As the campaign grew older, however, Clay's friends gladly availed themselves of Seward's influence with anti-slavery Whigs and naturalised citizens. "It is wonderful what an impulse the nomination of Polk has given to the abolition sentiment," wrote Seward. "It has already expelled other issues from the public mind. Our Whig central committee, who, a year ago, voted me out of the party for being an Abolitionist, has made abolition the war-cry in their call for a mass-meeting."[341] Even the sleuth-hounds of No-popery were glad to invite Seward to address the naturalised voters, whose hostility to the Whigs, in 1844, resembled their dislike of the Federalists in 1800. "It is a sorry consolation for this ominous aspect of things," he wrote Weed, "that you and I are personally exempt from the hostility of this class toward our political associates."[342]

[Footnote 341: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 718.]

[Footnote 342: Ibid., p. 723.]

Yet no man toiled more sedulously in this campaign than Seward. "Harrison had his admirers, Clay his lovers," is the old way of putting it. To elect him, Whigs were ready to make any sacrifice, to endure any hardship, and to yield every prejudice. Fillmore was ubiquitous, delivering tariff and anti-Texas speeches that filled all mouths with praise and all hearts with principle, as Seward expressed it. An evident desire existed on the part of many in both parties, to avoid a discussion of the annexation of Texas, and its consequent extension of slavery, lest too much or too little be said; but leaders like Seward and Fillmore were too wise to believe that they could fool the people by concealing the real issue. "Texas and slavery are at war with the interests, the principles, the sympathies of all," boldly declared the unmuzzled Auburn statesman. "The integrity of the Union depends on the result. To increase the slave-holding power is to subvert the Constitution; to give a fearful preponderance which may, and probably will, be speedily followed by demands to which the Democratic free-labour States cannot yield, and the denial of which will be made the ground of secession, nullification and disunion."[343] This was another of Seward's famous prophecies. At the time it seemed extravagant, even to the strongest anti-slavery Whigs, but the future verified it.

[Footnote 343: Ibid., p. 727.]

The Whigs, however, did not, as in 1840, have a monopoly of the enthusiasm. The public only half apprehended, or refused to apprehend at all, the danger in the Texas scheme; and, after the first chill of their immersion, the Democrats rallied with confidence to the support of their ticket. Abundant evidence of their strength had manifested itself at each state election since 1841, and, although no trailing cloud of glory now testified to a thrifty and skilful management, as in 1836, the two factions, in spite of recent efforts to baffle and defeat each other, pulled themselves together with amazing quickness. Indeed, if we may rely upon Whig letters of the time, the Democrats exhibited the more zeal and spirit throughout the campaign. They had their banners, their songs, and their processions. In place of ash, they raised hickory poles, and instead of defending Polk, they attacked Clay. Other candidates attracted little attention. Clay was the commanding, central figure, and over him the battle raged. There were two reasons for this. One was the fear of a silent free-soil vote, which the Bryant circular had alarmed in his favour. The other was a desire to strengthen the liberty party, and to weaken the Whigs by holding up Clay as a slave-holder. The cornerstone of that party was hostility to the slave-holder; and if a candidate, however much he opposed slavery, owned a single slave, it excluded him from its suffrage. This was the weak point in Clay's armour, and the one of most peril to the Whigs. To meet it, the latter argued, with some show of success, that the conflict is not with one slave-holder, or with many, but with slavery; and since the admission of Texas meant the extension of that institution, a vote for Clay, who once advocated emancipation in Kentucky and is now strongly opposed to Texas, is a vote in behalf of freedom.

In September, Whig enthusiasm underwent a marked decline. Clay's July letter to his Alabama correspondent, as historic now as it was superfluous and provoking then, had been published, in which he expressed a wish to see Texas added to the Union "upon just and fair terms," and hazarded the opinion that "the subject of slavery ought not to affect the question one way or the other."[344] This letter was the prototype of the famous alliteration, "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," in the Blaine campaign of 1884. Immediately Clay's most active anti-slavery supporters were in revolt. "We had the Abolitionists in a good way," wrote Washington Hunt from Lockport; "but Mr. Clay seems determined that they shall not be allowed to vote for him. I believe his letter will lose us more than two hundred votes in this county."[345] The effects of the dreadful blow are as briefly summed up by Seward: "I met that letter at Geneva, and thence here, and now everybody droops, despairs. It jeopards, perhaps loses, the State."[346] A few weeks later, in company with several friends, Seward, as was his custom, made an estimate of majorities, going over the work several times and taking accurate account of the drift of public sentiment. An addition of the columns showed the Democrats several thousands ahead. Singularly enough, Fillmore, whose accustomed despondency exhibited itself even in 1840, now became confident of success. This can be accounted for, perhaps, on the theory that to a candidate the eve of an election is "dim with the self-deceiving twilight of sophistry." He believed in his own safety even if Clay failed. Although the deep, burning issue of slavery had not yet roused popular forces into dangerous excitement, Fillmore had followed the lead of Giddings and Hale, sympathising deeply with the restless flame that eventually guided the policy of the North with such admirable effect. On the other hand, Wright approved his party's doctrine of non-interference with slavery. He had uniformly voted to table petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, declaring that any interference with the system, in that district, or in the territories, endangered the rights of their citizens, and would be a violation of faith toward those who had settled and held slaves there. He voted for the admission of Arkansas and Florida as slave States; and his opposition to Texas was based wholly upon reasons other than the extension of slavery. The Abolitionists understood this, and Fillmore confidently relied upon their aid, although they might vote for Birney instead of Clay.

[Footnote 344: Private letter, Henry Clay to Stephen Miller, Tuscaloosa, Ala., July 1, 1844.]

[Footnote 345: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 123.]

[Footnote 346: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 724.]

That Seward rightly divined public sentiment was shown by the result. Polk carried the State by a plurality of little more than five thousand, and Wright by ten thousand, while Stewart polled over fifteen thousand votes.[347] These last figures told the story. Four years before, Birney had received less than seven thousand votes in the whole country; now, in New York, the Abolitionists, exceeding their own anticipations, held the balance of power.[348] Had their votes been cast for Clay and Fillmore both would have carried New York, and Clay would have become the Chief Executive. "Until Mr. Clay wrote his letter to Alabama," said Thurlow Weed, dispassionately, two years afterward, "his election as President was certain."[349]

[Footnote 347: Silas Wright, 241,090; Millard Fillmore, 231,057; Alvan Stewart, 15,136.—Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

[Footnote 348: In 1840 Gerrit Smith received 2662; in 1842 Alvan Stewart polled 7263.—Ibid., p. 166.]

[Footnote 349: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 1, p. 572.]

Clay's defeat was received by his devoted followers as the knell of their hopes. For years they had been engaged labourously in rolling uphill the stone of Sisyphus, making active friendships and seeking a fair trial. That opportunity had come at last. It had been an affair of life or death; the contest was protracted, intense, dramatic; the issue for a time had hung in poignant doubt; but the dismal result let the stone roll down again to the bottom of the hill. No wonder stout men cried, and that thousands declared the loss of all further interest in politics. To add to their despair and resentment, the party of Birney and Stewart exulted over its victory not less than the party of Polk and Silas Wright.



CHAPTER VIII

THE RISE OF JOHN YOUNG

1845-1846

Although the Democrats were again successful in electing a governor and President, their victory had not healed the disastrous schism that divided the party. The rank and file throughout the State had not yet recognised the division into Radicals and Conservatives; but the members of the new Legislature foresaw, in the rivalries of leaders, the approach of a marked crisis, the outcome of which they awaited with an overshadowing sense of fear.

The strife of programmes began in the selection of a speaker. Horatio Seymour was the logical candidate. Of the Democratic members of the last Assembly, he was the only one returned. He had earned the preferment by able service, and a disposition obtained generally among members to give him the right of way; but the state officials had not forgotten and could not forget that Seymour, whose supple and trenchant blade had opened a way through the ranks of the Radicals for the passage of the last canal appropriation, had further sinned by marshalling Governor Bouck's forces at the Syracuse convention on September 4, 1844; and to teach him discretion and less independence, they promptly warned him of their opposition by supporting William C. Crain of Herkimer, a fierce Radical of the Hoffman school and a man of some ability. Though the ultimate decision favoured Seymour, Azariah C. Flagg, the state comptroller, resolutely exhausted every device of strategy and tactics to avert it. He summoned the canal board, who, in turn, summoned to Albany their up-state employees, mindful of the latter's influence with the unsophisticated legislators already haunted by the fear of party disruption. To limit the issue, Governor Wright was quoted as favourable to Crain, and, although it subsequently became known that he had expressed no opinion save one of entire indifference, this added to the zeal of the up-state Radicals, who now showed compliance with every hint of their masters.

In the midst of all Horatio Seymour remained undaunted. No one had better poise, or firmer patience, or possessed more adroit methods. The personal attractions of the man, his dignity of manner, his finished culture, and his ability to speak often in debate with acceptance, had before attracted men to him; now he was to reveal the new and greater power of leadership. Seymour's real strength as a factor in state affairs seems to date from this contest. It is doubtful if he would have undertaken it had he suspected the fierceness of the opposition. He was not ambitious to be speaker. So far as it affected him personally, he had every motive to induce him to remain on the floor, where his eloquence and debating power had won him such a place. But, once having announced his candidacy he pushed on with energy, sometimes masking his movements, sometimes mining and countermining; yet always conscious of the closeness of the race and of the necessity of keeping his activity well spiced with good nature. Back of him stood Edwin Croswell. The astute editor of the Argus recognised in Horatio Seymour, so brilliant in battle, so strong in council, the future hope of the Democratic party. It is likely, too, that Croswell already foresaw that Van Buren's opposition to the annexation of Texas, and the growing Free-soil sentiment, must inevitably occasion new party alignments; and the veteran journalist, who had now been a party leader for nearly a quarter of a century, understood the necessity of having available and successful men ready for emergencies. Under his management, therefore, and to offset the influence of the canal board's employees, Conservative postmasters and Conservative sheriffs came to Albany, challenging their Radical canal opponents to a measurement of strength. When, finally, the caucus acted, the result showed how closely divided were the factions. Of seventy Democrats in the Assembly, sixty-five were present, and of these thirty-five voted for Seymour.

The irritation and excitement of this contest were in a measure allayed by an agreement to renominate Azariah C. Flagg for comptroller of state. His ability and his service warranted it. He had performed the multiplying duties of the office with fidelity; and, although chief of the active Radicals, the recollection of his stalwart aid in the great financial panic of 1837, and in the preparation and advocacy of the act of 1842, gave him a support that no other candidate could command. It was also in the minds of two or three members holding the balance of power between the factions, to add to the harmony by securing an even division of the other four state offices. In carrying out their project, however, the gifted Croswell took good care that Samuel Young, whose zeal and ability especially endeared him to the Radicals, should be beaten for secretary of state by one vote, and that Thomas Farrington, another favourite Radical, should fail of re-election as treasurer of state. Since Young and Farrington were the only state officers, besides Flagg, seeking re-election, it looked as if their part in the speakership struggle had marked them for defeat, a suspicion strengthened by the fact that two Radicals, who took no part in that contest, were elected attorney-general and surveyor-general.

Reproachful ironies and bitter animosity, boding ill for future harmony, now followed the factions into a furious and protracted caucus for the selection of United States senators in place of Silas Wright and Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, the latter having resigned to accept the governorship of Wisconsin.[350] The Conservatives supported Daniel S. Dickinson and Henry A. Foster; the Radicals John A. Dix and Michael Hoffman. There was more, however, at stake than the selection of two senators; for the President would probably choose a member of his Cabinet from the stronger faction; and to have time to recruit their strength, the programme of the Radicals included an adjournment of the caucus after nominating candidates for the unexpired terms of Wright and Tallmadge. This would possibly give them control of the full six years' term to begin on the 4th of the following March. A majority of the caucus, however, now completely under the influence of Edwin Croswell and Horatio Seymour, concluded to do one thing at a time, and on the first ballot Dix was nominated for Wright's place, giving him a term of four years. The second ballot named Dickinson for the remaining month of Tallmadge's term. Then came the climax—the motion to adjourn. Instantly the air was thick with suggestions. Coaxing and bullying held the boards. All sorts of proposals came and vanished with the breath that floated them; and, though the hour approached midnight, a Conservative majority insisted upon finishing the business. The election of Dix for a term of four years, they said, had given the Radicals fair representation. Still, the latter clamoured for an adjournment. But the Conservatives, inexorable, demanded a third ballot, and it gave Dickinson fifty-four out of ninety-three members present. When the usual motion to make the nomination unanimous was bitterly opposed, Horatio Seymour took the floor, and with the moving charm and power of his voice, with temper unbroken, he made a fervid appeal for harmony. But bitterness ruled the midnight hour; unanimity still lacked thirty-nine votes. As the Radicals passed out into the frosty air, breaking the stillness with their expletives, the voice of the tempter suggested a union with the Whigs for the election of Samuel Young. There was abundant precedent to support the plan. Bailey had bolted Woodworth's nomination; German had defeated Thompson; and, in 1820, Rufus King had triumphed over Samuel Young. But these were the tactics of DeWitt Clinton. In 1845, the men who aspired to office, the men with a past and the men who looked for a future, had no words of approval for such methods; and before the Whigs heard of the scheme, Samuel Young had stamped it to death.

[Footnote 350: "On that occasion the feud between the two sections of the party was disclosed in all its intensity. The conflict, which was sharp and ended in the election of Daniel S. Dickinson for the six-years term, in spite of the strong opposition of the Radical members of the caucus, was a triumph for the Conservatives, and a defeat for the friends of Governor Wright. The closing years of the great statesman's life were overcast by shadows; adverse influences were evidently in the ascendant, not only at Washington, but close about him and at home."—Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John A. Dix, Vol. 1, p. 194.]

To add to the chagrin of the Radicals, President Polk now invited William L. Marcy, a Conservative of great prestige, to become secretary of war. The Radicals did not know, and perhaps could not know the exact condition of things at the national capital; certainly they did not know how many elements of that condition told against them. President Polk, apparently with a desire of treating his New York friends fairly, asked Van Buren to recommend a New Yorker for his Cabinet; and, with the approval of Silas Wright, the former President urged Benjamin F. Butler for secretary of state, or Azariah C. Flagg for secretary of the treasury. Either of these men would have filled the place designated with great ability. Polk was largely indebted to Van Buren and his friends; Butler had given him the vote of New York, and Wright, by consenting to stand for governor at the urgent solicitation of Van Buren, had carried the State and thus made Democratic success possible. But Polk, more interested in future success than in the payment of past indebtedness, had an eye out for 1848. He wanted a man devoted solely to his interests and to the annexation of Texas; and, although Butler was a personal friend and an ornament to the American bar, he hesitated, despite the insistence of Van Buren and Wright, to make a secretary of state out of the most devoted of Van Buren's adherents, who, like the sage of Lindenwald himself, bitterly opposed annexation.

In this emergency, the tactics of Edwin Croswell came to Polk's relief. The former knew that Silas Wright could not, if he would, accept a place in the Cabinet, since he had repeatedly declared during the campaign that, if elected, he would not abandon the governorship to enter the Cabinet, as Van Buren did in 1829. Croswell knew, also, that Butler, having left the Cabinet of two Presidents to re-enter his profession, would not give it up for a secondary place among Polk's advisers. At the editor's suggestion, therefore, the President tendered Silas Wright the head of the treasury, and, upon his declination, an offer of the secretaryship of war came to Butler. The latter said he would have taken, although with reluctance, either the state or treasury department; but the war portfolio carried him too far from the line of his profession. Thus the veteran editor's scheme, having worked itself out as anticipated, left the President at liberty, without further consultation with Van Buren, to give William L. Marcy[351] what Butler had refused. To the Radicals the result was as startling as it was unwelcome. It left the Conservatives in authority. Through Marcy they would command the federal patronage, and through their majority in the Legislature they could block the wheels of their opponents. It was at this time that the Conservatives, "hankering," it was said, after the offices to be given by an Administration committed to the annexation of Texas, were first called "Hunkers."

[Footnote 351: "On the great question that loomed threateningly on the horizon, Wright and Marcy took opposite sides. Wright moved calmly along with the advancing liberal sentiment of the period, and died a firm advocate of the policy of the Wilmot Proviso. On this test measure Marcy took no step forward."—H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, p. 40.]

John Young, a Whig member of the Assembly, no sooner scented the increasingly bitter feeling between Hunker and Radical than he prepared to take advantage of it. Young was a great surprise to the older leaders. He had accomplished nothing in the past to entitle him to distinction. In youth he accompanied his father, a Vermont innkeeper, to Livingston County, where he received a common school education and studied law, being admitted to the bar in 1829, at the age of twenty-seven. Two years later he served a single term in the Assembly, and for ten years thereafter he had confined his attention almost exclusively to his profession, becoming a strong jury lawyer. In the meantime, he changed his politics from a firm supporter of Andrew Jackson to a local anti-masonic leader, and finally to a follower of Henry Clay. Then the Whigs sent him to Congress, and, in the fall of 1843, elected him to the celebrated Assembly through which Horatio Seymour forced the canal appropriation. But John Young seems to have made little more of a reputation in this historic struggle than he did as a colleague of Millard Fillmore in the Congress that passed the tariff act of 1842. He did not remain silent, but neither his words nor his acts conveyed any idea of the gifts which he was destined to disclose in the various movements of a drama that was now, day by day, through much confusion and bewilderment, approaching a climax. From a politician of local reputation, he leaped to the distinction of a state leader. If unnoticed before, he was now the observed of all observers. This transition, which came almost in a day, surprised the Democrats no less than it excited the Whigs; for Young lifted a minority into a majority, and from a hopeless defeat was destined to lead his party to glorious victory. "With talents of a high order," says Hammond, "with industry, with patient perseverance, and with a profound knowledge of men, he was one of the ablest party leaders and most skilful managers in a popular body that ever entered the Assembly chamber."[352] Hammond, writing while Young was governor, did not express the view of Thurlow Weed, who was unwilling to accept tact and cunning for great intellectual power. But there is no doubt that Young suddenly showed uncommon parliamentary ability, not only as a debater, owing to his good voice and earnest, persuasive manner, but as a skilful strategist, who strengthened coolness, courtesy, and caution with a readiness to take advantage of the supreme moment to carry things his way. Within a month, he became an acknowledged master of parliamentary law, easily bringing order out of confusion by a few simple, clear, compact sentences. If his learning did not rank him among the Sewards and the Seymours, he had no occasion to fear an antagonist in the field on which he was now to win his leadership.

[Footnote 352: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 3, p. 537.]

The subject under consideration was the calling of a constitutional convention. The preceding Legislature, hoping to avoid a convention, had proposed several amendments which the people approved in the election of 1844; but the failure of the present Legislature to ratify them by a two-thirds majority, made a convention inevitable, and the question now turned upon the manner of its calling and the approval of its work. The Hunkers, with the support of the Governor, desired first to submit the matter to the people; and, if carried by a majority vote, taking as a test the number of votes polled at the last election, the amendments were to be acted upon separately. This was the plan of Governor Clinton in 1821. On the other hand, the Whigs, the Anti-Renters, and the Native Americans insisted that the Legislature call a convention, and that its work be submitted, as a whole, to the people, as in 1821. This the Hunkers resisted to the bitter end. An obstacle suddenly appeared, also, in the conduct of William C. Grain, who thought an early and unlimited convention necessary. Michael Hoffman held the same view, believing it the only method of getting the act of 1842 incorporated into the organic law of the State. Upon the latter's advice, therefore, Crain introduced a bill in the Assembly similar to the convention act of 1821. It was charged, at the time, that Crain's action was due to resentment because of his defeat for speaker, and that the Governor, in filling the vacancy occasioned by the transfer of Samuel Nelson to the Supreme Court of the United States, had added to his indignation by overlooking the claims of Michael Hoffman. It is not improbable that Crain, irritated by his defeat, did resent the action of the Governor, although it was well known that Hoffman had not sought a place on the Supreme bench. But, in preferring an unlimited constitutional convention, Crain and Hoffman expressed the belief of the most eminent lawyers of the Commonwealth, that the time had come for radical changes in the Constitution, and that these could not be obtained unless the work of a convention was submitted in its entirety to the people and approved by a majority vote.

Crain's bill was quickly pigeon-holed by the select committee to which it was referred, and John Young's work began when he determined to have it reported. There had been little difficulty in marshalling a third of the Assembly to defeat the constitutional amendments proposed by the preceding Legislature, since Whigs, Anti-Renters, and Native Americans numbered fifty-four of the one hundred and twenty-eight members; but, to overcome a majority of seventeen, required Young's patient attendance, day after day, watchful for an opportunity to make a motion whenever the Hunkers, ignorant of his design, were reduced by temporary absences to an equality with the minority. Finally, the sought-for moment came, and, with Crain's help, Young carried a motion instructing the committee to report the Crain bill without amendment, and making it the special order for each day until disposed of. It was a staggering blow. The air was thick with suggestions, contrivances, expedients, and embryonic proposals. The Governor, finding Crain inexorable, sent for Michael Hoffman; but the ablest Radical in the State refused to intervene, knowing that if the programme proposed by Wright was sustained, the Whigs would withdraw their support and leave the Hunkers in control.

When the debate opened, interest centred in the course taken by the Radicals, who accepted the principle of the bill, but who demurred upon details and dreaded to divide their party. To this controlling group, therefore, were arguments addressed and appeals made. Hammond pronounced it "one of the best, if not the best, specimens of parliamentary discussion ever exhibited in the capital of the State."[353] Other writers have recorded similar opinions. It was certainly a memorable debate, but it was made so by the serious political situation, rather than by the importance of the subject. Horatio Seymour led his party, and, though other Hunkers participated with credit, upon the Speaker fell the brunt of the fight. He dispensed with declamation, he avoided bitter words, he refused to crack the party whip; but with a deep, onflowing volume of argument and exhortation, his animated expressions, modulated and well balanced, stirred the emotions and commanded the closest attention. Seymour had an instinct "for the hinge or turning point of a debate." He had, also, a never failing sense of the propriety, dignity, and moderation with which subjects should be handled, or "the great endearment of prudent and temperate speech" as Jeremy Taylor calls it; and, although he could face the fiercest opposition with the keenest blade, his utterances rarely left a sting or subjected him to criticism. This gift was one secret of his great popularity, and daily rumours, predicted harmony before a vote could be reached. As the stormy scenes which marked the progress of the bill continued, however, the less gifted Hunkers did not hesitate to declare the party dissolved unless the erring Radicals fell into line.

[Footnote 353: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 3, p. 544.]

John Young, who knew the giant burden he had taken up, showed himself acute, frank, patient, closely attentive, and possessed of remarkable powers of speech. Every word surprised his followers; every stroke strengthened his position. He did not speak often, but he always answered Seymour, presenting a fine and sustained example of debate, keeping within strict rules of combat, and preserving a rational and argumentative tone, yet emphasising the differences between Hunker and Radical. Young could not be called brilliant, nor did he have the capacity or finish of Seymour as an orator; but he formed his own opinions, usually with great sagacity, and acted with vigour and skill amid the exasperation produced by the Radical secession. Seward wrote that "he has much practical good sense, and much caution." This was evidenced by the fact that, although only four Radicals voted to report Crain's bill, others gradually went over, until finally, on its passage, only Hunkers voted in the negative. It was a great triumph for Young. He had beaten a group of clever managers: he had weakened the Democratic party by widening the breach between its factions; and he had turned the bill recommending a convention into a Whig measure.

The bad news discouraged the senators who dreamed of an abiding union between the two factions; and, although one or two Radicals in the upper chamber favoured the submission of the amendments separately to the people, the friends of the measure obtained two majority against all attempts to modify it, and four majority on its passage. The Governor's approval completed Young's triumph. He had not only retained his place as an able minority leader against the relentless, tireless assaults of a Seymour, a Croswell, and a Wright; but, in the presence of such odds, he had gained the distinction of turning a minority into a reliable majority in both houses, placing him at once upon a higher pedestal than is often reached by men of far greater genius and eloquence.

The determination of the Hunkers to pass a measure appropriating $197,000 for canal improvement made the situation still more critical. Although the bill devoted the money to completing such unfinished portions of the Genesee Valley and Black River canals as the commissioners approved, it was clearly in violation of the spirit of the act of 1842 upon which Hunker and Radical had agreed to bury their differences, and the latter resented its introduction as an inexcusable affront; but John Young now led his Whig followers to the camp of the Hunkers, and, in a few days, the measure lay upon the Governor's table for his approval or veto.

Thus far, Governor Wright had been a disappointment to his party. Complaints from Radicals were heard before his inauguration. They resented his acceptance of a Hunker's hospitality, asserting that he should have made his home at a public house where Hunker and Radical alike could freely counsel with him; they complained of his resignation as United States senator, insisting that he ought to have held the office until his inauguration as governor and thus prevented Bouck appointing a Hunker as his successor; they denounced his indifference in the speakership contest; and they murmured at his opposition to a constitutional convention. There was cause for some of these lamentations. It was plain that the Governor was neither a leader nor a conciliator. A little tact would have held the Radicals in line against a constitutional convention and kept inviolate the act of 1842, but he either did not possess or disclaimed the arts and diplomacies of a political manager. He could grapple with principles in the United States Senate and follow them to their logical end, but he could not see into the realities of things as clearly as Seymour, or estimate, with the same accuracy, the relative strength of conflicting tendencies in the political world. Writers of that day express amazement at the course of Silas Wright in vetoing the canal appropriation, some of them regarding him as a sort of political puzzle, others attributing his action to the advice of false friends; but his adherence to principle more easily explains it. Seymour knew that the "up-state" voters, who would probably hold the balance of power in the next election, wanted the canal finished and would resent its defeat. Wright, on the other hand, believed in a suspension of public works until the debt of the State was brought within the safe control of its revenues, and in the things he stood for, he was as unyielding as flint.

When the Legislature adjourned Hunkers and Radicals were too wide apart even to unite in the usual address to constituents; and in the fall campaign of 1845, the party fell back upon the old issues of the year before. To the astonishment of the Hunkers, however, the legislative session opened in January, 1846, with two Radicals to one Conservative. It looked to the uninitiated as if the policy of canal improvement had fallen into disfavour; but Croswell, and other Hunkers in the inner political circle, understood that a change, long foreseen by them, was rapidly approaching. The people of New York felt profound interest in the conflict between slavery and freedom, and the fearless stand of Preston King of St. Lawrence in supporting the Wilmot Proviso, excluding "slavery and involuntary servitude" from the territory obtained from Mexico, had added fuel to the flame. King was a Radical from principle and from prejudice. For four successive years he had been in the Assembly, hostile to canals and opposed to all improvements. In his bitterness he denounced the Whig party as the old Federalist party under another name. He was now, at the age of forty, serving his second term in Congress. But, obstinate and uncompromising as was his Democracy, the aggressive spirit and encroaching designs of slavery had so deeply disturbed him that he refused to go with his party in its avowed purpose of extending slavery into free or newly acquired territory.

To the Hunkers, this new departure seemed to offer an opportunity of weakening the Radicals by forcing them into opposition to the Polk administration; and a resolution, approving the course of the New York congressmen who had supported the annexation of Texas, appeared in the Senate soon after its organisation. Very naturally, politicians were afraid of it; and the debate, which quickly degenerated into bitter personalities, indicated that the Free-soil sentiment, soon to inspire the new Republican party, had not only taken root among the Radicals, but that rivalries between the two factions rested on differences of principle far deeper than canal improvement. "If you study the papers at all," wrote William H. Seward, "you will see that the Barnburners of this State have carried the war into Africa, and the extraordinary spectacle is exhibited of Democrats making up an issue of slavery at Washington. The consequences of this movement cannot be fully apprehended. It brings on the great question sooner and more directly than we have even hoped. All questions of revenue, currency, and economy sink before it. The hour for the discussion of emancipation is nearer at hand, by many years, than has been supposed."[354]

[Footnote 354: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 33.]



CHAPTER IX

THE FOURTH CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

1846

The constitutional convention, called by the Legislature of 1845, received popular sanction at the fall elections; and, in April, 1846, one hundred and twenty-eight delegates were chosen. The convention assembled on the first day of June, and terminated its labours on the ninth day of October. It was an able body of men. It did not contain, perhaps, so many distinguished citizens as its predecessor in 1821, but, like the convention of a quarter of a century before, it included many men who had acquired reputations for great ability at the bar and in public affairs during the two decades immediately preceding it. Among the more prominent were Michael Hoffman of Herkimer, famous for his influence in the cause of canal economy; James Tallmadge of Dutchess, whose inspiring eloquence had captivated conventions and legislatures for thirty years; William C. Bouck of Schoharie, the unconquered Hunker who had faced defeat as gracefully as he had accepted gubernatorial honours; Samuel Nelson, recently appointed to the United States Supreme Court after an experience of twenty-two years upon the circuit and supreme bench of the State; Charles S. Kirkland and Ezekiel Bacon of Oneida, the powerful leaders of a bar famous in that day for its famous lawyers; Churchill C. Cambreling of New York, a member of Congress for eighteen consecutive years, and, more recently, minister to Russia; George W. Patterson of Livingston, a constant, untiring and enthusiastic Whig champion, twice elected speaker of the Assembly and soon to become lieutenant-governor.

Of the younger delegates, three were just at the threshold of their brilliant and distinguished careers. John K. Porter of Saratoga—then only twenty-seven years old, afterward to become a member of the Court of Appeals and the associate of William M. Evarts as counsel for Henry Ward Beecher in the Tilton suit—discussed the judiciary in speeches singularly adapted to reach the understanding of the delegates; Samuel J. Tilden, who had served respectably but without distinction in the Assembly of 1845 and 1846, evidenced his inflexible courage and high intellectual qualities; and Charles O'Conor, already known to the public, gave signal proof of the prodigious extent of those powers and acquirements which finally entitled him to rank with the greatest lawyers of any nation or any time.

Of the more distinguished members of the convention of 1821, James Tallmadge alone sat in the convention of 1846. Daniel D. Tompkins, Rufus King, William W. Van Ness, Jonas Platt, and Abraham Van Vechten were dead; James Kent, now in his eighty-third year, was delivering law lectures in New York City; Ambrose Spencer, having served as chairman of the Whig national convention at Baltimore, in 1844, had returned, at the age of eighty-one, to the quiet of his agricultural pursuits in the vicinity of Lyons; Martin Van Buren, still rebellious against his party, was watching from his retreat at Lindenwald the strife over the Wilmot Proviso, embodying the opposition to the extension of slavery into new territories; Erastus Root, at the age of seventy-four, was dying in New York City; and Samuel Young, famous by his knightly service in the cause of the Radicals, had just finished in the Assembly, with the acerbity of temper that characterised his greatest oratorical efforts during nearly half a century of public life, an eloquent indictment of the Hunkers, whom he charged with being the friends of monopoly, the advocates of profuse and unnecessary expenditures of the public funds, and the cause of much corrupt legislation.

But of all men in the State the absence of William H. Seward was the most noticeable. For four years, as governor, he had stood for internal improvements, for the reorganisation of the judiciary along lines of progress, for diminishing official patronage, for modifying, and ultimately doing away with, feudal tenures, and for free schools and universal suffrage. His experience and ability would have been most helpful in the formation of the new constitution; but he would not become a delegate except from Auburn, and a majority of the people of his own assembly district did not want him. "The world are all mad with me here," he wrote Weed, "because I defended Wyatt too faithfully. God help them to a better morality. The prejudices against me grows by reason of the Van Nest murder!"[355] Political friends offered him a nomination and election from Chautauqua, but he declined, urging as a further reason that the Whigs would be in the minority, and his presence might stimulate fresh discords among them.

[Footnote 355: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 791.]

Horace Greeley had expected a nomination from Chautauqua. He had relations who promised him support, and with their failure to elect him began that yearning for office which was destined to doom him to many bitter disappointments. Until now, he had kept his desires to himself. He wanted to be postmaster of New York in 1841; and, when Seward failed to anticipate his ambition, he recalled the scriptural injunction, "Ask, and it shall be given you." So, he conferred with Weed about the constitutional convention. Washington County was suggested, then Delaware, and later Albany; but, the nominees having been selected, the project was abandoned, and Horace Greeley waited until the convention of 1867. Weed expressed the belief that if Greeley's wishes had been known two weeks earlier, his ambition might have been gratified, although on only two occasions had non-resident delegates ever been selected.

Popular sovereignty attained its highest phase under the Constitution of 1846; and the convention must always be notable as the great dividing line between a government by the people, and a government delegated by the people to certain officials—executive, legislative, and judicial—who were invested with general and more or less permanent powers. Under the Constitution of 1821, the power of appointment was placed in the governor, the Senate, and the Assembly. State officers were elected by the Legislature, judges nominated by the governor and confirmed by the Senate, district attorneys appointed by county courts, justices of the peace chosen by boards of supervisors, and mayors of cities selected by the common council. Later amendments made justices of the peace and mayors of cities elective; but, with these exceptions, from 1821 to 1846 the Constitution underwent no organic changes. Under the Constitution of 1846, however, all officers became elective; and, to bring them still nearer the people, an elective judiciary was decentralised, terms of senators were reduced from four to two years, and the selection of legislators was confined to single districts. It was also provided that amendments to the Constitution might be submitted to the people at any time upon the approval of a bare legislative majority. Even the office of governor, which had been jealously reserved to native citizens, was thrown open to all comers, whether born in the United States or elsewhere.

As if to accentuate the great change which public sentiment had undergone in the preceding twenty years these provisions were generally concurred in by large majorities and without political bias. The proposition that a governor need not be either a freeholder or a native citizen was sustained by a vote of sixty-one to forty-nine; the proposal to overcome the governor's veto by a majority instead of a two-thirds vote was carried by sixty-one to thirty-six; the term of senators was reduced from four to two years by a vote of eighty to twenty-three; and their selection confined to single districts by a majority of seventy-nine to thirty-one. An equally large majority favoured the provision that no member of the Legislature should receive from the governor or Legislature any civil appointment within the State, or to the United States Senate. Charles O'Conor antagonised the inhibition of an election to the United States Senate with much learning and eloquence. He thought the power of the State to qualify or restrict the choice of senators was inconsistent with the Federal Constitution; but the great majority of the convention held otherwise. Indeed, so popular did this section become that, in 1874, members of the Legislature were prohibited from taking office under a city government.

The period when property measured a man's capacity and influence also seems to have passed away with the adoption of the Constitution of 1846. For the first time in the State's history, the great landholders lost control, and provisions as to the land law became clear and wholesome. Feudal tenures were abolished, lands declared allodial, fines and quarter sales made void, and leases of agricultural lands for longer than twelve years pronounced illegal. Although vested rights could not be affected, the policy of the new constitutional conditions, aided by the accessibility of better and cheaper lands along lines of improved transportation, compelled landlords in the older parts of the State to seek compromises and to offer greater inducements. The only persons required to own property in order to enjoy suffrage and the right to hold office were negroes, who continued to rest under the ban until the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution. The people of New York felt profound interest in the great conflict between slavery and freedom, but, for more than a quarter of a century after the Wilmot Proviso became the shibboleth of the Barnburners, a majority of voters denied the coloured man equality of suffrage. Among the thirty-two delegates in the convention of 1846 who refused to allow the people to pass upon the question of equality of suffrage, appear the names of Charles O'Conor and Samuel J. Tilden.

The great purpose of the convention was the reform of the laws relating to debt and to the creation of a new judicial establishment. Michael Hoffman headed the committee charged with the solution of financial problems. He saw the importance of devoting the resources of the State to the reduction of its debt. It was important to the character of the people, he thought, that they should be restless and impatient under the obligation of debt; and the strong ground taken by him against an enlargement of the Erie and its lateral canals had resulted in the passage of the famous act of 1842, the substance of which he now desired incorporated into the Constitution. He would neither tolerate compromises with debtors of the State, nor allow its credit to be loaned. He favoured sinking funds, he advocated direct taxation, he insisted upon the strictest observance of appropriation laws, and he opposed the sale of the canals. In his speeches he probably exaggerated the canal debt, just as he minimised the canal income and brushed aside salt and auction duties as of little importance; yet everybody recognised him as the schoolmaster of the convention on financial subjects. His blackboard shone in the sunlight. He was courteous, but without much deference. There was neither yielding nor timidity. If his flint struck a spark by collision with another, it made little difference to him. Yet years afterward, Thurlow Weed, who backed Seward in his appeal for more extensive internal improvements, admitted that to Hoffman's enlightened statesmanship, New York was indebted for the financial article in the Constitution of 1846, which had preserved the public credit and the public faith through every financial crisis.[356]

[Footnote 356: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 34.]

Hoffman placed the state debt, with interest which must be paid up to the time of its extinguishment, at thirty-eight million dollars. Out of the canal revenues he wanted $1,500,000 paid yearly upon the canal debt; $672,000 set apart for the use of the State; and the balance applied to the improvement of the Erie canal, whenever the surplus amounted to $2,500,000. Further to conserve the interests of the Commonwealth, he insisted that its credit should not be loaned; that its borrowed money should not exceed one million dollars, except to repel invasion or suppress insurrection; and that no debt should be created without laying a direct annual tax sufficient to pay principal and interest in eighteen years. The result showed that, in spite of vigorous opposition, he got all he demanded. Some of the amounts were reduced; others slightly diverted; and the remaining surplus of the canal revenues, instead of accumulating until it aggregated $2,500,000, was applied each year to the enlargement of the Erie canal and the completion of the Genesee Valley and Black River canals; but his plan was practically adopted and time has amply justified the wisdom of his limitations. In concluding his last speech, the distinguished Radical declared "that this legislation would not only preserve the credit of New York by keeping its debts paid, but it would cause every State in the Union, as soon as such States were able to do so, to sponge out its debts by payment and thus remove from representative government the reproaches cast upon us on the other side of the water."[357]

[Footnote 357: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 3, p. 655.]

But Hoffman, while exciting the admiration of all men for his persistence, dexterity, and ability, did not lead the most important contest. In 1846, the popular desire for radical changes in the judiciary was not less peremptory than the expression in 1821. Up to this time, the courts of the State, in part, antedated the War of Independence. Now, in place of the ancient appointive system, the people demanded an elective judiciary which should be responsible to them and bring the courts to them. To make these changes, the president of the convention appointed a committee of thirteen, headed by Charles H. Ruggles of Dutchess, which embraced the lawyers of most eminence among the delegates. After the chairman came Charles O'Conor of New York, Charles P. Kirkland of Utica, Ambrose L. Jordan of Columbia, Arphaxed Loomis of Herkimer, Alvah Worden of Saratoga, George W. Patterson of Livingston, and several others of lesser note. At the end of the committee appeared a merchant and a farmer, possibly for the reason that condiments make a dish more savoury. Ruggles was a simple-hearted and wise man. He had been on the Supreme bench for fifteen years, becoming one of the distinguished jurists of the State. In the fierce conflicts between Clintonians and Bucktails he acted with the former, and then, in 1828, followed DeWitt Clinton to the support of Andrew Jackson. But Ruggles never offended anybody. His wise and moderate counsel had drawn the fire from many a wild and dangerous scheme, but it left no scars. Prudence and modesty had characterised his life, and his selection as chairman of the judiciary committee disarmed envy and jealousy. He was understood to favour an elective judiciary and moderation in all doubtful reforms. Arphaxed Loomis possessed unusual abilities as a public speaker, and, during a brief career in the Assembly, had become known as an advocate of legal reform. He was afterward, in April, 1847, appointed a commissioner on practice and pleadings for the purpose of providing a uniform course of proceedings in all cases; and, to him, perhaps, more than to any one else, is due the credit of establishing one form of action for the protection of private rights and the redress of private wrongs. Worden had been a merchant, who, losing his entire possessions by failure, began the study of law at the age of thirty-four and quickly took a prominent place among the lawyers of the State. Ambrose L. Jordan, although somewhat younger than Benjamin F. Butler, Thomas Oakley, Henry R. Storrs, and other former leaders of the bar, was their successful opponent, and had gained the distinction of winning the first breach of promise suit in which a woman figured as defendant. Patterson had rare and exquisite gifts which made him many friends and kept him for half a century prominent in political affairs. Though of undoubted intellectual power, clear-sighted, and positive, he rarely answered other men's arguments, and never with warmth or heat. But he had, however, read and mastered the law, and his voice was helpful in conferring upon the people a system which broke the yoke of the former colonial subordination.

The majority report of the judiciary committee provided for a new court of last resort, to be called the Court of Appeals, which was to consist of eight members, four of whom were to be elected from the State at large for a term of eight years, and four to be chosen from the justices of the Supreme Court. A new Supreme Court of thirty-two members, having general and original jurisdiction in law and equity, was established in place of the old Supreme Court and Court of Chancery, the State being divided into eight districts, in each of which four judges were to be elected. In addition to these great courts, inferior local tribunals of civil and criminal jurisdiction were provided for cities. The report thus favoured three radical changes. Judges became elective, courts of law and equity were united, and county courts were abolished. The inclusion of senators in the old Court of Errors—which existed from the foundation of the State—had made the elective system somewhat familiar to the people, to whom it had proved more satisfactory than the method of appointment; but the union of courts of law and equity was an untried experiment in New York. It had the sanction of other States, and, in part, of the judicial system of the United States, where procedure at law and in equity had become assimilated, if not entirely blended, thus abolishing the inconvenience of so many tribunals and affording greater facility for the trial of equity causes involving questions of fact.

But delegates were slow to profit by the experience of other Commonwealths. From the moment the report was submitted attacks upon it became bitter and continuous. Charles O'Conor opposed the elective system, the union of the two courts, and the abolition of the county court. Charles P. Kirkland proposed that only three members of the Court of Appeals be elected, the others to be appointed by the governor, with the consent of the Senate. Alvah Worden wanted two Courts of Appeals, one of law and one of chancery, neither of which should be elective. Simmons desired a different organisation of the Supreme Court, and Bascom objected to the insufficient number of sessions of the court provided for the whole State. Others of the minority submitted reports and opinions, until the subject seemed hopelessly befogged and the work of the majority a failure. O'Conor was especially impatient and restless in his opposition. In skill and ability no one could vie with him in making the old ways seem better. He was now forty-two years old. He had a powerful and vigorous frame, and a powerful and vigorous understanding. It was the wonder of his colleagues how, in addition to the faithful work performed in committee, he could get time for the research that was needed to equip him for the great speeches with which he adorned the debates. He never held office, save, during a portion of President Pierce's administration, that of United States attorney for the southern district of New York; but his rapid, almost instinctive judgment, his tact, his ability to crush sophistries with a single sentence, and his vigorous rhetoric must have greatly distinguished his administration of any office which he might have occupied. Yet the conservatism which finally separated him from the cordial supporters of the government during the Civil War usually kept him in the minority. His spirit was not the spirit that governed; and, in spite of his brilliant and determined opposition, the convention of 1846 accepted the elective system, approved the union of equity and law courts, prohibited the election of a member of the Legislature to the United States Senate, and submitted to the decision of the people the right of coloured men to equal suffrage. Only in the retention of the county court were O'Conor's views sustained; and this came largely through the influence of Arphaxed Loomis, the material part of whose amendment was ultimately adopted. When, finally, the Constitution in its entirety was submitted to the convention for its approval, O'Conor was one of six to vote against it.

The Constitution of 1846 was the people's Constitution. It reserved to them the right to act more frequently upon a large class of questions, introducing the referendum which characterises popular government, and making it a more perfect expression of the popular will. That the people appreciated the greater power reserved to them was shown on the third of November, by a vote of 221,528 to 92,436. With few modifications, the Constitution of 1846 still remains in force,—ample proof that wisdom, unalloyed with partisan politics or blind conservatism, guided the convention which framed it.



CHAPTER X

DEFEAT AND DEATH OF SILAS WRIGHT

1846-1847

The Democratic campaign for governor in 1846 opened with extraordinary interest. Before the Legislature adjourned, on May 13, the Hunkers refused to attend a party caucus for the preparation of the usual address. Subsequently, however, they issued one of their own, charging the Radicals with hostility to the Polk administration and with selfishness, born of a desire to control every office within the gift of the canal board. The address did not, in terms, name Silas Wright, but the Governor was not blind to its attacks. "They are not very different from what I expected when I consented to take this office," he wrote a friend in Canton. "I do not yet think it positively certain that we shall lose the convention, but that its action and the election are to produce a perfect separation of a portion of our party from the main body I cannot any longer entertain a single doubt. You must not permit appearances to deceive you. Although I am not denounced here by name with others, the disposition to do that, if policy would permit, is not even disguised, and every man known to be strongly my friend and firmly in my confidence is more bitterly denounced than any other."[358]

[Footnote 358: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 3, p. 756. Appendix.]

It is doubtful if Silas Wright himself fully comprehended the real reason for such bitterness. He was a natural gentleman, kindly and true. He might sometimes err in judgment; but he was essentially a statesman of large and comprehensive vision, incapable of any meanness or conscious wrong-doing. The masses of the party regarded him as the representative of the opportunity which a great State, in a republic, holds out to the children of its humblest and poorest citizens. He was as free from guile as a little child. To him principle and party stood before all other things; and he could not be untrue to one any more than to the other. But the leaders of the Hunker wing did not take kindly to him. They could not forget that the Radical state officers, with whom he coincided in principle, in conjuring with his name in 1844 had defeated the renomination of Governor Bouck; and, though they might admit that his nomination practically elected Polk, by extracting the party from the mire of Texas annexation, they preferred, deep in their hearts, a Whig governor to his continuance in office, since his influence with the people for high ends was not in accord with their purposes. For more than a decade these men, as Samuel Young charged in his closing speech in the Assembly of that year, had been after the flesh-pots. They favoured the banking monopoly, preferring special charters that could be sold to free franchises under a general law; they influenced the creation of state stocks in which they profited; they owned lands which would appreciate by the construction of canals and railroads. To all these selfish interests, the Governor's restrictive policy was opposed; and while they did not dare denounce him by name, as the Governor suggested in his letter, their tactics increased the hostility that was eventually to destroy him.

It must be confessed, however, that the representation of Hunkers at the Democratic state convention, held at Syracuse on October 1, did not indicate much popular strength. The Radicals outnumbered them two to one. On the first ballot Silas Wright received one hundred and twelve votes out of one hundred and twenty-five, and, upon motion of Horatio Seymour, the nomination became unanimous. For lieutenant-governor, Addison Gardiner was renominated by acclamation. The convention then closed its labours with the adoption of a platform approving the re-enactment of the independent treasury law, the passage of the Walker tariff act, and the work of the constitutional convention, with an expression of hope that the Mexican War, which had commenced on the 12th of the preceding May, might be speedily and honourably terminated. The address concluded with a just eulogy of Silas Wright. At the moment, the contest seemed at an end; but the sequel showed it was only a surface settlement.

If Democrats were involved in a quarrel, the Whigs were scarcely a happy family. It is not easy to pierce the fog which shrouds the division of the party; but it is clear that when Seward became governor and Weed dictator, trouble began in respect to men and to measures. Though less marked, possibly, than the differences between Democratic factions, the discord seemed to increase with the hopelessness of Whig ascendancy. Undoubtedly it began with Seward's recommendation of separate schools for the children of foreigners, and in his pronounced anti-slavery views; but it had also festered and expanded from disappointments, and from Weed's opposition to Henry Clay in 1836 and 1840. Even Horace Greeley, already consumed with a desire for public preferment, began to chafe under the domineering influence of Weed and the supposed neglect of Seward; while Millard Fillmore, and those acting with him, although retaining personal relations with Weed, were ready to break away at the first opportunity. As the Whigs had been in the minority for several years, the seriousness of these differences did not become public knowledge; but the newspapers divided the party into Radicals and Conservatives, the former being represented by the Evening Journal and the Tribune, the latter by the New York Courier and Enquirer and the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser.

This division, naturally, led to some difference of opinion about a candidate for governor; and, when the Whig state convention met at Utica on September 23, an informal ballot developed fifty-five votes for Millard Fillmore, thirty-six for John Young, and twenty-one for Ira Harris, with eight or ten scattering. Fillmore had not sought the nomination. Indeed, there is evidence that he protested against the presentation of his name; but his vote represented the conservative Whigs who did not take kindly either to Young or to Harris. Ira Harris, who was destined to bear a great part in a great history, had just entered his forty-fourth year. He was graduated from Union College with the highest honours, studied law with Ambrose Spencer, and slowly pushed himself into the front rank of practitioners at the Albany bar. In 1844, while absent in the West, the Anti-Renters nominated him, without his knowledge, for the Assembly, and, with the help of the Whigs, elected him. He had in no wise identified himself with active politics or with anti-rent associations; but the people honoured him for his integrity as well as for his fearless support of the principle of individual rights. In the Assembly he demonstrated the wisdom of their choice, evidencing distinguished ability and political tact. In 1845 the same people returned him to the Assembly. Then, in the following year, they sent him to the constitutional convention; and, some months later, to the State Senate. Beneath his plain courtesy was great firmness. He could not be otherwise than the constant friend of everything which made for the emancipation and elevation of the individual. His advocacy of an elective judiciary, the union of law and equity, and the simplification of pleadings and practice in the courts, showed that there were few stronger or clearer intellects in the constitutional convention. With good reason, therefore, the constituency that sent him there favoured him for governor.

But John Young shone as the popular man of the hour. Young was a middle-of-the-road Whig, whose candidacy grew out of his recent legislative record. He had forced the passage of the bill calling a constitutional convention, and had secured the canal appropriation which the Governor deemed it wise to veto. In the Assembly of 1845 and 1846, he became his party's choice for speaker; and, though not a man of refinement or scholarly attainments, or one, perhaps, whose wisdom and prudence could safely be relied upon under the stress of great responsibilities, he was just then the chief figure of the State and of great influence with the people—especially with the Anti-Renters and their sympathisers, whose strife and turbulence in Columbia and Delaware counties had been summarily suppressed by Governor Wright. The older leaders of his party thought him somewhat of a demagogue; Thurlow Weed left the convention in disgust when he discovered that a pre-arranged transfer of the Harris votes would nominate him. But, with the avowed friendship of Ira Harris, Young was stronger at this time than Weed, and on the third ballot he received seventy-six votes to forty-five for Fillmore. To balance the ticket, Hamilton Fish became the candidate for lieutenant-governor. Fish represented the eastern end of the State, the conservative wing of the party, and New York City, where he was deservedly popular.

There were other parties in the field. The Abolitionists made nominations, and the Native Americans put up Ogden Edwards, a Whig of some prominence, who had served in the Assembly, in the constitutional convention of 1821, and upon the Supreme bench. But it was the action of the Anti-Renters, or national reformers as they were called, that most seriously embarrassed the Whigs and the Democrats. The Anti-Renters could scarcely be called a party, although they had grown into a political organisation which held the balance of power in several counties. Unlike the Abolitionists, however, they wanted immediate results rather than sacrifices for principle, and their support was deemed important if not absolutely conclusive. When the little convention of less than thirty delegates met at Albany in October, therefore, their ears listened for bids. They sought a pardon for the men convicted in 1845 for murderous outrages perpetrated in Delaware and Schoharie; and, although unsupported by proof, it was afterward charged and never denied, that, either at the time of their convention or subsequently before the election, Ira Harris produced a letter from John Young in which the latter promised executive clemency in the event of his election. However this may be, it is not unlikely that Harris' relations with the Anti-Renters aided materially in securing Young's indorsement, and it is a matter of record that soon after Young's inauguration the murderers were pardoned, the Governor justifying his action upon the ground that their offences were political. The democratic Anti-Renters urged Silas Wright to give some assurances that he, too, would issue a pardon; but the Cato of his party, who never caressed or cajoled his political antagonists, declined to give any intimation upon the subject. Thereupon, as if to emphasise their dislike of Wright, the Anti-Rent delegates indorsed John Young for governor and Addison Gardiner for lieutenant-governor.

In the midst of the campaign William C. Bouck received the federal appointment of sub-treasurer in New York, under the act re-establishing the independent treasury system. This office was one of the most important in the gift of the President, and, because the appointee was the recognised head of the Hunkers, the impression immediately obtained that the government at Washington disapproved the re-election of Silas Wright. It became the sensation of the hour. Many believed the success of the Governor would make him a formidable candidate for President in 1848, and the impropriety of Polk's action occasioned much adverse criticism. The President and several members of his Cabinet privately assured the Governor of their warmest friendship, but, as one member of the radical wing expressed it, "Bouck's appointment became a significant indication of the guillotine prepared for Governor Wright in November."

Other causes than the Democratic feud also contributed to the discomfiture of Silas Wright. John Young had made an admirable record in the Assembly. He had also, at the outbreak of hostilities with Mexico, although formerly opposed to the annexation of Texas, been among the first to approve the war, declaring that "Texas was now bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, and that since the rights of our citizens had been trampled upon, he would sustain the country, right or wrong."[359] It soon became evident, too, that the Anti-Renters were warm and persistent friends. His promise to pardon their leaders received the severe condemnation of the conservative Whig papers; but such censure only added to his vote in Anti-Rent counties. In like manner, Young's support of the canals and Wright's veto of the appropriation, strengthened the one and weakened the other in all the canal counties. Indeed, after the election it was easy to trace all these influences. Oneida, a strong canal county, which had given Wright eight hundred majority in 1844, now gave Young thirteen hundred. Similar results appeared in Lewis, Alleghany, Herkimer, and other canal counties. In Albany, an Anti-Rent county, the Whig majority of twenty-five was increased to twenty-eight hundred, while Delaware, another Anti-Rent stronghold, changed Wright's majority of nine hundred in 1844, to eighteen hundred for Young. On the other hand, in New York City, where the conservative Whig papers had bitterly assailed their candidate, Wright's majority of thirty-three hundred in 1844 was increased to nearly fifty-two hundred. In the State Young's majority over Wright exceeded eleven thousand,[360] and Gardiner's over Fish was more than thirteen thousand. The Anti-Renters, who had also indorsed one Whig and one Democratic canal commissioner, gave them majorities of seven and thirteen thousand respectively. Of eight senators chosen, the Whigs elected five; and of the one hundred and twenty-eight assemblymen, sixty-eight, the minority being made up of fifty Democrats and ten Anti-Renters. The Whig returns also included twenty-three out of thirty-four congressmen.

[Footnote 359: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 3, p. 762.]

[Footnote 360: John Young, 198,878; Silas Wright, 187,306; Henry Bradley, 12,844; Ogden Edwards, 6306.—Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

It was a sweeping victory—one of the sporadic kind that occur in moments of political unrest when certain classes are in rebellion against some phase of existing conditions. Seward, who happened to be in Albany over Sunday, pictured the situation in one of his racy letters. "To-day," he says, "I have been at St. Peter's and heard one of those excellent discourses of Dr. Potter. There was such a jumble of wrecks of party in the church that I forgot the sermon and fell to moralising on the vanity of political life. You know my seat. Well, halfway down the west aisle sat Silas Wright, wrapped in a coat tightly buttoned to the chin, looking philosophy, which it is hard to affect and harder to attain. On the east side sat Daniel D. Barnard, upon whom 'Anti-Rent' has piled Ossa, while Pelion only has been rolled upon Wright. In the middle of the church was Croswell, who seemed to say to Wright, 'You are welcome to the gallows you erected for me.' On the opposite side sat John Young, the saved among the lost politicians. He seemed complacent and satisfied."[361]

[Footnote 361: F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 34.]

The defeat of Silas Wright caused no real surprise. It seemed to be in the air. Everything was against him save his own personal influence, based upon his sincerity, integrity, and lofty patriotism. Seward had predicted the result at the time of Wright's nomination in 1844, and Wright himself had anticipated it. "I told some friends when I consented to take this office," he wrote John Fine, his Canton friend, in March, 1846, "that it would terminate my public life."[362] But the story of Silas Wright's administration as governor was not all a record of success. He was opposed to a constitutional convention as well as to a canal appropriation, and, by wisely preventing the former, it is likely the latter would not have been forced upon him. Without a convention bill and a canal veto, the party would not have divided seriously, John Young would not have become a popular hero, and the Anti-Renters could not have held the balance of power. To prevent the calling of a constitutional convention, therefore, or at least to have confined it within limits approved by the Hunkers, was the Governor's great opportunity. It would not have been an easy task. William C. Crain had a profound conviction on the subject, and back of him stood Michael Hoffman, the distinguished and unrelenting Radical, determined to put the act of 1842 into the organic law of the State. But there was a time when a master of political diplomacy could have controlled the situation. Even after permitting Crain's defeat for speaker, the appointment of Michael Hoffman to the judgeship vacated by Samuel Nelson's transfer to the federal bench would have placed a powerful lever in the Governor's hand. Hoffman had not sought the office, but the appointment would have softened him into a friend, and with Michael Hoffman as an ally, Crain and his legislative followers could have been controlled.

[Footnote 362: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 3, p. 756. Appendix.]

It is interesting to study the views of Wright's contemporaries as to the causes of his defeat.[363] One thought he should have forced the convention and veto issues in the campaign of 1845, compelling people and press to thresh them out a year in advance of his own candidacy; another believed if he had vetoed the convention bill a canal appropriation would not have passed; a third charged him with trusting too much in old friends who misguided him, and too little in new principles that had sprung up while he was absent in the United States Senate. One writer, apparently the most careful observer, admitted the influence of Anti-Renters and the unpopularity of the canal veto, but insisted that the real cause of the Governor's defeat was the opposition of the Hunkers, "bound together exclusively by selfish interests and seeking only personal advancement and personal gain."[364] This writer named Edwin Croswell as the leader whose wide influence rested like mildew upon the work of the campaign, sapping it of enthusiasm, and encouraging Democrats among Anti-Renters and those favourable to canals to put in the knife on election day. Such a policy, of course, it was argued, meant the delivery of Polk from a powerful opponent in 1848, and the uninterrupted leadership of William L. Marcy, who now wielded a patronage, greatly increased by the Mexican War, in the interest of the Hunkers and for the defeat of Silas Wright. If this were not true, continued the writer, William C. Bouck's appointment would have been delayed until after election, and the work of postmasters and other government officials, who usually contributed generously of their time and means in earnest support of their party, would not have been deadened.

[Footnote 363: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 3, p. 691.]

[Footnote 364: Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 693.

"More serious than either of these [Anti-Rent disturbance and veto of canal appropriation] was the harm done by the quiet yet persistent opposition of the Hunkers. Nor can it be doubted that the influence of the Government at Washington was thrown against him in that critical hour. Governor Marcy was secretary of war; Samuel Nelson had just been appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; Governor Bouck held one of the most influential offices in the city of New York—all these were members of that section of the party with which Governor Wright was not in sympathy. It was evident that he would not be able to maintain himself against an opposition of which the elements were so numerous, so varied, and so dangerous."—Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John A. Dix, Vol. 1, p. 227.]

There is abundant evidence that Governor Wright held similar views. "I have neither time nor disposition to speak of the causes of our overthrow," he wrote, a few days after his defeat was assured. "The time will come when they must be spoken of, and that plainly, but it will be a painful duty, and one which I do not want to perform. Our principles are as sound as they ever were, and the hearts of the great mass of our party will be found as true to them as ever. Hereafter I think our enemies will be open enemies, and against such the democracy has ever been able, and ever will be able to contend successfully."[365]

[Footnote 365: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 3, p. 757. Appendix.]

Silas Wright's defeat in no wise pained him personally. Like John Jay he had the habits of seclusion. Manual labour on the farm, his correspondence, and the preparation of an address to be delivered at the State Agricultural Fair in September, occupied his leisure during the spring and summer of 1847.[366] "If I were to attempt to tell you how happy we make ourselves at our retired home," he wrote Governor Fairfield of Maine, "I fear you would scarcely be able to credit me. I even yet realise, every day and every hour, the relief from public cares, and if any thought about temporal affairs could make me more uneasy than another, it would be the serious one that I was again to take upon myself, in any capacity, that ever pressing load."[367] This was written on the 16th of August, 1847, and on the morning of the 27th his useful life came to an end. The day before he had spoken of apoplexy in connection with the death of a friend, as if he, too, had a premonition of this dread disease. When the end came, the sudden rush of blood to the head left no doubt of its presence.

[Footnote 366: "Nothing can be imagined more admirable than the conduct of that great man under these trying circumstances. He returned at once to his beloved farm at Canton, and resumed, with apparent delight, the occupations of a rustic life. Visitors have related how they found him at work in his fields, in the midst of his farmhands, setting an example of industry and zeal. His house was the shrine of many a pilgrimage; and, as profound regret at the loss of such a man from the councils of the State took the place of a less honourable sentiment, his popularity began to return. Already, as the time for the nomination of a President drew near, men were looking to him, as an illustrious representative of the principles and hereditary faith of the Democratic-Republican party, in whose hands the country would be safe, no matter from what quarter the tempest might come."—Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John A. Dix, Vol. 1, p. 228.]

[Footnote 367: Jabez D. Hammond, Political History of New York, Vol. 3, p. 729.]

The death of Silas Wright produced a profound sensation. Since the decease of DeWitt Clinton the termination of no public career in the State caused more real sorrow. Until then, the people scarcely realised how much they loved and respected him, and all were quick to admit that the history of the Commonwealth furnished few natures better fitted than his, morally and intellectually, for great public trusts. Perhaps he cannot be called a man of genius; but he was a man of commanding ability, with that absolute probity and good sense which are the safest gifts of a noble character.

On the 12th of the following December, James Kent died in his eighty-fifth year. He had outlived by eighteen years his contemporary, John Jay; by nearly forty-five years his great contemporary, Alexander Hamilton; and by more than thirty years his distinguished predecessor, Chancellor Livingston. He was the last of the heroic figures that made famous the closing quarter of the eighteenth and the opening quarter of the nineteenth centuries. He could sit at the table of Philip Hone, amidst eminent judges, distinguished statesmen, and men whose names were already famous in literature, and talk of the past with personal knowledge from the time the colony graciously welcomed John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, as its governor, or threateningly frowned upon William Howe, viscount and British general, for shutting up its civil courts. When, finally, his body was transferred from the sofa in the library where he had written himself into an immortal fame, to the cemetery on Second Avenue, the obsequies became the funeral not merely of a man but of an age.



CHAPTER XI

THE FREE-SOIL CAMPAIGN

1847-1848

The fearless stand of Preston King in supporting the Wilmot Proviso[368] took root among the Radicals, as Seward prophesied, and the exclusion of slavery from territory obtained from Mexico, became the dominant Democratic issue in the State. Because of their approval of this principle the Radicals were called "Barnburners." Originally, these factional differences, as noted elsewhere, grew out of the canal controversy in 1838 and in 1841, the Conservatives wishing to devote the surplus canal revenues to the completion of the canals—the Radicals insisting upon their use to pay the state debt. Under this division, Edwin Croswell, William C. Bouck, Daniel S. Dickinson, Henry A. Foster, and Horatio Seymour led the Conservatives; Michael Hoffman, John A. Dix, and Azariah C. Flagg marshalled the Radicals. When the Conservatives, "hankering" after the offices, accepted unconditionally the annexation of Texas, they were called Hunkers. In like manner, the Radicals who sustained the Wilmot Proviso now became Barnburners, being likened to the farmer who burned his barn to get rid of rats. William L. Marcy, Silas Wright, Benjamin F. Butler, and the Van Burens took no part in the canal controversy; but after Martin Van Buren's defeat in 1844 Marcy became a prominent Hunker and entered Polk's Cabinet, while Wright, Butler, and the Van Burens joined the Barnburners.