The desire to be first in every path of political success had become such a passion in Tompkins' nature that the question presented by the President's invitation found an answer in the immediate impulses of his ambition. No doubt his duties as Governor and the importance of his remaining through the impending crisis appealed to him, but they did not control his answer. He wanted to be President, and he was willing to sacrifice anything or anybody to secure the prize. So, it is not surprising that he declined Madison's gracious offer, since the experience of Northern men with Virginia Presidents did not encourage the belief that the Presidency was reached through the Cabinet.[184] Yet, had Tompkins fully appreciated, as he did after it was too late, the importance of a personal and pleasant acquaintance with the Virginia statesman and the other men who controlled congressional caucuses, he would undoubtedly have entered Madison's Cabinet. As the ranking, and, save Monroe, the oldest of the President's advisers, he would have had two years in which to make himself popular, a sufficient time, surely, for one having the prestige of a great war governor, with gentleness of manner and sweetness of temper to disarm all opposition and to conciliate even the fiercest of politicians. Fifteen years later Martin Van Buren resigned the governorship to go to the head of Jackson's Cabinet, and it made him President.
It is not at all unlikely that Madison had it in mind to make Tompkins his successor. He had little liking for his jealous secretary of state who had opposed his nomination in 1808, criticised the conduct of the war, and forced the retirement of cabinet colleagues and the removal of favourite army officers—who had, in a word, dominated the President until the latter became almost as tired of him as of Armstrong. But, as the time approached for the nomination of a new Executive, Madison's jealous regard for Virginia, as well as his knowledge of Monroe's fitness, induced him to sustain the candidate from his own State. This was notice to federal office-holders in New York to get into line for the Virginian; and very soon some of Tompkins' closest friends began falling away. To add to the Governor's unhappiness, the Administration, repeating its tactics toward the Clintons in 1808 and 1812, began exalting his enemies. In sustaining DeWitt Clinton's aspirations Solomon Southwick had actively opposed the Virginia dynasty and bitterly assailed Tompkins and Spencer for their desertion of the eminent New Yorker. For three years he had practically excluded himself from the Republican party, criticising the war with the severity of a Federalist, and continually animadverting upon the conduct of the President and the Governor; but Monroe's influence now made this peppery editor of the Register postmaster at Albany, turning his paper into an ardent advocate of the Virginian's promotion. The Governor, who had openly encouraged such a policy when DeWitt Clinton sought the Presidency, now felt the Virginia knife entering his own vitals.
Van Buren's part in Tompkins' disappointment, although not active, showed the shrewdness of a clever politician. He had learned something of national politics since he advocated the candidacy of DeWitt Clinton so enthusiastically four years before. He knew the Governor was seriously bent upon being President, and that his friends throughout the State were joining in the bitterness of the old Clinton cry that Virginia had ruled long enough—a cry which old John Adams had taken up, declaring that "My son will never have a chance until the last Virginian is laid in the graveyard;" but Van Buren knew, also, that few New Yorkers in Washington had any hope of Tompkins' success. It was the situation of 1812 over again. Tompkins was personally unknown to the country; Crawford and Monroe were national leaders of wide acquaintance, who practically divided the strength of their party. Could Van Buren have made Tompkins the President, he would have done so without hesitation; but he had little disposition to tie himself up, as he did with Clinton in 1812, and let Crawford, with Spencer's assistance, take the office and hand the patronage of New York over to the Judge. The Kinderhook statesman, therefore, declared for Tompkins, and carried the Legislature for him in spite of Spencer's support of Crawford; then, with the wariness of an old campaigner, he prevented New York congressmen from expressing any preference, although three-fourths of them favoured Crawford. When the congressional caucus finally met to select a candidate, Van Buren had the situation so muddled that it is not known to this day just how the New York congressmen did vote. Monroe, however, was not unmindful of the service rendered him. After the latter's nomination, Tompkins was named for Vice President; and if he did not resent taking second place, as George Clinton did in 1808, it was because the Vice Presidency offered changed conditions, enlarged acquaintance, and one step upward on the political ladder.
CHAPTER XXII
CLINTON’S RISE TO POWER
1815-1817
There was never a time, probably, when the white man, conversant with the rivers and lakes of New York, did not talk of a continuous passage by water from Lake Erie to the sea. As early as 1724, when Cadwallader Colden was surveyor-general of the colony, he declared the opportunity for inland navigation in New York without a parallel in any other part of the world, and as the Mohawk Valley, reaching out toward the lakes of Oneida and Cayuga, and connecting by easy grades with the Genesee River beyond, opened upon his vision, it filled him with admiration. Even then the thrifty settler, pushing his way into the picturesque country of the Iroquois, had determined to pre-empt the valleys whose meanderings furnished the blackest loam and richest meadows, and whose gently receding foot-hills offered sites for the most attractive homes in the vicinity of satisfactory and enduring markets. It was this scene that impressed Joseph Carver in 1776. Carver was an explorer. He had traversed the country from New York to Green Bay, and looking back upon the watery path he saw nothing to prevent the great Northwest from being connected with the ocean by means of canals and the natural waterways of New York. In one of the rhetorical flights of his young manhood, Gouverneur Morris declared that "at no distant day the waters of the great inland seas would, by the aid of man, break through their barriers and mingle with those of the Hudson." George Washington had visions of the same vast system as he traversed the State, in 1783, with George Clinton, on his way to the headwaters of the Susquehanna.
These were the dreams of statesmen, whose realisation, however, was yet far, very far, away. In 1768, long after "Old Silver Locks" had become the distinguished lieutenant-governor, he induced Sir Henry Moore, the gay and affable successor of Governor Monckton, to ascend the Mohawk for the supreme purpose of projecting a canal around Little Falls. Sixteen years later, in 1784, the Legislature tendered Christopher Colles the entire profits of the navigation of the river if he would improve it; yet work did not follow words. It was easy to see what might be done, but the man did not appear who could do it. In 1791, George Clinton took a hand, securing the incorporation of a company to open navigation from the Hudson to Lake Ontario. The company completed three sections of a canal—aggregating six miles in length, with five leaky locks—at a cost of four hundred thousand dollars, but the price of transportation was not cheapened, nor the time shortened. This seemed to end all money effort. Other canal companies were organised, one to build between the Hudson and Lake Champlain, another to connect the Oswego River with Cayuga and Seneca lakes; but the projects came to nothing. Finally, in 1805, the Legislature authorised Simeon DeWitt, the surveyor-general, to cause the several routes to be accurately surveyed; and, after he had reported the feasibility of constructing a canal without serious difficulty from Lake Erie to the Hudson, a commission of seven men, appointed in 1810, estimated the cost of such construction at five million dollars. It was hoped the general government would assist in making up this sum; but it soon became apparent that the war, into which the country was rapidly drifting, would use up the national surplus, while rival projects divided attention and lessened the enthusiasm. Efforts to secure a right of way, developed the avarice of landowners, who demanded large damages for the privilege. Thus, discouragement succeeded discouragement until a majority of the earlier friends of the canal gave up in despair.
But there was one man who did not weaken. DeWitt Clinton had been made a member of the Canal Commission in 1810, and with Gouverneur Morris, Peter B. Porter and other associates, he explored the entire route, keeping a diary and carefully noting each obstacle in the way. In 1811, he introduced and forced the passage of a bill clothing the commission with full power to act; and, afterward, he visited Washington with Gouverneur Morris to obtain aid from Congress. Then came the war, and, later, in 1815, Clinton's overthrow and retirement.
This involuntary leisure gave Clinton just the time needed to hasten the work which was to transmit his name to later generations. Bitterly mortified over his defeat, he retired to a farm at Newton on Long Island, where he lived for a time in strict seclusion, indulging, it was said, too freely in strong drink. But if Clinton lacked patience, and temporarily, perhaps, the virtue of temperance, he did not lack force of will and strength of intellect. He corresponded with men of influence; sought the assistance of capitalists; held public meetings; and otherwise endeavoured to enlist the co-operation of people who would be benefited, and to arouse a public sentiment which should overcome doubt and stir into activity men of force and foresight. Writing from Buffalo, in July, 1816, he declared that "in all human probability, before the passing away of the present generation, Buffalo will be the second city in the State."[185] A month later, having examined "the land and the water with scrutinising eye, superintending our operations and exploring all our facilities and embarrassments" from the great drop at Lockport to the waters of the Mohawk at Utica, he again refers to the future Queen City of the Lakes with prophetic power. "Buffalo is to be the point of beginning, and in fifty years it will be next to New York in wealth and population."[186]