A Political History of the State of New York Volume II Part 3

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 friendship."[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 dictatorship, 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.

Friends of the New Yorker loved to dwell upon his courage in thus placing himself in the chasm between failing banks and a patriotic people, often paralleling it with the historic leap of Marcus Curtius into the Roman Forum to save the republic. "But with this difference,"

once exclaimed Andrew B. d.i.c.kinson, an unlearned but brilliant Steuben County Whig, generally known as Bray d.i.c.kinson: "the Roman feller jumped into the gap of his own accord, but the people throw'd Van Buren in!"

On August 12, 1840, the Whigs renominated William H. Seward for governor, and in the following month the Democrats named William C.

Bouck. There was a rugged honesty and ability about Bouck that commended him to the people. He was not brilliant; he rarely attempted to speak in public; and his education had been limited to a few months of school in each winter; but he was a shrewd, wise Schoharie farmer, well read in the ways of men and in the book of the world. Seward thought him "a kind, honest, amiable, and sagacious man, his easy and fascinating manners lacking neither dignity nor grace." Beginning as town clerk, Bouck had served acceptably as sheriff, a.s.semblyman, and for nineteen years as ca.n.a.l commissioner, personally superintending the construction of the ca.n.a.l from Brockport to Lake Erie, and disbursing, without loss, eight millions of dollars. He had travelled up and down the State until the people came to know him as "the old white horse," in allusion to a favourite animal which he rode for many years; and to labourers and contractors his election became a matter of the greatest personal interest.

But the hardships growing out of the panic of 1837 and the crisis of 1839 guided the actions of men. It made little difference to them that Bouck had been a faithful, prudent, and zealous supporter of the ca.n.a.ls, or that, like DeWitt Clinton, he had been removed as ca.n.a.l commissioner on purely political grounds. The issues were national--not state. Van Buren clearly saw the force and direction of public sentiment. Yet his sub-treasury measure, so beneficent in its aims that its theory was not lost in the necessities growing out of the Civil War, proved the strongest weapon in the armory of his opponents. Webster, with mingled pathos and indignation, denounced his "disregard for the public distress" by his "exclusive concern for the interest of government and revenue," declaring that help must come to the people "from the government of the United States--from thence alone!" This was the cry of the greenbacker in 1876 and the argument of the free silver advocate in 1896. "Upon this," said Webster, "I risk my political reputation, my honour, my all. He who expects to live to see these twenty-six States resuming specie payments in regular succession once more, may expect to see the restoration of the Jews. Never. He will die without the sight." Yet Webster lived to see the resumption of specie payments in a very short time, and he lived long enough also to exclude this St. Louis speech from his collected works. Nevertheless, Webster's eloquence contributed to Van Buren's overwhelming defeat.

Much has been written of the historic campaign of 1840. The enthusiasm has been called "frenzy" and "crazy fanatacism." It has also been likened to the crusading spirit, aroused by the preaching of Peter the Hermit. "The nation," said Clay, "was like the ocean when convulsed by some terrible storm." Webster declared that "every breeze says change; the cry, the universal cry, is for a change." Long before campaigns usually begin New York was a blaze of excitement. Halls were insufficient to hold the crowds. Where hundreds had formerly a.s.sembled, thousands now appeared. The long lines of wagons, driven to the meeting places, raised clouds of dust such as mark the moving of armies. The Whig state convention at Utica became a ma.s.s-meeting of twenty-five thousand people, who formed into one great parade. "How long is this procession?" asked a bystander of one of the marshals.

"Indeed, sir, I cannot tell," was the reply. "The other end of it is forming somewhere near Albany."

The canva.s.s became one of song, of a.s.sociation, and of imagination, which aroused thoughts that were intensely animating and absorbing.

The taunt of a Virginia newspaper that Harrison should remain in his log cabin on the banks of the Ohio made the log cabin "a symbol," as Weed happily expressed it, "of virtue that dwells in obscurity, of the hopes of the humble, of the privations of the poor, of toil and danger, of hospitality and charity and frugality." Log cabins sprang up like gourds in a night. At the door, stood the cider barrel, and, hanging by the window, the omnipresent c.o.o.nskin swayed in the breeze.

They appeared on medals, in pictures, in fancy work, and in processions. Horace Greeley, who had done so much in 1838 through the columns of the _Jeffersonian_, now began the publication of the _Log Cabin_, filling whole sides of it with songs elaborately set to music, and making it so universally popular that the New York _Tribune_, established in the following year, became its legitimate successor in ability and in circulation.

In his biography of Henry Clay, Schurz says that in no presidential canva.s.s has there ever been "less thought." It is likely if there had been no log cabins, no cider, no c.o.o.n-skins, and no songs, the result would have been the same, for, in the presence of great financial distress, the people seek relief very much as they empty a burning building. But the reader of the _Log Cabin_ will find thought enough.

Greeley's editorials summed up the long line of mistakes leading to the panic of 1837, and the people understood the situation. They were simply unwilling longer to trust the party in power.

Evidence of this distrust astonished Democrats as much as it pleased the Whigs. The September election in Maine, followed in October by the result in Ohio and Indiana, both of which gave large Whig majorities, antic.i.p.ated Harrison's overwhelming election in November. In New York, however, the returns were somewhat disappointing to the Whigs.

Harrison carried the State by thirteen thousand majority, receiving in all 234 electoral votes to 60 for Van Buren; but Seward's majority of ten thousand in 1838 now dropped to five thousand,[316] while the Whig majority in the a.s.sembly was reduced to four.

[Footnote 316: William H. Seward, 222,011; William C. Bouck, 216,808.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

Seward's weakness undoubtedly grew out of his message in the preceding January. With the approval of Dr. Knott of Union College, and Dr.

Luckey, a distinguished Methodist divine, he recommended the establishment of separate schools for the children of foreigners and their instruction by teachers of the same faith and language. The suggestion created an unexpected and bitter controversy. Influential journals of both parties professed to see in it only a desire to win Catholic favour, charging that Bishop Hughes of New York City had inspired the recommendation. At that time, the Governor had neither met nor been in communication, with the Catholic prelate; but, in the excitement, truth could not outrun misstatement, nor could the patriotism that made Seward solicitous to extend school advantages to the children of foreign parents, who were growing up in ignorance, be understood by zealous churchmen.

After his defeat, Van Buren retired to Lindenwald, in the vicinity of Kinderhook, his native village, where he was to live twenty-one years, dying at the age of eighty. Lindenwald was an old estate, whose acres had been cultivated for one hundred and sixty years. William P. Van Ness, the distinguished jurist and orator, once owned it, and, thirty years before the ex-President bought it, Irving had secluded himself amidst its hills, while he mourned the death of his betrothed, and finished the _Knickerbocker_. As the home of Van Buren, Lindenwald did not, perhaps, become a Monticello or a Montpelier. Jefferson and Madison, having served eight years, the allotted term of honour, had formally retired, and upon them settled the halo of peace and triumph that belongs to the sage; but life at Lindenwald, with its leisure, its rural quiet, and its freedom from public care, satisfied Van Buren's bucolic tastes, and no doubt greatly mitigated the anguish arising from bitter defeat, the proscription of friends, and the loss of party regard which he was destined to suffer during the next decade.

CHAPTER IV

HUMILIATION OF THE WHIGS

1841-1842

The Whig state convention, a.s.sembled at Syracuse on October 7, 1842, looked like the ghost of its predecessor in 1840. The buoyancy which then stamped victory on every face had given place to fear and forebodings. Eighteen months had left nothing save melancholy recollections. Even the log cabins, still in place, seemed to add to Whig depression, being silent reminders of the days when melody and oratory, prophetic of success, filled hearts which could no longer be touched with hope and faith. This meant that the Whigs, in the election of 1841, had suffered a decisive defeat, losing the a.s.sembly, the Senate, and most of the congressmen. Even Francis Granger, whose majority usually ran into the thousands, was barely elected by five hundred. Orleans County, at one time the centre of the anti-masonic crusade, sent Sanford E. Church to Albany, the first Democrat to break into the a.s.sembly from the "infected district" since the abduction of William Morgan.

Several reasons accounted for this change. Harrison's death, within a month after his inauguration, made John Tyler President, and Tyler first refused appointments to Whigs, and then vetoed the bill, pa.s.sed by a Whig Congress, re-establishing the United States Bank. He said that he had been opposed, for twenty-five years, to the exercise of such a power, if any such power existed under the Const.i.tution. This completed the break with the party that elected him. Henry Clay denounced his action, the Cabinet, except Webster, resigned in a body, and the Whigs with great unanimity indorsed the Kentucky statesman for President in 1844. To add to the complications in New York, John C.

Spencer, who now became secretary of war, so zealously espoused and warmly defended the President that feelings of mutual distrust and ill-will soon grew up between him and Weed. It is doubtful if any New York Whig, at a time of such humiliation, could have accepted place in Tyler's Cabinet and remained on terms of political intimacy with Weed; but, of all men, John C. Spencer was the least likely to do so. In Freeman's celebrated cartoon, "The Whig Drill," Spencer is the only man in the squad out of step with Thurlow Weed, the drum-major.

Governor Seward also played a part in the story of his party's downfall. The school question, growing out of his recommendation that separate schools for the children of Roman Catholics should share in the public moneys appropriated by the State for school purposes, lost none of its bitterness; the McLeod controversy put him at odds with the national Administration; and the Virginia controversy involved him in a correspondence that made him odious in the South. In his treatment of the McLeod matter, Seward was clearly right. Three years after the destruction of the _Caroline_, which occurred during the Canadian rebellion, Alexander McLeod, while upon a visit in the State, boasted that he was a member of the attacking party and had killed the only man shot in the encounter. This led to his arrest on a charge of murder and arson. The British Minister based his demand for McLeod's release on the ground that the destruction of the _Caroline_ "was a public act of persons in Her Majesty's service, obeying the orders of their superior authorities." In approving the demand, Lord Palmerston suggested that McLeod's execution "would produce war, war immediate and frightful in its character, because it would be a war of retaliation and vengeance." Webster, then secretary of state, urged Seward to discontinue the prosecution and discharge McLeod; but the Governor, promising a pardon if McLeod was convicted, insisted that he had no power to interfere with the case until after trial, while the courts, upon an application for McLeod's discharge on habeas corpus, held that as peace existed between Great Britain and the United States at the time of the burning of the _Caroline_, and as McLeod held no commission and acted without authority, England's a.s.sumption of responsibility for his act after his arrest did not oust the court of its jurisdiction. Fortunately, McLeod, proving his boast a lie by showing that he took no part in the capture of the _Caroline_, put an end to the controversy, but Seward's refusal to intervene broke whatever relations had existed between himself and Webster.

The Virginia correspondence created even greater bitterness. The Governor discovered that a requisition for the surrender of three coloured men, charged with aiding the escape of a fugitive slave, was based upon a defective affidavit; but, before he could act, the court discharged the prisoners upon evidence that no offence had been committed against the laws of Virginia. Here the matter might very properly have ended; but, in advising Virginia's governor of their discharge, Seward voluntarily and with questionable propriety, enlarged upon an interpretation of the const.i.tutional provision for the surrender of fugitives from justice, contending that it applied to acts made criminal by the laws of both States, and not to "an act inspired by the spirit of humanity and of the Christian religion,"

which was not penal in New York. This was undoubtedly as good law as it was poor politics, for it needlessly aroused the indignation of Virginia, whose legislature retaliated by imposing special burdens upon vessels trading between Virginia and New York until such time as the latter should repeal the statute giving fugitive slaves the right of trial by jury.

The immediate cause of the Whig defeat, however, had its origin in disasters incident to the construction of the ca.n.a.ls. It had been the policy of Governor Marcy, and other Democratic leaders, to confine the annual ca.n.a.l expenditures to the surplus revenues, and, in enlarging the Erie, it was determined to continue this policy. On the other hand, the Whigs advocated a speedy completion of the public works, limiting the state debt to an amount upon which interest could be paid out of the surplus revenues derived from the ca.n.a.l. This policy, backed by several Democratic members of the Senate in 1838, resulted in the authorisation of a loan of four millions for the Erie enlargement. In 1839 Seward, still confident of the State's ability to sustain the necessary debt, advised other improvements, including the completion of the Genesee Valley and Black River ca.n.a.ls, as well as the construction of three railroads, at a total estimated expenditure of twelve to fifteen millions. By 1841, the debt had increased to eighteen millions, including the loan of four millions, while the work was scarcely half finished. To add to the difficulty, state stocks depreciated over twenty per cent., embarra.s.sing the administration in its efforts to raise money. The Democrats p.r.o.nounced such a policy disastrous and ruinous; and, although the Whigs replied that the original estimates were wrong, that the price of labour and material had advanced, and that when completed the ca.n.a.ls would speedily pay for themselves, the people thought it time to call a halt, and in the election of 1841 they called it.[317]

[Footnote 317: "Seward had faults, which his accession to power soon displayed in bold relief. His natural tendencies were toward a government not merely paternal, but prodigal--one which, in its multiform endeavours to make every one prosperous, if not rich, was very likely to whelm all in general embarra.s.sment, if not in general bankruptcy. Few governors have favoured, few senators voted for more unwisely lavish expenditures than he. Above the suspicion of voting money into his own pocket, he has a rooted dislike to opposing a project or bill whereby any of his attached friends are to profit.