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

by De Alva Stanwood Alexander

Just now, however, Clinton and Van Buren, like lovers who had quarrelled and made up, could not be too responsive to each other's wishes. To confirm the latter's good intentions, the Regency senators promptly approved Clinton's nomination of Samuel Jones for chancellor in place of Nathan Sanford, who was now chosen United States senator to succeed Rufus King. It was bitter experience. The appointment rudely ignored the rule, uniformly and wisely adhered to since the formation of a state government, to promote the chief justice.

Besides, Jones had been a pronounced Federalist for a quarter of a century. Moreover, he was a relative of the Governor's wife, and to some men, even in that day, nepotism was an offence. But he was an eminent lawyer, the son of the distinguished first comptroller, and to make their consideration of the Governor's wishes more evident, the senators confirmed the nomination without sending it to a committee.

A more remarkable illustration of Van Buren's conciliatory policy occurred in the confirmation of James McKnown as recorder of Albany. McKnown was a bitter Clintonian. It was he who, at the Albany meeting, so eloquently protested against the removal of Clinton as a canal commissioner, denouncing it as "the offspring of that malignant and insatiable spirit of political proscription which has already so deeply stained the annals of the State," and the perpetrators as "utterly unworthy of public confidence."[248] But the Senate confirmed him without a dissenting vote. Later, when a vacancy occurred in the judgeship of the eighth circuit by the resignation of William B. Rochester, it seemed for a time as if the coalition must break. The Regency wanted Herman J. Redfield, one of the seventeen senators whose opposition to the electoral bill had caused his defeat; but the eighth district was Clinton's stronghold, and if he nominated Redfield, the Governor argued, it would deprive him of strength and prestige, and seriously weaken the cause of Jackson. The Regency, accustomed to remain faithful to the men who incurred popular odium for being faithful to them, found it difficult, either to reconcile the conditions with their wishes, or to compromise upon any one else. Nevertheless, on the last day of the session, through the active and judicious agency of Benjamin Knower, John Birdsall of Chautauqua County, a friend of Clinton, was nominated and confirmed.

In the meantime, Van Buren had returned to his seat in Congress. He entered the United States Senate in 1821, and, although observing the decorum expected of a new member of that body, he displayed powers of mind that distinguished him as a senator of more than ordinary ability. He now became a parliamentary orator, putting himself at the head of an anti-Administration faction, and developing the tact and management of a great parliamentary leader. He had made up his mind that nothing less than a large and comprehensive difference between the two wings of the Republican party would be of any real use; so he arraigned the Administration, with great violence, as un-Republican and Federalistic. He took a definite stand against internal improvements by the United States government; he led the opposition to the appointment of American representatives to the Congress of Panama, treating the proposed mission as unconstitutional and dangerous; and he charged the Administration with returning to the practices of the Federalist party, to which Adams originally belonged, declaring that the presidential choice of 1825 was not only the restoration of the men of 1798, but of the principles of that day; that the spirit of encroachment had become more wary, but not more honest; and that the system then was coercion, now it was seduction. He classed the famous alien and sedition laws, of the elder Adams, with the bold avowal of the younger Adams that it belonged to the President alone to decide upon the propriety of a foreign mission. Thus, he associated the administration of John Quincy Adams with the administration of his father, insisting that if the earlier one deserved the retribution of a Republican victory, the latter one deserved a similar fate.

Van Buren's language had the courteous dignity that uniformly characterised his speeches. He charged no personal wrong-doing; he insinuated no base motives; he rejected the unfounded story of the sale of the Presidency to Adams; he voted for Clay's confirmation as secretary of state, and, as a member of the senatorial committee, he welcomed the new President upon his inauguration; but from the moment John Quincy Adams became President, the Senator from New York led the opposition to his administration with the astuteness of a great parliamentary leader, determined to create a new party in American politics. Van Buren also had some strong allies. With him, voted Findlay of Pennsylvania, Holmes of Maine, Woodbury of New Hampshire, Dickerson of New Jersey, and Kane of Illinois, besides twelve Southern senators. But, from the outset, he was the leader. His speeches, smooth and seldom impassioned, were addressed to the intellect rather than to the feelings. He was the master of the art of making a perfectly clear statement of the most complicated case, and of defending his measures, point by point, with never-failing readiness and skill throughout the most perplexing series of debates. He talked to make converts, appealing to his colleagues with a directness well calculated to bring to his side a majority of the waverers.

Van Buren's opposition to the Adams administration has been called factious and unpatriotic. It was certainly active and continuous, and, perhaps, now and then, somewhat more unscrupulous than senatorial opposition is in our own time; but his policy was, unquestionably, the policy of more modern political parties. His tactics created an organisation which, inside and outside of the Senate, was to work unceasingly, with tongue and pen, to discredit everything done by the men in office and to turn public opinion against them. It was a part of his plan not only to watch with jealous care all the acts of the Administration, but to make the most of every opportunity that could be used to turn them out of office; and when the Senate debate ended, the modern Democratic party had been formed. Adams recorded in his now famous diary that Van Buren made "a great effort to combine the discordant elements of the Crawford and Jackson and Calhoun men into a united opposition against the Administration." He might have added, also, that the debate distinctly marked Van Buren's position in history as a party-maker in the second great division of parties in America.

Van Buren's coalition with DeWitt Clinton, however, came perilously near prostrating them both. At their state convention, held at Utica, in September, 1826, the Clintonians and the People's party renominated Clinton for governor. In the following month, the Bucktails met at Herkimer, and, if Van Buren could have had his way, the convention would have indorsed Clinton. Finding such action inadvisable, however, Van Buren secured the nomination of William B. Rochester, on the theory that he was a good enough candidate to be beaten. Rochester was not a man of marked ability. He had done nothing to make himself known throughout the State; he did not even favour a state road through the southern tier of counties. He was simply a lawyer of fair attainments who had served a term in the Legislature, one in Congress, and two years as a circuit judge, a position from which he resigned, in 1825, to become minister to Panama.

But Rochester proved vastly more formidable as a candidate for governor than the Van Buren leaders anticipated. It became well known that he was a supporter of the Adams administration, and that Henry Clay regarded him with favour. Indeed, it was through the latter's personal and political friendship that he secured the mission to Panama. Thus, the feeling began to obtain that Rochester, although the nominee of the Regency party, more nearly represented the interests and principles of the Adams administration than DeWitt Clinton, an avowed Jackson man, who had formed a coalition with Van Buren. For this reason, Peter B. Porter, an ardent admirer of Clay, and now a member of the People's party, entered with spirit into the campaign, appealing to the Clintonians, a large majority of whom favoured Adams, to resent Clinton's deal with Jackson's friends, and vote for Rochester, whose election would insure the success of the President, and bring credit to the people of the western counties, already ambitious to give the State a governor. This potent appeal was taken up throughout the State, influencing many Clintonians to support Rochester, and holding in line scores of Bucktails who favoured Adams.

It was a critical moment for Van Buren. He was not only a candidate for re-election to the United States Senate, but he had staked all upon the overthrow of the Adams administration. Yet, the election of his party's candidate for governor would in all probability overthrow the Clinton-Van Buren coalition, giving the vote of the State to the President, and possibly defeat his own re-election. It was a singular political mix-up.

Van Buren had hoped to exclude from the campaign all national issues, as he succeeded in doing the year before. But the friends of Clay and Adams could not be hoodwinked. The canvass also developed combinations that began telling hard upon Van Buren's party loyalty. Mordecai M. Noah, an ardent supporter of Van Buren, and editor of the New York Enquirer, came out openly for Clinton. For years, Noah had been Clinton's most bitter opponent. He opposed the canal, he ridiculed its champion, and he lampooned its supporters; yet he now swallowed the prejudices of a lifetime and indorsed the man he had formerly despised. Van Buren, it may safely be said, was at heart quite as devoted a supporter of the Governor, since the latter's re-election would be of the greatest advantage to his own personal interests; but whatever his defects of character, and however lacking he may have been in an exalted sense of principle, Van Buren appeared to be sincere in his devotion to Rochester. This was emphasised by the support of the Albany Argus and other leading Regency papers.