There were those who thought the time of his death fortunate for his fame, since former opponents were softened and former friends had not fallen away. An impression also obtained that little was left him politically to live for. New conditions and new men were springing up. As a strict constructionist of the Federal Constitution, with a leaning toward states' rights, he could not have followed Clintonians into the Whig party soon to be formed, nor would he have been at home among the leaders of the Jackson or new Democratic party, who were unlikely to have any use for him. He would not be second to Van Buren, and Van Buren would not suffer him to interfere with the promotion of his own career. It is possible Van Buren might have supported him for governor in 1828, but he would have had no hesitation in playing his own part regardless of him. Had Clinton insisted, so much the worse for Clinton. Of the two men, Van Buren possessed the advantage. He had less genius and possibly less self-reliance, but in other respects—in tact, in prudence, in self-control, in address—indeed, in everything that makes for party leadership, Van Buren easily held the mastery.

Clinton's career was absolutely faultless in two aspects—as an honest man, and a husband, only praise is due him. He died poor and pure. Yet, there are passages in his history which evidence great defects. Life had been for him one long dramatic performance. Many great men seem to have a suit of armour in the form of coldness, brusqueness, or rudeness, which they put on to meet the stranger, but which, when laid aside, reveals simple, charming, and often boyish manners. Clinton had such an armour, but he never put it off, except with intimates, and not then with any revelation of warmth. He was cold and arrogant, showing no deference even to seniors, since he denied the existence of superiors. Nobody loved him; few really liked him; and, except for his canal policy, his public career must have ended with his dismissal from the New York mayoralty. It seemed a question whether he really measured up to the stature of a statesman.

Nevertheless, the judgment of posterity is easily on the side of Clinton's greatness. Thurlow Weed spoke of him as a great man with weak points; and Van Buren, in his attractive eulogy at Washington, declared that he was "greatly tempted to envy him his grave with its honours." He may well have done so; for, although Van Buren reached the highest office in the gift of the people, and is clearly one of the ablest leaders of men in the history of the Empire State, his fame does not rest on so sure a foundation. Clinton was a man of great achievement. He was not a dreamer; nor merely a statesman with imagination, grasping the idea in its bolder outlines; but, like a captain of industry, he combined the statesman and the practical man of affairs, turning great possibilities into greater realities. It may be fairly said of him that his career made an era in the history of his State, and that in asserting the great principle of internal improvements he blazed the way that guided all future comers.



CHAPTER XXXII

VAN BUREN ELECTED GOVERNOR

1828

In September, 1827, Van Buren permitted the New York wing of the Republican party to come out plainly for Andrew Jackson for President. The announcement, made by the general committee, which met in Tammany Hall, declared that the Bucktails reposed full confidence in Andrew Jackson's worth, integrity, and patriotism, and would support only those who favoured him for President of the United States.

Peter B. Sharpe, a Tammany chief of courage, recently speaker of the Assembly, voiced a faint protest; and later he summoned Marinus Willett from his retirement to preside at an opposition meeting. It was, no doubt, an inspiring sight to see this venerable soldier of the Revolution, who had won proud distinction in that long and bloody war, presiding at an assembly of his fellow citizens nearly half a century afterward; it accentuated the fact that other heroes existed besides the victor of New Orleans; but the Van Buren papers spoke in concert. Within a week, the whole State understood that the election of 1827 must be conducted with express reference to the choice of Jackson in 1828.

The note of this bugle call, blown by Edwin Croswell, the famous editor of the Albany Argus, resounded the enthusiasm of the party. The ablest and most popular men, preliminary to the contest, were selected for legislative places. Erastus Root was again nominated in Delaware County; Robert Emmet, the promising son of the distinguished Thomas Addis Emmet, and Ogden Hoffman, the eloquent and brilliant son of Josiah Ogden Hoffman, who was to become the best criminal lawyer of his day, found places on the ticket in New York City; Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, heretofore an opponent of the Regency, but now to begin a public career which finally placed him in the United States Senate for twelve years, was brought out in Dutchess County; and Benjamin F. Butler, whose revision of the state statutes had made him exceedingly popular, accepted a nomination in the anti-Regency stronghold of Albany.

Not to be outdone in the character or strength of their ticket, the Adams men summoned their ablest and most eloquent campaigners to share the burden of the contest; and Elisha Williams, Peter B. Sharpe, Francis Granger, and Peter B. Porter readily responded. Ezra C. Gross, who had served a term in Congress, also bore a conspicuous part. Gross was rapidly forging to the front, and would doubtless have become one of the most gifted and brilliant men in the State had he not fallen an early victim to intemperance.

For a purely local campaign, without the assistance of a state ticket, it proved a canvass of unusual vehemence, filling the air with caricatures and lampoons, and bringing victory to the drilled and disciplined forces which were now to follow, for half a score of years, the fortunes of the New Orleans hero. From the moment Jackson became the standard-bearer, the crowds were with him. Adams was represented as cold and personally unpopular; Jackson as frank, cordial in manner, and bravely chivalric. When everything in favour of Adams was carefully summed up and admitted, his ability as a writer, as a lawyer, as a diplomatist, and as a statesman, the people, fascinated by the distinguished traits of character and the splendour of the victory at New Orleans, threw their hats into the air for Andrew Jackson. The eloquence of Williams could carry Columbia County; Porter, ever popular and interesting, could sweep the Niagara frontier; and Gross, with an illuminated rhetoric that lives to this day in the memory of men who heard their fathers talk about it, had no trouble in Essex; but from the Hudson to Lake Oneida the Jackson party may be said to have carried everything by storm, electing its ticket by over four thousand majority in New York City, and securing nearly all the senatorial districts and the larger part of the Assembly. So overwhelming was the victory that Van Buren had no trouble at the opening of the Twentieth Congress to defeat the re-election of John W. Taylor for speaker.

As the time approached for nominating a governor to lead the campaign of 1828, Van Buren realised that the anti-masonic sentiment, which had been rapidly growing since the abduction of William Morgan, had developed into an influence throughout the western part of the State that threatened serious trouble. Morgan was a native of Virginia, born in 1776, a man of fair education, and by trade a stone-mason. Little is known of his life until 1821, when he resided first in York, Canada, and, a year later, in Rochester, New York, where he worked at his trade. Then he drifted to LeRoy, in Genesee County, becoming an active Free Mason. Afterward, he moved back to Rochester, and then to Batavia, where he sought out David C. Miller, a printer, who agreed to publish whatever secrets of Free Masonry Morgan would reveal. The work, done by night and on Sundays, was finally interrupted on September 11, 1826, by Morgan's arrest, on a trifling criminal charge, and transfer to Canandaigua for examination. His acquittal was immediately followed by a second arrest upon a civil process for a small debt and by his imprisonment in the Canandaigua jail. When discharged on the succeeding night, he was quickly seized, and, as it subsequently appeared from the evidence taken at the trial of his abductors, he was bound, gagged, thrust violently into a covered carriage, driven by a circuitous route, with relays of horses and men, to Fort Niagara, and left in confinement in the magazine. Here he dropped out of view.

The excitement following the discovery of this crime was without a parallel in the history of Western New York. Citizens everywhere organised committees for the apprehension of the offenders; the Governor offered a reward for their discovery; the Legislature authorised the appointment of able lawyers to investigate; and William L. Marcy and Samuel Nelson, then judges of the Supreme Court, were designated to hold special circuits for the trial of the accused. Many persons were convicted and punished as aiders and abettors of the conspiracy. For three years the excitement continued without abatement, until the whole State west of Syracuse became soaked with deep and bitter feeling, dividing families, sundering social ties, and breeding lawsuits in vindication of assailed character. Public sentiment was divided as to whether Morgan had been put to death. Half a century afterward, in 1882, Thurlow Weed published an affidavit, rehearsing a statement made to him in 1831 by John Whitney, who confessed that he was one of five persons who took Morgan from the magazine and drowned him in Lake Ontario.[253]

[Footnote 253: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 332.]

The trouble stirred up by this unfortunate affair gradually drifted into politics. In the spring of 1827, a disinclination had shown itself among the people of Genesee County to support Free Masons for supervisors or justices of the peace, and, although the leading men of the western part of the State deprecated political action, the pressure became so great that Free Masons were excluded from local tickets in certain towns of Genesee and Monroe Counties. This course was resented by their friends. In the summer of the same year, the old treasurer of Rochester, who had been elected year after year without opposition, was defeated. No one had openly opposed him, but a canvass of the returns disclosed a silent vote which was quickly charged to the Masons. This discovery, says Thurlow Weed, "was like a spark of fire dropped into combustible materials." Immediately, Rochester became the centre of anti-Masonry. In September, an anti-masonic convention nominated a legislative ticket, which, to the amazement and confusion of the old parties, swept Monroe County by a majority of over seventeen hundred. Direction was thus given to the movement. In the following year, when the state and national election was approaching, it appeared that throughout "the infected district," as it was called, the opponents of Masonry, although previously about equally divided in political sentiment, had aligned themselves with the Adams party, and that the Masons had affiliated with the followers of Jackson. There was good reason for this division. The prominent men in the anti-masonic body, for the most part, were not only leaders of the Adams party, but, very early in the excitement, President Adams took occasion to let it be known that he was not a Mason. On the other hand, it was well understood that Jackson was a Mason and gloried in it.

This was the situation when the Adams followers, who now called themselves National Republicans, met in convention at Utica on July 22, 1828. The wise policy of nominating candidates acceptable to all Anti-Masons was plain, and the delegates from the western half of the State proposed Francis Granger for governor. Granger was not then a political Anti-Mason, but he was clean, well-known, and popular, and for two years had been a leading member of the Assembly. Thurlow Weed said of him that he was "a gentleman of accomplished manners, genial temperament, and fine presence, with fortune, leisure, and a taste for public life."[254] Indeed, he appears to have felt from the first a genuine delight in the vivid struggles of the political arena, and, although destined to be twice beaten for governor, and once for Vice President, he had abundant service in the Cabinet, in the Legislature, and in Congress. Just then he was thirty-six years old, the leading antagonist of John C. Spencer at the Canandaigua bar, and one whom everybody regarded as a master-spirit. Dressed in a bottle-green coat with gilt buttons, a model of grace and manhood, he was the attraction of the ladies' gallery. He had youth, enthusiasm, magnificent gifts, and a heart to love. All his resources seemed to be at instant command, according as he had need of them. Besides, he was a born Republican. Thomas Jefferson had made his father postmaster-general, and during the thirteen years he held the office, the son was studying at Yale and fighting Federalism.[255]

[Footnote 254: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 391.]

[Footnote 255: Writing of Granger, in January, 1831, Seward says: "I believe I have never told you all I thought about this star of the first magnitude in Anti-masonry, and the reason was that, with a limited personal acquaintance, I might give you erroneous impressions which I should afterward be unable to reverse. He is 'six feet and well-proportioned,' as you well know, handsome, graceful, dignified, and affable, as almost any hero of whom you have read; is probably about thirty-six or seven years old. In point of talent he has a quick and ready apprehension, a good memory, and usually a sound judgment. Has no 'genius,' in its restricted sense, not a very brilliant imagination, nor extraordinary reasoning faculties; has no deep store of learning, nor a very extensive degree of information. Yet he is intimately acquainted with politics, and with the affairs, interests, and men of the State. He is never great, but always successful. He writes with ease and speaks with fluency and elegance—never attempts an argument beyond his capacity, and, being a good judge of men's character, motives, and actions, he never fails to command admiration, respect, and esteem. Not a man do I know who is his equal in the skill of exhibiting every particle of his stores with great advantage. You will inquire about his manners. His hair is ever gracefully curled, his broad and expansive brow is always exposed, his person is ever carefully dressed, to exhibit his face and form aright and with success. He is a gallant and fashionable man. He seems often to neglect great matters for small ones, and I have often thought him a trifler; yet he is universally, by the common people, esteemed grave and great. He is an aristocrat in his feelings, though the people who know him think him all condescension. He is a prince among those who are equals, affable to inferiors, and knows no superiors. In principle he has redeeming qualities—more than enough to atone for his faults—is honest, honourable, and just, first and beyond comparison with other politicians of the day. You will ask impatiently, 'Has he a heart?' Yes. Although he has less than those who do not know him believe him to possess, he has much more than those who meet him frequently, but not intimately, will allow him to have. He loves, esteems, and never forgets his friends; but you must not understand me that he possesses as confiding and true a heart as Berdan had, or as you think I have, or as we both know Weed has. There is yet one quality of Granger's character which you do not dream of—he loves money almost as well as power."—Frederick W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 1, p. 171.]

Eastern delegates wanted Smith Thompson. Thompson was a man of great learning and an honoured member of the Republican party. But he was sixty years old. With the exception of five years as secretary of the navy, under Monroe, he had been continuously upon the bench for over a quarter of a century, first as justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court of the State, latterly as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. It was suggested, with some pertinency as it afterward appeared, that the people of the State having declared in the recently adopted Constitution, that a judge, holding office during good behaviour, ought not to be a candidate for an elective office, would resent such a nomination. It was further suggested, with even greater force, that Thompson's nomination would offend the ultra Anti-Masons and bring an independent ticket into the field, thus dividing the Adams vote and giving the election to the Jackson candidate. On the other hand, it was maintained with equal spirit that the nomination of Granger, avowedly to secure the anti-masonic vote, would offend the National Republicans and jeopardise the state as well as the electoral ticket. It took a ballot to decide the question, and Thompson won by a close vote. Francis Granger was then nominated for lieutenant-governor by acclamation.

As predicted, several ultra anti-masonic editors in Genesee and Ontario counties immediately denounced the nomination of Thompson. The Adams people knew it portended danger; but Thompson would not withdraw and the ultras would not relent. Thereupon, the anti-masonic convention, already called to meet at Utica, added to the difficulty of the situation by nominating Francis Granger and John Crary. Granger had not solicited nomination, and now he was burdened with two. But Thompson refused to relieve the embarrassment, and Crary proved wickedly false to his agreement. The latter admitted that the union of the Adams and anti-masonic forces would probably elect Granger for lieutenant-governor, and he promised to withdraw as soon as Granger should do so. Upon this Granger declined the anti-masonic nomination; but the wily Van Buren, who was intently watching the embarrassment of the National Republicans, took good care to have Crary remain and Solomon Southwick substituted for Granger. The general sentiment of the Anti-Masons did not respond to this movement. But the angry feeling excited by Granger's declination, aided by Van Buren's finesse, gave Southwick, who had acquired some credit with the Anti-Masons by an early renunciation of his masonic ties, an opportunity of advancing his visionary projects of personal ambition. Thurlow Weed declared that the people had been "juggled" out of a candidate for governor; but Weed did not know that Van Buren, needing money to help along the jugglery, wrote James A. Hamilton, the son of the great Federalist, that unless "you do more in New York than you promised, our friends in Albany, at best poor, will break down." Crary was one of the assemblymen who, in 1824, had boldly denounced the removal of Clinton as a canal commissioner. After his broken promise to Granger and his bargain with Van Buren, however, he ceased to be called "Honest John Crary."

Before the meeting of the National Republican convention, Martin Van Buren was announced as the Jackson candidate for governor. It was well-known, at least to the Albany Regency, that if Jackson became President, Van Buren would be his secretary of state. One can readily understand that Van Buren would willingly exchange the Senate for the head of the Cabinet, since the office of secretary of state had been for twenty years a certain stepping-stone to the Presidency. Madison had been Jefferson's secretary of state, Monroe had filled the exalted place under Madison, and John Quincy Adams served Monroe in the same capacity. But Van Buren's willingness to exchange the Senate, an arena in which he had ranked among the ablest statesmen of the Republic, for the governorship, was prompted by the force of circumstances and not by choice. Jackson's election was believed to depend upon New York, and the carrying of New York, to depend upon Van Buren. The latter, at this time, was at the zenith of his popularity. His speeches had not only stamped him as a genuine parliamentary debater, but had gained for him the reputation of being the congressional leader and chief organiser of the Jackson party. During his seven and a half years in the Senate, his name was associated with every event of importance; his voice was heard on one side or the other of every question that interested the American people; and the force he brought to bear, whether for good or evil, swayed the minds of contemporaries to an unusual degree.

Van Buren looked his best in these days. His complexion was a bright blonde, and he dressed with the taste of Disraeli. Henry B. Stanton describes him as he appeared at church in Rochester on a Sunday during the campaign. "He wore an elegant snuff-colored broadcloth coat with velvet collar; his cravat was orange with modest lace tips; his vest was of a pearl hue; his trousers were white duck; his silk hose corresponded to the vest; his shoes were morocco; his nicely fitting gloves were yellow kid; his long-furred beaver hat, with broad brim, was of Quaker color. As he sat in the wealthy aristocratic church of the town, in the pew of General Gould who had been a lifelong Federalist and supporter of Clinton, all eyes were fixed upon the man who held Jackson's fate in his hands."[256]

[Footnote 256: H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, p. 32.]

Van Buren did not propose to take any chances, either in securing the nomination or the election for governor—hence his visit to Rochester and the western counties to study for himself the anti-masonic situation. "The excitement has been vastly greater than I supposed," he wrote Hamilton. In order to find some way of pacifying it, he turned aside to visit the home of his friend, Enos T. Throop, then living on the wooded and beautiful banks of Lake Owasco. In January, 1827, Throop, who presided at the first trial of the Morgan abductors, had, to the great delight of all Anti-Masons, flayed the defendants, before pronouncing sentence, in a remarkably effective and emphatic address. Such a man was needed to strengthen the Jackson ticket, and before Van Buren got home it was charged that he had secured Throop's promise to stand for lieutenant-governor, with the assurance that within three months after his inauguration, if everything went according to programme, he should be the acting governor.

These tactics meant the turning down of Nathaniel Pitcher, the acting governor in place of DeWitt Clinton. Pitcher had served four years in the Assembly, one term in Congress, and as a delegate to the convention in 1821. Though a man of limited education and strong prejudices, with a depth of feeling that made him as vigorously independent as he was rigidly honest, he proved his fitness for the high office to which he had suddenly fallen heir by several excellent appointments to the Superior Court, just then created for the city of New York. He honoured himself further by restoring the rule, so rudely broken by Clinton, of offering the chancellorship to Chief Justice Savage, and, upon his declining it, to Reuben H. Walworth, then a young and most promising circuit judge. Later in the year, he named Daniel Mosely for the seventh circuit vacated by the resignation of Enos T. Throop, soon to become lieutenant-governor. These appointments marked him as a wise and safe executive. Van Buren understood this, and his correspondence with Hamilton, and others, while absent in the west, affords many interesting glimpses into his political methods in their immodest undress. As the candidate for governor, he was very active just now. His letters indicate that he gave personal attention to the selection of all delegates, and that he wanted only those in whom reliance could be absolutely placed. "Your views about the delegates are correct," he says to Hamilton. "It would be hazarding too much to make out a list." A list might contain names of men who could not be safely trusted at such a supreme moment; and Van Buren naturally desired that his nomination should be enthusiastically unanimous. The slightest protest from some disappointed friend of Nathaniel Pitcher, who was to be sacrificed for Throop, or of Joseph C. Yates, who was spending his years in forced retirement at Schenectady, would take away the glory and dull the effect of what was intended to be a sudden and unanimous uprising of the people's free and untrammelled delegates in favour of the senior United States senator, the Moses of the newly-born Democratic party.

The anticipated trouble at the Herkimer convention, however, did not appear. Delegates were selected to nominate Martin Van Buren and Enos T. Throop, and, after they had carried out the programme with unanimity, Pitcher ceased to act with the Jackson party. But the contest between the opposing parties proved exceedingly bitter and malevolent. It resembled the scandalous campaign of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1800, and the more recent Blaine and Cleveland canvass of 1884. Everything that could be tortured into apparent wrong was served up to listening thousands. Van Buren had about him the genius of Edwin Croswell, the unerring judgment of Benjamin F. Butler, the wisdom of William L. Marcy, the diplomacy of Benjamin Knower, and the scintillating brilliancy of Samuel A. Talcott; but like McGregor, Van Buren sat at the head of the table. He cautioned Noah, he complimented Coleman, he kept Southwick and Crary on the anti-masonic ticket, he selected the candidate for lieutenant-governor, he called for funds, and he insisted upon making the Adams administration odious. In referring to the President and his secretary of state, he did not personally join in the cry of bargain and sale, of fraud and corruption, of treachery and knavery; nor did he speak of them as "the Puritan and the Blackleg;" but for three years his criticisms had so associated the Administration with Federalism and the offensive alien and sedition laws which Jefferson condemned and defeated in 1800, that the younger Adams inherited the odium attached to his father a quarter of a century before.

The National Republicans retaliated with statements no less base and worthless, exhibiting Jackson as a military butcher and utterly illiterate, and publishing documents assailing his marriage, the chastity of his wife, and the execution of six militiamen convicted of mutiny. Thurlow Weed, who conducted the Adams campaign in the western part of the State, indulged in no personal attacks upon Jackson or his wife, refusing to send out the documents known as "Domestic Relations" and "Coffin Handbills." "The impression of the masses was that the six militiamen deserved hanging," he says, in his autobiography, "and I look back now with astonishment that enlightened and able statesmen could believe that General Jackson would be injured with the people by ruthlessly invading the sanctuary of his home, and permitting a lady whose life had been blameless to be dragged forth into the arena of politics."[257]

[Footnote 257: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 309.]

The result of the election for governor and lieutenant-governor was practically settled by the nomination of an anti-masonic independent ticket. Thurlow Weed advised Smith Thompson that votes enough to defeat him would be thrown away upon Southwick. Van Buren wrote Hamilton to "bet for me on joint-account five hundred dollars that Thompson will be defeated, and one hundred dollars on every thousand of a majority up to five thousand; or, if you can't do better, say five hundred on the result and fifty on every thousand up to ten." The returns justified his confidence. He received one hundred and thirty-six thousand votes to one hundred and six thousand for Thompson and thirty-three thousand for Southwick.[258] Francis Granger would probably have received the aggregate vote of Thompson and Southwick, or three thousand more than Van Buren. That Weed rightly understood the situation is evidenced by his insistence that a candidate be nominated acceptable to the Anti-Masons. "Van Buren's election," said Thurlow Weed, in his autobiography, the tears of disappointment and chagrin almost trickling down his cheeks when he wrote the words nearly half a century afterward, "enabled his party to hold the State for the twelve succeeding years."[259] But it was the last time, for many years, that Thurlow Weed did not have his way in the party. It was apparent that the opponents of Van Buren needed a leader who could lead; and, although it took years of patient effort to cement into a solid fighting mass all the heterogeneous elements that Clinton left and Van Buren could not control, the day was destined to come when one party flag floated over an organisation under the leadership of the stately form of Thurlow Weed.

[Footnote 258: Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

[Footnote 259: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 307.]



CHAPTER XXXIII

WILLIAM H. SEWARD AND THURLOW WEED

1830

Although the election in 1828 brought hopeless defeat to the National Republicans, apparently it imparted increased confidence and vigour to anti-Masonry. For a time, this movement resembled the growth of abolitionism at a later day, people holding that a secret society, which sought to paralyse courts, by closing the mouths of witnesses and otherwise unnerving the arm of justice, threatened the existence of popular government. The moral question, too, appealed strongly to persons prominent in social, professional, and church life, who increased the excitement by renouncing masonic ties and signifying their conversion to the new gospel of anti-Masonry. Cadwallader D. Colden, formerly the distinguished mayor of New York and a lawyer of high reputation, wrote an effective letter against Free Masonry, which was supplemented by the famous document of David Barnard, a popular Baptist divine of Chautauqua County. Henry Dana Ward established the Anti-Masonic Review in New York City, and Frederick Whittlesey became equally efficient and influential as editor of the Rochester Republican.

But the man who led the fight and became the centre from which all influences emanated was Thurlow Weed. Early in the struggle, as a member of the Morgan committee, he investigated the crime of 1826. Soon after, he founded the Anti-Masonic Enquirer of Rochester, whose circulation, unparalleled in those days, quickly included the western and northern counties of New York, and the neighbouring States of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Weed had been slow to yield to the influences which carried the question into politics, but, once having determined to appeal to the ballot-box, he set to work to strengthen and enlarge the party. It became a quasi-religious movement, ministers and churches, without any very far-reaching hopes and plans, labouring to bring about a spirit which should induce men to renounce Masonry; and in their zeal they worked with the singleness of thought and the accepted methods that dominate the revivalist and temperance advocate.

The aim of Thurlow Weed was to reach the people, and it mattered not how often he had to bear defeat, or the sneers of older politicians and an established press; he flung himself into the work with an indomitable spirit and an entire disregard of trouble and pain. Weed was a born fighter. He saw no visions, he believed in no omens, and he had no thought of bearing a charmed life; but he seems to have been indifferent to changes of season or the assaults of men, as he travelled from one end of the State to the other regardless of inclement weather, answering attacks with rough and rasping sarcasms, and meeting every crisis with the candour and courage of a John Wesley. One reads in his autobiography, almost with a feeling of incredulity, of the toil cheerfully borne and the privations eagerly endured while the guiding member of the Morgan committee.

Weed proved a great captain, not only in directing and inspiring anti-masonic movements, but in rallying to his standard a body of young men destined to occupy conspicuous places in the State and in the nation. Among those entering the Assembly, in 1829, were Philo C. Fuller of Livingston and Millard Fillmore of Erie. When Weed first met him, in 1824, Fuller was a law clerk in James Wadsworth's office, only twenty-three years old. But Weed noted his fitness for public place, and in 1828 had him nominated and elected to the Assembly.

Millard Fillmore was a year or two older. His youth, like that of Weed, had been crowded with everything except schooling. He learned the clothier's trade, he was apprenticed to a wool-carder, and he served his time at the woodpile, in the harvest field, and as chore boy. Only at odd moments did he get an education; but when he began studying law and teaching school he quickly evidenced a strength of intellect that distinguished him throughout life. Weed met him at an Adams convention in Buffalo, in 1828, and so favourably impressed was he with his ability that he suggested his nomination for the Assembly.

One year later, Weed insisted upon the nomination of Albert H. Tracy, of Erie, for the Senate. Tracy, who had already served six years in Congress, had the advantage of being well born and well educated. His father, a distinguished physician of Connecticut, urged him to adopt the profession of medicine, but when about ready for a degree, he entered his brother's law office at Madison, New York, and, in 1815, upon his admission to the bar, settled in Buffalo. He was then twenty-two years old. Four years later he entered Congress. He had earned this quick start by good ability; and so acceptably did he maintain himself, that, in spite of the acrimony existing between Clintonian and Bucktail, his name was regarded with much favour in 1825 as the successor of Rufus King in the United States Senate. Tracy was a man of marked ability. Though neither brilliant nor distinguished as a public speaker, he was a skilful advocate, easy and natural; with the help of a marvellous memory, and a calm, philosophic temperament, he ranked among the foremost lawyers of his day. Like James Tallmadge, he was inordinately ambitious for public life, and his amiability admirably fitted him for it; but like Tallmadge, he was not always governed by principle so much as policy. He showed at times a lamentable unsteadiness in his leadership, listening too often to the whispers of cunning opponents, and too easily separating himself from tried friends. In 1838, he practically left his party; and, soon after, he ceased to practise his profession, burying a life which had promised great usefulness and a brilliant career. In mien, size, bearing, visage, and conversation he was the counterpart of Thomas Jefferson when about the same age—a likeness of which Tracy was fully conscious.

Tracy's nomination to the Senate in 1829 came as a great surprise and a greater gratification. He had not taken kindly to the anti-masonic party. Only the year before, he dissuaded John Birdsall from accepting its nomination to Congress, because of the obloquy sure to follow defeat; but its strength, evidenced in the campaign of 1828, opened his eyes; and, while absent in Albany, unsuccessfully seeking a judgeship from Governor Throop, Thurlow Weed had him nominated. On his way home, he stopped at Rochester to call upon the great apostle of anti-Masonry, reaching the house before sunrise. "He was wrapped in a long camlet cloak," says Weed, "and wore an air of depression that betokened some great disappointment. 'You have been east?' I asked, for I had not heard of his absence from home. 'Yes,' he answered. 'Then you don't know what happened at Batavia yesterday?' He replied in the negative, and I continued: 'We had a convention and nominated a candidate for senator.' When he laughingly inquired, 'Who?' I said, 'Why, we nominated you.' He instantly jumped two feet from the floor and whooped like an Indian. Then, with brightened countenance and undisguised elation of spirit that he was to have a seat in the Senate for four years, he informed me of his disappointment in not obtaining either the judgeship, or the presidency of the branch of the United States Bank about to be established at Buffalo."[260]

[Footnote 260: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 340.]

Thus far, Thurlow Weed had won more reputation than money in Rochester. He dwelt in a cheap house in an obscure part of the village. Sometimes he had to borrow clothes to be presentable. "One day," says Henry B. Stanton, "I was standing in the street with him and Frederick Whittlesey when his little boy came up and said: 'Father, mother wants a shilling to buy some bread.' Weed put on a queer look, felt in his pockets, and remarked: 'That is a home appeal, but I'll be hanged if I've got the shilling.' Whittlesey drew out a silver dollar and gave the boy who ran off like a deer."[261] Yet, at that moment, Weed with his bare arms spattered with printer's ink, was the greatest power in the political life of Western New York.

[Footnote 261: H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, p. 25.]

But a scheme more helpful to Weed and to his party than the election of young men of large promise was just now on foot. The need of a newspaper at Albany, to represent the sentiments of the Anti-Masons had long been recognised; and, to enable Weed to establish it, he had been re-elected to the Assembly in the autumn of 1829. In the course of the winter the project quickly took shape; a fund of twenty-five hundred dollars was subscribed; and on March 22, 1830, appeared the first number of the Albany Evening Journal, in which were soon to be published the sparkling paragraphs that made it famous.[262] Weed's salary as editor was fixed at seven hundred and fifty dollars. The paper was scarcely larger than the cloud "like a man's hand;" and its one hundred and seventy subscribers, scattered from Buffalo to New York, became somewhat disturbed by the acrimonious and personal warfare instantly made upon it by Edwin Croswell of the Argus.

[Footnote 262: "Writing slowly and with difficulty, Weed was for twenty years the most sententious and pungent writer of editorial paragraphs on the American press."—Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 312.]

Croswell and Weed had been boys together at Catskill. They were neither intimates nor equals, although of the same age; for young Croswell had the advantage of position and education given him by his father, then publisher of the Recorder. To Weed, only such work came as a bare-footed, ragged urchin of eleven was supposed to be capable of doing. This was in 1808. The two boys did not meet again for twenty years, and then only to separate as Hamilton and Burr had parted, on the road to White Plains, in the memorable retreat from Manhattan in September, 1776. But Croswell, retaining the quiet, studious habits that characterised his youth, climbed rapidly. He had become editor of the Argus, state printer, and one of the ablest and most zealous members of the Albany Regency. He possessed a judgment that seemed almost inspired, with such untiring industry and rare ability that for years the Democratic press of the country looked upon the Argus as its guiding star.

Against this giant in journalism Thurlow Weed was now to be opposed. "You have a great responsibility resting upon your shoulders," wrote the accomplished Frederick Whittlesey, "but I know no man who is better able to meet it."[263] This was the judgment of a man who had personal knowledge of the tremendous power of Weed's pen. In his later years, Weed mellowed and forgave and forgot, but when he went to Albany, and for years before, as well as after, he seemed to enjoy striking an adversary. An explosion followed every blow. His sarcasms had needle-points, and his wit, sometimes a little gross, smarted like the sting of wasps. Often his attacks were so severe and merciless that the distress of his opponents created sympathy for them.

[Footnote 263: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 361.]

Very early in the Evening Journal's history Croswell invited Weed's fire. It is doubtful if the Argus' publisher thought or cared much about the character of the reply. Editors are not usually sensitive to the stricture of others. But when Weed's retort came, the rival writers remained without personal or business relations until, years afterward, Croswell, financially crushed by the failure of the Albany Canal Bank, and suspected of dishonesty, implored Weed's assistance to avoid a criminal indictment. In the meantime subscriptions poured into the Journal. The people recognised a fighter; the thoughtful distinguished a powerful mind; and politicians discovered such a genius for leadership that Albany became a political centre for the National Republicans as it was for the Bucktails. Within ten years after its establishment, the Evening Journal had the largest circulation of any political paper in the United States.

The birth year of the Journal also witnessed a reorganisation of the Anti-Masons. Heretofore, this party had declared only its own peculiar principles, relying for success upon the aid of the National Republicans; but, as it now sympathised with Henry Clay upon questions of governmental policy, especially the protection of American industry, it became evident that, to secure the greatest political strength, its future policy must be ardent antagonism to the principles of the Jackson party. Accordingly, at the Utica convention, held in August, 1830, it adopted a platform substantially embracing the views of the National Republicans. In acknowledgment of this change, the Adams party accepted the nomination of Francis Granger for governor and Samuel Stevens, a prominent lawyer of Albany City and the son of a distinguished Revolutionary officer, for lieutenant-governor.

The Bucktails did not get on so smoothly at their convention, held at Herkimer, on September 8. Erastus Root thought if Van Buren could afford to take the nomination away from Acting Governor Pitcher, he might deprive Enos T. Throop of the same honour. Throop, who was acting governor in the place of Van Buren, had proved a feeble executive. Besides, it could not be forgotten that Throop suffered Van Buren to humiliate Pitcher simply to make his own election sure. But Throop had friends if nothing else. On the first ballot, he received seventy-eight votes to forty for Root. The wrangle over lieutenant-governor proved less irritating, and Edward P. Livingston, after several ballots, secured seventy-seven votes.

These contests created unusual bitterness. Root had the offer of support from a working men's convention; and his failure to secure the Herkimer nomination left the working men, especially in New York City, in no mood to support the Bucktail choice. All this greatly encouraged the Anti-Masons. Granger and Stevens commanded the cordial support of the National Republicans, while Throop and Livingston were personally unpopular. Throop had the manners of DeWitt Clinton without a tithe of his ability, and Livingston, stripped of his family's intellectual traits, exhibited only its aristocratic pride. But there were obstacles in the way of anti-masonic success. Among other things, Francis Granger had become chairman of an anti-masonic convention at Philadelphia, which Weed characterised as a mistake. "The men from New York who urged it are stark mad," he wrote; "more than fifty thousand electors are now balancing their votes, and half of them want an excuse to vote against you."[264] Whether this "mistake" had the baleful influence that Weed anticipated, could not, of course, be determined. The returns, however, proved a serious disappointment.[265] Granger had carried the eighth or "infected district" by the astounding majority of over seven thousand in each of the first five districts. In the sixth district the anti-masonic vote fell over four thousand. It was evident that the Eastern masons, who had until now acted with the National Republicans, preferred the rule of the Regency to government by Anti-Masons.

[Footnote 264: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 2, p. 39.]

[Footnote 265: Throop, 128,842; Granger, 120,361.—Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

The year that witnessed this disheartening defeat of the Anti-Masons, welcomed into political life a young man of great promise, destined to play, for the next forty years, a conspicuous part in the history of his country. William Henry Seward was twenty-nine years old when elected to the State Senate; but to all appearances he might have been eight years younger. He was small, slender, boyish, punctilious in attire, his blue eyes and finely moulded chin and mouth giving an unconscious charm to his native composure, which attracted with a magnetism peculiarly its own; but there was nothing in his looks or manner to indicate that the chronicle of the century would record his name among the country's most prominent statesmen. He had neither the bold, full forehead of Marcy, nor the tall, commanding form of Talcott, although the boyish face suggested the refinement of Butler's features, softened by the blue eyes and light sandy hair. The only noticeable feature was the nose, neither Roman nor Semitic, but long, prominent and aggressive, with nostrils slightly distended. In after years, the brow grew heavier, the eyes more deeply set, and the chin, slightly drawn, gave greater prominence to the jaw and firmness to the mouth.

In 1830, Seward had not yet made his great legal contest in the Freeman case, setting up the then novel and unpopular defence of insanity, and establishing himself as one of the ablest and grittiest lawyers in the State. But early in that year, he made a speech, at an anti-masonic conference, which won the confidence of the delegates sufficiently to admit him to leadership with Thurlow Weed, Francis Granger, John C. Spencer, Frederick Whittlesey, William H. Maynard, and Albert H. Tracy. He was the youngest man in the council, younger than Whittlesey, four years younger than Weed, and eight years younger than Tracy. Granger and John C. Spencer belonged almost to an earlier generation. Millard Fillmore was one year his senior; but Fillmore, whose force and feeling made for conservatism, had not yet entered that coterie of brilliant anti-masonic leaders.

Seward was neither precocious nor gifted beyond his years. He had spirit and gifts, with sufficient temper and stubbornness to defend him against impositions at home or in college; but the love for adventure and the strenuous life, that characterised Weed's capricious youth, were entirely absent. As a boy, Weed, untidy even to slovenliness, explored the mountain and the valley, drifted among the resolute lads of the town, and lingered in gardens and orchards, infinitely lovable and capable of the noblest tenderness. On the contrary, Seward was precise, self-restrained, possessing the gravity and stillness of a youth who husbanded his resources as if conscious of physical frailty, yet wholesome and generous, and once, at least, splendidly reckless in his race for independence of a father who denied him the means of dressing in the fashion of other college students. By the time he reached the age of nineteen, he had run away to Georgia, taught school six months, studied law six months, and graduated with honour from Union College. Two years later, in 1822, he was admitted to the bar, and, having accepted a partnership with Elijah Miller, located at Auburn. To make this arrangement the more binding, he married his partner's daughter and became a member of his family.

Seward retained the political affiliations of his father, who was a Republican and a Bucktail, until the journey on the canal to Auburn opened his eyes to the importance of internal improvements. This so completely changed him into a Clintonian, that, in the autumn of 1824, he assailed the Albany Regency with great vigour and voted for DeWitt Clinton for governor. Four years later, he presided over a state convention of young National Republicans, favourable to the re-election of John Quincy Adams; and then witnessed that party's defeat and dispersion under the murderous fire of the Jackson forces, aided by Southwick and Crary on the anti-masonic ticket. Seward had not taken kindly to the anti-masonic party. What would have been his final attitude toward it is problematical had he not fallen under the influence of Weed. The first meeting of this illustrious pair, a very casual meeting, occurred in the summer of 1824 while Seward was passing through Rochester on his return from a visit to Niagara Falls. A wheel of the coach came off, and among the curious who quickly assembled "one taller and more effective, while more deferential and sympathising than the rest," says Seward, in his autobiography, "lent his assistance."[266] This was Thurlow Weed. "My acquaintance with William H. Seward grew rapidly on subsequent occasions," adds Weed, "when he was called to Rochester on professional business. Our views in relation to public affairs, and our estimate of public men, rarely differed, and in regard to anti-Masonry he soon became imbued with my own opinions."[267]

[Footnote 266: Autobiography of William H. Seward, p. 56.]

[Footnote 267: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 137.]

This was the key that opened the way to great achievement. Tracy listened to others and was lost; Fillmore finally preferred the judgment of his associates in Washington, and is to-day without a statue even in his own home; but Seward kept closely in touch with the man whose political judgment inspired him with confidence. "Come now and let us reason together," said Weed, and together these two friends worked out the policy of success. "I saw in him, in a remarkable degree," continued Weed, "rapidly developing elements of character which could not fail to render him eminently useful in public life. I discerned also unmistakable evidences of stern integrity, earnest patriotism, and unswerving fidelity. I saw also in him a rare capacity for intellectual labour, with an industry that never tired and required no relaxation; to all of which was added a purity and delicacy of habit and character almost feminine."[268]

[Footnote 268: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 423.]

In his Autobiography, Seward says he joined the anti-masonic party because he thought it the only active political organisation opposed to Jackson and Van Buren, whose policy seemed to him to involve "not only the loss of our national system of revenue, and of enterprises of state and national improvement, but also the future disunion of the States, and ultimately the universal prevalence of slavery."[269] Once an Anti-Mason, he became, like Weed, a zealous and aggressive member of the party. He embodied its creed in resolutions, he attended its first national convention at Philadelphia, he visited John Quincy Adams at Quincy—just then an anti-masonic candidate for Congress—he aided in the establishment of the Albany Evening Journal, and, a little later, as a delegate to the party's second national convention at Baltimore, he saw Chief Justice Marshall upon the platform, sat beside Thaddeus Stevens, and voted for William Wirt as an anti-masonic candidate for President. It was during his attendance upon the Philadelphia convention that Thurlow Weed had him nominated, without his knowledge, for state senator. "While stopping at Albany on my way south," he says,[270] "Weed made some friendly but earnest inquiries concerning my pecuniary ability, whether it was sufficient to enable me to give a portion of my time to public office. When I answered my ability was sufficient, but I had neither expectation nor wish for office, he replied that he had learned from my district enough to induce him to think it possible that the party might desire my nomination to the Senate."

[Footnote 269: Autobiography of William H. Seward, p. 74.]

[Footnote 270: Autobiography of William H. Seward, p. 79.]

Thurlow Weed had many claims to the regard of his contemporaries, but the greatest was the intelligence that enabled him to discern the rising genius of a recruit to anti-Masonry whose name was to help make illustrious any cause which he served.



CHAPTER XXXIV

VAN BUREN'S ENEMIES MAKE HIM VICE PRESIDENT

1829-1832

Martin Van Buren's single message as governor exhibited a knowledge of conditions and needs that must rank it among the ablest state-papers in the archives of the capitol. Unlike some of his predecessors, with their sentences of stilted formality, he wrote easily and with vigour. His message, however, was marred by the insincerity which shows the politician. He approved canals, but, by cunningly advising "the utmost prudence" in taking up new enterprises, he coolly disparaged the Chenango project; he shrewdly recommended the choice of presidential electors by general ticket instead of by congressional districts, knowing that opposition to the change died with DeWitt Clinton. With full knowledge of what he himself had done, in the last campaign, in urging upon John A. Hamilton the necessity of raising funds, he boldly attacked the use of money in elections, proposing "the imposition of severe penalties upon the advance of money by individuals for any purposes connected with elections except the single one of printing." It is not surprising, perhaps, that a man of Van Buren's personal ambition found himself often compelled, for the sake of his own career, to make his public devotion to principle radically different from his practice; but it is amazing that he should thus brazenly assume the character of a reformer before the ink used in writing Hamilton was dry.

The prominent feature of Van Buren's message was the bank question, which, to do him credit, he discussed with courage, urging a general law for chartering banks without the payment of money bonus, and declaring that the only concern of the State should be to make banks and their circulation secure. In accord with this suggestion, he submitted the "safety fund" project, subsequently enacted into law, providing that all banks should contribute to a fund, administered under state supervision, to secure dishonoured banknotes. There was a great deal of force in Van Buren's reasoning, and the New York City banks, which, at first, declined to recharter under the law, finally accepted the scheme with apparent cheerfulness. Had the real test, which came with the hard times of 1837, not broken it down, Van Buren's confidence in the project might have continued. After that catastrophe, which was destined to prove his Waterloo, he had confidence in nothing except gold and silver.

As anticipated, Van Buren's inauguration as governor preceded his appointment as secretary of state under President Jackson only seventy days. It gave him barely time gracefully to assume the duties of one position before taking up those of the other. But, in making the change, he did not forget to keep an anchor to windward by having the amiable and timid Charles E. Dudley succeed him in the United States Senate. Dudley had the weakness of many cultured, charming men, who are without personal ambition or executive force. He was incapable of taking part in debate, or of exerting any perceptible influence upon legislation in the committee-room. Nevertheless, he was sincere in his friendships; and the opinion obtained that if Van Buren had desired for any reason to return to the Senate, Dudley would have gracefully retired in his favour.

The appointments of Green C. Bronson as attorney-general, and Silas Wright as comptroller of state, atoned for Dudley's election; for they brought conspicuously to the front two men whose unusual ability greatly honoured the State. Bronson had already won an enviable reputation at the bar of Oneida County. He was now forty years old, a stalwart in the Jackson party, bold and resolute, with a sturdy vigour of intellect that was to make him invaluable to the Regency. He had been a Clintonian surrogate of his county and a Clintonian member of the Assembly in 1822, but he had changed since then, and his present appointment was to give him twenty-two years of continuous public life as a Democrat, lifting him from justice to chief justice of the Supreme Court, and transferring him finally to the Court of Appeals.

Silas Wright was a younger man than Bronson, not yet thirty-five years old; but his admittance to the Regency completely filled the great gap left by Marcy's retirement. Like Marcy, he was large and muscular, although with a face of more refinement; like Marcy, too, he dressed plainly. He had an affable manner stripped of all affectation. From his first entrance into public life, he had shown a great capacity for the administration of affairs. He looked like a great man. His unusually high, square forehead indicated strength of intellect, and his lips, firmly set, but round and full, gave the impression of firmness, with a generous and gentle disposition. There was no evidence of brilliancy or daring. Nor did he have a politician's face, such as Van Buren's. Even in the closing years of Van Buren's venerable life, when people used often to see him, white-haired and bright-eyed, walking on Wall Street arm in arm with his son John, his was still the face of a master diplomatist. Wright, on the other hand, looked more like a strong, fearless business man. His manner of speaking was not unlike Rufus King's. He spoke slowly, without rhetorical embellishment, or other arts of the orator; but, unlike King, he had an unpleasant voice; nevertheless, if one may accept the opinion of a contemporary and an intimate, "there was a subdued enthusiasm in his style of speaking that was irresistibly captivating." The slightly rasping voice was "almost instantly forgotten in the beauty of his argument," which was "clear, forcible, logical and persuasive."[271]

[Footnote 271: John S. Jenkins, Lives of the Governors of New York, p. 790.]

Silas Wright had already been in public life eight years, first as surrogate of St. Lawrence County, afterward as state senator, and later as a member of Congress. He had also increased his earnings at the bar by holding the offices of justice of the peace, town clerk, inspector of schools, and postmaster at Canton. From the outset, he had allied himself with the Regency party, and, with unfailing regularity he had supported all its measures, even those which his better judgment opposed. His ability and gentle manners, too, apparently won the people; for, although St. Lawrence was a Clintonian stronghold, a majority of its voters believed in their young office-holder—a fact that was the more noteworthy since he had broken faith with them. In the campaign of 1823, he favoured the choice of presidential electors by the people; afterward, in the Senate, he voted against the measure. So bitter was the resentment that followed this bill's defeat, that many of the seventeen senators, who voted against it, ever afterward remained in private life. But Wright was forgiven, and, two years later, sent to Congress, where his public career really began. In a bill finally amended into the tariff act of 1828, he sought to remove the complaint of manufacturers that the tariff of 1824 was partial to iron interests, and the criticism of agriculturalists, that the woollens bill, of 1827, favoured the manufacturer. In this debate, he gave evidence of that genius for legislation which was destined soon to shine in the United States Senate at a time when some of the fiercest political fights of the century were being waged.

It is evident Van Buren did not appreciate the capacity of Silas Wright in 1831; otherwise, instead of William L. Marcy, Wright would have succeeded Nathan Sanford in the United States Senate.[272] Marcy had made an excellent state comptroller; his able and luminous reports had revealed the necessity of preserving the general fund, and the danger of constructing additional lateral canals. As a judge of the Supreme Court, also, his sound judgment had won him an enviable reputation, especially in the trial of the Morgan abductors, which was held at a time of great excitement and intense feeling. But, as a United States senator, Marcy failed to realise the expectations of his friends. Very likely two years were insufficient to test fairly his legislative capacity. Besides, his services, however satisfactory, would naturally be dwarfed in the presence of the statesmen then engaged in the great constitutional debate growing out of the Foote resolution, limiting the sale of public lands. Congress was rapidly making history; and the Senate, lifted into great prominence by the speeches of Webster and Hayne, had become a more difficult place than ever for a new member. At all events, Marcy did not exhibit the parliamentary spirit that seeks to lead, or which delights in the struggles of the arena where national reputations are made. He, moreover, had abundant opportunity. Thomas H. Benton says that the session of 1832 became the most prolific of party topics and party contests in the annals of Congress; yet Marcy was dumb on those subjects that were interesting every one else.

[Footnote 272: "Marcy was the immediate predecessor of Wright as state comptroller and United States senator. Each possessed rare talents, but they were totally dissimilar in mental traits and political methods. Both were statesmen of scrupulous honesty, who despised jobbery. Marcy was wily and loved intrigue. Wright was proverbially open and frank. Marcy never trained himself to be a public speaker, and did not shine in the hand-to-hand conflicts of a body that was lustrous with forensic talents. A man's status in the United States Senate is determined by the calibre and skill of the opponents who are selected to cross weapons with him in the forum. Wright was unostentatious, studious, thoughtful, grave. Whenever he delivered an elaborate speech the Whigs set Clay, Webster, Ewing, or some other of their leaders to reply to him."—H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, p. 39.]

Even when the great opportunity of Marcy's senatorial career was thrust upon him—the defence of Van Buren at the time of the latter's rejection as minister to Great Britain—he failed signally. The controversy growing out of Jackson's cabinet disagreements, ostensibly because of the treatment of Mrs. Eaton, wife of the Secretary of War, but really because of Calhoun's hostility to Van Buren, due to the President's predilections for him as his successor, had made it evident to Van Buren that an entire reorganisation of the Cabinet should take place. Accordingly, on April 11, 1831, he opened the way, by voluntarily and chivalrously resigning. President Jackson soon after appointed him minister to England, and Van Buren sailed for his post. But when the question of his confirmation came up, in the following December, Calhoun and his friends, joined by Webster and Clay, formed a combination to defeat it. Calhoun's opposition was simply the enmity of a political rival, but Webster sought to put his antagonism on a higher level, by calling Van Buren to account for instructions addressed to the American Minister at London in regard to our commercial relations with the West Indian, Bahama, and South American colonies of England.

In 1825 Parliament permitted American vessels to trade with British colonies, on condition that American ports be opened within a year to British vessels on the same terms as to American vessels. The Adams administration, failing to comply with the statute within the year, set up a counter prohibition, which was in force when Van Buren, wishing to reopen negotiations, instructed McLane, the American Minister at London, to say to England that the United States had, as the friends of the present administration contended at the time, been wrong in refusing the privileges granted by the act of 1825, but that our "views have been submitted to the people of the United States, and the counsels by which your conduct is now directed are the result of the judgment expressed by the only earthly tribunal to which the late administration was amenable for its acts." In other words, Van Buren had introduced party contests in an official dispatch, not brazenly or offensively, perhaps, but with questionable taste, and, for this, the great senators combined and spoke against him—Webster, Clay, Hayne, Ewing of Ohio, Holmes of Maine, and seven others—"just a dozen and equal to a full jury," wrote Benton. Webster said he would pardon almost anything when he saw true patriotism and sound American feeling, but he could not forgive the sacrifice of these to party. Clay characterised his language as that of an humble vassal to a proud and haughty lord, prostrating the American eagle before the British lion. In the course of his remarks, Clay also referred, in an incidental way, to the odious system of proscription practised in the State of New York, which, he alleged, Van Buren had introduced into the general government.

Only four senators spoke in Van Buren's defence, recalling the weak protest made in the Legislature on the day of DeWitt Clinton's removal as canal commissioner, but this gave William L. Marcy the greater opportunity for acquitting himself with glory and vindicating his friend. It was not a strong argument he had to meet. Van Buren had been unfortunate in his language, although in admitting that the United States was wrong in refusing the privileges offered by the British law of 1825, he did nothing more than had Gallatin, whom Adams sent to England to remedy the same difficulty. Furthermore, by assuming a more conciliatory course Van Buren had been entirely successful. To Webster's suggestion of lack of patriotism, and to Clay's declaration that the American eagle had been prostrated before the British lion, Marcy might have pointed to Van Buren's exalted patriotism during the War of 1812, citing the conscription act, which he drafted, and which Benton declared the most drastic piece of war legislation ever enacted into law. To Clay's further charge, that he brought with him to Washington the odious system of proscription, the New York senator could truthfully have retorted that the system of removals, inaugurated by Jackson, was in full swing before Van Buren reached the national capital; that if he did not oppose it he certainly never encouraged it; that of seventeen foreign representatives, the Secretary of State had removed only four; and that, in making appointments as governor, he never departed from the rule of refusing either to displace competent and trustworthy men, or to appoint the dishonest and incompetent. He could also have read Lorenzo Hoyt's wail that Van Buren would "not lend the least weight of his influence to displace from office such men as John Duer," Adams' appointee as United States attorney at New York. But Marcy did nothing of the kind. He made no use of the abundant material at hand, out of which he might have constructed a brilliant speech if not a perfect defence. Quite on the contrary he contented himself simply with replying to Clay's slur. He defended the practice of political proscription by charging that both sides did it. Ambrose Spencer, he said, the man whom Clay was now ready to honour, had begun it, and he himself "saw nothing wrong in the rule that to the victors belong the spoils of the enemy."

If the conspiracy of distinguished statesmen to defeat Van Buren's confirmation was shallow and in bad taste, Marcy's defence was scarcely above the standard of a ward politician. Indeed, the attempted defence of his friend became the shame of both; since it forever fixed upon Marcy the odium of enunciating a vicious principle that continued to corrupt American political life for more than half a century, and confirmed the belief that Van Buren was an inveterate spoilsman.[273]

[Footnote 273: "To this celebrated and execrable defence Van Buren owes much of the later and unjust belief that he was an inveterate spoilsman. Benton truly says that Van Buren's temper and judgment were both against it."—Edward M. Shepard, Life of Martin Van Buren, p. 233.]

Probably an abler defence would in no wise have changed the result. From the first a majority of senators had opposed Van Buren's confirmation, several of whom refrained from voting to afford Vice President Calhoun the exquisite satisfaction of giving the casting vote. "It will kill him, sir, kill him dead," Calhoun boasted in Benton's hearing; "he will never kick, sir, never kick." This was the thought of other opponents. But Thomas H. Benton believed otherwise. "You have broken a minister and elected a Vice President," he said. "The people will see nothing in it but a combination of rivals against a competitor."

This also was the prophecy of Thurlow Weed. While the question of rejection was still under consideration, that astute editor declared "it would change the complexion of his prospects from despair to hope. His presses would set up a fearful howl of proscription. He would return home as a persecuted man, throw himself upon the sympathy of the party, be nominated for Vice President, and huzzaed into office at the heels of General Jackson."[274] On the evening Van Buren heard of his rejection, in London, Lord Auckland, afterward governor-general of India, said to him: "It is an advantage to a public man to be the subject of an outrage."

[Footnote 274: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 1, p. 375.]

In New York, Van Buren's party took his rejection as the friends of DeWitt Clinton had taken his removal as canal commissioner. Indignation meetings were held and addresses voted. In stately words and high-sounding sentences, the Legislature addressed the President, promising to avenge the indignity offered to their most distinguished fellow citizen; to which Jackson replied with equal warmth and skill, assuming entire responsibility for the instructions given the American minister at London and for removals from office; and acquitting the Secretary of State of all participation in the occurrences between himself and Calhoun. He had called Van Buren to the State Department, the President said, to meet the general wish of the Republican party, and his signal success had not only justified his selection, but his public services had in nowise diminished confidence in his integrity and great ability. This blare of trumpets set the State on fire; and various plans were proposed for wiping out the insult of the Senate. Some suggested Dudley's resignation and Van Buren's re-election, that he might meet his slanderers face to face; others thought he should be made governor; but the majority, guided by the wishes of the Cabinet, and the expression of friends in other States, insisted that his nomination as Vice President would strengthen the ticket and open the way to the Presidency in 1836.

When, therefore, the Democratic national convention met at Baltimore, in May, 1832, only one name was seriously considered for Vice President. Van Buren had opponents in P.P. Barbour of Virginia and Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, but his friends had the convention. On the first ballot, he received two hundred and sixty votes out of three hundred and twenty-six. Barbour had forty, Johnson twenty-six. Delegates understood that they must vote for Van Buren or quarrel with Jackson.

Van Buren returned from London on July 5. New York was filled with a multitude to welcome him back. At a great dinner, ardent devotion, tempered by decorum, showed the loyalty of old neighbours, in whose midst he had lived, and over whom he had practically reigned for nearly a quarter of a century. Instead of killing him, the Senate's rejection had swung open a wider door for his entrance to the highest office in the gift of the people.



CHAPTER XXXV

FORMATION OF THE WHIG PARTY

1831-1834

The campaign of 1832 seemed to be without an issue, save Van Buren's rejection as Minister to Great Britain, and Jackson's wholesale removals from office. Yet it was a period of great unrest. The debate of Webster and Hayne had revealed two sharply defined views separating the North and the South; and, although the compromise tariff act of 1832, supported by all parties, and approved by the President, had temporarily removed the question of Protection from the realm of discussion, the decided stand in favour of a State's power to annul an act of Congress had made a profound impression in the North. Under these circumstances, it was deemed advisable to organise a Clay party, and, to this end, a state convention of National Republicans, assembled in Albany in June, 1831, selected delegates to a convention, held in Baltimore in December, which unanimously nominated Henry Clay for President. The Anti-Masons, who had previously nominated William Wirt, of Maryland, and were in practical accord with the National Republicans on all questions relating to federal authority, agreed to join them, if necessary, to sustain these principles.

A new issue, however, brought them together with great suddenness. Though the charter of the United States Bank did not expire until 1836, the subject of its continuance had occupied public attention ever since President Jackson, in his first inaugural address, raised the question of its constitutionality; and when Congress convened, in December, 1831, the bank applied for an extension of its charter. Louis McLane, then secretary of the treasury, advised the president of the bank that Jackson would approve its charter, if certain specified modifications were accepted. These changes proved entirely satisfactory to the bank; but Webster and Clay declared that the subject had assumed aspects too decided in the public mind and in Congress, to render any compromise or change of front expedient or desirable. Later in the session, the bill for the bank's recharter passed both branches of Congress. Then came the President's veto. The act and the veto amounted to an appeal to the people, and in an instant the country was on fire.

Under these conditions, the anti-masonic state convention, confident of the support of all elements opposed to the re-election of Andrew Jackson, met at Utica on June 21, 1832. Albert H. Tracy of Buffalo became its chairman. After he had warmed the delegates into enthusiastic applause by his happy and cogent reasons for the success of the party, Francis Granger was unanimously renominated for governor, with Samuel Stevens for lieutenant-governor. The convention also announced an electoral ticket, equally divided between Anti-Masons and National Republicans, headed by James Kent[275] and John C. Spencer. In the following month, the National Republicans adopted the anti-masonic state and electoral tickets. It looked like a queer combination, a "Siamese twin party" it was derisively called, in which somebody was to be cheated. But the embarrassment, if any existed, seems to have been fairly overcome by Thurlow Weed, who patiently traversed the State harmonising conflicting opinions in the interest of local nominations.

[Footnote 275: "Chancellor Kent's bitter, narrow, and unintelligent politics were in singular contrast with his extraordinary legal equipment and his professional and literary accomplishments."—Edward M. Shepard, Life of Martin Van Buren, p. 246.]

Meantime, the Van Buren leaders proceeded with rare caution. There had been some alarming defections, notably the secession of the New York Courier and Enquirer, now edited by James Watson Webb, and the refusal of Erastus Root longer to follow the Jackson standard. Samuel Young had also been out of humour. Young declared for Clay in 1824, and had inclined to Adams in 1828. It was in his heart also to rally to the support of Clay in 1832. But, looking cautiously to the future, he could not see his way to renounce old associates altogether; and so, as evidence of his return, he published an able paper in defence of the President's veto. There is no indication, however, that Erastus Root was penitent. He had been playing a double game too long, and although his old associates treated him well, electing him speaker of the Assembly in 1827, 1828, and again in 1830, he could not overlook their failure to make him governor. Finally, after accepting a nomination to Congress, his speeches indicated that he was done forever with the party of Jackson.

The Republican convention, which met at Herkimer, in September, 1832, nominated William L. Marcy for governor. Marcy had reluctantly left the Supreme Court in 1831; and he did not now take kindly to giving up the United States Senate, since the veto message had made success in the State doubly doubtful. But no other candidate excited any interest. Enos T. Throop had been practically ridiculed into retirement. He was nicknamed "Small-light," and the longer he served the smaller and the more unpopular he became. If we may accept the judgment of contemporaries, he lacked all the engaging qualities that usually characterise a public official, and possessed all the faults which exaggerate limited ability.

Marcy had both tact and ability, but his opposition to the Chenango canal weakened him in that section of the State. The Chenango project had been a thorn in the Regency's side ever since Francis Granger, in 1827, forced a bill for its construction through the Assembly, changing Chenango from a reliable Jackson county to a Granger stronghold; but Van Buren now took up the matter, assuring the people that the next Legislature should pass a law for the construction of the canal, and to bind the contract Edward P. Livingston, with his family pride and lack of gifts, was unceremoniously set aside as lieutenant-governor for John Tracy of Chenango. This bargain, however, did not relieve Marcy's distress. He still had little confidence in his success. "I have looked critically over the State," he wrote Jesse Hoyt on the first day of October, "and have come to the conclusion that probably we shall be beaten. The United States Bank is in the field, and I can not but fear the effect of fifty or one hundred thousand dollars expended in conducting the election in such a city as New York."

This was a good enough excuse, perhaps, to give Hoyt. But Marcy's despair was due more to the merciless ridicule of Thurlow Weed's pen than to the bank's money. Marcy had thoughtlessly included, in one of his bills for court expenses, an item of fifty cents paid for mending his pantaloons; and the editor of the Evening Journal, in his inimitable way, made the "Marcy pantaloons" and the "Marcy patch" so ridiculous that the slightest reference to it in any company raised immoderate laughter at the expense of the candidate for governor. At Rochester, the Anti-Masons suspended at the top of a long pole a huge pair of black trousers, with a white patch on the seat, bearing the figure 50 in red paint. Reference to the unfortunate item often came upon him suddenly. "Now, ladies and gentlemen," shouted the driver of a stage-coach on which Marcy had taken passage, "hold on tight, for this hole is as large as the one in the Governor's breeches." All this was telling hard upon Marcy's spirits and the party's confidence. Jesse Hoyt wrote him that something must be done to silence the absurd cry; but the candidate was without remedy. "The law provided for the payment of the judge's expenses," he said, "and while on this business some work was done on pantaloons for which the tailor charged fifty cents. It was entered on the account, and went into the comptroller's hands without a particle of reflection as to how it would appear in print." There was no suggestion of dishonesty. Weed was too skilful to raise a point that might be open to discussion, but he kept the whole State in laughter at the candidate's expense. Marcy felt so keenly the ridiculous position in which his patched pantaloons put him that, although he usually relished jokes on himself, "the patch" was a distressing subject long after he had been thrice elected governor.

The Granger forces had, however, something more influential to overcome than a "Marcy patch." Very early in the campaign it dawned upon the bankers of the State that, if the United States Bank went out of business, government deposits would come to them; and from that moment every jobber, speculator and money borrower, as well as every bank officer and director, rejoiced in the veto. The prejudices of the people, always easily excited against moneyed corporations, had already turned against the "monster monopoly," with its exclusive privileges for "endangering the liberties of the country," and now the banks joined them in their crusade. In other words, the Jackson party was sustained by banks and the opponents of banks, by men of means and men without means, by the rich and the poor. It was a great combination, and it resulted in the overwhelming triumph of Marcy and the Jackson electoral ticket.[276]

[Footnote 276: "On one important question, Mr. Weed and I were antipodes. Believing that a currency in part of paper, kept at par with specie, and current in every part of our country, was indispensable, I was a zealous advocate of a National Bank; which he as heartily detested, believing that its supporters would always be identified in the popular mind with aristocracy, monopoly, exclusive privileges, etc. He attempted, more than once, to overbear my convictions on this point, or at least preclude their utterance, but was at length brought apparently to comprehend that this was a point on which we must agree to differ."—Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 314.]

The western anti-masonic counties gave their usual majorities for Francis Granger, but New York City and the districts bordering the Hudson, with several interior counties, wiped them out and left the Jackson candidate ten thousand ahead.[277]

[Footnote 277: William L. Marcy, 166,410; Francis Granger, 156,672. Civil List, State of New York (1887), p. 166.]

This second defeat of Francis Granger had a depressing influence upon his party. It had been a contest of giants. Webster's great speeches in support of the United States Bank were accepted as triumphant answers to the arguments of the veto message, but nothing seemed capable of breaking the solid Jackson majorities in the eastern and southern counties; and, upon the assembling of the Legislature, in January, 1833, signs of disintegration were apparent among the Anti-Masons. Albert H. Tracy, despairing of success, began accepting interviews with Martin Van Buren, who sought to break anti-Masonry by conciliating its leaders. It was the voice of the tempter. Tracy listened and then became a missionary, inducing John Birdsall and other members of the Legislature to join him. Tracy had been an acknowledged leader. He was older, richer, and of larger experience than most of his associates, and, in appealing to him, Van Buren exhibited the rare tact that characterised his political methods. But the Senator from Buffalo could not do what Van Buren wanted him to do; he could not win Seward or capture the Evening Journal. "We had both been accustomed for years," says Thurlow Weed, "to allow Tracy to do our political thinking, rarely differing from him in opinion, and never doubting his fidelity. On this occasion, however, we could not see things from his standpoint, and, greatly to his annoyance, we determined to adhere to our principles."[278]

[Footnote 278: Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 421. Seward, in his Autobiography, says of Tracy, p. 166: "Albert H. Tracy is ... a man of original genius, of great and varied literary acquirements, of refined tastes, and high and honourable principles. He seems the most eloquent, I might almost say the only eloquent man in the Senate. He is plainly clothed and unostentatious. Winning in his address and gifted in conversation, you would fall naturally into the habit of telling him all your weaknesses, and giving him unintentionally your whole confidence. He is undoubtedly very ambitious; though he protests, and doubtless half the time believes, that dyspepsia has humbled all his ambition, and broken the vaultings of his spirit. I doubt not that, dyspepsia taken into the account, he will be one of the great men of the nation."]

It must be admitted that many reasons existed well calculated to influence Tracy's action. William Wirt had carried only Vermont, and Henry Clay had received but forty-nine out of two hundred and sixty-five electoral votes. Anti-Masonry had plainly run its course. It aroused a strong public sentiment against secret societies, until most of the lodges in western New York had surrendered their charters; but it signally failed to perpetuate its hold upon the masses. The surrendered charters were soon reissued, and the institution itself became more popular and attractive than ever. These disheartening conditions were re-emphasised in the election of 1833. The county of Washington, before an anti-masonic stronghold, returned a Jackson assemblyman; and the sixth district, which had elected an anti-masonic senator in 1829, now gave a Van Buren member over seven thousand majority. But the most surprising change occurred in the eighth, or "infected district." Three years before it had given Granger thirteen thousand majority; now it returned Tracy to the Senate by less than two hundred. For a long time his election was in doubt. Of the one hundred and twenty-eight assemblymen, one hundred and four belonged to the Jackson party, and of the eight senators elected Tracy alone represented the opposition.

It was certainly not an encouraging outlook, and the leaders, after full consultation, virtually declared the anti-masonic party dissolved. But this did not, however, mean an abandonment of the field. It was impossible for men who believed in internal improvements, in the protection of American industries, and in the United States Bank, to surrender to a party controlled by the Albany Regency, which was rapidly drifting into hostility to these great principles and into the acceptance of dangerous state rights' doctrines. In giving up anti-Masonry, therefore, Weed, Seward, Granger, Whittlesey, Fillmore, John C. Spencer, and other leaders, simply intended to let go one name and reorganise under another. Several Anti-Masons, following the lead of Tracy, fell by the way, but practically all the people who made up the anti-masonic and National Republican forces continued to act together.