When the Legislature assembled, in January, 1807, the intense bitterness of the fight exhibited itself in the defeat of Solomon Southwick for clerk of the Assembly. Southwick possessed the amiable, winning qualities that characterised William W. Van Ness. He was associated with his brother-in-law in the management of the Albany Register, and from his earliest youth had been as zealous a Republican as he was warm and disinterested in his friendships. To friend and foe he was alike cordial and generous. He possessed an open mind, not so eloquent as Van Ness, and less brilliant, perhaps, in conversation; but the fluent splendour of his speech and the beauty of his person and manners went as far toward the attainment of his ambition. He had been elected clerk of the Assembly continuously since 1803, until his popularity among the members, whom he served with uniform politeness and zeal, seemed proof against the attacks of any adversary. Just now, however, the enemies of DeWitt Clinton were the opponents of Solomon Southwick, while his rival, Garret Y. Lansing, the nephew of the Chancellor, had become the bitterest and most formidable enemy the Clintons had to encounter. Popular as he was, Southwick could not win against such odds, although it turned out that a change of four votes would have elected him.
A Lewis Council of Appointment made a clean sweep of the Governor's enemies and of DeWitt Clinton's friends. Clinton himself gave up the mayoralty of New York, Maturin Livingston again assumed the duties of recorder, and Thomas Tillotson was restored to the office of secretary of state. Perhaps Clinton thought he stood too high to be in danger from Lewis' hand. If he did he found out his mistake, for Lewis struck him down in the most unsparing and humiliating way. Public affront was added to political deprivation. Without warning or explanation, the first motion put at the first meeting of the new Council, on February 6, 1807, made him the first sacrifice. Had he been a justice of the peace in a remote western county he could not have been treated more rudely; and, it may be added, if better reason than that already existing were needed to seal the fate of Lewis, Clinton's removal furnished it. New York has seldom been roused to greater passion by a governor's act. It could even then be said of Clinton that his name was associated with every great enterprise for the public good. Less than a year before, in his efforts to educate the children of the poor, unprovided for in parochial schools, he had laid the foundation of the public school system, heading the subscription list for the purchase of suitable quarters. In spite of his faults he was a great executive, and before the sun went down on the day of his removal a large majority of the Republican members of the Legislature, guided by the deposed mayor, had nominated Daniel D. Tompkins for governor in place of Morgan Lewis.
In disposing of the mayoralty, Lewis recognised the importance of keeping it in the family, and offered it to Smith Thompson, both of whose wives were Livingstons; but only once in forty years did Thompson's love for the judiciary give way to political preferment, and then Martin Van Buren defeated him for governor. The mayoralty finally went to Marinus Willett, an officer of distinguished service in the Revolutionary war, whose gallantry at Fort Schuyler in the summer of 1777 won him a sword from Congress and the admiration of General Washington. But the steadfast, judicious qualities that commended him as a soldier seem to have forsaken him as a politician. He supported Burr, he followed Lewis, and he finally ran for lieutenant-governor against DeWitt Clinton, the regular nominee of his party, losing the election by a large majority; yet his amiability and war services kept him a favourite in spite of his political wavering. It was hard for a lover of his country to dislike a real hero of the Revolution, even though he forfeited the confidence of his party.
Clinton, who had kept his head cool in victory, did not lose it in defeat; but the Governor found himself in an awkward and humiliating position. Although the Federalists had made it possible for him to organise the Legislature and elect a friendly Council, he dared not appoint one of them to office, and the few ambitious Republicans who had marshalled under his standard proved inferior, inexperienced, or indiscreet. Only one Federalist fared well, and he succeeded in spite of Lewis. William W. Van Ness aspired to the Supreme Court judgeship made vacant by Brockholst Livingston's appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Governor, favouring, of course, a member of his own family, proposed Maturin Livingston. To this Thomas Thomas of the Council agreed, but Edward Savage proposed John Woodworth; John Nicholas inclined to Jonas Platt, and James Burt, the fourth member of the Council, preferred Van Ness. Platt was a Federalist, and in his way a remarkable man. His father, Zephaniah Platt, served in the Continental Congress, and as judge of the Circuit Court had pushed his way to the northern frontier, founded Plattsburg, and advocated a system of canals connecting the Hudson with the lakes. The son, following his example, studied law and emigrated to the western frontier, settling in Herkimer County, at Whitesboro. He had already served one term in the Legislature and one in Congress, and was destined to receive other honourable preferment. But just now Nicholas, his political backer, a recent comer from Virginia, who had served with him in Congress, was no match for the adroit Burt, whose shrewd management in the interest of Aaron Burr had recently sent Theodorus Bailey to the United States Senate over John Woodworth. Burt convinced Nicholas that Platt's candidacy would result in the election of Livingston or Woodworth, and having thus destroyed the Herkimer lawyer, he appealed to Savage to drop Woodworth in favour of Van Ness. Savage was a Republican of the old school, a supporter of George Clinton, an opponent of the Federal Constitution, who had apparently followed Lewis for what he could make out of it; but he was indisposed to add to the sin of rebellion against DeWitt Clinton the folly of voting for Maturin Livingston, and so he joined Burt and Nicholas in support of Van Ness. Thus it happened that the popular young orator became a member of the Supreme Court at the early age of thirty-one, being the youngest member of the court, save Daniel D. Tompkins, to serve on the old, conservative Council of Revision.
News of this bad business intensified the angry feeling against the Governor. A place on the Supreme Court, valued then even more highly than now, had been lost to the party because of his arrogant and consuming nepotism, and men turned with enthusiasm to Daniel D. Tompkins, whose nomination for governor brought him champions that had heretofore avoided all appearance of violent partisanship. Tompkins was accepted as the exponent of all that Republicans most prized; Lewis as their most obstinate and offensive opponent. Thus, at last, the Clintons faced the Livingstons on a fair field.
CHAPTER XIV
DANIEL D. TOMPKINS AND DeWITT CLINTON
1807-1810
Had DeWitt Clinton succeeded to the governorship in 1807, his way to the Presidency, upon which his eye was already fixed, might have opened easily and surely. But the bitterness of the Livingstons and the unfriendly disposition of the Federalists compelled him to flank the difficulty by presenting a candidate for governor who was void of offence. If it was humiliating to admit his own ineligibility, it was no less so to meet the new condition, for Lewis' election in 1804 had discovered the scarcity of available material, and developed the danger of relying upon another to do his bidding. Just now Clinton wanted a candidate with no convictions, no desires, no ambitions, and no purposes save to please him. There were men enough of this kind, but they could neither conceal their master's hand, nor command the suffrages of a majority on their own account. In this crisis, therefore, he selected, to the surprise of all and to the disgust of some, Daniel D. Tompkins, the young and amiable justice of the Supreme Court, who had taken the place of James Kent on the latter's promotion to chief justice.
Thus it happened that the day which witnessed DeWitt Clinton's removal from the New York mayoralty, welcomed into larger political life this man of honourable parentage, who was destined to play a very conspicuous part in affairs of state. Daniel D. Tompkins, a youth of promise and a young man of ripening wisdom, had been for some years in the public eye, first as a member of the constitutional convention of 1801, afterward as a successful candidate for Congress, and later as a judge of the Supreme Court. His rise had been phenomenally rapid. He passed from the farm to the college at seventeen, from college to the law office at twenty-one, from the law office to the constitutional convention at twenty-seven, and thence to Congress and the Supreme Court at thirty. He was now to become governor at thirty-three. But with all his promise and wisdom and rapid advancement, no one dreamed in 1807 that he was soon to divide political honour and power with DeWitt Clinton, five years his senior.