A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3

by De Alva Stanwood Alexander

It was a bold game of politics, and a dangerous one. The people did not love Clinton, but they believed in his policy, and a blow at him, in their opinion, was a blow at the canal. Nothing in the whole of Van Buren's history exhibits a more foolish disregard of public sentiment, or led to a greater disaster. But the Regency, blinded by its overwhelming victory at the last election, was prepared to pay a gambler's price for power, and, in the twinkling of an eye, before the Assembly knew what had happened, the Senate removed Clinton from the office of canal commissioner, only three votes being recorded for him. Thurlow Weed happened to be a witness of the proceeding, and, rushing to the Assembly chamber, urged Tallmadge to resist its passage through the house. "I knew how bitterly General Tallmadge hated Mr. Clinton," he says, "but in a few hurried and emphatic sentences implored him not to be caught in the trap thus baited for him. I urged him to state frankly, in a brief speech, how entirely he was estranged personally and politically from Mr. Clinton, but to denounce his removal during the successful progress of a system of improvement which he had inaugurated, and which would confer prosperity and wealth upon the people and enrich and elevate our State, as an act of vandalism to which he could not consent to be a party. I concluded by assuring him solemnly that if he voted for that resolution he could not receive the nomination for governor."[228]

But Tallmadge remained dumb. Gamaliel H. Barstow, formerly a Clintonian, walked out of the chamber. Other old friends showed indifference. Only Henry Cunningham of Montgomery, entering the chamber while the clerk was reading the resolution, eloquently denounced it. "When the miserable party strifes shall have passed by," he said, in conclusion; "when the political jugglers who now beleaguer this capital shall be overwhelmed and forgotten; when the gentle breeze shall pass over the tomb of that great man, carrying with it the just tribute of honour and praise which is now withheld, the pen of the future historian will do him justice, and erect to his memory a monument of fame as imperishable as the splendid works that owe their origin to his genius and perseverance."[229] One or two others spoke briefly in Clinton's behalf, and then the resolution passed—ayes sixty-four, noes thirty-four. Among the ayes were Tallmadge and Wheaton.

Had Clinton been assassinated, the news could not have produced a greater shock. Scarcely had the Assembly adjourned, before the citizens of Albany—rushing into the vacant chamber and electing the old and venerable John Taylor, the former lieutenant-governor, for chairman—expressed their indignation in denunciatory speeches and resolutions. In New York City, a committee of twenty-five, headed by Thomas Addis Emmet, called in person upon Clinton to make known the feeling of the meeting. Everywhere throughout the State, the removal awakened a cyclone of resentment, the members who voted for it being the storm-centres. At Canandaigua, personal indignities were threatened.[230] "Several members," says Weed, "were hissed as they came out of the capitol. Tallmadge received unmistakable evidence, on his way through State Street to his lodgings, of the great error he had committed. His hotel was filled with citizens, whose rebukes were loudly heard as he passed through the hall to his apartment, and as he nervously paced backward and forward in his parlour, 'the victim of remorse that comes too late,' he perceived both the depth and the darkness of the political pit into which he had fallen."[231]

Immediately, the tide began setting strongly in favour of Clinton for governor. Clintonian papers urged it, and personal friends wrote and rode over the State in his interest. Clinton himself became sanguine of success. "Tallmadge can scarcely get a vote in his own county," he wrote Post on the 21st of April. "He is the prince of rascals—if Wheaton does not exceed him."[232]

Meanwhile, a sensation long foreseen by those in the Governor's inner circle, was about to be sprung. Yates was not a man to be rudely thrust out of office. He knew he had blundered in opposing an electoral law, and he now proposed giving the Legislature another opportunity to enact one. The Regency did not believe there would be an extra session, because, as Attorney-General Talcott suggested, the power to convene the Legislature was a high prerogative, the exercise of which required more decision and nerve than Yates possessed; but, on the 2nd of June, to the surprise and consternation of the Van Buren leaders, Yates issued a proclamation reconvening the Legislature on August 2. It was predicated upon the failure of Congress to amend the Constitution, upon the recent defeat of the electoral bill in the Senate, and upon the just alarm of the people, that "their undoubted right" of choosing presidential electors would be withheld from them. Very likely, it afforded the Governor much satisfaction to make this open and damaging attack upon the Regency. He had surrendered independence if not self-respect, and, in return for his fidelity, had been ruthlessly cast aside for his less faithful rival. Yet his purpose was more than revenge. Between the Clintonian prejudice against Tallmadge, and the People's party's hatred of Clinton, the Governor hoped he might become a compromise candidate at the Utica convention. The future, however, had no place for him. He was ridiculed the more by his enemies and dropped into the pit of oblivion by his former friends. Nothing in his public life, perhaps, became him so well as his dignified retirement at Schenectady, amid the scenes of his youth, where he died at the age of sixty-nine, leaving a place in history not strongly marked.

Yates' extra session lasted four days and did nothing except to snub the Governor and give the eloquent Tallmadge, amidst tumultuous applause from the galleries, an opportunity of annoying the Regency by keeping up the popular excitement over a change in the choice of electors until the assembling of the Utica convention. As the days passed, the sentiment for Clinton became stronger and more apparent. Thurlow Weed, travelling over the State in the interest of Tallmadge, found Clinton's nomination almost universally demanded, with Tallmadge a favourite for second place. This, the eloquent gentleman peremptorily refused, until an appeal for harmony, and the suggestion that Adams' election might open to him a broader field for usefulness than that of being governor, produced the desired change. Probably Tallmadge felt within himself that he was not destined to a great political career. In any case, he finally accepted the offer with perfect good humour, giving Weed a brief letter consenting to the use of his name as lieutenant-governor. With this the young journalist arrived at Utica on the morning of convention day.

There were one hundred and twenty-two delegates in the convention, of whom one-fourth belonged to the People's party. These supported Tallmadge for governor. When they discovered that Tallmadge's vote to remove Clinton had put him out of the race, they suggested John W. Taylor; but a delegate from Saratoga produced a letter in which the distinguished opponent of the Missouri Compromise declined to become a candidate. This left the way open to DeWitt Clinton, and, as he carried off the nomination by a large majority, with Tallmadge for lieutenant-governor by acclamation, many representatives of the People's party walked out of the hall and reorganised another convention, resolving to support Tallmadge, but protesting against the nomination of Clinton—"a diversion," says Weed, "which was soon forgotten amid the general and pervading enthusiasm."[233]

The election of governor in 1824 passed into history as one of the most stirring ever witnessed in the State. In a fight, Samuel Young and DeWitt Clinton were at home. They neither asked nor gave quarter. There is no record that their fluency or invective did more than add to the excitement of the campaign; but each was well supplied with ready venom. Young was rhetorical and dramatic—Clinton energetic and forceful. People, listening to Young, rocked with laughter and revelled in applause as he pilloried his opponents, the ferocity of his attacks being surpassed only by the eloquence of his periods. With Clinton, speaking was serious business. He lacked the oratorical gift and the art of concealing the labour of his overwrought and too elaborate sentences; but his addresses afforded ample evidence of the capacity and richness of his mind. In spite of great faults, both candidates commanded the loyalty of followers who swelled with pride because of their courage and splendid ability. The confidence of the Regency and the usual success of Tammany at first made the friends of Clinton unhappy; but as the campaign advanced, Young discovered that the Regency, in insisting on the choice of electors by the Legislature, had given the opposition the most telling cry it could possibly have found against him; that the popular tumult over Clinton's removal was growing from day to day; and that his opponents were banded together against him on many grounds and with many different purposes. Two weeks before the election, it was evident to every one that the Regency was doomed, that Van Buren was disconcerted, and that Young was beaten; but no one expected that Clinton's majority would reach sixteen thousand,[234] or that Tallmadge would run thirty-two thousand ahead of Erastus Root. The announcement came like a thunderbolt, bringing with it the intelligence that out of eight senators only two Regency men had been spared, while, in the Assembly, the opposition had three to one. In other words, the election of 1822 had been completely reversed. Clinton was again in the saddle.

Samuel Young's political fortunes never recovered from this encounter with the illustrious champion of the canals. He was much in office afterward. For eight years he served in the State Senate, and once as lieutenant-governor; for a quarter of a century he lived on, a marvellous orator, whom the people never tired of hearing, and whom opponents never ceased to fear; but the glow that lingers about a public man who had never been overwhelmed by the suffrage of his fellow-citizens was gone forever.