People's party renominated Clinton for governor. In the following month, the Bucktails met at Herkimer, and, if Van Buren could have had his way, the convention would have indorsed Clinton. Finding such action inadvisable, however, Van Buren secured the nomination of William B. Rochester, on the theory that he was a good enough candidate to be beaten. Rochester was not a man of marked ability. He had done nothing to make himself known throughout the State; he did not even favour a state road through the southern tier of counties. He was simply a lawyer of fair attainments who had served a term in the Legislature, one in Congress, and two years as a circuit judge, a position from which he resigned, in 1825, to become minister to Panama.

But Rochester proved vastly more formidable as a candidate for governor than the Van Buren leaders anticipated. It became well known that he was a supporter of the Adams administration, and that Henry Clay regarded him with favour. Indeed, it was through the latter's personal and political friendship that he secured the mission to Panama. Thus, the feeling began to obtain that Rochester, although the nominee of the Regency party, more nearly represented the interests and principles of the Adams administration than DeWitt Clinton, an avowed Jackson man, who had formed a coalition with Van Buren. For this reason, Peter B. Porter, an ardent admirer of Clay, and now a member of the People's party, entered with spirit into the campaign, appealing to the Clintonians, a large majority of whom favoured Adams, to resent Clinton's deal with Jackson's friends, and vote for Rochester, whose election would insure the success of the President, and bring credit to the people of the western counties, already ambitious to give the State a governor. This potent appeal was taken up throughout the State, influencing many Clintonians to support Rochester, and holding in line scores of Bucktails who favoured Adams.

It was a critical moment for Van Buren. He was not only a candidate for re-election to the United States Senate, but he had staked all upon the overthrow of the Adams administration. Yet, the election of his party's candidate for governor would in all probability overthrow the Clinton-Van Buren coalition, giving the vote of the State to the President, and possibly defeat his own re-election. It was a singular political mix-up.

Van Buren had hoped to exclude from the campaign all national issues, as he succeeded in doing the year before. But the friends of Clay and Adams could not be hoodwinked. The canvass also developed combinations that began telling hard upon Van Buren's party loyalty. Mordecai M. Noah, an ardent supporter of Van Buren, and editor of the New York Enquirer, came out openly for Clinton. For years, Noah had been Clinton's most bitter opponent. He opposed the canal, he ridiculed its champion, and he lampooned its supporters; yet he now swallowed the prejudices of a lifetime and indorsed the man he had formerly despised. Van Buren, it may safely be said, was at heart quite as devoted a supporter of the Governor, since the latter's re-election would be of the greatest advantage to his own personal interests; but whatever his defects of character, and however lacking he may have been in an exalted sense of principle, Van Buren appeared to be sincere in his devotion to Rochester. This was emphasised by the support of the Albany Argus and other leading Regency papers.

Nevertheless, the election returns furnished ample grounds for suspicion. Steuben County, then a Regency stronghold, gave Clinton over one thousand majority. Other counties of that section did proportionately as well. It was explained that this territory would naturally support Clinton who had insisted in his message that the central and northern counties, having benefited by the Erie and Champlain canals, ought to give Steuben and the southern tier a public highway. But William B. Rochester went to his watery grave[249] thirteen years afterward with the belief that Van Buren and his confidential friends did not act in good faith.

[Footnote 249: Rochester was lost off the coast of North Carolina, on June 15, 1838, by the explosion of a boiler on the steamer Pulaski, bound from Charleston to Baltimore. Of 150 passengers only 50 survived.]

With the help of the state road counties, however, Clinton had a narrow escape; the returns gave him only 3650 majority.[250] This margin appeared the more wonderful when contrasted with the vote of Nathaniel Pitcher, candidate for lieutenant-governor on the Rochester ticket, who received 4182 majority. "Clinton luck!" was the popular comment.

[Footnote 250: Clinton's vote was 99,785—a falling off of 3,667 from 1824, while Rochester's was 96,135, an increase of 9,042 over Young's vote.—Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

The closeness of the result prompted the friends of the President to favour Rochester for United States senator to succeed Van Buren, whose term expired on March 4, 1827. Several of the Adams assemblymen acted with the Regency party, and it was hoped that through them a winning combination might be made. But Van Buren had not been sleeping. He knew his strength, and with confidence he returned to Washington to renew his attacks upon the Administration. When, finally, the election occurred, he had a larger majority than sanguine friends anticipated. Three Clintonians in the Senate and two in the Assembly, recognising the coalition of Van Buren and Clinton, cast their votes for the former. In thanking the members of the Legislature for this renewed expression of confidence, Van Buren spoke of the "gratifying unanimity" of their action, declaring that it should be his "constant and zealous endeavour to protect the remaining rights reserved to the States by the Federal Constitution; to restore those of which they have been divested by construction; and to promote the interests and honour of our common country."

Thus, in much less than two years, Van Buren easily retrieved all, and more, than he had lost by the election of Clinton and the defeat of Crawford. His position was singularly advantageous. Whatever happened, he was almost sure to gain. He stood with Clinton, with Jackson, and with a party drilled and disciplined better than regular troops. In his biography of Andrew Jackson, James Parton says of Van Buren at this time: "His hand was full of cards, and all his cards were trumps."[251] Andrew Jackson, who had been watching his career, said one day to a young New Yorker: "I am no politician; but if I were a politician, I would be a New York politician."[252]

[Footnote 251: James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, Vol. 3, p. 131.]

[Footnote 252: Ibid., p. 136.]

Van Buren's advantage, however, great as it was, did not end with his re-election to the United States Senate. One after another, the men who stood between him and the object of his ambition had gradually disappeared. Ambrose Spencer was no longer on the bench, James Tallmadge had run his political course, and Daniel D. Tompkins was in his grave. Only DeWitt Clinton was left, and on February 11, 1828, death very suddenly struck him down. Stalwart in form and tremendous in will power, few dreamed that he had any malady, much less that death was shadowing him. He was in his fifty-ninth year.

Of DeWitt Clinton it may fairly be said that "his mourners were two hosts—his friends and his foes." Everywhere, regardless of party, marks of the highest respect and deepest grief were evinced. The Legislature voted ten thousand dollars to his four minor children, an amount equal to the salary of a canal commissioner during the time he had served without pay. Indeed, nothing was left undone or unsaid which would evidence veneration for his memory and sorrow for his loss. He had lived to complete his work and to enjoy the reward of a great achievement. Usually benefactors of the people are not so fortunate; their halo, if it comes at all, generally forms long after death. But Clinton seemed to be the creature of timely political accidents. The presentation of his canal scheme had made him governor on July 1, 1817; and he represented the State when ground was broken at Rome on July 4; his removal as canal commissioner made him governor again in 1825; and he represented the State at the completion of the work. On both occasions, he received the homage of the entire people, not only as champion of the canal, but as the head of the Commonwealth for which he had done so much.