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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XV

TOMPKINS DEFEATS JONAS PLATT

1810

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XVI

DeWITT CLINTON AND TAMMANY

1789-1811

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XVII

BANKS AND BRIBERY

1791-1812

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XVIII

CLINTON AND THE PRESIDENCY

1812

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XIX

QUARRELS AND RIVALRIES

1813

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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