A Political History of the State of New York Volume II Part 2

How heartily Seward would have responded under like circ.u.mstances is evidenced by his action when a premature report went forth of Granger's selection. Being informed of it, Seward at once told his friends that Auburn must be the first to ratify, and immediately set to work preparing resolutions for the meeting.

[Footnote 293: _Ibid._, p. 374.]

Thurlow Weed was pre-eminently a practical politician. He believed in taking advantage of every opportunity to strengthen his own party and weaken the adversary, and he troubled himself little about the means employed. He preferred to continue the want of small bills for another year rather than allow the opposite party to benefit by a repeal of the obnoxious law; he approved Van Buren's course in the infamous Fellows-Allen controversy; and, had he been governor in place of John Jay in 1800, the existing Legislature would undoubtedly have been reconvened in extra session, and presidential electors chosen favourable to his own party, as Hamilton wanted. But, at the bottom of his nature, there was bed-rock principle from which no pressure could swerve him. He could exclaim with Emerson, "I will say those things which I have meditated for their own sake and not for the first time with a view to that occasion." In these words is the secret of his relation to the Whig party. He asked no office, and he gave only the ripe fruit of his meditative life. It is not to be supposed that, in 1838, he saw in the young man at Auburn the astute United States Senator of the fifties; or the still greater secretary of state of the Civil War; but he had seen enough of Seward to discern the qualities of mind and heart that lifted him onto heights which extended his horizon beyond that of most men, enabling him to keep his bearing in the midst of great excitement, and, finally, in the presence of war itself. Seward saw fewer things, perhaps, than the more active and eloquent Granger, but Weed knew that he saw more deeply.[294]

[Footnote 294: "Apart from politics, I liked Seward, though not blind to his faults. His natural instincts were humane and progressive. He hated slavery and all its belongings, though a seeming necessity constrained him to write, in 1838, to this intensely pro-slavery city, a pro-slavery letter, which was at war with his real, or at least with his subsequent convictions. Though of Democratic parentage, he had been an Adams man, an anti-Mason, and was now thoroughly a Whig. The policy of more extensive and vigorous internal improvement had no more zealous champion. By nature, genial and averse to pomp, ceremony, and formality, few public men of his early prime were better calculated to attract and fascinate young men of his own party, and holding views accordant on most points with his.... Weed was of coa.r.s.er mould and fibre than Seward--tall, robust, dark-featured, shrewd, resolute, and not over-scrupulous--keen-sighted, though not far-seeing."--Horace Greeley, _Recollections of a Busy Life_, pp. 311, 312.]

The Democratic state convention a.s.sembled at Herkimer on September 12, and unanimously renominated William L. Marcy and John Tracy. Marcy had made an able governor for three consecutive terms. His declaration that "to the victors belong the spoils" had not impaired his influence, since all parties practised, if they did not preach it; and, although he stultified himself by practically recommending and finally approving the construction of the Chenango ca.n.a.l, which he bitterly opposed as comptroller, he had lost no friends. Ca.n.a.l building was in accord with the spirit of the times. A year later, he had recommended an enlargement of the Erie ca.n.a.l; but when he discovered that the Chenango project would cost two millions instead of one, and the Erie enlargement twelve millions instead of six, he protested against further improvements until the Legislature provided means for paying interest on the money already borrowed. He clearly saw that the "unregulated spirit of speculation" would lead to ruin; and, to counteract it, he appealed to the Legislature, seeking to influence the distribution of bank stock along lines set forth in the law. But Marcy failed to enforce his precepts with the veto. In refusing, also, to rea.s.semble the Legislature, for the repeal of the Small Bills act, the pa.s.sage of which he had recommended in 1835, he gave the _Evening Post_ opportunity to a.s.sail him as "a weak, cringing, indecisive man, the mere tool of a monopoly junto--their convenient instrument."

Marcy held office under difficult conditions. The panic, coming in the summer of 1837, was enough to shatter the nerves of any executive; but, to the panic, was now added the Canadian rebellion which occurred in the autumn of 1837. Though not much of a rebellion, William L.

McKenzie's appeal for aid to the friends of liberty aroused hundreds of sympathetic Americans living along the border. Navy Island, above the Falls of Niagara, was made the headquarters of a provisional government, from which McKenzie issued a proclamation offering a reward for the capture of the governor-general of Canada and promising three hundred acres of land to each recruit.

The Canadian authorities effectually guarded the border, and destroyed the _Caroline_, presumably an insurgent steamer, lying at Schlosser's dock on the American side. In the conflict, one member of the crew was killed, and several wounded. The steamer proved to be an American vessel, owned by New York parties, and its destruction greatly increased the indignation against Canada; but Governor Marcy did not hesitate to call upon the people to refrain from unlawful acts within the territory of the United States; and, to enforce his proclamation, supplied General Scott, now in command of the Canadian frontier, with a force of militia. The American troops quickly forced the abandonment of Navy Island, scattered the insurgents and their allies to secret retreats, and broke up the guerrilla warfare. The loss of life among the patriots, due to their audacity and incompetent leadership, was considerable, and the treatment of prisoners harsh and in some instances inhuman. Many young men of intelligence and character were banished for life to Van Dieman's Land, McKenzie was thrown into a Canadian dungeon, and, among others, Van Schoulty, a brave young officer and refugee from Poland, who led an unsuccessful attack upon Prescott, was executed. Small as was the uprising, it created an intense dislike of Marcy among the friends of those who partic.i.p.ated in it.

Still another political splinter was festering in Marcy's side.

Several leading Democrats, who had sustained Jackson in his war upon the United States Bank, and in his removal of the deposits, refused to adopt Van Buren's sub-treasury scheme, proposed to the extra session of Congress, convened in September, 1837. This measure meant the disuse of banks as fiscal agents of the government, and the collection, safekeeping, and disburs.e.m.e.nt of public moneys by treasury officials. The banks, of course, opposed it; and thousands who had shouted, "Down with the United States Bank," changed their cry to "Down with Van Buren and the sub-treasury scheme." Among those opposing it, in New York, Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, a Democratic United States senator, took the lead, calling a state convention to meet at Syracuse. This convention immediately burned its bridges. It denounced Van Buren, it opposed Marcy, and it indorsed Seward. Behind it were bank officers and stockholders who were to lose the privilege of loaning the money of the United States for their own benefit, and the harder it struck them the more liberally they paid for fireworks and for shouters.

If trouble confronted the Democrats, discouragement oppressed the Whigs. Under the direction of Gerrit Smith the Abolitionists were on the war-path, questioning Seward as to the propriety of granting fugitive slaves a fair trial by jury, of abolishing distinctions in const.i.tutional rights founded solely on complexion, and of repealing the law authorising the importation of slaves into the State and their detention as such during a period of nine months. Seward avowed his firm faith in trial by jury and his opposition to all "human bondage,"

but he declined making ante-election pledges. He preferred to wait, he said, until each case came before him for decision. Seward undoubtedly took the wise course; but he did not satisfy the extremists represented by Smith, and many of the Whig leaders became panic-stricken. "The Philistines are upon us," wrote Millard Fillmore, who was canva.s.sing the State. "I now regard all as lost irrevocably.

We shall never be able to burst the withes. Thank G.o.d, I can endure it as long as they, but I am sick of our Whig party. It can never be in the ascendant."[295]

[Footnote 295: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

60.]

Francis Granger was no less alarmed. He estimated the Abolitionist vote at twenty thousand, "and before the grand contest of 1840," he wrote Weed, "they will control one-fourth the votes of the State. They are engaged in it with the same honest purpose that governed the great ma.s.s of Anti-Masons."[296] The young candidate at Auburn was also in despair. "I fear the State is lost," he wrote Weed on November 4.

"This conclusion was forced upon me strongly by news from the southern tier of counties, and is confirmed by an a.n.a.logy in Ohio. But I will not stop to reason on the causes. Your own sagacity has doubtless often considered them earlier and more forcibly than mine."[297]

[Footnote 296: _Ibid._, p. 61.]

[Footnote 297: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 61.]

But Horace Greeley did not share these gloomy forebodings. He was then engaged in editing the _Jeffersonian_, a weekly journal of eight pages, which had been established in February solely as a campaign newspaper. His regular business was the publication of the _New Yorker_, a journal of literature and general intelligence. During the campaign he consented to spend two days of each week at Albany making up the _Jeffersonian_, which was issued from the office of the _Evening Journal_, and he was doing this work with the indefatigable industry and marvellous ability that marked his character.

Greeley had battled for a place in the world after the manner of Thurlow Weed. He was born on a New Hampshire farm, he had worked on a Vermont farm, and for a time it seemed to him as if he must forever remain on a farm; but after a few winters of schooling he started over the Vermont hills to learn the printer's trade. A boy was not needed in Whitehall, and he pushed on to Poultney. There he found work for four years until the _Northern Spectator_ expired. Then he went back to the farm. But newspaper life in a small town had made him ambitious to try his fortunes in a city, and, journeying from one printing office to another, he finally drifted, in 1831, at the age of twenty, into New York.

Up to this time Greeley's life had resembled Weed's only in his voracious appet.i.te for reading newspapers. He cared little for the boys about town and less for the sports of youth; he could dispense with sleep, and wasted no time thinking about what he should eat or wear; but books, and especially newspapers, were read with the avidity that a well-fed threshing machine devours a stack of wheat. He seemed to have only one ambition--the acquisition of knowledge and the career of a man of letters, and in his efforts to succeed, he ignored forms and social usages, forgot that he had a physical body to care for, and detested man-worship. Standing at last before a printer's case on Broadway, he was able to watch, almost from the beginning, the great political drama in which he was destined to play so great a part.

Seward had just entered the State Senate; Weed, having recently established the _Evening Journal_, was ma.s.sing the Anti-Masons and National Republicans for their last campaign; William Lloyd Garrison had issued the first number of the _Liberator_; Gerrit Smith, already in possession of his father's vast estate, still clung to the Liberian colonisation scheme; and Van Buren, not yet returned from England, was about entering upon the last stage of his phenomenally successful political career. Politicians for the first time disturbed about the tariff, the bank, and internal improvements, had come to the parting of the ways; the old order of things had ended under John Quincy Adams--the new had just commenced under Andrew Jackson. But the young compositor needed no guide-post to direct his political footsteps. In 1834, he had established the _New Yorker_ and those who read it became Whigs. His mind acted upon other minds of a certain const.i.tution with wonderful magnetism, attracting thousands of readers by his marvellous gift of expression and the broad sympathies and clear discernments that characterised his writings. He had his own ideas about the necessity for reforms, and he seems easily to have fallen a victim to countless delusions and illusions which young visionaries and gray-headed theorists brought to him; but, in spite of remonstrances and crushing opposition, he stood resolutely for whatever awoke the strongest emotions of his nature.

Thurlow Weed had been a constant reader of the _New Yorker_. He did not know the name of its editor and had never taken the trouble to inquire, but when a cheap weekly Whig newspaper was needed for a vigorous campaign in 1838, the editor of the _New Yorker_, whoever he might be, seemed the proper man to edit and manage it. Going to New York, he called at the Ann Street office and found himself in the presence of a young man, slender, light-haired, slightly stooping, and very near-sighted, who introduced himself as Horace Greeley. At the moment, he was standing at the case, with coat off and sleeves rolled up, setting type with the ease and rapidity of an expert. "When I informed him of the object of my visit," says Weed, "he was, of course, surprised, but evidently gratified. Nor was his surprise and gratification diminished to learn that I was drawn to him without any other reason or information but such as I had derived from the columns of the _New Yorker_. He suggested the _Jeffersonian_ as the name for the new paper, and the first number appeared in February, 1838."[298]

[Footnote 298: _Autobiography of Thurlow Weed_, p. 466.]

It is one of the privileges of genius to discern the genius of others; but even Thurlow Weed could not have dreamed that he was giving opportunity to a man whose name was to rank higher than his own in history. There was a certain affinity between the intellectual nature of the two men, and they had now a common object. Both were journalists of tremendous energy, indomitable industry, and marvellous gifts; but Weed was a politician, Greeley a political preacher. Weed's influence lay in his remarkable judgment, his genius for diplomacy, and his rare gift of controlling individuals by personal appeal and by the overpowering mastery of his intellect; Greeley's supremacy grew out of his broad sympathies with the human race and his matchless ability to write. Weed's field of operations was confined largely to the State of New York and to delegates and men of influence who a.s.semble at national conventions; Greeley preached to the whole country, sweeping along like a prairie fire and converting men to his views as easily as steel filings are attracted to the magnet. From the outset he was above dictation. He lacked judgment, and at times greatly grieved the friends who were willing to follow him through fire and flood; but once his mind was made up he surrendered his understanding, his consciousness of convictions, of duty, and of public good, to no man or set of men. "I trust we can never be enemies," he once wrote Weed, "but better anything than I should feel the weight of chains about my neck, that I should write and act with an eye to any man's pleasure, rather than to the highest good."[299]

[Footnote 299: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

97.]

As the editor of the _Jeffersonian_, which now quickly won a mult.i.tude of readers, he did his work with marked ability, discussing measures calmly and forcibly, and with an influence that baffled his opponents and surprised his friends. Greeley seems never to have been an immature writer. His felicity of expression and ability to shade thought, with a power of appeal and invective that belongs to experience and mature age, came to him, as they did to Hamilton, before he was out of his teens, and whether he was right or whether he was wrong, he was always the most interesting, always the most commanding figure in American journalism in the epoch-making political controversies of his day.

The Whigs thought it a happy omen that election day, November 7, came this year on the anniversary of General Harrison's victory at Tippecanoe. As the returns came in Seward's friends grew more elated, and on Sat.u.r.day, the 11th, Weed covered the entire first page of the _Evening Journal_ with the picture of an eagle, having outspread wings and bearing in its beak the word "Victory." It was the first appearance in politics of this American bird, which was destined to play a part in all future celebrations of the kind. The completed returns showed that the Whigs had elected Seward and Bradish by ten thousand four hundred and twenty-one majority,[300] five of the eight senators, and nearly two-thirds of the a.s.semblymen. "Well, dear Seward," wrote Weed, "we are victorious; G.o.d be thanked--gratefully and devoutly thanked."[301] Seward was no less affected. "It is a fearful post I have coveted," he wrote; "I shudder at my temerity....

Indeed, I feel just now as if your zeal had been blind; but I may, perhaps, get over this. G.o.d grant, at all events, that I be spared from committing the sin of ingrat.i.tude. I hate it as the foulest in the catalogue."[302]

[Footnote 300: William H. Seward, 192,882; William L. Marcy, 182,461.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

[Footnote 301: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 379.]

[Footnote 302: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

61.]

Marcy seemed to accept his defeat good-naturedly. "Even before the ballot-boxes were closed," he wrote, facetiously, "I had partly persuaded myself to engage in a work for _my_ posterity, by writing the history of the rise, progress, and termination of the Regency. It will embrace the transactions of the golden days of the Republic (Empire State). It began with my entrance into public life, and terminates with my exit from it. The figures in the tableau will not be of the largest size, but the ascendancy of honest men, for such I think them to have been (_Ilium fuit_), will be interesting on account of great rarity." But, to the same friend, a few weeks later, he took a desponding view, expressing the fear that the power which had pa.s.sed from the Democratic party would not return to as honest hands. His financial condition, too, caused him much uneasiness. He had given eighteen years to the State, he said, the largest portion of an active and vigorous life, and now found himself poorer than when he took office. "If my acquisitions in a pecuniary way have probably been less and my labours and exertions greater," he asks, "what compensating advantages are to be brought into the calculation to balance the account?" An office-holder rarely asks such a question until thrown out of a position; while in office, it is evident he thinks the privilege of holding it sufficient compensation; otherwise, it may be presumed, he would resign. Marcy, however, was not forgotten. Indeed, his political career had scarcely begun, since the governorship became only a stepping-stone to continued honours. Within a few months, President Van Buren appointed him, under the convention of April, 1839, to the Mexican Claims Commission, and a few years later he was to become a member of two Cabinets.

CHAPTER III

THE DEFEAT OF VAN BUREN FOR PRESIDENT

1840

After Seward's election, the Whig party in New York may be fairly described as under the control of Thurlow Weed, who became known as the "Dictator." Although no less drastic and persevering, perhaps, than DeWitt Clinton's, it was a control far different in method.

Clinton did not disguise his power. He was satisfied in his own mind that he knew better than any other how to guide his party and govern his followers, and he acted accordingly--dogmatic, overbearing, often far from amiable, sometimes unendurable, to those around him. Weed, on the contrary, was patient, sympathetic, gentle, and absolutely without asperity. "My dear Weed," wrote Seward on December 14, 1838, "the sweetness of his temper inclines me to love my tyrant. I had no idea that dictators were such amiable creatures."[303] In a humourous vein, William Kent, the gifted son of the Chancellor, addressed him. "Mr.

Dictator, the whole State is on your shoulders. I take it, some future chronicler, in reciting the annals of New York during this period, in every respect equal to England in the time of Elizabeth, will devote the brightest colours to 'the celebrated Thurlow Weed, who so long filled the office of Governor Seward during his lengthened and prosperous administration.' It behooves you, therefore, to act circ.u.mspectly, and particularly in the advice you give the Governor as to appointments to office."[304]

[Footnote 303: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

63. F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 381.]

[Footnote 304: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

72.]

Few chapters of personal history can be more interesting than that which tells of the strange, subtle influence exercised by Weed over the mind of Seward; but it is doubtful if there was conscious control at any time. Certainly Seward never felt "the weight of chains" about his neck. Weed probably saw good reason to believe that in Seward he could have just the sort of an a.s.sociate who would suit all his purposes, since their views of public affairs and their estimate of public men rarely differed. "Our relations had become so intimate," he says, "and our sentiments and sympathies proved so congenial, that our interests, pursuits, and hopes of promoting each other's welfare and happiness became identical."[305] Weed seemed to glory in Seward's success, and Seward was supremely happy in and proud of Weed's friendship. Weed and Greeley were so differently const.i.tuted that, between them, such a relation could not exist, although at times it seemed to give Greeley real pain that it was so. "I rise early from a bed of sleepless thought," he once wrote Weed, "to explain that we differ radically on the bank question, and I begin to fear we do on the general policy and objects of political controversy."[306] But there were no such sleepless nights for Seward. Looking back upon four years of gubernatorial life, he opens his heart freely to the friend of his young manhood. "Without your aid," he declares, "how helpless would have been my prospect of reaching the elevation from which I am to-day descending. How could I have sustained myself there; how could I have secured the joyous reflections of this hour, but for the confidence I so undenyingly reposed on your affection?"[307] It was not Seward's nature to depend upon somebody to have his path in life or his ways of thinking pointed out to him; nor did he have the weakness of many highly cultured and gifted men who believe too much in the supremacy of intellect and culture. On the contrary, he had a way of speaking out his own honest thoughts, and would have despised himself, as much as would Greeley, if it had been necessary to enjoy any one's friendship on terms of humiliation. It was his nature, as well as his wish, to share with Weed the benefit of the latter's almost infallible judgment in political matters. In this way, Weed, more than either realised, had great influence with Seward. But Weed was no more the directing mind of the administration of Seward than was Hamilton of Washington's, or Van Buren of Jackson's, or Seward of Lincoln's. Many anecdotes were told ill.u.s.trative of this influence, which serve to show how strongly the notion obtained in the minds of the common people that Weed was really "the Dictator." The best, a.s.sociated Seward with his invariable custom of riding outside the coach while smoking his after-dinner cigar. The whip, on this occasion, did not know the distinguished traveller, and, after answering Seward's many questions, attempted to discover the ident.i.ty of his companion. The Governor disclaimed being a merchant, a lecturer, a minister, or a teacher. "Then I know what you are," said the driver; "you must be a lawyer, or you wouldn't ask so many questions." "That is not my business at present," replied Seward.

"Then who are you?" finally demanded Jehu. "I am the governor of this State," replied Seward. The driver at once showed incredulity, and the Governor offered to leave it to the landlord at the next tavern. On arriving there, and after exchanging salutations, Seward suggested the question in dispute. "No, you are not the governor," replied the landlord, to the great satisfaction of the driver. "What!" exclaimed Seward, in astonishment; "then who is governor?" "Why," said the landlord, "Thurlow Weed."[308]

[Footnote 305: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 1, p.

423.]

[Footnote 306: _Ibid._, Vol. 2, p. 97.]

[Footnote 307: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 642.]

[Footnote 308: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

100.]

"Though the incident never occurred," says Frederick W. Seward, in the biography of his father, "the story was so accordant with his habit of riding outside to smoke, and with the popular understanding of his relations with Mr. Weed, that it was generally accepted as true.

Seward himself used laughingly to relate it, and say that, though it was not quite true, it ought to be."[309]

[Footnote 309: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 395.]