Volume I Part 19 (2/2)
The comptroller, overwhelmed by the extravagance of the claim, construed the law to limit the premium on moneys borrowed solely on Tompkins' personal responsibility, and out of this a correspondence was conducted with much asperity. Archibald McIntyre, the comptroller since 1806, possessed the absolute confidence of the people; and when his letters became public a suspicion that the Vice President might be wrong was quickly encouraged by the friends of Clinton. This suspicion was increased as soon as the Legislature of 1820 got to work. It was intent on mischief. By a fusion of Clintonians and Federalists John C.
Spencer became speaker of the a.s.sembly, and to cripple Tompkins, who had now been nominated for governor, Jedediah Miller of Schoharie offered a resolution approving the conduct of the Comptroller in settling the accounts of the former Governor. This precipitated a discussion which has rarely been equalled in Albany for pa.s.sion and brilliancy. A coterie of the most skilful debaters happened to be members of this a.s.sembly; and for several weeks Thomas J. Oakley, John C. Spencer, and Elisha Williams sustained the Comptroller, while Erastus Root, Peter Sharpe, and others pleaded for Tompkins.
Meanwhile, on the 9th of March, a Senate committee, with Van Buren as chairman, reported that the Comptroller ought to have allowed Tompkins a premium of twelve and a half per cent. on $1,000,000, leaving a balance due the Vice President of $11,870.50. It was a strange mix-up, and the more committees examined it the worse appeared the muddle.
After Van Buren had reported, the question arose, should the Comptroller be sustained, or should the report of Van Buren's committee be accepted? It was a long drop from $130,000 claimed by Tompkins to $11,780.50 awarded him by Van Buren, yet it was better to take that than accept a settlement which made him a defaulter, and the Senate approved the Van Buren report. But Thomas J. Oakley, chairman of the a.s.sembly committee to which it was referred, did not propose to let the candidate for governor escape so easily. In an able review of the whole question he sustained the Comptroller, maintaining that the Vice President must seek relief under the law like other parties, and instructing the Comptroller to sue for any balance due the State, unless Tompkins reimbursed it by the following August. This ended legislation for the session.
Van Buren seems to have had no concern about Tompkins' ca.n.a.l record.
Possibly he thought the disappearance of Bucktail opposition took that issue out of the campaign; but he was greatly worked up over the unsettled accounts, and in his usual adroit manner set influences to work to discourage Tompkins' acceptance of the nomination, and to secure the consent of Smith Thompson, then secretary of the navy, to make the race himself. He had little difficulty in accomplis.h.i.+ng this end, for Thompson was not at all unwilling. But to get rid of Tompkins was another question. ”The Republican party in this State never was better united,” he wrote Smith Thompson, on January 19, 1820, three days after Tompkins' nomination; ”they all love, honour and esteem the Vice President; but such is their extreme anxiety to insure the prostration of the Junto, who have stolen into the seats of power, that they all desire that you should be the candidate. They will support Tompkins to the bat's end if you refuse, or he should not decline; but if he does, and you consent to our wishes, you will be hailed as the saviour of New York.”[198] On the same day Van Buren also wrote Rufus King: ”Some of our friends think it is dangerous to support the Vice President under existing circ.u.mstances.... A few of us have written him freely on the subject and to meet the event of his having left the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, I have sent a copy of our letter to Secretary Thompson, of which circ.u.mstance the Secretary is not informed. There are many points of view in which it would be desirable to place this subject before you, but I am fully satisfied you will appreciate without further explanation. I will, therefore, only say, that if the Vice President is with you, and upon a free discussion between you, the Secretary and himself, he should resolve to decline, and you can induce the Secretary to consent to our using his name, you will do a lasting benefit to the Republican interest of this State.”[199]
[Footnote 198: Charles R. King, _Life and Correspondence of Rufus King_, Vol. 6, p. 254.]
[Footnote 199: Charles R. King, _Life and Correspondence of Rufus King_, Vol. 6, p. 252.]
To this most adroit and cunning letter Rufus King replied on the last day of the month: ”The Vice President left us to-day at noon; on his way he stopped at the Senate and we had a short conference.... I observed as between him and Mr. Clinton my apprehension was that a majority, possibly a large majority of Federalists would vote for Mr.
Clinton; adding that between the Secretary of the Navy and Mr. Clinton I was persuaded that a majority of the Federalists would prefer the Secretary.... Apologising for the frankness with which I expressed my opinion, I added that I hoped he would wait until he reached New York before he decided; perhaps he would think it best to delay his answer until he arrived in Albany; one thing I considered absolutely necessary--that his accounts should be definitely closed before election. He answered that he was going immediately to Albany with four propositions which would lead to a final settlement; that he might think it best to delay his answer to the nomination until he should reach Albany. I said in conclusion that my earnest wish was the exclusion of Mr. Clinton, and my preference (knowing the personal sacrifice he would make in consenting to his own nomination) that the candidate selected should be the man who, in the opinion of those most capable to decide, will be the most likely to accomplish the work.”[200]
[Footnote 200: _Ibid._, Vol. 6, p. 263.]
Rufus King certainly did his work well. He had abundantly discouraged him as to the Federalists and had fully advised him as to the importance of settling his accounts; but all to no purpose. Two days later Thompson wrote Van Buren that the Vice President ”will stand.”
The Kinderhook statesman, however, disinclined to give it up, asked the Secretary in a note on the same day for authority to use his name ”if the Vice President, when he arrives here, should wish to decline.”
On the 7th of February, John A. King wrote his father: ”Hopes are still entertained that the Vice President's decision may yet yield to the wishes of many of his oldest friends. Those, however, who know him best have no such hopes. Judge Yates has said that he never refused an offer of any sort in his life.”[201] And so it proved in this instance. Tompkins was immovable. Like a race horse trained to running, he only needed to be let into the ring and given a free rein.
When the bell sounded he was off on his fifth race for governor.
[Footnote 201: Charles R. King, _Life and Correspondence of Rufus King_, Vol. 6, p. 267.]
If Tompkins was handicapped with a shortage and a ca.n.a.l record, Clinton was hara.s.sed for want of a party. To conceal the meagreness of his strength in a legislative caucus, Clinton was renominated with John Taylor at a meeting of the citizens of Albany. He had a following and a large one, but it was without cohesion or discipline. Men felt at liberty to withdraw without explanation and without notice. Within eight months after his election as a Clintonian senator, Benjamin Mooers of Plattsburg accepted the nomination for lieutenant-governor on the ticket with Governor Tompkins, apparently without loss of political prestige, or the respect of neighbours. The administration at Was.h.i.+ngton recognised the Bucktails as the regular Republican party, and showered offices among them, until Clinton later made it a matter of public complaint and official investigation. Other disintegrating influences were also at work. The ”high minded”
Federalists, in a published doc.u.ment signed by forty or fifty leading men, declared the Federal party dissolved and annihilated, and p.r.o.nounced the Clinton party simply a personal one. To belong to it independence must be surrendered, and to obtain office in it, one must laud its head and bow the knee, a system of sycophancy, they said, disgusting all ”high minded” men. But DeWitt Clinton's strength was not in parties nor in political management. He belonged to the great men of his time, having no superior in New York, and, in some respects, no equal in the country. He possessed a broader horizon, a larger intellect, a greater moral courage, than most of his contemporaries. It is probably true that, like a mountain, he appeared best at a distance, but having confidence in his ability and integrity, people easily overlooked his rough, unpopular manners. The shrewd, sagacious Yankee farmers who were filling up the great western counties of Ontario and Genesee believed in him. The Bucktails did not know, until the eastern and western districts responded with five thousand eight hundred and four majority for Clinton, as against four thousand three hundred and seventy-seven for Tompkins in the middle and southern districts, what a capital cry Clinton had in the ca.n.a.l issue; what a powerful appeal to selfish interests he could put into voice; and what a loud reply selfish interests would make to the appeal. It was not, in fact, a race between parties at all; it was not a question of shortage or settlement. It is likely the shortage affected the result somewhat; but the majority of over fourteen hundred meant approval of Clinton and his ca.n.a.l policy rather than distrust of Tompkins and his unsettled accounts. The question in 1820 was, shall the ca.n.a.l be built? and, although the Bucktails had ceased their hostility, the people most interested in the ca.n.a.l's construction wanted Clinton to complete what he had so gloriously and successfully begun.
The campaign was fought out with bitterness and desperation until the polls closed. No national or state issue divided the parties. In fact, there were no issues. It was simply a question whether Clinton and his friends, or Tompkins and the Bucktails should control the state government. The arguments, therefore, were purely personal. Clinton's friends relied upon his ca.n.a.l policy, his honesty, and his integrity--the Bucktails insisted that Clinton was no longer a Republican; that the ca.n.a.l would be constructed as well without him as with him, and that his defeat would wipe out factional strife and give New York greater prominence in the councils of the party. ”For the last ten days,” wrote Van Buren to Rufus King, on April 13, ”I have scarcely had time to take my regular meals and am at this moment pressed by at least half a dozen unfinished concerns growing out of this intolerable political struggle in which we are involved.”[202]
Nevertheless, he had no doubt of Tompkins' election. ”I entertain the strongest convictions that we shall succeed,”[203] he wrote later in the month. On the other hand, Clinton was no less certain. In his letters to Henry Post he is always confident; but at no time more so than now. ”The ca.n.a.l proceeds wondrously well,” he says. ”The Martling opposition has ruined them forever. The public mind was never in a better train for useful operations. John Townsend has just come from the west. There is but one sentiment.”[204] Yet, when the battle ended, it looked like a Clintonian defeat and Bucktail victory; for the latter had swept the Legislature, adding to their control in the Senate and capturing the a.s.sembly by a majority of eighteen over all.
It was only the presence of Tompkins among the slain that transferred the real glory to Clinton, whose majority was fourteen hundred and fifty-seven in a total vote of ninety-three thousand four hundred and thirty-seven. This exceeded any former aggregate by nearly ten thousand.[205]
[Footnote 202: Charles R. King, _Life and Correspondence of Rufus King_, Vol. 6, p. 331.]
[Footnote 203: _Ibid._, Vol. 6, p. 332.]
[Footnote 204: DeWitt Clinton to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 413.]
[Footnote 205: DeWitt Clinton, 47,444; Daniel D. Tompkins, 45,990.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]
Daniel D. Tompkins took his defeat much to heart. He believed his unsettled accounts had occasioned whispered slanders that crushed him.
After his angry controversy with Comptroller McIntyre, in the preceding year, he seriously considered the propriety of resigning as Vice President; for he sincerely believed his figures were right and that the Comptroller's language had cla.s.sed him in the public mind with what, in these latter days, would be called ”grafters.” ”Our friend on Staten Island is unfortunately sick in body and mind,”
Clinton wrote to Post in September, 1819. ”His situation upon the whole is deplorable and calculated to excite sympathy.”[206] It was, indeed, a most unfortunate affair, for the State discovered, years after it was too late, that it did owe the War Governor ninety-two thousand dollars.
[Footnote 206: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 413.]
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