Volume II Part 3 (1/2)
With Governor Seward's inauguration the Whig party was placed on trial. Ten years had pa.s.sed since DeWitt Clinton's death, and Seward was the first successor whose opinions and sentiments harmonised with those of that distinguished statesman. During the intervening period the Regency had been in absolute control of the State. It had contented itself with looking after things as they existed, rather than undertaking further improvements and reforms. Seward's election, therefore, was not only a revolution of parties, but a radical change of policy. Every Whig, fearful lest some misstep might lead to the early loss of the power just gained, had an opinion as to what should and should not be done. Some were afraid the Governor would say too much, others fearful he would say too little. Seward, moving on broad lines of economics and reform, believed that the promotion of transportation, the development of capital and credit, and the enlargement of educational advantages, would bring wealth to the State and greater happiness to the people; and his first message contained the policy that guided him throughout his entire political career. In its preparation, he relied upon President Knott of Union College for a.s.sistance on the subject of education; on John H. Beach for financial statistics; on Samuel B. Ruggles for ca.n.a.l figures; and on John C.
Spencer for general suggestions. Then he sat down with Weed for its final revision. When completed, it contained the groundwork of his political philosophy. He would prosecute the work of the ca.n.a.ls, he would encourage the completion of railroads, establish a board of internal improvement, extend charitable inst.i.tutions, improve the discipline of prisons, elevate the standard of education in schools and colleges, establish school district libraries, provide for the education of the coloured race, reform the practice of courts, cut off superfluous offices, repeal the Small Bills law, authorise banking under general laws, and apply rigorous safeguards, especially in populous cities, for the purity of the ballot-box. In concluding, he paid a handsome tribute to DeWitt Clinton and recommended that a monument be erected to his memory in Albany.
None of our statesmen, with whom reform has been a characteristic trait, was more devoted or happy. His delight, deep and unfailing, extended to every department of the government, and the minuteness of his knowledge betrayed the intimate acquaintance which he had gained of the affairs of the State during his four years in the Senate. His message caught the inspiration of this fresh and joyous maturity. It was written, too, in the easy, graceful style, rhythmical and subdued in expression, which afterward contributed to his extreme charm as an orator. From the first, Seward was an ardent optimist, and this first message is that of n.o.ble youth, delighting in the life and the opportunities that a great office presents to one who is mindful of its hara.s.sing duties and its relentless limitations, yet keenly sensitive to its novelty and its infinite incitements. The Democrats, whose hearts must have rejoiced when they heard his message, declared it the visionary schemes of a theorising politician, the work of a soph.o.m.ore rather than a statesman; yet, within little more than a decade, most of his suggestions found a place in the statute book.
Though the questions of that time are not the questions of our day, and engage only the historian and his readers, these twenty printed pages of recommendations, certain to excite debate and opposition, must always be read with deep enjoyment.
The chief criticism of his opponents grew out of his acceptance of Ruggles's estimate that the ca.n.a.ls would more than reimburse the cost of their construction and enlargement. The _Argus_ a.s.serted that Seward, instead of sustaining the policy of ”pay as you go,” favoured a ”forty million debt;” and this became the great campaign cry of the Democrats in two elections. On the other hand, the Whigs maintained that the ca.n.a.ls had enriched the people and the State, and that their future prosperity depended upon the enlargement of the Erie ca.n.a.l, so that its capacity would meet the increasing demands of business. In the end, the result showed how prophetically Seward wrote and how wisely Ruggles figured; for, although the Erie ca.n.a.l, in 1862, had cost $52,491,915.74, it had repaid the State with an excess of $42,000,000.
In the midst of so many recommendations, one wonders that Seward had nothing to say for civil service reform. We may doubt, and with reason, whether anything he might have said could have strengthened the slight hold which such a theory then had in the minds of the people, but it would have brought the need of reform strikingly before the country to bear, in time, ripe fruit. The Whig party, however, was not organised to keep Democrats in office, and no sooner had the Albany _Journal_ announced Seward's election than applications began pouring in upon the Governor-elect until more than one thousand had been filed. Seward afterward said that, of these applications, only two came from persons living west of Cayuga Bridge, although the eighth district had given him a majority equal to his entire majority in the State.
Under the Const.i.tution of 1821, there were more places to fill by appointment than under the Const.i.tution of 1846, and twice as many as now exist. In 1839, the Governor not only appointed port-wardens, harbour-masters, notaries public, and superintendents and commissioners of various sorts, but he nominated judges, surrogates, county clerks, examiners of prisons, weighers of merchandise, measurers of grain, cullers of staves, and inspectors of flour, lumber, spirits, salt, beef and pork, hides and skins, and fish and oil, besides numerous other officers. They applied formally to the Governor and then went to Weed to get the place. Just so the Whig legislators went through the form of holding a caucus to select state officers after the slate had been made up. John C. Spencer became secretary of state; Bates Cook of Niagara County, comptroller; Willis Hall of New York City, attorney-general; Jacob Haight, treasurer; and Orville L. Holley, surveyor-general. Thurlow Weed's account, read with the knowledge that he alone selected them, is decidedly humourous. ”Bates Cook had but a local reputation,” he says, ”and it required the strongest a.s.surances from Governor Seward and myself that he was abundantly qualified.” In other words, it was necessary for the caucus to know that Weed wanted him. ”The canva.s.s for attorney-general was very spirited,” he continues, ”Joshua A. Spencer of Oneida and Samuel Stevens of Albany being the most prominent candidates;” but Willis Hall, ”who was better known on the stump than at the bar, and whose zeal, energy, and tact had been conspicuous and effective in overthrowing the Democratic party,” got the office. Van Buren could not have surpa.s.sed this for practical politics. ”The nomination of Jacob Haight,” he goes on, ”afforded me great satisfaction. I had learned in my boyhood at Catskill to esteem and honour him. In 1824 when, as a Democratic senator, he arrayed himself against William H.
Crawford, the caucus nominee for President, and zealously supported John Quincy Adams, my early remembrances of him grew into a warm personal friends.h.i.+p.”[310] It was easy to fuse in Weed's big heart Democratic apostacy and the a.s.sociations of boyhood.
[Footnote 310: _Autobiography of Thurlow Weed_, p. 459.]
Yet Weed had able indorsers behind his candidates. ”I hear there is great opposition to Willis Hall,” wrote William Kent, ”and I am sorry for it. He has a great heart, and a great head, too. It has been his misfortune, but our good fortune, that his time and talents have been devoted to advancing the Whig party, while those who oppose him were taxing costs and filing demurrers. The extreme Webster men in New York have formed a combination against Willis. It is the dog in the manger, too, for no man from New York is a candidate.”[311]
[Footnote 311: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
73.]
But the dictator made a greater display of practical politics in the selection of a United States senator to succeed Nathaniel P.
Tallmadge. There were several aspirants, among them Millard Fillmore, John C. Spencer, John A. Collier, and Joshua A. Spencer. All these men were intensely in earnest. Fillmore, then in Congress, was chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means; and advancement to the Senate would have been a deserved promotion. But Tallmadge had rallied to the support of Seward, under the name of Conservatives, many former National Republicans, who had joined the Democratic party because of anti-Masonry, and Weed believed in keeping them in the Whig party by re-electing their leader. Fillmore, and other candidates, earnestly protested against the policy of discarding tried and faithful friends, and of conferring the highest and most important place in the gift of the party upon a new recruit whose fidelity could not be trusted; ”but, strong as those gentlemen were in the Whig party, they were unable to overcome a conviction in the minds of the Whig members of the Legislature,” says Weed, solemnly, as if the Whig members of the Legislature really did have something to do with it, ”that in view of the approaching presidential election Mr. Tallmadge was ent.i.tled to their support. He was, therefore, nominated with considerable unanimity.”[312] It was a great shock to Fillmore, which he resented a few years later. Indeed, Weed's dictators.h.i.+p, although quiet and gentle, was already raising dissent. Albert H. Tracy, indignant at Seward's nomination over the heads of older and more experienced men, had withdrawn from politics, and Gamaliel H. Barstow, the first state treasurer elected by the Whigs, resigned in a huff because he did not like the way things were going. Weed fully realised the situation.
”There are a great many disappointed, disheartened friends,” he wrote Granger. ”It has been a tremendous winter. But for the presidential question which will absorb all other things, the appointments would tear us to pieces.”[313] To his door, Seward knew, the censure of the disappointed would be aimed. ”The list of appointments made this winter is fourteen hundred,” he writes, ”and I am not surprised by any manifestation of disappointment or dissatisfaction. This only I claim--that no interest, pa.s.sion, prejudice or partiality of my own has controlled any decision I have made.”[314]
[Footnote 312: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 1, p.
461.]
[Footnote 313: _Ibid._, Vol. 2, p. 86.]
[Footnote 314: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 483.]
But there was one wheel lacking in the Weed machine. The Democrats controlled the Senate, obstructing bills deemed by the Whigs essential to the public welfare, and refusing to confirm Seward's nominations.
By preventing an agreement upon a candidate, preliminary to a joint ballot, they also blocked the election of a United States senator.
This situation was intolerable to Weed. Without the Senate, little could be accomplished and nothing of a strictly partisan character.
Besides, Weed had his eye on the lucrative place of state printer. In the campaign of 1839, therefore, he set to work to win the higher body of the Legislature by carrying the Albany district, in which three senators were to be chosen. For eighteen years, the Senate had been held by the Regency party, and, in all that time, Albany was numbered among the reliable Democratic districts. But Weed's friends now brought up eight thousand dollars from New York. The Democrats had made a spirited fight, and, although they knew Weed was endowed with a faculty for management, they did not know of his money, or of the ability of his lieutenants to place it. When the votes were counted, Weed's three nominees had an average majority of one hundred and thirty-three. This gave the Whigs nineteen senators and the Democrats thirteen. It was an appalling change for the Democrats, to whom it seemed the prologue to a defeat in 1840. In the ”clean sweep” of office-holders that followed, Tallmadge went back to the United States Senate, and Weed took from Croswell the office of public printer.
The presidential election of 1840 began in December, 1839. During Clay's visit to Saratoga, in the preceding summer, Weed had told him he could not carry New York; but, that Clay's friends in New York City, and along the river counties, might not be unduly alarmed, Weed masked his purpose of forcing Harrison's nomination, by selecting delegates ostensibly favourable to General Scott. Twenty delegates for Scott were, therefore, sent to the national convention at Harrisburg, two for Harrison and ten for Clay. On his way, Weed secured an agreement from the New England leaders to act with him, and, by a combination of the supporters of Scott and Harrison, the latter finally received one hundred and forty-eight votes to ninety for Clay.
The disappointment of Clay's friends is historic. Probably nothing parallels it in American politics. The defeat of Seward at Chicago in 1860, and of Elaine at Cincinnati in 1876, very seriously affected their friends, but the disappointment of Clay's supporters at Harrisburg, in December, 1839, took the form of anger, which, for a time, seemed fatal to the ticket. ”The nomination of Harrison,” wrote Thurlow Weed, ”so offended the friends of Clay that the convention was thrown entirely in the dark on the question of Vice President. The Kentucky delegation was asked to present a candidate, but they declined. Then John Clayton of Delaware was fixed upon, but Reverdy Johnson withdrew his name. Watkins Leigh of Virginia and Governor Dudley of North Carolina were successively designated, but they declined. While this was pa.s.sing the Vice Presidency was repeatedly offered to New York, but we had no candidate. Albert H. Tracy was eminently qualified for usefulness in public life. He entertained a high and strict sense of official responsibility, and had he not previously left us he would have been nominated. John Tyler was finally taken because we could get n.o.body else to accept.”[315]
[Footnote 315: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
77.]
The Harrisburg convention, unlike its unselfish predecessors, adjourned without a platform or declaration of principles; nor did the candidates, in accepting their nominations, indulge in political discussion. Votes were wanted from all who opposed Van Buren's administration--from the strict constructionist friends of Tyler, although opposed to the whole Whig theory of government, as much as from the followers of Harrison, who believed in protective tariffs and internal improvements.
Such action contrasted strangely with the work of the national Democratic convention which met at Baltimore on May 6, 1840. If despondency filled the air, the delegates at least had the courage of their convictions. After unanimously renominating Van Buren, it declared for a limited federal power, for the separation of public moneys from private banks, and for the const.i.tutional inability of Congress to interfere with slavery in the States, p.r.o.nouncing the efforts of Abolitionists both alarming and dangerous to the Union; it opposed internal improvements by the general government; the fostering of one industry to the injury of another; the raising of more money than was needed for necessary expenses; and the rechartering of a national bank. If this declaration did not shape the phrases, and marshal the sentences of future platforms of the party, it embraced the principles upon which Democracy went up to victory or down to defeat during the next two decades; and it must have carried Van Buren through successfully had not his administration fallen upon evil times.
The President, with great moral courage and keen-sighted wisdom, met the crisis of 1837 with an admirable bearing. The statesman suddenly displaced the politician. In the three months intervening between the suspension of specie payments and the extra session of Congress, Van Buren prepared a message as clear and as unanswerable as the logic of Hamilton's state papers. The law, he said, required the secretary of the treasury to deposit public moneys only in banks paying their notes in specie, and, since all banks had suspended specie payments, it was necessary to provide some other custody. For this reason, he had summoned Congress. Then he a.n.a.lysed the cause of the panic, arguing that ”the government could not help people earn a living, but it could refuse to aid the deception that paper is gold, and the delusion that value can arise without labour.” Those who look to the action of the government, he declared, for specific aid to the citizen to relieve embarra.s.sments arising from losses by reverses in commerce and credit, lose sight of the ends for which government is created, and the powers with which it is clothed. In conclusion, he recommended the enactment of an independent treasury scheme, divorcing the bank and the state.
These words of wisdom, often repeated, long ago became the principle of all administrations, notably of that of President Grant in the great crisis of 1873; and, except from 1841 to 1846, the sub-treasury scheme has been a cardinal feature of American finance. But its enactment was a long, fierce battle. Beginning in 1837, the contest continued through one Congress and half of another. Clay resisted and Webster denounced the project, which did not become a law until July 4, 1840--too late to be of a.s.sistance to Van Buren in November.