X. JOHN JAY AND DeWITT CLINTON…

X. JOHN JAY AND DeWITT CLINTON

1800

The election that decided the contest for Jefferson, returned DeWitt Clinton to the State Senate, and a Republican majority to the Assembly. As soon as the Legislature met, therefore, Clinton proposed a new Council of Appointment. Federalists shrieked in amazement at such a suggestion, since the existing Council had served little more than half its term. To this Republicans replied, good naturedly, that although party conditions were reversed, arguments remained the same, and reminded them that in 1794, when an anti-Federalist Council had served only a portion of its term, the Federalists compelled an immediate change. Whatever was fair for Federalists then, they argued, could not be unfair for Republicans now. If it was preposterous, as Josiah Ogden Hoffman had asserted, for a Council to serve out its full term in 1794, it was preposterous for the Council of 1800 to serve out its full term; if Schuyler was right that it was a dangerous and unconstitutional usurpation of power for the anti-Federalist Council to continue its sittings, it was a dangerous and unconstitutional usurpation of power for the Federalist Council of 1800 to continue its sittings. Of course Federalists were wrong in 1794, and Republicans were wrong in 1800, but there was as much poetic justice in the situation as a Republican could desire. As soon as the Assembly had organised, therefore, DeWitt Clinton, Ambrose Spencer, Robert Roseboom, and John Sanders became the Council of Appointment. Sanders was a Federalist, but Roseboom was a Republican, whose pliancy and weakness made him the tool of Clinton and Spencer.

DeWitt Clinton had at last come to his own. Until now his life had been uncheckered by important incident and unmarked by political achievement. He had run rapidly through the grammar school of Little Britain, his native town; through the academy at Kingston, the only one then in the State; through Columbia College, which he entered as a junior at fifteen and from which he graduated at the head of his class; and through his law studies with Samuel Jones. In 1789 came an appointment as private secretary to his uncle, George Clinton. When Governor Jay sought the assistance of another in 1795, Clinton resumed the law; but he continued to practise politics for a living, and at last found himself in the Assembly of 1797. He was then twenty-eight, strong, handsome, and well equipped for any struggle. He had devoted his leisure moments to reading, for which he had a passion that lasted him all his lifetime. He was especially fond of scientific studies, and of the active-minded Samuel L. Mitchill, six years his senior, who gave scientific reputation to the whole State.

In spite of his love for science, DeWitt Clinton was a born politician, with all the characteristic incongruities incident to such a life. He had the selfishness of Livingston, the inconsistency of Spencer, the imperiousness of Root, and the ability of a statesman. Unlike most other men of his party, he did not rely wholly upon discipline and organisation, or upon party fealty and courtesy. Hamilton had cherished the hope that Clinton might become a Federalist, not because he was a trimmer, or would seek a party in power simply for the spoils in sight, but because he had the breadth and liberality of enlightened opinions, the prophetic instinct, and the force of character to make things go his way, without drifting into success by a fortunate turn in tide and wind. He was not a mere day-dreamer, a theorist, a philosopher, a scholar, although he possessed the gifts of each. He was, rather, a man of action--self-willed, self-reliant, independent--as ambitious as Burr without his slippery ways, and as determined as Hamilton with all his ability to criticise an opponent. Clinton relied not more upon men than upon measures, and in the end the one thing that made him superior to all his contemporaries of the nineteenth century was a never-failing belief in the possibility of success along lines marked out for his life's work. He had faults and he committed errors. His one great political defect filled him with faults. He would be all or nothing. Attachment to his interests was the one supreme and only test of fitness for favours or friendship, and at one time or another he quarrelled with every friend who sought to retain independence of action.

Just now Clinton was looking with great expectancy into the political future. From defeat in 1796 he had reached the Assembly in 1797, and then passed to the State Senate in 1798; and from defeat in 1799 he passed again into the Senate in 1800. Thus far his record was without blemish. As a lad of eighteen he sided with his uncle in the contest over the Federal Constitution; but once it became the supreme law of the land he gave it early and vigorous support, not even soiling his career by a vote for the Kentucky resolutions. Unlike the Livingstons, he found little to commend in the controversy with Genet and the French, and in Jay's extra session of the Legislature he voted arms and appropriations to sustain the hands of the President and the honour of the flag. But he condemned the trend of Federalism as unwise, unpatriotic, and dangerous to the liberty of the citizen and to the growth of the country; and with equal force he opposed the influence of the French Revolution, maintaining that deeds of violence were unnecessary to startle the public into the knowledge that suffering exists, and that bad laws and bad social conditions result in hunger and misery. If he had been a great orator he would have charmed the conservatives who hated Federalism and dreaded Jacobinism. Like his uncle he spoke forcibly and with clearness, but without grace or eloquence; his writing, though correct in style and sufficiently polished, lacked the simplicity and the happy gift of picturesque phrase which characterised the letters of so many of the public men of that day. Yet he was a noble illustration of what may be accomplished by an indomitable will, backed by a fearless independence and a power to dominate people in spite of antagonism of great and successful rivals.

Clinton was now only at the opening of his great career. Even at this time his contemporaries seem to have made up their minds that he had a great career before him, and when he and Governor Jay met as members of the new Council of Appointment, on February 11, 1801, it was like Greek meeting Greek. If Jay was the mildest mannered man in the State, he was also one of the firmest; and on this occasion he did not hesitate to claim the exclusive right of nomination for office as had Governor Clinton in 1794. Clinton, on the other hand, following the course pursued by Philip Schuyler, boldly and persistently claimed a concurrent right on the part of the senatorial members. The break came when Jay nominated several Federalists for sheriff of Orange County, all of whom were rejected. Then Clinton made a nomination. Instead of putting the question Jay made a further nomination, on which the Council refused to vote. This ended the session. Jay asked for time to consider, and never again convened the Council; but two days later he sent a message to the Assembly, reviewing the situation and asking its advice. He also requested the opinion of the Chancellor and the Supreme Court Judges. The Assembly replied that it was a constitutional question for the Governor and the Council; the Judges declined to express an opinion on the ground that it was extra-judicial. Three weeks later Clinton, Spencer, and Roseboom reported to the Assembly, with some show of bitterness, that they had simply followed the precedent of Egbert Benson's appointment to the Supreme Court in 1794, an appointment, it will be remembered, which was made on the nomination of Philip Schuyler and confirmed, over the protest of Governor Clinton, by a majority of the Council.

Jay's failure to reconvene the Council seemed to gratify Clinton--if, indeed, his action had not been deliberately taken to provoke the Governor into such a course. Appointments made under such conditions could scarcely satisfy an ambitious leader who had friends to reward; and, besides, the election of a new governor in the following month would enable him to appoint a corps of men willing to do the bidding of their new master. On the other hand, Governor Jay closed his official career as he began it. His first address to the Legislature discovered an intention of adhering to the dogmas of civil service, and so far as directly responsible he seems to have maintained the principle of dismissing no one for political reasons.

The closing days of Jay's public life included an act for the gradual abolition of domestic slavery. It cannot be called an important feature of his administration, since Jay was entitled to little credit for bringing it about. Although he had been a friend of emancipation, and as president of an anti-slavery society had characterised slavery as an evil of "criminal dye," his failure to recommend emancipation in his messages emphasises the suggestion that he was governed by the fear of its influence upon his future political career. However this may be, it is certain that he resigned the presidency of the abolition society at the moment of his aroused ambition immediately preceding his nomination for governor in 1792. His son explains that the people of the State did not favour abolition; yet the reform apparently needed only the vigorous assistance of the Governor, for in 1798 a measure similar to the act of 1799 failed in the Assembly only by the casting vote of the chairman in committee of the whole.

One thing, though, may be assumed, that a man so animated by high principles as John Jay must have felt amply justified in taking the course he did. Of all distinguished New Yorkers in the formative period of the government, John Jay, perhaps, possessed in fullest measure the resplendent gifts that immortalise Hamilton. Nevertheless, it was the purity of his life, the probity of his actions, the excellence of his public purposes, that commended him to the affectionate regard of everybody. "It was never said of him," wrote John Quincy Adams, "that he had a language official and a language confidential." During a political career of eight and twenty years, if he ever departed from the highest ideal of an irreproachable uprightness of character, it is not of record. His work was criticised, often severely, at times justly, but his character for honesty and goodness continued to the end without blemish.

It is difficult to say in what field Jay did the best work. He excelled in whatever he undertook. He had poise, forcefulness, moderation, moral earnestness, and mental clearness. Whether at home or abroad the country knew his abiding place; for his well-doing marked his whereabouts as plainly as smoke on a prairie indicates the presence of a camp. He has been called the draftsman of the Continental Congress, the constitution-maker of New York, the negotiator of the peace treaty, and dictator under the Confederation, and he came very near being all that such designations imply. In a word, it may be said that what George Washington was in the field, in council, and as President, John Jay was in legislative halls, in diplomatic circles, and as a jurist.

The crowning act of his life was undoubtedly the peace treaty of 1783. But great as was this diplomatic triumph he lived long enough to realise that the failure to include Canada within the young Republic's domain was ground for just criticism. In his note to Richard Oswald, preliminary to any negotiations, Franklin suggested the cession of Canada in token "of a durable peace and a sweet reconciliation," having in mind England's desire that loyalists in America be restored to their rights. This was one of the three essentials to peace, and to meet it Franklin's note proposed that compensation be paid these loyalists out of the sale of Canada's public lands. Subsequent revelations made it fairly certain that had such cession, with its concessions to the loyalists, been firmly pressed, Canada would have become American territory. Why it was not urged remains a secret. There is no evidence that Franklin ever brought his suggestion to Oswald to the attention of Jay,[118] but it is a source of deep regret that Jay's profound sagacity did not include a country whose existence as a foreign colony on our northern border has given rise to continued embarrassment. The feeling involuntarily possesses one that he, who owned the nerve to stop all negotiations until Englishman and American met on equal terms as the representatives of equal nations, and dared to break the specific instructions of Congress when he believed France favoured confining the United States between the Atlantic and the Alleghanies, would have had the temerity to take Canada, had the great foresight been his to discern the irritating annoyances to which its independence would subject us.

[Footnote 118: "Mr. Oswald returned to Paris on the fourth of May (1782), having been absent sixteen days; during which Dr. Franklin informed each of his colleagues of what had occurred--Mr. Jay, at Madrid, Mr. Adams, in Holland--Mr. Laurens, on parole, in London."--James Parton, Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 2, p. 461. Franklin wrote to Adams and Laurens on April 20, suggesting that he had "hinted that, if England should make us a voluntary offer of Canada, expressly for that purpose, it might have a good effect." Works of Franklin (Sparks), Vol. 9, pp. 253-256. But his letter to Jay simply urged the latter's coming to Paris at once. Works of Franklin (Bigelow), Vol. 8, p. 48. Also, Works of Franklin (Sparks), Vol. 9, p. 254.]

Jay's brief tenure of the chief-justiceship of the United States Supreme Court gave little opportunity to test his real ability as a jurist. The views expressed by him pending the adoption and ratification of the Federal Constitution characterised his judicial interpretation of that instrument, and he lived long enough to see his doctrine well established that "government proceeds directly from the people, and is ordained and established in the name of the people." His distinguishing trait as chief justice was the capacity to confront, wisely and successfully, the difficulties of any situation by his own unaided powers of mind, but it is doubtful if the Court, under his continued domination, would have acquired the strength and public confidence given it by John Marshall. Jay believed that "under a system so defective it would not obtain the energy, weight, and dignity essential to its affording due support to the general government." This was one reason for his declining to return to the office after he ceased to be governor; he felt his inability to accomplish what the Court must establish, if the United States continued to grow into a world power. Under these circumstances, it was well, perhaps, that he gave place to John Marshall, who made it a great, supporting pillar, strong enough to resist state supremacy on the one side, and a disregard of the rights of States on the other; but Jay did more than enough to confirm the wisdom of Washington, who declared that in making the appointment he exercised his "best judgment."

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XI. SPOILS AND BROILS OF VICTORY

1801-1803

John Jay, tired of public life, now sought his Westchester farm to enjoy the rest of an honourable retirement, leaving the race for governor in April, 1801, to Stephen Van Rensselaer. On the other hand, George Clinton, accepting the Republican nomination, got onto his gouty legs and made the greatest run of his life.[119] Outside of New England, Federalism had become old-fashioned in a year. Following Jefferson's sweeping social success, men abandoned knee breeches and became democratic in garb as well as in thought. Henceforth, New York Federalists were to get nothing except through bargains and an occasional capture of the Council of Appointment.

[Footnote 119: George Clinton, 24,808; Stephen Van Rensselaer, 20,843.--Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

The election of George Clinton gave the party of Jefferson entire control of the State. It had the governor, the Legislature, and the Council of Appointment. It only remained to empower the Council to nominate as well as to confirm, and the boss system, begun in 1794, would have the sanction of law. For this purpose delegates, elected by the people, met at Albany on the 13th of October, 1801, and organised a constitutional convention by the election of Aaron Burr as president. Fortune had thus far been very good to Burr. At forty-five he stood one step only below the highest place in the nation, and now by a unanimous vote he became president of the second constitutional convention of the Empire State. His position was certainly imposing, but when the convention declared, as it did, that each member of the Council had the right to nominate as well as to confirm, Burr sealed DeWitt Clinton's power to overthrow and humiliate him.

In its uncompromising character DeWitt Clinton's dislike of Burr resembled Hamilton's, although for entirely different reasons. Hamilton thought him a dangerous man, guided neither by patriotism nor principle, who might at any moment throttle constitutional government and set up a dictatorship after the manner of Napoleon. Clinton's hostility arose from the jealousy of an ambitious rival who saw no room in New York for two Republican bosses. Accordingly, when the Council, which Jay had refused to reassemble, reconvened under the summons of Governor Clinton, it quickly disclosed the policy of destroying Burr and satisfying the Livingstons.[120] President Jefferson had already sent the Chancellor to France, and the Legislature had made John Armstrong, his brother-in-law, a United States senator. But enough of the Chancellor's family remained to fill other important offices, and the Council made Edward, a brother, mayor of New York; Thomas Tillotson, a brother-in-law, secretary of state; Morgan Lewis, a fourth brother-in-law, chief justice, and Brockholst Livingston, a cousin, justice of the Supreme Court.

[Footnote 120: "Young DeWitt Clinton and his friend Ambrose Spencer controlled this Council, and they were not persons who affected scruple in matters of political self-interest. They swept the Federalists out of every office even down to that of auctioneer, and without regard to appearances, even against the protests of the Governor, installed their own friends and family connections in power."--Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 1, pp. 228, 229. "DeWitt Clinton was hardly less responsible than Burr himself for lowering the standard of New York politics, and indirectly that of the nation."--Ibid., p. 112.]

Out of the spoils that remained, and there was an abundance, DeWitt Clinton and Ambrose Spencer helped themselves; and then they divided the balance between their relatives and supporters. Sylvanus Miller, an ardent and lifelong friend of the former, became surrogate of New York; Elisha Jenkins, who deserted the Federalists in company with Spencer, took John V. Henry's place as state comptroller; Richard Riker, the friend and second of Clinton in his famous duel with John Swartout, became district attorney in place of Cadwallader D. Colden, a worthy grandson of "Old Silver Locks," the distinguished colonial lieutenant-governor; John McKisson, a protégé of Spencer, took the clerkship of the Circuit Court from William Coleman, subsequently the brilliant editor of the Evening Post, established by Jay and Hamilton; and William Stewart, a brother-in-law of George Clinton, displaced Nathan W. Howell as assistant attorney-general. Thus the work of the political guillotine went on. It took sheriffs and surrogates; it spared neither county clerks nor justices of the peace; it left not a mayor of a city, nor a judge of a county. Even the residence of an appointee did not control. Sylvanus Miller of Ulster was made surrogate of New York with as much disregard of the people's wishes as Ruggles Hubbard of Rensselaer, who had visited the city but twice and knew nothing of its people or its life, was afterward made its sheriff.

When Clinton and Spencer finished their work a single Federalist, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, the attorney-general, remained in office, and he survived only until Ambrose Spencer could take his place. Soon afterward Spencer was advanced to the Supreme Court in place of Jacob Radcliff, a promotion that filled Federalists with the greatest alarm. Looking back upon the distinguished career of Chief Justice Spencer, it seems strange, almost ridiculous, in fact, that his appointment to the bench should have given rise to such fears; but Spencer had been the rudest, most ferocious opponent of all. The Federalists were afraid of him because they believed with William P. Van Ness, the young friend of Burr, that he was "governed by no principles or feelings except those which avarice and unprincipled ambition inspired."[121] Van Ness wrote with a pen dipped in gall, yet, if contemporary criticism be accepted, he did not exaggerate the feeling entertained for Spencer by the Federalists of that day. Like DeWitt Clinton, he was a bad hater, often insolent, sometimes haughty, and always arbitrary. After he left the Federalist party and became a member of the celebrated Council of 1801, he seemed over-zealous in his support of the men he had recently persecuted, and unnecessarily severe in his treatment of former associates. "The animosity of the apostate," said Van Ness, "cannot be controlled. Savage and relentless, he thirsts for vengeance. Such is emphatically the temper of Ambrose Spencer, who, after his conversion, was introduced to a seat in the Legislature, by his new friends, for the express purpose of perplexing and persecuting his old ones."[122] Spencer never got over being a violent partisan, but he was an impartial, honest judge. The strength of his intellect no one disputed, and if his political affiliations seemed to warp his judgment in affairs of state, it was none the less impartial and enlightened when brought to bear on difficult questions of law.

[Footnote 121: Letters of "Aristides", p. 42.]

[Footnote 122: Letters of "Aristides", p. 42.]

The timely resignation of John Armstrong from the United States Senate made room for DeWitt Clinton, who, however, a year later, resigned the senatorship to become mayor of New York. The inherent strength of the United States Senate rested, then as now, upon its constitutional endowment, but the small body of men composing it, having comparatively little to do and doing that little by general assent, with no record of their debates, evidently did not appreciate that it was the most powerful single chamber in any legislative body in the world. It is doubtful if the framers of the Constitution recognised the enormous power they had given it. Certainly DeWitt Clinton and his resigning colleagues did not appreciate that the combination of its legislative, executive, and judicial functions would one day practically dominate the Executive and the Congress, for the reason that its members are the constitutional advisers of the President, without whose assent no bill can become a law, no office can be filled, no officer of the government impeached, and no treaty made operative.

In taking leave of the United States Senate, Clinton probably gave little thought to the character of the place, whether it was a step up or a step down to the mayoralty. Just then he was engaged in the political annihilation of Aaron Burr, and he felt the necessity of entering the latter's stronghold to deprive him of influence. Out of six or seven thousand appointments made by the Council of Appointment not a friend of Aaron Burr got so much as the smallest crumb from the well-filled table. Even Burr himself, and his friend, John Swartout, were forced from the directorate of the Manhattan Bank that Burr had organised. "With astonishment," wrote William P. Van Ness, "it was observed that no man, however virtuous, however unspotted his life or his fame, could be advanced to the most unimportant appointment, unless he would submit to abandon all intercourse with Mr. Burr, vow opposition to his elevation, and like a feudal vassal pledge his personal services to traduce his character and circulate slander."[123]

[Footnote 123: Letters of "Aristides", p. 69.]

Governor Clinton feebly opposed this wholesale slaughter by refusing to sign the minutes of the Council and by making written protests against its methods; but greater emphasis would doubtless have availed no more, since the constitutional convention had reduced the governor to the merest figurehead. His one vote out of five limited the extent of his prerogative. Power existed in the combine only, and so well did DeWitt Clinton control that when the famous Council of 1801 had finished its work nothing remained for succeeding Councils to do until Clinton, the prototype of the party boss, returned in 1806 to crush the Livingstons.

Occasionally a decapitated office-holder fiercely resented the Council's action, and, to make it sting the more, complimented the Governor for his patriotic and unselfish opposition. John V. Henry evidenced his disgust by ever after declining public office, though his party had opportunities of recognising his great ability and rewarding his fidelity. Ebenezer Foote, a bright lawyer, who took his removal from the clerkship of Delaware County very much to heart, opened fire on Ambrose Spencer, charging him with base and unworthy motives in separating from the Federalists. To this Spencer replied with characteristic rhetoric. "Your removal was an act of justice to the public, inasmuch as the veriest hypocrite and the most malignant villain in the State was deprived of the power of perpetuating mischief. If, as you insinuate, your interests have by your removal been materially affected, then, sir, like many men more honest than yourself, earn your bread by the sweat of your brow."[124]

[Footnote 124: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 1, p. 177.]

At Washington, Jefferson had rewarded friends as openly as DeWitt Clinton took care of them in Albany. In telling the story, James A. Bayard of Delaware produced an oratorical sensation in the House of Representatives. "And now, sir, let me ask the honourable gentleman," said the congressman, in reply to William Giles' defence of the Virginia President, "what his reflections and belief will be when he observes that every man on whose vote the event of Mr. Jefferson's election hung has since been distinguished by presidential favour. Mr. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina was one of the most active, efficient and successful promoters of the election of the present chief magistrate, and he has since been appointed minister plenipotentiary to the court of Madrid--an appointment as high and honourable as any within the gift of the Executive. I know what was the value of the vote of Mr. Claiborne of Tennessee; the vote of a State was in his hands. Mr. Claiborne has since been raised to the high dignity of governor of the Mississippi Territory. I know how great, and how greatly felt, was the importance of the vote of Mr. Linn of New Jersey. The delegation of the State consists of five members; two of the delegation were decidedly for Mr. Jefferson, two were decidedly for Mr. Burr. Mr. Linn was considered as inclining to one side, but still doubtful; both parties looked up to him for the vote of New Jersey. He gave it to Mr. Jefferson; and Mr. Linn has since had the profitable office of supervisor of his district conferred upon him. Mr. Lyon of Vermont was in this instance an important man; he neutralised the vote of Vermont; his absence alone would have given the State to Mr. Burr. It was too much to give an office to Mr. Lyon; his character was low; but Mr. Lyon's son has been handsomely provided for in one of the executive offices. I shall add to the catalogue but the name of one more gentleman, Mr. Edward Livingston of New York. I knew well--full well I knew--the consequence of this gentleman. His means were not limited to his own vote; nay, I always considered more than the vote of New York within his power. Mr. Livingston has been made the attorney for the district of New York; the road of preferment has been opened to him, and his brother has been raised to the distinguished place of minister plenipotentiary to the French Republic."[125]

[Footnote 125: Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 1, pp. 294-5.]

Albert Gallatin, Jefferson's secretary of the treasury, thought Burr less selfish than either the Clintons or the Livingstons, and, on the score of office-seeking, Gallatin was probably correct. But Burr, if without relatives, had several devoted friends whom he pressed for appointment, among them John Swartout for marshal, Daniel Gelston for collector, Theodorus Bailey for naval officer, and Matthew L. Davis for supervisor. Swartout succeeded, but DeWitt Clinton, getting wind of the scheme, entered an heroic protest to Jefferson, who quickly concurred in Clinton's wishes without so much as a conference with Gallatin or Burr. The latter, hearing rumours of the secret understanding, sent a sharp letter to Gallatin, pressing Davis' appointment on the ground of good faith, with a threat that he would no longer be trifled with; but Gallatin was helpless as well as ignorant, and the President silent. Davis' journey to Monticello developed nothing but Jefferson's insincerity, and on his return to New York the press laughed at his credulity.

This ended Burr's pretended loyalty to the Administration. On his return to Washington, in January, 1802, he quietly watched his opportunity, and two weeks later gave the casting vote which sent Jefferson's pet measure, the repeal of the judiciary act of 1801, to a select committee for delay, instead of to the President for approval. Soon after, at a Federalist banquet celebrating Washington's birthday, Burr proposed the toast, "The union of all honest men." This was the fatal stab. The country didn't understand it, but to Jefferson and the Clintons it meant all that Burr intended, and from that moment DeWitt Clinton's newspaper, the American Citizen and Watchtower, owned by his cousin and edited by James Cheetham, an English refugee, took up the challenge thus thrown down, and began its famous attack upon the Vice President.

Burr's conduct during those momentous weeks when Federalists did their utmost to make him President, gave his rivals ample ground for creating the belief that he had evidenced open contempt for the principles of honest dealing. Had he published a letter after the Federalists decided to support him, condemning their policy as a conspiracy to deprive the people of their choice for President, and refusing to accept an election at their hands if tendered him, it must have disarmed his critics and smoothed his pathway to further political preferment; but his failure so to act, coupled with his well-known behaviour and the activity of his friends, gave opponents an advantage that skill and ability were insufficient to overcome.

James Cheetham handled his pen like a bludgeon. Even at this distance of time Cheetham's "View of Aaron Burr's Political Conduct," in which is traced the Vice President's alleged intrigues to promote himself over Jefferson, is interesting and exciting. Despite its bitter sarcasm and torrent of vituperation, Cheetham's array of facts and dates, the designation of persons and places, and the bold assumptions based on apparent knowledge, backed by foot-notes that promised absolute proof if denial were made, impress one strongly. There is much that is weak, much that is only suspicion, much that is fanciful. A visit to an uncle in Connecticut, a call upon the governor of Rhode Island, a communication sent under cover to another, letters in cipher, pleasant notices in Federalist newspapers, a journey of Timothy Green to South Carolina--all these belong to the realm of inference; but the method of blending them with well established facts was so artful, the writer's sincerity so apparent, and the strokes of the pen so bold and positive, that it is easy to understand the effect which Cheetham's accusation, taken up and ceaselessly repeated by other papers, would have upon the political fortunes of Burr.

Nevertheless the Vice President remained silent. He did not feel, or seem to feel, newspaper criticism with the acuteness of a sensitive nature trying to do right. "They are so utterly lost on me that I should never have seen even this," he wrote Theodosia, "but that it came inclosed to me in a letter from New York." Still Cheetham kept his battery at work. After his "Narrative" came the "View," and then, in 1803, "Nine Letters on the Subject of Burr's Defection," a heavier volume, a sort of siege-gun, brought up to penetrate an epidermis heretofore apparently impregnable. Finally, the Albany Register took up the matter, followed by other Republican papers, until their purpose to drive the grandson of Jonathan Edwards from the party could no longer be mistaken.[126]

[Footnote 126: "All the world knew that not Cheetham, but DeWitt Clinton, thus dragged the Vice President from his chair, and that not Burr's vices but his influence made his crimes heinous; that behind DeWitt Clinton stood the Virginia dynasty, dangling Burr's office in the eyes of the Clinton family, and lavishing honours and money on the Livingstons. All this was as clear to Burr and his friends as though it was embodied in an Act of Congress."--Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 1, pp. 331, 332.]

Burr's coterie of devoted friends so understood it, and when the gentle Peter Irving, whose younger brother was helping the newly established Chronicle into larger circulation by his Jonathan Oldstyle essays, showed an indisposition as editor of the Burrite paper to vituperate and lampoon in return, William P. Van Ness, the famous and now historic "Aristides," appeared in the political firmament with the suddenness and brilliancy of a comet that dims the light of stars.

Van Ness coupled real literary ability with political audacity, putting Cheetham's fancy flights and inferences to sleep as if they were babes in the woods. It was quickly seen that Cheetham was no match for him. He had neither the finish nor the venom. Compared to the sentences of "Aristides," as polished and attractive as they were bitter and ill-tempered, Cheetham's periods seemed coarse and tame. The letters of Junius did not make themselves felt in English political life more than did this pamphlet in the political circles of New York. It was novel, it was brilliantly able, and it drove the knife deeper and surer than its predecessors. What Taine, the great French writer, said of Junius might with equal truth be said of "Aristides," that if he made his phrases and selected his epithets, it was not from the love of style, but in order the better to stamp his insult. No one knew then, nor until long afterward, who "Aristides" was--not even Cheetham could pierce the incognito; but every one knew that upon him the full mind of Aaron Burr had unloaded a volume of information respecting men, their doings and sayings, which enriched the work and made his rhetoric an instrument of torture. It bristled with history and character sketches. Whatever the Vice President knew, or thought he knew, was poured into those eighty pages with a staggering fulness and disregard of consequences that startled the political world and captivated all lovers of the brilliant and sensational in literature. Confidences were revealed, conversations made public, quarrels uncovered, political secrets given up, and the gossip of Council and Legislature churned into a story that pleased every one. What Hamilton's attack on Adams did for Federalists, "Aristides'" reply to Cheetham did for the Republicans; but the latter wrote with a ferocity unknown to the pages of the great Federalist's unfortunate letter.

"Aristides" struck at everybody and missed no one. The Governor "has dwindled into the mere instrument of an ambitious relative;" Tillotson was "a contemptible shuffling apothecary, without ingenuity or devise, or spirit to pursue any systematic plan of iniquity;" Richard Riker was "an imbecile and obsequious pettifogger, a vain and contemptible little pest, who abandoned the Federal standard on the third day of the election, in April, 1800;" John McKisson, "an execrable compound of every species of vice," was the man whom Clinton "exultingly declared a great scoundrel." The attack thus daringly begun was steadily maintained. Ambrose Spencer was "a man as notoriously infamous as the legitimate offspring of treachery and fraud can possibly be;" Samuel Osgood, "a born hypocrite, propagated falsehood for the purpose of slander and imposition;" Chancellor Livingston, "a capricious, visionary theorist," was "lamentably deficient in the practical knowledge of a politician, and heedless of important and laborious pursuits, at which his frivolous mind revolted."

The greatest interest of the pamphlet, however, began when "Aristides," taking up the cause of Burr, struck at higher game than Richard Riker or Ambrose Spencer. DeWitt Clinton was portrayed as "formed for mischief," "inflated with vanity," "cruel by nature," "an object of derision and disgust," "a dissolute and desperate intriguer," "an adept in moral turpitude, skilled in all the combination of treachery and fraud, with a mind matured by the practice of iniquity, and unalloyed with any virtuous principle." "Was it not disgraceful to political controversy," continues "Aristides," with an audacity of denunciation and sternness of animosity, "I would develop the dark and gloomy disorders of his malignant bosom, and trace each convulsive vibration of his wicked heart. He may justly be ranked among those, who, though destitute of sound understandings, are still rendered dangerous to society by the intrinsic baseness of character that engenders hatred to everything good and valuable in the world; who, with barbarous malignity, view the prevalence of moral principles, and the extension of benevolent designs; who, foes to virtue, seek the subversion of every valuable institution, and meditate the introduction of wild and furious disorders among the supporters of public virtue. His intimacy with men who have long since disowned all regard to decency and have become the daring advocates of every species of atrocity; his indissoluble connection with those, who, by their lives, have become the finished examples of profligacy and corruption; who have sworn enmity, severe and eternal, to the altar of our religion and the prosperity of our government, must infallibly exclude him from the confidence of reputable men. What sentiments can be entertained for him, but those of hatred and contempt, when he is seen the constant associate of a man whose name has become synonymous with vice, a dissolute and fearless assassin of private character, of domestic comfort, and of social happiness; when he is known to be the bosom friend and supporter of the profligate and abandoned libertine, who, from the vulgar debauches of night, hastens again to the invasion of private property. Who, through the robbery of the public revenue, and the violation of private seals, hurries down the precipice of deep and desperate villainy."

This parting shot at Cheetham penetrated the most secret corners of private life, and leaves an impression that Cicero's denunciation of Catiline had delighted the youth of "Aristides." It would be fruitless to attempt the separation of the truth from the undeserved reproaches of Van Ness, but at the end of the discussion, Burr's character had not benefited. However unscrupulous and selfish the Clintons and the Livingstons might be, Burr's unprincipled conduct was fixed in the mind of his party, not by Cheetham's indulgence in fancy and inference, but by the well known and well established facts of history, which no rhetoric could wipe out, and no denunciation strengthen.

In the days of the duello such a war of words could hardly go on for two or three years without a resort to the pistol. Cheetham's pen had stirred up the tongues of men who resented charge with countercharge, and the high spirited United States marshal, John Swartout, the only friend of Burr in office, was quick to declare that DeWitt Clinton's opposition to the Vice President was based upon unworthy and selfish motives. Clinton answered promptly and passionately. The Governor's nephew displayed a fondness for indulging the use of epithets even in mature years, after he had quarrelled with William L. Marcy and Martin Van Buren. In those calmer days when age is supposed to bring a desire for peace, he was accustomed to call Erastus Root "a bad man," Samuel Young "much of an imbecile," Marcy "a scoundrel," and Van Buren "the prince of villains." Just now, however, Clinton was younger, only thirty-two years old, about the age of Swartout, and on hearing of the latter's criticism he trebled his epithets, pronouncing him "a liar, a scoundrel and a villain." Swartout quickly demanded a retraction, which Clinton declined unless the Marshal first withdrew his offensive words. Thereupon, the latter sent a challenge, and Clinton, calling in his friend, Richard Riker, the district attorney, met his adversary the next day at Weehawken and exchanged three shots without effect. On the fourth Clinton's bullet struck Swartout's left leg just below the knee, and while the surgeon was cutting it out, the Marshal renewed his demand for an apology. Clinton still refused, although expressing entire willingness to shake hands and drop the matter. On the fifth shot, the Marshal caught Clinton's ball in the same leg just above the ankle. Still standing steadily at his post and perfectly composed, Swartout demanded further satisfaction; but Clinton, tired of filling his antagonist with lead, declined to shoot again and left the field. In the gossip following the duel, Riker reported Clinton as saying in the course of the contest, "I wish I had the principal here."[127] The principal, of course, was Burr, to whose house the wounded Swartout was taken. "No one ever explained," says Henry Adams,[128] "why Burr did not drag DeWitt Clinton from his ambush and shoot him, as two years later he shot Alexander Hamilton with less provocation."

[Footnote 127: Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 1, p. 332.]

[Footnote 128: Ibid., 332.

Writing to Henry Post of the duel, Clinton (using the name, "Clinton," instead of the pronoun "I") said: "The affair of the duel ought not to be brought up. It was a silly affair. Clinton ought to have declined the challenge of the bully, and have challenged the principal, who was Burr. There were five shots, the antagonist wounded twice, and fell. C. behaved with cool courage, and after the affair was over challenged Burr on the field."--Harper's Magazine, Vol. 50, p. 565. "How Clinton should have challenged Burr on the field," writes John Bigelow, in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for May, 1875, "without its resulting in a meeting is not quite intelligible to us now. Though not much given to the redress of personal grievances in that way, Burr was the last man to leave a hostile message from an adversary like Clinton, then a Senator of the United States, unanswered."]

Out of this quarrel grew another, in which Robert Swartout, John's younger brother, fought Riker, wounding him severely. William Coleman of the Evening Post, in letting fly some poisoned arrows, also got tangled up with Cheetham. "Lie on Duane, lie on for pay, and Cheetham, lie thou too; more against truth you cannot say, than truth can say 'gainst you." The spicy epigrams ended in a challenge, but Cheetham made such haste to adjust matters that a report got abroad of his having shown the white feather. Harbour-Master Thompson, an appointee of Clinton, now championed Cheetham's cause, declaring that Coleman had weakened. Immediately the young editor sent him a challenge, and, without much ado, they fought on the outskirts of the city, now the foot of Twenty-first Street, in the twilight of a cold winter day, exchanging two shots without effect. Meantime, the growing darkness compelled the determined combatants to move closer together, and at the next shot Thompson, mortally wounded, fell forward into the snow.[129]

[Footnote 129: "Thompson was brought," says William Cullen Bryant in Reminiscences of the Evening Post, "to his sister's house in town; he was laid at the door; the bell was rung; the family came out and found him bleeding and near his death. He refused to name his antagonist, or give any account of the affair, declaring that everything which had been done was honourably done, and desired that no attempt should be made to seek out or molest his adversary."]

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XII. DEFEAT OF BURR AND DEATH OF HAMILTON

1804

The campaign for governor in 1804 was destined to become historic. Burr was driven from his party; George Clinton, ambitious to become Vice President, declined re-election;[130] and the Federalists, beaten into a disunited minority, refused to put up a candidate. This apparently left the field wide open to John Lansing, with John Broome for lieutenant-governor.

[Footnote 130: "DeWitt Clinton was annoyed at his uncle's conduct, and tried to prevent the withdrawal by again calling Jefferson to his aid and alarming him with fear of Burr. But the President declined to interfere. No real confidence ever existed between Jefferson and the Clintons."--Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 2, pp. 173, 174.]

For many years the Lansing family had been prominent in the affairs of the State and influential in the councils of their party. The Chancellor, some years younger than Livingston, a large, handsome, modest man, was endowed with a remarkable capacity for public life. The story of his career is a story of rugged manhood and a tragic, mysterious death. He rose by successive steps to be mayor of Albany, member of the Assembly of which he was twice speaker, member of Congress under the Confederation, judge and chief justice of the Supreme Court, and finally chancellor. Indeed, so long as he did the bidding of the Clintons he kept rising; but the independence that early characterised his action at Philadelphia in 1787 and at Poughkeepsie in 1788 became more and more pronounced, until it separated him at last from the faction that had steadily given him support. Perhaps his nearest approach to a splendid virtue was his stubborn independence. Whether this characteristic, amounting almost to stoical indifference, led to his murder is now a sealed secret. All that we know of his death is, that he left the hotel, where he lived in New York, to mail a letter on the steamer for Albany, and was never afterward seen. That he was murdered comes from the lips of Thurlow Weed, who was intrusted with the particulars, but who died with the secret untold. Lansing disappeared in 1829 and Weed died in 1882, yet, after the lapse of half a century, the latter did not feel justified in disclosing what had come to him as a sort of father confessor, years after the tragedy. "While it is true that the parties are beyond the reach of human tribunals and of public opinion," he said, "yet others immediately associated with them, and sharing in the strong inducement which prompted the crime, survive, occupying high positions and enjoying public confidence. To these persons, should my proof be submitted, public attention would be irresistibly drawn."[131]

[Footnote 131: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 35.]

Lansing had the instinct, equipment, and training for a chancellor. It has been truly said of him that he seemed to have no delights off the bench except in such things as in some way related to the business upon it. He had the unwearied application of Kent, coupled with the ability to master the most difficult details, and, although he lacked Livingston's culture, he was as resolute, and, perhaps, as restless and suspicious; but it is doubtful if he possessed the trained sagacity, the native shrewdness, and the diplomatic zeal to have negotiated the Louisiana treaty. Lansing began the study of law in 1774, and from that moment was wedded to its principles and constant in his devotions. His mysterious murder must have been caused by an irresistible longing to trace things to their source, bringing into his possession knowledge of some missing link or defective title, which would throw a great property away from its owner, but which, by his death, would again be buried from the ken of men. This, of course, is only surmise; but Weed indicates that property prompted the crime, and that the heirs of the murderer profited by it. Lansing was in his seventy-sixth year when the fatal blow came, yet so vigorous that old age had not set its seal upon him.

In 1804 Lansing hesitated to exchange the highest place on the bench, which would continue until the age limit set him aside in 1814, for a political office that would probably end in three years; but he finally consented upon representations that he alone could unite his party. Scarcely, however, had his name been announced before a caucus of Republican legislators named Aaron Burr, with Oliver Phelps of Ontario for lieutenant-governor--nominations quickly ratified at public meetings in New York and Albany. Among Burr's most conspicuous champions were Erastus Root of Delaware, James Burt of Orange, Peter B. Porter of Ontario, and Marinus Willett of New York.

If it is surprising that these astute and devoted friends did not appreciate, in some measure, at least, the extent to which popular esteem had been withdrawn from their favourite, it is most astonishing that Burr himself did not recognise the strength of the Clinton-Livingston-Spencer machine as it existed in 1804. Its managers were skilled masters of the political art, confident of success, fearless of criticism, unscrupulous in methods, and indefatigable in attention to details. They controlled the Council of Appointment, its appointees controlled the Assembly, and the Assembly elected the Council, an endless chain of links, equally strong and equally selfish. To make opposition the more fruitless, the distrust of Burr, hammered into the masses by Cheetham's pen, practically amounted to a forfeiture of party confidence. One cannot conceive a more inopportune time for Burr to have challenged a test of strength, yet Lansing's selection had hardly sounded in the people's ears before Burr's "Little Band," burning with indignation and resentment at his treatment, gathered about the tables in the old Tontine Coffee House at Albany and launched him as an independent candidate.

Rarely has a candidate for governor encountered greater odds; but with Burr, as afterward with DeWitt Clinton, it was now or never. In one of his dramas Schiller mourns over the man who stakes reputation, health, everything upon success--and no success in the end. Even Robert Yates, the coalition candidate in 1789, started with the support of a Federalist machine and the powerful backing of Hamilton. But in 1804 Burr found himself without a party, without a machine, and bitterly opposed by Hamilton.

When the sceptre passed from Federalist to Republican in 1801, Hamilton gave himself to his profession with renewed zeal, earning fifteen thousand dollars a year, and a reputation as a lawyer scarcely surpassed by Daniel Webster. "In creative power Hamilton was infinitely Webster's superior," says Chief Justice Ambrose Spencer, before whom both had practised.[132] Erastus Root, possibly looking through the eyes of Theodosia, thought Burr not inferior to Hamilton as a lawyer, although other contemporaries who knew Burr at his best, regarded him as an indefatigable, tireless, adroit lawyer rather than a profound and learned one. This put him in a different class from Hamilton. As well might one compare Offenbach with Mozart as Burr with Hamilton.

[Footnote 132: H.C. Lodge, Life of Alexander Hamilton, pp. 276-7.]

Hamilton journeyed to Albany in February, 1804, to argue the case of Harry Croswell, so celebrated and historic because of Hamilton's argument. Croswell, the editor of the Balance, a Federalist newspaper published at Hudson, had been convicted of libelling President Jefferson. Chief Justice Lewis, before whom the case was originally tried, declined to permit the defendant to prove the truth of the alleged libel. To this point, in his argument for a new trial, Hamilton addressed himself, contending that the English doctrine was at variance with common sense, common justice, and the genius of American institutions. "I have always considered General Hamilton's argument in this cause," said his great contemporary, Chancellor Kent, "as the greatest forensic effort he ever made. He had come prepared to discuss the points of law with a perfect mastery of the subject. He believed that the rights and liberties of the people were essentially concerned. There was an unusual solemnity and earnestness on his part in this discussion. He was at times highly impassioned and pathetic. His whole soul was enlisted in the cause, and in contending for the rights of the jury and a free press, he considered that he was establishing the surest refuge against oppression. He never before in my hearing made any effort in which he commanded higher reverence for his principles, nor equal admiration of the power and pathos of his eloquence."[133] Such a profound impression did his argument make, that, although the Court declined to depart from the settled rule of the common law, the Legislature subsequently passed a statute authorising the truth to be given in evidence, and the jury to be the judges of the law as well as of the facts in libel cases.

[Footnote 133: H.C. Lodge, Life of Alexander Hamilton, pp. 240-1.]

It was during the argument of this case at Albany that Hamilton, joining his Federalist friends at Lewis' Tavern, gave his reasons for preferring Chancellor Lansing to Aaron Burr for governor. There was something new in these reasons. In 1801 he preferred Jefferson to Burr because the latter, as he wrote Gouverneur Morris, "has no principles, public or private; could be bound by no argument; will listen to no monitor but his ambition; and for this purpose will use the worst portion of the community as a ladder to climb to permanent power, and an instrument to crush the better part. He is sanguine enough to hope everything, daring enough to attempt everything, wicked enough to scruple nothing."[134]

[Footnote 134: Hamilton's Works (Lodge), Vol. 8, p. 570.]

Nothing had occurred in the intervening years to change this opinion, but much was now happening to strengthen it. A Federalist faction in New England, led by Pickering in the United States Senate and Roger Griswold in the House, thought a dissolution of the Union inevitable to save Federalism, and for months the project had been discussed in a stifled, mysterious manner. "It (separation) must begin in Massachusetts," wrote Pickering to George Cabot, "but New York must be the centre of the confederacy."[135] To Rufus King, Pickering became more specific. "The Federalists have in general anxiously desired the election of Burr--and if a separation should be deemed proper, the five New England States, New York and New Jersey, would naturally be united."[136] But King disapproved disunion. "Colonel Pickering has been talking to me about a project they have for a separation of the States and a northern confederacy," he said to Adams of Massachusetts; "and he has also been this day talking with General Hamilton. I disapprove entirely of the project, and so, I am happy to tell you, does General Hamilton."[137] But the conspirators were not to be quieted by disapproving words. Griswold, in a letter to Oliver Wolcott, declared Burr's election and consequent leadership of the Federalist party "the only hope which at this time presents itself of rallying in defence of the Northern States,"[138] and in order not to remain longer inactive, he entered into a bargain with Burr, of which he wrote Wolcott fully. Wolcott sent the letter to Hamilton.[139]

[Footnote 135: January 29, 1804; Lodge's Cabot, p. 337.]

[Footnote 136: Ibid., p. 447.]

[Footnote 137: New England Federalism, p. 148.]

[Footnote 138: Hamilton's History, Vol. 7, p. 781; New England Federalism, p. 354.]

[Footnote 139: Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 2, p. 180. "Pickering and Griswold could win their game only by bartering their souls; they must invoke the Mephistopheles of politics, Aaron Burr. To this they had made up their minds from the beginning. Burr's four years of office were drawing to a close. He had not a chance of regaining a commanding place among Republicans, for he was bankrupt in private and public character."--Ibid., p. 171.]

It was plain to Hamilton that these timid conspirators wanted a bold chief to lead them into secession, and that since he would have nothing to do with them, they had invoked the aid of Aaron Burr. Thus, to his former desire to defeat Burr, was now added a determination to defeat incipient disunion, and in the Lewis Tavern conference he argued that Burr, a Democrat either from principle or calculation, would remain a Democrat; and that, though detested by leading Clintonians, it would not be difficult for a man of his talents, intrigue and address, possessing the chair of government, to rally under his standard the great body of the party, and such Federalists as, from personal goodwill or interested motives, may give him support. The effect of his elevation, with the help of Federalists would, therefore, be to reunite, under a more adroit, able and daring chief, not only the now scattered fragments of his own party, but to present to the confidence of the people of Federalist New England the grandson of President Edwards, for whom they had already a strong predilection. Thus he would have fair play to disorganise the party of Jefferson, now held in light esteem, and to place himself at the head of a northern party favouring disunion.

"If he be truly, as the Federalists have believed, a man of irregular and insatiable ambition," continued Hamilton, "he will endeavour to rise to power on the ladder of Jacobin principles, not leaning on a fallen party, unfavourable to usurpation and the ascendancy of a despotic chief, but rather on popular prejudices and vices, ever ready to desert a government by the people at a moment when he ought, more than ever, to adhere to it. On the other hand, Lansing's personal character affords some security against pernicious extremes, and, at the same time, renders it certain that his party, already much divided and weakened, will disintegrate more and more, until in a recasting of parties the Federalists may gain a great accession of force. At any rate it is wiser to foster schism among Democrats, than to give them a chief, better able than any they have yet had, to unite and direct them."[140]

[Footnote 140: Hamilton's Works (Lodge), Vol. 7, p. 325. "The struggle for control between Hamilton and the conspirators lasted to the eve of the election,--secret, stifled, mysterious; the intrigue of men afraid to avow their aims, and seeming rather driven by their own passions than guided by lofty and unselfish motives."--Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 2, p. 184.]

Within a week after the Lewis Tavern conference Burr's chances brightened by the sudden withdrawal of Lansing, because the latter would not allow the Clintons to dictate his appointments. This was a great surprise to Republicans and a great grief to Hamilton--the more so since it was not easy to find an available successor. The mention of DeWitt Clinton raised the cry of youth; Ambrose Spencer had too recently come over from the Federalists; Morgan Lewis lacked capacity and fitness. Thus the contention continued, but with a leaning more and more toward Morgan Lewis, a brother-in-law of Chancellor and Edward Livingston.

Lewis' youth had promised a brilliant future. He graduated with high honours at Princeton, and when the guns of Bunker Hill waked the country he promptly exchanged John Jay's law office for John Jay's regiment. In the latter's absence he retained command as major until ordered to the northern frontier, when he suddenly dropped into a place as assistant quartermaster-general, useful and important enough, but stripped of the glory usually preferred by the hot blood of a gallant youth. In time, the faithful, efficient quartermaster became a plodding, painstaking lawyer, a safe, industrious attorney-general, and a dignified, respectable judge; but he had not distinguished himself, nor did he possess the striking, showy characteristics of mind or manner often needed in a doubtful and bitterly contested campaign. Heretofore place had sought him by appointment. He became attorney-general when Aaron Burr gave it up for the United States Senate; and a year later, by the casting vote of Governor Clinton, the Council made him a Supreme Court judge. In 1801 the chief-justiceship dropped into his lap when Livingston went to France and Lansing became chancellor, just as the chancellorship would probably have come to him had Lansing continued a candidate for governor. In 1803 he wanted to be mayor of New York.

But with all his ordinariness no one else in sight seemed so available a candidate for governor. The Livingstons, already jealous of DeWitt Clinton's growing influence, secretly nourished the hope that Lewis might develop sufficient independence to check the young man's ambition. On the other hand, DeWitt Clinton, equally jealous of the power wielded by the Livingstons, thought the Chief Justice, a kind, amiable man of sixty, without any particular force of character, sufficiently plastic to mould to his liking. "From the moment Clinton declined," wrote Hamilton to Rufus King, "I began to consider Burr as having a chance of success. It was still my reliance, however, that Lansing would outrun him; but now that Chief Justice Lewis is his competitor, the probability, in my judgment, inclines to Burr."[141]

[Footnote 141: Hamilton's Works (Lodge), Vol. 8, p. 608.]

Burr's friends, knowing his phenomenal shrewdness in cloaking bargains and intrigues until the game was bagged, now relied upon him with confidence to bring victory out of the known discord and jealousy of his opponents, and for a time it looked as if he might succeed. Lansing's withdrawal and Hamilton's failure to put up Rufus King as he contemplated, gave Burr the support of Lansing's sympathy and a clear field among Federalists, except as modified by Hamilton's influence. In addition, his friends cited his ability and Revolutionary services, his liberal patronage of science and the arts, his distinguished and saintly ancestry, his freedom from family connections to quarter upon the public treasury, and his honest endeavour to free himself from debt by disposing of his estate. Especially in New York City did he meet with encouragement. His headquarters in John Street overflowed with ward workers and ward heelers, eager to elect the man upon whom they could rely for favours and with whom they doubtless sincerely sympathised. It was the contest of April, 1800, over again, save that Hamilton did not speak or openly oppose.

As the fight continued it increased in bitterness. Cheetham pounded Burr harder than ever, accusing him of seduction and of dancing with a buxom wench at a "nigger ball" given by one of his coloured servants at Richmond Hill. Jefferson was quoted as saying that Burr's party was not the real democracy, a statement that the American Citizen printed in capitals and kept standing during the three days of the election. With great earnestness Hamilton quietly warned the Federalists not to elevate a man who would use their party only to strengthen their opponents. In the up-counties, where the influence of the Clinton-Livingston-Spencer combine held the party together with cords of steel, every appointee, from judge of the Supreme Court to justice of the peace, was ranged on the side of Livingston's brother-in-law.

But Burr, too, had powerful abettors. In Orange and Dutchess he had always been a favourite; in Delaware, Erastus Root gave all his influence and all his gifts with the devotion that animated John Swartout and Marinus Willett in New York; in Ontario, Oliver Phelps, the great land speculator, endowed with an unconquerable energy and the strategy of a tactician, was backed by Peter B. Porter, the young and exceedingly popular clerk of that county, soon to be dismissed for his independence; in Albany, John Van Ness Yates, remembering Burr's support of his father's candidacy in 1789, also came to his assistance. Zealous and active, however, as these and other friends were, they were few and weak compared to the army of office-holders shouting and working for Morgan Lewis. When the returns, therefore, were in, although Burr carried New York by one hundred, he lost the State by over eight thousand.[142] A comparison of the vote with the senatorial returns of 1803 showed that for every Republican voting for Burr, a Federalist, influenced by Hamilton, voted for Lewis.

[Footnote 142: Morgan Lewis, 30,829; Aaron Burr, 22,139.--Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

It was Burr's Waterloo. He had staked everything and lost. Bankrupt in purse, disowned by his party, and distrusted by a large faction of the leading Federalists, he was without hope of recovery so long as Hamilton blocked the way. There is no evidence that Burr ever saw Hamilton's confidential letters to Morris and other trusted Federal leaders, or knew their contents, but he did know that Hamilton bitterly opposed him, and that his influence was blighting. To get rid of him, therefore, Burr now seems to have deliberately determined to kill him.[143]

[Footnote 143: "That all Hamilton's doings were known to Burr could hardly be doubted. He was not a vindictive man, but this was the second time Hamilton had stood in his way and vilified his character. Burr could have no reason to suppose that Hamilton was deeply loved; for he knew that four-fifths of the Federal party had adopted his own leadership when pitted against Hamilton's in the late election, and he knew, too, that Pickering, Griswold, and other leading Federalists had separated from Hamilton in the hope of making Burr himself the chief of a Northern confederacy. Burr never cared for the past,--the present and future were his only thoughts; but his future in politics depended on his breaking somewhere through the line of his personal enemies; and Hamilton stood first in his path, for Hamilton would certainly renew at every critical moment the tactics which had twice cost Burr his prize."--Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 2, pp. 185, 186.]

While in Albany in February to argue the Croswell case, Hamilton had dined with John Taylor, in company with Dr. Charles D. Cooper, who wrote a friend that, in the course of the dinner, Hamilton had declared, in substance, that he looked upon Burr as a dangerous man--one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government. "I could detail to you," continued Cooper, "a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr." This letter found its way into the newspapers, and in a note, dated June 18, 1804, Burr called Hamilton's attention to the words "more despicable," and added: "You must perceive, sir, the necessity of a prompt and unqualified acknowledgment or denial of the use of the expression which could warrant the assertions of Dr. Cooper."[144] This note, purposely offensive in its tone, was delivered by William P. Van Ness, a circumstance clearly indicating an intention to follow it with a challenge. Two days later, Hamilton replied, declining to make the acknowledgment or denial, since he could attach no meaning to the words used in the letter, nor could he consent to be interrogated as to the inferences drawn by third parties, but he was ready to avow or disavow any definite opinion with which he might be charged. "I trust on further reflection," concluded Hamilton, "you will see the matter in the same light with me. If not, I can only regret the circumstances and must abide the consequences."[145]

[Footnote 144: Hamilton's Works (Lodge), Vol. 8, p. 617.]

[Footnote 145: Hamilton's Works (Lodge), Vol. 8, p. 618.]

Burr's answer, which plainly shows the rhetoric of "Aristides," was more offensive than his initial letter. After replying to it, Hamilton prepared a note to be informally communicated to Burr, in which he stated that if the latter chose to inquire into the purport of any conversation between himself and Dr. Cooper, he would be able to reply with truth that it turned wholly on political topics, and had no relation to Burr's private character, adding that he was ready to make an equally frank answer with regard to any other conversation which Burr would specify.[146] When Burr pronounced this honourable proposition "a mere evasion," his purpose was as evident as it became on June 27th, the day he sent the challenge.

[Footnote 146: Ibid., p. 621.]

Hamilton's acceptance of the challenge was inevitable. For a hundred years men have regretted and mourned that he did not dare to stand alone against duelling, as he had dared to stand alone for economic and patriotic principles against the clamour of mobs and the malice of enemies. But absurd and barbarous as was the custom, it flourished in Christian America, as it did in every other Christian country, in spite of Christian ethics; and it would not permit a proud, sensitive nature, jealous of his honour, especially of his military honour, to ignore it. Lorenzo Sabine's list of duellists includes a score of prominent Englishmen, Frenchmen and Americans, many of them contemporary with Hamilton, and some of them as profoundly admired, who succumbed to its tyranny. Proof of his valour at Monmouth and at Yorktown would no more placate the popular contempt and obloquy sure to follow an avoidance of its demands than would the victory at Waterloo have excused Wellington had he declined to challenge Lord Winchilsea. All this did not make duelling right, but it excuses a noble soul for yielding "to the force of an imperious custom," as Dr. Knott put it--a custom that still exists in France and Germany, and in some parts of America, perhaps, though now universally execrated by Christian people and pronounced murder by their laws. Even at that time Hamilton held it in abhorrence. In a paper drawn for publication in the event of death, he announced his intention of throwing away his fire, and in extenuation of yielding, he adds: "To those who, with me, abhorring the practice of duelling, may think that I ought on no account to have added to the number of bad examples, I answer that my relative situation, as well in public as in private, enforcing all the considerations which constitute what men of the world denominate honour, imposed on me, as I thought, a peculiar necessity not to decline the call. The ability to be in the future useful, whether in resisting mischief, or effecting good, in those crises of our public affairs which seem likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular."[147] The pathway of history is strewn with the wrecks of customs and superstitions which have held men in their grip, compelling obedience and demanding regularity; but no custom ever had a firmer hold upon gifted men than duelling, making them its devotees even when their intellects condemned it, their hearts recognised its cruelty, and their consciences pronounced it wrong.

[Footnote 147: Hamilton's Works (Lodge), Vol. 8, pp. 626-8.]

Because of Hamilton's engagements in court, the hostile meeting was deferred until Wednesday, July 11th. In the meantime the principals went about their vocations with apparent indifference to the coming event. On the evening of July 4th, Hamilton and Burr attended the annual dinner of the Society of the Cincinnati, of which the former had succeeded Washington as president. The occasion was remembered as the gayest and most hilarious in the society's history. Hamilton leaped upon the table and sang "The Drum," an old camp song that became historic because of his frequent rendition of it. It was recalled afterward that Burr withdrew before the festivities had ended. On Saturday evening Hamilton dined Colonel Trumbull, one of Washington's first aides, and on Monday attended a reception given by Oliver Wolcott, John Adams' secretary of the treasury. Tuesday evening he prepared the paper already quoted, and addressed a letter to Theodore Sedgwick, one of Pickering's sternest conspirators, warning him against disunion. "Dismemberment of our empire," he said, "will be a clear sacrifice of great positive advantages, without any counterbalancing good; administering no relief to our real disease, which is democracy--the poison of which, by a subdivision, will only be the more concentred in each part, and consequently the more virulent."[148]

[Footnote 148: Hamilton's Works (Lodge), Vol. 8, p. 615. Letter to Theo. Sedgwick.]

Meantime the secret had been confined to less than a dozen persons, and to none of Hamilton's intimate friends. Troup remained with him until a late hour Monday night without suspecting anything, the gaiety of his manner leading his friend to think his health was mending. Had Troup divined the hostile meeting, it might not have occurred. When John Swartout entered Burr's room at daylight on that fatal 11th of July, he found him sound asleep.

It was seven o'clock Wednesday morning, a hot July day, that Hamilton crossed the Hudson to Weehawken, with Pendleton, his second, and Dr. Hosack, Burr and Van Ness having preceded them. It took but a moment to measure ten paces, load the pistols, and place the principals in position. As the word was given, Burr took deliberate aim and fired. Instantly Hamilton reeled and fell forward headlong upon his face, involuntarily discharging his pistol. "This is a mortal wound, Doctor," he gasped, and immediately sank into a swoon. An examination showed that the ball had penetrated the right side. Burr, sheltered by Van Ness under an umbrella, hurried from the scene, while Hamilton, conveyed in his boat to the city, gradually recovered consciousness. "My vision is indistinct," he murmured; but soon after, catching sight of a pistol near him, cautioned them to take care of it. "It is undischarged and still cocked," he said; "it may go off and do harm. Pendleton knows I did not intend to fire at him." As the boat neared the wharf, he asked that Mrs. Hamilton be sent for. "Let the event be gradually broken to her," he said, "but give her hopes." Thus he lingered for thirty-one hours in great agony, but retaining his self-command to the last, and dying in the midst of his stricken family and sorrowing friends.

If Washington and Lincoln be excepted, it is doubtful if an American was ever more deeply mourned. Had he been President, he could not have been buried with greater pomp, or with manifestations of more profound sorrow. Although he had been hated by his enemies, and at times misunderstood by some of his friends, at his death the people, without division, instantly recognised that his life had been passionately devoted to his country, and they paid him the tribute only accorded the memory of a most illustrious patriot. Such demonstrations were not confined to New York. The sorrow became national; speeches, sermons, and poems without number, were composed in his honour; in every State, some county or town received his name; wherever an American lived, an expression of sympathy found record. It was the consensus of opinion that the life which began in January, 1757 and ended in July, 1804, held in the compass of its forty-seven years the epitome of what America meant for Americans in the days of its greatest peril and its greatest glory. "Had he lived twenty years longer," said Chancellor Kent, "I have very little doubt he would have rivalled Socrates or Bacon, or any other of the sages of ancient or modern times, in researches after truth and in benevolence to mankind. The active and profound statesman, the learned and eloquent lawyer, would probably have disappeared in a great degree before the character of the sage and philosopher, instructing mankind by his wisdom, and elevating the country by his example."[149]

[Footnote 149: William Kent, Life of James Kent, appendix, p. 328.]

Burr became a name of horror.[150] When Hamilton's death was announced there came a cry of execration on his murderer, which the publication of the correspondence intensified. A coroner's jury pronounced him a murderer, the grand jury instructed the district attorney to prosecute, and the Vice President found it necessary to take refuge in concealment until the first fury of the people had subsided. Cheetham's pen, following him remorselessly, charged that he ransacked the newspapers for the grounds of a challenge; that for three months he daily practised with a pistol; and that while Hamilton lay dying, he sat at the table drinking wine with his friends, and apologising that he had not shot him through the heart.

[Footnote 150: "Orators, ministers, and newspapers exhausted themselves in execration of Burr."--Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 2, p. 190.]

Within two years Burr was arrested for treason, charged with an attempt to place himself at the head of a new nation formed from the country of the Montezumas and the valley of the Mississippi, and, although he was acquitted, his countrymen believed him guilty of a treasonable ambition. In the State where he had found his chief support, he ever after ranked in infamy next to Benedict Arnold. Thenceforth he became a stranger and a wanderer on the face of the earth. His friends left him and society shunned him. "I have not spoken to the damned reptile for twenty-five years," said former Governor Morgan Lewis, in 1830.[151]

[Footnote 151: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 370.]

For the moment, one forgets the horrible tragedy of July 11, 1804, and thinks only of the lonely man who lived to lament it. He was in his eighty-first year when he died. On his return from Europe in 1812, only one person welcomed him. This was Matthew L. Davis, his earliest political friend and biographer. Burr made Davis his literary executor, and turned over to him the confidential female correspondence that had accumulated in the days of his popularity as United States senator and Vice President, and that he had carefully filed and indorsed with the full name of each writer. The treachery, falsehood, and desertion with which these letters charged him, seemed to this unnatural man to add to their value, and he gave them to his executor without instructions, that the extent of his gallantries, his power of fascination, and the names of the gifted and beautiful victims of his numerous amours might not become a secret in his grave. One can conceive nothing baser. The preservation of letters to satisfy an erotic mind is low enough, but deliberately to identify each anonymous or initialled letter with the full name of the writer, for the use of a biographer, is an act of treachery of which few men are capable. To the credit of Davis, these letters were either returned to their writers or consigned to the flames.

Burr was a politician by nature, habit and education. In his younger days he easily enlisted the goodwill and sympathy of his associates, surrounding himself with a large circle of devoted, obedient friends; and, though neither a great lawyer nor a brilliant speaker, his natural gifts, supplemented by industry and perseverance, and a very attractive presence, made him a conspicuous member of the New York bar and of the United States Senate. He was, however, the ardent champion of nothing that made for the public good. Indeed, the record of his whole life indicates that he never possessed a great thought, or fathered an important measure. Throughout the long, and, at times, bitter controversy over the establishment of the Union, his silence was broken only to predict its failure within half a century.

It is doubtful if he was ever a happy man. In the very hours when he was the most famous and the most flattered, he described himself as most unhappy. So long, though, as Theodosia lived, he was never alone. When she died, he suffered till the end. There has hardly ever been in the world a more famous pair of lovers than Burr and his gifted, noble daughter, and there is nothing in history more profoundly melancholy than the loss of the ship, driven by the pitiless wind of fate, on which Theodosia had taken passage for her southern home. Yet one is shocked at the unnatural parent who instructs his daughter to read, in the event of his death in the duel with Hamilton, the confidential letters which came to him in the course of his love intrigues and affairs of gallantry. It imports a moral obliquity that, happily for society, is found in few human beings. As he lived, so he died, a strange, lonely, unhappy man, out of tune with the beautiful world in which he was permitted to exist upward of four score years. He had done a great deal of harm, and, except as a Revolutionary soldier, no good whatever.

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XIII. THE CLINTONS AGAINST THE LIVINGSTONS

1804-1807

When Morgan Lewis began his term as governor tranquillity characterised public affairs in the State and in the nation. The Louisiana Purchase had strengthened the Administration with all classes of people; Jefferson and George Clinton had received 162 electoral votes to 14 for Pinckney and Rufus King; Burr had gone into retirement and was soon to go into obscurity; the Livingstons, filling high places, were distinguishing themselves at home and abroad as able judges and successful diplomatists; DeWitt Clinton, happy and eminently efficient as the mayor of New York, seemed to have before him a bright and prosperous career as a skilful and triumphant party manager; while George Clinton, softened by age, rich in favouring friends, with an ideal face for a strong, bold portrait, was basking in the soft, mellow glow that precedes the closing of a stormy life. Never before, perhaps never since, did a governor enter upon his duties, neither unusual nor important, under more favourable auspices; yet the story of Lewis' administration is a story of astonishing mistakes and fatal factional strife.

The Governor inaugurated his new career by an unhappy act of patronage. The appointment of Maturin Livingston, his son-in-law, and the removal of Peter B. Porter, the friend of Burr, showed a selfish, almost malevolent disregard of public opinion and the public service, a trait that, in a way, characterised his policy throughout. Livingston was notoriously unfitted for recorder of New York. He was unpopular in his manners, deficient in a knowledge of law, without industry, and given to pleasure rather than business, but, because of his relationship, the Governor forced him into that responsible position. In like manner, although until then no change had occurred within the party for opinion's sake, Lewis voted for the removal of Peter B. Porter, the young and popular clerk of Ontario County. Porter's youth indicated an intelligence that promised large returns to his country and his party, and the Governor lived long enough to see him honourably distinguished in Congress, highly renowned when his serious career began on the Niagara frontier in the War of 1812, and, afterward, richly rewarded as secretary of war in the Cabinet of John Quincy Adams. But in 1805 the Governor cheerfully voted for his removal, thus establishing the dangerous precedent that a member of one's political household was to be treated with as little consideration as a member of the opposite party.

Although Lewis' conduct in the case of Maturin Livingston and Peter B. Porter was not the most foolish act in a career of folly, it served as a fitting preface to his policy in relation to the incorporation of the Merchants' Bank of New York, a policy that proved fatal to his ambition and to the influence of the Livingstons. Already doing business under the general laws, two Republican Legislatures had refused to incorporate the Merchants' Bank. But during the legislative session of 1805 the bank people determined to have their way, and in the efforts that followed they used methods and means common enough afterward, but probably unknown before that winter. Although in no wise connected with the scandal growing out of the controversy, Lewis favoured the incorporation of the bank. On the other hand, DeWitt Clinton opposed it, maintaining that two banks in New York City were sufficient. However, the Governor, backed by the Federalists and a small Republican majority, was successful. In the Council of Revision, Ambrose Spencer opposed the act of incorporation on the ground that existing banks, possessing five million dollars of capital, with authority to issue notes and create debts to the amount of fifteen million more, were sufficient, especially as the United States had suffered an alarming decrease of specie, and as no one save a few individuals, inspired solely by cupidity, had asked for a new bank. Spencer, however, relied principally in his attack upon affidavits of Obadiah German, the Republican leader of the Assembly, and Stephen Thorn of the same body, charging that Senator Ebenezer Purdy, the father of the measure, had offered them large rewards for their votes, German having Purdy's admission that he had become convinced of the propriety of incorporating the bank after a confidential conference with its directors. From this it was to be inferred, argued Spencer, that before such improper means were made use of, Purdy himself, whose vote was necessary to its passage, was averse to its incorporation. "To sanction a bill thus marked in its progress through one branch of the Legislature with bribery and corruption," concluded the Judge, "would be subversive of all pure legislation, and become a reproach to a government hitherto renowned for the wisdom of its councils and the integrity of its legislatures."[152] But Spencer's opposition and Purdy's resignation, to avoid an investigation, did not defeat the measure, which had the support of Chief Justice Kent, a Federalist, and two members of the Livingston family, a majority of the Council.

[Footnote 152: Alfred B. Street, New York Council of Revision, p. 429.]

DeWitt Clinton had not approved the Governor's course. The flagrant partiality shown Lewis' family in the unpopular appointment of Maturin Livingston, his son-in-law, displeased him, and the removal of Porter seemed to him untimely and vindictive. In killing Hamilton, Clinton reasoned, Burr had killed himself politically, and out of the way himself there was no occasion to punish his friends who would now rejoin and strengthen the Republican party. Clinton, however, remained passive in his opposition until the incorporation of the bank furnished a plausible excuse for an appeal to the party; then, with a determination to subjugate the Livingstons, he caused himself and his adherents to be nominated and elected to the State Senate upon the platform that "a new bank has been created in our city, and its charter granted to political enemies." It was a bold move, as stubborn as it was dangerous. Clinton had little to gain. The Livingstons were not long to continue in New York politics. Maturin was insignificant; Brockholst was soon to pass to the Supreme Court of the United States; Edward had already sought a new home and greater honours in New Orleans; and the Chancellor, having returned from France, was without ambition to remain longer in the political arena. Even the brothers-in-law were soon to disappear. John Armstrong was in France; Smith Thompson, who was to follow Brockholst upon the bench of the United States Supreme Court, refused to engage in party or political contests, and the gifts of Tillotson and Lewis were not of quality or quantity to make leaders of men. On the other hand, Clinton had much to lose by forcing the fight. It condemned him to a career of almost unbroken opposition for the rest of his life; it made precedents that lived to curse him; and it compelled alliances that weakened him.

Lewis resented Clinton's imperious methods, but he made a fatal mistake in furnishing him such a pretext for open opposition. He ought to have known that in opposing the Merchants' Bank, Clinton represented the great majority of his party which did not believe in banks. Undoubtedly Clinton's interest in the Manhattan largely controlled his attitude toward the Merchants', but the controversy over the latter was so old, and its claims had been pressed so earnestly by the Federalists in their own interest, that the question had practically become a party issue as much as the contest over the Bank of the United States. Already two Republican Legislatures had defeated it, and in a third it was now being urged to success with the help of a solid Federalist vote and a system of flagrant bribery, of which the Governor was fully advised. A regard for party opinion, if no higher motive, therefore, might well have governed Lewis' action. After the fight had been precipitated, resulting in a warfare fatal to Lewis, the Governor's apologists claimed that in favouring the bank he had simply resisted Clinton's domination. The Governor may have thought so, but it was further evidence of his inability either to understand the sentiment dominating the party he sought to represent, or successfully to compete with Clinton in leadership. DeWitt Clinton, with all his faults, and they were many and grave, had in him the gifts of a master and the capacity of a statesman. Lewis seems to have had neither gifts nor capacity.

In January, 1806, DeWitt Clinton, securing a majority of the Council of Appointment by the election of himself and two friends, sounded the signal of attack upon the Governor and his supporters. He substituted Pierre C. Van Wyck for Maturin Livingston and Elisha Jenkins for Thomas Tillotson. The Governor's friends were also evicted from minor office, only men hostile to Lewis' re-election being preferred. Nothing could be less justifiable, or, indeed, more nefarious than such removals. They were discreditable to the Council and disgraceful to DeWitt Clinton; yet sentiment of the time seems to have approved them, regarding Clinton's conduct merely as a stroke of good politics. In the midst of this wretched business it is pleasant to note that Jenkins' transfer from comptroller to secretary of state opened a way for the appointment of Archibald McIntyre, whose safe custody of the purse in days when economies and husbandries were in order, distinguished him as a faithful official, and kept him in office until 1821.

After such drastic treatment of the Governor, it is not without interest to think of Lewis in Albany and Clinton in New York keeping their eyes upon the election in April, 1806, both alike hopeful of finding allies in the party breakup. The advantage seemed to be wholly with the Mayor and not with the Governor. Indeed, Republicans of all factions were so well assured of Clinton's success that it required the faith of a novice in politics to believe that Lewis had any chance. But DeWitt Clinton had to deal with two classes of men, naturally and almost relentlessly opposed to him--the friends of Burr and the Federalists. It was of immense importance that the former should stand with him, since the Federalists were certain to side with the Lewisites or "Quids," as the Governor's friends came to be known, and to secure such an advantage Clinton promptly made overtures to the Burrites, of whom John Swartout, Peter Irving and Matthew L. Davis were the leaders.

There is some confusion as to details, but Davis is authority for the statement that in December, 1805, Theodorus Bailey, as Clinton's agent, promised to aid Burr's friends through the Manhattan Bank, to recognise them as Republicans, to appoint them to office on the same footing with the most favoured Clintonian, and to stop Cheetham's attacks in the American Citizen. Clinton pronounced the story false, but it was known that the Manhattan Bank loaned eighteen thousand dollars to a prominent Burrite; that on January 24, 1806, Clinton met Swartout, Irving and Davis at the home of Bailey; and that afterward, on February 20, leading Clintonians banqueted the Burrites at Dyde's Hotel in the suburbs of New York in celebration of their union. There were many reasons for maintaining the profoundest secrecy as to this alliance and Dyde's Hotel had been selected for the purpose of avoiding publicity, but the morning's papers revealed the secret with an exaggerated account of their doings and sayings. Immediately, other Burrites, joining the Lewisites at Martling's Long-room, a popular meeting-place, organised a protestant faction, afterward known as Martling Men, whose enmity was destined to follow Clinton to his downfall.

As election day approached the Quids made a decisive struggle against Clinton. They rehearsed the charges of "Aristides;" they denounced him as cold and imperious; they charged that he had an almost boundless political ambition; that he maintained his own councils regardless of his associates, and accepted no suggestion not in harmony with his own policy. The Martling Men accused him of duplicity, and of a desire only for place and pay. In aid of Lewis, Chancellor Lansing took this opportunity of revealing the secret that led him to withdraw from the gubernatorial race in 1804, charging that George Clinton had sought "to pledge him to a particular course of conduct in the administration of the government of the State." When the latter denied the statement, Lansing, becoming more specific, affirmed that the venerable statesman had mentioned DeWitt Clinton as a suitable person for chancellor. It is not surprising, perhaps, that DeWitt Clinton's reply that if tendered the office he would have declined it, fell upon incredulous ears, since the young man at that very moment was holding three offices and drawing three salaries.

But the contest did not become seriously doubtful until the Quids received the active support of the Federalists, just then led by William W. Van Ness, who seems to have leaped into prominence as suddenly as did "Aristides," his cousin. If we may estimate the man by the praises of his contemporaries, William W. Van Ness' eloquence delighted the Assembly of which he had become a member in 1805, not more than his pointed and finished wit charmed every social gathering which he honoured with his presence. Indeed, as a popular orator he seems to have had no rival. Though his passion for distinction was too ardent and his fondness for sensual pleasure immoderate, sober minded men were carried away with the fascinating effervescence of his public utterances and the brilliancy of his conversation. He had a commanding presence, almost a colossal form, and a voice marvellous for its strength and for the music of its intonations. He was neither profound nor learned. The common school at Claverack, where he was born in independence year, furnished him little more than the rudiments of English, and at the age of twenty he closed the door to further advancement by prematurely burdening himself with a family; yet he seemed to know without apparent effort everything that was necessary to know, and to exert a gentle, unconscious, unpretending power that was resistless. A sweetness of temper and a native dignity of manner cast a grace and charm about him which acted as a spell upon all who came within its influence. Hammond, the historian, thought him the possessor of every gift that nature and fortune could bestow--wit, beauty, good nature, suave manners, eloquence, and admirable conversation. Such a combination gave him leadership, and he led his followers solidly to Lewis, with the result that the coalition of Federalists and Quids won out by a small majority.

When the Legislature assembled, in January, 1807, the intense bitterness of the fight exhibited itself in the defeat of Solomon Southwick for clerk of the Assembly. Southwick possessed the amiable, winning qualities that characterised William W. Van Ness. He was associated with his brother-in-law in the management of the Albany Register, and from his earliest youth had been as zealous a Republican as he was warm and disinterested in his friendships. To friend and foe he was alike cordial and generous. He possessed an open mind, not so eloquent as Van Ness, and less brilliant, perhaps, in conversation; but the fluent splendour of his speech and the beauty of his person and manners went as far toward the attainment of his ambition. He had been elected clerk of the Assembly continuously since 1803, until his popularity among the members, whom he served with uniform politeness and zeal, seemed proof against the attacks of any adversary. Just now, however, the enemies of DeWitt Clinton were the opponents of Solomon Southwick, while his rival, Garret Y. Lansing, the nephew of the Chancellor, had become the bitterest and most formidable enemy the Clintons had to encounter. Popular as he was, Southwick could not win against such odds, although it turned out that a change of four votes would have elected him.

A Lewis Council of Appointment made a clean sweep of the Governor's enemies and of DeWitt Clinton's friends. Clinton himself gave up the mayoralty of New York, Maturin Livingston again assumed the duties of recorder, and Thomas Tillotson was restored to the office of secretary of state. Perhaps Clinton thought he stood too high to be in danger from Lewis' hand. If he did he found out his mistake, for Lewis struck him down in the most unsparing and humiliating way. Public affront was added to political deprivation. Without warning or explanation, the first motion put at the first meeting of the new Council, on February 6, 1807, made him the first sacrifice. Had he been a justice of the peace in a remote western county he could not have been treated more rudely; and, it may be added, if better reason than that already existing were needed to seal the fate of Lewis, Clinton's removal furnished it. New York has seldom been roused to greater passion by a governor's act. It could even then be said of Clinton that his name was associated with every great enterprise for the public good. Less than a year before, in his efforts to educate the children of the poor, unprovided for in parochial schools, he had laid the foundation of the public school system, heading the subscription list for the purchase of suitable quarters. In spite of his faults he was a great executive, and before the sun went down on the day of his removal a large majority of the Republican members of the Legislature, guided by the deposed mayor, had nominated Daniel D. Tompkins for governor in place of Morgan Lewis.

In disposing of the mayoralty, Lewis recognised the importance of keeping it in the family, and offered it to Smith Thompson, both of whose wives were Livingstons; but only once in forty years did Thompson's love for the judiciary give way to political preferment, and then Martin Van Buren defeated him for governor. The mayoralty finally went to Marinus Willett, an officer of distinguished service in the Revolutionary war, whose gallantry at Fort Schuyler in the summer of 1777 won him a sword from Congress and the admiration of General Washington. But the steadfast, judicious qualities that commended him as a soldier seem to have forsaken him as a politician. He supported Burr, he followed Lewis, and he finally ran for lieutenant-governor against DeWitt Clinton, the regular nominee of his party, losing the election by a large majority; yet his amiability and war services kept him a favourite in spite of his political wavering. It was hard for a lover of his country to dislike a real hero of the Revolution, even though he forfeited the confidence of his party.

Clinton, who had kept his head cool in victory, did not lose it in defeat; but the Governor found himself in an awkward and humiliating position. Although the Federalists had made it possible for him to organise the Legislature and elect a friendly Council, he dared not appoint one of them to office, and the few ambitious Republicans who had marshalled under his standard proved inferior, inexperienced, or indiscreet. Only one Federalist fared well, and he succeeded in spite of Lewis. William W. Van Ness aspired to the Supreme Court judgeship made vacant by Brockholst Livingston's appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Governor, favouring, of course, a member of his own family, proposed Maturin Livingston. To this Thomas Thomas of the Council agreed, but Edward Savage proposed John Woodworth; John Nicholas inclined to Jonas Platt, and James Burt, the fourth member of the Council, preferred Van Ness. Platt was a Federalist, and in his way a remarkable man. His father, Zephaniah Platt, served in the Continental Congress, and as judge of the Circuit Court had pushed his way to the northern frontier, founded Plattsburg, and advocated a system of canals connecting the Hudson with the lakes. The son, following his example, studied law and emigrated to the western frontier, settling in Herkimer County, at Whitesboro. He had already served one term in the Legislature and one in Congress, and was destined to receive other honourable preferment. But just now Nicholas, his political backer, a recent comer from Virginia, who had served with him in Congress, was no match for the adroit Burt, whose shrewd management in the interest of Aaron Burr had recently sent Theodorus Bailey to the United States Senate over John Woodworth. Burt convinced Nicholas that Platt's candidacy would result in the election of Livingston or Woodworth, and having thus destroyed the Herkimer lawyer, he appealed to Savage to drop Woodworth in favour of Van Ness. Savage was a Republican of the old school, a supporter of George Clinton, an opponent of the Federal Constitution, who had apparently followed Lewis for what he could make out of it; but he was indisposed to add to the sin of rebellion against DeWitt Clinton the folly of voting for Maturin Livingston, and so he joined Burt and Nicholas in support of Van Ness. Thus it happened that the popular young orator became a member of the Supreme Court at the early age of thirty-one, being the youngest member of the court, save Daniel D. Tompkins, to serve on the old, conservative Council of Revision.

News of this bad business intensified the angry feeling against the Governor. A place on the Supreme Court, valued then even more highly than now, had been lost to the party because of his arrogant and consuming nepotism, and men turned with enthusiasm to Daniel D. Tompkins, whose nomination for governor brought him champions that had heretofore avoided all appearance of violent partisanship. Tompkins was accepted as the exponent of all that Republicans most prized; Lewis as their most obstinate and offensive opponent. Thus, at last, the Clintons faced the Livingstons on a fair field.

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XIV. DANIEL D. TOMPKINS AND DeWITT CLINTON

1807-1810

Had DeWitt Clinton succeeded to the governorship in 1807, his way to the Presidency, upon which his eye was already fixed, might have opened easily and surely. But the bitterness of the Livingstons and the unfriendly disposition of the Federalists compelled him to flank the difficulty by presenting a candidate for governor who was void of offence. If it was humiliating to admit his own ineligibility, it was no less so to meet the new condition, for Lewis' election in 1804 had discovered the scarcity of available material, and developed the danger of relying upon another to do his bidding. Just now Clinton wanted a candidate with no convictions, no desires, no ambitions, and no purposes save to please him. There were men enough of this kind, but they could neither conceal their master's hand, nor command the suffrages of a majority on their own account. In this crisis, therefore, he selected, to the surprise of all and to the disgust of some, Daniel D. Tompkins, the young and amiable justice of the Supreme Court, who had taken the place of James Kent on the latter's promotion to chief justice.

Thus it happened that the day which witnessed DeWitt Clinton's removal from the New York mayoralty, welcomed into larger political life this man of honourable parentage, who was destined to play a very conspicuous part in affairs of state. Daniel D. Tompkins, a youth of promise and a young man of ripening wisdom, had been for some years in the public eye, first as a member of the constitutional convention of 1801, afterward as a successful candidate for Congress, and later as a judge of the Supreme Court. His rise had been phenomenally rapid. He passed from the farm to the college at seventeen, from college to the law office at twenty-one, from the law office to the constitutional convention at twenty-seven, and thence to Congress and the Supreme Court at thirty. He was now to become governor at thirty-three. But with all his promise and wisdom and rapid advancement, no one dreamed in 1807 that he was soon to divide political honour and power with DeWitt Clinton, five years his senior.

Tompkins was on the farm when Clinton was in Columbia College; but if the plow lengthened his days, study shortened his nights, and five years after Clinton graduated, Tompkins entered the same institution. Just then it was a stern chase. Clinton had the advantage of family, Tompkins the disadvantage of being a stranger. When the former entered the Legislature, the latter had only opened a law office. Then, but four years later, they met in the constitutional convention, Clinton on the winning side and Tompkins on the right side. The purpose of this convention, it will be recalled, had been to give each member of the Council of Appointment the power to nominate candidates for office--Clinton holding that the Council had the right to nominate as well as to confirm appointments; Tompkins, with barely a dozen associates, took the ground, maintained by Governors Clinton and Jay, that its power was limited to confirmation. This position showed the nerve as well as the independence of the younger man, and he was able proudly to refer to it when, twenty years later, the constitutional convention of 1821, inspired by the popular contempt, achieved the abolition of the Council, and with it the political corruption and favouritism to which it had given rise.

The record of New York politics is a record of long and bitter contests between these chiefs of two antagonistic Republican factions. What the struggle between Stalwarts and Half Breeds was to our own time, the struggle between Clinton and Tompkins was to our ancestors of two and three generations ago. Two men could hardly be more sharply contrasted. The one appeared cold and reserved, the other most gracious and gentle; Clinton's self-confidence destroyed the fidelity of those who differed in opinion, Tompkins' urbanity disarmed their disloyalty; Clinton was unrelenting, dogged in his tenacity, quick to speak harshly, moving within lines of purpose regardless of those of least resistance. Although he often changed his associates, like Lord Shaftesbury, he never changed his purposes. Tompkins, always firm and dignified, was affable in manner, sympathetic in speech, overflowing with good nature, and unpretending to all who approached him. It used to be said that Tompkins made more friends in refusing favours than Clinton did in granting them.

The two men also differed as much in personal appearance as in manner. Tompkins, shapely and above the ordinary height, had large, full eyes, twinkling with kindness, a high forehead wreathed with dark, curly hair, and an oval face, easily and usually illuminated with a smile; Clinton had a big frame, square shoulders, a broad, full forehead, short, pompadour hair, dark penetrating eyes, and a large mouth with lips firmly set. It was a strong face. A dullard could read his character at a glance. To his intimate friends Clinton was undoubtedly a social, agreeable companion; but the dignified imperiousness of his manner and the severity of his countenance usually overcame the ordinary visitor before the barriers of his reserve were broken. Tompkins, on the contrary, carried the tenderness of a wide humanity in his face.

It was hardly creditable to Clinton's knowledge of human nature that he selected Daniel D. Tompkins for a gubernatorial candidate, if he sought a man whom he might control. The memory of the constitutional convention, or a glance into the history of the elder Tompkins, who had stood firm and unyielding in the little settlement of Fox Meadows in Winchester after the American defeat on Long Island, when all his neighbours save two had faltered in the cause of independence, would have enlightened him respecting the Tompkins character. The farmer boy's determined, patient preparation for public life, and his fortitude in the face of conscious disadvantages, ought also to have suggested that the young man was made of sterner stuff than the obedient Theodorus Bailey. Still more surprising is it that Clinton should overlook, or insufficiently consider the fact that Tompkins was now the son-in-law of Mangle Minthorne, a wealthy citizen of New York, and the leader of the Martling Men, of whose opposition he had already been apprised, and whose bitter hostility he was about to experience. If he thought to disarm the enmity of Minthorne by helping the son-in-law, his hopes were raised only to be dashed to earth again.

It is certain DeWitt Clinton had no one save himself to thank for taking this Hercules, whose political direction was conspicuously inevitable from the first. But Clinton wanted an assured victor against Morgan Lewis and the Livingstons, with their Federalist supporters, and, although some people inclined to the opinion that Tompkins had already been promoted too rapidly, Clinton believed his services on the bench had made him the most available man in the party. For three years this young judge, substituting sympathy for severity, had endeared himself to all who knew him. The qualities of fairness and fitness which Greek wisdom praised in the conduct of life were characteristic of his life. From what we know of his work it is fair to presume, had he tarried upon the bench until 1821, he would have been a worthy associate of Smith Thompson and Ambrose Spencer.

Sixty-five Republican members of the Legislature signed the address, drawn by DeWitt Clinton, putting Tompkins into the race for governor; forty-five indorsed the platform on which Governor Lewis stood for re-election. The Clinton address gave no reason for preferring Tompkins to Lewis, but the latter's weakness as an executive, foreshadowed a defeat which each day made plainer, and when the votes, counted on the last day of April, gave Tompkins 4085 majority, the result was as gratifying to Clinton as it was disastrous to Lewis.[153] It was not a sweeping victory, such as Lewis had won over Burr three years before, for the former's weakness was less offensive than the latter's wickedness, but it launched the successful candidate on his long period of authority, which was not to be ended until he was broken in health, if not in character.

[Footnote 153: Daniel D. Tompkins, 35,074; Morgan Lewis, 30,989.--Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

Daniel D. Tompkins had the good fortune to begin his administration at a time when England and the United States were about to quarrel over the former's insistence on impressing American seamen into its service, thus giving the people something to think about save offices, and dividing them again sharply into two parties. Indeed, while the election was pending in April, three deserters from the Melampus, a British sloop-of-war, by enlisting on the Chesapeake, a United States frigate of thirty-eight guns, became the innocent cause of subjecting the United States to gross insult. The American government, smarting under England's impressment of its seamen, refused to surrender these deserters, inquiries showing that they were coloured men of American birth, two of whom had been pressed into the British service from an American vessel in the Bay of Biscay. When the Chesapeake sailed, therefore, the Leopard, an English man-of-war mounting fifty guns, followed her to the high seas and demanded a return of the deserters. Receiving a prompt refusal, the Englishman raked the decks of the Chesapeake for the space of twelve minutes, killing three men and wounding eighteen, among them the commander. The Chesapeake was not yet ready for action. Her crew was undrilled in the use of ordnance, her decks littered, appliances for reloading were wanting, and at the supreme moment neither priming nor match could be found. Under these distressing circumstances, the boarding officer of the Leopard took the deserters and sailed for Halifax. The sight of the dismantled Chesapeake, with its dead and dying, aroused the people irrespective of party into demanding reparation or war. "This country," wrote Jefferson, "has never been in such a state of excitement since the battle of Lexington."[154] Immediately the most exposed ports were strengthened, and the States were called upon to organise and equip 100,000 militia ready to march. Among other things, Jefferson ordered British cruisers to depart from American waters, forbidding all aid and intercourse with them.

[Footnote 154: Jefferson to Colonel Taylor, August 1, 1807; Works, v., 148.]

On the day of Governor Tompkins' inauguration the crippled Chesapeake sailed back into Norfolk; and before the New York Legislature assembled in the following January, England had published its Orders in Council, forbidding all neutral trade with France. Napoleon had also promulgated his Milan Decree, forbidding all neutral trade with England, and the Congress of the United States, with closed doors, in obedience to the recommendation of the President, had ordered an embargo forbidding all foreign-bound American vessels to leave United States ports.

For several years American commerce, centring chiefly in New England and New York, and occupying a neutral position toward European belligerents, had enjoyed unparalleled prosperity. Reaching all parts of the world, it had, indeed, largely engrossed the carrying trade, especially of France and the European powers. As restraints increased, the Yankee skippers became sly and cunning--risking capture, using neutral flags, and finding other subterfuges for new restrictions. The embargo would tie up the ships to rot, throw seamen out of employment, destroy perishable commodities like breadstuffs, and paralyse trade. From the moment of its passage, therefore, merchants and shipowners resisted it, charging that Napoleon's Decree had provoked the British Orders, and that if the former would recede, the latter would be modified. It revived the old charge of Jefferson's enmity to commerce. In the excitement, DeWitt Clinton opposed it, and Cheetham, with his bitter, irritating pen, sustained him. He thought American commerce might be left to solve the difficulty for itself, by allowing merchants to arm their vessels or otherwise encounter the risks and perils at their own discretion, rather than be compelled to abandon the highway of nations to their British rivals, whose sole purpose, he maintained, was to drive us from the ocean and capture French supplies being transported in French vessels.

But the Republicans in Congress stood firmly by the embargo, holding that if George Canning would modify the Orders in Council, which were intended to drive American commerce from the ocean, Napoleon would modify his decrees, which were provoked by the British Orders. It was not a question of avoiding sacrifices, said Governor Tompkins, in his speech to the Legislature, in January, 1808, but whether one sacrifice might not better be borne than another. The belligerents had issued decrees regardless of our rights. If we carried for England, France would confiscate; if for France, England would confiscate. England exacted tribute, and insisted upon the right of search; France demanded forfeiture if we permitted search or paid tribute; between the two the world was closed to us. But the belligerents needed our wheat and breadstuffs, and while the embargo was intended only for a temporary expedient, giving the people time for reflection, and keeping our vessels and cargoes from spoliation, it must prevail in the end by making Europe feel the denial of neutral favours. "What patriotic citizen," he concluded, "will murmur at the temporary privations and inconveniences resulting from this measure, when he reflects upon the vast expenditure of national treasure, the sacrifice of the lives of our countrymen, the total and permanent suspension of commerce, the corruption of morals, and the distress and misery consequent upon our being involved in the war between the nations of Europe? The evils which threaten us call for a magnanimous confidence in the efforts of our national councils to avert them, and for a firm, unanimous determination to devote everything that is dear to us to maintain our right and national honour."[155]

[Footnote 155: Governor's Speeches. January 26, 1808, p. 98.]

Governor Tompkins' views, sustained by decided majorities in both branches of the Legislature, hastened DeWitt Clinton's change of attitude; and, to the great disgust of Cheetham, he now swung into line. Deceived by the first outcry against Jefferson's policy, Clinton had presided at an opposition meeting, while Cheetham, following his lead, had assailed it in the American Citizen. In the same spirit George Clinton, the Vice President, imprudently and impulsively attacked it in letters to his friends; but DeWitt Clinton, seeing his mistake, quickly jumped into line with his party, leaving Cheetham and his uncle to return as best they could. It was an ungracious act, since Cheetham, who had devoted the best of his powers in justifying the conduct of Clinton, was now left in the air, without the means of gracefully getting down.

Meantime, the new Council of Appointment, elected in February, and controlled by DeWitt Clinton, had reversed the work of Lewis. Marinus Willett surrendered the mayoralty to DeWitt Clinton, Maturin Livingston gave up the recordership, Thomas Tillotson turned over the secretaryship of state to Elisha Jenkins, Sylvanus Miller again became surrogate of New York, and John Woodworth was dismissed from the office of attorney-general. Under the Constitution, the Legislature elected the treasurer of the State, an office which Abraham G. Lansing, brother of the Chancellor and father of Garrett, had held continuously since the defalcation of McClanan in 1803. Lansing was wealthy, and, like his brother, a man of the highest character for integrity and correct business methods, but he had followed Lewis to defeat and now paid the penalty by giving place to David Thomas, who, like McClanan, was also to prove a defaulter. Thus, within a year after Tompkins' inauguration, an entire change of persons holding civil offices in the State had taken place, the Governor shrewdly strengthening himself by assuming to have helped the winners, and weakening Clinton by permitting the disappointed to charge their failure to the Mayor.

The nomination of a Republican candidate to succeed Jefferson, gave Tompkins further opportunity of strengthening himself at the expense of DeWitt Clinton. For months the latter had been urging the claims of George Clinton for President, on the ground of the Vice President's hitherto undisputed right to promotion, and because Virginia had held the office long enough. But a congressional caucus, greatly to the disgust of Monroe and the Clintons, and without the knowledge of the Vice President, hastily got together according to the custom of the day and nominated James Madison for President and George Clinton for Vice President. The disappointed friends of Monroe and Clinton charged that the caucus was irregular, only eighty-nine out of one hundred and thirty-nine Republican representatives and senators having attended it, and could they have agreed upon a candidate among themselves Madison must have been beaten. Leading Federalists waited until late in April for DeWitt Clinton to make some arrangement which their party might support, but, while Federalists waited, the threatened Republican bolt wasted itself in a fruitless endeavour to unite upon a candidate for first place. Monroe's friends would not have George Clinton, whom they pronounced too old and too infirm, and Clinton's friends declined to accept Monroe, who was objectionable, if for no other reason, because he was a Virginian. Finally, the Federalists nominated Charles C. Pinckney of South Carolina for President and Rufus King of New York for Vice President, making Madison's election absolutely certain.

This ought to have ended the strife in Republican ranks. Under similar circumstances any ordinary politician would have hastened to re-establish himself with his party. But DeWitt Clinton, carrying the contest to the New York Legislature, called to appoint presidential electors, insisted that the vote of the State be given to his uncle. The strong affection for the venerable statesman insured the suggestion favourable consideration by a large portion of the Republican party, but Tompkins assailed it with unanswerable argument. Without being of the slightest use to George Clinton, he contended, such a course would exhibit an unhappy division in Republican ranks, excite the jealousy of Madison's friends, impair the influence of New York Republicans with the Administration, and make them appear ridiculous to their brethren in other States. This was the talk of a wise politician. The contest was squarely between James Madison, regularly nominated by the method then accepted, and Charles C. Pinckney, the candidate of the Federalists; and a vote for Clinton meant a Republican vote thrown away out of pique. DeWitt Clinton understood this; but he could not curb a disposition to have things his way, and, upon his insistence, it was finally agreed that each elector should vote his preference. Under this arrangement, George Clinton received six votes out of the nineteen, Ambrose Spencer leading the minority. Of the votes cast for President, Madison received 122, Clinton 6, and Pinckney 48; for Vice President, George Clinton had 113, Rufus King 48, John Langdon of New Hampshire 9, and Madison and Monroe three each, the votes of Judge Spencer and his five associates.

Within a twelvemonth DeWitt Clinton had plainly made a series of serious mistakes. He had opposed the embargo, he had antagonised Madison, who still resented the Clintons' opposition to the Federal Constitution, and he had forced a discovery of Tompkins' superior management and political wisdom. To add to his embarrassment, the Lewisites, the Burrites, and the Martling Men now openly charged him with hostility to Madison and with insincere support of Jefferson and Tompkins, since he continued on friendly terms with Cheetham, who still bitterly opposed the embargo. If these three political groups of men, having a bond of union in their common detestation of DeWitt Clinton, could have found a leader able to marshal them, they must have compassed the latter's political overthrow long before he prostrated himself. Already it was whispered that Tompkins approved their attacks, a suspicion that found many believers, since Minthorne had set to work to destroy Clinton. But the Governor was too wise to be drawn openly into gladiatorial relations with DeWitt Clinton at this time, although, as it afterward appeared, Madison and Tompkins even then had an understanding to which Clinton was by no means a stranger.

Clinton, however, continued seemingly on good terms with Tompkins; and to disprove the attacks of the Martling Men he introduced a series of resolutions in the State Senate, to which he had been elected in the preceding April, approving the administration of President Madison and pledging support to Governor Tompkins. To make his defence the more complete, he backed the resolutions with an elaborately prepared speech, in which he bitterly assailed the Federalists, who, he declared, thought it "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Clinton may be excused for getting in accord with his party; but since his change disclosed an absence of principle, it was bad manners, to say the least, to denounce, with Miltonic quotation, those who consistently held to the views formerly entertained by himself. Of Clinton it could scarcely be said, that he was a favourite in the Legislature. He frequently allowed his fierce indignation to get the better of his tongue. His sharp sarcasms, his unsparing ridicule, and his heedless personalities, sometimes withered the effect of his oratory; yet it is quite certain that the fury of his assaults and the exuberance of his anger aroused the keenest interest, and that when the Martling Men finally prevented his return to the Legislature his absence was generally regretted.

Clinton's speech did not convince Federalists that embargo was the product of profound statesmanship. Abraham Van Vechten, the leader of the Federalists in the Legislature, was a powerful and logical reasoner, and an orator of singular eloquence. His success as an advocate at the bar followed him to the Assembly, and in every debate he proved a formidable antagonist. He had a gift of sarcasm that made an adversary exceedingly uncomfortable; and as he shattered the reasoning of Clinton, he exposed the imperious and domineering trimmer to ridicule and jest. Van Vechten ranked among the ablest men of New York. His tall, erect, and dignified figure was well known throughout the State, and although he did not assume to lead his party, the Federalists recognised his right to share in its leadership. Governor Jay offered him a place on the Supreme bench; but he preferred the bar and the brief sessions of the Legislature.

By the side of Van Vechten sat Daniel Cady, at that time thirty-six years of age, already renowned as a lawyer, the rival of Ogden Hoffman and Marcus T. Reynolds, and, in the estimation of his contemporaries, one of the most generous and gifted men of his time. Three terms in the Legislature and one in Congress measured, until his election to the Supreme Court in 1847, his career in public life; but brief as was this service, his great ability adorned the State and strengthened his party. His distinguished daughter, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose achievements covered more than half of the last century, represented in a marked degree his gifts, his accomplishments, and the sweetness of his nature.

Under the lead of Van Vechten and Cady, the Federalists tormented DeWitt Clinton and the friends of embargo, by contrasting the busy wharves in 1807, covered with bales of cotton, barrels of flour, and hogsheads of sugar, with the stagnation that characterised all avenues of commerce in 1809. Ropewalks were deserted, sailmakers idle, draymen without business, and sailors without bread. If England bled, they declared, the United States bled faster. An ocean whitened with American sails had been turned over to British ships which were absorbing the maritime trade. France showed an indifference to America's commerce and England boasted an independence of America's trade. As a weapon of coercion, exclaimed Cady, embargo has been a failure--as a measure of defence it has been suicidal. What would happen if our ships were suffered to go to Europe and the Indies? Some would reach Europe and find a market; others would go to England, obtain a license to sail to a Baltic port, and then sell at great profit. Out of a hundred ships, two would probably be seized by the French. Better to lose two by seizure than the destruction of all by embargo.

Obadiah German had much to say in defence of the justice and prudence of the embargo. There was nothing brilliant about German; but ample evidence of his parliamentary ability lines the pathway of his public career. Without eloquence or education, he had the full courage of his convictions and an intellectual vigour sufficient to back them. He came to the Legislature in 1798, and, in 1809, very unexpectedly succeeded Samuel L. Mitchill as United States senator. Later he served one term as speaker of the Assembly. Just now he was the recognised leader of the Republican majority in that body, and in his wise, uncouth way dealt many a hard blow with telling effect.

Nathan Sanford also assisted in repelling the assaults of Cady and Van Vechten. Sanford was the pet of the Martling Men and the enemy of DeWitt Clinton. He had been appointed United States attorney upon the resignation of Edward Livingston in 1803, holding the office until his election to the United States Senate to succeed Obadiah German in 1815. In the meantime he served two terms in the Assembly, one of them as speaker, and three terms in the State Senate. Afterward, he became chancellor for two or three years, and then took another term as United States senator. His activity gave him strength, and his loyalty to the Martling Men, now known as Tammany, supplied him with backers enough to keep him continuously in office for thirty years. Despite his titles of Senator and Chancellor, however, and his long public service, he did not leave a memory for eloquence, scholarship, or for great ability; though he was a ready talker and a willing friend, quick to catch the favouring breeze and ready to adopt any political method that promised success. In upholding embargo, Sanford admitted its seriousness, but emphasised its necessity. He recalled how England had searched our ships, impressed our seamen, killed our citizens, and insulted our towns. The ocean, he argued, had become a place of robbery and national disgrace, since Great Britain, by its orders in Council, had provoked France into promulgating the Berlin Decree of November, 1806, and the Milan Decree of December, 1807, which denationalised any ship that touched an English port, or suffered an English search, or paid an English tax--whether it entered a French port, or fell into the power of a French privateer. Thus, since England had blockaded one-half of Europe and France the other half, he thought it time for dignified retirement, until England felt the need of additional supplies, and France awoke to the loss of its luxuries.

At the close of the spirited debate, DeWitt Clinton's resolutions were adopted by both houses--in the Senate without a division; in the Assembly by a vote of sixty-one to forty-one. But almost before the result was announced, American wheat dropped from two dollars to seventy cents a bushel, turning the election of April, 1809, into a Federalist victory. It was a great surprise to Tompkins and his party, whose only gleam of hope grew out of the failure of the Federalists to return senators from the middle and eastern districts, thus preventing, as they assumed, a Federalist majority in the new Council of Appointment and a wholesale removal of Republican officials. But the Federalists understood their work. After welcoming to the speakership their old friend, William North of Duansburgh, who had served in the same capacity in 1795 and again in 1796, the Assembly elected to the Council, two Federalists and two Republicans, including Robert Williams of the middle district. Williams had been a Lewisite, a Burrite, and a Clintonian. With the help of a Federalist governor in 1799, he became sheriff of Dutchess County, and, although he bore the reputation of a trimmer, he seems to have concealed the real baseness of his character until the meeting of the new Council, when his casting vote turned out of office every Republican in the State. By this treachery his son-in-law, Thomas J. Oakley, of whom we shall hear much hereafter, became surrogate of Dutchess County; Jacob Radcliff, the great chancery lawyer, mayor of New York; Abraham Van Vechten, attorney-general, and Abraham G. Lansing, treasurer of state. From the moment of his apostacy Robert Williams, classified by his neighbours with Judas Iscariot and ignored by men of all parties, passed into obscurity.

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XV. TOMPKINS DEFEATS JONAS PLATT

1810

Though DeWitt Clinton again lost the mayoralty of New York, he was still in the Senate; and to maintain an appearance of friendship with the Governor, he wrote the address to the people, signed by the Republican members of the Legislature, placing Tompkins in the race for re-election. The Federalists, encouraged by their gains in April, 1809, had with confidence nominated Jonas Platt for governor, and Nicholas Fish for lieutenant-governor. Fish is little known to the present generation except as the father of Hamilton Fish, the able secretary of state in President Grant's Cabinet; but in his day everybody knew of him, and everybody admitted his capacity and patriotism. His distinguished gallantry during the Revolution won him the confidence of Washington and the intimate friendship of Hamilton, after whom he named his illustrious son. For many years he was adjutant-general of the State, president of the New York Society of the Cincinnati, and a representative Federalist. It is said that Aaron Burr felt rebuked in his presence, because he recognised in him those high qualities of noble devotion to principle which the grandson of Jonathan Edwards well knew were wanting in his own character. Just now Fish was fifty-two years old, a member of the New York Board of Aldermen, and an inveterate opponent of Republicanism, chafing under DeWitt Clinton's dictatorship in the State and Tammany's control in the city.

Jonas Platt had borne an important part in propping up falling Federalism. He was a born fighter. Though somewhat uncouth in expression and unrefined in manner, he had won for himself a proud position at the bar of his frontier home, and was rapidly writing his name high on the roll of New York statesmen. He had proved his popularity by carrying his senatorial district in the preceding election; and he had demonstrated his ability as a debater by replying to the arguments of DeWitt Clinton with a power that comes only from wide information and a consciousness of being in the right. He could not be turned aside from the real issue. Whatever or whoever had provoked the British Orders in Council, he declared, one thing was certain, those orders could not have driven American commerce from the ocean had not the embargo established British commerce in its place. This was the weak point in the policy of Jefferson, and the strong point in the argument of Jonas Platt. Five hundred and thirty-seven vessels, aggregating over one hundred and eighty thousand tons, had been tied up in New York alone; and the public revenues collected at its custom house had dropped from four and a half millions to nothing. History concedes that embargo, since it required a much greater sacrifice at home than it caused abroad, utterly failed as a weapon for coercing Europe; and with redoubled energy and prodigious effect, Platt drove this argument into the friends of the odious and profitless measure, until the Governor's party in the election of 1809 had gone down disastrously.

To Obadiah German, a living embodiment of the Jeffersonian spirit, the most extravagant arguments in support of the embargo came naturally and clearly. To a man of DeWitt Clinton's high order of intellect, however, it must have been difficult, in the presence of Jonas Platt's logic, backed as it was by an unanswerable array of facts, to believe that the arguments in favour of embargo were those which history would approve. As if, however, to establish Platt's position, Congress, in the midst of the New York campaign, voted to remove the embargo, and to establish in its stead, non-intercourse with Great Britain and France--thus reopening trade with the rest of Europe and indulging those merchants who desired to take the risks of capture. For the moment, this was a great blow to Clinton and a great victory for Platt, giving him a prestige that his party thought entitled him to the governorship.

In the legislative session of 1810, however, Jonas Platt developed neither the strength nor the shrewdness that characterised his conduct on the stump during the campaign of 1809. William Erskine, the British minister, a son of the distinguished Lord Chancellor, whose attachment to America was strengthened by marriage, had negotiated a treaty with the United States limiting the life of the Orders in Council to June 10, 1809. This treaty had been quickly disavowed by the English government, and, in referring to it in his message, Governor Tompkins accused England of wilfully refusing to fulfil its stipulations. "With Great Britain an arrangement was effected in April last," wrote the Governor, "which diffused a lively satisfaction through the nation, and presaged a speedy restoration of good understanding and harmony between the two countries. But our hopes were blasted by an unexpected disavowal of the agreement, and an unqualified refusal to fulfil its stipulations on the part of England. Since the recall of the minister who negotiated the arrangement, nothing has occurred to brighten the prospect of an honourable adjustment of our differences. On the contrary, instead of evincing an amicable disposition by substituting other acceptable terms of accommodation in lieu of the disavowed arrangement, the new minister has persisted in impeaching the veracity of our Administration, which a sense of respect for themselves, and for the dignity of the nation they represent, forbade them to brook."

There was nothing in this statement to rebuke. Young Erskine had been displaced by an English minister who had acquired the reputation of being an edged-tool against neutral nations, a curiously narrow, hide-bound politician, whose language was as insolent as his manners were offensive. The Governor's reference, therefore, had not been too severe, nor had his statement overleaped the truth; yet Jonas Platt attacked it with great asperity, arraigning the national administration and charging that the country had more cause for war with France than with Great Britain. This was both unwise and untenable. The Governor had aimed his criticism at France as well as at England. He spoke of one as controlling the destinies of the European continent, of the other as domineering upon the ocean, and of both as overleaping "the settled principles of public law, which constituted the barriers between the caprice, the avarice, or the tyranny of a belligerent, and the rights and independence of a neutral." But Jonas Platt, betrayed by his prejudices against Jefferson and France, went on with an argument well calculated to give his opponents an advantage. His language was strong and clear, his sarcasm pointed; but it gave DeWitt Clinton the opportunity of charging Federalists with taking sides with the British against their own country.

There never was a time when the Federalists, as a national party, were willing to join hands with England to the disadvantage of their country. They had the same reasons for disliking England that animated their opponents. But their antipathy to Jacobins and to Jefferson, and the latter's partiality for France, drove them into sympathy with Great Britain's struggle against Napoleon, until the people suspected them of too great fondness for English institutions and English principles. Several events, too, seemed to justify such a suspicion, notably the adherence of British Tories to the Federalist party, and the latter's zeal to allay hostile feelings growing out of the Revolutionary war. To such an extent had this sentimental sympathy been carried, that, in the summer of 1805, the Federalists of Albany, having a majority in the common council, foolishly refused to allow the Declaration of Independence to be read as a part of the exercises in celebration of the Fourth of July. Naturally, such a policy quickly aroused every inherited and cultivated prejudice against the British, strengthening the belief that the Federalists, as a party, were willing to suppress the patriotic utterances of their own countrymen rather than injure the feelings of America's hereditary foe.

When DeWitt Clinton, therefore, charged the party of Jonas Platt with taking the side of the British against their own country, the debate revived old tales of cruelty and massacre, growing out of England's alliance with the Indians in the early days of the Revolution; and it gave John Taylor opportunity to recount the horrors which he had witnessed in the days of his country's extreme peril. Taylor was sixty-eight years old. For nearly twenty years he had been a member of the Legislature, and was soon to be lieutenant-governor for nearly ten years more. Before the Revolutionary war, he served in the Provincial Congress; and in Arnold's expedition to Canada, in 1775, he had superintended the commissary department, contributing to the comfort of the shattered remnant who stood with Montgomery on the Plains of Abraham on that ill-fated last day of the year.

Taylor was a man of undoubted integrity and great political sagacity. His character suffered, perhaps, because a fondness for money kept growing with his growing years. "For a good old gentlemanly vice," says Byron, "I think I must take up with avarice." Taylor did not wait to be an old gentleman before adopting "the good old gentlemanly vice," but it did not seem to hurt him with the people, for he kept on getting rich and getting office. He was formed to please. His tall, slender form, rising above the heads of those about him, made his agreeable manners and easy conversation the more noticeable, gaining him the affection of men while challenging their admiration for his ability.

In 1760, Taylor had followed the British army to Oswego, and there acquired a knowledge of the Indian language. He knew of the alliance between the British and Indians in 1776, and had witnessed the horrible massacres growing out of these treaty relations. The most tragic stories of Indian atrocities begin with the payment of bounties by the British for the scalps of women and children, and for the capture of men and boys who would make soldiers. Often guided by Tories, the fierce Mohawks sought out the solitary farmhouse, scalped the helpless, and, with a few prisoners, started back on their lonely return journey to Canada, hundreds of miles through the forest, simply to receive the promised reward of a few Spanish dollars from their British allies. When DeWitt Clinton, therefore, charged the Federalists with loving the English more than their own country, John Taylor won the Senate by recalling Indian atrocities set on foot by British officers, and often carried out with the assistance of British Tories, now members of the Federalist party. Daniel Parrish, a senator from the eastern district, having more courage than eloquence, came to Platt's support with the most exact and honest skill, repelling the insinuations of Clinton, and indignantly denying Taylor's tactful argument. But when Taylor, pointing his long, well-formed index finger at the eastern senator, expressed surprise and grief to hear one plead the English cause whose father had been foully murdered by an Indian while under British pay and British orders, Parrish lost his temper and Platt his cause.

It was a sad day for Platt. So successfully did Taylor revive the old Revolutionary hatred of the British that the Herkimer statesman's arraignment of Governor Tompkins, offered as a substitute for DeWitt Clinton's friendly answer, was rejected by a vote of twenty-three to six. Coming as it did on the eve of the gubernatorial election it was too late to retrieve his lost position. Moreover, the repeal of the embargo had materially weakened the Federalists and correspondingly strengthened the Republicans, since the commerce of New York quickly revived, giving employment to the idle and bread to the hungry. The conviction deepened, also, that a Republican administration was sincerely impartial in sentiment between the two belligerents, and that the present foreign policy, ineffective as it might be, fitted the emergency better than a bolder one. Added to this, was the keen desire of the Republicans to recover the offices which had been lost through the apostacy of Robert Williams; and although the Federalists struggled like drowning men to hold their ill-gotten gains, the strong anti-British sentiment, backed by a determination to approve the policy of Madison, swept the State, re-electing Governor Tompkins by six thousand majority[156] and putting both branches of the Legislature in control of the Republicans. Surely, Jonas Platt was never to be governor.

[Footnote 156: Daniel D. Tompkins, 43,094; Jonas Platt, 36,484.--Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

In the heated temper of the triumphant party, the new Council of Appointment, chosen soon after the Legislature convened in January, 1811, began removing officials with a fierceness that in our day would have brought shame and ruin upon any administration. It was a Clinton Council, and only Clintonians took office. Jacob Radcliff again turned over the New York mayoralty to DeWitt Clinton; Abraham Van Vechten gave up the attorney-generalship to Matthias B. Hildreth; Daniel Hale surrendered the secretaryship of state to Elisha Jenkins; Theodore V.W. Graham bowed his adieus to the recordership of Albany as John Van Ness Yates came in; and James O. Hoffman, Cadwallader D. Colden, and John W. Mulligan, as recorder, district attorney, and surrogate of New York, respectively, hastened to make way for their successors. As soon as an order could reach him, Thomas J. Oakley, surrogate of Dutchess County, vacated the office that the treachery of his father-in-law had brought him. It was another clean sweep throughout the entire State. Even Garrett T. Lansing, because he once belonged to the Lewisites, found the petty office of master in chancery catalogued among the "spoils."

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XVI. DeWITT CLINTON AND TAMMANY

1789-1811

The death of Lieutenant-Governor Broome, in the summer of 1810, created a vacancy which the Legislature provided should be filled at the following election in April. John Broome had been distinguished since the olden days when the cardinal policy of New York was the union of the Colonies in a general congress. He had belonged to the Committee of Fifty-one with John Jay, to the Committee of One Hundred with James Duane, and to the Committee of Observation with Philip Livingston. After the Revolution, he became president of the Board of Aldermen, treasurer of the Chamber of Commerce, and, in 1789, had stood for Congress against James Lawrence, the trusted adjutant-general of Washington. Although Broome's overwhelming defeat for Congress in no wise reflected upon his character as a patriot and representative citizen, it kept him in the background until the Federalists had frittered away their power in New York City. Then he came to the front again, first as state senator, and afterward, in 1804, as lieutenant-governor; but he never reached the coveted governorship. In that day, as in this, the office of lieutenant-governor was not necessarily a stepping stone to higher preferment. Pierre Van Cortlandt served with fidelity for eighteen years without getting the long wished-for promotion; Morgan Lewis jumped over Jeremiah Van Rensselaer in 1804; and Daniel D. Tompkins was preferred to John Broome in 1807. Indeed, with the exception of Enos T. Throop, Hamilton Fish, David B. Hill, and Frank W. Higgins, none of the worthy men who have presided with dignity over the deliberations of the State Senate have ever been elected governor.

DeWitt Clinton now wished to succeed Broome; and a large majority of Republican legislators quickly placed him in nomination. Clinton had first desired to return to Albany as senator, as he would then have possessed the right to vote and to participate in debate. But the Martling Men, who held the balance of power, put forward Morgan Lewis, his bitterest enemy. It was a clever move on the part of the ex-Governor. Clinton had literally driven Lewis from the party, and for three years his name remained a reminiscence; but, with the assistance of Tammany, he now got out of obscurity by getting onto the ticket with Governor Tompkins. To add, too, to Clinton's chagrin, Tammany also put up Nathan Sanford for the Assembly, and thus closed against him the door of the Legislature. But to carry out his ambitious scheme--of mounting to the Presidency in 1812--Clinton needed to be in Albany to watch his enemies; and, although he cared little for the lieutenant-governorship, the possession of it would furnish an excuse for his presence at the state capital.

The announcement of DeWitt Clinton's nomination raised the most earnest outcries among the Martling Men. They had endeavoured to defeat his reappointment to the mayoralty; but their wild protests had fallen upon deaf ears. Indeed, the hatred of Minthorne, the intriguing genius of Teunis Wortman, and the earnestness of Matthew L. Davis, seemed only to have been agencies to prepare the way for Clinton's triumphant restoration. Now, however, these accomplished political gladiators proposed to give battle at the polls, and if their influence throughout the State had been as potent as it proved within the wards of New York City, the day of DeWitt Clinton's destiny must have been nearly over.

Since its organisation in 1789, the Society of St. Tammany had been an influential one. It was founded for charitable purposes; its membership was made up mostly of native Americans, and its meetings were largely social in their character.

"There's a barrel of porter at Tammany Hall, And the Bucktails are swigging it all the night long; In the time of my boyhood 'twas pleasant to call For a seat and cigar 'mid the jovial throng."

Thus sang Fitz-Greene Halleck of the social customs that continued far into the nineteenth century. Originally, Federalists and anti-Federalists found a welcome around Tammany's council fire; and its bucktail badge, the symbol of liberty, hung from the hat of Clintonian and Hamiltonian alike. But toward the end of Washington's second administration the society became thoroughly partisan and thoroughly anti-Federalist, shifting its wigwam to the historic "Long Room," at the tavern of Abraham Martling, a favourite hostlery which the Federalists contemptuously called "the Pig-Pen." Then it was, that Aaron Burr made Tammany a power in political campaigns. He does not seem to have been its grand sachem, or any sachem at all; nor is it known that he ever entered its wigwam or affiliated as a member; but its leaders were his satellites, who began manufacturing public opinion, manipulating primaries, dictating nominations, and carrying wards.

Out of Burr's candidacy for President sprang Tammany's long and bitter warfare against DeWitt Clinton. The quarrel began in 1802 when Clinton and Cheetham charged Burr with intriguing to beat Jefferson; it grew in bitterness when Clinton turned Burr and the Swartouts out of the directorate of the Manhattan Bank; nor was it softened after the secret compromise, made at Dyde's Hotel, in February, 1806. Indeed, from that moment, Tammany seemed the more determined to harass the ambitious Clinton; and, although his agents, as late as 1809, sought reconciliation, the society expelled Cheetham and made Clinton an object of detestation. Cheetham, who died in 1810, did not live to wreak full vengeance; but he did enough to arouse a shower of brick-bats which broke the windows of his home and threatened the demolition of the American Citizen.

Though Cheetham's decease relieved Tammany of one of its earliest and most vindictive assailants, the political death of DeWitt Clinton would have been more helpful, since Clinton's opposition proved the more harmful. As mayor he lived like a prince distributing bounty liberally among his supporters. He was lavish in the gift of lucrative offices, lavish in the loan of money, and lavish in contributions to charity. His salary and fees were estimated at twenty thousand dollars, an extravagant sum in days when eight hundred dollars met the expense of an average family, and the possessor of fifty thousand dollars was considered a rich man. Besides, his wife had inherited from her father, Walter Franklin, a wealthy member of the Society of Friends, an estate valued at forty thousand dollars, making her one of the richest women in New York.

But Clinton had more than rich fees and a wealthy wife. The foreign element, especially the Irish, admired him because, when a United States senator, he had urged and secured a reduction of the period of naturalisation from fourteen years to five; and because he relieved the political and financial distress of their countrymen, by aiding the repeal of the alien and sedition laws. For a score of years, America had invited to its shores every fugitive from British persecution. But the heroes of 'Ninety-eight, who had escaped the gibbet, and successfully made their way to this country through the cordon of English frigates, were welcomed with laws even more offensive than the coercion acts which they had left behind. The last rebellious uprising to occur in Ireland under the Georges, had sent Thomas Addis Emmet, brother of the famous and unfortunate Irish patriot, a fugitive to the land of larger liberty. To receive this brother with laws that might send him back to death, was to despise the national sentiment of Irishmen; and the men, Clinton declared, who had been indisposed or unable to take account of the force of a national sentiment, were not and never could be fit to carry on the great work of government.

Thoughtful, however, as DeWitt Clinton had been of the oppressed in other lands, he lacked what Dean Swift said Bolingbroke needed--"a small infusion of the alderman." If he thought a man stupid he let him know it. To those who disagreed with him, he was rude and overbearing. All of what is known as the "politician's art" he professed to despise; and while Tammany organised wards into districts, and districts into blocks, Clinton pinned his faith on the supremacy of intellect, and on office-holding friends. The day the news of his nomination for lieutenant-governor reached New York, Tammany publicly charged him with attempting "to establish in his person a pernicious family aristocracy;" with making complete devotion "the exclusive test of merit and the only passport to promotion;" and with excluding himself from the Republican party by "opposing the election of President Madison." There was much truth in some of these charges. Clinton had quarrelled with Aaron Burr; he had overthrown Morgan Lewis; and he was ready to defeat Daniel D. Tompkins. Even Cheetham had left him some months before his death, and Richard Riker, who acted as second in the duel with John Swartout, was soon to ignore the chilly Mayor when he passed. The estrangement of these friends is pathetic, yet one gets no melancholy accounts of Clinton's troubles. The great clamour of Tammany brought no darkening clouds into his life. He was soon to learn that Tammany, heretofore an object of contempt, was now a force to be reckoned with, but he did not show any qualms of uneasiness even if he felt them.

Tammany bolted Clinton's nomination, selecting for its candidate Marinus Willett, its most available member, and most brilliant historic character. Before and during the Revolution, Willett did much to make him a popular hero. He served the inefficient Abercrombie in his unsuccessful attack on Ticonderoga in 1758; he was with the resolute Bradstreet at the brilliant charge of Fort Frontenac; he led the historic sortie at Fort Schuyler on the 7th of August, 1777. Men were still living who saw his furious assault upon the camp of Johnson's Greens, so sudden and sharp that the baronet himself, before joining the flight of his Indians to the depths of the thick forest, did not have time to put on his coat, or to save the British flag and the personal baggage of Barry St. Leger. The tale was strange enough to seem incredible to minds more sober than those of the Tammany braves, who listened with pride to the achievements of their sachem. With two hundred and fifty men and an iron three-pounder, Willett had fallen so unexpectedly upon the English and Indians, that the advance guard, panic-stricken, suddenly disappeared--officers, men, and savages--leaving twenty-one wagon loads of rich spoil. This heroic deed was a part of Willett's stock in trade, and, although he was wobbly in his politics, the people could not forget his courage and good judgment in war. But Willett's influence was confined to the wards of a city. The rural counties believed in New York's mayor rather than in New York's hero; and when the votes were counted, Clinton had a safe majority. He had fared badly in New York City, being deprived of more than half his votes through the popular candidacy of Nicholas Fish; but, in spite of Tammany, he was able to go to Albany, and to begin work upon a scheme which, until then, had been only a dream. It was to be a gigantic struggle. Lewis and the Livingstons opposed him, Tammany detested him, Tompkins was jealous of him, Spencer deserted him; but he had shown he knew how to wait; and when waiting was over, he showed he knew how to act.

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XVII. BANKS AND BRIBERY

1791-1812

During the early years of the last century, efforts to incorporate banks in New York were characterised by such an utter disregard of moral methods, that the period was long remembered as a black spot in the history of the State. Under the lead of Hamilton, Congress incorporated the United States Bank in 1791; and, inspired by his broad financial views, the Legislature chartered the Bank of New York in the same year, the Bank of Albany in 1792, and the Bank of Columbia, located at Hudson, in 1793. These institutions soon fell under the management of Federalists, who believed in banks and were ready to aid in their establishment, so long as they remained under Federalist control.

Republicans, on the other hand, disbelieved in banks. They opposed the United States Bank; and by George Clinton's casting vote defeated an extension of its charter, which expired by limitation on March 4, 1811. To them a bank was a combination of the rich against the poor, a moneyed corporation whose power was a menace to free institutions, and whose secret machinations were to be dreaded. At the same time, Republican leaders recognised the political necessity of having Republican banks to offset the influence of Federalist banks, and in order to overcome the deep seated prejudice of their party and to defeat the opposition of Federalists, inducements were offered and means employed which unscrupulous men quickly turned into base and shameless bribery.

In his partisan zeal Burr began the practice of deception. The Republicans needed a bank. The only one in New York City was controlled by the Federalists, who also controlled the Legislature, and the necessities of the rising party, if not his own financial needs, appealed to Burr's clever management. Under the cover of chartering a company to supply pure water, and thus avoid a return of the yellow fever which had so recently devastated the city, he asked authority to charter the Manhattan Company, with a capital of two million dollars, provided "the surplus capital might be employed in any way not inconsistent with the laws and Constitution of the United States and of the State of New York." The people remembered the terrible yellow fever scourge, and the Legislature considered only the question of relieving the danger with pure and wholesome water; and, although the large capitalisation aroused suspicion in the Senate, and Chief Justice Lansing called it "a novel experiment,"[157] the bill passed. Thus the Manhattan Bank came into existence, while wells, brackish and unwholesome, continued the only sufficient source of water supply.

[Footnote 157: "This, in the opinion of the Council, as a novel experiment, the result whereof, as to its influence on the community, must be merely speculative and uncertain, peculiarly requires the application of the policy which has heretofore uniformly obtained--that the powers of corporations relative to their money operations, should be of limited instead of perpetual duration."--Alfred B. Street, New York Council of Revision, p. 423.]

That was in 1799. Four years later, the Republicans of Albany, realising the importance of a bank and the necessity of avoiding the opposition of their own party, obtained a charter for the State Bank, by selling stock to Republican members of the Legislature, with an assurance that it could be resold at a premium as soon as the institution had an existence. There was a ring of money in this proposition. Such an investment meant a gift of ten or twenty dollars on each share, and immediately members clamoured, intrigued, and battled for stock. The very boldness of the proposition seemed to save it from criticism. Nothing was covered up. To put the stock at a premium there must be a bank; to make a bank there must be a charter; and to secure a charter a majority of the members must own its stock. The result was inevitable.

It seems incredible in our day that such corruption could go on in broad daylight without a challenge. At the present time a legislator could not carry a district in New York if it were known that his vote had been secured by such ill-gotten gains. Yet the methods of the Republican promoters of the State Bank seem not to have brought a blush to the cheek of the youngest legislator. No one of prominence took exception to it save Abraham Van Vechten, and he was less concerned about the immorality of the thing than the competition to be arrayed against the Federalist bank in Albany. Even Erastus Root, then just entering his first term in Congress, saw nothing in the transaction to shock society's sense of propriety or to break the loftiest code of morality. "There was nothing of mystery in the passage of the bank," he wrote. "The projectors sought to push it forward by spreading the stock among the influential Republicans of the State, including members of the Legislature, and carry it through as a party measure. It was argued by the managers of the scheme that the stock would be above par in order to induce the members of the Legislature to go into the measure, but nothing in the transaction had the least semblance of a corrupt influence. No one would hesitate from motives of delicacy, to offer a member, nor for him to take, shares in a bank sooner than in a turnpike or in an old canal."[158]

[Footnote 158: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 1. Appendix, p. 583, Note J.]

One can hardly imagine Erastus Root serious in the expression of such a monstrous doctrine. His life had been pure and noble. He was a sincere lover of his country; a statesman of high purpose, and of the most commanding talents. No one ever accused him of any share in this financial corruption. Yet a more Machiavellian opinion could not have been uttered. On principle, Republican members of the Legislature opposed banks, and that principle was overcome by profits; in other words, members must be bought, or the charter would fail. That the stock did go above par is evident from Root's keen desire to get some of it. As an influential Republican, he was allowed to subscribe for fifty shares, but when he called for it the papers could not be found. The bank was not a bubble. It had been organised and its stock issued, but its hook had been so well baited that the legislators left nothing for outsiders. Subsequently the directors sent Root a certificate for eight shares, and John Lamb, an assemblyman from Root's home, gave up eight more; but the Delaware congressman, angry because deprived of his fifty shares, refused to accept any. "I had come prepared to take the fifty," he wrote, "and in a fit of more spunk than wisdom, I rejected the whole."[159]

[Footnote 159: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 1. Appendix, p. 582, Note S.]

Two years after, in 1805, the Federalists desired to charter the Merchants' Bank of New York City. But the Legislature, largely Republican, was led by DeWitt Clinton, now at the zenith of his power, who resented its establishment because it must become a competitor of the Manhattan, an institution that furnished him fat dividends and large influence. Clinton had undoubtedly acquired a reputation for love of gain as well as of power, but he had never been charged, like John Taylor, with avarice. He spent with a lavish hand, he loaned liberally to friends, and he borrowed as if the day of payment was never to come; yet he had no disposition to help opponents of a bank that must cripple his control and diminish his profits. In this contest, too, he had the active support of Ambrose Spencer, who fought the proposed charter in the double capacity of a stockholder in the Manhattan and the State, and a member of the Council of Revision. Three banks, with five millions of capital and authority to issue notes and create debts for fifteen millions more, he argued, were enough for one city. He had something to say also about "an alarming decrease of specie," and "an influx of bills of credit," which "tended to further banish the precious metals from circulation."[160]

[Footnote 160: Alfred B. Street, New York Council of Revision, p. 427.]

Governor Lewis would have been wiser had he joined Clinton and Spencer in their opposition. But Lewis would not play second fiddle in any game with Clinton, and so when he discovered that Clinton opposed the bank, he yielded party principle to personal prejudice and favoured it. With this powerful recruit the managers still lacked a majority, and, to influence others, Ebenezer Purdy, a Republican senator, employed his gifts in offering his legislative associates large rewards and rich benefits. As a statesman, Purdy seems to have been without any guiding principle, or any principle at all. He toiled and pushed and climbed, until he had landed in the Senate; then he pulled and bargained and promised until he became a member of the Council of Appointment, and, later, chairman of the legislative caucus that nominated Chancellor Lansing for governor; but not until the Merchants' Bank wanted a charter did Purdy find an opportunity to develop those aldermanic qualifications which distinguish him in history. He was getting on very well until he had the misfortune to confide his secret to Stephen Thorn, a senator from the eastern district, and Obadiah German, the well-known assemblyman from Chenango, whose views were not as liberal as Erastus Root's. "No one would hesitate, from motives of delicacy, to offer a member shares in a bank," said Root. This was Purdy's view also; but Thorn and German thought such an offer had the "semblance of a corrupt influence," and they made affidavits that Purdy had attempted to corrupt their votes. According to these affidavits the Senator promised German fifty shares of stock, with a profit of twenty dollars a share, and Thorn thirty shares, with a profit of twenty-five dollars a share. Similar affidavits were made by other members.

Erastus Root took exception to such transactions. "The Merchants' Bank in 1805," he says, "had powerful opposition to encounter, and, of course, made use of powerful means to accomplish the object. Then the shares and the assurance became down-right corruption."[161] But it is not easy to observe the difference between the methods of the State Bank managers, which Root affirms "had not the least semblance of a corrupt influence," and those of the Merchants' Bank, which he pronounces "down-right corruption," except that the one was open bribery and the other secret bribery. In either case, votes were obtained by the promise of profits. It is likely the methods of the Merchants' would have escaped notice, as did those of the State Bank, had not Clinton, determined to beat it, complained of Purdy's bribery. The latter resigned to escape expulsion, but the bank received its charter. This aroused the public conscience, and in the following winter the Legislature provided suitable punishment for the crime of bribery.

[Footnote 161: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 2. Appendix, p. 582.]

It was not until 1812 that any one had the hardihood to suggest another bank. Then the Federalists sought a charter for the Bank of America, with a capital of six millions, to be located in New York City. The applicants proposed to pay the school fund four hundred thousand dollars, the literature fund one hundred thousand, and the State one hundred thousand, provided no other bank be chartered for twenty years. In addition to this extravagant bonus, its managers agreed to loan the State one million dollars at five per cent. for the construction of canals, and one million to farmers at six per cent. for the improvement of their real estate. This bold and liberal proposal recalls John Law's South Sea Bubble of the century before; for, although the Bank of America sought no monopoly and promised the payment of no national debt, it did seem to be aiming its flight above the clouds, since, counting the Manhattan at two, the united capital of the banks of the State did not exceed five millions. The promoters, anticipating an outcry against the incorporation of such a gigantic institution, employed David Thomas of Washington and Solomon Southwick of Albany to visit members of the Legislature at their homes with the hope of enlisting their active support.

It is doubtful if two men better equipped to supply the necessary legislative majority could have been found in the State. Both were stalwart Republicans, possessing the confidence of DeWitt Clinton and an extensive acquaintance among local party managers. Thomas had caution and rare sagacity. Indeed, his service of four years in the Legislature and eight years in Congress had added to his political gifts such shrewdness and craft that he did not scruple, on occasion, to postpone or hasten an event, even though such arrangement was made at the expense of some one else. This characteristic had manifested itself in the removal of Abraham G. Lansing as treasurer of state. The Chancellor's brother, by long service, had won the confidence of the people as a keeper of the State's money, and, although his family had followed the fortunes of Governor Lewis, it did not occur to the Legislature to dispossess him of his office until David Thomas wanted a position. Then, the silent, crafty Washingtonian developed so artfully the iniquity of Lansing's political perfidy that he succeeded in obtaining the office for himself. It was because of this craftiness, this unscrupulous use of every weapon of political warfare, that the bank hired him. His gifts, his schemes, his faults, his vices, were alike useful.

Solomon Southwick belonged to a different type. He lacked the caution of Thomas, but nature had given him the appearance and manners which well fitted him for the task of attracting those who came within the range of his influence. He was singularly handsome and graceful. No stranger came near him without feeling an instant desire to know him. He was all the more attractive because there seemed to be nothing artificial or made up about him. He had his intimates, but with an unstudied and informal dignity, he was hail-fellow with every one, keeping none at a distance, and concealing his real feelings behind no mask of conventionalism. It was said of him at this time that he knew more men personally than any other citizen in the State. He had been four times elected clerk of the Assembly, he had served as sheriff of his county, and he was now sole editor and proprietor of the Albany Register, the leading and most influential Republican paper. To ability as a writer he also added eloquence of speech. Southwick could not be called a great orator, but he had grace, wit, imagination, and a beauty of style that appealed to the hearts and sympathies of his hearers. In the conduct of his business affairs, nobody could be more careful, more methodical, more precise. Indeed, we may take it for granted, without any biographical information on the subject, that in 1811 Solomon Southwick was on the road to the highest honours in the gift of his State.

But his connection with the Bank of America covered him with suspicion from which he never entirely recovered. It must have occurred to him, when accepting the bank's retainer, that his opposition to the Merchants' Bank would be recalled to the injury of his consistency. In 1805, he had boldly declared in the Register that any Republican who voted for a Federalist bank was justly censurable; in 1812, he so far changed his mind as to hold that any one "who supports or opposes a bank upon the grounds of Federalism or Republicanism, is either deceiver or deceived, and will not be listened to by any man of sense or experience." A little later in the contest, when partisan fury and public corruption were the opposing forces, several sub-agents of the bank were indicted for bribery, among them a former clergyman who was sent to the penitentiary. Then it was whispered that David Thomas, following the example of Purdy in 1805, had scattered his purchase-money everywhere, sowing with the sack and not with the hand. Finally, Casper M. Rouse, a senator from Chenango, accused Thomas of offering him ten shares of stock, with a profit of one thousand dollars, adding that Thomas had told him to call upon Southwick in Albany. Southwick had evidently fallen into bad company, and, although Rouse disclaimed having seen the Albany journalist, a week or two later Alexander Sheldon, speaker of the Assembly, made a charge against Southwick similar to Rouse's accusation against Thomas. Both men were indicted, but the jury preferred accepting the denial of the defendants, since it appeared that Rouse and Sheldon, instead of treating the accused as bribers and men unworthy of confidence, had maintained their former relations with them, subsequently voting for Thomas for treasurer of state, and for Southwick as regent of the State University. As positive proof of bribery was limited in each case to the prosecuting witness, we may very well accept the defendants' repeated declarations of their own integrity and uprightness, although the conditions surrounding them were too peculiar not to leave a stigma upon their memory.

These charges of crime, added to the bank's possession of a solid majority in both branches of the Legislature, aroused the opposition into a storm of indignation and resentment. Governor Tompkins had anticipated its coming, and in a long, laboured message, warned members to beware of the methods of bank managers. Such institutions, he declared, "facilitate forgeries, drain the country of specie, discourage agriculture, swallow up the property of insolvents to the injury of other creditors, tend to the subversion of government by vesting in the hands of the wealthy and aristocratic classes powerful engines to corrupt and subdue republican notions, relieve the wealthy stockholder from an equal share of contribution to the public service, and proportionally enhance the tax on the hard earnings of the farmer, mechanic and labourer." He spoke of the "intrigue and hollow pretences" of applicants, insisting that the gratification of politicians ought not to govern them, nor the "selfish and demoralising distribution of the stock." "Nor ought we to be unmindful," he continued, "that the prominent men who seek the incorporation of new banks, are the very same men who have deeply participated in the original stock of most of the previously established banks. Having disposed of that stock at a lucrative advance, and their avidity being sharpened by repeated gratification, they become more importunate and vehement in every fresh attempt to obtain an opportunity of renewing their speculations." As if this were not reason enough, he exhorted them not to be deceived by the apparent unanimity of sentiment about the capital, since it "is no real indication of the sentiments of the community at large," but so to legislate as "to retain and confirm public confidence, not only in the wisdom, but also in the unbending independence and unsullied integrity of the Legislature."[162]

[Footnote 162: Governors' Speeches, January 28, 1812, pp. 115-8.]

The Governor's arguments were supplemented by others from Ambrose Spencer, whose bank holdings seemed more likely than ever to suffer if this gigantic combination succeeded. Spencer's opposition to the Merchants' Bank in 1805 had been earnest, but now his whole soul was aflame. To counteract the influence of Southwick's Register, he established the Albany Republican, which ceased to exist at the end of the campaign, but which, during its brief life, struck at every head that favoured the bank. Its editorials, following the line of his objections in the Council of Revision, lifted into prominence the injurious effect likely to flow from such an alarming extension of banking capital at a time when foreign commerce was stagnant, and when the American nation was on the eve of a war in defence of its commercial rights. This was mixed with a stronger personal refrain, discovering the danger to his bank-holdings and revealing the intensity of a nature not yet inured to defeat. A bank controlling three times as much capital as any other, he argued, with unlimited power to establish branches throughout the State, must be a constant menace to minor institutions, which were established under the confidence of governmental protection and upon the legislative faith that no further act should impair or destroy their security. "A power thus unlimited," he declared, "may be exercised not only to prejudice the interests, but to control the operations, destroy the independence, and impair the security of every bank north of the city of New York. A bill thus improvisory and alarming, giving undefined and unnecessary powers, and leaving the execution of those powers to a few individuals, would materially weaken the confidence of the community in the justice, wisdom, and foresight of the Legislature."[163]

[Footnote 163: Alfred B. Street, New York Council of Revision, p. 432.]

With Tompkins and Spencer stood John Taylor, whose fear for his stock in the State Bank, of which he was president, made his opposition more conspicuous than it appeared in 1805, when he assaulted Purdy, knocking him down as he left the senate chamber; but in this contest, he did not strike or threaten. He moved among his associates in the Senate with the grace of a younger man, his tall, spare form bending like a wind-swept tree as he reasoned and coaxed. In the same group of zealous opponents belonged Erastus Root, who had just entered the Senate, and whose speech against the Bank of America was distinguished for its suppressed passion and its stern severity. He had waked up, at last, to the scandalous barter in bank charters.

There was, however, one Republican in Albany whose course excited more serious censure than was meted out to all others. At a moment when the methods of bank managers aroused the most bitter hostility of his closest political allies, DeWitt Clinton became conspicuous by his silence. At heart he opposed the Bank of America as bitterly as Ambrose Spencer and for the same reasons; nor did he recognise any difference in the conditions surrounding it and those which existed in 1805 when he drove Ebenezer Purdy from the Senate; but, consumed with a desire to get a legislative indorsement for President, before Madison secured a congressional nomination, he refused to take sides, since the bank people, who dominated the Legislature, refused such an indorsement until the passage of their charter. In vain did Spencer threaten and Taylor plead. He would vote, Clinton said, against the bank if opportunity presented, but he would not be drawn into the bitter contest; he would not denounce Southwick; he would not judge Thomas; he would not even venture to criticise the bank. For fourteen years Clinton and Spencer had been fast political friends; but now, at the supreme moment of Clinton's ambition, these brothers-in-law were to fall under the guidance of different stars.

Governor Tompkins, whose desire to enter the White House no longer veiled itself as a secret, understood the purpose and importance of Clinton's silence, and to give President Madison an advantage, he used a prerogative, only once exercised under the Constitution of 1777, to prorogue the Legislature for sixty days. Ostensibly he did it to defeat the bank; in reality he desired the defeat of Clinton. It is not easy to appreciate the wild excitement that followed the Governor's act. It recalled the days of the provincial governors, when England's hand rested heavily upon the liberties of the people; and the friends of the bank joined in bitter denunciation of such a despotic use of power. Meantime, a congressional caucus renominated Madison. But whatever the forced adjournment did for Clinton, it in no wise injured the bank, which was chartered as soon as the Legislature reassembled on May 21.

While the Bank of America was engrossing the attention of the Legislature and the nomination of a presidential candidate convulsed Congress, George Clinton closed his distinguished career at Washington on the 20th of April, 1812. If he left behind him a memory of long service which had been lived to his own advantage, it was by no means lived to the disadvantage of his country or his State. He did much for both. Perhaps he was better fitted for an instrument of revolution than a governor of peace, but the influence which he exercised upon his time was prodigious. In the two great events of his life--the revolt of the Colonies and the adoption of a Federal Constitution--he undoubtedly swayed the minds of his countrymen to a degree unequalled among those contemporaries who favoured independence and state supremacy. He lacked the genius of Hamilton, the scholarly, refined integrity of Jay, and the statesmanship of both; but he was by odds the strongest, ablest, and most astute man of his party in the State. Jay and Hamilton looked into the future, Clinton saw only the present. The former possessed a love for humanity and a longing for progress which encouraged them to work out a national existence, broad enough and strong enough to satisfy the ambition of a great nation a century after its birth; Clinton was satisfied to conserve what he had, unmoved by the great possibilities even then indistinctly outlined to the eye of the statesman whose vision was fixed intently upon an undivided America. But Clinton wisely conserved what was given to his keeping. As he grew older he grew more tolerant and humane, substituting imprisonment for the death penalty, and recommending a complete revision of the criminal laws. His administration, too, saw the earliest attempts made in a systematic way toward the spread of education among the multitudes, his message to the Legislature of 1795 urging a generous appropriation to common schools. This was the first suggestion of state aid. Colleges and seminaries had been remembered, but schools for the common people waited until Clinton had been governor for eighteen years.

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XVIII. CLINTON AND THE PRESIDENCY

1812

For many years DeWitt Clinton had had aspirations to become a candidate for President. He entered the United States Senate in 1802 with such an ambition; he became mayor of New York in 1803 with this end in view; he sought the lieutenant-governorship in 1811 for no other purpose; and, although he had never taken a managing step in that direction, looking cautiously into the future, he saw his way and only waited for the passing of the Vice President. DeWitt Clinton, whatever his defects of character and however lacking he may have been in an exalted sense of political principle, appears to have been sincere in his anxiety to elevate his uncle to the presidential chair. During Jefferson's administration his efforts seem never to have been intermitted, and only when the infirmities of advanced age admonished him that George Clinton's life and career were nearly at an end, did his mind and heart, acquiescing in the appropriation of his relative's mantle, seize the first opportunity of satisfying his unbounded ambition.

The opening presented in the spring of 1812 was not an unattractive one. A new party, controlled by a remarkable coterie of brilliant young men from the South, whose shibboleth was war with England, had sprung up in Congress, and, by sheer force of will and intellect, had dragged to the support of its policies the larger part of the Republican majority.[164] President Madison was thoroughly in sympathy with these members. He thought war should be declared before Congress adjourned, and, to hasten its coming, he had recommended an embargo for sixty days. "For my own part," he wrote Jefferson, "I look upon a short embargo as a step to immediate war, and I wait only for the Senate to make the declaration."[165] This did not sound like a peace voice; yet the anti-English party felt little cordiality for him. His abilities, as the event amply proved, were not those likely to wage a successful war. He was regarded as a timid man, incapable of a burst of passion or a bold act. In place of resolute opinion he courted argument; with an inclination to be peevish and fretful, he was at times arrogantly pertinacious. Although his health, moreover, was delicate and he looked worn and feeble, he exhibited no consciousness of needing support, declining to reconstruct his Cabinet that abler men might lend the assistance his own lack of energy demanded. As time went on Republicans would gladly have exchanged him for a stronger leader, one better fitted by character and temperament to select the men and find a way for a speedy victory. It was no less plain that the conservatives thoroughly disliked him, and if they could have wrought a change without disrupting the party, it would have suited their spirit and temper to have openly opposed his renomination.

[Footnote 164: Of ninety-eight senators and representatives who voted, on June 18, 1812, for a declaration of war against England, seventy-six, or four less than a majority, resided south of the Delaware. No Northern State except Pennsylvania declared for war, while every Southern State except Kentucky voted solidly for it.]

[Footnote 165: Madison to Jefferson, April 24, 1812, Writings, Vol. 2, p. 532.]

DeWitt Clinton understood the situation, and his friends pointed with confidence to his well known character for firmness and nerve. Of Clinton, it may be justly said, that he seems most attractive, not as a politician, not as a mayor solicitous for the good government of a growing city, not as a successful promoter of the canal, but as a rugged, inflexible, determined, self-willed personality. Perhaps not many loved him, or longed for his companionship, or had any feeling of tenderness for him; yet, in spite of his manners or want of manners, there was a fascination about the man that often disarmed censure and turned the critic into a devotee. At this time he undoubtedly stood at the head of his party in the North. He was still young, having just entered his forties, still ambitious to shine as a statesman of the first magnitude. An extraordinary power of application had equipped him with the varied information that would make him an authority in the national life. Even his enemies admitted his capacity as a great executive. He had sometimes been compelled, for the sake of his own career, to regulate his course by a disregard of party creed, especially at a time when the principles of Republicanism were somewhat undefined in their character; but amid all the doubts and distractions of a checkered, eventful political career he was known for his absolute integrity, his clear head, and his steady nerve. His very pride made it impossible for him to condescend to any violation of a promise.

Clinton's New York party friends naturally desired a legislative indorsement for him before Congress could act. But Governor Tompkins' sudden adjournment of the Legislature had stripped him of that advantage, and three days before the houses reassembled, on May 18, Madison was renominated by a congressional caucus, seventeen senators and sixty-six representatives, including three from New York, taking part in its proceedings. Eleven days later, ninety out of ninety-five Republican members of the New York Legislature voted in caucus to support Clinton.[166] If the Madison caucus doubted the wisdom of its action, the Clinton caucus was no less uncertain of the expediency of its decision. Governor Tompkins opposed it; the Livingstons assailed it; the Martling Men, led by Sanford and Lewis, refused to attend; Ambrose Spencer and John Taylor went into it because they were driven; and Erastus Root, in maintaining that Clinton could not, and as a Federal candidate ought not, to succeed, clearly voiced the sentiment of a large minority. In short, the most prominent men in the State opposed the nomination, knowing that Republicans outside of New York could not support it because of its irregularity.

[Footnote 166: "This unusual unanimity among the New York Republicans pointed to a growing jealousy of Virginia, which threatened to end in revival of the old alliance between New York and New England."--Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 6, p. 215. "George Clinton, who had yielded unwillingly to Jefferson, held Madison in contempt."--Ibid., Vol. 4, p. 227.]

But, at the supreme moment, events greatly favoured Clinton. Pierre Van Cortlandt, Obadiah German, and other members of Congress appeared upon the scene, bringing the story of Madison's unpopularity and bearing letters from Gideon Granger, the postmaster-general, urging the support of Clinton. Granger belonged to Connecticut, and, except William Eustis, about to retire as an inefficient secretary of war, was the only cabinet officer from a northern State. He knew that not a dozen northern members of Congress sincerely favoured war, and that not a man in the party save Madison himself, sincerely favoured the President's renomination; but he also knew that the South had determined to force the issue; and so in a powerful document he demanded the nomination of a man who, when conflict came, could shorten it by a vigorous administration. This appeal lifted the Clinton movement above the level of an ordinary state nomination.

On the day of his selection, DeWitt Clinton believed his chances more than even. Though the declaration of war had popularised Madison in the South and West, and, in a measure, solidified the Republicans in the North, the young aspirant still counted on a majority of malcontents and Federalists. The best obtainable information indicated that three Republicans in Massachusetts would unite with the Federalists in choosing Clinton electors; that the rest of New England would act with Massachusetts; and that Clinton would also obtain support in Maryland, Ohio, North Carolina, Delaware, New Jersey, and, possibly, Virginia. "If Pennsylvania should be combined," Clinton said to Gouverneur Morris, "I would come out all right." As late, too, as the middle of September, Rufus King ventured the opinion to Christopher Gore that while North Carolina was still uncertain, Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland would probably become Clintonian, although Pennsylvania and Vermont would be "democratic and Madisonian."

To the Federalist leaders, Clinton called himself an American Federalist. If chosen President he engaged to make immediate peace with England, and to oppose the views of those Southern States which sought to degrade the Northern States by oppressing commerce.[167] It was this suggestion that led to a secret conference between Clinton, John Jay, Rufus King and Gouverneur Morris, held at the latter's home on August 5, to consider the advisability of forming a peace party. Few scenes in political history are more dramatic than this meeting of Clinton and the three Federalist leaders of the Empire State. King at first objected to taking any part. He looked on Clinton, he said, as one who could lead only so long as he held the views and prejudices of his followers, and who, unless a large body of Republicans came with him, was not worth accepting. But King finally consented to be present, after Jay, although in ill health, promised to join them. Morris was pleased to undertake his part, for association with Clinton upon the Canal Commission had made them somewhat intimate. It was agreed to exclude every topic except the plan of forming a peace party. The hour fixed was two in the afternoon; but it was five o'clock before Clinton entered the stately library at Morrisania.

[Footnote 167: "No canvass for the Presidency was ever less creditable than that of DeWitt Clinton in 1812. Seeking war votes for the reason that he favoured more vigorous prosecution of the war; asking support from peace Republicans because Madison had plunged the country into war without preparation; bargaining for Federalist votes as the price of bringing about a peace; or coquetting with all parties in the atmosphere of bribery in bank charters--Clinton strove to make up a majority which had no element of union but himself and money."--Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 6, p. 410.]

In opening the interview, Morris simply read the resolutions prepared for a peace meeting. "Then Clinton observed," says Rufus King, "that he did not differ from us in opinions respecting public affairs, and that he entirely approved the resolutions; but, as his friends, comprehending a great majority of the Republican party in the State, were divided in their opinions respecting the war--prejudices against England leading some of them to approve the war--time was necessary to bring them to one opinion. Disastrous events had already happened, and owing to the incapacity of the national administration still further misfortunes would occur, and would serve to produce an union of opinion respecting the war; that for these reasons the proposed peace meeting should be deferred four or five weeks; in the interim he would confer with his friends for the purpose of bringing about a common opinion, and apprise the movers of his ulterior views on Monday, August 10, when the canal commissioners would hold a meeting."[168]

[Footnote 168: Rufus King, Life and Correspondence, Vol. 5, p. 269.]

During the now historic interview, Clinton said that the President's incapacity made it impossible for him longer to continue his party relation; and he pledged his honour that the breach between them was irreparable. Yet, on account of his friends as well as his own account, he said, he deemed it expedient to avoid publicity on the subject. He spoke of Spencer with bitterness, styling him "his creature," whom Armstrong governed, and who, in turn, influenced Tompkins and John Taylor. "Armstrong," he repeated, "while engaged in measures to procure a peace meeting in Dutchess County over which he had promised to preside, had been bought off by the miserable commission of a brigadier-general."[169]

[Footnote 169: Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 271.]

As the campaign grew older, the Federalists were perplexed and distracted by an increasing uncertainty as to what they should do. This was especially true of those who sighed for power and despaired of getting it through the continuance of a Federalist party. Rufus King, clear as to the course which ought to be followed, earnestly advised his friends to nominate a respectable Federalist, not with the expectation of succeeding in the election, but for the purpose of keeping the Federal body unbroken in principle; that its character and influence might be reserved for the occasion which, in the present course of affairs, he said, could not fail to arrive. King, however, failed to influence his friends. On September 15, in a convention of sixty or more delegates from all the States north of the Potomac, it was recommended that, as it would be inexpedient to name a Federal candidate because impractical to elect one, Federalists should co-operate in the election of a President who would be likely to pursue a different policy from Madison.

This resolution was largely due to the eloquence of Harrison Gray Otis. He urged that the defeat of Madison would speedily lead to a peace, for which the door stood open in the repeal of the Orders in Council. Rufus King insisted that the name all had in mind be given in the resolution; although, he admitted, no one knew whether Clinton would pursue a policy different from Madison's. No man in the country, he said, was more equivocal in his character. He had disapproved the embargo and then receded from his opinion; and, to restore himself to the confidence of his party, he had published a tirade against the Federalists. "If we succeed in promoting his election," thundered the orator, "I fear we may place in the chair a Cæsar Borgia instead of a James Madison."[170] These were bitter words, recalling Hamilton's famous criticism of Aaron Burr, but they were spoken without the wealth of Hamilton's experience to support them. That Clinton would sacrifice his own interests and his own ambition for the sake of any political cause no one could believe; that he had played fast and loose for a time with the great question of embargo was too well known to be denied; but that anything had occurred in his public career to justify Rufus King's simile, his worst enemies could not seriously credit. Even Christopher Gore was compelled to admit that the Federal leaders of Massachusetts "are favourably impressed with the character and views of Clinton. Indeed, since last spring I have scarcely heard any one speak of him but extolled the excellence of his moral character and the purity of his present political views."[171] To this King simply replied: "I stated my sentiments to the meeting, a great majority of whom thought them incorrect. Time, which reveals truth, must decide between us."[172]

[Footnote 170: Rufus King, Life and Correspondence, Vol. 5, p. 281.]

[Footnote 171: Rufus King, Life and Correspondence, Vol. 5, pp. 281-4.]

[Footnote 172: Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 283.]

By the middle of September, Clinton exhibited lamentable weakness as a political organiser. Opposing him, he had the whole power of state and national administrations, and the most prominent men of the party, led by Erastus Root. Besides, a new Legislature, elected in the preceding April, had a Republican majority on joint ballot divided between Clintonians and Madisonians; and, still further to perplex the situation, twenty Republican assemblymen absolutely refused to vote unless Madison were given a fair division of the electors. This meant the surrender of one elector out of three, an arrangement to which Clinton dared not consent.

Clinton, though seriously impressed by the gravity of his position, seems to have done nothing to clear the way; but the hour of crisis brought with it the man demanded. During recent years a new and very remarkable figure in political life had been coming to the front. Martin Van Buren, afterward President of the United States, was establishing his claim to the position of commanding influence he was destined to hold during the next three decades. His father, an innkeeper in the village of Kinderhook, gave him a chance to learn a little English at the common schools, and a little Latin at the academy. At the age of fourteen, he began sweeping an office and running errands for a country attorney, who taught him the law. Then he went to New York City to finish his education in the office of William P. Van Ness, an old Columbia County neighbour, at that time making his brilliant and bitter attack as "Aristides" upon the Clintons and the Livingstons. A year later, in 1803, Van Buren celebrated his twenty-first birthday by forming a partnership in Kinderhook with a half-brother, James J. Van Alen, already established in the practice. In 1808, he became surrogate; and when the Legislature convened in November, 1812, he took a seat in the Senate, the youngest man save one, it is said, until then elected to that body.

Martin Van Buren had shown unusual sagacity as a politician. Born under conditions which might have disheartened one of different mould, bred in a county given up to Federalism, and taught in the law for six years by an uncompromising follower of Hamilton, he nevertheless held steadfastly to the Jeffersonian faith of his father. Nor would he be moved in his fealty to the Clintons, although Van Ness, his distinguished law preceptor, worshipped Burr and hated his enemies. As a very young man, Van Buren was able to see that the principles of Republicanism had established themselves in the minds of the great majority of the people interested in political life, and if he had been persuaded that Aaron Burr and his Federalist allies were to be restored to power in 1804, he was far too shrewd to be tempted by the prospects of such a coalition. He had also shown, from his first entrance into politics, a remarkable capacity for organisation. He had courage, a social and cheerful temper, engaging manners, and extraordinary application. He also had the happy faculty of guiding without seeming to dictate; he could show the way without pushing one along the path. Finally, back of all, was the ability that soon made him the peer of Elisha Williams, the ablest lawyer in a county famous for its brilliant men, enabling him quickly to outgrow the professional limitations of Kinderhook, and to extend his practice far beyond the limits of the busy city of Hudson.

Martin Van Buren cannot be ranked as a great orator. He spoke too rapidly, and he was wanting in imagination, without which eloquence of the highest character is impossible. Besides, although his head was well formed and his face singularly attractive, his small figure placed him at a disadvantage. He possessed, however, a remarkable command of language, and his graceful, persuasive manner, often animated, sometimes thrilling, frequently impassioned, inspired confidence in his sincerity, and easily classed him among the ablest speakers. His best qualities consisted in his clearness of exposition, his masterly array of forcible argument, his faculty for balancing evidence, for acquiring and comparing facts, and for appreciating tendencies.

When Van Buren entered the State Senate he was recognised as the Republican leader of his section. A recent biographer says that his skill in dealing with men was extraordinary, due no doubt to his temper of amity and inborn genius for society. "As you saw him once," wrote William Allen Butler, "you saw him always--always punctilious, always polite, always cheerful, always self-possessed. It seemed to any one who studied this phase of his character as if, in some early moment of destiny, his whole nature had been bathed in a cool, clear, and unruffled depth, from which it drew this lifelong serenity and self-control."[173] Any intelligent observer of public life must have felt that Martin Van Buren was only at the opening of a great political career. Inferior to DeWitt Clinton in the endowments which obtain for their possessor the title of a man of genius, he could, though thirteen years younger, weigh the strength of conflicting tendencies in the political world with an accuracy to which Clinton could not pretend.

[Footnote 173: William Allen Butler, Address on Martin Van Buren (1862).]

On reaching Albany, in November, 1812, Van Buren saw the electoral situation at a glance; and naturally, almost insensibly, he became Clinton's representative. He slipped into leadership as easily as Bonaparte stepped into the history of Europe, when he seized the fatal weakness in the well defended city of Toulon. Van Buren had approved embargo, non-intercourse, and the war itself. The discontent growing out of Jefferson's severe treatment of the difficulties caused by the Orders in Council and the Berlin and Milan Decrees, seems never to have shaken his confidence in Republican statesmanship, or aroused the slightest animosity against the congressional caucus nominee for President. But he accepted Clinton as the regular and practically the unanimous nominee of the Republican members of a preceding Legislature. Although Madison's nomination had come in the way then accepted, he had a stronger sense of allegiance to the expressed will of his party in the State. His adversaries, of whom he was soon to have many, charged him with treachery to the President and to the party. There came a time when it was asserted, and, apparently, with some show of truth, that he had neither the courage nor the heart to keep the side of his convictions boldly and finally; that he was always thinking of personal interests, and trying to take the position which promised the greatest advantage and the greatest security. We shall have occasion, in the course of these pages, to study the basis of such criticism. But, in the present crisis, had he not been thoroughly sincere and single-hearted, he could easily have thrown in his fortunes with the winning side; for at that time he must have had little faith in the chances of Clinton's election. Vermont had been given up, Pennsylvania was scarcely in doubt, and the South showed unmistakable signs of voting solidly for Madison.[174]

[Footnote 174: "DeWitt Clinton was classed by most persons as a reckless political gambler, but Martin Van Buren, when he intrigued, preferred to intrigue upon the strongest side. Yet one feeling was natural to every New York politician, whether a Clinton or a Livingston, Burrite, Federalist, or Republican,--all equally disliked Virginia; and this innate jealousy gave to the career of Martin Van Buren for forty years a bias which perplexed his contemporaries, and stood in singular contradiction to the soft and supple nature he seemed in all else to show."--Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol. 6, pp. 409, 410.]

Van Buren's work not only encouraged several Federalists to vote for Clinton electors, but it compelled the Madisonians not to vote at all. It seemed easy, when a master hand guided the helm, to bring order out of chaos. Upon joint ballot, the Clintonian electors received seventy-four votes to the Federalists' forty-five; twenty-eight blanks represented the Madison strength. Van Buren, however, could not control in other States. If some one in Pennsylvania, of equal tact in the management of men, could have supplemented his work, Clinton must easily have won. But it is not often given a party, or an individual, to have the assistance of two such men at the same time. After the votes were counted, it appeared that Clinton had carried New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and had five votes in Maryland--eighty-nine in all. The remaining one hundred and twenty-eight belonged to Madison.

In estimating the discontent excited by the declaration of war Clinton had failed to foresee that there is something captivating to a spirited people about the opening of a new war. He had also failed to notice that military failures could not affect Madison's strength. The surrender of Detroit, Dearborn's blunder in wasting time, and the inefficiency of the secretary of war had raised a storm of public wrath sufficient to annihilate Hull and to shake the earth under Eustis; but it passed harmlessly over the head of the President. The foreign policy of Jefferson and Madison, approved by the Republican party, was on trial, and the defeat of the Administration meant a want of confidence in the party itself. Here, then, was a contingency against which Clinton had never thought of providing, and, as so often happens, the one thing not taken into consideration, proved decisive in the result.

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XIX. QUARRELS AND RIVALRIES

1813

After Clinton's loss of the Presidency, it must have been clear to his friends and enemies alike that his influence in the Republican party was waning. A revolution in sentiment did not then sweep over the State with anything like the swiftness and certainty of the present era of cheap newspapers and rapid transit. Yet, in spite of his genius, which concealed, and, for a time, checked the suddenness of his fall, the rank and file of the party quickly understood what had happened. Friends began falling away. For several months Ambrose Spencer had openly and bitterly denounced him, and Governor Tompkins took a decisive part in relieving his rival of the last hope of ever again reckoning on the support of Republicans.

The feeling against Clinton was intensified by the common belief that the election of Rufus King, as United States senator to succeed John Smith, on March 4, 1813, paid the Federalists their price for choosing Clinton electors. The Republicans had a majority on joint ballot, and James W. Wilkin, a senator from the middle district, was placed in nomination; but when the votes were counted King had sixty-four and Wilkin sixty-one. It looked treacherous, and it suggested gross ingratitude, since Wilkin had presided at the legislative caucus which nominated Clinton for President; but, as we have seen, events had been moving in different ways, events destined to produce a strange crop of political results. In buying its charter, the Bank of America had contracted to do many things, and the election of a United States senator was not unlikely among its bargains. This theory seems the more probable since Clinton, whom Rufus King had denounced as a dangerous demagogue, would have preferred putting King into a position of embarrassment more than into the United States Senate. Wilkin himself so understood it, or, at least, he believed that the Bank, and not Clinton, had contributed to his defeat, and he said so in a letter afterward found among the Clinton papers.

Hostile Republicans were, however, now ready to believe Clinton guilty of any act of turpitude or ingratitude; and so, on February 4, when a legislative caucus renominated Daniel D. Tompkins for governor by acclamation, Clinton received only sixteen votes for lieutenant-governor. There is no evidence that Van Buren took part in Clinton's humiliation; but it is certain he did not act with all the fairness that might have been expected. He could well have said that Clinton was no worse than the majority of his party who had nominated him; that his aim, like theirs, was a vigorous prosecution of the war in the interest of an early peace; that he had no intention of separating himself from the Republican party, and that his renomination for lieutenant-governor would reunite the party, making it more potent to create and support war measures. But Van Buren himself was not beyond danger. Tammany's mutterings and Spencer's violent denunciations threatened to exclude others from the party, and to escape their hostility, this rising young statesman found it convenient to drop Clinton and shout for Tompkins. A less able and clear-headed man might have gone wrong at this parting of the ways, just as did Obadiah German and other friends of Clinton; but Van Buren never needed a guide-post to point out to him the safest political road to travel. The better to prove his party loyalty, he consented to draft the usual grandiloquent address issued by the legislative caucus to Republican electors, always a sophomoric appeal, but quite in accord with the rhetoric of the time. If any doubt existed as to the orthodoxy of Van Buren's Republicanism, this address must have dissipated it. It sustained the general government by forcible argument, and it appealed with fervid eloquence and deep pathos to the patriotism of the people to continue their support of the party.

How great a part Clinton was yet to play in the history of his State no one could foresee. Much speculation has been indulged by writers as to the probable course of history had he been elected President, but the mere fact that he was able to inspire so small a fraction of his party with full faith in his leadership is decisive evidence that he was not then the man of the hour. It is certain that his enemies believed his political life had been brought to an ignoble close. Clinton probably felt that he would have no difficulty in living down the opprobrium put upon him by partisan hostility; and to prove that he was still in the political arena, a little coterie of distinguished friends, led by Obadiah German and Pierre Van Cortlandt, made a circle about him. From this vantage ground he defied his enemies, attacking Madison's conduct of the war with great severity, and protesting against the support of Tompkins and Taylor as the mere tools of Madison.

Clinton's usual good fortune also attended him. As we have seen, the April elections in 1812 returned a Federalist Assembly, which selected a Council of Appointment opposed to Clinton's removal from the mayoralty. It displaced everybody else throughout the State. Clintonians and Madisonians alike suffered, including the able and distinguished Thomas Addis Emmet, an ardent friend of Clinton who had been urged to accept the attorney-generalship after the death of Matthias B. Hildreth in the preceding August. But Clinton had the support of Jonas Platt, the leading member of the Council, and Platt refused to permit his removal. Doubtless the latter hoped to fill up the Federalist ranks with Clintonian recruits; and so with greater confidence than usual the Federalists, when their turn came, nominated Stephen Van Rensselaer for governor and George Huntington of Oneida County for lieutenant-governor.

Aside from the result of the elections of the preceding November, which had given Federalists twenty out of thirty congressmen, it is difficult to understand upon what the party of Hamilton really based its confidence. Before the campaign was a month old, it must have been evident that the defeated candidate for President had as little influence as Van Rensselaer, who, as a major-general of militia in command at Fort Niagara, was a miserable failure. After shivering with fear for sixty days lest Hull's fate overtake him, Van Rensselaer, apparently in sheer desperation, had suddenly ordered a small part of his force across the river to be shot and captured in the presence of a large reserve who refused to go to the assistance of their comrades. The news of this defeat led Monroe to speak of him as "a weak and incompetent man with high pretensions." Jefferson thought Hull ought to be "shot for cowardice" and Van Rensselaer "broke for incapacity."[175]

[Footnote 175: Jefferson to Madison, Nov. 5, 1812; Jefferson MSS. Series V., Vol. XV.]

But the Federalists, unmindful of the real seriousness of that disaster, contested the election with unusual vehemence, until the best informed men of both parties conceded their advantage. The Government's incapacity was abundantly illustrated in the failure of its armies and in the impoverished condition of its treasury, and if the home conditions had been disturbed by distress, the confidence of the Federalists must have been realised. The people of the State, however, had seen and felt nothing of actual warfare. In spite of embargoes and blockades, ample supplies of foreign goods had continued to arrive; and, except along the Niagara frontier, occupied by a few hundred scattered settlers, the farms produced their usual harvests and the industries of life were not impaired. Under these conditions, the voters of the country districts saw no reason for defeating a governor whom they liked, for a man whose military service added nothing to his credit or to the lustre of the State. So, when the election storm subsided, it was found, to the bitter mortification of the Federalists, that while the chief towns, New York, Hudson and Albany, were strong in opposition, Tompkins and Taylor had triumphed by the moderate majority of 3606 in a total vote of over 83,000.[176] The Senate stood three to one in favour of the Republicans. The Assembly was lost by ten votes.

[Footnote 176: Daniel D. Tompkins, 43,324; Stephen Van Rensselaer, 39,718.--Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

Tompkins was now at the zenith of his political career. He was one of those men not infrequently observed in public life, who, without conspicuous ability, have a certain knack for the management of men, and are able to acquire influence and even a certain degree of fame by personal skill in manipulating patronage, smoothing away difficulties, and making things easy. Nature had not only endowed him with a genius for political diplomacy, but good fortune had favoured his march to popularity by disassociating him with any circumstances of birth or environment calculated to excite jealousy or to arouse the suspicion of the people. He was neither rich nor highly connected. The people knew him by the favourite title of the "farmer's boy," and he never appeared to forget his humble beginnings. "He had the faculty," says James Renwick, formerly of Columbia College, who knew him personally, "of never forgetting the name or face of any person with whom he had once conversed; of becoming acquainted and appearing to take an interest in the concerns of their families; and of securing, by his affability and amiable address, the good opinion of the female sex, who, although possessed of no vote, often exercise a powerful indirect influence." Thus, while still in the early prime of life, he had risen to a position in the State which, even in the case of men with superior intellectual endowments, is commonly the reward of maturer years and longer experience.

From the moment Tompkins became governor in 1807 the strongest ambition of his mind was success in the great game of politics; and, although never a good hater, his capacity for friendship depended upon whether the success of his own career was endangered by the association. Having laid Clinton in the dust, his eye rested upon John Armstrong, who had recently won the appointment of secretary of war. Armstrong had been recalled from Paris at the request of Napoleon, just in time to get in the way of both Clinton and Tompkins. At first he was a malcontent, grumbling at Madison, and condemning the conduct of public affairs generally; but, after the declaration of war, he supported the Administration, and, on July 6, 1812, to the surprise and indignation of Clinton, he accepted a brigadiership, with command of New York City and its defences. Then came the period of danger and urgency following the surrender of Detroit, and Armstrong, on the 6th of February, 1813, to the great embarrassment of Tompkins, obtained quick promotion to the head of the war department.

There seems to have been no reason why Tompkins should have harboured the feeling of rivalry toward Armstrong that he cherished for Clinton. The former was simply a pretentious occupier of high places, without real ability for great accomplishment. His little knowledge of the theory and practice of war was learned on the staff of General Gates, who, Bancroft says, "had no fitness for command and wanted personal courage." It was while Armstrong was dwelling in the tent of this political, intriguing adventurer, that he wrote the celebrated "Newburgh Letters," stigmatised by Washington. These events, coupled with his want of scruples and known capacity for intrigue and indolence, made him an object of such distrust that the Senate, in spite of his social and political connections, barely confirmed him.

Could Tompkins, looking two years into the future, have foreseen Armstrong passing into disgraceful retirement after the capture of the city of Washington, he might easily have dismissed all rivalry from his mind; but just now the two men who seemed to stand most in his way were Armstrong and Spencer. He thought Spencer in too close and friendly alliance with Armstrong, and that Armstrong, whose strength in the State greatly depended upon Spencer's influence, was the only obstacle in his path to the White House. Thus there arose in his mind a sentiment of rivalry for Armstrong, and a strong feeling of distrust and dislike for Spencer. The latter, who now possessed little more real liking for Tompkins than Clinton did, soon understood the Governor's feeling toward him; and he also learned that Van Buren, with an intellect for organisation and control far superior to anything the Republicans of the State had heretofore known, had come into the political game to stay.

By phenomenal luck, DeWitt Clinton's good fortune still continued to attend him. In April, 1813, the Federalists had again carried the Assembly, and, although without senators in the middle and western districts to serve upon the Council of Appointment, Clinton found a friend in Henry A. Townsend, who answered the purpose of a Federalist. Townsend would support Jonas Platt for a judgeship if Clinton was retained as mayor.

Townsend had come into the Senate in 1810 as a Clinton Republican, but his brief legislative career had not been as serene as a summer's day. He fell out with Tompkins and Spencer when he fell in with Thomas and Southwick, and whether or not the favours distributed by the Bank of America actually became a part of his assets, the bank's opponents took such violent exception to his vote that poor Townsend had little to hope for from that faction of his party. It was commonly believed at the time, therefore, that a desire to please Clinton and possibly to gain the favour of Federalists in the event of their future success, influenced him to support Platt, conditional on the retention of Clinton. It is quite within the range of probability that some such motive quickened his instinct for revenge and self-preservation, although it led to an incident that must have caused Clinton keen regret and mental anguish.

Townsend's Republican colleague in the Council was none other than Morgan Lewis, who saw an opportunity of creating trouble by nominating Richard Riker as an opposing candidate to Platt. Tompkins had probably something to do with making this nomination--or, at all events, with giving his friend Lewis the idea of bringing it forward just then. Surely, they thought, Clinton would reverence Riker, who acted as second in the Swartout duel and recently headed the committee to promote his election to the Presidency. Clinton felt the sting of his enemies. There was a time when Clinton had supported Tompkins against Lewis; now Lewis, in supporting Tompkins against Clinton, was thrusting the latter through with a two-edged knife; for if Townsend voted for Riker, the Federalists would drop Clinton; if he voted for Platt, Riker would drop him. In vain did Clinton wait for Riker to suggest some avenue of escape. The plucky second wanted a judgeship which meant years of good living, as much as Clinton wanted the mayoralty that might be lost in another year. Clinton had not yet drunk the dregs of the bitter cup. False friends and their unpaid security debts were still to bankrupt him; but he had already seen enough to know that the setting sun is not worshipped. Under these circumstances his friendship for Riker was not strong enough to induce him to throw away his last chance of holding the mayoralty and its fat fees; and so when Townsend voted for Platt, Riker's affection for Clinton turned to hate.

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