Meanwhile, Clinton was urging Post to help him out of his difficulty. "I want authenticated testimony of the interference of the general government in our elections," he wrote on November 19. "Our friends must be up and doing on this subject. It is all important."[209] Eight days later he stirred up Post again. "What is the annual amount of patronage of the national government in this State?" he asked.[210] "Knowing the accuracy of your calculations, I rely much on you." Then he developed his plan: "The course of exposition ought, I think, to be this—to collect a voluminous mass of documents detailing facts, and to form from them a lucid, intelligible statement. On the representation of facts recourse must also be had to inferences, and it ought also to unite boldness and prudence."[211] It is evident that thus far inferences outnumbered facts, for far into December Clinton was still calling upon his friends to collect testimony. "Go on with your collection of proofs," he wrote. "I think with a little industry this matter will stand well."[212]
When submitted to the Legislature, on January 17, 1821, the documents, according to the Governor's instructions, were indeed very voluminous. It required a bag to take them to the capitol—the green bag message, it was called; but it proved to be smoke, with little fire. It fully established that the naval storekeeper at Brooklyn, and other federal officials were offensive partisans, just as they had been under Clinton's control, and just as they have been ever since. The Bucktails saw distinctly enough that the State could not be aroused into indignation by such a mass of documents; but there was one letter from Van Buren to Henry Meigs, the congressman, dated April 5, 1820, advising the removal of postmasters at Bath, Little Falls, and Oxford, because it seemed impossible to secure the free circulation of Bucktail newspapers in the interior of the State, which provoked much criticism. How the Governor got it does not appear, but it gives a glimpse of Van Buren's political methods that is interesting. "Unless we can alarm them (the Clintonians) by two or three prompt removals," he says, "there is no limiting the injurious consequences that may result from it."
Soon after, two of the postmasters were removed. If the charge was true, that postmasters were preventing the circulation of Bucktail newspapers, Van Buren's course was very charitable. Evidently he did not want places for his friends so much as a proper delivery of the mails; for otherwise he would have insisted upon the removal of all offenders. The gentle suggestion that the removal of two or three would be a warning to others, explains how this devout lover of men lived through a long life on most intimate terms with his neighbours. If such conditions existed under the modern management of the Post-Office Department, every wrong-doer would be summarily dismissed, regardless of party or creed. Van Buren's methods had no such drastic discipline; yet his letter became the subject of much animadversion by the Clintonians, not so much because they disapproved the suggestion as because Van Buren wrote it. "It is very important to destroy this prince of villains," Clinton declared, in a letter to Post of December 2, 1820.[213]
Like many other brilliant political leaders, Van Buren was somewhat thin-skinned; he happened, too, to be out of the State Senate, and thus was compelled to endure, in silence, the attacks of the opposition. It is believed that at this time, Van Buren had a strong inclination to accept a Supreme Court judgeship, and thus withdraw forever from political life. But the fates denied him any chance of making this serious anti-climax in his great political career. While the green bag message convulsed the Clintonians with simulated indignation, the Bucktails declared him, by a caucus vote of fifty-eight to twenty-four, their choice for United States senator in place of Nathan Sanford, whose term expired on March 4, 1821.
It appeared then as it appears now, that Martin Van Buren was "the inevitable man." He was thirty-nine years of age, in the early ripeness of his powers, a leader at the bar, and the leader of his party. He had accumulated from his practice the beginnings of the fortune which his Dutch thrift and cautious habits made ample for his needs. The simple and natural rules governing his astute political leadership seemed to leave him without a rival, or, at least, without an opponent who could get in his way. Times had changed, too, since the days when United States senators resigned to become postmasters and mayors of New York. A seat in the United States Senate had become a great honour, because it was a place of great power and great influence; and in passing from Albany to Washington Van Buren would add to state leadership an opportunity of becoming a national figure. It is not surprising, therefore, that Clinton sought to defeat him; for he had ever been ready to retaliate upon men who ventured to cross his purposes. But Clinton's scheme had no place in the plans of Bucktails. "I am afraid Van Buren will beat Sanford for senator," he wrote Post as early as the 30th of December, 1820. "He will unless his friends stand out against a caucus decision."[214] This is what Clinton wanted the twenty-four Sanford delegates to do, and, to encourage such a bolt, he compelled every Federalist and Clintonian, save one, to vote for him, although Sanford represented Tammany and its bitter hostility to Clinton. But the Bucktails had at last established a party organisation that could not be divided by Clinton intrigue, and Van Buren received the full party vote.
When Roger Skinner and his three associates on the new Council of Appointment got to work, Clinton quickly discovered that he could expect little from such a body of Bucktails; and he received less than he expected. For, when the Council had finished, only one Clintonian remained in office. Oakley, the able attorney-general; Jay, the gifted recorder of New York; Colden, the acceptable mayor of New York; Hawley, the ideal superintendent of common schools; Solomon Van Rensselaer, the famous and fearless adjutant-general; McIntyre, the trusted and competent comptroller, had all disappeared in a night. Only Simeon DeWitt, who had been surveyor-general for forty years, was left undisturbed. Former Councils had been radical and vigorous in their action, but the Skinner council cut as deep and swift as the famous Clinton Council of 1801. At its first meeting, clerks and sheriffs and surrogates and district attorneys fell in windrows. Yet it was no worse than its predecessors; it could not be worse, since precedents existed in support of conduct however scandalous.
The removal of Hawley, McIntyre, and Van Rensselaer produced a greater sensation throughout the State than any previous dismissals, except that of DeWitt Clinton from the mayoralty in 1815. Gideon Hawley had held the office of school superintendent for nine years, organising the State into school districts, distributing the school fund equitably, and perfecting the work, so that the entire system could be easily handled by a superintendent. In 1818, he reported five thousand schools thus organised, with upward of two hundred thousand pupils in attendance for a period of four to six months each year. He did this work on a salary of three hundred dollars—only to receive, at last, in place of thanks so richly deserved, the unmerited rebuke of a summary dismissal.
The removal of Archibald McIntyre made a sensation almost as great. For fifteen years, McIntyre had been such an acceptable comptroller that the waves of factional and party strife had broken at his feet, leaving him master of the State's finances. The Lewisites retained him in 1807; the Federalists kept him in 1809; the Republicans continued him in 1811; the Federalists again spared him in 1813; while the frequent changes that followed Clinton's downfall left him undisturbed. He took no part in political contests. It was his duty to see that the State's money was paid according to law, and he so conducted the office; but the Bucktails deeply resented his treatment of the Vice President, and a swift removal was the penalty. In some degree McIntyre may have been responsible for the defeat of Tompkins. The perfervid strength of his convictions as to the injustice of the Vice President's claim betrayed him into an intemperance of language that suggests overzeal in a public official. In refusing, too, to balance the Vice President's accounts, as the Legislature clearly intended, and as he might have done regardless of the Vice President's additional claim, he seems to have assumed an unnecessary responsibility, and to have learned what many men have experienced in public life, that nothing is so dangerous as being too faithful. But McIntyre may have had no reason to regret his removal. He was immediately returned to the Legislature as a senator, and the next year appointed agent for the state lotteries, a business that enabled him in a few years to retire with an independent fortune.
It is unnecessary to introduce here a full list of the new office-holders; but there came into notice at this time three young lawyers who subsequently occupied a conspicuous place in the history of their State and country. Samuel A. Talcott took the place of Thomas J. Oakley as attorney-general; William L. Marcy became adjutant-general in place of Van Rensselaer, and Benjamin F. Butler was appointed district attorney of Albany County. Marcy was then thirty-five years of age, Talcott thirty-two, and Butler twenty-six. Talcott was tall and commanding, with high forehead and large mellow blue eyes that inspired confidence and admiration. His manners combined dignity and ease; and as he swept along the street, or stood before judge or jury, he appeared like nature's nobleman. Marcy had a bold, full forehead, with heavy brows and eyes deep set and expressive. It was decidedly a Websterian head, though the large, firm mouth and admirably moulded chin rather recalled those of Henry Clay. The face would have been austere, forbidding easy approach, except for the good-natured twinkle in the eye and a quiet smile lingering about the mouth. Marcy was above the ordinary height, with square, powerful shoulders, and carried some superfluous flesh as he grew older; but, at the time of which we are writing, he was as erect as the day he captured St. Regis. Butler was slighter than Marcy, and shorter than Talcott, but much larger than Van Buren, with fulness of form and perfect proportions. He had an indescribable refinement of face which seemed to come from the softness of the eye and the tenderness and intellectuality of the mouth, which reflected his gentle and generous spirit.