Several events of the year aided the opposition party. The hostility of the Jackson leaders to internal improvements aroused former Clintonians who believed in canals, and the widespread financial embarrassment alarmed commercial and mercantile interests. They resented the remark of the President that "men who trade on borrowed capital ought to fail," and the bold denial that "any pressure existed which an honest man should regret." Business men, cramped for money, or already bankrupt because the United States Bank, stripped of its government deposits, had curtailed its discounts, did not listen with patience or amiability to statements of such a character; nor were they inclined to excuse the President's action on the theory that the United States Bank had cut down its loans to produce a panic, and thus force a reversal of his policy. To them such utterances seemed to evince a want of sympathy, and opposition orators and journals took advantage of the situation by eloquently denouncing a policy that embarrassed commerce and manufactures, throwing people out of employment and bringing suffering and want to the masses.

The New York municipal election in the spring of 1834 plainly showed that the voters resented the President's financial policy. For the first time in the history of the city, the people were to elect their mayor, and, although purely a local contest, it turned upon national issues. All the elements of opposition now used the one name of "Whig." Until this time local organisations had adopted various titles, such as "Anti-Jackson," "Anti-Mortgage," and "Anti-Regency;" but the opponents of Jackson now claimed to be the true successors of the Whigs of 1776, calling their movement a revolution against the tyranny and usurpation of "King Andrew." They raised liberty poles, spoke of their opponents as Tories, and appropriated as emblems the national flag and portraits of Washington.

The prospects of the new party brightened, too, when it nominated for mayor Gulian C. Verplanck, a member of Tammany Hall, a distinguished congressman of eight years' service, and, until then, a representative of the Jackson party, highly esteemed and justly popular. Although best known, perhaps, as a scholar and writer, Verplanck's active sympathies early led him into politics. He entered the Whig party and the mayoralty campaign with high hopes of success. He led the merchants and business men, while his opponent, Cornelius V.R. Lawrence, also a popular member of Tammany, rallied the mechanics and labouring classes. The spirited contest, characterised by rifled ballot-boxes and broken heads, revealed at once its national importance. If the new party could show a change in public sentiment in the foremost city in the Union, it would be helpful in reversing Jackson's financial policy. So the great issue became a cry of "panic" and a threat of "hard times." Like the strokes of a fire bell at night, it alarmed the people, whose confidence began to waver and finally to give way.

The evident purpose of the United States Bank was to create, if possible, the fear of a panic. By suddenly curtailing its loans, ostensibly because of the removal of the deposits, it brought such pressure upon the state banks that a suspension of specie payment seemed inevitable. To relieve this situation, Governor Marcy and the Legislature, acting with great promptness, pledged the State's credit to the banks, should the exigency require such aid, to the amount of six million dollars. This was called "Marcy's mortgage." The Whigs stigmatised it as a pledge of the people's property for the benefit of money corporations, denouncing the project as little better than a vulgar swindle in the interest of the Democratic party. Whether Marcy's scheme really averted the threatened calamity, or whether the United States Bank had already carried its contraction as far as it intended, it is certain that the fear of a panic served its purpose in the campaign. The Whigs became enthusiastic, and, as the United States Bank now began relieving the commercial embarrassment by extending its loans and giving its friends in New York special advantages, the party felt certain of victory. When the polls closed the result did not fully realise Whig anticipations; yet it disclosed a Democratic majority, cut down from five thousand to two hundred, with a loss of the Council. Verplanck had, indeed, been beaten by one hundred and eighty-one votes; but the Common Council, carrying with it the patronage of the city, amounting to more than one million dollars a year, had been easily won. The Democrats had the shadow, it was said, and the Whigs the substance.

This election, and other successes in many towns throughout the State, greatly encouraged the leaders of the opposition. A convention held at Syracuse, in August, 1834, adopted the title of "Whig," and the new party exulted in its name. To add to the enthusiasm, Daniel Webster declared, in a letter, that, from his cradle, he had "been educated in the principles of the Whigs of '76." The New York City election was referred to as the "Lexington" of the revolution against "King Andrew," as its prototype was against King George.

The Whigs' hope of success was heightened, also, by the unanimous nomination of William H. Seward for governor. Seward was now thirty-three years of age. During his four years in the Senate, political expediency neither limited nor controlled his opinions. He had argued for reform in the military system; he had favoured the abolition of imprisonment for debt; he had vigorously opposed the attacks upon the United States Bank and the removal of the deposits; he had antagonised the Chenango canal for reasons presented by Comptroller Marcy, and he gave generously of his time in the Court of Errors. He had grown into a statesman of acknowledged genius and popularity, placing himself in sympathy with the masses, denouncing misrule and supporting measures of reform. Of all the old and experienced members of the Senate, it was freely admitted that none surpassed him in a knowledge of the affairs of the State, or in a readiness to debate leading questions. But, well fitted as he was, he did not solicit the privilege of being a candidate for governor. On the contrary, with Weed and Whittlesey, he tried to find some one else. Granger preferred going to Congress; Verplanck had not yet recovered from the chagrin and disappointment of losing the mayoralty; Maynard was dead, and James Wadsworth would not accept office. To Seward an acceptance of the nomination, therefore, appealed almost as a matter of duty.

Silas M. Stilwell of New York became the candidate for lieutenant-governor. Stilwell had been a shoemaker, and, until the organisation of the Whig party, a stalwart supporter of the Regency, occupying a conspicuous place as an industrious and ambitious member of the Assembly. When the deposits were removed and a panic threatened he declared himself a Whig.

Confidence characterised the convention which nominated Seward and Stilwell. Young men predominated, and their enthusiasm was aroused to the highest pitch by the eloquence of Peter R. Livingston, their venerable chairman. Like a new convert, Livingston prophesied victory. Livingston had been a wheel-horse in the party of Jefferson. He had served in the Senate with Van Buren; he had taken a leading part in the convention of 1821, and he had held, with distinction, the speakership of the Assembly and the presidency of the Senate. His creed was love of republicanism and hatred of Clinton. At one time he was the faithful follower, the enthusiastic admirer, almost the devotee of Van Buren; and, so long as the Kinderhook statesman opposed Clinton, he needed Livingston. But, when the time came that Van Buren must conciliate Clinton, Livingston was dropped from the Senate. The consequences were far more serious than Van Buren intended. Livingston was as able as he was eloquent, and Van Buren's coalition with Clinton quickly turned Livingston's ability and eloquence to the support of Clay. Then he openly joined the Whigs; and to catch his influence, and the thrill of his remarkable voice, they made him chairman of their first state convention. As an evidence of their enthusiasm, the whole body of delegates, with music and flags, drove from Syracuse to Auburn, twenty-six miles, to visit their young candidate for governor.

In the same month the Democrats renominated Marcy and John Tracy, strong in prestige of past success and present power. Instantly, the two leading candidates were contrasted—Marcy, the mature and experienced statesman; Seward, a "red-haired young man," without a record and unknown to fame. Stilwell was told to "stick to his boots and shoes;" and, in resentment, tailors, printers, shoemakers, and men of other handicraft, organised in support of "the working man" against the "Jackson Aristocrats." In answer to the Commercial Advertiser's sneer that Seward was "red-haired," William L. Stone, with felicitous humour, told how Esau, and Cato, Clovis, William Rufus, and Rob Roy not only had red hair, but each was celebrated for having it; how Ossian sung a "lofty race of red-haired heroes," how Venus herself was golden-haired, as well as Patroclus and Achilles. "Thus does it appear," the article concluded, "that in all ages and in all countries, from Paradise to Dragon River, has red or golden hair been held in highest estimation. But for his red hair, the country of Esau would not have been called Edom. But for his hair, which was doubtless red, Samson would not have carried away the gates of Gaza. But for his red hair, Jason would not have navigated the Euxine and discovered the Golden Horn. But for the red hair of his mistress, Leander would not have swum the Hellespont. But for his red hair, Narcissus would not have fallen in love with himself, and thereby become immortal in song. But for his red hair we should find nothing in Van Buren to praise. But for red hair, we should not have written this article. And, but for his red hair, William H. Seward might not have become governor of the State of New York! Stand aside, then, ye Tories, and 'Let go of his hair.'"[279]

[Footnote 279: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 238.]

The mottoes of this campaign illustrate the principles involved in it. "Seward and Free Soil, or Marcy with his Mortgage" was a favourite with the Whigs. "The Monster Bank Party" became the popular cry of Democrats, to which the Whigs retorted with "The Party of Little Monsters." "Marcy's Pantaloons," "No Nullification," and "Union and Liberty" also did service. Copper medals bearing the heads of candidates were freely distributed, and humourous campaign songs, set to popular music, began to be heard.

It was a lively campaign, and reports of elections in other States, showing gratifying gains, kept up the hopes of Whigs. But, at the end, the withering majorities in Democratic strongholds remained unbroken, re-electing Marcy and Tracy by thirteen thousand majority,[280] and carrying every senatorial district save the eighth, and ninety-one of the one hundred and twenty-two assemblymen. The Whigs had put forward their ablest men for the Legislature and for Congress, but, outside of those chosen in the infected district, few appeared in the halls of legislation, either at Albany or at Washington. Francis Granger went to Congress. "He has had a fortunate escape from his dilemma, and I rejoice at it," wrote Seward to Thurlow Weed. "He is a noble fellow, and I am glad that, if we could not make him what we wished, we have been able to put him into a career of honour and usefulness."[281]

[Footnote 280: William L. Marcy, 181,905; William H. Seward, 168,969.—Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

[Footnote 281: Autobiography of William H. Seward, p. 241.]

Seward was not broken-hearted over his defeat. The majority against him was not so large as Granger encountered in 1832; but it was sufficiently pronounced to send him back to his profession with the feeling that his principles and opinions were not yet wanted. "If I live," he said to Weed, "and my principles ever do find favour with the people, I shall not be without their respect. Believe me, there is no affectation in my saying that I would not now exchange the feelings and associations of the vanquished William H. Seward for the victory and 'spoils' of William L. Marcy."[282]

[Footnote 282: Autobiography of William H. Seward, p. 241.]



A POLITICAL HISTORY

OF THE

STATE OF NEW YORK

BY

DeALVA STANWOOD ALEXANDER, A.M.

Member of Congress, Formerly United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York

VOL. II

1833-1861



NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1906

Copyright, 1906 By HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY



CONTENTS

VOL. II

CHAPTER PAGE

I. VAN BUREN AND ABOLITION. 1833-1837 1

II. SEWARD ELECTED GOVERNOR. 1836-1838 15

III. THE DEFEAT OF VAN BUREN FOR PRESIDENT. 1840 31

IV. HUMILIATION OF THE WHIGS. 1841-1842 47

V. DEMOCRATS DIVIDE INTO FACTIONS. 1842-1844 56

VI. VAN BUREN DEFEATED AT BALTIMORE. 1844 65

VII. SILAS WRIGHT AND MILLARD FILLMORE. 1844 76

VIII. THE RISE OF JOHN YOUNG. 1845-1846 90

IX. FOURTH CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 1846 103

X. DEFEAT AND DEATH OF SILAS WRIGHT. 1846-1847 114

XI. THE FREE-SOIL CAMPAIGN. 1847-1848 129

XII. SEWARD SPLITS THE WHIG PARTY. 1849-1850 145

XIII. THE WHIGS' WATERLOO. 1850-1852 159

XIV. THE HARDS AND THE SOFTS. 1853 180

XV. A BREAKING-UP OF PARTY TIES. 1854 190

XVI. FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 1854-1855 205

XVII. FIRST REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR. 1856 222

XVIII. THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 1857-1858 243

XIX. SEWARD'S BID FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 1859-1860 256

XX. DEAN RICHMOND'S LEADERSHIP AT CHARLESTON. 1860 270

XXI. SEWARD DEFEATED AT CHICAGO. 1860 281

XXII. NEW YORK'S CONTROL AT BALTIMORE. 1860 294

XXIII. RAYMOND, GREELEY, AND WEED. 1860 305

XXIV. FIGHT OF THE FUSIONISTS. 1860 324

XXV. GREELEY, WEED, AND SECESSION. 1860-1861 334

XXVI. SEYMOUR AND THE PEACE DEMOCRATS. 1860-1861 346

XXVII. WEED'S REVENGE UPON GREELEY. 1861 361

XXVIII. LINCOLN, SEWARD, AND THE UNION. 1860-1861 367

XXIX. THE WEED MACHINE CRIPPLED. 1861 388



A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK



CHAPTER I

VAN BUREN AND ABOLITION

1833-1837

After Van Buren's inauguration as Vice President, he made Washington his permanent residence, and again became the President's chief adviser. His eye was now intently fixed upon the White House, and the long, rapid strides, encouraged by Jackson, carried him swiftly toward the goal of his ambition. He was surrounded by powerful friends. Edward Livingston, the able and accomplished brother of the Chancellor, still held the office of secretary of state; Benjamin F. Butler, his personal friend and former law partner, was attorney-general; Silas Wright, the successor of Marcy, and Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, the eloquent successor of the amiable Dudley, were in the United States Senate. Among the members of the House, Samuel Beardsley and Churchill C. Cambreling, firm and irrepressible, led the Administration's forces with conspicuous ability. At Albany, Marcy was governor, Charles L. Livingston was speaker of the Assembly, Azariah C. Flagg state comptroller, John A. Dix secretary of state, Abraham Keyser state treasurer, Edwin Croswell state printer and editor of the Argus, and Thomas W. Olcott the able financier of the Regency. All were displaying a devotion to the President, guided by infinite tact, that distinguished them as the organisers and disciplinarians of the party. "I do not believe," wrote Thurlow Weed, "that a stronger political organisation ever existed at any state capital, or even at the national capital. They were men of great ability, great industry, indomitable courage, and strict personal integrity."[283]

[Footnote 283: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 103.]

John A. Dix seemed destined from the first to leave an abiding mark in history. Very early in life he was distinguished for executive ability. Although but a boy, he saw active service throughout the War of 1812, having been appointed a cadet at fourteen, an ensign at fifteen, and a second lieutenant at sixteen. After the war, he served as aide-de-camp on the staff of General Brown, living at Fortress Monroe and at Washington, until feeble health led to his resignation in 1828. Then he began the practice of law at Cooperstown. In 1830, when Governor Throop made him adjutant-general, he removed to Albany. He was now twenty-six years old, an accomplished writer, a vigorous speaker, and as prompt and bold in his decisions as in 1861, when he struck the high, clear-ringing note for the Union in his order to shoot the first man who attempted to haul down the American flag. He was not afraid of any enterprise; he was not abashed by the stoutest opposition; he was not even depressed by failure. When the call came, he leaped up to sudden political action, and very soon was installed as a member of the Regency.

Dix had one great advantage over most of his contemporaries in political life—he was able to write editorials for the Argus. It took a keen pen to find an open way to its columns. Croswell needed assistance in these days of financial quakings and threatened party divisions, but he would accept it only from a master. Until this time, Wright and Marcy had aided him. Their love for variety of subject, characteristic, perhaps, of the gifted writer, presented widely differing themes, flavoured with humour and satire, making the paper attractive if not spectacular. To this work Dix, who had already published a Sketch of the Resources of the City of New York, now brought the freshness of a strong personality and the training of a scholar and linguist. He had come into public life under the influence of Calhoun, for whom the army expressed a decided preference in 1828; but he never accepted the South Carolinian's theory of nullification. Dix had inherited loyalty from his father, an officer in the United States army, and he was quick to strike for his country when South Carolina raised the standard of rebellion in 1861.

There was something particularly attractive about John A. Dix in these earlier years. He had endured hardships and encountered dangers, but he had never known poverty; and after his marriage he no longer depended upon the law or upon office for life's necessities. Educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, at the College of Montreal, and at St. Mary's College in Baltimore, he learned to be vigorous without egotism, positive without arrogance, and a man of literary tastes without affectation. Even long years of earnest controversy and intense feeling never changed the serene purity of his life, his lofty purposes, or the nobility of his nature. It is doubtful if he would have found distinction in the career of a man of letters, to which he was inclined. He had the learning and the scholarly ambition. Like Benjamin F. Butler, he could not be content with a small measure of knowledge. He studied languages closely, he read much of the world's literature in the original, and he could write on political topics with the firm grasp and profound knowledge of a statesman of broad views; but he could not, or did not, turn his English into the realm of literature. Yet his Winter in Madeira and a Summer in Spain and Florence, published in 1850, ran through five editions in three years, and is not without interest to-day, after so many others, with, defter pen, perhaps, have written of these sunny lands. His appointment as secretary of state in 1833 made him also state superintendent of common schools, and his valuable reports, published during the seven years he filled the office, attest his intelligent devotion to the educational interests of New York, not less than his editorial work on the Argus showed his loyal attachment to Van Buren.

But, despite the backing of President Jackson, and the influence of other powerful friends, there was no crying demand outside of New York for Van Buren's election to the Presidency. He had done nothing to stir the hearts of his countrymen with pride, or to create a pronounced, determined public sentiment in his behalf. On the contrary, his weaknesses were as well understood without New York as within it. David Crockett, in his life of Van Buren, speaks of him as "secret, sly, selfish, cold, calculating, distrustful, treacherous," and "as opposite to Jackson as dung is to a diamond." Crockett's book, written for campaign effect, was as scurrilous as it was interesting, but it proved that the country fully understood the character of Van Buren, and that, unlike Jackson, he had no great, redeeming, iron-willed quality that fascinates the multitude. Tennessee, the home State of Jackson, opposed him with bitterness; Virginia declared that it favoured principles, not men, and that in supporting Van Buren it had gone as far astray as it would go; Calhoun spoke of the Van Buren party as "a powerful faction, held together by the hopes of plunder, and marching under a banner whereon is written 'to the victors belong the spoils.'" Everywhere there seemed to be unkindness, unrest, or indifference.

Nevertheless, Van Buren's candidacy had been so persistently and systematically worked up by the President that, from the moment of his inauguration as Vice President, his succession to the Presidency was accepted as inevitable. It is doubtful if a man ever slipped into an office more easily than Martin Van Buren secured the Presidency. That there might be no failure at the last moment, a national democratic convention, the second one in the history of the party, was called to nominate him at Baltimore, in May, 1835, eighteen months before the election. When the time came, South Carolina, Alabama, and Illinois were unrepresented; Tennessee had one delegate, and Mississippi and Missouri only two each; but Van Buren's nomination followed with an ease and a unanimity that caused a smile even among the office-holding delegates.

Indeed, slavery was the only thing in sight to disturb Van Buren. At present, it was not larger than a cloud "like a man's hand," but the agitation had begun seriously to disturb politicians. After the North had emerged from the Missouri struggle, chafed and mortified by the treachery of its own representatives, the rapidly expanding culture of cotton, which found its way in plenty to northern seaports, had apparently silenced all opposition. A few people, however, had been greatly disturbed by the arguments of a small number of reformers, much in advance of their time, who were making a crusade against the whole system of domestic slavery. Some of these men won honoured names in our history. One of them was Benjamin Lundy. In 1815, when twenty-six years old, Lundy organised an anti-slavery association, known as the "Union Humane Society," and, in its support, he had traversed the country from Maine to Tennessee, lecturing, editing papers, and forming auxiliary societies. He was a small, deaf, unassuming Quaker, without wealth, eloquence, or marked ability; but he had courage, tremendous energy, and a gentle spirit. He had lived for a time in Wheeling, Virginia, where the horrors, inseparable from slavery, impressed him very much as the system in the British West Indies had impressed Zachary Macaulay, father of the distinguished essayist and historian; and, like Macaulay, he ever after devoted his time and his abilities to the generous task of rousing his countrymen to a full sense of the cruelties practised upon slaves.

In 1828, he happened to meet William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison's attention had not previously been drawn to the slavery question, but, when he heard Lundy's arguments, he joined him in Baltimore, demanding, in the first issue of The Genius, immediate emancipation as the right of the slave and the duty of the master. William Lloyd Garrison was young then, not yet twenty-three years of age, but he struck hard, and soon found himself in jail, in default of the payment of fifty dollars fine and costs for malicious libel. At the end of forty-nine days, Arthur Tappan, of New York City, paid the fine, and Garrison, returning to Boston, issued the first number of The Liberator on January 1, 1830.

This opened the agitation in earnest. Garrison treated slavery as a crime, repudiating all creeds, churches, and parties which taught or accepted the doctrine that an innocent human being, however black or down-trodden, was not the equal of every other and entitled to the same inalienable rights. The South soon heard of him, and the Georgia Legislature passed an act offering a reward of five thousand dollars for his delivery into that State. Indictments of northern men by southern grand juries now became of frequent occurrence, one governor making requisition upon Governor Marcy for the surrender of Arthur Tappan, although Tappan had never been in a Southern State. The South, finding that long-distance threats, indictments, and offers of reward accomplished nothing, waked into action its northern sympathisers, who appealed with confidence to riot and mob violence. In New York City, the crusade opened in October, 1833, a mob preventing the organisation of an anti-slavery society at Clinton Hall. Subsequently, on July 4, 1834, an anti-slavery celebration in Chatham Street chapel was broken up, and five days later, the residence of Lewis Tappan was forced open and the furniture destroyed. These outrages were followed by the destruction of churches, the dismantling of schoolhouses, and the looting of dwellings, owned or used by coloured people. In October, 1835, a committee of respectable citizens of Utica, headed by Samuel Beardsley, then a congressman and later chief justice of the State, broke up a meeting called to organise a state anti-slavery society, and destroyed the printing press of a democratic journal which had spoken kindly of Abolitionists. The agitators, however, were in no wise dismayed or disheartened. It would have taken a good deal of persecution to frighten Beriah Green, or to confuse the conscience of Arthur Tappan.

In the midst of such scenes came tidings that slavery had been abolished in the British West Indies, and that the Utica indignity had been signalised by the conversion of Gerrit Smith. Theretofore, Smith had been a leading colonisationist—thereafter he was to devote himself to the principles of abolitionism. Gerrit Smith, from his earliest years, had given evidence of precocious and extraordinary intelligence. Thurlow Weed pronounced him "the handsomest, the most attractive, and the most intellectual young man I ever met." Smith was then seventeen years old—a student in Hamilton College. "He dressed a la Byron," continues Weed, "and in taste and manners was instinctively perfect."[284] His father was Peter Smith, famous in his day as one of the largest landowners in the United States; and, although this enormous estate was left the son in his young manhood, it neither changed his simple, gentle manners, nor the purpose of his noble life.[285] By profession, Gerrit Smith was a philanthropist, and in his young enthusiasm he joined the American Colonisation Society, organised in 1817, for the purpose of settling the western coast of Africa with emancipated blacks. It was a pre-eminently respectable association. Henry Clay was its president, and prominent men North and South, in church and in state, approved its purpose and its methods. In 1820 it purchased Sherbro Island; but finding the location unfortunate, other lands were secured in the following year at Cape Mesurado, and about a thousand emigrants sent thither during the next seven years. Gerrit Smith, however, found the movement too slow, if not practically stranded, by the work of the cotton-gin and the doctrine of Calhoun, that "the negro is better off in slavery at the South than in freedom elsewhere." So, in 1830, he left the society to those whose consciences condemned slavery, but whose conservatism restrained them from offensive activity. The society drifted along until 1847, when the colony, then numbering six or seven thousand, declared itself an independent republic under the name of Liberia. In the meantime, Smith, unaided and alone, had provided homes in northern States, on farms of fifty acres each, for twice as many emancipated blacks, his gifts aggregating over two hundred thousand acres.

[Footnote 284: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 31.]

[Footnote 285: "Many years ago I was riding with Gerrit Smith in northern New York. He suddenly stopped the carriage, and, looking around for a few minutes, said: 'We are now on some of my poor land, familiarly known as the John Brown tract;' and he then added, 'I own eight hundred thousand acres, of which this is a part, and all in one piece.' Everybody knows that his father purchased the most of it at sales by the comptrollers of state for unpaid taxes. He said he owned land in fifty-six of the sixty counties in New York. He was also a landlord in other States."—H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, p. 189.]

Gerrit Smith's conversion to abolitionism helped the anti-slavery cause, much as the conversion of St. Paul benefited the Christian church. He brought youth, courage, enthusiasm, wealth, and marked ability. Although alienated from him for years because of his peculiar creed, Thurlow Weed refers in loving remembrance to "his great intellect, genial nature, and ample fortune, which were devoted to all good works." When the people of Utica, his native town, broke up the meeting called to form a state anti-slavery society, Smith promptly invited its projectors to his home at Peterborough, Madison County, where the organisation was completed. He was thirty-three years old then, and from that day until Lincoln's proclamation and Lee's surrender freed the negro, he never ceased to work for the abolition of slavery. The state organisation, nourished under his fostering care, led to greater activity. Anti-slavery societies began to form in every county and in most of the towns of some counties. Abolitionism did not take the place of anti-Masonry, which was now rapidly on the wane; but it awakened the conscience, setting people to thinking and, then, to talking. The great contest to abolish slavery in the British West Indies, led by the Buxtons, the Wilberforces, and the Whitbreads, had aroused public indignation in the United States, as well as in England, by the overwhelming proofs that men and women were being constantly flogged; and that branding female slaves on the breast with red-hot iron, was used as a means of punishment, as well as of identification. Other more revolting evidences of the horrors, which seemed to be the inevitable accompaniment of the slave system, found lodgment in American homes through the eloquence of the noted English abolition lecturer, George Thompson, then in this country; until the cruelties, characterising slavery in Jamaica, were supposed and believed by many to be practised in the Southern States.

Naturally enough, the principal avenue between the promoter of anti-slavery views and the voter was the United States mails, and these were freighted with abolition documents. It is likely that Harrison Gray Otis, the wealthy and aristocratic mayor of Boston, did not exaggerate when he advised the southern magistrate, who desired the suppression of Garrison's Liberator, that "its office was an obscure hole, its editor's only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few insignificant persons of all colours;"[286] but the Southerners knew that from that "obscure hole" issued a paper of uncompromising spirit, which was profoundly impressing the people of the United States, and their journals and orators teemed with denunciations. The Richmond Whig characterised Abolitionists as "hell-hounds," warning the northern merchants that unless these fanatics were hung they would lose the benefit of southern trade. A Charleston paper threatened to cut out and "cast upon the dunghill" the tongue of any one who should lecture upon the evils or immorality of slavery. The Augusta Chronicle declared that if the question be longer discussed the Southern States would secede and settle the matter by the sword, as the only possible means of self-preservation. A prominent Alabama clergyman advised hanging every man who favoured emancipation, and the Virginia Legislature called upon the non-slave-holding States to suppress abolition associations by penal statutes.

[Footnote 286: Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, Vol. 1, p. 122, note.]

In the midst of such sentiments, it was evident to Van Buren, whose election depended upon the Southern States, that something definite must be done, and that nothing would be considered definite by the South which did not aim at the total abolition of the anti-slavery agitator. Accordingly, his friends held meetings in every county in the State, adopting resolutions denouncing them as "fanatics and traitors to their country," and indorsing Van Buren "as a patriot opposed to the hellish abolition factions and all their heresies." Van Buren himself arranged for the great meeting at Albany at which Governor Marcy presided. "I send you the inclosed proceedings of the citizens of Albany," wrote Van Buren to the governor of Georgia, "and I authorise you to say that I concur fully in the sentiments they advance."

In commenting upon the Albany meeting, Thurlow Weed, with the foresight of a prophet, wrote in the Evening Journal: "This question of slavery, when it becomes a matter of political controversy, will shake, if not unsettle, the foundations of our government. It is too fearful, and too mighty, in all its bearings and consequences, to be recklessly mixed up in our partisan conflicts."[287] When the Legislature convened, in January, 1836, Governor Marcy took up the question in his message. "I cannot doubt," he said, "that the Legislature possesses the power to pass such penal laws as will have the effect of preventing the citizens of this State, and residents within it, from availing themselves, with impunity, of the protection of its sovereignty and laws, while they are actually employed in exciting insurrection and sedition in a sister State, or engaged in treasonable enterprises, intending to be executed therein."[288] Not content with this show of loyalty to the South on the part of his friends, Van Buren secured the support of Silas Wright and Nathaniel P. Tallmadge for the bill, then pending in the United States Senate, prohibiting postmasters from knowingly transmitting or delivering any documents or papers relating to the abolition of slavery, and when the measure, on a motion for engrossment, received a tie vote, Van Buren cast the decisive vote in the affirmative.[289]

[Footnote 287: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 319.]

[Footnote 288: Governors' Messages, January 5, 1836.]

[Footnote 289: "When the bill came to a vote in the Senate, although there was really a substantial majority against it, a tie was skilfully arranged to compel Van Buren, as Vice President, to give the casting vote. White, the Southern Democratic candidate so seriously menacing him, was in the Senate, and voted for the bill. Van Buren must, it was supposed, offend the pro-slavery men by voting against the bill, or offend the North and perhaps bruise his conscience by voting for it. When the roll was being called, Van Buren, so Benton tells us, was out of the chair, walking behind the colonnade at the rear of the Vice President's seat. Calhoun, fearful lest he might escape the ordeal, eagerly asked where he was, and told the sergeant-at-arms to look for him. But Van Buren was ready, and at once stepped to his chair and voted for the bill. His close friend, Silas Wright of New York, also voted for it. Benton says he deemed both the votes to be political and given from policy. So they probably were.... Van Buren never deserved to be called a 'Northern man with Southern principles.' But this vote came nearer to an excuse for the epithet than did any other act of his career."—Edward M. Shepard, Life of Martin Van Buren, p. 277.]

Van Buren's prompt action gave him the confidence and support of three-fourths of the slave-holding States, without losing his hold upon the Democracy of the free States. Indeed, there was nothing new that the Whigs could oppose to Van Buren. They were not ready to take the anti-slavery side of the issue, and questions growing out of the bank controversy had practically been settled in 1832. This, therefore, was the situation when the two parties in New York assembled in convention, in September, 1836, to nominate state candidates. Marcy and John Tracy were without opposition. From the first moment he began to administer the affairs of the State, Marcy must have felt that he had found his work at last.

The Whigs were far from being united. Henry Clay's disinclination to become a nominee for President resulted in two Whig candidates, Hugh L. White of Tennessee, the favourite of the southern Whigs, and William Henry Harrison, preferred by the Eastern, Middle, and Western States. This weakness was soon reflected in New York. Thurlow Weed was full of forebodings, and William H. Seward found his law office more satisfactory than a candidate's berth. Like Clay he was perfectly willing another should bear the burden of inevitable defeat. So the Whigs put up Jesse Buel for governor, Gamaliel H. Barstow for lieutenant-governor, and an electoral ticket favourable to Harrison.

Jesse Buel was not a brilliant man. He was neither a thinker, like Seward, nor an orator, like Granger; but he was wise, wealthy, and eminently respectable, with enough of the statesman in him to be able to accept established facts and not to argue with the inexorable. Years before, he had founded the Albany Argus, editing it with ability and great success. Through its influence he became state printer, succeeding Solomon Southwick, after the latter's quarrel with Governor Tompkins over the Bank of America. This was in 1813. Three years later Thurlow Weed, then a young man of nineteen, worked for him as a journeyman printer. "From January till April," he writes, "I uniformly reached the office before daylight, and seldom failed to find Mr. Buel at his case, setting type by a tallow candle and smoking a long pipe." Buel made so much money that the party managers invited him to let others, equally deserving, have a turn at the state printing. So he went into the Assembly, distinguishing himself as an able, practical legislator. But he gradually drew away from the Democrats, as their financial policy became more pronounced; and upon the organisation of the Whig party gave it his support. Had he chosen he might have been its candidate for governor in 1834; and it is difficult to understand why he should have accepted, in 1836, with little expectation of an election, what he declined two years before when success seemed probable.

Gamaliel H. Barstow had been a Clintonian and an anti-Clintonian, a follower and a pursuer of Van Buren, an Adams man and an Anti-Mason—everything, in fact, except a Federalist. But, under whatever standard he fought, and in whatever body he sat, he was a recognised leader, full of spirit, fire, and force. In 1824, he had stood with James Tallmadge and Henry Wheaton at the head of the Adams party; in 1831, he had accompanied John C. Spencer and William H. Seward to the national anti-masonic convention at Baltimore; and, in the long, exciting debate upon the bill giving the people power to choose presidential electors, he exhibited the consummate shrewdness and sagacity of an experienced legislator. There was nothing sinister or vindictive about him; but he had an unsparing tongue, and he delighted to indulge it. This is what he did in 1836. Having turned his back upon the Democratic party, the campaign to him became an occasion for contrasting the past and "its blighting Regency majorities" with the future of a new party, which, no doubt, seemed to him and to others purer and brighter, since the longer it was excluded from power the less opportunity it had for making mistakes.

But 1836 was a year of great prosperity. The undue depression of 1835 was now succeeded by commercial activity and an era of expansion and inflation. Visionary schemes were everywhere present. Real estate values doubled, farms were platted into village lots, wild lands were turned into farms, and a new impulse was given to legitimate and illegitimate enterprises. Stocks rose, labour went up, farm products sold at higher prices, and the whole country responded to the advantages of the money plethora. Democracy rode on the crest of the wave, and Jackson's financial policy was accepted with joy.

Nevertheless the Whig party, hoping to strengthen its numbers in Congress, did not relax its zeal. When the vote, however, revealed nearly thirty thousand majority for Marcy[290] and the Van Buren electoral ticket, with ninety-four Democrats in the Assembly and only one Whig in the Senate, it made Thurlow Weed despair for the Republic.

[Footnote 290: William L. Marcy, 166,122; Jesse Buel, 136,648—Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]



CHAPTER II

SEWARD ELECTED GOVERNOR

1836-1838

The overwhelming defeat of the Whigs, in 1836, left a single rift in the dark cloud through which gleamed a ray of substantial hope. It was plain to the most cautious business man that if banking had been highly remunerative, with the United States Bank controlling government deposits, it must become more productive after Jackson had transferred these deposits to state institutions; and what was plain to the conservative banker, was equally patent to the reckless speculator. The legislatures of 1834 and 1835, therefore, became noted as well as notorious for the large number of bank charters granted. As the months passed, increased demands for liberal loans created an increasing demand for additional banks, and the greater the demand the greater the strife for charters. Under the restraining law of the State, abundant provision had been made for a fair distribution of bank stocks; but the dominant party, quick to take an advantage helpful to its friends, carefully selected commissioners who would distribute it only among their political followers. At first it went to merchants or capitalists in the locality of the bank; but gradually, Albany politicians began to participate, and then, prominent state officers, judges, legislators and their relatives and confidential friends, many of whom resold the stock at a premium of twenty to twenty-five per cent. before the first payment had been made. Thus, the distribution of stock became a public scandal, deplored in the messages of the Governor and assailed by the press. "The unclean drippings of venal legislation," the New York Evening Post called it. But no remedy was applied. The Governor, in spite of his regrets, signed every charter the Legislature granted, and the commissioners, as if ignorant of the provisions to secure a fair distribution of the stock, continued to evade the law with boldness and great facility.

Members of the Democratic party in New York City, who believed that banking, like any other business, ought to be open to competition, had organised an equal rights party in 1834 to oppose all monopolies, and the bank restraining law in particular. Several meetings were held during the summer. Finally, in October, both factions of Tammany Hall attempted forcibly to control its proceedings, and, in the contest, the lights were extinguished. The Equal Righters promptly relighted them with loco-foco or friction matches and continued the meeting. From this circumstance they were called Locofocos, a name which the Whigs soon applied to the whole Democratic party.

The Equal Rights party was not long-lived. Two years spanned its activity, and four or five thousand votes measured its strength; but, while it lasted, it was earnest and the exponent of good principles. In 1836, these people held a state convention at Utica, issued a declaration of principles, and nominated a state and congressional ticket. In New York City, the centre of their activity, Frederick A. Tallmadge was put up for state senator and Edward Curtis for Congress, two reputable Whigs; and, to aid them, the Whig party fused successfully with the Equal Righters, electing their whole ticket. This victory was the one ray of hope that came to the Whigs out of the contest of 1836. It proved that some people were uneasy and resentful.

But other Whig victories were soon to follow. Reference has already been made to the unprecedented prosperity that characterised the year 1836. This era of expansion and speculative enterprises, which began with the transfer of government deposits, continued at high pressure under the influence of the newly chartered banks. With such a money plethora, schemes and projects expanded and inflated, until success seemed to turn the heads of the whole population. So wild was the passion for new enterprises, that one had only to announce a scheme to find people ready to take shares in it. Two per cent. a month did not deter borrowers who expected to make one hundred per cent. before the end of the year. In vain did the Governor inveigh against this "unregulated spirit of speculation." As the year advanced, men grew more reckless, until stocks and shares were quickly purchased at any price without the slightest care as to the risk taken.

The beginning of the end of this epoch of insane speculation was felt, early in the spring of 1837, by a money pressure of unexampled severity. Scarcely had its effect reached the interior counties, before every bank in the country suspended specie payments. Then confidence gave way, and tens of thousands of people, who had been wealthy or in comfortable circumstances, waked up to the awful realisation of their bankruptcy and ruin. The panic of 1837 reached the proportions of a national calamity. Most men did not then know the reason for the crash, and the knowledge of those who did, brought little comfort. But, gradually, the country recognised that the prosperity of a nation is not increased in proportion to the quantity of paper money issued, unless such currency be maintained at its full value, convertible, at pleasure, into hard cash—the money standard of the world.

It so happened that the Legislature had not adjourned when the crash came, and, without a moment's delay, it suspended for one year the section of the Safety Fund act forbidding banks to issue notes after refusing to pay them in coin on demand; but it refused to suspend the act, passed in March, 1835, prohibiting the issue or circulation of bills under the denomination of five dollars. This left the people without small bills, and, as New York banks dared not issue them, necessity forced into circulation foreign bills, issued by solvent and insolvent banks, the losses from which fell largely upon the poorer classes who could not discriminate between the genuine and the spurious. So great was the inconvenience and loss suffered by the continuance of this act, that the people petitioned the Governor to call an extra session of the Legislature for its repeal; but Marcy declined, for the reason that the Legislature had already refused to give the banks the desired authority. Thus, the citizens of New York, staggering under a panic common to the whole country, were compelled to suffer the additional hardships of an irredeemable, and, for the most part, worthless currency, known as "shin-plasters."

In the midst of these "hard times," occurred the election in November, 1837. The New York municipal election, held in the preceding spring and resulting, with the help of the Equal Righters, in the choice of a Whig mayor, had prepared the way for a surprise; yet no one imagined that a political revolution was imminent. But the suffering people were angry, and, like a whirlwind, the Whigs swept nearly every county in the State. Of one hundred and twenty-eight assemblymen, they elected one hundred and one, and six of the eight senators. It happened, too, that as the triennial election of sheriffs and clerks occurred this year, the choice of these officers swelled the triumph into a victory that made it the harder to overthrow. In a moment, the election of 1837 had given the Whigs a powerful leverage in local contests, enabling them to build up a party that could be disciplined as well as organised. To add to their strength, the Legislature, when it convened, in January, 1838, proceeded to take the "spoils." Luther Bradish was chosen speaker, Orville L. Holley surveyor-general, and Gamaliel L. Barstow state treasurer. It also suspended for two years the act prohibiting banks from issuing small bills, passed a general banking law, and almost unanimously voted four millions for enlarging the Erie canal.

Although the spring elections of 1838 showed a decided falling off in the Whig vote, hopes of carrying the State in November were so well founded that Whig candidates for governor appeared in plenty. Looking back upon the contest from a distance, especially with the present knowledge of his superlative fitness for high place, it seems strange that William H. Seward should not have had an open way in the convention. But Francis Granger had also won the admiration of his party by twice leading a forlorn hope. Amidst crushing defeat he had never shown weariness, and his happy disposition kept him in friendly touch with his party. The Chenango people were especially ardent in his support. Twice he had forced their canal project through a hostile Assembly, and they did not forget that, in the hour of triumph, Seward opposed it. Besides, Granger had distinguished himself in Congress, resisting the policy of Jackson and Van Buren with forceful argument and ready tact. He was certainly a man to be proud of, and his admirers insisted with great pertinacity that he should now be the nominee for governor.

There was another formidable candidate in the field. Luther Bradish had proved an unusually able speaker, courteous in deportment, and firm and resolute in his rulings at a time of considerable political excitement. He had entered the Assembly from Franklin in 1828, and, having early embraced anti-Masonry with Weed, Granger, and Seward, was, with them, a leader in the organisation of the Whig party. The northern counties insisted that his freedom from party controversies made him peculiarly available, and, while the supporters of other candidates were quarrelling, it was their intention, if possible, to nominate him. Seward and Granger were eager for the nomination, but neither seems to have encouraged the ill-will which their followers exhibited. Indeed, Seward evidenced a disposition to withdraw; and he would doubtless have done so, had not his friends, and those of Granger, thought it better to let a convention decide. As the campaign grew older, the canvass proceeded with asperity. Granger's adherents accused Seward of an unjust conspiracy to destroy him, and of having canvassed the State, personally or by agents, to secure the prize even at the cost of a party division. They charged him with oppressing the settlers in Chautauqua, with editing the Albany Journal, with regulating the Bank of the United States, and controlling the movements of Henry Clay. "I am already so wearied of it," Seward wrote, "that, if left to myself, I should withdraw instantly and forever. I am ill-fitted for competition with brethren and friends. But with a clear conscience and greater magnanimity than there is manifested toward me, I shall go safely through all this storm."[291]

[Footnote 291: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 366.]

The confidence disclosed in the closing sentence was due largely to his confidence in Thurlow Weed. The editor of the Albany Journal seriously desired to take no part in the choice of delegates, since his personal and political relations with all the candidates were intimate and confidential; but he had known Granger longer than the others, and, if controlled by personal friendship, he must have favoured the Ontario candidate. Weed, however, believed that Seward's nomination would awaken greater enthusiasm, especially among young men, thus giving the ticket its best chance of success. At the last moment, therefore, he declared in favour of the Auburn statesman.

The sequel showed that his help came none too soon. Four informal ballots were taken, and, on the following day the formal and final one. The first gave Seward 52, Granger 39, and Bradish 29, with 4 for Edwards of New York. This was supposed to be Granger's limit. On the second ballot, Bradish's friends transferred thirteen votes to him, making Seward 60, Granger 52, Bradish 10, and Edwards 3. If this was a surprise to the friends of Seward, the third ballot was a tremendous shock, for Seward fell off to 59, and Granger got 60. Bradish had 8. Then Weed went to work. Though he had understood that Granger, except in a few counties, had little strength, the last ballot plainly showed him to be the popular candidate; and during an intermission between the third and fourth ballots, the Journal's editor exhibited an influence few men in the State have ever exercised. The convention was made up of the strongest and most independent men in the party. Nearly all had held seats in the state or national legislature, or had occupied other important office. Experience had taught them to act upon their own convictions. The delegates interested in the Chenango Valley canal were especially obstinate and formidable. "Weed," said one of them, "tell me to do anything else; tell me to jump out of the window and break my neck, and I will do it to oblige you; but don't ask me to desert Granger!"[292] Yet the quiet, good-natured Weed, his hand softly purring the knee of his listener as he talked—never excited, never vehement, but sympathetic, logical, prophetic—had his way. The fourth ballot gave Seward 67, Granger 48, Bradish 8. The work was done. When the convention reassembled the next morning, on motion of a warm supporter of Granger, the nomination was made unanimous, and Bradish was named for lieutenant-governor by acclamation.

[Footnote 292: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 373.]

Much disappointment was exhibited by Granger's friends, especially the old anti-Mason farmers who were inclined to reproach Weed with disloyalty. Granger himself stoically accepted defeat and zealously supported the ticket. He had said to a departing delegate, "if either Mr. Seward or Mr. Bradish attain a majority at the informal ballot, my friends must give the successful competitor their united support."[293] How heartily Seward would have responded under like circumstances is evidenced by his action when a premature report went forth of Granger's selection. Being informed of it, Seward at once told his friends that Auburn must be the first to ratify, and immediately set to work preparing resolutions for the meeting.

[Footnote 293: Ibid., p. 374.]

Thurlow Weed was pre-eminently a practical politician. He believed in taking advantage of every opportunity to strengthen his own party and weaken the adversary, and he troubled himself little about the means employed. He preferred to continue the want of small bills for another year rather than allow the opposite party to benefit by a repeal of the obnoxious law; he approved Van Buren's course in the infamous Fellows-Allen controversy; and, had he been governor in place of John Jay in 1800, the existing Legislature would undoubtedly have been reconvened in extra session, and presidential electors chosen favourable to his own party, as Hamilton wanted. But, at the bottom of his nature, there was bed-rock principle from which no pressure could swerve him. He could exclaim with Emerson, "I will say those things which I have meditated for their own sake and not for the first time with a view to that occasion." In these words is the secret of his relation to the Whig party. He asked no office, and he gave only the ripe fruit of his meditative life. It is not to be supposed that, in 1838, he saw in the young man at Auburn the astute United States Senator of the fifties; or the still greater secretary of state of the Civil War; but he had seen enough of Seward to discern the qualities of mind and heart that lifted him onto heights which extended his horizon beyond that of most men, enabling him to keep his bearing in the midst of great excitement, and, finally, in the presence of war itself. Seward saw fewer things, perhaps, than the more active and eloquent Granger, but Weed knew that he saw more deeply.[294]

[Footnote 294: "Apart from politics, I liked Seward, though not blind to his faults. His natural instincts were humane and progressive. He hated slavery and all its belongings, though a seeming necessity constrained him to write, in 1838, to this intensely pro-slavery city, a pro-slavery letter, which was at war with his real, or at least with his subsequent convictions. Though of Democratic parentage, he had been an Adams man, an anti-Mason, and was now thoroughly a Whig. The policy of more extensive and vigorous internal improvement had no more zealous champion. By nature, genial and averse to pomp, ceremony, and formality, few public men of his early prime were better calculated to attract and fascinate young men of his own party, and holding views accordant on most points with his.... Weed was of coarser mould and fibre than Seward—tall, robust, dark-featured, shrewd, resolute, and not over-scrupulous—keen-sighted, though not far-seeing."—Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, pp. 311, 312.]

The Democratic state convention assembled at Herkimer on September 12, and unanimously renominated William L. Marcy and John Tracy. Marcy had made an able governor for three consecutive terms. His declaration that "to the victors belong the spoils" had not impaired his influence, since all parties practised, if they did not preach it; and, although he stultified himself by practically recommending and finally approving the construction of the Chenango canal, which he bitterly opposed as comptroller, he had lost no friends. Canal building was in accord with the spirit of the times. A year later, he had recommended an enlargement of the Erie canal; but when he discovered that the Chenango project would cost two millions instead of one, and the Erie enlargement twelve millions instead of six, he protested against further improvements until the Legislature provided means for paying interest on the money already borrowed. He clearly saw that the "unregulated spirit of speculation" would lead to ruin; and, to counteract it, he appealed to the Legislature, seeking to influence the distribution of bank stock along lines set forth in the law. But Marcy failed to enforce his precepts with the veto. In refusing, also, to reassemble the Legislature, for the repeal of the Small Bills act, the passage of which he had recommended in 1835, he gave the Evening Post opportunity to assail him as "a weak, cringing, indecisive man, the mere tool of a monopoly junto—their convenient instrument."

Marcy held office under difficult conditions. The panic, coming in the summer of 1837, was enough to shatter the nerves of any executive; but, to the panic, was now added the Canadian rebellion which occurred in the autumn of 1837. Though not much of a rebellion, William L. McKenzie's appeal for aid to the friends of liberty aroused hundreds of sympathetic Americans living along the border. Navy Island, above the Falls of Niagara, was made the headquarters of a provisional government, from which McKenzie issued a proclamation offering a reward for the capture of the governor-general of Canada and promising three hundred acres of land to each recruit.

The Canadian authorities effectually guarded the border, and destroyed the Caroline, presumably an insurgent steamer, lying at Schlosser's dock on the American side. In the conflict, one member of the crew was killed, and several wounded. The steamer proved to be an American vessel, owned by New York parties, and its destruction greatly increased the indignation against Canada; but Governor Marcy did not hesitate to call upon the people to refrain from unlawful acts within the territory of the United States; and, to enforce his proclamation, supplied General Scott, now in command of the Canadian frontier, with a force of militia. The American troops quickly forced the abandonment of Navy Island, scattered the insurgents and their allies to secret retreats, and broke up the guerrilla warfare. The loss of life among the patriots, due to their audacity and incompetent leadership, was considerable, and the treatment of prisoners harsh and in some instances inhuman. Many young men of intelligence and character were banished for life to Van Dieman's Land, McKenzie was thrown into a Canadian dungeon, and, among others, Van Schoulty, a brave young officer and refugee from Poland, who led an unsuccessful attack upon Prescott, was executed. Small as was the uprising, it created an intense dislike of Marcy among the friends of those who participated in it.

Still another political splinter was festering in Marcy's side. Several leading Democrats, who had sustained Jackson in his war upon the United States Bank, and in his removal of the deposits, refused to adopt Van Buren's sub-treasury scheme, proposed to the extra session of Congress, convened in September, 1837. This measure meant the disuse of banks as fiscal agents of the government, and the collection, safekeeping, and disbursement of public moneys by treasury officials. The banks, of course, opposed it; and thousands who had shouted, "Down with the United States Bank," changed their cry to "Down with Van Buren and the sub-treasury scheme." Among those opposing it, in New York, Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, a Democratic United States senator, took the lead, calling a state convention to meet at Syracuse. This convention immediately burned its bridges. It denounced Van Buren, it opposed Marcy, and it indorsed Seward. Behind it were bank officers and stockholders who were to lose the privilege of loaning the money of the United States for their own benefit, and the harder it struck them the more liberally they paid for fireworks and for shouters.

If trouble confronted the Democrats, discouragement oppressed the Whigs. Under the direction of Gerrit Smith the Abolitionists were on the war-path, questioning Seward as to the propriety of granting fugitive slaves a fair trial by jury, of abolishing distinctions in constitutional rights founded solely on complexion, and of repealing the law authorising the importation of slaves into the State and their detention as such during a period of nine months. Seward avowed his firm faith in trial by jury and his opposition to all "human bondage," but he declined making ante-election pledges. He preferred to wait, he said, until each case came before him for decision. Seward undoubtedly took the wise course; but he did not satisfy the extremists represented by Smith, and many of the Whig leaders became panic-stricken. "The Philistines are upon us," wrote Millard Fillmore, who was canvassing the State. "I now regard all as lost irrevocably. We shall never be able to burst the withes. Thank God, I can endure it as long as they, but I am sick of our Whig party. It can never be in the ascendant."[295]

[Footnote 295: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 60.]

Francis Granger was no less alarmed. He estimated the Abolitionist vote at twenty thousand, "and before the grand contest of 1840," he wrote Weed, "they will control one-fourth the votes of the State. They are engaged in it with the same honest purpose that governed the great mass of Anti-Masons."[296] The young candidate at Auburn was also in despair. "I fear the State is lost," he wrote Weed on November 4. "This conclusion was forced upon me strongly by news from the southern tier of counties, and is confirmed by an analogy in Ohio. But I will not stop to reason on the causes. Your own sagacity has doubtless often considered them earlier and more forcibly than mine."[297]

[Footnote 296: Ibid., p. 61.]

[Footnote 297: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 61.]

But Horace Greeley did not share these gloomy forebodings. He was then engaged in editing the Jeffersonian, a weekly journal of eight pages, which had been established in February solely as a campaign newspaper. His regular business was the publication of the New Yorker, a journal of literature and general intelligence. During the campaign he consented to spend two days of each week at Albany making up the Jeffersonian, which was issued from the office of the Evening Journal, and he was doing this work with the indefatigable industry and marvellous ability that marked his character.

Greeley had battled for a place in the world after the manner of Thurlow Weed. He was born on a New Hampshire farm, he had worked on a Vermont farm, and for a time it seemed to him as if he must forever remain on a farm; but after a few winters of schooling he started over the Vermont hills to learn the printer's trade. A boy was not needed in Whitehall, and he pushed on to Poultney. There he found work for four years until the Northern Spectator expired. Then he went back to the farm. But newspaper life in a small town had made him ambitious to try his fortunes in a city, and, journeying from one printing office to another, he finally drifted, in 1831, at the age of twenty, into New York.

Up to this time Greeley's life had resembled Weed's only in his voracious appetite for reading newspapers. He cared little for the boys about town and less for the sports of youth; he could dispense with sleep, and wasted no time thinking about what he should eat or wear; but books, and especially newspapers, were read with the avidity that a well-fed threshing machine devours a stack of wheat. He seemed to have only one ambition—the acquisition of knowledge and the career of a man of letters, and in his efforts to succeed, he ignored forms and social usages, forgot that he had a physical body to care for, and detested man-worship. Standing at last before a printer's case on Broadway, he was able to watch, almost from the beginning, the great political drama in which he was destined to play so great a part. Seward had just entered the State Senate; Weed, having recently established the Evening Journal, was massing the Anti-Masons and National Republicans for their last campaign; William Lloyd Garrison had issued the first number of the Liberator; Gerrit Smith, already in possession of his father's vast estate, still clung to the Liberian colonisation scheme; and Van Buren, not yet returned from England, was about entering upon the last stage of his phenomenally successful political career. Politicians for the first time disturbed about the tariff, the bank, and internal improvements, had come to the parting of the ways; the old order of things had ended under John Quincy Adams—the new had just commenced under Andrew Jackson. But the young compositor needed no guide-post to direct his political footsteps. In 1834, he had established the New Yorker and those who read it became Whigs. His mind acted upon other minds of a certain constitution with wonderful magnetism, attracting thousands of readers by his marvellous gift of expression and the broad sympathies and clear discernments that characterised his writings. He had his own ideas about the necessity for reforms, and he seems easily to have fallen a victim to countless delusions and illusions which young visionaries and gray-headed theorists brought to him; but, in spite of remonstrances and crushing opposition, he stood resolutely for whatever awoke the strongest emotions of his nature.

Thurlow Weed had been a constant reader of the New Yorker. He did not know the name of its editor and had never taken the trouble to inquire, but when a cheap weekly Whig newspaper was needed for a vigorous campaign in 1838, the editor of the New Yorker, whoever he might be, seemed the proper man to edit and manage it. Going to New York, he called at the Ann Street office and found himself in the presence of a young man, slender, light-haired, slightly stooping, and very near-sighted, who introduced himself as Horace Greeley. At the moment, he was standing at the case, with coat off and sleeves rolled up, setting type with the ease and rapidity of an expert. "When I informed him of the object of my visit," says Weed, "he was, of course, surprised, but evidently gratified. Nor was his surprise and gratification diminished to learn that I was drawn to him without any other reason or information but such as I had derived from the columns of the New Yorker. He suggested the Jeffersonian as the name for the new paper, and the first number appeared in February, 1838."[298]

[Footnote 298: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 466.]

It is one of the privileges of genius to discern the genius of others; but even Thurlow Weed could not have dreamed that he was giving opportunity to a man whose name was to rank higher than his own in history. There was a certain affinity between the intellectual nature of the two men, and they had now a common object. Both were journalists of tremendous energy, indomitable industry, and marvellous gifts; but Weed was a politician, Greeley a political preacher. Weed's influence lay in his remarkable judgment, his genius for diplomacy, and his rare gift of controlling individuals by personal appeal and by the overpowering mastery of his intellect; Greeley's supremacy grew out of his broad sympathies with the human race and his matchless ability to write. Weed's field of operations was confined largely to the State of New York and to delegates and men of influence who assemble at national conventions; Greeley preached to the whole country, sweeping along like a prairie fire and converting men to his views as easily as steel filings are attracted to the magnet. From the outset he was above dictation. He lacked judgment, and at times greatly grieved the friends who were willing to follow him through fire and flood; but once his mind was made up he surrendered his understanding, his consciousness of convictions, of duty, and of public good, to no man or set of men. "I trust we can never be enemies," he once wrote Weed, "but better anything than I should feel the weight of chains about my neck, that I should write and act with an eye to any man's pleasure, rather than to the highest good."[299]

[Footnote 299: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 97.]

As the editor of the Jeffersonian, which now quickly won a multitude of readers, he did his work with marked ability, discussing measures calmly and forcibly, and with an influence that baffled his opponents and surprised his friends. Greeley seems never to have been an immature writer. His felicity of expression and ability to shade thought, with a power of appeal and invective that belongs to experience and mature age, came to him, as they did to Hamilton, before he was out of his teens, and whether he was right or whether he was wrong, he was always the most interesting, always the most commanding figure in American journalism in the epoch-making political controversies of his day.

The Whigs thought it a happy omen that election day, November 7, came this year on the anniversary of General Harrison's victory at Tippecanoe. As the returns came in Seward's friends grew more elated, and on Saturday, the 11th, Weed covered the entire first page of the Evening Journal with the picture of an eagle, having outspread wings and bearing in its beak the word "Victory." It was the first appearance in politics of this American bird, which was destined to play a part in all future celebrations of the kind. The completed returns showed that the Whigs had elected Seward and Bradish by ten thousand four hundred and twenty-one majority,[300] five of the eight senators, and nearly two-thirds of the assemblymen. "Well, dear Seward," wrote Weed, "we are victorious; God be thanked—gratefully and devoutly thanked."[301] Seward was no less affected. "It is a fearful post I have coveted," he wrote; "I shudder at my temerity.... Indeed, I feel just now as if your zeal had been blind; but I may, perhaps, get over this. God grant, at all events, that I be spared from committing the sin of ingratitude. I hate it as the foulest in the catalogue."[302]

[Footnote 300: William H. Seward, 192,882; William L. Marcy, 182,461.—Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

[Footnote 301: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 379.]

[Footnote 302: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 61.]

Marcy seemed to accept his defeat good-naturedly. "Even before the ballot-boxes were closed," he wrote, facetiously, "I had partly persuaded myself to engage in a work for my posterity, by writing the history of the rise, progress, and termination of the Regency. It will embrace the transactions of the golden days of the Republic (Empire State). It began with my entrance into public life, and terminates with my exit from it. The figures in the tableau will not be of the largest size, but the ascendancy of honest men, for such I think them to have been (Ilium fuit), will be interesting on account of great rarity." But, to the same friend, a few weeks later, he took a desponding view, expressing the fear that the power which had passed from the Democratic party would not return to as honest hands. His financial condition, too, caused him much uneasiness. He had given eighteen years to the State, he said, the largest portion of an active and vigorous life, and now found himself poorer than when he took office. "If my acquisitions in a pecuniary way have probably been less and my labours and exertions greater," he asks, "what compensating advantages are to be brought into the calculation to balance the account?" An office-holder rarely asks such a question until thrown out of a position; while in office, it is evident he thinks the privilege of holding it sufficient compensation; otherwise, it may be presumed, he would resign. Marcy, however, was not forgotten. Indeed, his political career had scarcely begun, since the governorship became only a stepping-stone to continued honours. Within a few months, President Van Buren appointed him, under the convention of April, 1839, to the Mexican Claims Commission, and a few years later he was to become a member of two Cabinets.



CHAPTER III

THE DEFEAT OF VAN BUREN FOR PRESIDENT

1840

After Seward's election, the Whig party in New York may be fairly described as under the control of Thurlow Weed, who became known as the "Dictator." Although no less drastic and persevering, perhaps, than DeWitt Clinton's, it was a control far different in method. Clinton did not disguise his power. He was satisfied in his own mind that he knew better than any other how to guide his party and govern his followers, and he acted accordingly—dogmatic, overbearing, often far from amiable, sometimes unendurable, to those around him. Weed, on the contrary, was patient, sympathetic, gentle, and absolutely without asperity. "My dear Weed," wrote Seward on December 14, 1838, "the sweetness of his temper inclines me to love my tyrant. I had no idea that dictators were such amiable creatures."[303] In a humourous vein, William Kent, the gifted son of the Chancellor, addressed him. "Mr. Dictator, the whole State is on your shoulders. I take it, some future chronicler, in reciting the annals of New York during this period, in every respect equal to England in the time of Elizabeth, will devote the brightest colours to 'the celebrated Thurlow Weed, who so long filled the office of Governor Seward during his lengthened and prosperous administration.' It behooves you, therefore, to act circumspectly, and particularly in the advice you give the Governor as to appointments to office."[304]

[Footnote 303: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 63. F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 381.]

[Footnote 304: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 72.]

Few chapters of personal history can be more interesting than that which tells of the strange, subtle influence exercised by Weed over the mind of Seward; but it is doubtful if there was conscious control at any time. Certainly Seward never felt "the weight of chains" about his neck. Weed probably saw good reason to believe that in Seward he could have just the sort of an associate who would suit all his purposes, since their views of public affairs and their estimate of public men rarely differed. "Our relations had become so intimate," he says, "and our sentiments and sympathies proved so congenial, that our interests, pursuits, and hopes of promoting each other's welfare and happiness became identical."[305] Weed seemed to glory in Seward's success, and Seward was supremely happy in and proud of Weed's friendship. Weed and Greeley were so differently constituted that, between them, such a relation could not exist, although at times it seemed to give Greeley real pain that it was so. "I rise early from a bed of sleepless thought," he once wrote Weed, "to explain that we differ radically on the bank question, and I begin to fear we do on the general policy and objects of political controversy."[306] But there were no such sleepless nights for Seward. Looking back upon four years of gubernatorial life, he opens his heart freely to the friend of his young manhood. "Without your aid," he declares, "how helpless would have been my prospect of reaching the elevation from which I am to-day descending. How could I have sustained myself there; how could I have secured the joyous reflections of this hour, but for the confidence I so undenyingly reposed on your affection?"[307] It was not Seward's nature to depend upon somebody to have his path in life or his ways of thinking pointed out to him; nor did he have the weakness of many highly cultured and gifted men who believe too much in the supremacy of intellect and culture. On the contrary, he had a way of speaking out his own honest thoughts, and would have despised himself, as much as would Greeley, if it had been necessary to enjoy any one's friendship on terms of humiliation. It was his nature, as well as his wish, to share with Weed the benefit of the latter's almost infallible judgment in political matters. In this way, Weed, more than either realised, had great influence with Seward. But Weed was no more the directing mind of the administration of Seward than was Hamilton of Washington's, or Van Buren of Jackson's, or Seward of Lincoln's. Many anecdotes were told illustrative of this influence, which serve to show how strongly the notion obtained in the minds of the common people that Weed was really "the Dictator." The best, associated Seward with his invariable custom of riding outside the coach while smoking his after-dinner cigar. The whip, on this occasion, did not know the distinguished traveller, and, after answering Seward's many questions, attempted to discover the identity of his companion. The Governor disclaimed being a merchant, a lecturer, a minister, or a teacher. "Then I know what you are," said the driver; "you must be a lawyer, or you wouldn't ask so many questions." "That is not my business at present," replied Seward. "Then who are you?" finally demanded Jehu. "I am the governor of this State," replied Seward. The driver at once showed incredulity, and the Governor offered to leave it to the landlord at the next tavern. On arriving there, and after exchanging salutations, Seward suggested the question in dispute. "No, you are not the governor," replied the landlord, to the great satisfaction of the driver. "What!" exclaimed Seward, in astonishment; "then who is governor?" "Why," said the landlord, "Thurlow Weed."[308]

[Footnote 305: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 1, p. 423.]

[Footnote 306: Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 97.]

[Footnote 307: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 642.]

[Footnote 308: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 100.]

"Though the incident never occurred," says Frederick W. Seward, in the biography of his father, "the story was so accordant with his habit of riding outside to smoke, and with the popular understanding of his relations with Mr. Weed, that it was generally accepted as true. Seward himself used laughingly to relate it, and say that, though it was not quite true, it ought to be."[309]

[Footnote 309: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 395.]

With Governor Seward's inauguration the Whig party was placed on trial. Ten years had passed since DeWitt Clinton's death, and Seward was the first successor whose opinions and sentiments harmonised with those of that distinguished statesman. During the intervening period the Regency had been in absolute control of the State. It had contented itself with looking after things as they existed, rather than undertaking further improvements and reforms. Seward's election, therefore, was not only a revolution of parties, but a radical change of policy. Every Whig, fearful lest some misstep might lead to the early loss of the power just gained, had an opinion as to what should and should not be done. Some were afraid the Governor would say too much, others fearful he would say too little. Seward, moving on broad lines of economics and reform, believed that the promotion of transportation, the development of capital and credit, and the enlargement of educational advantages, would bring wealth to the State and greater happiness to the people; and his first message contained the policy that guided him throughout his entire political career. In its preparation, he relied upon President Knott of Union College for assistance on the subject of education; on John H. Beach for financial statistics; on Samuel B. Ruggles for canal figures; and on John C. Spencer for general suggestions. Then he sat down with Weed for its final revision. When completed, it contained the groundwork of his political philosophy. He would prosecute the work of the canals, he would encourage the completion of railroads, establish a board of internal improvement, extend charitable institutions, improve the discipline of prisons, elevate the standard of education in schools and colleges, establish school district libraries, provide for the education of the coloured race, reform the practice of courts, cut off superfluous offices, repeal the Small Bills law, authorise banking under general laws, and apply rigorous safeguards, especially in populous cities, for the purity of the ballot-box. In concluding, he paid a handsome tribute to DeWitt Clinton and recommended that a monument be erected to his memory in Albany.

None of our statesmen, with whom reform has been a characteristic trait, was more devoted or happy. His delight, deep and unfailing, extended to every department of the government, and the minuteness of his knowledge betrayed the intimate acquaintance which he had gained of the affairs of the State during his four years in the Senate. His message caught the inspiration of this fresh and joyous maturity. It was written, too, in the easy, graceful style, rhythmical and subdued in expression, which afterward contributed to his extreme charm as an orator. From the first, Seward was an ardent optimist, and this first message is that of noble youth, delighting in the life and the opportunities that a great office presents to one who is mindful of its harassing duties and its relentless limitations, yet keenly sensitive to its novelty and its infinite incitements. The Democrats, whose hearts must have rejoiced when they heard his message, declared it the visionary schemes of a theorising politician, the work of a sophomore rather than a statesman; yet, within little more than a decade, most of his suggestions found a place in the statute book. Though the questions of that time are not the questions of our day, and engage only the historian and his readers, these twenty printed pages of recommendations, certain to excite debate and opposition, must always be read with deep enjoyment.

The chief criticism of his opponents grew out of his acceptance of Ruggles's estimate that the canals would more than reimburse the cost of their construction and enlargement. The Argus asserted that Seward, instead of sustaining the policy of "pay as you go," favoured a "forty million debt;" and this became the great campaign cry of the Democrats in two elections. On the other hand, the Whigs maintained that the canals had enriched the people and the State, and that their future prosperity depended upon the enlargement of the Erie canal, so that its capacity would meet the increasing demands of business. In the end, the result showed how prophetically Seward wrote and how wisely Ruggles figured; for, although the Erie canal, in 1862, had cost $52,491,915.74, it had repaid the State with an excess of $42,000,000.

In the midst of so many recommendations, one wonders that Seward had nothing to say for civil service reform. We may doubt, and with reason, whether anything he might have said could have strengthened the slight hold which such a theory then had in the minds of the people, but it would have brought the need of reform strikingly before the country to bear, in time, ripe fruit. The Whig party, however, was not organised to keep Democrats in office, and no sooner had the Albany Journal announced Seward's election than applications began pouring in upon the Governor-elect until more than one thousand had been filed. Seward afterward said that, of these applications, only two came from persons living west of Cayuga Bridge, although the eighth district had given him a majority equal to his entire majority in the State.

Under the Constitution of 1821, there were more places to fill by appointment than under the Constitution of 1846, and twice as many as now exist. In 1839, the Governor not only appointed port-wardens, harbour-masters, notaries public, and superintendents and commissioners of various sorts, but he nominated judges, surrogates, county clerks, examiners of prisons, weighers of merchandise, measurers of grain, cullers of staves, and inspectors of flour, lumber, spirits, salt, beef and pork, hides and skins, and fish and oil, besides numerous other officers. They applied formally to the Governor and then went to Weed to get the place. Just so the Whig legislators went through the form of holding a caucus to select state officers after the slate had been made up. John C. Spencer became secretary of state; Bates Cook of Niagara County, comptroller; Willis Hall of New York City, attorney-general; Jacob Haight, treasurer; and Orville L. Holley, surveyor-general. Thurlow Weed's account, read with the knowledge that he alone selected them, is decidedly humourous. "Bates Cook had but a local reputation," he says, "and it required the strongest assurances from Governor Seward and myself that he was abundantly qualified." In other words, it was necessary for the caucus to know that Weed wanted him. "The canvass for attorney-general was very spirited," he continues, "Joshua A. Spencer of Oneida and Samuel Stevens of Albany being the most prominent candidates;" but Willis Hall, "who was better known on the stump than at the bar, and whose zeal, energy, and tact had been conspicuous and effective in overthrowing the Democratic party," got the office. Van Buren could not have surpassed this for practical politics. "The nomination of Jacob Haight," he goes on, "afforded me great satisfaction. I had learned in my boyhood at Catskill to esteem and honour him. In 1824 when, as a Democratic senator, he arrayed himself against William H. Crawford, the caucus nominee for President, and zealously supported John Quincy Adams, my early remembrances of him grew into a warm personal friendship."[310] It was easy to fuse in Weed's big heart Democratic apostacy and the associations of boyhood.

[Footnote 310: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 459.]

Yet Weed had able indorsers behind his candidates. "I hear there is great opposition to Willis Hall," wrote William Kent, "and I am sorry for it. He has a great heart, and a great head, too. It has been his misfortune, but our good fortune, that his time and talents have been devoted to advancing the Whig party, while those who oppose him were taxing costs and filing demurrers. The extreme Webster men in New York have formed a combination against Willis. It is the dog in the manger, too, for no man from New York is a candidate."[311]

[Footnote 311: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 73.]

But the dictator made a greater display of practical politics in the selection of a United States senator to succeed Nathaniel P. Tallmadge. There were several aspirants, among them Millard Fillmore, John C. Spencer, John A. Collier, and Joshua A. Spencer. All these men were intensely in earnest. Fillmore, then in Congress, was chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means; and advancement to the Senate would have been a deserved promotion. But Tallmadge had rallied to the support of Seward, under the name of Conservatives, many former National Republicans, who had joined the Democratic party because of anti-Masonry, and Weed believed in keeping them in the Whig party by re-electing their leader. Fillmore, and other candidates, earnestly protested against the policy of discarding tried and faithful friends, and of conferring the highest and most important place in the gift of the party upon a new recruit whose fidelity could not be trusted; "but, strong as those gentlemen were in the Whig party, they were unable to overcome a conviction in the minds of the Whig members of the Legislature," says Weed, solemnly, as if the Whig members of the Legislature really did have something to do with it, "that in view of the approaching presidential election Mr. Tallmadge was entitled to their support. He was, therefore, nominated with considerable unanimity."[312] It was a great shock to Fillmore, which he resented a few years later. Indeed, Weed's dictatorship, although quiet and gentle, was already raising dissent. Albert H. Tracy, indignant at Seward's nomination over the heads of older and more experienced men, had withdrawn from politics, and Gamaliel H. Barstow, the first state treasurer elected by the Whigs, resigned in a huff because he did not like the way things were going. Weed fully realised the situation. "There are a great many disappointed, disheartened friends," he wrote Granger. "It has been a tremendous winter. But for the presidential question which will absorb all other things, the appointments would tear us to pieces."[313] To his door, Seward knew, the censure of the disappointed would be aimed. "The list of appointments made this winter is fourteen hundred," he writes, "and I am not surprised by any manifestation of disappointment or dissatisfaction. This only I claim—that no interest, passion, prejudice or partiality of my own has controlled any decision I have made."[314]

[Footnote 312: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 1, p. 461.]

[Footnote 313: Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 86.]

[Footnote 314: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 483.]

But there was one wheel lacking in the Weed machine. The Democrats controlled the Senate, obstructing bills deemed by the Whigs essential to the public welfare, and refusing to confirm Seward's nominations. By preventing an agreement upon a candidate, preliminary to a joint ballot, they also blocked the election of a United States senator. This situation was intolerable to Weed. Without the Senate, little could be accomplished and nothing of a strictly partisan character. Besides, Weed had his eye on the lucrative place of state printer. In the campaign of 1839, therefore, he set to work to win the higher body of the Legislature by carrying the Albany district, in which three senators were to be chosen. For eighteen years, the Senate had been held by the Regency party, and, in all that time, Albany was numbered among the reliable Democratic districts. But Weed's friends now brought up eight thousand dollars from New York. The Democrats had made a spirited fight, and, although they knew Weed was endowed with a faculty for management, they did not know of his money, or of the ability of his lieutenants to place it. When the votes were counted, Weed's three nominees had an average majority of one hundred and thirty-three. This gave the Whigs nineteen senators and the Democrats thirteen. It was an appalling change for the Democrats, to whom it seemed the prologue to a defeat in 1840. In the "clean sweep" of office-holders that followed, Tallmadge went back to the United States Senate, and Weed took from Croswell the office of public printer.

The presidential election of 1840 began in December, 1839. During Clay's visit to Saratoga, in the preceding summer, Weed had told him he could not carry New York; but, that Clay's friends in New York City, and along the river counties, might not be unduly alarmed, Weed masked his purpose of forcing Harrison's nomination, by selecting delegates ostensibly favourable to General Scott. Twenty delegates for Scott were, therefore, sent to the national convention at Harrisburg, two for Harrison and ten for Clay. On his way, Weed secured an agreement from the New England leaders to act with him, and, by a combination of the supporters of Scott and Harrison, the latter finally received one hundred and forty-eight votes to ninety for Clay. The disappointment of Clay's friends is historic. Probably nothing parallels it in American politics. The defeat of Seward at Chicago in 1860, and of Elaine at Cincinnati in 1876, very seriously affected their friends, but the disappointment of Clay's supporters at Harrisburg, in December, 1839, took the form of anger, which, for a time, seemed fatal to the ticket. "The nomination of Harrison," wrote Thurlow Weed, "so offended the friends of Clay that the convention was thrown entirely in the dark on the question of Vice President. The Kentucky delegation was asked to present a candidate, but they declined. Then John Clayton of Delaware was fixed upon, but Reverdy Johnson withdrew his name. Watkins Leigh of Virginia and Governor Dudley of North Carolina were successively designated, but they declined. While this was passing the Vice Presidency was repeatedly offered to New York, but we had no candidate. Albert H. Tracy was eminently qualified for usefulness in public life. He entertained a high and strict sense of official responsibility, and had he not previously left us he would have been nominated. John Tyler was finally taken because we could get nobody else to accept."[315]