Volume I Part 23 (1/2)
Immediately, the tide began setting strongly in favour of Clinton for governor. Clintonian papers urged it, and personal friends wrote and rode over the State in his interest. Clinton himself became sanguine of success. ”Tallmadge can scarcely get a vote in his own county,” he wrote Post on the 21st of April. ”He is the prince of rascals--if Wheaton does not exceed him.”[232]
[Footnote 232: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 569. Clinton seems to have taken a particular dislike to Henry Wheaton. Elsewhere, he writes to Post: ”There is but one opinion about Wheaton, and that is that he is a pitiful scoundrel.”--_Ibid._, p. 417.]
Meanwhile, a sensation long foreseen by those in the Governor's inner circle, was about to be sprung. Yates was not a man to be rudely thrust out of office. He knew he had blundered in opposing an electoral law, and he now proposed giving the Legislature another opportunity to enact one. The Regency did not believe there would be an extra session, because, as Attorney-General Talcott suggested, the power to convene the Legislature was a high prerogative, the exercise of which required more decision and nerve than Yates possessed; but, on the 2nd of June, to the surprise and consternation of the Van Buren leaders, Yates issued a proclamation reconvening the Legislature on August 2. It was predicated upon the failure of Congress to amend the Const.i.tution, upon the recent defeat of the electoral bill in the Senate, and upon the just alarm of the people, that ”their undoubted right” of choosing presidential electors would be withheld from them.
Very likely, it afforded the Governor much satisfaction to make this open and damaging attack upon the Regency. He had surrendered independence if not self-respect, and, in return for his fidelity, had been ruthlessly cast aside for his less faithful rival. Yet his purpose was more than revenge. Between the Clintonian prejudice against Tallmadge, and the People's party's hatred of Clinton, the Governor hoped he might become a compromise candidate at the Utica convention. The future, however, had no place for him. He was ridiculed the more by his enemies and dropped into the pit of oblivion by his former friends. Nothing in his public life, perhaps, became him so well as his dignified retirement at Schenectady, amid the scenes of his youth, where he died at the age of sixty-nine, leaving a place in history not strongly marked.
Yates' extra session lasted four days and did nothing except to snub the Governor and give the eloquent Tallmadge, amidst tumultuous applause from the galleries, an opportunity of annoying the Regency by keeping up the popular excitement over a change in the choice of electors until the a.s.sembling of the Utica convention. As the days pa.s.sed, the sentiment for Clinton became stronger and more apparent.
Thurlow Weed, travelling over the State in the interest of Tallmadge, found Clinton's nomination almost universally demanded, with Tallmadge a favourite for second place. This, the eloquent gentleman peremptorily refused, until an appeal for harmony, and the suggestion that Adams' election might open to him a broader field for usefulness than that of being governor, produced the desired change. Probably Tallmadge felt within himself that he was not destined to a great political career. In any case, he finally accepted the offer with perfect good humour, giving Weed a brief letter consenting to the use of his name as lieutenant-governor. With this the young journalist arrived at Utica on the morning of convention day.
There were one hundred and twenty-two delegates in the convention, of whom one-fourth belonged to the People's party. These supported Tallmadge for governor. When they discovered that Tallmadge's vote to remove Clinton had put him out of the race, they suggested John W.
Taylor; but a delegate from Saratoga produced a letter in which the distinguished opponent of the Missouri Compromise declined to become a candidate. This left the way open to DeWitt Clinton, and, as he carried off the nomination by a large majority, with Tallmadge for lieutenant-governor by acclamation, many representatives of the People's party walked out of the hall and reorganised another convention, resolving to support Tallmadge, but protesting against the nomination of Clinton--”a diversion,” says Weed, ”which was soon forgotten amid the general and pervading enthusiasm.”[233]
[Footnote 233: _Autobiography of Thurlow Weed_, p. 120.]
The election of governor in 1824 pa.s.sed into history as one of the most stirring ever witnessed in the State. In a fight, Samuel Young and DeWitt Clinton were at home. They neither asked nor gave quarter.
There is no record that their fluency or invective did more than add to the excitement of the campaign; but each was well supplied with ready venom. Young was rhetorical and dramatic--Clinton energetic and forceful. People, listening to Young, rocked with laughter and revelled in applause as he pilloried his opponents, the ferocity of his attacks being surpa.s.sed only by the eloquence of his periods. With Clinton, speaking was serious business. He lacked the oratorical gift and the art of concealing the labour of his overwrought and too elaborate sentences; but his addresses afforded ample evidence of the capacity and richness of his mind. In spite of great faults, both candidates commanded the loyalty of followers who swelled with pride because of their courage and splendid ability. The confidence of the Regency and the usual success of Tammany at first made the friends of Clinton unhappy; but as the campaign advanced, Young discovered that the Regency, in insisting on the choice of electors by the Legislature, had given the opposition the most telling cry it could possibly have found against him; that the popular tumult over Clinton's removal was growing from day to day; and that his opponents were banded together against him on many grounds and with many different purposes. Two weeks before the election, it was evident to every one that the Regency was doomed, that Van Buren was disconcerted, and that Young was beaten; but no one expected that Clinton's majority would reach sixteen thousand,[234] or that Tallmadge would run thirty-two thousand ahead of Erastus Root. The announcement came like a thunderbolt, bringing with it the intelligence that out of eight senators only two Regency men had been spared, while, in the a.s.sembly, the opposition had three to one. In other words, the election of 1822 had been completely reversed.
Clinton was again in the saddle.
[Footnote 234: DeWitt Clinton, 103,452; Samuel Young, 87,093.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]
Samuel Young's political fortunes never recovered from this encounter with the ill.u.s.trious champion of the ca.n.a.ls. He was much in office afterward. For eight years he served in the State Senate, and once as lieutenant-governor; for a quarter of a century he lived on, a marvellous orator, whom the people never tired of hearing, and whom opponents never ceased to fear; but the glow that lingers about a public man who had never been overwhelmed by the suffrage of his fellow-citizens was gone forever.
CHAPTER x.x.x
VAN BUREN ENCOUNTERS WEED
1824
Political interest, in 1824, centred in the election of a President as well as a Governor. Three candidates,--William H. Crawford of Georgia, John Quincy Adams of Ma.s.sachusetts, and Henry Clay of Kentucky,--divided the parties in New York. No one thought of DeWitt Clinton. Very likely, after his overwhelming election, Clinton, in his joy, felt his ambition again aroused. He had been inoculated with presidential rabies in 1812, and his letters to Henry Post showed signs of continued madness. ”I think Crawford is _hors de combat_,” he wrote in March, 1824. ”Calhoun never had force, and Clay is equally out of the question. As for Adams, he can only succeed by the imbecility of his opponents, not by his own strength. In this crisis may not some other person bear away the palm?”[235] Then follows the historic ill.u.s.tration, indicating that the ca.n.a.l champion thought he might become a compromise candidate: ”Do you recollect the story of Themistocles the Athenian? After the naval victory of Salamis a council of generals was held to determine on the most worthy. Each man was to write down two names, the first and the next best. Each general wrote his own name for the first, and that of Themistocles for the second. May not this contest have a similar result? I am persuaded that with common prudence we will stand better than ever.”[236]
[Footnote 235: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 568.]
[Footnote 236: _Ibid._, Vol. 50, p. 586.]
But the field was preoccupied and the compet.i.tors too numerous. So, getting no encouragement, Clinton turned to the hero of New Orleans.
”In Jackson,” he wrote Post, ”we must look for a sincere and honest friend. Whatever demonstrations are made from other quarters are dictated by policy and public sentiment.”[237] He grows impatient with Clay, indignant at the apparent success of Adams, and vituperative over the tactics of Calhoun. ”Clay ought to resign forthwith,” he writes on the 17th of April, 1824; ”his chance is worse than nothing.
Jackson would then prevail with all the Western States, if we can get New Jersey.”[238] Four days later he was sure of New Jersey. ”We can get her,” he a.s.sures Post, on April 21. ”I see no terrors in Adams'
papers; his influence has gone with his morals.”[239]
[Footnote 237: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 568.]
[Footnote 238: _Ibid._, p. 568.]
[Footnote 239: _Ibid._, p. 569.]
But by midsummer Clinton had become alarmed at the action of the candidate from South Carolina. ”Calhoun is acting a treacherous part to Jackson,” he says, under date of July 23, ”and is doing all he can for Adams. Perhaps there is not a man in the United States more hollow-headed and base. I have long observed his manoeuvres.”[240] A week later Clinton speaks of Calhoun as ”a thorough-paced political blackleg.”[241] In August he gives Adams another slap. ”The great danger is that there will be a quarrel between the friends of Jackson and Adams, and that in the war between the lion and the unicorn the cur may slip in and carry off the prize.”[242]
[Footnote 240: _Ibid._, p. 569.]