A Political History of the State of New York Volume I Part 5

If Clinton thought himself fortunate in gaining Burr, he was still more fortunate in the defection of the influential Livingstons. What Caesar said of Gaul used to be said of the Empire State, that all New York was divided into three parts--the Clintons, the Livingstons, and the Schuylers. Parton said "the Clintons had power, the Livingstons had numbers, and the Schuylers had Hamilton."[53] In 1788 seven members of the Livingston family, with the Schuylers, had overthrown the Clintons, and turned the Confederation into the Union. Robert R.

Livingston, standing at their head, was the exponent of a liberal policy toward all American citizens, and the champion of a broader national life. His a.s.sociates were the leading Federalists; his principles were the pillars of his party; and his ambitions centred in the success and strength of his country.

[Footnote 53: James Parton, _Life of Aaron Burr_, Vol. 1, p. 169. "New York, much more than New England, was the home of natural leaders and family alliances. John Jay, the governor; the Schuylers, led by Philip Schuyler and his son-in-law, Alexander Hamilton; the Livingstons, led by Robert R. Livingston, with a promising younger brother, Edward, nearly twenty years his junior, and a brother-in-law, John Armstrong, besides Samuel Osgood, Morgan Lewis and Smith Thompson, other connections by marriage with the great Livingston stock; the Clintons, headed by George, the governor, and supported by the energy of DeWitt, his nephew,--all these Jays, Schuylers, Livingstons, Clintons, had they lived in New England, would probably have united in the support of their cla.s.s; but being citizens of New York they quarrelled."--Henry Adams, _History of the United States_, Vol. 1, pp. 108-09.]

Prudence, therefore, if no higher motive, required that the Livingstons be not overlooked in the division of federal patronage.

There was much of it to divide. Besides cabinet positions and judicial appointments, the foreign service offered rare opportunities to a few accomplished statesmen and recognised scholars. Robert R. Livingston, as chancellor of New York, stood in line of promotion for chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, but John Jay stood nearer to Hamilton, just as Philip Schuyler did when United States senators were chosen. Other honourable and most desirable positions, however, were open. John Quincy Adams thought a mission to England or France better than the Cabinet, but Gouverneur Morris went to France, Thomas Pinckney to England, William Short to Spain, and David Humphreys to Portugal. The Livingstons were left out.

Hamilton's funding system, especially the proposed a.s.sumption of state debts, then dividing the public mind, afforded plausible cause for opposing federalism; and ostensibly for this reason, the Livingstons ceased to be Federalists. Some of the less conspicuous members, residents of Columbia County, continued their adherence, but the statesmen who give the family its name in history wanted nothing more of a party whose head was a "young adventurer," a man "not native to the soil," a "merchant's clerk from the West Indies." The story is that the Chancellor convened the family and made the separation so complete that Washington's subsequent offer of the mission to France failed to secure his return.

The first notice of the Livingston break was in the election of a United States senator in 1791. Philip Schuyler, Hamilton's father-in-law, confidently expected a re-election. His selection for the short term was with this understanding. But several members of the a.s.sembly, nominally Federalists, were friendly to Clinton, who preferred Aaron Burr to Schuyler because of Hamilton's influence over him;[54] and when the Governor promised Morgan Lewis, the Chancellor's brother-in-law, Burr's place as attorney-general, Livingston's disposition to injure Hamilton became intensified, and to the disappointment of Schuyler, the vote of the Legislature disclosed a small majority for Burr.

[Footnote 54: In a letter to Theodorus Bailey, Chancellor Kent, then a member of the a.s.sembly, expressed the opinion that "things look auspicious for Burr. It will be in some measure a question of northern and southern interests. The objection of Schuyler's being related to the Secretary has weight."--William Kent, _Memoirs and Letters of James Kent_, p. 39.]

It is easy to conjecture that the haughty, unpopular, aristocratic old General[55] would not be as acceptable as a young man of thirty-five, fascinating in manner, gifted in speech, and not yet openly and offensively partisan; but it needed something more than this charm of personality to line up the hard-headed, self-reliant legislator against Hamilton and Philip Schuyler, and Burr found it in his appeal to Clinton, and in the clever brother-in-law suggestion to Livingston.

[Footnote 55: "The defeat of Schuyler was attributed partly to the unprepossessing austerity of his manner."--_Ibid._, p. 38.]

The defeat of Schuyler was a staggering blow to Hamilton. The great statesman had achieved success as secretary of the treasury, but as a political manager, his lack of tact, impatience of control, and infirmity of temper, had crippled the organisation. In less than three years the party had lost a United States senator, suffered the separation of a family vastly more important than federal appointees, and sacrificed the prestige of victory, so necessary to political success.

CHAPTER VI

GEORGE CLINTON DEFEATS JOHN JAY

1792-1795

Burr's rapid advancement gave full rein to his ambition. Not content with the exalted office to which he had suddenly fallen heir, he now began looking for higher honours; and when it came time to select candidates for governor, he invoked the tactics that won him a place in the United States Senate. He found a few anti-Federalists willing to talk of him as a stronger candidate than George Clinton, and a few Federalists who claimed that the moderate men of both parties would rally to his support. In the midst of the talk Isaac Ledyard wrote Hamilton that "a tide was likely to make strongly for Mr. Burr,"[56]

and James Watson, in a similar strain, argued that Burr's chances, if supported by Federalists, would be "strong."[57]

[Footnote 56: James Parton, _Life of Aaron Burr_, Vol. 1, p. 187.]

[Footnote 57: _Ibid._, 188.]

Clinton's firm hold upon his party quickly checked Burr's hope from that quarter, but the increasing difficulty among Federalists to find a candidate offered opportunity for Burr's peculiar tactics, until his adherents were everywhere--on the bench, in the Legislature, in the drawing-rooms, the coffee-houses, and the streets. Hamilton had only to present him and say, "Here is your candidate," and Aaron Burr would cheerfully have opposed the friend who, within less than two years, had appointed him attorney-general and elected him United States senator. But Hamilton deliberately snuffed him out. The great Federalist had finally induced John Jay to become the candidate of his party. This was on February 13, 1792. Two days later, the anti-Federalists named George Clinton and Pierre Van Cortlandt, the old ticket which had done service for fifteen years.

In inducing John Jay to lead his party, Hamilton made a good start.

Heretofore Jay had steadily refused to become a candidate for governor. "That the office of the first magistrate of the State," he wrote, May 16, 1777, "will be more respectable as well as more lucrative than the place I now fill is very apparent; but my object in the course of the present great contest neither has been nor will be either rank or money."[58] After his return from Europe, when Governor Clinton's division of patronage and treatment of royalists had become intensely objectionable, Jay was again urged to stand as a candidate, but he answered that "a servant should not leave a good old master for the sake of more pay or a prettier livery."[59] If this was good reasoning in 1786 and 1789, when he was secretary of foreign affairs, it was better reasoning in 1792, when he was chief justice of the United States; but the pleadings of Hamilton seem to have set a presidential bee buzzing, or, at least, to have started ambition in a mind until now without ambition. At any rate, Jay, suddenly and without any apparent reason, consented to exchange the most exalted office next to President, to chance the New York governorship.

[Footnote 58: William Jay, _Life of John Jay_, Vol. 1, p. 162.]

[Footnote 59: _Ibid._, p. 198.]

There had never been a time since John Jay entered public life that he was not the most popular man in the city of New York. In 1788 he received for delegate to the Poughkeepsie convention, twenty-seven hundred and thirty-five votes out of a total of twenty-eight hundred and thirty-three. John Adams called him "a Roman" because he resembled Cato more than any of his contemporaries. Jay's life divided itself into three distinct epochs of twenty-eight years each--study and the practice of law, public employment, and retirement. During the years of uninterrupted public life, he ran the gamut of office-holding. It is a long catalogue, including delegate to the Continental Congress, framer of the New York Const.i.tution, chief justice of the New York Supreme Court, president of the Continental Congress, minister to Spain, member of the Peace Commission, secretary of foreign affairs, chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, negotiator of the Jay treaty, and finally governor of New York. No other American save John Quincy Adams and John Marshall ever served his country so continuously in such exalted and responsible place. On his return from Europe after an absence of five years, Adams said he returned to his country "like a bee to its hive, with both legs loaded with merit and honour."[60]

[Footnote 60: To Thos. Barclay, May 24, 1784, _Hist. Mag._, 1869, p.

358.]

Jay accepted the nomination for governor in 1792, on condition that he be not asked to take part in the campaign. "I made it a rule," he wrote afterward, "neither to begin correspondence nor conversation upon the subject."[61] Accordingly, while New York was deeply stirred, the Chief Justice leisurely rode over his circuit, out of hearing and out of sight of the political disturbance, apparently indifferent to the result.

[Footnote 61: William Jay, _Life of John Jay_, Vol. 1, p. 289.]

The real political campaign which is still periodically made in New York, may be said to have had its beginning in April, 1792. Seldom has an election been contested with such prodigality of partisan fury. The rhetoric of abuse was vigorous and unrestrained; the campaign lie active and ingenious; the arraignment of cla.s.s against cla.s.s sedulous and adroit, and the excitement most violent and memorable. If a weapon of political warfare failed to be handled with craft and with courage, its skilful use was unknown.

Indeed, if any one doubts that it was a real time of political upheaval, he has only to glance at local histories. Federalists and anti-Federalists were alike convulsed by a movement which was the offspring of a genuine and irresistible enthusiasm of that strong, far-reaching kind that makes epochs in the history of politics. The people having cut loose from royalty, now proposed cutting loose from silk stockings, knee breeches, powdered hair, pigtails, shoe buckles, and ruffled shirts--the emblems of n.o.bility. Perhaps they did not then care for the red plush waistcoats, the yarn stockings, and the slippers down at the heel, which Jefferson was to carry into the White House; but in their effort to overthrow the tyranny of the past, they were beginning to demand broader suffrage and less ceremony, a larger, freer man, and less caste. To them, therefore, Jay and Clinton represented the aristocrat and the democrat. Jay, they said, had been nurtured in the lap of ease, Clinton had worked his way from the most humble rank; Jay luxuriated in splendid courts, Clinton dwelt in the home of the lowly son of toil; Jay was the choice of the rich, Clinton the man of the people; Jay relied upon the support of the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, Clinton upon the poor villager and the toiling farmer.

Newspapers charged Jay with saying that "there ought to be in America only two sorts of people, one very rich, the other very poor,"[62] and to support the misrepresentation, they quoted his favourite maxim that "those who own the country ought to govern it," pointing to the State Const.i.tution which he drafted, to prove that only the well-to-do could vote. The Dutch, largely the slave holders of the State, accused him of wishing to rob them by the abolition of slavery. Dressed in other rhetorical clothes, these stories did service again in 1795 and 1798.

[Footnote 62: George Pellew, _Life of John Jay_, p. 275.]

But the a.s.sumption of state debts, and Hamilton's financial system, became the fiercest objects of attack. To them were traced the "reign of speculators" that flowered in the year 1791. "Bank bubbles, tontines, lotteries, monopolies, usury, gambling and swindling abound," said the New York _Journal_; "poverty in the country, luxury in the capitals, corruption and usurpation in the national councils."

Hamilton's system had given the deepest stab to the hopes of the anti-Federalists, since it taught people to look to the Union rather than to the State. Internal taxes and import duties were paid to the United States; coin was minted by the United States; paper money issued by the United States; letters carried and delivered by the United States; and state debts a.s.sumed by the United States. All this had a tendency to break state attachments and state importance; and in striking back, Republican orators branded the reports of the Secretary of the Treasury as "dangerous to liberty," the a.s.sumption of debts as "a clever device for enslaving the people," and the whole fiscal system "a dishonest scheme." The failure and imprisonment of William Duer, until recently Hamilton's trusted a.s.sistant, followed by riots in New York City, gave colour to the charge, and, although the most bitter opponents of the great Federalist in no wise connected him with any corrupt transaction, yet in the spring of 1792 Hamilton, the friend and backer of Jay, was the most roundly abused man in the campaign.

The Federalists resented misrepresentation with misrepresentation.

Clinton's use of patronage, his opposition to the Federal Const.i.tution, and the impropriety of having a military governor in time of peace, objections left over from 1789, still figured as set pieces in rhetorical fireworks; but the great red light, burned at every meeting throughout the State, exposed Governor Clinton as secretly profiting by the sale of public lands. The Legislature of 1791 authorised the five state officers, acting as Commissioners of the Land Office, to sell unappropriated lands in such parcels and on such terms as they deemed expedient, and under this power 5,542,173 acres returned $1,030,433. Some of the land brought three shillings per acre, some two shillings six pence, some one shilling, but Alexander McComb picked up 3,635,200 acres at eight pence. McComb was a friend of Clinton. More than that, he was a real estate dealer and speculator. In the legislative investigation that followed, resolutions condemning the commissioners' conduct tangled up Clinton in a division of the profits, and sent McComb to jail. This was a sweet morsel for the Federalists. It mattered not that the Governor denied it; that McComb contradicted it; that no proof supported it; or that the a.s.sembly acquitted him by a party vote of thirty-five to twenty; the story did effective campaign service, and lived to torture Aaron Burr, one of the commissioners, ten years afterward. Burr tried to escape responsibility by pleading absence when the contracts were made; but the question never ceased coming up--if absence included all the months of McComb's negotiations, what time did the Attorney-General give to public business?

It was a deep grief to Jay that the Livingstons opposed him. The Chancellor and Edward were his wife's cousins, Brockholst her brother.

Brockholst had been Jay's private secretary at the emba.s.sy in Madrid, but now, to use a famous expression of that day, "the young man's head was on fire," and violence characterised his political feelings and conduct. Satirical letters falsely attributed to Jay fanned the sparks of the Livingston opposition into a bright blaze, and, although the Chief Justice denied the insinuation, the Chancellor gave battle with the enthusiasm of a new convert.

As one glances through the list of workers in the campaign of 1792, he is reminded that the juniors or beginners soon came to occupy higher and more influential positions than some of their elders and leaders.

DeWitt Clinton, for instance, not yet in office, was soon to be in the a.s.sembly, in the State Senate, and in the United States Senate--a greater force than any man of his time in New York, save Hamilton.

James Kent had just entered the a.s.sembly. As a student in Egbert Benson's office, his remarkable industry impressed clients and teacher, but when his voice sounded the praises of John Jay, few could have antic.i.p.ated that this young man, small in stature, vivacious in speech, quick in action, with dark eyes and a swarthy complexion, was destined to become one of the most famous jurists in a century.

Ambrose Spencer had not yet scored his first political honour, but his herculean frame and stately presence, with eyes and complexion darker than Kent's, are to be seen leading in every political contest for more than forty years.

There were also Smith Thompson, taught in the law by Chancellor Kent and tutored in politics by George Clinton, who was to follow the former Chief Justice and end his days on the United States Supreme bench; Joseph C. Yates, founder of Union College, and Samuel L.

Mitchill, scientist and politician, who has been called the Franklin of New York. Younger than these, but equally alert, was Cadwallader A.

Colden, grandson of the royal lieutenant-governor of Stamp Act days.

He was now only twenty-two, just beginning at the bar, but destined to be the intimate friend of Robert Fulton, a famous leader of a famous bar, and a political chieftain of a distinguished career.[63]

[Footnote 63: Interested in this exciting campaign was yet a younger generation, who soon contested their right-of-way to political leadership. Erastus Root was a junior at Dartmouth; Daniel D. Tompkins had just entered Columbia; Martin Van Buren was in a country school on the farm at Kinderhook; John Treat Irving was playing on the banks of the river to be made famous by his younger brother; and William W. Van Ness, the rarest genius of them all, and his younger cousin, William P. Van Ness, were listening to the voices that would soon summon them, one in support of the brilliant Federalist leader, the other as a second to Aaron Burr in the great tragedy at Weehawken on the 11th of July, 1804.]

At the election, the people gave Jay a majority of their votes; but at the count, a majority of the state canva.s.sers gave Clinton the governorship. This was the first vicious party precedent established in the Empire State. It has had many successors at the polls, in the Legislature, and at the primaries, but none bolder and more harmful, or ruder and more outrageously wrong. Under the law, inspectors of election sealed the ballots, delivered them to the sheriff or his deputy, who conveyed them to the secretary of state. In Otsego County, Richard R. Smith's term as sheriff had expired, and the new sheriff had not yet qualified, but Smith delivered the ballots to a person specially deputised by him. Tioga's sheriff turned the ballots over to his deputy, who, being taken ill on the journey, handed them to a clerk for transmission. In Clinton the sheriff gave the votes to a man without deputation. No ballots were missing, no seals were broken, nor had their delivery been delayed for a moment. But as soon as it became known that these counties gave Jay a majority of about four hundred, quite enough to elect him, it was claimed that the votes had not been conveyed to the secretary of state by persons authorised to do so under the law, and the canva.s.sers, voting as their party preferences dictated, ruled out the returns by a vote of seven to four in Clinton's favour. The discussion preceding this action, however, was so acrimonious and the alleged violation of law so technical, that the board agreed to refer the controversy to Rufus King and Aaron Burr, the United States senators.

Burr had many an uneasy hour. He preferred to avoid the responsibility, since an opinion might jeopardise his political interests. If he found for Clinton, his Federalist friends would take offence; if he antagonised Clinton, the anti-Federalists would cast him out. Thus far it had been his policy to keep in the background, directing others to act for him; now he must come out into the open.

He temporised, delayed, sought suggestions of friends, and endeavoured to induce his colleague to join him in declining to act as a referee, but King saw no reason for avoiding an opinion, and in answering the question of the canva.s.sers, he took the broad ground that an election law should be construed in furtherance of the right of suffrage. The act was for the protection of voters whose rights could not be jeopardised by the negligence or misconduct of an agent charged with the delivery of the ballots, nor by canva.s.sers charged with their counting. It was preposterous to suppose that the sudden illness of a deputy, or the failure of an official to qualify, could disfranchise the voters of a whole county. If it were otherwise, then the foolish or intentional misconduct of a sheriff might at any time overturn the will of a majority. There was no pretence of wrong-doing. The ballots had been counted, sealed, and delivered to the secretary of state no less faithfully than if there had been a technical adherence to the strict letter of the law. He favoured canva.s.sing Tioga's vote, therefore, although it was doubtful if a deputy sheriff could deputise a deputy, while the vote of Clinton should be canva.s.sed because a sheriff may deputise by parol. As to Otsego, on which the election really turned, King held that Smith was sheriff until a successor qualified, if not in law, then in fact; and though such acts of a _de facto_ officer as are voluntarily and exclusively beneficial to himself are void, those are valid that tend to the public utility.

Burr was uninfluenced by respect for suffrage. Being statutory law, it must be construed literally, not in spirit, or because of other rights involved. He agreed with his colleague as to the law governing the Clinton case; but following the letter of the act, he held that Tioga's votes ought not to be counted, since a deputy could not appoint a deputy. The Otsego ballots were also rejected because the right of a sheriff to hold over did not exist at common law; and as the New York statute did not authorise it, Smith's duties ceased at the end of his term; nor could he be an officer _de facto_, since he had accepted and exercised for one day the office of supervisor, which was incompatible with that of sheriff. In other words, Burr reduced the question of Jay's election to Smith's right to act, and to avoid the _de facto_ right, so ably presented by Senator King, he relied upon Smith's service of a day as supervisor before receiving and forwarding the ballots, notwithstanding sheriffs invariably held over until their successors qualified. Seven of such cases had occurred in fifteen years, and never before had the right been seriously questioned. In one instance a hold-over sheriff had executed a criminal. When urged to appoint a sheriff for Otsego earlier in the year, Governor Clinton excused his delay because the old one could hold over.

After this decision, only Clinton himself could avert the judgment certain to be rendered by a partisan board. Nevertheless, the Governor remained silent. Thus, by a strict party vote of seven to four, the canva.s.sers, omitting the three counties with four hundred majority in Jay's favour, returned 8,440 votes for Clinton and 8,332 for Jay.

Then, to destroy all evidence of their shame, the ballots were burned, although the custom obtained of preserving them in the office of the secretary of state.[64]

[Footnote 64: A few days after Clinton's inauguration Burr wrote a Federalist friend: "I earnestly wished and sought to be relieved from the necessity of giving any opinion, particularly as it would be disagreeable to you and a few others whom I respect and wish always to gratify; but the conduct of Mr. King left me no alternative. I was obliged to give an opinion.... It would, indeed, be the extreme of weakness in me to expect friendship from Mr. Clinton. I have too many reasons to believe that he regards me with jealousy and malevolence.... Some pretend, but none can believe, that I am prejudiced in his favour. I have not even seen or spoken to him since January last." This letter had scarcely been delivered when Clinton appointed him to the Supreme Court, an office which Burr declined, preferring to remain in the Senate.]

News travelled slowly in those days. There were no telegrams, no reporters, no regular correspondents, no special editions to tell the morning reader what had happened the day before; but when it once became known that John Jay had been counted out, the people of the State were aroused to the wildest pa.s.sion of rage, recalling the famous Tilden-Hayes controversy three-quarters of a century later. A returning board, it was claimed, had overturned the will of the people; and to the superheated excitement of the campaign, was added the fierce anger of an outraged party. Wild menaces were uttered, and the citizens of Otsego threatened an appeal to arms. "People are running in continually," wrote Mrs. Jay to her husband, "to vent their vexation. Senator King says he thinks Clinton as lawfully governor of Connecticut as of New York, but he knows of no redress."[65] Hamilton agreed with King, and counselled peaceful submission.

[Footnote 65: _Jay MSS._]