Volume I Part 18 (1/2)
Van Buren had shown, from his first entrance into public life, a remarkable faculty for winning men to his own way of thinking. His criticism of Clinton was now directed with characteristic sagacity and skill. His argument, that the object of those who sustained Clinton was to establish a conspiracy with the Federalists at home and abroad, for the overthrow of the Republican party in the nation as well as in the State, seemed justified by the open support of William W. Van Ness, the gifted young justice of the Supreme Court. Further to confirm his contention, Jonas Platt, now of the Supreme bench, and Jacob Rutsen Van Rensselaer of Columbia, a bold, active, and most zealous partisan, who had served in the Legislature and as secretary of state, made no secret of their intention to indorse Clinton's nomination, and, if necessary, to ride over the State to secure his election. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances nothing could discredit the Clinton agitation, with the more reasonable part of the Republican legislators, more than Van Buren's charge, strengthened by such supporting evidence.
The ca.n.a.l influences of the time, however, were too strong for any ingenuity of argument, or adroitness in the raising of alarm, to prevail; and so the skilful manager turned his attention to Joseph G.
Yates, a judge of the Supreme Court, as an opposing candidate who might be successful. Yates belonged to the old-fas.h.i.+oned American type of handsome men. He had a large, shapely head, a prominent nose, full lips, and a face cleanly shaven and rosy. His bearing was excellent, his voice, manner, and everything about him bespoke the gentleman; but neither in aspect nor manner of speech did he measure up to his real desire for political preferment. Yet he had many popular qualities which commended him to the rank and file of his party. He was a man of abstemious habits and boundless industry, whose courtesy and square dealing made him a favourite. Few errors of a political character could be charged to his account. He had favoured Clinton for President; he had supported Tompkins and the war with great zeal, and, to the full extent of his ability and influence, he had proved an ardent friend of the ca.n.a.l policy.
It had been a trait of the Yates family--ever since its founder, an enterprising English yeoman, a native of Leeds in Yorks.h.i.+re, had settled in the colony during the troublous days of Charles I.--to espouse any movement or improvement which should benefit the people.
Joseph had already shown his activity and usefulness in founding Union College; he regarded the proposed ca.n.a.l as a long step in the development and prosperity of the State; but he did not take kindly to Van Buren's suggestion that he become a candidate for governor against Clinton. In this respect he was unlike Robert, chief justice, his father's cousin, who first ran for governor on the Federalist ticket at the suggestion of Hamilton, and, three years later, as an anti-Federalist candidate at the suggestion of George Clinton, suffering defeat on both occasions. He was, however, as ambitious as the old Chief Justice; and, had the time seemed ripe, he would have responded to the call of the Kinderhook statesman as readily as Robert did to the appeals of Hamilton and George Clinton.
Peter B. Porter was more willing. He belonged to the Tompkins-Van Buren faction which nourished the hope that the soldier, who had recently borne the flag of his country in triumph on several battlefields, would carry off the prize, although the caucus was to convene in less than forty-eight hours. There could be no doubt of General Porter's strength with the people. He had served his State and his country with a fidelity that must forever cla.s.s his name with the bravest officers of the War of 1812. He rode a horse like a centaur; and, wherever he appeared, whether equipped for a fight, or off for a hunt through the forests of the Niagara frontier, his easy, familiar manners surrounded him with hosts of friends. The qualities that made him a famous soldier made him, also, a favoured politician. As county clerk, secretary of state, and congressman, he had taken the keenest interest in the great questions that agitated the political life of the opening century; and as a ca.n.a.l commissioner, in 1811, he had supported DeWitt Clinton with all the energy of an enthusiast.
At this time Porter was forty-four years old. He was a graduate of Yale, a student of the law, and as quick in intelligence as he was pleasing of countenance. His speeches, enlivened with gleams of humour, rays of fancy, and flashes of eloquence, expressed the thoughts of an honourable, upright statesman who was justly esteemed of the first order of intellect. Certainly, if any one could take the nomination from DeWitt Clinton it was Peter B. Porter.
It is possible, had the nomination been left exclusively to Republican members of the Legislature, as it had been for forty years, Porter might have been the choice of his party. Spencer, however, evidently feared Van Buren's subtle control of the Legislature; for, early in the winter, he began encouraging Republicans living in counties represented by Federalists, to demand a voice in the nominating caucus. It was a novel idea. Up to this time, governors and lieutenant-governors had been nominated by members of the Legislature; yet the plan now suggested was so manifestly fair that few dared oppose it. Why should the Republicans of Albany County, it was asked, be denied the privilege of partic.i.p.ating in the nomination of a governor simply because, being in a minority, they were unrepresented in the Legislature? There was no good reason; and, although Van Buren well understood that such counties would return delegates generally favourable to Clinton, he was powerless to defeat the reform. The result was the beginning of nominating conventions, composed of delegates selected by the people, and the nomination of DeWitt Clinton.
The blow to Van Buren was a severe one. ”An obscure painter of the Flemish school,” wrote Clinton to his friend and confidant, Henry Post, ”has made a very ludicrous and grotesque representation of Jonah immediately after he was ejected from the whale's belly. He is represented as having a very bewildered and dismal physiognomy, not knowing from whence he came nor to what place bound. Just so looks Van Buren, the leader of the opposition party.”[189] Yet Van Buren seems to have taken his defeat with more serenity and dignity than might have been expected. Statesmen of far n.o.bler character have allowed themselves to indulge in futile demonstrations of disappointment and anger, but Van Buren displayed a remarkable evenness of temper. He advocated with ability and sincerity the bill to construct the ca.n.a.l, which pa.s.sed the Legislature on April 15, the last day of the session.
Indeed, of the eighteen senators who favoured the project, five were bitter anti-Clintonians whose support was largely due to Van Buren.
[Footnote 189: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 412.]
In this vote, the noes, in both a.s.sembly and Senate, came from Clinton's opponents, including the Tammany delegation and their friends. From the outset Tammany, by solemn resolutions, had denounced the ca.n.a.l project as impractical and chimerical, declaring it fit only for a ditch in which to bury Clinton. At Albany its representatives greeted the measure for its construction with a burst of mockery; and, by placing one obstacle after another in its way, nearly defeated it in the Senate. It was during this contest that the friends of Clinton called his opponents ”Bucktails”--the name growing out of a custom, which obtained on certain festival occasions, when leading members of Tammany wore the tail of a deer on their hats.
Refusing to accept DeWitt Clinton, Tammany made Peter B. Porter its candidate for governor. There is ample evidence that Porter never concealed the chagrin or disappointment of defeat; but, though the distinguished General must have known that his name was printed upon the Tammany ticket and sent into every county in the State, he did not co-operate with Tammany in its effort to elect him. Other defections existed in the party. Peter R. Livingston seemed to concentrate in himself all the prejudices of his family against the Clintons. Moses I. Cantine of Catskill, a brother-in-law of Van Buren, though perhaps incapable of personal bitterness, opposed Clinton with such zeal that he refused to vote either for a gubernatorial candidate, or for the construction of a ca.n.a.l. Samuel Young, who seemed to nourish a deep-seated dislike of Clinton, never tired of disparaging the ex-Mayor. He apparently took keen pleasure in holding up to ridicule and in satirising, what he was pleased to call his ponderous pedantries, his solemn affectation of profundity and wisdom, his narrow-mindedness, and his intolerable and transparent egotism. But the ca.n.a.l sentiment was all one way. With the help of the Federalists, who declined to make an opposing nomination, Clinton swept the State like a cyclone, receiving nearly forty-four thousand votes out of a total of forty-five thousand.[190] Porter had less than fifteen hundred. Clinton's inauguration as governor occurred on the first day of July, 1817, and three days later he began the construction of the Erie ca.n.a.l.
[Footnote 190: DeWitt Clinton, 43,310; Peter B. Porter, 1479.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]
CHAPTER XXIII
BUCKTAIL AND CLINTONIAN
1817-1819
DeWitt Clinton had now reached the highest point in his political career. He was not merely all-powerful in the administration, he was the administration. He delighted in the consciousness that he was looked up to by men; that his success was fixed as a star in the firmament; and that the greatest work of his life lay before him. He was still in the prime of his days, only forty-eight years old, with a marvellous capacity for work. It is said that he found a positive delight in doing what seemed to others a wearisome and exhaustive tax upon physical endurance. ”The ca.n.a.l,” he writes to his friend, Henry Post, in the month of his inauguration, ”is in a fine way. Ten miles will be completely finished this season, and all within the estimate.
The application of the simple labour-saving machinery of our contractors has the operation of magic. Trees, stumps, and everything vanish before it.”[191] The exceptional work and responsibility put upon him during the construction of his ”big ditch,” as his enemies sarcastically called it, might well have made him complain of the official burdens he had to bear; but neither by looks nor words did he indicate the slightest disposition to grumble. Nature had endowed him with a genius for success. He loved literature, he delighted in country life, he was at home among farmers, and with those inclined to science he a.n.a.lysed the flowers and turned with zest to a closer study of rocks and soils. No man ever enjoyed more thoroughly, or was better equipped intellectually to undertake such a career as he had now entered upon. His audacity, too, amazed his enemies and delighted his friends.
[Footnote 191: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 412.]
But Clinton had learned nothing of the art of political management either in his retirement or by experience. He was the same domineering, uncompromising, intolerant dictator, helpful only to those who continually sounded his praises, cold and distant toward those who acted with independence and spirit. He had made his enemies his footstool; and he now a.s.sumed to be the recognised head of the party whose destinies were in his keeping and whose fortunes were swayed by his will. It is, perhaps, too much to say that this was purely personal ambition. On the contrary, Clinton seems to have acted on the honest conviction that he knew better than any other man how New York ought to be governed, and the result of his effort inclines one to the opinion that he was right in the belief. At all events, it is not surprising that a man of his energy and capacity for onward movement should refuse to regulate his policy to the satisfaction of the men that had recently crushed him to earth, and who, he knew, would crush him again at the first opportunity. In this respect he was not different from Van Buren; but Van Buren would have sought to placate the least objectionable of his opponents, and to bring to his support men who were restless under the domination of others.
Clinton, however, did nothing of the kind. He would not even extend the olive branch to Samuel Young after the latter had quarrelled with Van Buren. He preferred, evidently, to rely upon his old friends--even though some of their names had become odious to the party--and upon a coterie of brilliant Federalists, led by William W. Van Ness, Jonas Platt, and Thomas J. Oakley, with whom he was already upon terms of confidential communication. He professed to believe that the principles of Republican and Federalist were getting to be somewhat undefined in their character; and that the day was not far off, if, indeed, it had not already come, when the Republican party would break into two factions, and, for the real business of statesmans.h.i.+p, divide the Federalists between them. Yet, in practice, he did not act on this principle. To the embarra.s.sment of his Federalist friends he failed to appoint their followers to office, making it difficult for them to explain why he should profit by Federalist support and turn a deaf ear to Federalist necessities; and, to the surprise of his most devoted Republican supporters, he refused to make a clean sweep of the men in office whom he believed to have acted against him. He quickly dropped the Tammany men holding places in New York City, and occasionally let go an up-state politician at the instance of Ambrose Spencer, but with characteristic independence he disregarded the advice of his friends who urged him to let them all go.
Meanwhile, a change long foreseen by those who were in the inner political circle was rapidly approaching. At no period of American history could such a man as Clinton remain long in power without formidable rivals. No sooner, therefore, had the Legislature convened, in January, 1818, than Martin Van Buren, Samuel Young, Peter R.
Livingston, Erastus Root, and their a.s.sociates, began open war upon him. For a long time it had been a question whether it was to be Clinton and Van Buren, or Van Buren and Clinton. Van Buren had been growing every day in power and influence. Seven years before Elisha Williams had sneered at him as Little Matty. ”Poor little Matty!” he wrote, ”what a blessing it is for one to think he is the greatest little fellow in the world. It would be cruel to compel this man to estimate himself correctly. Inflated with pride, flattered for his pertness, caressed for his a.s.surance, and praised for his impertinence, it is not to be wondered that in a market where those qualifications pa.s.s for evidence of intrinsic merit he should think himself great.” Williams, great and brilliant as he was, could not bear with patience the supremacy which Van Buren was all too certainly obtaining. He struggled against him, intrigued against him, and finally hated and lampooned him, but the superiority of Van Buren's talents as a managing politician was destined to make him pre-eminent in the State and in the nation.
That Van Buren was not always honourable, the famous Fellows-Allen contest had recently demonstrated. Henry Fellows, a Federalist candidate for a.s.semblyman in Ontario County, received a majority of thirty votes over Peter Allen, a Republican; but because the former's name appeared in his certificate as Hen. Fellows, the Bucktails, guided by Van Buren, seated Allen, whose vote was absolutely needed to elect a Republican Council of Appointment. Writing ”Hen.” for Henry was not error; it was not even an inadvertence. Van Buren knew that it stood for Henry as ”Wm.” did for William, or ”Jas.” for James. But Van Buren wanted the Council. It cannot be said that this action was inconsistent with the sentiment then governing the conduct of parties; for the maxim obtained that ”everything is fair in war.” Nevertheless, it illuminated Van Buren's character, and left the impression upon some of his contemporaries that he was a stranger to a high standard of political morality.
Probably DeWitt Clinton would have taken similar advantage. But in practical politics Clinton was no match for the Kinderhook statesman.
Van Buren studied the game like a chess-player, taking knights and p.a.w.ns with the ease of a skilful mover. Clinton, on the other hand, was an optimist, who believed in his destiny. In the performance of his official duties he mastered whatever he undertook and relied upon the people for his support; and so long as he stood for internal improvements and needed reform in the public service, he did not rely in vain. Force, clearness and ability characterised his state papers.
For years he had been a student of munic.i.p.al and county affairs; and, in suggesting new legislation, he exhibited rare judgment and absolute impartiality. A comprehension that sound finance had much to do with domestic prosperity, entered into his review of the financial situation--in its relation to the construction of the ca.n.a.ls--indicating fulness of information and great clearness as to existing conditions.