Volume I Part 18 (2/2)

Clinton was honestly proud of his ca.n.a.l policy; more than once he declared, with exultation, that nothing was more certain to promote the prosperity of the State, or to secure to it the weight and authority, in the affairs of the nation, to which its wealth and position ent.i.tled it. Seldom in the history of an American commonwealth has a statesman been as prophetic. But in managing the details of party tactics--in dealing with individuals for the purpose of controlling the means that control men--he conducted the office of governor much as he did his candidacy for President in 1812, without plan, and, apparently, without organisation. With all his courage, Clinton must have felt some qualms of uneasiness as one humiliation followed another; but if he felt he did not show them. Conscious of his ability, and of his own great purposes, he seems to have borne his position with a sort of proud or stolid patience.

This inattention or inability to attend to details of party management became painfully apparent at the opening of the Legislature in January, 1818. Van Buren and his friends had agreed upon William Thompson for speaker of the a.s.sembly. Thompson was a young man, warm in his pa.s.sions, strong in his prejudices, and of fair ability, who had served two or three terms in the lower house, and who, it was thought, as he represented a western district, and, in opposition to Elisha Williams, had favoured certain interests in Seneca County growing out of the location of a new courthouse, would have greater strength than other more prominent Bucktails. It was known, also, that Thompson had taken a violent dislike to Clinton and could be relied upon to advance any measure for the latter's undoing. To secure his nomination, therefore, Van Buren secretly notified his partisans to be present at the caucus on the evening before the session opened.

The Clintonians had talked of putting up John Van Ness Yates, son of the former Chief Justice, a ready talker, companionable and brilliant, a gentleman of fine literary taste, with an up-and-down political career due largely to his consistent following of Clinton. But the Governor now wanted a stronger, more decided man; and, after advising with Spencer, he selected Obadiah German, for many years a leader in the a.s.sembly, and until recently a member of the United States Senate, with such a record for resistance to Governor Tompkins, and active complicity with the Federalists who had aided his election to the a.s.sembly, that the mere mention of his name to the Bucktails was like a firebrand thrown onto the roof of a thatched cottage. German himself doubted the wisdom of his selection. He was an old-time fighter, preferring debate on the floor to the wielding of a gavel while other men disputed; but the Governor, with sublime faith in German's fidelity and courage, and a sublimer faith in his own power to make him speaker, turned a deaf ear to the a.s.semblyman's wishes.

Had Clinton now conferred with his friends in the Legislature, or simply urged their presence at the caucus, he might easily have nominated German in spite of his record. On the contrary, he did neither, and when the caucus met, of the seventy-five members present, forty-two voted for Thompson and thirty-three for German. When too late Clinton discovered his mistake--seventeen Clintonians had been absent and all the Bucktails present. The great Clinton had been outwitted!

The hearts of the Bucktails must have rejoiced when they heard the count, especially as the refusal of the Clintonians to make the nomination unanimous indicated an intention to turn to the Federalists for aid. This was the one error the Bucktails most desired Clinton to commit; for it would stamp them as the regular representatives of the party, and reduce the Clintonians to a faction, irregular in their methods and tainted with Federalism. It is difficult to realise the arguments which could persuade Clinton to take such a step. Even if such conduct be not considered a question of principle, and only one of expediency, he should have condemned it. Yet this is just what Clinton did not do. After two days of balloting he disclosed his hand in a motion declaring Obadiah German the speaker, and sixty-seven members, including seventeen Federalists, voted in the affirmative, while forty-eight, including three Federalists, voted in the negative.

”The a.s.sembly met on Tuesday,” wrote John A. King to his father, on January 8, 1818, ”but adjourned without choosing a speaker. The next day, after a short struggle, Mr. German was chosen by the aid of some of the Federalists. I regret to say that there are some of the Federal gentlemen and influential ones, too, who are deeply pledged to support the wanderings fortunes of Mr. Clinton. On this point the Federal party must, if it has not already, divide. Once separated there can be no middle course; a neutrality party in politics, if not an absurdity, at least is evidence of indecision. We are not yet declared enemies, but if I mistake not, the question of Council and the choice of a United States senator must, if these gentlemen persist, decide the matter irrevocably. Mr. W. Duer, Van Vechten, Bunner, Hoffman, and myself are opposed to Mr. W. Van Ness, Oakley, and J. Van Rensselaer.

Mr. Clinton has found means to flatter these gentlemen with the prospect of attaining their utmost wishes by adhering to and supporting his administration.”[192]

[Footnote 192: Charles R. King, _The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King_, Vol. 6, p. 102.]

Clinton committed the second great error of his life when he consented to bolt the caucus nominee of his party. It was an act of conscious baseness. He had not manfully put forward his strength. Instead of managing, he temporised; instead of meeting his adversaries with a will, he did nothing, while they worked systematically and in silence.

Even then he need not have entered the caucus; but, once having voluntarily entered it, it was his plain duty to support its nominee.

As a question of principle or expediency Clinton's conduct, therefore, admits of no defence. The plea that Van Buren had secretly a.s.sembled the Bucktails in force neither justifies nor palliates it; for the slightest management on Clinton's part would have controlled the caucus by bringing together fifty members instead of thirty-three, and the slightest inquiry would have discovered the weakness of having only thirty-three present instead of fifty.

Clinton professed to believe that the Federalists no longer existed as a party; and it is probably true that he desired to create a party of his own out of its members.h.i.+p, strengthened by the Clintonians, and to leave Tammany and its Bucktail supporters to build up an opposition organisation. But in this he was in advance of his time. Though the day was coming when a majority of the Clintonians and Federalists would make the backbone of the Whig party in the Empire State, a new party could not be built up by such methods as Clinton now introduced.

New parties, like poets, are born, not made, and a love for principle, not a desire for spoils, must precede their birth. If Clinton had sincerely desired a new organisation, he should have disclaimed all connection with the Republican or Federalist, and planted his standard on the cornerstone of internal improvements, prepared to make the sacrifice that comes to those who are tired of existing conditions and eager for new policies and new a.s.sociations. But Clinton was neither reformer nor pioneer. He loved the old order of things, the Council of Appointment, the Council of Revision, the Const.i.tution of 1777 as amended by the convention of 1801, and all the machinery that gave power to the few and control to the boss. He had been born to power.

From his first entrance into the political arena he had exercised it--first with the help of his uncle George, afterward with the a.s.sistance of his brother-in-law, Ambrose Spencer; and now that he had swung back into power again by means of his ca.n.a.l policy, he had no disposition to let go any part of it by letting go the Republican party. What Van Buren got from him he must take by votes, not by gifts.

Clinton's flagrant violation of the caucus rule, that a minority must yield to the majority, not only broke the Republican party into the famous factions known as Clintonians and Bucktails; it alarmed local leaders throughout the State; made the rank and file distrustful of the Governor's fealty, and consolidated his enemies, giving them the best of the argument and enabling Van Buren to build up an organisation against which the Governor was ever after compelled to struggle with varying fortune. Indeed, in the next month, Van Buren so managed the selection of a Council that it gave Clinton credit for controlling appointments without the slightest power of making them, so that the disappointed held him responsible and the fortunate gave him no thanks. Following this humiliation, too, came the election, by one majority, of Henry Seymour, a bitter opponent of Clinton, to the ca.n.a.l commissioners.h.i.+p made vacant by the resignation of Joseph Ellicott. The Governor's attention had been called to the danger of his candidate's defeat; but with optimistic a.s.surance he dismissed it as impossible until Ephraim Hart, just before the election occurred, discovered that the cunning hand of Van Buren had accomplished his overthrow. ”A majority of the ca.n.a.l commissioners are now politically opposed to the Governor,” declared the Albany _Argus_, ”and it will not be necessary for a person who wishes to obtain employment on the ca.n.a.l as agent, contractor or otherwise, to avow himself a Clintonian.” This exultant shout meant that in future only anti-Clintonians would make up the army of ca.n.a.l employees.

But a greater _coup d'etat_ was to come. Van Buren understood well enough that Clinton's strength with the people was not as a politician or Republican leader, but as a stubborn, indefatigable advocate of the ca.n.a.l; and that, so long as the Bucktails opposed his scheme, their control of appointments could not overthrow him. Van Buren, therefore, determined to silence this opposition. Just how he did it is not of record. It was said, at the time, that a caucus was held of Clinton's opponents; but, however it was done, it must have required all Van Buren's strength of will and art of persuasion to sustain him in the midst of so many difficulties--difficulties which were greatly increased by the unfriendly conduct of Erastus Root, and two or three senators from the southern district, including Peter Sharpe, afterward speaker of the a.s.sembly. Yet the fact that he accomplished it, and with such secrecy that Clinton's friends did not know how it was brought about, showed the quiet and complete control exercised by Van Buren over the members of the Bucktail party. The _National Advocate_, edited by Mordecai Manesseh Noah, a conspicuous figure in politics for forty years and one of the most unrelenting partisans of his day, had supported Tammany in its long and bitter antagonism to the ca.n.a.l with a malevolence rarely equalled in that or any other day.

He measured pens with Israel W. Clarke of the Albany _Register_, who had so ably answered every point that Noah charged their authors.h.i.+p to Clinton himself. But after Van Buren had spoken, the _Advocate_, suddenly, as if by magic, changed its course, and, with the rest of the Bucktail contingent, rallied to the support of Clinton's pet scheme with arguments as sound and full of clear good sense as the Governor himself could wish. The people, however, had good reason to know that statesmen were not all and always exactly as they professed to be; and the immediate effect of the Bucktail change of heart amounted to little more than public notice that the ca.n.a.l policy was a complete success, and that Tammany and its friends had discovered that further opposition was useless.

CHAPTER XXIV

RE-ELECTION OF RUFUS KING

1819-1820

Although Clinton's ca.n.a.l policy now dominated Bucktails as well as Clintonians, eliminating all differences as to public measures, the bitterness between these factions increased until the effort to elect a United States senator to succeed Rufus King resulted in a complete separation. The Clintonians had settled upon John C. Spencer, while the Bucktails thought Samuel Young, a decided friend of Clinton's ca.n.a.l policy, the most likely man to attract support. Both were representative men, and either would have done honour to the State.

John C. Spencer needed no introduction or advertis.e.m.e.nt as the son of Ambrose Spencer. He was a man of large promise. Everything he did he did well, and he had already done much. Though scarcely thirty-four years of age, he had established himself as a leading lawyer of the Commonwealth, whose strong, vigorous English in support of the war had found its way into Parliament as an unanswerable argument to Lord Liverpool's unwise policy, winning him an enviable reputation as a writer. Skilful in expression, adroit in attack, calm and resourceful in argument, with the sarcasm of the younger Pitt, he had presented American rights and British outrages in a clearer light than others, arousing his countrymen very much as the letters of Junius had quickened English political life forty years before. He made it plain that England's insistence upon the right to stop and search an American vessel, and England's persistent refusal to recognise a naturalised American citizen on board an American vessel, were the real causes of quarrel. ”There is not an individual,” said a leading British journal, ”who has attended at all to the dispute with the United States, who does not see that it has been embittered from the first, and wantonly urged on by those who, for the sake of their own aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, are willing to plunge their country into all the evils portrayed by the American writer.”

A single term in Congress had placed Spencer in the ranks of the leaders. He was trenchant in speech, forceful on paper, and helpful in committee. Intellectually, he took the place of the distinguished South Carolinian, just then leaving Congress to become Monroe's secretary of war, whose thin face and firm mouth resembled the New Yorker's. Spencer, like Calhoun, delighted in establis.h.i.+ng by the subtlest train of philosophical reasoning the delicate lines that exposed sophistry and error, and made clear the disputed point in law or in legislation. The rhetorical drapery that gave Samuel Young such signal success found no place in Spencer's arguments or in his pamphlets; but to a logic that deeply penetrated his subject he added an ethical interest which captivated the mind, as his reasoning illuminated and made plain. He was a born fighter. Like his father, he asked no quarter and he gave none. His eye had the expression one sees in hawks and game-c.o.c.ks. At twenty-eight, as district attorney of the five western counties of the State, he had become a terror to evil-doers, and it is said of him, at his old home in Canandaigua, that men, conscious of their innocence, preferred appealing to the mercy of the court than endure prosecution at his hands. Possibly he possessed the small affections which Disraeli thought necessary to be coupled with large brains to insure success in public life, yet his nature, in every domestic and social relation, was the gentlest and simplest. DeWitt Clinton did not always approve Spencer's political course. He thought him ”an incubus on the party,” ”the political millstone of the west,” and he attributed the occasional loss of Ontario and neighbouring counties ”to his deleterious management.” The austerity and haughtiness of his manner naturally lessened his popularity, just as his caustic pen and satirical tongue made him bitter enemies; but his strong will and imperious manner were no more offensive than Clinton's. Like Clinton, too, Spencer was ill at ease in a harness; he resented being lined up by a party boss. But, at the time he was talked of for United States senator, the intelligent action and tireless industry upon which his fame rests, had so impressed men, that they overlooked unpopular traits in their admiration for his great ability. People did not then know that he was to sit in the Cabinet of a President, and be nominated to a place upon the Supreme bench of the United States; but they knew he was destined to become famous, because he was already recognised as a professional and political leader.

The genius of Samuel Young had also left its track behind. He was not a great lawyer, but his contemporaries thought him a great man. He combined brilliant speaking with brilliant writing. The fragments of his speeches that have been preserved scarcely hint at the extraordinary power accorded them in the judgment of his neighbours.

It is likely that the magic of presence, voice, and action, exaggerated their merits, since he possessed the gifts of a trained orator, rivalling the forceful declamation of Erastus Root, the mellow tones and rich vocabulary of William W. Van Ness, and the smoothness of Martin Van Buren. But, if his speeches equalled his pamphlets, the judgment of his contemporaries must be accepted without limitation.

Chancellor Kent objected to giving joint stock companies the right to engage in privateering, a drastic measure pa.s.sed by the Legislature of 1814 in the interest of a more vigorous prosecution of the war; and in his usual felicitous style, and with much learning, the stubborn Federalist p.r.o.nounced the statute inconsistent with the spirit of the age and contrary to the genius of the Federal Const.i.tution. Young replied to the great Chancellor in a series of essays, brilliant and readable even in a new century. He showed that, although America had been handicapped by Federalist opposition, by a disorganised army, and by a navy so small that it might almost as well have not existed, yet American privateers--outnumbering the British fleet, scudding before the wind, defying capture, running blockades, destroying commerce, and bearing the stars and stripes to the ends of the earth--had dealt England the most staggering blow ever inflicted upon her supremacy of the sea. This was plain talk and plain truth; and it made the speaker of the a.s.sembly known throughout the State as ”the sword, the s.h.i.+eld, and the ornament of his party.” Young was as dauntless as Spencer, and, if anything, a more distinguished looking man. He was without austerity and easy of approach; and, although inclined to reticence, he seemed fond of indulging in jocular remarks and an occasional story; but he was a man of bad temper. He fretted under opposition as much as Clinton, and he easily became vindictive toward opponents. This kept him unpopular even among men of his own faction. Clinton thought him ”much of an imbecile,” and suggested in a letter to Post that ”suspicions are entertained of his integrity.”[193]

Yet Young had hosts of friends eager to fight his political battles.

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