A Political History of the State of New York Volume I Part 20

Tompkins' public life continued four years longer. In the autumn of 1820, the Legislature balanced his accounts and the country re-elected him Vice President. The next year his party made him a delegate to the const.i.tutional convention, and the convention made him its president; but he never recovered from the chagrin and mortification of his defeat for the governorship. Soon after the election, melancholy accounts appeared of the havoc wrought upon a frame once so full of animal spirits. He began to drink too freely even for those days of deep drink. His eye lost its l.u.s.tre; deep lines furrowed the round, sunny face; the unruffled temper became irritable; and, within three months after the close of his second term as Vice President, before he had entered his fifty-second year, he was dead.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE ALBANY REGENCY

1820-1822

When the Legislature a.s.sembled to appoint presidential electors in November, 1820, Bucktail fear of Clinton was at an end for the present. Before, his name had been one to conjure with; thenceforth it was to have no terrors. He had, indeed, been re-elected governor, but the small majority, scarcely exceeding one per cent. of the total vote, showed that he was now merely an independent, and a very independent member, of the Republican party. To the close of his career he was certain to be a commanding figure, around whom all party dissenters would quickly and easily rally; but it was now an individual figure, almost an eccentric figure, whose work as a political factor seemed to be closed.

Yet Clinton was not ready to go into a second retirement. On the theory, as he wrote Henry Post, that "the meekness of Quakerism will do in religion, but not in politics,"[207] he looked about him for something to arouse public attention and to excite public indignation, and, for the want of a better subject, he charged the Monroe administration with interference in the recent state election. Post advised caution; but Clinton, stung by the defeat of his friends and by his own narrow escape, had become possessed with the suspicion that federal officials had used the patronage of the government against him. So, in his speech to the Legislature in November, he protested against the outrage. "If the officers under the appointment of the federal government," he declared, "shall see fit as an organised and disciplined corps to interfere in state elections, I trust there will be found a becoming disposition in the people to resist these alarming attempts upon the purity and independence of their local governments."[208] Clinton had no evidence upon which to support this charge. It was, at best, only a suspicion based upon his own methods; but the Senate demanded proof, and failing to get specifications, it declared it "highly improper that the Chief Magistrate of the State should incriminate the administration of the general government, without ample testimony in his possession." The resolutions closed with an expression of confidence in the patriotism and integrity of the government.

[Footnote 207: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 413.]

[Footnote 208: _Governors' Speeches_, November 7, 1820, p. 179.]

Meanwhile, Clinton was urging Post to help him out of his difficulty.

"I want authenticated testimony of the interference of the general government in our elections," he wrote on November 19. "Our friends must be up and doing on this subject. It is all important."[209] Eight days later he stirred up Post again. "What is the annual amount of patronage of the national government in this State?" he asked.[210]

"Knowing the accuracy of your calculations, I rely much on you." Then he developed his plan: "The course of exposition ought, I think, to be this--to collect a voluminous ma.s.s of doc.u.ments detailing facts, and to form from them a lucid, intelligible statement. On the representation of facts recourse must also be had to inferences, and it ought also to unite boldness and prudence."[211] It is evident that thus far inferences outnumbered facts, for far into December Clinton was still calling upon his friends to collect testimony. "Go on with your collection of proofs," he wrote. "I think with a little industry this matter will stand well."[212]

[Footnote 209: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 413.]

[Footnote 210: _Ibid._, Vol. 50, p. 413.]

[Footnote 211: _Ibid._, Vol. 50, p. 414.]

[Footnote 212: _Ibid._, Vol. 50, p. 415.]

When submitted to the Legislature, on January 17, 1821, the doc.u.ments, according to the Governor's instructions, were indeed very voluminous.

It required a bag to take them to the capitol--the green bag message, it was called; but it proved to be smoke, with little fire. It fully established that the naval storekeeper at Brooklyn, and other federal officials were offensive partisans, just as they had been under Clinton's control, and just as they have been ever since. The Bucktails saw distinctly enough that the State could not be aroused into indignation by such a ma.s.s of doc.u.ments; but there was one letter from Van Buren to Henry Meigs, the congressman, dated April 5, 1820, advising the removal of postmasters at Bath, Little Falls, and Oxford, because it seemed impossible to secure the free circulation of Bucktail newspapers in the interior of the State, which provoked much criticism. How the Governor got it does not appear, but it gives a glimpse of Van Buren's political methods that is interesting. "Unless we can alarm them (the Clintonians) by two or three prompt removals,"

he says, "there is no limiting the injurious consequences that may result from it."

Soon after, two of the postmasters were removed. If the charge was true, that postmasters were preventing the circulation of Bucktail newspapers, Van Buren's course was very charitable. Evidently he did not want places for his friends so much as a proper delivery of the mails; for otherwise he would have insisted upon the removal of all offenders. The gentle suggestion that the removal of two or three would be a warning to others, explains how this devout lover of men lived through a long life on most intimate terms with his neighbours.

If such conditions existed under the modern management of the Post-Office Department, every wrong-doer would be summarily dismissed, regardless of party or creed. Van Buren's methods had no such drastic discipline; yet his letter became the subject of much animadversion by the Clintonians, not so much because they disapproved the suggestion as because Van Buren wrote it. "It is very important to destroy this prince of villains," Clinton declared, in a letter to Post of December 2, 1820.[213]

[Footnote 213: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 415.

Clearly discerning Van Buren as his most formidable compet.i.tor for political leadership, Clinton's letters to Post from 1817 to 1824 abound in vituperative allusions, as, for example: "Whom shall we appoint to defeat the arch scoundrel Van Buren?" November 30, 1820.

"Of his cowardice there can be no doubt. He is lowering daily in public opinion, and is emphatically a corrupt scoundrel," August 30, 1820. "Van Buren is now excessively hated out of the State as well as in it. There is no doubt of a corrupt sale of the vote of the State, although it cannot be proved in a court of justice," August 6, 1824.

"We can place no reliance upon the goodwill of Van Buren. In his politics he is a confirmed knave." And again: "With respect to Van Buren, there is no developing the man. He is a scoundrel of the first magnitude, ... without any fixture of principle or really of virtue."

"Van Buren must be conquered through his fears. He has no heart, no sincerity."]

Like many other brilliant political leaders, Van Buren was somewhat thin-skinned; he happened, too, to be out of the State Senate, and thus was compelled to endure, in silence, the attacks of the opposition. It is believed that at this time, Van Buren had a strong inclination to accept a Supreme Court judgeship, and thus withdraw forever from political life. But the fates denied him any chance of making this serious anti-climax in his great political career. While the green bag message convulsed the Clintonians with simulated indignation, the Bucktails declared him, by a caucus vote of fifty-eight to twenty-four, their choice for United States senator in place of Nathan Sanford, whose term expired on March 4, 1821.

It appeared then as it appears now, that Martin Van Buren was "the inevitable man." He was thirty-nine years of age, in the early ripeness of his powers, a leader at the bar, and the leader of his party. He had acc.u.mulated from his practice the beginnings of the fortune which his Dutch thrift and cautious habits made ample for his needs. The simple and natural rules governing his astute political leadership seemed to leave him without a rival, or, at least, without an opponent who could get in his way. Times had changed, too, since the days when United States senators resigned to become postmasters and mayors of New York. A seat in the United States Senate had become a great honour, because it was a place of great power and great influence; and in pa.s.sing from Albany to Washington Van Buren would add to state leadership an opportunity of becoming a national figure.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Clinton sought to defeat him; for he had ever been ready to retaliate upon men who ventured to cross his purposes. But Clinton's scheme had no place in the plans of Bucktails. "I am afraid Van Buren will beat Sanford for senator," he wrote Post as early as the 30th of December, 1820. "He will unless his friends stand out against a caucus decision."[214] This is what Clinton wanted the twenty-four Sanford delegates to do, and, to encourage such a bolt, he compelled every Federalist and Clintonian, save one, to vote for him, although Sanford represented Tammany and its bitter hostility to Clinton. But the Bucktails had at last established a party organisation that could not be divided by Clinton intrigue, and Van Buren received the full party vote.

[Footnote 214: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 414.]

When Roger Skinner and his three a.s.sociates on the new Council of Appointment got to work, Clinton quickly discovered that he could expect little from such a body of Bucktails; and he received less than he expected. For, when the Council had finished, only one Clintonian remained in office. Oakley, the able attorney-general; Jay, the gifted recorder of New York; Colden, the acceptable mayor of New York; Hawley, the ideal superintendent of common schools; Solomon Van Rensselaer, the famous and fearless adjutant-general; McIntyre, the trusted and competent comptroller, had all disappeared in a night.

Only Simeon DeWitt, who had been surveyor-general for forty years, was left undisturbed. Former Councils had been radical and vigorous in their action, but the Skinner council cut as deep and swift as the famous Clinton Council of 1801. At its first meeting, clerks and sheriffs and surrogates and district attorneys fell in windrows. Yet it was no worse than its predecessors; it could not be worse, since precedents existed in support of conduct however scandalous.

The removal of Hawley, McIntyre, and Van Rensselaer produced a greater sensation throughout the State than any previous dismissals, except that of DeWitt Clinton from the mayoralty in 1815. Gideon Hawley had held the office of school superintendent for nine years, organising the State into school districts, distributing the school fund equitably, and perfecting the work, so that the entire system could be easily handled by a superintendent. In 1818, he reported five thousand schools thus organised, with upward of two hundred thousand pupils in attendance for a period of four to six months each year. He did this work on a salary of three hundred dollars--only to receive, at last, in place of thanks so richly deserved, the unmerited rebuke of a summary dismissal.

The removal of Archibald McIntyre made a sensation almost as great.

For fifteen years, McIntyre had been such an acceptable comptroller that the waves of factional and party strife had broken at his feet, leaving him master of the State's finances. The Lewisites retained him in 1807; the Federalists kept him in 1809; the Republicans continued him in 1811; the Federalists again spared him in 1813; while the frequent changes that followed Clinton's downfall left him undisturbed. He took no part in political contests. It was his duty to see that the State's money was paid according to law, and he so conducted the office; but the Bucktails deeply resented his treatment of the Vice President, and a swift removal was the penalty. In some degree McIntyre may have been responsible for the defeat of Tompkins.

The perfervid strength of his convictions as to the injustice of the Vice President's claim betrayed him into an intemperance of language that suggests over-zeal in a public official. In refusing, too, to balance the Vice President's accounts, as the Legislature clearly intended, and as he might have done regardless of the Vice President's additional claim, he seems to have a.s.sumed an unnecessary responsibility, and to have learned what many men have experienced in public life, that nothing is so dangerous as being too faithful. But McIntyre may have had no reason to regret his removal. He was immediately returned to the Legislature as a senator, and the next year appointed agent for the state lotteries, a business that enabled him in a few years to retire with an independent fortune.

It is unnecessary to introduce here a full list of the new office-holders; but there came into notice at this time three young lawyers who subsequently occupied a conspicuous place in the history of their State and country. Samuel A. Talcott took the place of Thomas J. Oakley as attorney-general; William L. Marcy became adjutant-general in place of Van Rensselaer, and Benjamin F. Butler was appointed district attorney of Albany County. Marcy was then thirty-five years of age, Talcott thirty-two, and Butler twenty-six. Talcott was tall and commanding, with high forehead and large mellow blue eyes that inspired confidence and admiration. His manners combined dignity and ease; and as he swept along the street, or stood before judge or jury, he appeared like nature's n.o.bleman. Marcy had a bold, full forehead, with heavy brows and eyes deep set and expressive. It was decidedly a Websterian head, though the large, firm mouth and admirably moulded chin rather recalled those of Henry Clay. The face would have been austere, forbidding easy approach, except for the good-natured twinkle in the eye and a quiet smile lingering about the mouth. Marcy was above the ordinary height, with square, powerful shoulders, and carried some superfluous flesh as he grew older; but, at the time of which we are writing, he was as erect as the day he captured St.

Regis. Butler was slighter than Marcy, and shorter than Talcott, but much larger than Van Buren, with fulness of form and perfect proportions. He had an indescribable refinement of face which seemed to come from the softness of the eye and the tenderness and intellectuality of the mouth, which reflected his gentle and generous spirit.

At the time of Talcott's appointment, though he had not distinguished himself as a legal compet.i.tor of Van Buren, he displayed the gentle manners and amiable traits that naturally commended him to one of Van Buren's smooth, adroit methods. The Kinderhook statesman had, however, in selecting him for attorney-general, looked beyond the charming personality to the rapidly developing powers of the lawyer, who was even then captivating all hearers by the strength of his arguments and the splendour of his diction. Contemporaries of Talcott were fond of telling of this remarkable, almost phenomenal gift of speech. One of them mentions "those magical transitions from the subtlest argument to the deepest pathos;" another describes him as "overpowering in the weight of his intellect, who produced in the minds of his audience all the sympathy and emotion of which the mind is capable." William H.

Dillingham, a cla.s.smate and lifelong friend, declared that the extraordinary qualities which marked his career and so greatly distinguished him in after life--towering genius, astonishing facility in acquiring knowledge, and surpa.s.sing eloquence, were developed during his college days. The life of Talcott recalls, in its brilliant activity, the dazzling legal career of Alexander Hamilton. Wherever the greatest lawyers gathered he was in their midst, the "Erskine of the bar." At his last appearance in the Supreme Court of the United States he opposed Daniel Webster in the "Sailors' Snug Harbor" case.

"Beginning in a low and measured tone," says Bacon, in his _Early Bar of Oneida County_, "he gathered strength and power as he proceeded in his masterly discourse, and for five hours held the breathless attention of bench and bar and audience, in an argument which the ill.u.s.trious Marshall declared had not been equalled in that court since the days of the renowned William Pinckney."

Benjamin F. Butler was very much like Talcott in gentleness of manner and in power of intellect. He was born in Kinderhook, Columbia County, where his father, starting as a mechanic, became a merchant, and, after a brief service in the Legislature, received the appointment of county judge. But there was no more reason to expect Medad Butler to bring an ill.u.s.trious son into the world than there was that his neighbour, Abraham Van Buren, should be the father of the eighth President of the United States. Thirteen years divided the ages of Van Buren and Butler; and, while the latter attended the district school and aided his father about the store, Van Buren was practising law and talking politics with Butler's father. Young Butler was not a dreamer.

He had no wild ambition to be great, and cherished no thought of sitting in cabinets or controlling the policy of a great party; but his quiet, respectful manners and remarkable acuteness of mind attracted Van Buren. When Van Buren went to Hudson as surrogate of the county, Butler entered the Hudson academy. There he distinguished himself, as he had already distinguished himself in the little district school, acquiring a decided fondness for the cla.s.sics. His teachers predicted for him a brilliant college career; but, whatever his reasons, he gave up the college, and, at the age of sixteen, entered Van Buren's law office and Van Buren's family. On his admission to the bar, in 1817, he became Van Buren's partner at Albany.

Though Talcott began life a Federalist, in the party breakup he joined the Bucktails, with Butler and Van Buren. It seemed to be a love match--the relations between Talcott and Butler. They were frequently a.s.sociated in the most important cases, the possession of scholarly tastes being the powerful magnet that drew them together. Talcott, at Williams College, had evidenced an astonishing facility for acquiring knowledge; Butler, after leaving the academy, had continued the study of the languages until he could read his favourite authors in the original with great ease. This was their delight. Neither of them took naturally to public service, though offices seemed to seek them at every turn of the road--United States senator, judge of the Supreme Court, and seats in the cabinets of three Presidents. Nevertheless, with the exception of a brief service under Jackson and Van Buren, Butler declined all the flattering offers that came to him.

It was Marcy who seemed born for a politician. A staid old Federalist teacher sent him away from school at fourteen years of age, because of his love for Jeffersonian principles and his fondness for argument.

The early years of this Ma.s.sachusetts lad seem to have been strangely varied and vexed. He was the leader of a band of noisy, roguish boys who made the schoolroom uncomfortable for the teacher, and the neighbourhood uncomfortable for the parents. Neither the father nor his wife appear to have had any idea of their good fortune. Mrs. Marcy once declared him the worst boy in the country. He showed little disposition to study and less inclination to work; yet it was noticed that he read all the books to be found in the homes of his playfellows and in the libraries of the district. The character of the books made no difference; he preferred reading anything to reading nothing, though history and general literature, such as the works of Addison, on whose style he seems to have moulded his own, were his favourite volumes. When, at last, he met Salem Towne, his earliest, and, in a sense, his best education began. Towne recognised the latent genius of the lad and told him of it, encouraging him to enter college and the law. Marcy used often to declare, in later years, that he owed everything he ever gained in life to the influence and example of Salem Towne. The affectionate regard which Marcy felt for his boyhood friend, a regard which endured until the day of his death, belongs to the chapter of pathetic incidents in Marcy's life.

Soon after leaving Brown University, Marcy settled in Troy and became violently hostile to DeWitt Clinton. After Clinton's downfall, he was appointed recorder of Troy; and after Clinton's restoration, he was promptly removed. Just now he was trying to practise law, and to edit the Troy _Budget_, a Bucktail newspaper; but he preferred to read, sitting with his unblacked boots on the table, careless of his dress, and indifferent to his personal appearance. He looked dull and inactive, and people thought he lacked the industry and energy so necessary to success in any profession; but when the _Budget_ appeared, its editorials made men read and reflect. It was the skill with which he marshalled facts in a gentle and winning style that attracted Van Buren and made them friends.

Marcy's appointment as adjutant-general created intense indignation, because he took the place of Solomon Van Rensselaer, who had served in the War of 1812, bravely leading the attack on Queenstown Heights and holding his ground until dislodged by superior force; but, it was said in reply, that Marcy had the honour of capturing the first British fort and the first British flag of the war. The fight was not a b.l.o.o.d.y encounter like the Queenstown engagement; yet, for men new to war, it evidenced coolness and great courage. A detachment of British soldiers had taken a position at St. Regis, seven miles from the American camp.

Selecting one hundred and seventy picked men, Lieutenant Marcy cautiously approached the fort at night, overpowered the guards on the outposts, surprised the sentries at the entrance, broke down the gates, and charged the enemy in the face of a volley of musketry. When it was over he had the fort, a file of prisoners, several stands of arms, and a flag. Van Buren thought this record was good enough.

The appointment of Talcott, Marcy, and Butler changed the existing political system. Prior to their activity, the distribution of patronage depended largely upon the local boss. His needs determined the men who, regardless of their personal fitness, should be given office. But Talcott and his colleagues introduced new methods, with a higher standard of political morality, and a better system of party discipline. They refused to tolerate unworthy men, and when the little souls stormed and raged, their wise counsels silenced the selfish and staggered the boss. Gradually, their control of patronage and of the party's policy became so absolute that they were called the "Albany Regency." It was, at first, simply a name given them by Thurlow Weed;[215] there was neither organisation nor legal authority. Power came from their great ability and high purpose.

[Footnote 215: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

36.]

The Albany Regency was destined to continue many years, and to number among its members men of character and great influence. Roger Skinner, a United States district judge, was an early member of it; so were Edwin Croswell of the Albany _Argus_, and Benjamin Knower, the state treasurer. At a later day came John A. Dix, Azariah C. Flagg, Silas Wright, and Charles E. Dudley. In his autobiography, Thurlow Weed says he "had never known a body of men who possessed so much power and used it so well." They had, he continues, "great ability, great industry, indomitable courage, and strict personal integrity."[216] But the men who organised the Regency, giving it power and the respect of the people, by refusing to do what their fine sense of honour did not approve, were Talcott, Marcy, and Butler. It was as remarkable a trio as ever sat about a table.

[Footnote 216: _Autobiography of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 1, p. 103.]

In the pa.s.sing of these three great intellects, there is something peculiarly touching. Talcott died suddenly at the early age of forty-five, leaving the members of the New York bar as sincere mourners. Butler, after the highest and purest living, died at fifty-nine, just as he landed in France to visit the scenes of which he had read and dreamed. Marcy, at sixty-two, having recently retired as President Pierce's secretary of state, was found lifeless, lying upon his bed, book in hand. He had been reading, as he had read since childhood, whenever there came a lull in the demand for his wisdom, his counsel, and his friendship.[217]

[Footnote 217: "Always an honoured citizen of New York, it has seemed fitting that the highest mountain-peak in the State by bearing his name should serve as a monument to his memory."--James F. Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. 1, p. 247.]

CHAPTER XXVII