De Witt Clinton and the Rise of the People's Men 9780773566187

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De Witt Clinton and the Rise of the People's Men

In 1824 the People's party, the first popular reform movement in the American republic, elected most of its candidates for the Senate and Assembly of New York, the new nation's most populous state. Craig Hanyan and Mary Hanyan examine the development of this influential movement and the role of De Witt Clinton, its chief beneficiary. The authors not only provide an in-depth analysis of the interplay of interests and ideology behind the People's movement but also establish relationships between the emergent political culture that bolstered that movement and the Whig and Democratic parties of the later second-party system. Moreover, they demonstrate that the central objective of the People's movement was not simply to enhance American political democracy: it was also fuelled by a determination to avoid taxation of personalty (personal property or estate, including stocks), which quickly won the support of canny and well-heeled backers both in upstate New York and in New York City. The authors draw on extensive research on New York's political life, from the town and county levels to the state Assembly and Senate, and include profiles of the groups who were active in state politics in the early nineteenth century. CRAIG HANYAN is associate professor of history, Brock University. MARY L. HANYAN is an independent researcher.

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De Witt Clinton and the Rise of the People's Men C R A I G BANYAN W I T H MARY L. H A N Y A N

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo

McGill-Queen's University Press 1996 ISBN 0-7735-1434-1 Legal deposit third quarter 1996 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in the United States on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Program Hanyan, Craig De Witt Clinton and the rise of the People's men Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1434-1 I. Clinton, DeWitt, 1769-1828. 2. New York (State)—Politics and government—1775-1865. 3. Political parties—New York (State)— History. I. Hanyan, Mary L. II. Title. FI23.H35 1996

974.7'03'O92

096-900278-5

In Memory ofC.M. Van Bergen

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction: A Man, a Movement, and Methods 3 2 "His Story Is Told": A Politician in Retreat

21

3 The "First Fruits of the New Constitution": The Troubles of the Party in Power 62 4 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion": The Clintonian Contribution to an Opposition Position 88 5 "A More Temperate State of Things": The Emergence of an Opposition Movement 117 6 "The Gordian Knot": Public Opinion and the Politics of Legislative Blockage 149 7 "One Republic Not Ungrateful": The Shadow of Magistracy Lengthens across Generations 181 8 "New York Is Now an Empire": The Utica Convention and the Affirmation of Commerce 213 9 "Root Cried Yesterday": The Workings and Aftermath of Victory 244 Appendix A

Relationship Categories

289

viii Contents

Appendix B Tables 293 Notes 309 A Brief Note on Bibliographies 405 Index 407 MAPS 1 New York City in 1824 86 2 Political Features of New York State in November 1824 212

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which, over many years, has helped to defray the expense of our research. We also acknowledge support from the President's Fund of Brock University, which contributed money towards a replacement for one course for one-half of an academic year, enabling us to complete the first draft of this monograph. From the outset we have sought to build a strong empirical dimension into our work, and we are grateful to the many people who have enabled us to gather and process evidence. Brock University's librarians and technical staff have been consistently supportive of our work. Anne Relic and the late Sylvia Osterbind with unflagging persistence sought out a wide range of materials and brought them to us by interlibrary loan; John Burniak has made the rare materials in our Special Collections readily available. The technical expertise and efficiency of Karen Bowder enabled us to make fuller and more efficient use of microfilm; Tony Biernacki and Jim Ross stood ever ready to repair and refine the photographic and microfilm equipment with which we have worked. Peter Van Asten, Andrew Morgan, Kevin Dover, and Chris Hogg of Brock's Computing and Communications Services have always been available to solve technical problems and untangle snarled computer programs. Brock students have lent their skills as research assistants; we offer our thanks for the suggestions as well as the consistent efforts of Denny Gilbert, Theresa Ossichuck, Beth Miller, and Linda Moskejaer.

x Acknowledgments

Two men helped us gain convenient access to vital De Witt Clinton materials. Colin A. Flint of Brock's Department of Physics, when dean of the university, provided the funds that enabled us to travel to Virginia to work with the correspondence of De Witt Clinton and Henry Post, Jr. We had traced this material to the family of the late Henry Post Mitchell, who generously arranged access to these documents while they were on deposit at the University of Virginia Library. Professor William C. Mahaney of Atkinson College of York University kindly made available to us a microfilm copy of De Witt Clinton's diary. We owe many debts to patient librarians and archivists in the United States. Inevitably, most of our research has centred in New York State. Nevertheless, we found invaluable material outside the Empire State and wish to thank the staff of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the American Antiquarian Society, the William L. Clements Library of the University of Michigan, the Connecticut Historical Society, the John Carter Brown Library of Brown University, Newberry Library, and the Firestone Library of Princeton University for their unfailing courtesy. Within New York City our obligations are numerous. The staff of the New-York Historical Society, the late Thomas J. Dunnings, Jr, and before him Arthur Breton provided never-failing assistance. Similarly, we have, over a number of years, found ample help and guidance at a range of New York collections: the Rare Books, Manuscript, and Local History divisions of the New York Public Library; the Columbia University libraries, particularly the Special Collections of the Butler Library; the Pierpont Morgan Library; the Museum of the City of New York; the New York Academy of Medicine; the Municipal Archives of New York City; the Brooklyn Historical Society; and the Queens Borough Public Library's Long Island Room. Our work in New York City would not have been as pleasant or as profitable without the genial guidance of Dagoberto Molerio, who has made freely available to scholars his knowledge of the historical sources of the city. Upstate, we made use of the two major depositories of the New York State Library in Albany. The staff of the New York State Archives, on the one hand, and James Corsaro and the staff of the Manuscripts Division of the State Library, on the other, have provided patient and painstaking support for our work over many years. Those years began when Peter Christoph, now retired, guided us through the Manuscript Division's rich collections. Members of the Library's Reference Division have been consistently helpful: Audrey Smith, Marilyn Douglas, and Melinda Yates. Cornell University made available to us under most convenient conditions not only the remarkable resources of its Regional History Collection but its fine collection of local newspapers. We would

xi Acknowledgments

also like to express our appreciation for the series of Guide[s] to Historical Resources, which the New York Historical Resources Center of the Cornell University Libraries prepared. Without this research tool we would have found it far more difficult to thread our way through the sources to be found in local public libraries and town and county historical societies. Further upstate sources to which we are indebted include the staff of the North Country Historic Center and the Kent-Delord House Museum in Plattsburgh, Rochester Public Library, the Library of the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown, the Rare Books and Manuscript Division of the Rush Rhees Library of the University of Rochester - Karl S. Kabelac, especially - the George Arents Research Library of Syracuse University, Union College Library, the Washington's Headquarters Museum at Newburgh, Hamilton College Library, Colgate University Library, the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library - William Loos, Curator of Manuscripts, in particular - the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, Troy Public Library, the Oneida County Historical Society, the Onondaga County Historical Association, Ontario County Historical Society, and the Cayuga County Museum of History and Art. Public libraries - such as those in Utica, Cazenovia, Poughkeepsie, Cherry Valley, Delhi, Newburgh, Batavia, and Cortland - house runs of newspapers that have been made available to us in uniformly convenient circumstances. Throughout the state, town and county historians have offered invaluable advice and guidance to material that might otherwise have been inaccessible. We have acknowledged some of these dutiful people in our notes but are indebted to many more. History buffs such as Emily Madden of Livonia, John Genung of Seneca Falls, and Henry Pomares of Goshen provided valuable assistance and direction. The theoretical structure of this book has been long in gestation. Eventually, we reduced our work on New York politics to a short essay designed to test out our understanding of the People's Movement and the thrust of Clinton's later career. Brock colleagues Frederick Drake, John McEwen, John Sainsbury, and Margot Adams-Webber vetted this essay in one of its several shapes, and their counsel enabled us to avoid many pitfalls. Other members of the historical profession have offered useful observations. We are particularly grateful to Bernard Bailyn, Jean H. Baker, Walter Hugins, Philip L. White, and Malcolm Sylvers for their comments on our understanding of the People's Movement. Among these critics we are happy to include J. Daniel Livermore of Canada's Department of External Affairs. Professor John L. Larson of Purdue University laboured with an earlier and much longer version

xii Acknowledgments

of this manuscript. Our debt to him is considerable, and we hope that the improvements we have made in its final form may in some degree repay his kindness. Finally, we wish to express our deep appreciation to Peter B. Blaney of McGill-Queen's University Press. His insight, encouragement, and unfailing courtesy have made this book possible. Philip J. Cercone and Joan McGilvray of McGill-Queen's have cheerfully helped us over several hurdles. Finally, Carlotta Lemieux's fine sense of style, careful scrutiny, and appreciation for the meaning of this book have clarified and refined its message.

De Witt Clinton and the Rise of the People's Men

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i Introduction:

A Man, a Movement, and Methods

In 1880, Martha J. Lamb's History of the City of New York recorded that "the fame of De Witt Clinton had gone to the ends of the earth" by 1824. Clinton held no elective office at the time, but as president of the state's Canal Commission1 "was simply attending to his duties" by overseeing completion of the Erie Canal: "He had for years been traversing the State to watch over the progress of the canal, without salary, or a dollar of reward for his services." Although Clinton did not profit, the state and its great port city benefited. Looking back from the vantage of Gilded Age Manhattan, Lamb assured her readers that "his ceaseless exertions had animated industry and enterprise, facilitated the rapid accumulation of capital, and given the New York public a sweet foretaste of unfolding riches - in ten thousand separate ways." They should remember him as a prime architect of capitalist prosperity. Lamb recalled that in spite of Clinton's accomplishments, or because of them, his "ancient enemies" appeared "to have taken alarm at his increasing notoriety."2 For although Clinton fostered the impression that he had "left the field" to his foes, he continued to base his political activities in the state's capital.3 There he maintained a working tie with his dour Presbyterian merchant friend, William James, grandfather of the novelist Henry James and the philosopher William James, and a man "prosperous almost beyond parallel."'* From Albany, Clinton kept an eye on developments in New York City, usually through his former private secretary, Charles Glidden Haines, or through Henry Post, Jr, cashier of the Franklin Bank. Although Clinton remained poised to

4 Introduction

re-emerge politically, he did not run for governor in 1822; but two years later, heading the ticket offered by the People's Movement, he won in an electoral triumph that captured the governorship and almost twothirds of the state assembly. This monograph explores the complex development and meaning of this turnaround and Clinton's role in it. The People's men of New York State launched the earliest broadbased reform movement of the new republic and won control of a state that had one-sixth of the United States' white male population. Beginning their effort soon after the introduction of a new state constitution in 1822, the reformers came to power pledged to democratize New York's political processes. They accomplished their ends after administering a sharp defeat to the regular Republicans of the state.5 As this movement accelerated, Clinton moved to its centre and towards the centre of New York politics. Although - to put it in his own words - his foothold on the "ball of power" became increasingly precarious, he remained in office until his death in i828.6 This study probes the development of the People's Movement largely by following Clinton's experience, though not entirely by doing so. Clinton has been described as essentially unpleasant - scheming, opportunistic, vain, supercilious, haughty, an arbitrary relic of an era in which the word "democrat" bore ugly connotations.? If less attractive than his great Virginia contemporaries, he long remained important in the political life of New York State and could judge its ways astutely. His leadership style, his personality, his capacity to build on and mould public opinion helped to define the development of the People's Movement. Clinton wove his message from the fabric of available and contending persuasions, providing a statement that was rich and complex enough to becloud the unattractive facets of the People's Movement.8 Calling for a harmonious balance among the social elements of the New York commonwealth and the republic, he denounced jacobinism and the corrupt Washington court. Consistently, he emphasized the need for righteous magistracy; New Yorkers bestowed the label "Regency" on Clinton's opponents when he was out of office, implying that New York then lacked its true sovereign. The term became current at this point, not before.9 With equal fervour, Clinton proclaimed the prosperous and harmonious future that would come out of liberal capitalism, marking entrepreneurs, the "opulent men" of capitalism, as the "few" to whom Americans must give heed and leeway. Yet he also sought to exploit the anxiousness of New Yorkers as they responded to the intensification of commerce that has become known as the "market revolution."10 Moreover, even when speaking in the "country" mode of the evils of

5 A Man, a Movement, and Methods power at the centre, Clinton could shift gears to shine as an optimistic and informed architect of enlightenment, order, and progress, eager to build through government power.11 Clinton spoke too as a man of religious faith, though this does not mean that he believed deeply. He also exploited the appeal of magic and the occult. With the occult majesty of Freemasonry, Clinton publicly buried metal plates, an act that made him seem at once the architect of the "canal system" and a magician who promised to make treasure spring from the earth.12 As an officer of the American Bible Society and the Presbyterian Education Society, Clinton advocated a more orthodox spirituality. Pitting himself against Episcopalian Bishop John H. Hobart, he proclaimed the virtues of a popular faith that was founded in revealed religion but was also liberating and rational. Meanwhile, he effectively cultivated members of a medical profession threatened by healers who put their faith in charms and herbs. Clinton's several voices grew partly out of the experiences of his long and varied political career, during which he remained afloat in the shifting currents of power in New York while reflecting the varied intellectual currents of his day. His diverse voices also reflected his sense of possibilities for change along with a deep ambivalence about government power. He would in measure agree with Thomas Paine that "society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness." Still, over time, wise government could foster beneficent change, bringing the individual prosperity and enlightenment that could make "society in every state ... a blessing," as Paine would have it.13 Clinton's background and early career shed essential light on his role in the People's Movement and on the setting of that reform effort.14 He was born in 1769 into a prosperous Anglo-Irish family that had cultivated close ties with leading Dutch families on the western side of the Hudson River. A nephew of George Clinton, who was governor of New York for twenty of the years after Independence and vicepresident of the United States from 1804 to 1812, De Witt made an early acquaintance with people who wielded substantial power. Standing over six feet, he entered manhood robust and handsome enough to win the sobriquet "Magnus Apollo." After graduation from Columbia, Clinton studied law, served as private secretary to his uncle, and in the mid-iyQOs, as his uncle's prospects temporarily faded, he cultivated a warm relationship with the Livingston family. This connection was long-lasting; when Clinton married a second time in 1819, it was to a granddaughter of Philip Livingston.!5 During the 17908, besides speculating heavily in frontier lands, Clinton developed a wide range of acquaintances through various benevolent and

6

Introduction

social organizations in New York City, including the Black Friars, the Uranians, and the Masons, among whom he long remained a major figure in the state. At this point in his career, Clinton held that "to pave the way for the introduction of ... sublime virtue in the administration of the affairs of a nation the will of the community not the will of an individual ought to be the controlling power." If this will was embodied in government through the agency of responsive magistrates, he stated: schools of virtue and seminaries of learning will be founded - agriculture, commerce, and manufactures encouraged - the polite arts and the useful sciences patronized - and the rights of nature and the rights of religion respected ... It will also be the object of the Nation to assuage physical evils by the establishment of hospitals, aim-houses and public granaries, and to alleviate by proper correctives the moral ills which prevail. The shackles of slavery will then fall to the ground and the horrid instruments of capital punishment be only seen on the descriptive canvas. - The proud crest of oppression will be levelled to the dust - the chicanery of law banished from the seat of distributive justice - and the long catalogue of crimes which disgraces our statute books considered as ... the invention of diabolical spirits ... The hand of art will change the face of the Universe; Mountains, deserts, and oceans will feel its mighty force.16

Perfection might come out of the enlightened public opinion of a free people. Guided by widely informed, open-minded, and socially responsible men, men with minds that were "liberal" in that sense, American society would ever improve. In 1797 Clinton won a seat in the state assembly, along with Aaron Burr and eleven other New York City men. There he carefully tempered his party role while supporting modest proposals for betterment: he backed milder punishments and the emancipation of New York's slaves; he also helped to establish the steamboat monopoly of Robert R. Livingston. Entering the state senate in 1798, Clinton did not play a visible role in the trickery that established the Manhattan Company and then transformed it from a waterworks into a financial engine for the Republican Party. Rather, he appeared to cooperate with Federalist leaders to protect New York City from yellow fever. Similarly, he skirted the issues posed by the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions and the Alien and Sedition acts. Burr rather than Clinton led the Republican Party's campaign that won New York City in 1800, a victory that Thomas Jefferson thought critical to his election to the presidency: because the Republicans captured New York City, they commanded the state assembly and the necessary electoral votes.'?

7 A Man, a Movement, and Methods

After this victory, Clinton swung into action, aided by his exFederalist compeer, Ambrose Spencer, who was subsequently a judge of the state's supreme court and who successively married two of Clinton's sisters. Nudging Livingston aside, they engineered the nomination of George Clinton for governor and then wrested control of patronage from the sitting Federalist governor, John Jay. With George Clinton's election, the Clinton-dominated Council of Appointment doled out prominent offices to leading members of the Livingston family. The followers of Burr received much less, as they did from Thomas Jefferson once the presidential election had been settled. The election of 1800 and its aftermath reshuffled the deck and changed the rules of New York politics. The Clintonians shouldered the Burrites aside and manoeuvred the Livingstons into appointive offices, making them more distant from the voters and thus less able to cover themselves with the thickening mantle of electoral democracy. Change, however, did not assuage the tensions between Virginia and New York, which had once been apparent in the differences between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton and was later seen between Jefferson and Burr. In 1802, De Witt Clinton signalled his loyalty to Jefferson. He introduced a prototype of the Twelfth Amendment, first in the New York legislature and then in the United States Senate, to which he had recently been elected. Meanwhile, he undermined Burrite influence in the Bank of the Manhattan Company. Clinton's term in the federal Senate was brief. He resigned to become mayor of New York City in 1803. He was at home with the city's elites and societies, and as he had been married since 1796 to Maria Franklin, a wealthy heiress of Quaker antecedents, he could live with comfort on the mayor's salary, enjoying the company of like-minded friends such as his fellow natural historian, Dr David Hosack. On Manhattan Island, Clinton cultivated an urban political base that in great measure rested on his relationship with men of commerce and finance. Viewed from the South, he therefore appeared as Hamilton and Burr redivivus, as a man endowed with formidable political skills. The fact that Clinton threw his weight behind institutions that fostered New York City as a centre of civilized life - the New-York Historical Society, the American Academy of Arts, the Free School Society, and the Literary and Philosophical Society - did not lessen the danger that he presented to the players of the "Virginia Game," who managed to keep the presidency in the hands of the men of the Old Dominion.18 For his part, Clinton had reason to feel irritation at the persistent Virginian unwillingness to provide adequately for the defence of the city and port of New York: if the Napoleonic Wars spread to the New World, the city might again suffer as it had during the American Revolution.

8 Introduction Within New York Republicanism, factional battles developed - first between the Clintonians and Burrites, and then between the Clintonians and Lewisites. In each struggle, Clinton's foes allied with Federalists, and in each the banking power of the Clintonians, exercised through the Manhattan Company, appeared critical to success, emphasizing the ties between Clinton and "opulent men." In 1807, Clinton compensated for his increasing distance from the farmers and mechanics who made up the mass of New York voters by backing Daniel D. Tompkins, "the farmer's boy," for governor. This step created a Republican alternative to which New York City mechanics and upstate farmers might look for Republican leadership - and an alternative with whom Southerners might ally. Otherwise, the Virginian leadership had a countervailing force in the New York branch of the Bank of the United States. The Virginian need for a New York alternative to Clinton developed rapidly before the War of 1812 as Clinton's interest in a canal to the West grew. The United States Constitution and the Northwest Ordinance had provided for the creation of a range of states above the Ohio River, and these new states might in time reflect the influence of the states above the Mason and Dixon Line or of those below it. The ordinance defined the region as free during the territorial stage; the southeastern states, however, especially Virginia, lay closest to it. "9 Commercial access to the West was near the heart of George Washington's plans for the Potomac Company.20 But Washington, like James Madison, knew firsthand the attractiveness of upstate New York lands along the Mohawk gap in the mountains that opened westward, and he invested heavily in them.21 Both men had seen a route that might readily be peopled to make easier the course of westering empire - for New Englanders and New Yorkers. New York State, guided by a commission on which Clinton sat with eminent Federalists, authorized surveys for a canal to Lake Erie in April 1810. In December 1811, Clinton (who was then lieutenant-governor as well as mayor), accompanied by one of these Federalists, Gouverneur Morris, arrived in Washington to seek federal funds for the canal and to cultivate support for his presidential candidacy. Madison, however, made it sufficiently clear that the United States should prepare to fight Britain rather than dig canals, and the House of Representatives blocked the funding scheme.22 Clinton went home to Albany to preside over the New York State Senate as it considered the incorporation of the Bank of America, a $6 million institution that had strong Federalist backing. A year earlier, the Bank of the United States, thanks in part to the casting vote of Vice-President George Clinton, had faced dissolution. De Witt Clinton's aging uncle had thus deprived the Madison administration of a financial engine that might restrain the fusion of Northern political and financial

9 A Man, a Movement, and Methods

power. Now New York State, denied federal funds to build an artery to the West, appeared about to create a bank that could unite those powers against Southern Republicanism and perhaps help fund canal building. But Governor Tompkins, charging supporters of the bank with corruption, prorogued the legislature in late March. Tompkins's move deprived Clinton of the opportunity to win the presidential nomination of the New York legislature before Madison received his congressional nomination on 18 May. The state legislature reconvened on 21 May, passed the Bank Act the next day, and a week later a Republican caucus nominated Clinton to run against Madison.23 During the campaign, Clinton won support from Federalists who were discontented with the Madison administration's entry into a war with Britain that was bound to have devastating effects on the commerce of the United States; the country ought to have either peace or adequate protection of its maritime trade. Nevertheless, Clinton lost the election by a largely sectional electoral vote, 89 to 128. Had he won, he would have become the nation's chief magistrate at the age of forty-four. During the War of 1812, denied an active military command, the mayor busied himself with the defence of New York City and its harbour. Meanwhile, he offered criticisms of the Madison administration's war effort and continued to emphasize the importance of developing American naval strength. Madisonian Republicans stood ready to capitalize on any slip that cast doubt on Clinton's patriotism, and in February 1814, at a dinner for Commodore Isaac Chauncey, he made one. Rising to offer a volunteer toast, Clinton gave "the golden days of commercial prosperity" - words offensive to those Americans who hoped that this war, like the Revolution, might make the country something of a "Christian Sparta." These words were to plague Clinton in later years, giving his opponents the opportunity to charge that he served men who preferred to gather profits rather than defend the honour of a republic in which citizens cherished virtue.*4 With this honour denied, virtue and public liberty would be swept away by commerce-engendered change. Even before Clinton spoke of the "golden days," Ambrose Spencer and Martin Van Buren, key allies, had abandoned him; he could not escape eventual rustication by his party once the war ended. His removal from the mayoralty came in the spring of 1815, when Madisonians and unsympathetic Federalists in the Council of Appointment united to retire him. But Clinton did not leave apologetically. In his valedictory he warned: The history of the world proclaims the natural alliance between anarchy and tyranny; and if ... we are doomed ... to travel the round of human depravity, and to become ... [the] prey of creatures like ourselves, we must look for the ...

10

Introduction

causes, in the dissolution of the union, and in the establishment of a military despotism: the former will entail ... the evils of never-ceasing ... wars, and the latter will result as a necessary consequence, if it does not previously arise.25

Eleven days later, the state's "Federal Republican" caucus recalled that during the war "the iron despotism of a military chief hung over us." Predicting renewed hostilities, it held that the war had accomplished nothing except to ruin merchants, throw sailors out of work, pile up debt, and saddle the nation with taxes.26 Four months after the Treaty of Ghent, Clinton and leading Federalists defined the Virginian court as a seat of destructive power. Clinton's rustication did not last long. Within eight months he had restored momentum to the canal project. As markets shifted in the postwar world, New York State, he argued, could become the vital link between the "inland seas" and the Atlantic Ocean, making it the heart of a lively internal market; the commerce and prosperity which the waterway would engender would bring civilization and order to New York's cities and farms. Van Buren eventually had to embrace this prediction. Although Madison denied federal funds a second time by vetoing John C. Calhoun's bonus bill, the canal project did not stall. Clinton, again allied with Spencer, won office as governor of New York in 1817, while Tompkins went off to his reward as vice-president of the United States. The union of Clinton and Spencer, who was soon to be raised to chief justice, re-established Clintonian magistracy in its fullness, though with some internal friction. Spencer favoured William Harris Crawford of Georgia for the presidency, which galled Clinton. Moreover, Clinton was irked by Spencer's son, John C. Spencer of Canandaigua; the young lawyer's Episcopalianism and political independence seemed to threaten Clintonianism in western New York, an area in which Clinton sought to build on his own Presbyterianism and his Quaker connections. The Clinton-Spencer alliance held together, but over the next three years the tenuous peace within the New York Republican Party dissolved. Two elements fully emerged, each hoping to dominate the politics of New York in the name of true republicanism. Martin Van Buren stood out as the leader of a "Bucktail" opposition that increasingly emphasized the virtue of party regularity, while the Clintonians increasingly emphasized the iniquity of party as a potential vessel of conspiracy and oppression that would enhance the power of government at the expense of social harmony.27 Against the Bolingbrokean essence of Clintonianism, which centred on the magistrate as the artificer of social and political harmony and of prosperity, the regulars pitted the notion of harmonious party order. The Van Burenite regulars, the organizing force within Bucktailism,

11 A Man, a Movement, and Methods

worked to articulate systematic party processes that reached out from three engines of power: the legislative caucus, the junto of managers that became known as the Albany Regency, and the Albany Argus, the newspaper that stood at the centre of an extensive press network. Commending "regular nominations" and defining which local nominations were regular, the Bucktail press eroded Clinton's Republican following and ultimately his hold on patronage, including the many judicial office holders whom Ambrose Spencer oversaw. As before, the division in New York Republicanism mirrored sectional tensions. In mid-February 1819, the Clintonian congressman James Tallmadge, Jr, challenged the westward extension of slavery by an amendment to the bill that would enable Missouri to become a state of the Union: "Provided, That the further introductory of slavery ... be prohibited ... and that all children born within ... the ... State ... shall be free, but may be held to service until the age of twenty-five years."28 Although Clinton and Tallmadge soon parted political company, Clinton chimed in to assure New York legislators that "slavery is an evil of the first magnitude" and that "it is our duty to prohibit its progress in all cases ... allowed by the constitution." He recommended that they express their "sense on this occasion, as equally due the character of the state and the prosperity of the empire."29 Some men from the South fancied that Clinton might aspire to lead an all-Northern party that would include antislavery Republicans and office-hungry Federalists. Martin Van Buren approached the slavery issue cautiously, for he wanted to avoid defending slavery and yet not give offence to the South. Also, in spite of - or because of - the democratic drift of the Bucktails, Van Buren would have preferred the secretary of the navy, Smith Thompson, a member of the Livingston connection, to be the Bucktail candidate for governor in 1820. But Thompson declined, leaving the hard-drinking Tompkins to take the nomination. Clinton defeated the putatively pro-Southern Tompkins after a warm campaign in which the issue of slavery, along with Tompkins's wartime finances, played an important part in newspaper exchanges.30 Meanwhile, Van Buren secured Federalist help. United States Senator Rufus King - who had opposed the extension slavery - backed Tompkins. More important, two of his sons helped to establish the antiClinton New- York American and to bring over to the Bucktails a small but formidable group of young Federalists.31 These men, who became known as the High-Minded Federalists, displayed a remarkable group profile: three-fifths were lawyers, almost two-thirds of those whose religious affiliation can be found were Episcopalian, and of the thirtynine groups that we explored for this study, the High-Minded Federalists score highest for close family relationships to politically active men of

12 Introduction

the period.32 In effect, Van Buren incorporated into the ranks of the regulars a professional patriciate that provided the Bucktails with legislative and judicial talent. Yet because many of these ex-Federalists hungered for office, because their press spoke from New York City, and because their spiritual life tended to centre on Bishop Hobart's Trinity Church in New York City, the High-Minded made the regulars vulnerable. For although the newcomers were a conspicuous elite that could offset the connections which the Clintonians and People's men had with commercial leaders and flexible Federalists, nevertheless, voters who resented "aristocracy" and politics that turned on the power of a patrician's "interest" might see the merit of throwing their support to Clinton rather than to the regulars.33 More particularly, Van Buren's new-found helpers contributed to the groundwork that eventually swung New York City back into Clinton's column. These changes lay in the future, however. In the meantime, Jabez D. Hammond of Cherry Valley, a Clintonian lawyer and banker, recorded that "the result of the election [of 1820] ... was a complete triumph to the opponents of the governor." Clinton lost control of the assembly as well as the senate.34 Struggling to rebuild his following, he claimed that the "power of the general administration has increased the extension of its patronage" and now threatened "as an organized and disciplined corps, to interfere in the state elections." Belatedly and with little effect, Clinton protested an increasingly hostile use of federal patronage. John C. Spencer had condemned this patronage during the spring election campaign, when his Canandaigua Ontario Messenger had foretold that "disappointed office seekers under the state government" would win the backing of the Monroe administration if they joined Clinton's opposition. Both Clinton and Spencer lamented the federal government's "continual encroachments upon the rights and sovereignties of the states."35 Spurred on by patronage problems, Clinton called for revision of New York State's constitution of 1777, a proposal that built on the momentum created by the recent revision of the constitutions of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Referring to the Council of Appointment, he held that "if the ingenuity of man had been exercised to organize the appointing power ... to produce continual intrigue and commotion in the state, none could have been devised with more effect." Made up of four senators chosen by the assembly from the each of the four great senatorial districts of the state, the council sat with the governor to distribute patronage down to the town level. To erase its "pernicious influence" required the "radical remedy" of a convention. Clinton thought, however, that "the subject of amend-

13 A Man, a Movement, and Methods

ments generally" should be submitted to a convention, "thereby avoiding controversy about the purposes for which it is called; or, by submitting the question to the people ... to determine whether one ought to be convened; and ... to provide for the ratification by the people in their primary assemblies, of the proceedings of the convention." Clinton preferred a "double check ... to carry into effect the sovereign authority of the people" lest New York "risk ... changing materially the features of a constitution ... admirably calculated to promote the happiness, to elevate the prosperity, and to protect the freedom of the community."36 Since he regarded the wealthier freeholders who voted for governor and senators as moulders of "the will of the community" and as a bedrock of good sense, he wanted only limited change. Despite Clinton's admonition, the Bucktails ignored the governor and pressed through a bill that provided for a complete overhaul of the state's constitution. As a member of the Council of Revision, in which the governor, chancellor, and supreme court judges of the state passed on all bills, Clinton had to break a tie vote between the four other members. The Federalist chancellor James Kent and the chief justice Ambrose Spencer opposed the bill; the associate justices John Woodworth and Joseph C. Yates favoured it. Clinton voted to send the bill back to the legislature, accepting Kent's reasoning that the people, not their representatives, should decide whether it be "wise or expedient, that the entire constitution should be revised and probed, and perhaps disturbed to its foundation. "3? Ultimately, the Bucktails had to accept the council's demand for a referendum. Ultimately, too, Clinton became vulnerable to the charge that he only reluctantly accepted the reforms accomplished by the convention that met in the late summer of 1821. With their debates widely publicized in the state's press, the members of the 1821 convention voted to end discriminatory property qualifications for voting and to broaden the franchise - for white males. The old constitution had specified a twenty-pound freehold or forty-shilling rent qualification for those who cast ballots for assemblymen and a freehold "of the value of one hundred pounds, over and above the value of all debts charged thereon," for the electors of the governor and members of the state senate. The new constitution gave the ballot for all offices to white males who had reached the age of twenty-one years and met one of two other sets of qualifications. Under one set they could vote if they had resided in the state for one year and in their town for six months and had paid a property tax or done militia duty. Men legally exempt from the tax or duty could also vote. Under the other set, which tended to enfranchise younger and poorer men, white males who had lived in the state for three years and in their towns for one year could vote if they had laboured on the highways or com-

14 Introduction muted that labour. Men "of colour," on the other hand, had to be citizens of New York - free - for three years and seized of "a freehold estate of the value of two hundred and fifty dollars over and above all debts and incurabrances charged thereon. "38 Even with the injustice done African Americans, the number of men who could legally vote for governor and senators increased 158 percent and for assemblymen 56 percent.3^ By eliminating the two great councils, the convention appeared to strike a blow against magisterial power. The abolition of the Council of Appointment worked a substantive change in the distribution of state patronage. No longer would the governor sit with that council to fill posts throughout the state. The convention granted the governor sole power to appoint the adjutant general, but major generals and other top officers required senate confirmation. Broadly speaking, from noncommissioned officers to brigadier generals, officers would now be chosen by the men immediately under their command. The new constitution provided for the election of many local civil officers and empowered the legislature to choose the major state administrative officers: secretary of state, treasurer, comptroller, attorney general, surveyor general, and commissary general. Justices of the peace would be chosen through an arrangement that gave judges and supervisors an equal voice and gave the governor a role only when they disagreed. Provisions that opened the way to fairly extensive revision of the court system also put Spencer's position at risk: the number of supreme court judges was reduced from five to three, all to be nominated by the next governor and approved by the senate. Equally important, this new procedure covered all judicial appointments above the justices of the peace. The change not only threatened to deprive Clinton of a longtime and effective if independent collaborator; it also threatened the remaining judges over whom Spencer had some influence. The assemblymen would continue to be elected for one year and senators for four years in four annual classes. In an effective assault on Clinton's power, however, the majority of the convention voted to reduce the governor's term of office from three years to two, and advanced the next election for governor by one year. Since the Bucktails had cast him, along with Kent and Spencer, as opponents of democracy, Clinton did not seek re-election to the governorship in 1822. But with Joseph Yates in the governor's chair, he could not rest easily. While out of office in 1823 and 1824, Clinton spent most of his time in Albany and participated actively in politics as he understood it. During these years he began to suffer from the heart condition that would take his life on ii February 1828.1° Yet he thoroughly enjoyed the struggle to regain power, and he gloried in the sweeping victory he achieved at the polls in November 1824, when he was again elected governor of New York State.

15

A Man, a Movement, and Methods

THE N A T U R E AND LEGACY OF THE PEOPLE'S M O V E M E N T

Clinton played a vital role in the evolution of the People's Movement that led to this victory. Yet we must assess this development from a vantage that Clinton would never know fully: the party system that matured in the decade after his death but drew on changes that he witnessed. Commercial opportunity had increasingly shaped American lives before the War of 1812, and this transformation greatly accelerated with the peace, moulding the syzygy which we know as the second American party system and which emerged in the 18308 as the Whig and Democratic parties.^1 Although some scholars have proceeded sceptically when distinguishing Whigs from Democrats,«2 two broadly divergent but intertwined political cultures came to enfold and to define the political lives of Americans. Both arose from deep ideological roots and from the personal experience of partisans as the great social and economic changes of the early nineteenth century took hold. The literature has stressed these broad factors rather than the behaviour of particular religious and ethnic groups. Three decades ago, in his study of the Jacksonian parties of New York, Lee Benson defined the optimistic Whig vision of a positive liberal state that could mould a moral and prosperous society. The Democrats espoused its alternative, the backward-looking, negative liberal state. Benson's concurrent exploration of ethnocultural determinants of party loyalty and voting appeared to vitiate the importance of policy differences between the two parties; in truth, he pointed out that these factors meshed.43 Ronald P. Formisano, in a work on party development in Michigan, built on Benson's perception of the importance of ethnicity and religion and, later, in an eclectic and richly nuanced study of Massachusetts politics, sketched the social and economic forces that produced "modern" parties with high levels of participation by the 18405, a process in which "antiparty populism" occasionally forced politicians to address the failures of American democracy. 44 Other historians have centred on the divergent responses to these forces. Major Wilson earlier pointed to differing attitudes towards change in the major parties that emerged in the 18305; stubbornly resisting change, Democrats insisted on personal freedom in an expanding agrarian order, whereas Whigs thought of the republic as fulfilling itself by developing over time, with freedom and prosperity to be more fully realized.45 Daniel Walker Howe, cataloguing the faces of Whig political culture, laid bare its evangelical and didactic veins and maintained that the men of that party venerated the ideals of classical republicanism while they embraced a modernizing entrepreneurial ethos.46 This ethos, to repeat, has become more central to our understanding

16 Introduction of the political mind-sets of the Jacksonian period. Exploring the impact of changes in the postwar market structure and transportation pattern, historians have established linkages between political culture and the anxieties engendered by economic change, a web of connections that Marvin Meyers explored in the late 1950s.47 He understood that the question often came down to fear or acceptance of change - fear that imbued the American mind with frenetic ambivalence. According to John Ashworth, writing thirty years later, the Democratic Party of the 18305 drew sustenance from agrarian levellers, who felt acutely threatened by the inequalities built into the expanding and energetic capitalism dear to many Whigs.48 Whigs, on the other hand, in the view of Lawrence Frederick Kohl, greeted the engines of prosperity as fearless and autonomous individuals, ready to cope with the new world taking shape around them. His Democrats drew together as men wary of that future, an interpretation which suggests that features of character along with elements of political and social culture fed into the formation of the second party system.49 The psychological suggestion is intriguing, but the literature has more effectively drawn on broad social and economic categories, on economic change, and on the republican ideological heritage of the United States. Harry L. Watson's work on Cumberland County, North Carolina, showed that a source of partisanship lay in responses to economic development; the agencies and expressions of urban commercial growth, particularly when vested with the power of government, threatened to undercut a personal independence which Democrats claimed to cherish more than material prosperity.50 Perception of the dangerous connection between "aristocracy" and government power had assumed compelling and enduring shape during the Revolution; Americans remained determined that the fruits of their labour would not be denied by a class laying claim to a unique political position.51 James L. Huston has reminded us that the "Jefferson-Jackson Democratic axis" called for laissez faire out of "unwavering fidelity to republican fears arising from the political economy of aristocracy," the overweening aspect of Benson's positive liberal state.52 This aspect stirred a powerful gendered subcurrent in the second party system, pointing to linkages with domestic politics that also effected the People's Movement. Looking at the presidential campaign of 1828, Norma Basch has explored the Adamsite attack on the virtue of Rachel and Andrew Jackson, who had quite innocently married before Lewis Robards completed his divorce from Rachel.53 The ensuing partisan exchange defined two opposing views of the way in which domestic relations fitted with politics in the public sphere; the linkages mirrored the divergence of the Democrats and the Adamsites, who in essence

iy

A Man, a Movement, and Methods

were the Whigs-to-be. Adams men and Whigs held that the barriers between public and private and between religion and politics should be thin, even transparent. Probity in domestic relations gave assurance of probity in the expanding marketplace, an approach that anticipated the careful assessment of character and creditworthiness eventually regularized by firms such as Tappan's Mercantile Agency. The pursuit of worthiness made the Whig receptive to evangelical appeals to make men and society holy or at least less prone to countenance unpredictableness.54 By contrast, the Democrat feared that scrutiny by presumed superiors would lead to tyrannical intrusion into the most private of relationships. If, as the Erie Canal began to contribute to the economy of New York, these protean elements of the second party system began to mature in the 18205, so may have other characteristics of the state's political economy. Clinton, the People's men, and the regular Republicans of New York laid jealous claim to the revolutionary heritage of the state as they struggled to formulate the rules of politics under the state's new constitution. Meanwhile, they dealt obliquely, gingerly, and effectively with the issues of taxation and the supply of money and credit. The reform movement, in part because of this concern, weakened the power of the "spring of government," sapping its capacity to address such policy questions with force and clarity. An exploration of the movement provides the opportunity to examine closely the relationship between men, circumstances, and ideology that helped to foster liberal capitalism, greater political democracy, and reservations about legislative power.55 The political and economic circumstances of New York State in the early 18205 frame the People's Movement and attest to its significance. Under Clinton's leadership, the government of the state had begun and nearly completed the Champlain Canal and the Erie Canal; work on these waterways had continued through the first major economic upheaval of the new nation, the Panic of 1819. The success of the canals, which were already being extensively used, coincided with important political departures: New York's participation in the movement to revise state constitutions, the impending end of Virginia's hold on the presidency, and the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson, the American man of destiny from the "country."56 Within New York, the Van Burenite effort to legitimate both party regularity and party as such meanwhile intensified.57 New Yorkers, in sum, had reason to believe that they had entered a period in which transportation and market changes would affect their lives and in which political activity might address these changes - or at least express their feelings about them. Secondly, they had equal reason to expect that

18 Introduction

the rules of the political game had altered significantly. Now that the political elites had done their work, lesser folk might participate, responding to both trends; they might act to participate in further reshaping New York's political economy. The exploration of their response and its aftermath demands scrutiny of the proceedings of New York's legislature, which bore directly on the relationship between policy and democracy. Fortunately, many speeches and incidental exchanges from both houses appeared in the major newspapers of the state and occasionally reappeared in the papers of villages far from New York City and Albany. Fortunately, too, the journals of the senate and assembly of New York have preserved many roll-call votes, making possible an analysis by means of indexes of likeness and difference, cross-tabulation, and clustering^8 These devices help to establish the relationship between the words that Clinton and other New Yorkers "heard" spoken in the legislature and the degree to which the changes in parties and factions arose from the struggles in the senates and assemblies that sat during these years. An exploration of party and faction also demands an assessment of the "interest" of legislators and secondary leaders. We have assumed that the personal histories and collective profiles of these men cast light on the mind-set and objectives of the voters and partisans to whom they appealed; at least most of the voters yielded to these men's desire to be elected or most locally active party men went along with their attendance at conventions. Therefore, we have drawn on our work in collective biography to probe the People's Movement and to place its leadership in the context of men who were politically active on the state level from 1815 through 1828. The biographies have enabled us to compare the careers of the People's men with other groups of the period. In particular, a careful development of their genealogies has revealed the degree to which these groups worked within "connections" of men who were active in politics at the state level during the period. For this element of the monograph we have, among other sources, found useful information in local histories, town records, directories, legislative journals, session laws, private and official correspondence, genealogies, family histories, college catalogues, society records, church records, military records, state and federal censuses, and newspapers to develop biographies of 2,016 political figures. Because of limitations of space, these sources are ordinarily cited only when we are dealing with individual figures. The men belonged to thirty-nine groups: the fourteen senates and fourteen assemblies sitting from 1815 through i828;59 the Federalist state convention of 1816 (106 members);60 the Republican caucus-convention of 1817 (i26);61 the Clintonian committee of correspondence of 1820

19 A Man, a Movement, and Methods

(i?3);62 the signatories of the High-Minded Federalist Address of 1820 (55, maximum count); the Constitutional Convention of 1821 (i26);63 the People's Party convention of 1824 (121, final count);6* the Clinton Republican convention of 1826 (m);65 the regular Republican convention of 1826 (iis);66 the state Adams convention of 1828 (99);6? the state Jackson convention of 1828 (iis);68 and the Anti-Masonic convention of 1828 (8i).69 We found 12,230 family connections among these men. Regarding 3,724 of these connections as sufficiently close to offer personal and political leverage, we divided them into two categories (see categories i and 2 in appendix A). The relationships between pairs of individuals who had more than one category 2 relationship have been raised to category i. Since several men participated in more than one group, relationships were counted by group. That is, if A was related to B, and B sat in two assemblies, we tallied two relationships for A. Finally, to provide a standardized comparison of the constellations and subgroups under investigation, we employed an index of relatedness (see column 9, tables 1-3, in appendix B).7° The collective profile of the membership of a legislature or convention offers a statement about who should exercise power; the profile also suggests the ends of power. In such a statement, just as in Clinton's responses to public feelings and tensions, political history and social history converge. In the case of legislatures, their convergence demands analysis that establishes the relationship between the profile of the legislature and the laws which the lawmakers make. The prosopographical outline of the legislatures and conventions that followed the Constitutional Convention of 1821 reveal sharp social and economic diversities between particular assemblies and political groups; after the People's victory, as the political moment assumed its permanent shaping qualities, adjustments muted the differences. Quite apart from its usefulness in comparing the rapidly changing constellations of the early and mid-18205 and tracking the long-term political and economic behaviour of the participants, the biographical and genealogical record has enabled us to look more closely at the candidates in the county constituencies which we selected to explore the voting response of towns in the contests of 1823 and 1824. This portion of our investigation of the People's Movement rests heavily on contemporary newspapers, which have proved rich sources for assembly, senate, and gubernatorial voting returns down to the town level, making it possible to analyse voting behaviour in most of New York's counties.71 Equally important, Horatio Spafford's Gazetteer of the State of New- York and the journals of the assembly provide extensive townlevel economic, social, demographic, and educational data, which we

2O

Introduction

have weighed against the votes provided by the newspapers.72 Generally, we have employed simple regression to test propositions suggested by newspaper comment and a variety of local history sources.^ Dissecting the elections in all of the counties for which we had gathered returns proved prohibitive, threatening to crowd out Clinton's experiences and to cramp the legislative psephology and the broadly prosopographical approach that we employed to scan other facets of the reform movement. Taking account of the unique political qualities to be found in each county, we chose to concentrate on populous constituencies from different regions of the state, and included Albany, Oneida, and New York counties in each set.™ Although this is not a perfect solution, we believe that the responses of the towns in these counties in diverse ways reflect themes central to the struggle between the antiregulars of the People's Movement and the Bucktail, or regular, Republicans. Political writers in the New York newspapers provided an ideological gloss on these themes, revealing the sharply divergent understandings of New York society. These views not only clearly foreshadow the contrasting Whig and Democratic mind-sets that have been developed in recent writings on the second party system; with the men who struggled for them, they also recall the profiles of the Localists and Cosmopolitans that were chiselled out in Jackson Turner Main's study of American politics on the eve of the Constitution of lyS?.75 The debate precipitated by the People's Movement drew on some continuing lines of difference in the politics of the new nation. Yet the New Yorkers who participated in the struggle anticipated and contributed to the characteristics of the second party system as a dialogue that controlled and channelled difference in a political democracy that encompassed great and increasing disparities in personal wealth. With the emergence and victory of the People's Movement, New Yorkers achieved a resolution of democratic reform and "the prosperity of the empire." The Empire State could now assume that name and could continue to develop a central role in America's imperial and capitalist destiny, a role that would often reflect the will of the commecial and financial leaders in New York State's imperial city.76

2 "His Story Is Told": A Politician in Retreat

As the 1822 session of the New York State legislature began, De Witt Clinton's political star dimmed. Clinton, his Republican followers, and his Federalist sympathizers had become identified with opposition to reform of New York's 1777 constitution. Clinton's Bucktail Republican opponents had recommended change, and the voters had authorized it almost three to one in the spring of 1821. The Constitutional Convention had met during the summer. Doubtless another referendum, scheduled for mid-January, 1822 would confirm its work; and so it did. Martin Van Buren later chose to regard the two-to-one majority as a victory attesting to the power of "old party feelings." Tersely, he predicted Clinton's fate: "His story is told."1 1 8 2 2 : CLINTON IN RETREAT

Van Buren erred, but not so much because Clinton was to prove a master of the machinery of opposition politics. It was more that Clinton centered great attention on the development of public attitudes. In the middle of December 1821, he had concluded that although "lethargic apathy prevails ... A day of great agitation must ... arrive and when it comes it will be as terrible as the whirlwind and the Tornado." By the following April, he had prescribed a tactical posture: "The policy of our party is to be concentrated for action - to be silent and to act when opportunity offers."2 Good would then come out of the storm if men of "liberal" mind stood together. Although unsettled by change, New Yorkers would give their confidence to informed men of good judg-

22 "His Story Is Told"

ment, trusting them to mould the promise of the future and better fulfil the lives of the citizens. A party "concentrated for action," not an organizational plan, fitted with Clinton's acceptance of change and his willingness to exploit forces dimly seen but presumed manageable; it described his tactical bent. This essence of Clintonianism would not fit readily with regular and predictable party procedures, which by their nature might stay the recognition of opportunity and block willingness to build on change. Sharing this attitude with Clinton, his following could wait, with hope, for opportunity. They found and made use of it, offering a putatively better society and winning power. Meanwhile, with the new constitution, the Bucktails held the ensign of political if not social and economic betterment, while Clinton manoeuvred to fall back, expecting others to follow him. He constantly scanned the political terrain for possible fellows in arms and for pitfalls into which the Bucktails might stumble. Manoeuvring off the field, Clinton retreated in the spirit of a bushwhacker expecting to make a comeback, rather than as a general with an army in being who must openly regroup for battle. Leaving blaze marks on the trail of his retreat, he carefully monitored opinion and continued to shape an image of himself as a leader who could return to the governorship - or rise to the presidency. Early in 1822 Clinton had made his decision not to run again for the governorship, under the new constitution.3 He had long kept silent about his intention because he chose, in the military parlance of New York politics, to leave the field in good order, determined to build a following and to return. In staging the public announcement of his decision, he carefully chose his words as well as the other actors in the proceedings. The fifty-year-old William James took the chair of the 16 April meeting in Skinner's Mansion House, but much younger men were very much in evidence. Assemblyman Thomas B. Campbell of Chautauqua County, a thirty-three-year-old New Hampshire-born entrepreneur, presided along with James. The judge advocate general, Peter Gansevoort of Albany, aged thirty-four, and Charles G. Haines, aged thirty, who was then practising law in New York City, praised the governor for crafting policy in the face of partisan fury. Citing "the doctrine of official rotation," Clinton declined their invitation to stand again but emphasized that the future must depend on a "chief magistrate who calls forth the internal resources and latent energies of a state - who promotes the interests of agriculture and manufactures - who fosters seminaries of learning, the interests of science and literature, and schools of elementary instruction.'^

23 A Politician in Retreat

Nine months later, accompanied by his eldest son, Colonel Charles A. Clinton, and by three other young patrician lawyers who cherished the honour of military rank, Clinton would go through the heavy snow that blanketed Albany on New Year's Day of 1823 to pay a public and spirited visit to the uneasy man who had just moved into the governor's chair.5 Joseph C. Yates received his callers fortified by the massive presence of his lieutenant-governor, Erastus Root. Clinton saw "misery & confusion ... painted in the countenance of the former" and added: Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night.6

Suggesting the material with which he intended to rebuild, Clinton had again given effective prominence to comparatively young professional men at a time when the median age of assemblymen was forty-three.7 Clinton early beckoned younger men to ally with him against the Bucktail-dominated middle-aged legislators who opposed him. He recognized that in doing away with property qualifications for white males, the constitution of 1821 had given the vote to young men who had not yet accumulated wealth. Men in their twenties and thirties, if made candidates or committee men, might lead their peers to support a revived Clintonianism, a politics of economic optimism and change, promising new solutions to the problems that lingered after the Panic of 1819. Faithful Clintonians would accept change in the franchise, expecting it to fit peacefully in place with economic growth. The gathering that went through the gesture of offering De Witt Clinton the nomination in 1822 was a foretaste of the many "young men's" meetings that were later held under the eye of Clintonian politicians. l822: B U C K T A I L P R O B L E M S

By delaying until that gathering the announcement of his decision not to run, Clinton had steadied his "friends." Although the new constitution had changed the date of elections from the spring to the autumn, few Bucktails had toyed with the idea of waiting Clinton out and holding a summer nominating convention to make their choice of governor and lieutenant-governor. Most continued to regard the end of the legislative session as the time to caucus on their executive candidates. The Bucktail legislators had therefore met on the evening of Monday, 18 March, and had picked Joseph Yates of Schenectady and Erastus Root, a rough,

24

"His Story Is Told"

informal, hard-drinking man, who seemed to embody the rugged qualities of his Delaware County. Some complained that the caucus had ignored the western part of the State, but in Yates the Bucktails offered a candidate satisfying to citizens who felt that the southern end of the Hudson Valley had too long commanded the governorship. Appealing though Yates may have been, none of the sixteen Clintonian senators and only two of the fifty-three Clintonian assemblymen crossed the line to show up at the nominating caucus.8 Menaced by divisions that would inevitably emerge as they chose their candidates, the Bucktails (the Van Burenites and ex-Federalists in particular) had vainly striven to protect the secrecy of their proceedings. The dissension did not centre on the possibilities of VicePresident Daniel D. Tompkins. Tompkins had lost one gubernatorial race, he came from the wrong part of the state - Staten Island - and problems with alcohol and personal finances eliminated him as a candidate. But Canal Commissioner Samuel Young of Saratoga had struck a consistently democratic posture during the Constitutional Convention. Being independent of Van Buren, he posed a substantial threat to Yates, and the means by which Yates's supporters headed him off left considerable ill feeling. Those in favour of Young had sought an early adjournment of the legislature "to some time in the summer," but Yates's supporters had blocked Young's effort to delay the caucus; if Young were to be nominated, it would have to be after he had been cleared by a senate committee of charges of "Mai practice" in his duties as a commissioner.9 Yates's nomination lulled some foes of the Bucktails; it intrigued others in whose company Yates and Van Buren felt uneasy. The prospect of returning to the New York Supreme Court guided Ambrose Spencer, who favoured Yates and had been sidling towards Martin Van Buren. Clinton's brother-in-law believed that Yates would eventually nominate him and that Van Buren would ensure senate confirmation.10 Stephen Van Rensselaer, a Federalist for whom accommodation had become an art valuable to preserving his lands in Rensselaer and Albany counties, found an adequacy of rectitude in the Yates-Root ticket; he thought Yates sound, though inclined to be "led by designing men," and Root had resisted the corrupting influence of bank lobbyists." Clintonian Congressman Albert H. Tracy of Buffalo approached the Bucktail ticket in a spirit of mischievous pragmatism. He preferred Young but thought that if Clintonian republicans espoused the Yates nomination, they would "place both the candidates and the party in an awkward predicament."12 Bucktails, if increased by Clintonians, would be too large a group to satisfy and discipline. The Clintonian commitment to growth through a well-managed political economy and

25 A Politician in Retreat

to communal harmony, and the Clintonian hostility to political parties as such could overwhelm the Bucktails in what should be Van Buren's hour of partisan victory. Generally, the Bucktail press warned against amalgamation, for it would erode the unity and regularity of this wing of the Republican Party.13 Another danger preoccupied Heman J. Redfield, the Bucktail postmaster of Le Roy who was district attorney of Genesee County. Responding to an overture from John C. Spencer, Redfield welcomed "a union of the members of the old democratic fraternity" but execrated the High-Minded Federalists: "Actuated altogether by interested motives," these "least honest" of the Federalists had joined the Bucktails, while the Federalists who supported Clinton had "maintained their integrity as a party" and had struggled"to establish their political principles." Redfield centred his attention on casting out these new Bucktails. In future the High-Minded, he said, "will have no more" offices. He assured Spencer that "such sentiments are very frequently expressed among our people."14 Hunger for available places threatened to isolate an element that was often vital to Van Burenite control of the Bucktail congeries. Filling the Albany Post Office Yates and the Bucktail Republicans already had reason to worry about federal patronage, a matter over which Clinton had no more influence during his waning governorship than he had over the distribution of state offices. He played little part in a major Van Burenite defeat, the selection of a Clintonian Federalist as postmaster of Albany. Solomon Southwick had become postmaster of Albany seven years before, but by the end of 1821 his mercurial financial affairs were in decline, and the postmaster general had demanded that he make good his defaults by i January or be removed. Hard pressed, Southwick began to sound very Bucktail. Saluting the new constitution in the Albany Register of 19 December, he lauded the extended franchise and warned "every friend of liberty ... to be alarmed, when he beholds the Legislative Power treated as unworthy of trust, especially in what relates to the Political Economy of the state." Southwick denied that he had any "lot or part" in Clinton's administration and condemned the excesses of executive power. Clinton soon learned that his new-found critic had only a precarious hold on the postmastership and that at least one other person sought to take over the position, which paid $2,000 a year. The information came not through any formal political channel but from a social visit to the family of Congressman Solomon Van Rensselaer, who hoped

26 "His Story Is Told"

to leave Washington to replace South wick. '5 Clinton asked Van Rensselaer "whether we ought to stir in this affair, as we are all concerned in having a good postmaster."16 He had relied on Van Rensselaer as a friendly presence in Congress and could rely on him in Albany.J? Van Rensselaer gave no hint that he preferred Clinton as other than a quiet supporter, and the governor confined himself to urging Ferris Pell, New York's Washington claim agent, to make it known that the appointment of Van Rensselaer would be "universally acceptable,"18 words meant to tempt those who wished to limit Van Buren's power. By the beginning of 1822, Van Rensselaer had won the backing of the postmaster general, the secretary of war John C. Calhoun, most of the New York delegation, and congressmen from Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Support came the more readily because of Solomon Van Rensselaer's likely successor in Congress. If the Albany County electors behaved properly, Solomon's cousin, Stephen Van Rensselaer, would grace Washington. The patroon could check Van Buren, who was then serving as one of New York's senators, by tempering Van Buren's ideas about the importance of party. The thought of both Van Rensselaers in the positions they wanted was compelling, and President Monroe made the gesture of inviting Solomon Van Rensselaer to dinner out of alphabetical order. Martin Van Buren had initially been unaware of Van Rensselaer's vigorous politicking and had been tentatively pushing his brother-inlaw, the co-editor of the Albany Argus. As the struggle became heated, the senator and the Albany Van Burenites shifted easily to a patrician candidate who was less closely associated with Van Buren and therefore less likely to displease other factions among the Bucktails or the Monroe administration. This candidate was John Lansing, Jr, the sixty-eightyear-old former chancellor.^ The Van Burenites made up for lost time. On the last day of 1821, the congressional supporters of Van Rensselaer had petitioned Meigs to appoint the congressman because of his war service. Within five days, Vice-President Tompkins and Rufus King, the other New York senator, joined Van Buren in urging delay on the postmaster general so that their Albany "friends" might gather support for a successor to Southwick. When denied this leeway, Van Buren penned instructions for an Albany memorial to the president explaining why, within New York, Bucktails alone (the High-Minded included) should have offices. Not that Van Buren scorned Federalist support. He believed that given the "respectability, &c.," of Lansing, many unconverted Federalists might sign a petition for him.20 If Monroe wanted patrician virtue and independence, he could have it in Lansing. On the day Van Buren dispatched his instructions, De Witt Clinton sent Van Rensselaer "a powerful petition," signed by "most respectable

27 A Politician in Retreat

inhabitants and most of the merchants." But the president had settled the issue before many names were on either memorial. Pressed by Van Buren's demand for delay, Monroe devoted a cabinet session to the problem. In this 4 January meeting, Meigs pointed to Van Rensselaer's war record, the congressman's popularity in Albany, and the congressional petition signed by eleven Bucktail members and also by seven Clintonians and four Federalists. After Meigs retired, the president sat silently as the members of the cabinet discussed the problem. Recognizing the postmaster's authority to appoint, they nevertheless emphasized the president's right to intervene, but Monroe declined to question Meigs's choice.21 Although Van Buren soon managed to swing seven of the eleven Bucktails behind the demand for delay, Meigs quickly wrote to Solomon Southwick and instructed him to hand his office over to Solomon Van Rensselaer.22 Clinton's major antagonists had suffered a multifaceted defeat, and they recovered as best they could. The Washington leaders had ignored Van Buren's conception of the relation between party commitment and the gift of patronage. His control over New York congressional Bucktails appeared limited, and he seemed to lack the acumen necessary to anticipate or fend off Van Rensselaer's drive for office. The setback called for some expression of strength and discontent.2^ Accordingly, Van Buren's Albany managers published his correspondence and that of King and Tompkins with Monroe and Meigs and held a public meeting. Mayor Charles E. Dudley and State Treasurer Benjamin Knower presented a memorial holding that New York, unlike other parts of the country, seethed with party conflict. The president must therefore bear in mind that the Republican Party's national power could best be preserved by "consulting the harmony, promoting the interests, and strengthening the power of our political friends."2'' Clinton happily concluded that the Bucktails had charged the Monroe administration with attempting to keep New York "in confusion" and contentedly mused that "things look well in all directions." Here was an opportunity to build on offended state pride, Clinton conferred regularly with Solomon Van Rensselaer for three days, and on the fourth the Clintonians held their meeting. With the "venerable" LieutenantGovernor John Tayler in the chair, they called their gathering "Republican" and needled the Van Burenites for attacking the administration and consorting with such Federalist gentry as Rufus King.25 They chided the Bucktails for naivete - for failing to realize "that as soon as ... the Bucktail party had a decided ... ascendancy in the politics of this state, the favor of the Gen. Government would be given to the minority ... preventing this state from exercising a controlling influence in national concerns."26 Virginian determination to limit New York's

28 "His Story Is Told"

power would preserve Clintonianism, if only as a foil; New York could escape the pain and oppression of factional division only by commanding the national government. Mocked in their hour of ascendancy within the state, the Van Burenites decided to approach the next presidential election by backing a candidate who would not betray his friends in New York. They would secure an understanding with a candidate who could command the South while they delivered New York.27 Clinton and the 1822 Council of Appointment Clinton took satisfaction from the affair of the Albany post office, but the ongoing proceedings of the 1822 Council of Appointment offered his state following less satisfaction. The seventy-three Bucktail assemblymen easily overcame fifty-three Clintonians to elect a Bucktail Council of Appointment.28 Between 4 February and 17 April, Clinton sat through eleven sessions with them while they removed seventy-two men and issued commissions to fifty-two new officers.29 A few Clintonians tried to hold on by claiming a change in their politics, but they were seldom rewarded for their efforts.30 Local Bucktail meetings clashed with Clintonian justices of the peace, and some merchants determined to remain both magistrates and Clintonians - by deception if necessary.31 Since these men marketed local produce; their neighbours depended on them and found their power and opinions hard to resist. Even though the Panic of 1819 and the decline in grain prices had shaken their authority,32 they nevertheless felt that they retained enough control over the minds of their fellow townsmen to lie and to have them accept the lie. So although the grip of these magistrates had loosened, Clinton could take comfort that, while feigning conversion, they attempted to stand fast in the face of the "jacobin" tide that Bucktail constitutional tinkering had released. In spite of the odds against him, Clinton achieved two patronage successes that strengthened his hand in New York City. One affected the contentious medical profession, a vital element in New York politics. Joseph Bayley, health officer of the port and an ex officiomember of New York City's board of health, had received his position in 1820. Now his foes assailed him as "an old and bitter federalist" and "a rank Clintonian," who had threatened to fire employees of the Marine Hospital on Staten Island if they voted wrongly.33 One merchant complained that, "more than any other man," Joseph Bayley had undermined the Staten Island Bucktails. Bayley's opponents, prominent Bucktails all, supported Dr Charles Drake as "a uniform and consistent republican."34 Drake's failure to obtain the position turned on medical issues in addition to the political divisions among physicians. First, as one who

29 A Politician in Retreat

held that yellow fever was of domestic origin, Drake differed with Bayley and maintained that Bayley and the board of health had ignored sanitation and had covered up yellow fever cases of domestic origin. Like David Hosack of the College of Physicians and Surgeons - who cited Bayley's work with approval - Bayley argued that the disease was imported, although, with Hosack, he conceded that local conditions contributed to its spread. Second, Drake led a group of physicians in the county medical society who held that the professors of the College of Physicians and Surgeons should not control its board of trustees. He served on a committee of the society chaired by the pro-Tompkins physician, John Watts, Jr. The committee had convinced the regents to enlarge the board, to fill the seats with physicians from outside the college, and to provide for the gradual elimination of the professors from the board. Both Bayley and Drake sat on the new board, in which ill-feeling lingered to make for an atmosphere of intrigue.35 In May 1821, Samuel Bard, the august and ceremonial president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, died at his Hyde Park home. During the evening of 24 January 1822, the trustees of the college met to choose their new chief. Clinton's friend Hosack then proved his capacity to undermine anti-Clintonian influence among physicians. Hosack won, leaving James Campbell, the Van Burenite surrogate of New York, to marvel that "this Hosack for intrigue, management & address beats the very Devil himself." The next day the first of the letters demanding that Drake replace Bayley went off to Albany. A Clintonian physician of eminence and political skill had thus won the presidency of the state's urban medical school. Yet the regents had the final say, and Dr Wright Post soon alleged that Hosack had circulated rumours that he - Post - did not want the presidency and would shortly depart for a position at another medical school. By 16 February, Post knew that, thanks to Bucktail influence, the regents had chosen him rather than Hosack. Five days earlier, with a number of antiClintonian regents present - Solomon Southwick, Joseph C. Yates, Samuel Young, William A. Duer, and John Lansing, Jr - that board had decided that the college had unanimously elected Post as its president and had made Hosack vice-president.36 After this, the council hesitated to remove Bayley and appoint Drake, in part thanks to Clinton. Before late March, Bayley's office had twice come up in discussions, during which Clinton had forced the four Bucktails to back away from giving the office to Drake. Bayley, he argued, was a highly competent man, a man in whom knowledgeable New Yorkers placed their trust as they faced a fearsome disease.37 Clinton confronted the Bucktail councillors with the danger of leaning too far towards one side in the controversy over yellow fever. Importationist

30 "His Story Is Told"

William Coleman's Evening Post would doubtless greet a Drake appointment with reproach, and future science might prove Bayley right. Hedging its bets, the council reduced its pressure on a professional elite that Hosack would eventually marshal in support of Clinton.38 Equally important, Clinton stood by a principle meaningful to the young lawyers with whom he stood before Yates: expertise must take precedence over partisan management. Jacob Barker and the Banks Jacob Barker, an ineffable New York City merchant and financier, matched Hosack's effectiveness and contributed to Clinton's other council success. Barker's private and unincorporated Exchange Bank had earlier provided to mechanics and small capitalists the services denied by banks where neither these men nor their endorsers were "known." After the collapse of the Exchange Bank in 1819, Barker's career offered the city's mechanics an example of resilience. First, he began illicit banking operations under cover of the Mercantile Insurance Company.39 Then, in April 1820, he claimed benefit under the New York insolvency laws. By 1822, he had acquired "full power of the Assignee appointed by the Recorder to collect all monies due" to his estate. Barker next petitioned Congress for settlement of his accounts remaining from the war loan of 2 May 1814 and "for Two Millions of [government] stock now due me." The failure of this petition did not blunt his drive to dominate the board of the year-old North River Bank, and although court action stalled this effort, the directors of the bank offered to buy out his interest. Finally, the law that revived the Dutchess County Insurance Company vindicated the faith of mechanics and traders in Barker's ability to supply money. With more Clintonian than Bucktail backing, this measure was passed early in the 1822 session.^0 On 21 February, Barker sat with the council in its third meeting as it chose auctioneers, functionaries vital to New York's role as a centre of importation. How many Barker may have spoken for is impossible to determine; Clinton, however, expressed his gratitude, praising Barker's "excellent traits of character. "4l Apart from the re-establishment of the Dutchess County Insurance Company, Clinton walked a careful line as he gave Barker help with the problem of the relocation and control of the North River Bank. Clinton brought Barker together with legislators and supreme court judges, with Chancellor James Kent and with John Stevens, the New Jersey entrepreneur whose sons would soon launch the Hoboken, the first double-ended steam ferry to ply the Hudson.*2 Before these men, Barker could argue his case.

31 A Politician in Retreat

The bank that Barker sought to capture had been chartered in 1821 to serve "the inhabitants of the northern and western parts of the city of New-York," its precise location unspecified. It was, however, to lend the Swartwout brothers up to $100,000 for the further development of the extensive Hoboken agricultural project, which they had begun in 1814 by purchasing 327 acres from Stevens. This argued that the charter should have located the bank near Barclay Street, where the Hoboken steam ferry would dock, and it soon opened one block south of Barclay. The directors and others petitioned the legislature to amend that law to specify this location, and by the third week of February the matter was before the assembly.43 Barker wanted to move the North River Bank from the Hudson side of the island to the East River side, a shift that offered gain for Clinton if he and Barker worked together. Barker lived and conducted his business close to the Brooklyn ferry slip. This Second and Fourth Ward area, unlike the wealthier Third Ward in which the North River Bank had opened, had voted heavily against Clinton in the 1820 election. With a bank in that part of Manhattan, Barker could back borrowers and endorsers whom the bankers a dozen blocks away in Wall Street would not serve.44 In return for this backing, he could command political loyalty to protect and extend his insurance company and banking operations. Given that under the Bucktail constitution, two-thirds of both houses had to approve a corporate charter, Barker knew that he needed Clintonian help to implement this extension. Denying that the directors really represented the stockholders, Barker condemned the effort to change the Bank's charter to confine the North River Bank to the west side of Manhattan. Demand for credit and other banking services should decide the bank's location, he said.45 Gulian C. Verplanck, the High-Minded Bucktail leader in the 1822 assembly, disagreed. He argued that the proposed change protected the vested rights of those for whom the lawmakers intended the bank, and the legislature must continue to protect them even if most of the stockholders objected. Although two leading upstate Clintonian assemblymen broke ranks to agree, the effort to change the charter stalled.46 By helping to keep a possibility open for Barker, Clinton cautiously positioned himself to build strength in New York City. He knew that caution was essential: banks off Wall Street could not be allowed to develop in a way that raised questions about the soundness of commercial banking in New York City. Clintonianism emphasized economic expansion to ensure social and political harmony, but the uneasiness that lingered after the Panic of 1819 contributed to a reluctance to charter new banks. Since he was present in the Capitol on almost half of the days when the legislature

32 "His Story Is Told"

sat, Clinton knew that bitter hostility to banks and insurance companies could come out of Clintonian mouths.47 Looking closely at the way men voted, he saw that Clintonians supported banks with limited enthusiasm, and no bank charters passed during this session. Insurance companies, so useful to Barker, fared better. The Bucktails most often opposed them, but the Clintonians often backed them firmly, and five insurance companies won the necessary support of two-thirds of the members of both houses. The Clintonian legislators cautiously followed a course that supported the expansion of capital, justified by the security from uncertainty that insurance offered.48 THE TAX B I L L OF I 8 2 2

These insurance companies could make a contribution to the ever larger pie that Clinton believed would bring domestic peace and good order. The issue of taxation, however, intruded to threaten conflict between those New Yorkers who had much to invest and those who had little. Hard times had eroded the income of government, forcing legislators to scrutinize the fairness of the state's tax system. In 1822 the receipts from the local tax of one mill on each dollar of assessed real and personal estate made up a little over one-third of the annual revenue of the state. Because of falling property values, these revenues had by declined 16.3 percent since i8i9.49 Overseers of the poor therefore had less money to disburse. The report of the assembly's Committee on Pauperism and the Poor Laws reflected their frustration. Concluding that "provision, for ... the voluntary poor increases pauperism," the committee took "it for granted that the public mind is ... prepared ... for the modification or total abolition of a system ... found ... to multiply ... evils it was designed ... to cure."5° Rather than become resident paupers, the poor should move on to find work in an increasingly integrated national economy that offered a flexible if demanding labour market. Until the poor laws changed, however, local governments needed more money. New York's largely farming population readily accepted the proposition that personalty, the scrip of banks included, had too long evaded taxation. Edmond Charles Genet championed this view. The one-time diplomat of revolutionary France completed a memorial on taxation on 28 January 1822, a day before he paid a visit to Clinton. A week later, (a day on which Genet again consulted with Clinton), the petition came before the assembly. Genet began his appeal, printed for the lower house on 18 March, by pointing out that he was "the guardian and executor of several landed estates, in the city of New-York, and other parts of the state." This reminded legislators of Genet's tie with Clinton:

33 A Politician in Retreat

Genet had married Cornelia Clinton, the daughter of George Clinton, and De Witt Clinton remained security for the Frenchman's conduct as guardian of Cornelia Clinton Genet's children. The 1822 legislature passed an act completing the partition of lands which these children and other heirs of George Clinton held in common with LieutenantGovernor John Tayler. Nevertheless, to drive home his independence of the governor and the nonpartisan essence of his proposal, Genet announced that Daniel D. Tompkins, as well as Cadwallader D. Colden, the New York City Clintonian lawyer, had approved his demand that the state tax personalty more fully. Moreover, Genet had earlier spoken about taxation before the Rensselaer County Agricultural Society, being careful to send a copy of his address to Martin Van Buren. The sharpeyed Albanians who saw Genet visit Clinton fifteen times during the session - usually when the tax bills were before the assembly or senate - therefore had some reason to pause before they concluded that Citizen Genet and the governor had conspired to please farmers and threaten the monied institutions and men of New York State with heavier taxes.51 Genet recalled that when he was a resident of New York City in 1818, the personal property reported and assessed there stood at $20,900,000, but this did not include the $22,000,000 capital of the state-chartered financial institutions of the city. Manhattan's assessors, Genet pointed out, chose to neglect "fractional parts of capital or stock ... scattered all over." The stock of these corporations, even if not readily accessible, was taxable. Genet had revealed the gist of a plan to reach these assets in a mid-October address he had given to the Agricultural Society. He had then lamented that the balance of trade compelled "merchants ... to remit not only our precious metals, but our public stocks ... besides a considerable portion of state stock, and even securities on real estate." To recover revenue from the fast-departing wealth of New York, Genet defined money invested in bank and insurance stock as taxable personalty. Investors living outside New York State would not withdraw their money if it was taxed, he argued: rather, the effort of the state government to maintain fiscal soundness would encourage them to have confidence in all New York securities.52 After a bit of Clintonian prodding, leading Bucktails eventually took up the proposal to tax the capital of "monied institutions." The assembly initially shunted Genet's petition aside; but in the upper house, John L. Viele, a young Federalist-Clintonian lawyer and senator from Saratoga County, a man whom Clinton felt "understands every thing," proposed that "a committee ... enquire into the expedience of laying a tax on bank stock, for the benefit of the canal fund of this state." The upper house postponed his resolution, but an older senate hand, John T. More, a Bucktail tavernkeeper from the mountainous town of

34 "His Story Is Told"

Roxbury in Delaware County, laid hold of the issue. More's bill would apply only to bank capital, but it would impose a heavier burden than the mill tax, charging twenty-five cents on each hundred dollars of capital stock actually paid in. Meanwhile, in the assembly, John Tracy, a Chenango County Bucktail lawyer, had introduced an "Act to Equalize Taxation," which called for the assessment of "the full amount of capital stock" of banks and insurance companies. Finally, John Savage, the Bucktail comptroller, made an offering. He attached to his report on a petition from the Oneida Iron and Glass Manufacturing Company a suggestion that the assembly consider legislation to "authorize the assessment and taxation of the corporated property of every bank and corporate body, the same as the property of an individual. "53 The prospect of a law reaching to all corporations had emerged. The Clintonians gave less support to the bill in the lower house than the Bucktails, who voted for it forty-four to sixteen, while the antiregulars backed it twenty-eight to sixteen.54 Regional difference, however, stood out more clearly than divisions along factional lines. Hinterland Bucktails found in Byram Green of Sodus an articulate leader, who warmly defended the tax bill by pleading the case of aggrieved farmers against irresponsible urban speculators. The farmer, fixed to his land, could not escape taxes, he argued, but personalty easily escaped its fair portion of the burden. Taxation of the capital stock of banks should reach the personalty of foreigners, who enjoyed the protection and services of the New York State government. Green agreed with Genet that the improved credit of the state would make it likely that these foreigners would keep their money invested in New York rather than putting it elsewhere. Three Bucktails from southern New York responded. Michael Ulshoeffer of New York City held that Ohio had ruined its credit by taxing bank stock. Secondly, the bill did not specify other than bank and insurance stock for taxation; it too clearly reflected "hostility to a particular species of property." Speaker Samuel B. Romaine agreed. Equally important, so did James Burt of Orange County, aged sixtyone, with fourteen sessions of experience in the legislature.55 Because Burt embodied the plain farmer, men listened to him no matter what political colours he flew during his winding political career. His participation gave notice that "country" defiance of excessive power might mobilize to defend New York City's engines of finance and commerce against a predatory state government. Pondering the debate and the success of the tax bill in the assembly, Clinton decided that the tactic of party silence did not preclude confidential condemnation of the law. Early in the morning of 5 April, he wrote to Henry Post, Jr, and told his New York City banker-confidant that the proposal was "a ramification of a system of jacobinism - a

35 A Politician in Retreat

war against property." He assured Post that it would not pass and let him know that the Clintonian financial expert, the former comptroller Archibald Mclntyre, had just left his seat in the senate to travel to New York City, presumably to carry the news of a tax proposal that had more Bucktail than Clintonian support. Yet Clinton did not really feel disappointment at the survival of the tax bill in the lower house. Mindful of Bucktail divisions, he preferred a fuller debate over the issue to a scuttling of the law. The Albany Gazette and Daily Advertiser, the remaining pro-Clinton news-sheet at the capital, changed its approach to the tax proposal as it came before the assembly. Shifting from criticism of Genet, Savage, and the bill, the newspaper gave more space to the pro-tax position.56 New York City's merchant capitalists attacked the tax bill as it came before the senate. On 10 April the senate received two petitions against the law. Merchant William Bayard signed his name to the protest of the New York Chamber of Commerce. The presidents of eighteen insurance companies and ten banks had signed the other petition, which echoed Bayard's arguments. Bayard emphasized that the capital stock of banks and insurance companies often rested on the pledged stock of other financial institutions or real estate "without adding to the capital stock of the community." Therefore, "the proposed law ... imposes double and threefold levies on the stock of banks and insurance companies of our own state, and cannot reach the bank stock of other states, or of the United States which may be owned here." New York State would not only drive "foreign" capital away, but New York capitalists might find it wise to invest in other states. Developing this point, Bayard demanded that the senators see New York as one of several competing political economies: The commercial metropolis of the state of New-York, is surrounded by active and sagacious rivals ... prompt to take advantage of the mistakes of others, and to counterbalance by liberal and politic measures, the superior advantages which Providence has given to this highly favoured city. If the legislature of this state should not perceive the true foundation on which our prosperity rests, but should, by unwise laws, drive capital and enterprise away, will not Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and Boston open their arms to receive them; ... commerce may be first effected, but manufactures and agriculture will also deeply feel the injury.

The tax law, a master stroke of legislative fecklessness, could thus destroy the commonwealth's competitive advantages.57 The New York Chamber of Commerce had picked out three merchants to go to Albany to present its position to the Senate Committee on Commerce and Agriculture through three Hudson Valley lawyers.

36 "His Story Is Told"

Led by Bayard, the committee included Henry Wyckoff and George Tibbits of Troy, who, through his brother Elisha, the president of the Franklin Fire Insurance Company, maintained ties to New York City's financial life. John Vernon Henry, an experienced Albany lawyer, and two younger men, Thomas Jackson Oakley of Poughkeepsie and Charles Haines, would speak for them.58 These men had ready access to Clinton. By Wednesday, 10 April, the day after the Chamber of Commerce had chosen its committee, Haines was in Albany, visiting Clinton with Sylvanus Miller, whose decade of service as the surrogate of New York County gave him extensive knowledge of the personal wealth of the city. On Thursday, Bayard and Wyckoff appeared but did not stay for dinner when Oakley joined Miller and Haines. On Friday morning, before the senate hearing, Bayard, Wyckoff, and Haines came to see Clinton for a final conference.59 The senate proceedings took place before a politically mixed committee that was certain to resist the tax measure. Charles E. Dudley, the wealthy Van Burenite mayor of Albany, presided; two other members, George Rosecrantz and Duncan McMartin, Jr., had been consistent Clintonians. Rosecrantz, a prosperous fifty-seven-year-old Herkimer County farmer had not voted against any of the charter bills that had come before the senate in that session; McMartin had followed the same course;60 and Dudley's private and business life gave little hope to Bucktails who wanted tax reform. Dudley had established strong social ties to the Federalist George Tibbits, his fellow Rhode Islander, whose son, High-Minded George Mortimer Tibbits, would soon marry a niece of Dudley's wife. Moreover, Dudley had become a major Albany banking figure.61 Supporters of the tax could therefore easily lump Van Burenites with Clintonians as protectors of privileged personal wealth. Dudley sought to limit the damage by including on the committee some men who were less inclined to support the chartering of new banks. He fashioned a body that was more Bucktail but only slightly more sympathetic to the taxation of financial institutions, the other members being the Clintonian Samuel Miles Hopkins and three Bucktails: John More, Walter Bowne of New York City, and Tilly Lynde of Chenango County. The wealthy Bowne had already served as a director of the Columbian Insurance Company, the Manhattan Company, and the Bank of the United States, and as both the president and a director of the Phoenix Insurance Company. Lynde also had a banking connection. Having been successful as a merchant in Sherburne, he had left that business in 1816 to concentrate heavily on politics and had then become a director of the Bank of Chenango.62 The hearing took place in a senate chamber crowded with Albanians and assemblymen, and with other members of the senate sitting as spec-

37 A Politician in Retreat

tators. The drama promised that the issue would not die. Before the lawyers could begin, Genet rose and denied that the committee had any right to hear them. The lawyers, he said, had no power, under corporate seal, from each and every bank and insurance company which they claimed to represent. But Dudley silenced him, stating that the committee had decided to hear counsel, and counsel would be heard; Genet could speak afterwards. Then Oakley spoke for two hours, embellishing the arguments presented in the memorials received by the senate two days previously. Henry followed briefly, and Haines remained silent. After that, Genet held forth with "great volubility and vehement gesticulations. "63 The Friday hearing over, the senate shuffled towards postponement of the problem. On Monday, Dudley reported that the system "operated in some parts of the state with manifest injustice, as it regards the industrious classes of the community," and therefore the comptroller ought next year to "report a new and comprehensive system for taxing real and personal estate." With this proposal left hanging, the senate amended the assembly's bill to limit the tax law to residents of New York State. Company officers were to send information on stockholders to the comptroller, who would then redirect it to the town assessors by way of the county clerks. Although this promised to tax personalty held within the state - if the local officers cooperated - it avoided taxing banks and insurance companies directly, giving the investor from out of state or from abroad immunity from taxation. With this arrangement approved, the senators returned to the Committee of the Whole to wrestle further with the bill, and towards the end of the day a motion was passed to report "progress." This ended consideration of the matter in the 1822 session.6* A complex but credible arrangement to tax had emerged, and in failing to press it through, the legislators of 1822 had left behind an unresolved problem, which Comptroller Savage might bring up. Ogden Edwards, pondering the last days of the session, noted in a letter to Rufus King: "The personal property of the State is but very partially taxed, & unless some mode is pointed out by which it can be reached, the attack on the banks will unquestionably be renewed at the next session."65 A week before the senate shelved the tax bill, Clinton had assured Henry Post that "every effort will be made to resist the tornado of jacobinism which threatens to be overwhelming." The political usefulness of this tornado crossed his mind as concluded: "As to politics the rule we have adopted as to silence works well. The adversary is quarrelling in every direction."66 If the Clintonians were to go underground, the Bucktails might have the quarrel over taxation all to themselves.

38

"His Story Is Told"

T H E U N I O N C O L L E G E LOTTERY A N D THE REGENCY

The Bucktails' quarrel offered Clinton the prospect of financial support from men of wealth who were made uneasy by Bucktail "jacobinism." Helped by William James, he made use of other, covert means. James, occasionally accompanied by the Rev. Eliphalet Nott, the president of Union College, and by the former comptroller, Archibald Mclntyre, called on Clinton thirty-two times while the legislature of 1822 was sitting. Their business may have involved a fourth man, Isaac Denniston, whose visits never occurred simultaneously with those of Nott and James, though his calls clustered about theirs.67 Nott, James, and Mclntyre, and perhaps Denniston indirectly, had stakes in an arrangement that Jabez D. Hammond later termed "one of the most important contracts ... ever ... made and executed in this community." Actually, two contracts were signed in July 1822, one of them secret. Since leaving the comptrollership, Mclntyre had gone into the lottery business with Joseph Yates's brother, John Barentse Yates, who was also the brother to Union's treasurer, Henry Yates, Jr. Both members of the "House of Yates and Mclntyre" signed the contracts, as did Henry Yates and Eliphalet Nott for Union College. William James acted as the sole witness to both agreements. On these lottery contracts, Denniston, finally, could comment knowledgeably, given his experience as manager of the scandal-plagued Medical Science Lottery.68 Because scandal and losses had clouded the history of New York's lotteries, the Constitutional Convention of 1821 decided that "no lottery shall hereafter be authorized in this state," and it prohibited the sale of all lottery tickets in the state "except in lotteries already provided for by law." An assembly report of 1822 carried this repudiation of lotteries further, and its reasoning made the July contracts possible. Previously, when the state had mismanaged lotteries, the treasury had made up the losses. Since the constitution forbade additional lotteries to recoup those losses, it was in the state's interest to leave the management of lotteries to people who had an interest in running them efficiently.69 This led to a law lobbied forward by Eliphalet Nott. Under it, the recipient institutions might "appoint one of their number to assume supervision and direction" of the lotteries, thereby delegating the right to appoint agents and make contracts.70 Nott could now purchase the lottery rights of the New-York Historical Society, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Hamilton College, and the Asbury African Church, all of which shunned the responsibilities of management. Since William James had already lent Union College $56,000 and was willing to place more money at Nott's disposal,

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Nott could offer to pay those institutions that were too much in need of cash to hold out for eventual payment of the monies which the lottery acts had granted them. Since the Union College managers would be arranging lotteries for the sums originally granted to the other institutions, the 15 percent of sales which they could lawfully take for their services had greatly increased. The contracts over which De Witt Clinton's friend James presided divided it three ways: 8.75 percent for Union College, 4 percent for Yates and Mclntyre as agents, and 2.25 percent for the "President's Fund," which had been created by the secret contract. By the end of March 1824, $58,114.40 had gone into the College Fund and $16,907 into the President's Fund.71 No evidence links De Witt Clinton to these lottery contracts, but both James and Mclntyre handled money for him, though not always meeting his needs as promptly as he wished. As a major firm, they had to give their attention to concessions elsewhere, especially to the Union Canal Lottery of Pennsylvania. This meant that Mclntyre often travelled south to manage the Pennsylvania operation. At times, Clinton found this frustrating; he had trouble setting up New York City meetings with Mclntyre when it became necessary to discuss confidential business.72 Yet in a pinch he could rely on Henry Post to coordinate his confreres - as when, in September 1822, he told Post that "Mclntyre must from Philadelphia make interest with Mr. James."^ Mclntyre next sought to purchase a newspaper that had served as a major political organ. William Duane of the Philadelphia Aurora, intrigued by the possibilities of Latin America, yielded to the adventurousness that had once taken him to India and had brought him to the United States; but he needed money to pay his debts. The arrangement that Mclntyre and Duane made unravelled, however, leaving Clinton's war chest somewhat diminished and leading him to conclude that "the Aurora business was a great deception." It may have been; but the fact remains that Clinton, even before he completed his retreat from office, tried to establish a press in the state which, after New York, had the highest number of electoral votes. Moreover, he had supporters with money who were willing to act for him.7* 1823: Nott Fends Off Scrutiny The efforts of Clinton's friends aroused Bucktail suspicions, and Clinton's opponents became curious about Nott's accounts. In January 1823, Dudley piloted through the senate a law that added Joseph Yates and Erastus Root (who by then were governor and lieutenant-governor) to the board of Union College as ex officio trustees. Then a more aggressive thrust came from the Bucktail-dominated board of regents.

40 "His Story Is Told"

Twelve days after this act passed the assembly, the trustees of Union College reported to the legislature, lamenting that the debt of the college had increased since their last statement and attributing it to the failure of earlier lotteries. Not dissuaded by the trustees' posture of blamelessness, a committee of the regents headed by William A. Duer, an ex-Federalist Van Burenite, pressed the college's board for a fuller financial statement. Meeting resistance, Duer's committee submitted resolutions to the regents, and the regents reported them to the legislature. The first resolution demanded that the trustees report on details of the college's debt. Compliance would reveal James as a creditor who received interest from bank stock owned by the college. This made menacing the other question that Duer's committee resolved to ask: Was the college's endowment being used for other ends than the mandated purposes of support of professorships, development of a library, and giving aid to indigent students?75 Firmly guided by Nott, a committee of the trustees produced a lengthy response, which came before the assembly on 21 April 1823. It introduced into New York politics a term that alluded to the reactionary Tories of England - "Regency" - a term that deftly but broadly suggested both abuse of power and the iniquity of Van Burenite ties to the High-Minded Federalists. Equally, to New York men - and women - who were familiar with the extensive 1820 newspaper coverage of the adultery trial of Queen Caroline in the House of Lords, it suggested abuse of legislative power at the expense of the powerless - women, in particular. The seed that Nott had sown would, after an August 1824 meeting of the New York legislature, bear rich fruit for the Clintonians. Building on the memory of the queen's trial, Nott said that Duer's three-man regents' committee "did misapprehend the duty imposed on them." The trustees of Union College, he explained, had included comment on the financial situation of the college in their initial report because they had "heard ... that unkind feelings existed among some members of the Regency towards Union College, and that ... some undefined dissatisfaction had been expressed with respect to the abuse of funds, that required correction." Nott, however, had no intention of acknowledging the fiscal authority of the Regency, and he challenged the Duer committee's demand for an accounting. The regents had given no sign that they wished to pay Union's debt, he observed, and therefore they had no equitable right to require a statement. Having condemned the regents' committee's language as "too imperious and mandatory," Nott turned Dudley's law against the committee. Besides appointing the governor and lieutenant-governor as trustees, ex officio, it had empowered the board of trustees to choose those members who did not sit ex officio. This, Nott argued, nullified an

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1805 arrangement between the regents and Union College which promised eventually to give the regents-chosen trustees a majority. According to the Duer committee, the legislature could not have framed the act with this intention, but Nott insisted that the lawmakers had framed it knowingly. The constitution of 1821 had cut down the size of the state's supreme court and thus had cut down the size of Union's board, he argued; the legislature had merely recognized that the state had abrogated the 1805 renegotiation of Union's charter, making the college a free agent and diminishing the regents' right to oversee its finances. Isaac Riggs, the Clintonian editor of the Schenectady Cabinet, printed the regents' and Union's statements in a pamphlet, fielding a demonstration of Clintonian legal expertise and making the term "Regency" more public. Ambrose Spencer, Jonas Platt, James Kent, Thomas Addis Emmet, John Wells, and David Ogden contributed to a formidable appendix of legal opinions.76 As the controversy ended with Nott gaining the upper hand, Clinton moved aggressively. He urged Post to set up a "system" or "Committee of finance and raise a large amount." The "ways and means" would assure "triumphant success" and repay both Post and Mclntyre for "advances."77 THE 1 8 2 2 C A M P A I G N : SEEDS OF HOPE

Clinton had become increasingly optimistic well before Nott successfully concluded his duel with Duer and the regents. New Yorkers had voted during the first three weekdays of November 1822, and about a month after the returns appeared, Clinton assured Henry Post that there was a "glorious spirit in the wind." Back in October, looking for signs of the turnabout that he deemed inevitable, he had paid close attention to a quixotic effort by Solomon Southwick to deny Yates the governorship. Although recognizing that Southwick could not succeed, Clinton had fancied on the eve of the election that Albany's former postmaster was "gaining." The contest would go to Yates, but the tide had begun to shift: Southwick had raised usable issues.78 Southwick had assailed both Bucktail procedures and the genuineness of Bucktail republicanism. He had nominated himself and then later claimed "regular nomination ... by one of the largest Republican meetings" ever to crowd into the large hall of the Capitol. Insisting that the crowd had gathered spontaneously, Southwick mocked Van Burenite regularity and focused on the iniquity of caucus nominations.79 He held that the caucus, an institution distant from public feeling, had covered the body politic of New York with a host of lesions. By enabling a party elite to dominate the political process, the caucus destroyed "republican simplicity," encouraging other envious elites and reducing the

42 "His Story Is Told"

political process to a contest of self-serving cliques. Moreover, to conceal their parasitical wrangling from the populace, party politicians had created "the most intricate labyrinths ... to involve their proceedings in yet deeper mystery." Through these means, said Southwick, the state had come to have candidates such as Joseph Yates, who belonged to "the great family aristocracy of the state" and would provide amply for his family. By this species of court politics, the Van Burenites had bought off lesser gentry, who secured "snug berths" by covert "fawning to men in power." The cost of the pelf - salaries, contracts, charters, and even "gigantic monopolies" - fell on the mechanics and farmers, the "middling interest" of the state. Running as the candidate of the "smallfry" Southwick urged the mechanics to elect a "mechanic governor" and so free themselves from a lawyer elite.80 Southwick never endorsed the heavier taxation of personalty, but his polemics made it harder for the Bucktails to oppose tax reform. With the gist of Southwick's campaign in print, Clinton set his own following partially in motion. This manoeuvre had begun in September 1822, a month during which Clinton concluded that "great confusion" racked the Bucktails, who would "break up into a thousand fragments" headed by "petty leaders." "Our friends," he advised, "must keep together - consolidate" to attract and absorb the fragments.81 After he had taken counsel with the Mohawk Valley Clintonians, a senate district convention met at Bagg's Hotel in Utica on 11 October. It chose two senate candidates: a prominent Clintonian-Federalist merchant, George Huntington of Rome, and a Clintonian Republican physician, Westel Willoughby of Herkimer.82 An earlier meeting in Montgomery County had followed late-summer spadework by Clinton and paved the way for the Utica convention. The Montgomery convention of 26 September nominated James Mclntyre, Archibald's brother, for sheriff and chose Federalist John W. Cady to stand for Congress. More important, after confirming the candidacy of Joseph Yates for governor, the meeting chose Henry Huntington of Rome, George Huntington's elder brother, to stand for lieutenantgovernor against Erastus Root.83 Unlike George, Henry had long been a Republican. In 1812 he had voted as a Clintonian presidential elector, and he had been on the ticket of electors pledged to Clinton in 1820. In the state election of 1826, he would stand as De Witt Clinton's running mate. Though trained as a lawyer, Huntington had grown wealthy as a merchant and land speculator. Functioning since 1812 either as the president or a director of the Bank of Utica, an institution that had a substantial branch at Canandaigua, Huntington exercised extensive financial control over commercial credit in central and western New York. He also had the moral weight to justify the Geneva Gazette's

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description of him as a "gentleman of unblemished character." A leading Presbyterian lay member, he became president of the Western Domestic Missionary Society in i826.84 With Huntington's out-of-the-way nomination, an element of evangelical piety entered the struggle against the regulars; Clinton would build on it. The candidacies of the Huntington brothers, harmonious partners in business and leading citizens of Oneida County, emphasized Clinton's willingness to draw on both parties to rebuild Clintonian Republicanism. George Huntington had served seven sessions as a Federalist assemblyman. His selection to run with Republicans sent an invitation to which Federalists could respond; independent Clintonian Federalists who had clung to their old party designation should now discard it. "Names in politics as well as science," Clinton told Post, "are matters of substance - and a bad name in public is as injurious to success as a bad name in private life." By the fourth week of October, pointing to meetings in the Fifth and Third Senate Districts, which centred respectively on Oneida and Albany counties, Clinton concluded that "the name of federalist ... is now almost universally dropped."85 Out of the whirlwind there must emerge a common commitment hammered out by the forces of change rather than imposed by the force of party authority. Clinton believed that he could hold his own followers and also win support from discontented Bucktails, provided he balanced his efforts carefully. Eyeing his opponents during late 1822 and into 1823, he speculated that not only could he absorb Samuel Young's backers, but he could enlist the supporters of Erastus Root, who "fraternized occasionally" with the Young faction. If enough Bucktail legislators defected, the Clintonians could even take state printing contracts away from the Albany Argus and thus "break up V[an] B[uren]'s Press."86 Yet friendly gestures now came from Young and Root because they hoped to absorb Clinton's followers and with their aid to dominate the Bucktail congeries. Undue Clintonian passiveness could demoralize and dissolve Clinton's forces or at least lead to a union in which he served rather than led. He therefore insisted on vigorous support for the senate slate for the Fourth Senate District - Montgomery, Saratoga, Washington, and the counties ranging north to Canada - where the Young faction might most quickly absorb Clintonians.8? Compared with the campaign in the Fourth Senate District, the effort to make Henry Huntington lieutenant-governor appeared languid. Clintonian newspapers such as the Schenectady Cabinet, the Utica Columbian Gazette, and the New-York Statesman avoided praise of Huntington and condemnation of Root. Their restrained posture advertised Clinton's statewide candidate without inviting the hostility of

44 "His Story Is Told"

those who followed Root. The relaxed character of the Huntington campaign lent credibility to the Albany Argus report "that Mr. Huntington has written a letter declining the nomination for lieut. governor; and that his determination will be soon made public." Huntington did not bother to deny the claim of the Argus. Yet he received 37.2 percent of the votes cast for lieutenant-governor, showing strength where Clinton had been strong in 1820. Clinton had not risked much and could comfortably state his "candid opinion ... that if I had been a candidate I would have been reelected Governor."88 C L I N T O N ' S TACTICS IN RETREAT

In retreat, Clinton nevertheless chose to modulate his public presence carefully. Rather than slinking out of sight, he had remained visible where it mattered. Moreover, he strove to remain a leader with a multifaceted but clear message, the message not so stridently presented nor the presence so salient that he came under attack. He also strove quietly to gather and assess bits and pieces of public feeling so that he might adjust the Clintonian message, making it fit with what New York needed and what most voters wanted. With Clinton shifting towards a listening mode, the antiregular Republican press had not been able to enliven the listless referendum on the new constitution. Bucktail editors took note. Late in November 1821, charging Clintonians with "deep-rooted hostility" to the new constitution, the Ithaca Republican Chronicle remarked on the silence of Nathaniel H. Carter's Albany New-York Statesman, the key element in the Clintonian press. After three more weeks of Carter's restraint, the Chronicle editors speculated that Clinton meant merely to "feel the pulse of the people, to see whether a general opposition" could be mounted. They correctly concluded that he had early decided against a campaign on the merits of the constitution. In November, Carter's Statesman had echoed Clinton's conclusion that "there is a great variety of opinion ... on the subject." Thereafter, the Statesman kept mum, commenting only that "the editors of the Argus, finding no opposition ... amuse themselves with stating objections of their own, and then sagely answering them; as boys sometimes set up bricks, for the sake of knocking them down."8' On New Year's Day 1822, Carter announced that, with that issue, the Albany New-York Statesman was ceasing publication. Accepting the loss of government patronage as a hazard of an "exclusively political paper," he announced that he would begin in Manhattan a new journal, the New-York Evening Advertiser. The name implied a commercial newspaper, signalling other Clintonian printers that they should dampen

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political themes. Yet Carter's subscribers and the editors with whom he exchanged issues would have found his new sheet familiar. Atop the first page they saw, as before, the words New-York Statesman. Within a month after Clinton had concluded a six-week visit to New York City, the central element in the Clintonian press network shifted there, to what eventually proved to be more fertile ground.?0 In shifting, Carter continued to fly Clinton's banner. Clinton, however, chose to remain in Albany. Regarding the capital city as a "miniature picture of the political feelings of the State" that "receives and ... communicates impressions," he remained there during most of 1823 and 1824.9I In doing so, he denied that his foes had erased him from the state's political landscape, for he chose to stay in the same house that had served him as an executive mansion since 1818. His continued residence in that building reminded all who came to Albany of his potential return to office. From it he kept a close eye on the politics of the capital until he again became governor at the beginning of I825-92 Yet Clinton hardly remained fixed in Albany, eying only its miniature picture. During the half year between the adjournment of New York's 1822 legislature and the autumnal frosts, Clinton took lengthy trips that kept him away from Albany for almost half this time." Little more than a week after he announced his mid-April decision not to stand for the governorship, Clinton, accompanied by William James, boarded the steamboat Richmond and headed down the Hudson to New York City. The two men returned in the same vessel in the mid-afternoon of 5 May. In the meantime, settled at Washington Hall on the corner of Reade and Broadway, they stayed long enough to witness the New York City's last charter election under the old constitution.^ The political ambience of New York City, which then had one-tenth of the state's population, offered encouraging signs. "Regularly nominated" Republicans carried all posts in seven of the ten wards, but Bucktail unity began to fray as ex-Federalist regulars imperiously assumed the posture of guardians of party integrity; the High-Minded New-York American warned that those "who prefer the gratification of their own personal and partial interests to the harmony and influence of republicanism" would be "expelled from party communion. "95 Even as the American demanded harmony, Mordecai M. Noah of New York's Bucktail National Advocate kept the potentially divisive tax issue before his readers. Reminding artisans and smaller capitalists of high rates of interest, Noah suggested that the export of silver to purchase luxuries and excess speculation in stocks bought on credit made money dear. He offered four supplementary premises. First, "a great pressure and an artificial one certainly exists." Second, the brokers

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of the city had met to set the price of stocks artificially low. Third, "the money influence seems concentrated in Wall street." These points fitted with Noah's fourth: "Since the attempt to tax Bank Stock was made, Stocks have fallen ... There is something wrong some where, and must be found out."96 Noah hinted that Wall Street had engineered the tightness of credit and the low price of stocks to defeat the movement to tax personalty. 1822: Circulating to Maintain Credibility After returning to Albany, Clinton did not stay long at rest. With his fifteen-year-old son, George William Clinton, he headed west on a journey that took twenty-seven days.9? The formal purpose was to attend the meeting of the canal commissioners that was to wrestle with the problem of the western terminus of the Erie Canal. On the way to Buffalo, Clinton met local figures on their own ground, which enabled him to discuss matters not readily committed to writing and thus gave him an advantage over Martin Van Buren, who now more frequently relied on party organization to maintain communications and foster loyalty. Utica provided a comfortable base from which Clinton made sorties in different directions over several days.98 Oneida County had been heartily Clintonian in 1820. A wealthy district, whose manufacturing was beginning to bloom and whose population was equal to 40 percent of New York City's, Oneida could again serve as an upstate well of Clintonian strength. Clinton first ranged east towards Little Falls in Herkimer County and next northwest to Trenton. Then, in one day, in which he and George rode on horseback for over thirty miles, he visited New Hartford, the village of Clinton and Hamilton College, and finally turned northeast to ride to Whitesborough, where he called on Judge Jonas Platt. This demonstration of athletic prowess was put on for those who thought that Clinton's damaged knee and growing weight meant incapacity; and the roundabout pilgrimage to Judge Platt's home gave Federalists who contemplated lining up behind the High-Minded of Oneida County additional reason to pause. Finally, Clinton was visited at Bagg's Hotel by many who had given support in the past, including Ezekiel Bacon, a prominent transplanted Yankee, and George Rosecrantz, a nephew of General Nicholas Herkimer, the revolutionary hero of the Germans of the Mohawk Valley. Clinton saw leading medical doctors during this trip. He believed that the authority of a "liberal" elite must rest on a foundation of learning and meaningful service. By cultivating his relationship with physicians, he affirmed his posture as a statesman; they needed him, too.

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Oneida County physicians Luther Guiteau and Alexander Coventry hoped that the county medical societies would gain the power to impose "wholesome discipline" on trained physicians and to restrain the increasing number of "root doctors" whom the law allowed to practise medicine provided they used native herbs. Constitutional change and an efflorescence of popular, perfectionist medicine had added new twists. Since the voters would choose coroners from now on, there was a fear that men who favoured folk medicine might pass judgment on physicians, endangering the ascendancy of the liberal mind as the antiprofessional Thomsonian medical movement spread, and offering Americans the opportunity to manage their own health care.99 The state medical society's convention met annually in Albany, always when the legislature was in session. In maintaining close ties with the upstate leadership of New York medicine, Clinton kept open the possibility of "acting with" politically informed men, who sought professional respectability and order and who claimed to be truly learned in nature's laws. Moving westwards, Clinton repeated his Utica conferences, concentrating on the seats of other bell-wether counties, such as Niagara and Ontario, both of which had given him substantial majorities in 1820. In the port village of Buffalo, he spent many hours with twenty-nineyear-old Congressman Albert H. Tracy and with the developers of Buffalo Harbor, especially Samuel Wilkeson, Isaac Kibbe, State Senator Oliver Forward, and Judge Charles Townsend of the four-year-old forwarding firm of Townsend and Coit.100 At Canandaigua, pressing on to Albany, Clinton met with the wealthy and prepossessing young Francis Granger. Already president of Canandaigua Village and supervisor of the town, Granger promised to become a major figure in Ontario County politics, capable of moulding sentiment in the Finger Lakes region.101 Face to face with these men, Clinton could reinforce the principles laid out in his January annual message and reaffirm the importance of his "canal system."102 He prescribed for national prosperity, holding that farmers should not expect relaxation of Britain's corn laws to solve their problems. Rather than depending on the caprice of foreign markets, Americans should win enduring agricultural prosperity by developing a strong domestic market in the "dense population of manufacturing towns and commercial cities." Buying American through these centres would blend republican purity with prosperity. Clinton played down protectionism and extolled an expanding seaborne trade that promised to link commerce with republicanism if Americans turned towards Latin America. New York, wisely governed, could fill a vital role in building a national domain of prosperity and liberty, he maintained. The state had iron

48 "His Story Is Told"

and it must have coal, which, given "liberal encouragement on the part of the state," would be found and mined. With canals to bring these essentials together and then carry iron products to market, manufacturing and commercial growth was inevitable. Clinton made it clear that the legislators were not to be the source of economic vision in New York. They should instead see to "the creation of a general board for public improvements to commence its operations after the completion of the present undertakings." He explained: "This board, selected from our most enlightened and public spirited fellow citizens, and invested with power to establish and facilitate all useful channels of communication, and all eligible modes of improvement, would be enabled by a judicious application of public resources to conduct us to an elevation of unparalleled prosperity." The senate and assembly could serve effectively by surrendering power to a board made up of men superior in mind and motive, an alternative to the body of party managers gathered around Martin Van Buren. "Party ascendancy" should not guide the development of the state, just as it should not decide the constitutional referendum. Scanning these words, the Van Burenite editors of the Albany Argus charged that the Clintonians had "struck their colours in stratagem, and only wait a favorable opportunity to raise the bloody flag."I03 The Erie Canal was the most important stripe in the "bloody flag" of Clintonianism. Transportation, according to Clinton, was the key to the development of internal markets; while circulating, he laboured to defend his title as architect of the Grand Canal. In 1821, Robert Troup, land agent for the Pulteney estate in western New York, at a cost of $380 had printed fifteen hundred copies of a pamphlet designed to destroy Clinton's prestige as the prime mover of New York's canals. Troup drew inspiration from Elkanah Watson, who considered himself a more genuine agricultural reformer than Clinton. Equally important was the fact that in his determination to be an effective agent, Troup meant to defend the English owners of the properties in his charge against taxation. Mindful that the Clintonians could place heavy taxes on the lands of foreign owners, Troup aligned himself with those Bucktails, the High-Minded Federalists in particular, who now had the power as well as the desire to protect both the real estate and the personalty of foreign investors.104 Clinton anonymously responded that Watson, encouraged by Troup, had "hastened to cover himself with the lion's skin, and to assume the plumage of the eagle"; and that, thus falsely attired, the upstart paraded around Albany as if he had taken "full possession of the body and the branches of the tree of glory"; neither "a subaltern intellect" nor "imbecile productions" could make Watson's "ridiculous pretensions" stick.I05

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Troup struck back in early February in A Letter to Brockholst Livingston, Esq., one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States - and a member of one of New York's great landed families. Troup argued that Clinton had not single-handedly revived the movement for an Erie Canal after the War of 1812; it had been neither dead nor dormant. During the critical legislative days of 1816 and 1817, Clinton, according to Troup, had given more heed to bolstering his sagging political fortunes than to the preparation of legislation to provide for the completion of the canal. In committee sessions he had been vague, said Troup, and although Clinton was a canal commissioner, he could provide no maps or plans other than an exotic inclined plane design - a remarkably unfair charge. Finally, Troup charged that Clinton was neither fiscally responsible nor financially creative, and that it was George Tibbits who had contrived the Canal Fund and a long-term financial plan.106 In other words, one who now stood close to if not within the Bucktail pale had saved the state from the ill-conceived taxation that would have come with Clinton's opportunistic politics and sloppy statesmanship. T H E D I S P U T E OVER T H E W E S T E R N T E R M I N U S OF THE E R I E CANAL Clinton followed the policy of silence in print after Troup's counterthrust.107 He knew that another issue could ripen to establish him as the capable engineer of economic expansion. Before travelling eastwards to Canandaigua and Albany in the summer of 1822, he attended to the difficult problem of the western terminus of the canal - whether the canal should end at Buffalo or at Black Rock, a short distance down the northward-running Niagara River. Presiding over the Canal Commission, Clinton over four days listened to the citizens of Buffalo, to the representatives of Black Rock, and to engineers, all locked in conflict over an issue that was important to the two villages. The decision could affect the success of the canal; with western New Yorkers "greatly agitated" over the question and Erie County leaders divided, it presented both political danger and opportunity.108 1821: Division among the Engineers In 1821 the engineer David Thomas had made it clear that he did not favour the plan of Peter and Augustus Porter for a harbour on the Niagara River.I09 These Black Rockers planned to create a long and narrow basin. They would build a mole from Bird Island at the juncture of Lake Erie and the Niagara River, running it down the river to the

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tip of Squaw Island, and would then throw a dam from the northern end of that island to the American shore. The canal would enter the raised pool of water near the north end, between the dam and the mouth of Scajaquada Creek. Consisting of a giant scoop, filled by the waters diverted from the river, the basin promised the canal a supply of water. Thomas faulted this proposal on three grounds: the rocky river bottom would make it hard to anchor the mole and dam; drift ice, driven by wind and currents, would clog the harbor, the jagged ice edges cutting into the timbers of the mole and dam; and the British, from their shore could bombard the basin, breaching it, and drying up the canal.110 Buffalo's citizens agreed and questioned the engineering skill of James Geddes, who favoured the Black Rock harbour because he believed it would provide the most steady supply of water.111 They argued that works designed to control the rapidly moving Niagara River must prove expensive; a dam from Squaw Island to the mainland could cost $218,592 and the mole from that island to Bird Island another $335,592, whereas it would cost the state no more than $133,418 to bring the canal from Tonawanda Creek to the harbour at Buffalo. The projectors of Buffalo's harbour touted a pier running northwestward from the southern lip of Buffalo Creek, its current boring through the sand bars that rose near the mouth of the stream. With this pier already underway, the Buffalonians claimed that they had a storm-resistant shelter for vessels drawing six feet of water.112 Neither the legislators nor the canal commissioners gave heed to the demands of the competitors for a decision, and by the end of 1821 the Buffalo group was growing anxious. Buffalo's Wilkeson, Kibbe, and Forward had backed Clinton in state politics, whereas Peter B. Porter's anti-Clintonian record was sound; so Black Rock might win out of political merit what it could not gain by technical advantage. Thomas's hostility to the Black Rock proposal could also prove to be a disadvantage for Buffalo. The Quaker engineer corresponded with Clinton on natural science, and by the publication of his Travels through the Western Country in the Summer of 1816 Thomas had marked himself as a man of the governor's stamp. Clinton had followed up this book, which made clear Thomas's interest in pomology and scientific agriculture, with his "Hibernicus" letters in the New- York Columbian. Published as a book in 1822, these letters suggested how New York State might appear to a roving savant sympathetic to Clinton's politics and accomplishments.113 The guise was meant to be penetrable - as in the present situation, Hibernicus-Clinton had put himself on display as a roving savant magistrate, competent to decide rightly between Black Rock and Buffalo.

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1822: The Western Terminus in Albany Throughout the last legislature, pressed by leaders of both villages, the board had wrestled with the question. Clinton was well aware of the determination of the chief advocate of Buffalo harbour. Samuel Wilkeson, a large man, over six feet tall and resolute in mien, had purchased about forty of Buffalo's lots, and during the winter of 1822 he had lobbied with energy. Coming to Albany just before the legislature convened, Wilkeson had seen Clinton at least thirteen times before a critical meeting of the canal commissioners on 12 February. "4 Four engineers - Benjamin Wright, Canvass White, David Thomas, and Nathan Roberts - then spoke in favour of carrying the canal to Buffalo. Geddes struggled in vain for Black Rock, but the other engineers concluded that ice flows would chew apart the mole and dam cribs. Even so, Geddes's opponents had not established the superiority of Buffalo's harbour. The board therefore put off its decision until the spring, when the engineers and commissioners could visit the Buffalo and Black Rock sites."5 Before this investigation could take place, the spring thaw and flood conditions came. Wilkeson left Albany in early March and soon afterwards a late winter storm created a torrent in Buffalo Creek. The rush of water undermined and toppled more than two hundred feet of the pier and left a substantial sand bar at its end. According to one report, the entrance to the harbour was now nowhere deeper than two and one-half feet. Alarmed, Wilkeson headed back to Albany on 12 March. State Senator David Evans, Van Buren's western friend, sized up Wilkeson's objectives at the capital, saying that he had returned to throw his weight behind the nomination of Samuel Young.116 As Clinton's star faded, Wilkeson thought that the canal commissioner whose political career seemed about to shoot upwards could seal Buffalo's victory. By this point Wilkeson faced new resistance in Albany. When the Canal Commission had made its February decision, James Geddes had written to Peter B. Porter and told him that the Black Rock harbour plan had not won. Both of the Porter brothers now brought their influence to bear. Peter quickly went off to Albany. Sheldon Thompson, a Black Rock shipbuilder, remained behind to measure the Buffalo sand bar and keep track of activity in that village. Urging Porter to work on Young, Thompson told him to forget his own political ambitions: "Better for us to have the harbour here than the first office in the State." Porter had substantial support in western New York, and in the Bucktail nominating caucus he swung most of it to Young.1'7

52

"His Story Is Told"

Augustus Porter moved more subtly than his brother and Wilkeson, making Clinton aware of one problem that might develop with Buffalo's success. On 23 March Augustus penned a letter to Clinton stating that he understood "that it yet remains to be decided whether a boat canal is to be cut along the shore at Black Rock, or whether a vessel navigation shall be formed by means of a mole to be erected along near an[d] parallel to the shore." The latter would merely deprive Buffalo of "the exclusive privilege of a harbour," he observed, whereas, the boat canal would cut off the existing warehouses of Black Rock from the vital lake trade and thus destroy the village. Having protested that the Niagara River mole provided an alternative to monopoly, Augustus Porter supplied Clinton with a map of Buffalo's new pier and newer sand bar. Thompson's soundings showed the depth ranging from two feet to three feet and ten inches.1'8 Clinton could see that Wilkeson's dream might become a political liability. The issue of monopoly would give Black Rock an ethical edge that could be damaging if a terminal harbour at Buffalo proved hard to maintain. Fortunately, two months of lobbying by Peter B. Porter spared Clinton entanglement in the difficulties of the Buffalo harbour project. An even-handed law passed "by the almost unanimous vote of both branches" of the legislature promised the Buffalo Harbor Company $12,000 of its costs if it could make a harbour for vessels drawing eight feet of water and do so by i January 1824. It also empowered the canal commissioners, "in their discretion," to contract a Black Rock harbour on the Geddes plan. If the builders completed it satisfactorily, the state would pay them $12,000 and the estimated cost of digging a canal along the margin of the harbour."9 Clinton had still to preside over the June 1822 meeting of the Canal Commission at which the commissioners were "to examine into, & decide on, the important question of locating a harbor or harbors for the western terminus of the grand canal." Three months before they gathered, Clinton packed Geddes off to Ohio to begin a survey of its canals. With Geddes absent from the meeting, the commissioners avoided a battle over the harbour and worked out a temporary arrangement. They decided that if the Black Rockers could build at least ten rods of pier by the beginning of the following May or June, the commission would either recommend that the state repay them or make a contract with them to build a harbour. Secondly, they recommended that "the acting Canal Commissioners, on the western part of the Erie Canal, be advised to put under contract, the canal line from Little Buffalo creek, to some point nearly opposite Bird Island, this season."120 Little Buffalo Creek flowed southwards into Buffalo Creek near the mouth of the larger stream. Since a canal joining the Niagara River

53 A Politician in Retreat

at Bird Island with Buffalo Creek was not inconsistent with the Geddes plan, neither Buffalo nor Black Rock had carried the day. The issue had been shelved for the short remainder of Clinton's governorship, leaving him to prove his mettle as head of the Canal Commission and as a technically competent statesman if the Bucktails seemed to allow the need to reward friends to guide their decision on the western terminus. Given the fact that both outlets posed problems, Clinton could fall back on voting against the majority. The Decision of June 1823 A year later Clinton had the opportunity to show that he put sound construction of the great waterway before mere considerations of place - including his own place on the Canal Commission. The commissioners met on the Niagara Frontier during the third week of June 1823, and by Wednesday they had decided as Clinton expected. With Stephen Van Rensselaer abstaining, Clinton alone supported Buffalo as the sole terminus of the canal. Peter B. Porter and his Black Rock companions, who were in Buffalo at the time, rejoiced to hear that they would have their harbour. Clinton went contentedly to bed in his Eagle Tavern room after savouring the light of the moon on the lake.121 Clinton had already concluded that he would not suffer even if thrown off the Canal Commission. At the beginning of 1823 he had learned through Samuel Wilkeson that the legislature might oust him. Although Clinton initially thought it "all fudge," he found that Victory Birdseye of Onondaga County had framed a removal proposal that included dismissal of Myron Holley, who acted as treasurer of the board. Clinton knew that one legislative caucus regarded this measure as a misuse of power; the members had hissed it down. The Batavia Spirit of the Times, a Bucktail newspaper, had suggested that Charles E. Dudley had thought of ridding the board of Stephen Van Rensselaer as well. It had argued that such a step would be folly, for Clinton, Holley, and Van Rensselaer had made valuable contributions to the building of the canal, and the development of a soundly built waterway must be paramount.122 The newspaper's message was plain: economic efficiency and prosperity, and full recovery from distress must come before the patronage mechanics of partisan politics. After the 1823 vote on the terminus, Clinton deemed his position stronger, for he had stood for a politics of vision, not of interest. Moreover, Wilkeson and the Buffalonians knew that he had stood by them.I23 The failure of Van Rensselaer and Holley to support him against Young, Henry Seymour, and William C. Bouck would be attributed to intimidation, meaning that the Van Burenite leadership valued power alone.

54 "His Story Is Told"

Heading back to Albany as the summer of 1823 began, Clinton radiated optimism. He wrote to Henry Post from Utica that he had seen "thousands and my previous impression is confirmed with respect to public sentiment." It would be easy to rescue New York from its "present situation," he said. Later, he ticked off fourteen counties on which he could count - each of which he did indeed carry in i824. I2 4 The people of all of them - including Chautauqua and Cattaraugus - needed the successful completion and uninterrupted operation of the Erie Canal. Had Clinton and the Buffalonians prevailed, the people of these counties might have worried that the sand bars of Buffalo Creek would prevent the flow of their crops to market. As things stood, they were left to ponder the fragility of Black Rock's artificial harbour and the wisdom of the Bucktail commissioners who had decided for that basin. T H E SAVANT-STATESMAN A N D TRUE M A G I S T R A C Y Clinton took his role and reputation as savant-statesman - as a worthy successor to Thomas Jefferson - very much to heart as he retreated in 1822 and 1823. Determined to be an informed architect of political economy, he read aggressively even as he travelled about. In the spring, summer, and fall of 1822, he turned to the tomes of at least sixty authors and leafed through ten journals.I25 Seeking out recent publications, Clinton concentrated on travel literature and natural history.126 During the early part of 1823 he continued to draw from Louis Simond's Switzerland, taking extensive notes on geological formations. Other geological entries came from a work on the American West, the second volume of which appeared in Philadelphia in January 1823. This was Stephen H. Long and Edwin James's Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, performed in the Years 1819 and IS20.121

Clinton carefully extracted evidence of the forces of sudden geologic change. Like most contemporaries who shared his interests, he accepted the catastrophism of Baron Georges Cuvier and the Neptunism of Abraham Gottlob Werner. They held that cataclysms had greatly altered the earth, bringing progress in life forms, and that water had been important in these events.128 One of the first passages to catch Clinton's eye in the many pages he perused was a description of Niagara Falls in the 1698 English translation of Louis Hennepin's Nouvelle Decouverte: "The waters which fall from this horrible precipice do foam & boyl ... making an outrageous noise more terrible than that of thunder. "I29 Clinton knew the sound of the Niagara River at the Falls, and his memory of it made credible Guillaume Antoine Olivier's belief that the Black Sea had once burst into the Mediterranean. Such upheavals

55 A Politician in Retreat

could bring suffering to humanity, which might include among its lesser pains the destruction of Black Rock's mole and dam. '3° Clinton's notes revealed a mind that sought to capture and retain the useful, and for which "liberal" meant informed openness to possibilities. Great possibilities glimmered far to the south and west, well beyond the borders of New York State. Wanting to map out sources of prosperity, he gave close attention to the occurrence of minerals, extracting information on gypsum, alum, iron, copper, and, above all, coal. As he made his way through Long and James's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, he carefully ferreted out references to coal deposits.^1 From Bonnycastle's South America he learned that the mountains of Peru "contain excellent coal - also cobalt - antinomy and silver." Thumbing his way through works on Latin America, he paid close attention to the political and economic life of the southern continent and the Caribbean islands.'32 Reading William Davis Robinson's Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution, Clinton dwelt on transportation by water as one key to the Latin American trade. In November 1822 he told an Ohio correspondent that he accepted a proposition that Robinson had appended to his history - that it was feasible to build across southern Nicaragua an interoceanic canal terminating in the Gulf of Papagayo on the Pacific side. Clinton thought that $10 million would probably be enough to build such a canal, though he reasoned that "no safe estimate can be formed until an accurate survey is made." He added, "There are no insurmountable obstacles arising from financial or physical considerations yet there are political objections - and to emphasize the point, he inserted the word "strong" before "political." Clinton had three problems in mind: first, an interoceanic canal would absorb the funds needed for internal improvements in the United States; second, Central America was not United States territory; and third, "the Executive of the U.S. has in two instances pronounced ... that the Constitution does not authorize the General Govt to make roads & canals. "'33 In terming these obstacles political, Clinton implied that the right kind of national leadership could cope with them. Clinton's 1822 reading shaped both his vision of a canal across Central America and his understanding of what had to be done for the oceans to be linked at that point. An isthmian canal defined a new way in which an informed magistrate might benefit his people, indeed, the people of the entire hemisphere. The greatest political challenge lay in convincing Americans, Southerners in particular, that national power to build heralded no threat of trespass on local institutions. This leadership might come from New York State, reaching westwards from its canal and southwards from its great port to become the heartland of an American empire.

56 "His Story Is Told"

Clinton's sense of the need for a creative and responsible magistracy did not focus solely on the presidency; it ranged broadly over New York society. Clinton grew increasingly certain that New Yorkers found the changes under the new constitution "odious" and "extremely disgusting." Among other things, it had reduced the governor's term from three to two years. Moreover, with the creation of a circuit court system in 1823, he saw the ascendancy of "secondary lawyers" to the bench; they "brought litigation home to every man's door," sowing confusion and giving little justice. Similarly, in the militia, the elected colonels, majors, and captains of the units mirrored the diverse interests of their neighbours, undercutting military authority.134 As the Black Rock decision would ultimately reveal, leadership under the Bucktail regime had become empty at all levels. Clinton believed that this would cause people to reflect on the Apostle Paul's exploration of the need for submission to godly leaders, without whom there could be no commonwealth approximating the Kingdom of God.135 Clinton itched to issue a forthright political attack on his foes, something with a biblical strain. But before he could contrive these polemics, a legal decision drove home his criticism of the faulty lawyers and judges who had risen in the wake of the new constitution. The event suggested that the Federalists who worked with him more truly understood the needs of New York than the High-Minded Federalists, who clung to the Van Burenites. High-Minded William A. Duer presided in the new Third Circuit, which corresponded with the Third Senate District centring on Albany. On 21 July 1823, Duer confirmed an injunction he had issued, restraining an engineer who was acting for the canal commissioners; the engineer could no longer take from the property of a landholder stone to be used for the completion of a dam crossing the Hudson River above Troy and terminating at a lock on the east bank. The prospect of the lock and dam, however, pleased the people of Lansingburgh and, above all, the citizens of the village of Waterford, which was situated on the west bank of the Hudson. The works would allow sloops to sail up the river past Troy and unload at Lansingburgh; and if they were small enough, they would even be able to enter the Erie Canal through the locks under construction at Waterford. These possibilities made George Tibbits of Troy unhappy. In February 1823, this High-Minded elder statesman had drawn up for the Troy common council a petition asking the legislature to abandon the dam and lock and to undertake another plan. Carrying the Champlain Canal across the Hudson by an aqueduct and bringing it into the Hudson at Troy would serve their city better, he argued. High-Minded James Lynch, chairman of the assembly's Committee on Canals and Internal

57 A Politician in Retreat

Improvements, wanted Tibbits's support for the incorporation of a bank, and his report agreed with the Troy position; but a subsequent report from the canal commissioners dismissed the Troy plan and insisted that the work on the lock and dam continue. Alderman Stephen Ross of Troy, from whose land the builders took stone, had then sought the injunction.^6 Duer's injunction and decision, published in the Albany Argus on 25 July 1823, smacked of one High-Minded hand washing another, and Clinton quickly moved to discredit it. That afternoon he met with Ambrose Spencer and John L. Viele, the lawyer for the engineers and commissioners. He also saw James Kent at least three times in these late July days.'37 The chancellor's order of 29 July - his last opinion - dissolved Duer's injunction and explained at length how the Third Circuit judge had misinterpreted the opinions he had cited. Kent then confirmed that the statutes gave the canal commissioners the power to enter premises to take necessary materials, giving compensation. Since taking stone would not destroy Ross's property "as it had been held and enjoyed," Ross had adequate remedy by suit for damages. Kent reminded his readers - the Albany and New York newspapers quickly published the decision - that the courts should interpret the laws that had bearing on the canal system in a way "best adapted to the facility and success of a great and generous scheme of public policy."1^ Clinton judged that the decrees blocking the removal of stone had created "a great noise" and that Kent's decision had "blown ... [Duer] up in public opinion. "'39 By attempting to benefit one place at the expense of an open and integrating transportation system, Duer's decision had provided further evidence that the Bucktail mind failed to understand "liberal" principles. The liberality essential to true magistracy rested on character, attitude, and vision. Clinton disdained the Bucktails because "it is the nature of jacobinism to pull down men elevated above its level." Thinking back to the beginning of Jefferson's presidency, he imagined that, among the Bucktails, it was the "refuse of the Burr Band" who provided core support for the presidential candidacy of William Harris Crawford of Georgia. They were "men of sanguine temperaments" who talked "big, boasting words." Although they exhibited industry, that would "not supply the place of character & public confidence"; and since they really cared nothing for progress, the public would recognize them for what they were. Fittingly, Martin Van Buren, "a scoundrel of the first magnitude," led the persistent knaves who would sully Jefferson's legacy. "There is no developing the man" commented Clinton. He maintained that Van Buren performed "without any fixture of principle or reality of virtue."'4°

58 "His Story Is Told" T H E PATRIOT S T R A N G E R

Clinton expected to return to office, for he believed that virtue and talent must surely be elevated, not rusticated. Refusing to accept any foe's judgment that his political future was "desperate indeed," he cultivated praise far enough away to belie the Bucktail press's charges that he spawned "panegyrics on himself." In the spring of 1822, Clinton asked Campbell of Chautauqua County if he had "attended ... to the pieces in the Fredonia Chautauque Gazette.."'i1 According to the editor of this paper, Clinton's creative genius had brought wealth to New Yorkers; yet lesser men, who were unable to win power by superior policy and were unworthy of the praise of "liberal minded men," were now spitefully and ungratefully hounding him. The editor predicted that within two and one-half years "that spirit of jealousy, which is the companion of inferior minds," would have abated, enabling a "union of parties" to offer Clinton for the presidency; and if New Yorkers failed to act, grateful Ohio canal enthusiasts might take the lead.1''2 The development of Pennsylvania sentiment very much interested Clinton. With twenty-eight electoral votes, the state stood next to New York in importance, and favourable public opinion there might stir Ohioans.'43 Failing to find an organ in western Pennsylvania, Clinton shifted towards a Philadelphia counterpart of Noah's Advocate - Stephen Simpson's Columbian Observer. Simpson had once been an unhappy clerk in the patrician ambience of the Bank of the United States, and subsequently he served as cashier of the bank of the independent financier, Stephen Girard. In 1830 he was to run as the first congressional candidate of the Workingmen's Party of Philadelphia. M4 Simpson spoke for lesser traders, artisans, and aspiring clerks, for those whom the Panic of 1819 had buffeted and who felt cheated by people who had more leverage and influence to cope with hard times. Announcing his "vocation" in August 1822, he swore to defend the "just pretensions of the productive and middle classes of society" and to oppose all expressions of "aristocracy, English politicks, and family influence," which included "that Monster of corruption, fraud, and nobility, the Bank of the United States." Not that Simpson defined Philadelphia as the seat of evil; rather, "a deep and fatal game [was] playing at Washington with the liberties of the People." Consequently, a president from the cabinet, chosen by the congressional caucus, would not end the evils of Monroe's administration - the contracts improperly let, and the "Army and Treasury and Bank combinations." What the nation needed, said Simpson, was "the pure eye of a Patriot stranger," who would "discern abuses" and would "correct and purge them. "'45

59 A Politician in Retreat

Clinton regarded Simpson's Columbian Observer as a paper conducted with "great ability," though he termed it a "speculation.""*6 The editor preferred Andrew Jackson for the presidency. Yet Clinton kept open a channel of communication through Post, instructing the banker on the principles he would have Simpson espouse. He told Post to encourage the editor not only to "announce a preference for the old republican doctrines" but "for the encouragement of manufactures and inland navigation - for the promotion of literature and science &c &c." Clinton stressed the need to guide the public to choose "men of talents & virtue. "'47 They would reconcile freedom with power exercised in the name of development. Although admiring Simpson's use of traditional opposition ideology, Clinton wanted him to move closer to the editorial posture of Nathaniel Carter. Carter's New-York Statesman held that "all governments are ... in some degree arbitrary power" and are prone to corruption and violation of rights."*8 The Statesman nevertheless lamented the "senseless and stupid devotion to a negative administration." Encouragement of "commerce, agriculture, and manufactures" would cement the Union, the paper maintained. A narrow construction of the constitution had not only retarded economic development but had "given rise to extensive collisions in opinion, which will yet burst forth, with increased violence, in the debates of Congress." To bring harmony, a national policy was needed that would foster economic growth through the construction of roads and canals; but if they were to accomplish this, the citizens would have to choose the ablest man rather than "tamely waiting to see who is the strongest man."1^ From the Clintonian vantage, an oppressive combination of party and regional power had formerly blocked the able man from office. In early 1823, Christian Schultz, a New Yorker living in western Virginia, produced a lengthy polemic which Clinton judged capable of "doing wonders."^0 Stressing the legitimacy of Clinton's appeal, Schultz argued that Clinton might preside over an era of political harmony, for party distinction had become cant now that a Federalist institution such as the Bank of the United States had won Republican favour. Even so, Schultz hailed the authenticity of the Republicanism that Clinton had imbibed from his uncle, and he held that the ascendancy of James Madison had brought a series of Southern usurpations that threatened these principles of freedom. Madison, choosing "to kick Mr. Jefferson's creed into the fire," had generated a "new revision" of "our republican creed." Schultz maintained that this new model leadership had resorted to Federalist devices of abusive central power: "armies - navies - stamp

60 "His Story Is Told"

tax - whiskey tax - national banks by the dozen - and persecutions for political opinions." Establishing a "persecuting system" that had "done more injury to the republican character of our country than ever the wild career of Mr. Adams did," Madison and Monroe had harried their "friends."1'1 For Schultz, Madisonian ruthlessness had come into full play in 1812. Before then, the north "had suffered much ... by commercial restrictions" and Northerners had been "desirous of a change, either by vigorous measures, or amicable arrangement." Thus had come the nomination of Clinton, who had won Federalist support because the members of that party had believed him "more favorably disposed to encourage commerce than Mr. Madison." Thus, too, had come war: "The nomination of Mr, Clinton produced the war, and ... if that [nomination had] failed, no war would have been recommended." Madison, confident of re-election, "would then have continued to receive the insults of England on one cheek, and the indignities of France on the other."152 The United States, said Schultz, had gone to war to preserve Virginian power rather than to secure the rights of Northern commerce. Schultz held that Southerners continued to employ the "party spirit" and caucuses as instruments of oppressive federal power, shaping the Republican Party as a vehicle of centralized oppression. A caucus held at Washington to nominate a presidential candidate would arrogate powers that might be more safely lodged in the "scattered" meetings of presidential electors.'53 Americans, for the sake of sectional equity and national union, should resist the caucus and partisanship, said Schultz. Not only would these devices of political manipulation endanger the "permanency of our union," but a Southern succession to the presidency would "blast the rising prosperity" of the country by denying it leadership from men who were "superiors in the science of legislation."15'' The Southern succession would continue to emphasize party and power, though the "semi-barbarous times that required party presidents" had "passed away." Clinton's "inexhaustible genius" had "led New-York to the pinnacle of civil glory."155 If elected president, Clinton, according to Schultz, would return the country to primitive republican harmony and foster its economic growth. His aspirations remaining high, Clinton in retreat actively fostered tactical possibilities that could bring his return to office. He also continued to centre on his person a persuasion that fused several elements and addressed the exercise of power from the local level to the presidency. Liberalism, for Clinton, sprang out of creative magistracy; magistracy could not arise out of simple personal ascendancy based on the satisfaction of a range of locally rooted particular "interests," which had been the substance of colonial politics.'56 Political leadership at

61 A Politician in Retreat

any level required vision provided by individuals who were morally and intellectually capable of formulating changes that led to general prosperity. Vision came out of dialogue between leader and citizenry, which party power and discipline must not sully and stultify. Public opinion would formulate broadly felt needs and desires, and the magistrate endowed with a truly liberal intellect would address these judgments, aided by advisers who concentrated their attention on social and economic improvements rather than on the management of party. Movement was one key to Clinton's style of politics. So it had been on the eve of the revolution of 1800, when he had circulated as an agent of the Grand Lodge of the State of New-York, setting up new lodges for the rapidly expanding fraternity, thereby providing more prosperous farmers and artisans throughout the state with the feeling that they had social grace and wisdom.157 Clinton's long tenure as grand master of the grand lodge had ceased, yet he continued to circulate, hoping to convince New Yorkers to endorse his vision of "sublime virtue in ... administration." It is an exaggeration to say that he circulated like the commodities on the waterways that he would build, as a politician counterpart of the extensive postal system that the United States had created, but he was trying. His style of politics therefore fitted with and encouraged changing circumstances, exemplifying the ambiance of the rapidly altering, expanding, American market system. As such, the style encouraged political change. Now that the men of party had come to power, Clinton believed he had only to "proceed on the ground of a charge of ruinous measures"^8 that would disrupt that system, and then take whatever path towards magistracy opened as the public expressed its inevitable discontent with a leadership that focused on retention of power rather than on the good of the commonwealth. The path could lead to the presidency; it might lead again to the governorship. Clinton had no doubt that he was the man to tread on it, taking whatever steps proved to be necessary to gain his destined office.

3 The "First Fruits of the New Constitution": The Troubles of the Party in Power

During the Constitutional Convention of 1821, Martin Van Buren had explained his opposition to the popular election of justices of the peace: "What could the single arm of a chief magistrate of the state do towards suppressing a rebellion? It must be effected through the interposition of this inferior magistracy."1 The justices, four in each of New York's six hundred or so towns and wards, served as front-line soldiers in the state's judicial system, facing the stresses of the Panic of 1819 and postwar economic adjustment. The Bucktails had chosen to formulate constitutional revision in this time of stress. Although they had gained politically, Van Buren's words suggest that they would have to order a society ruffled by changes - changes that soon led to expressions of severe discipline and of great hope: the harsh prison discipline of the Auburn system and the replacement of almshouses by workhouses; the revival religion of Charles G. Finney and Joseph Smith's vision of patriarchy restored.2 "Regularity," consisting of party discipline, organization, and procedures, gave the Van Burenite leaders one means of bringing order to political life. Through it they tended to dominate the state senate, whose members came from districts approximately four times as large as assembly districts - dimensions that made organization valuable in senate elections. In turn, the senate had a crucial role in the distribution of patronage under the new constitution: for many offices, the governor nominated and the senate approved. Patronage had helped to attract the High-Minded Federalists, and the Bucktail managers relied heavily on High-Minded skills in judicial

63 The Troubles of the Party in Power

posts and legislative leadership. As the sarcastic sobriquet attached to these ex-Federalists suggests, the Van Burenites appeared to embrace a self-serving and powerful "interest." The High-Minded stood out as the most "well-connected" group of New York political participants between the end of the War of 1812 and the election of Andrew Jackson. As already noted, they tended to share two other noticeable characteristics: three-fifths of these relatively young men practised law, and about the same proportion attended the Episcopal Church. Hence, they were markedly different from the average assemblyman.3 Rigid party regularity administered by an elite could run athwart the democratic and antiaristocratic legacy of the American Revolution - a legacy likely to take on new life in New York, given the recent constitutional revision. The Revolution had also provided Americans with the freedom and power to guide their political economy. After the Panic of 1819, the demand for imaginative management of the order of American life had assumed a vital importance for many citizens, who refused to seek safety by retreating from commerced Controlling New York State's government from the beginning of 1823, the Bucktails faced the task of reconciling continuing demands for greater democracy with the need to contrive an economic policy that offered both safety and prosperity. Elements of their approach to power and elements of their personnel brought problems that had to be handled gingerly lest Clinton emerge as the herald of liberalism suffused with democracy. RESULTS OF THE I 822 ELECTION

With these problems but dimly seen, Bucktail fortunes in late 1822 appeared to be high and rising. After the November elections, one antiClinton editor, promising the fulfilment of democracy, claimed, "Throughout the state we have the most cheering information. Everywhere the democracy is triumphant ... These are the first fruits of the new Constitution."5 The completeness of Yates's success at the polls appeared to embody Bucktail victory in its fullness. He had even defeated his opponent a bit more thoroughly than De Witt Clinton had flattened Peter B. Porter in 1817. Clinton had won 96.7 percent of the vote for governor, whereas Yates now had 97.8 percent.6 Yet the strength of Henry Huntington's showing may have given Yates reason to appear apprehensive on New Year's Day 1823, and there were other elements of the published returns of November 1822 that could have added to his uneasiness. Although the new constitution had enlarged the electorate, the 1822 turnout gave evidence of lassitude, at least for state offices. Under the old constitution, 100,490 men in the 1821 population had been legally eligible to vote for executive and senate

64 "First Fruits of the New Constitution"

candidates, and 93,437 had actually cast ballots for governor in 1820 (some doubtless exaggerating the value of their freeholds). The voters had now increased to about 260,100, yet only slightly more than half of this number had balloted in the contest for the governorship. Granted that it was a one-sided race, but 1.8 percent fewer men voted for senate candidates, and the vote for senators fell below the vote for governor in all districts, even in those six out of eight that had opposing slates.7 More men had voted in 1821 because they had had to decide whether to hold a constitutional convention and whether the state would have a Bucktail or Clintonian legislature. Moreover, the turnout of assembly voters had often been higher when Clinton last ran for office.8 His absence appeared to drain meaning from the 1822 contest at the state level. Taking the 1821 and 1822 votes from a sample of fifteen counties scattered throughout the state suggests the pattern that lay before political leaders, who customarily scanned the town-level votes carried in the newspapers. They could see that the actual number of voters participating at the assembly level had dropped, with the mean per county decline being slightly more than 3 percent, but the aggregate being 10 percent. The figure of 3 percent masks considerable countyby-county variation, which revealed a new voter focus. Participation in some counties rose, and in others it fell sharply. Delaware County, which witnessed a heated contest over the sheriff's office, registered an increase of 100.3 percent. Cortland, with no contest for sheriff or clerk, saw turnout decline by 43 percent. Local contests generated the greatest interest: 7.1 percent more men voted for assemblymen than for senators, and n percent more voted for sheriffs and clerks.9 Those voting in 1822 wanted most to choose the two county officers formerly appointed in Albany. A warm contest over the office of county clerk or sheriff could increase the assembly vote; many assemblymen came to Albany with memories of an electorate that had expressed heightened concern about local issues. The shift of attention led Bucktail editors to protest the subversion of regularity and to see threats to the public peace. "Disorganizes" had worked to undermine the "harmony" of the party, on which depended the good order of the state, they claimed. The practice of "self nomination," in particular, not only harmed the machinery of the party, but with the men who announced their own candidacies came drunkenness, turmoil, and "the confusion and strife of mobs."10 Otherwise, much turmoil centred around the election of sheriffs and clerks, creating dissension. After the election, one Bucktail editor mused on the salient "defect" of the new constitution, criticizing it for being the "choice by the people of county officers ... It is then that ... the very foundations

65 The Troubles of the Party in Power

of social enjoyment and good feeling, are violently assailed and broken up."11 Bucktail regularity sustained substantial loss and impairment at the local level. Satisfactory electoral evidence remains for thirty-five of New York's fifty-three counties - 78 percent of the state's 1825 population. In only one of the thirty-five (Cortland) did the office of sheriff and clerk go uncontested, and at least eighteen of the offices (eight clerkships and ten shrievalties) went to men who were not regularly nominated Bucktails.12 New York County - Manhattan Island - was the scene of the one well-known pre-election fracas. Although Mordecai Noah won the regular nomination for sheriff, a dissident candidate beat him at the polls.'3 Regulars faced ample trouble along the Hudson River and in the northwestern counties near Rochester. In Orange County the regular nominating meeting broke up, which led to a second meeting and a second slate of candidates, not only for sheriff and clerk, but for Congress and the assembly. Soon there were six candidates running for sheriff, three of them self-nominated. Two of the self-nominated candidates had served on the regular Central Committee of the County; one of them was elected sheriff.'•* On the eastern side of the Hudson, in Dutchess County, dissidents charged that a regular meeting continued a practice of "conferring ... posts of honor and profit on a few individuals for many years in succession." The malcontents nominated competitors for sheriff, county clerk, and Congress; their candidate for sheriff had already nominated himself, and two other men soon followed. In Westchester, the breakdown of regularity focused on the sheriff's office, a post held by the chairman of the county's General Republican Committee. When the county convention selected another Republican to run, the chairman nominated himself. To the north, in Saratoga County, dissident Republicans charged that "the charm of regular nomination has been used to ensure ... obedience to a Monied Aristocracy."They chose the county jailer as their candidate for sheriff, and on election day he led the successful opposition ticket. In western New York, in Ontario and Seneca counties, self-nominated candidates won the office of sheriff. The regular candidate for sheriff won in Monroe County, but by a plurality: two Clintonians, put forward with the help of dissident Bucktails, made the contest close.15 The regulars also suffered in the congressional races of 1822. Eleven of New York's thirty-four seats went to men who did not run under their aegis.16 By comparison with this experience, however, and with the contests for sheriff and clerk, the Bucktails seemed to have done well at the state level. Regular conventions nominated all thirty-two members of the new senate.'7 One hundred and twenty-eight men made

66 "First Fruits of the New Constitution"

up the new assembly, and only twenty-six of them were self-nominated or were nominated by other than Bucktail regular conventions. Seventyfive members had been active anti-Clintonians between 1818 and 1822. Thirty-six of this group, as well as twenty-three other assemblymen, had received offices from the 1821 Council of Appointment dominated by the Van Burenite Roger Skinner.'8 In sum, three-quarters of the assembly of 1823 had been given the imprimatur of regularity in the form of nomination or patronage. On the other hand, of the twenty-six independents, seventeen had either received appointments from Skinner's council or been active Bucktails, or both. In spite of their backgrounds, they had chosen to defy Bucktail convention, for other influences caused them to regard party order as secondary. Available sources record that at least half of these men had held elective local office and had enjoyed an average tenure of 6.7 years - a strong indication that local issues and influence had abetted their election.'' Furthermore, the local eminence of these men must be set in the context of another attribute of the 1823 assembly. Overall, it was the least experienced lower house to sit between 1814 and 1829. Members who had been active anti-Clintonians averaged more previous assembly service than the others, but only somewhat more.20 The pooled experience of the members in state-level legislative discipline was minimal, making it possible that these men would defy party order if the objectives of the legislative leaders proved at odds with the wishes of their constituents. The legislature of 1823 increased local power. Towns were the units of government closest to most New Yorkers, and the incorporation of a town gave its citizens the power to gather to accomplish a wide range of tasks. Between 1815 and 1825, the population of the state grew 35.8 percent, and the growth in the number of towns - from 493 to 680, a 38.1 percent increase - more than kept pace with the population, an average of seventeen being established each year. In spite of the requirement of the new constitution that two-thirds of the members of each house must approve the chartering of a town, incorporations reached a peak of thirty-four during the session that began in January i823.21 Responsive to the wishes of citizens at the local level, the members of the forty-sixth session created 5 percent of the New York towns that existed by 1825. One constitutional change heightened town loyalty in a way that ran counter to the Van Burenite model of party order, with its hierarchy of committees and conventions, party caucus, and party managers at the capital. Altering the representation of twenty-eight counties set aside understandings that had specified when particular towns could present an assembly candidate. The Bucktails kept mum about the problem,

67 The Troubles of the Party in Power

but their opponents saw an opportunity. Some Clinton supporters gathered to formulate and publish county-wide plans for the rotation of assembly representation among towns. Other antiregulars, seeking to justify self-nomination, played on feelings that regular political machinery overlooked the claims and interests of one town or another. These towns would only receive their due when their best men defied the party and stepped forward to defend the interests of their neighbours.22 After the election, the Clintonian press continued to cultivate town loyalties. The Cooperstown Freeman's Journal and the Canandaigua Ontario Repository copied a piece from Carter's New- York Statesman. Writing on "Regular Nominations," "J.S." maintained that "the people, when left to themselves, make proper selections for office." One therefore found on the boards of supervisors "the most respectable and upright men" of the counties, whereas those "without other than a talent for intrigue" wound up in the legislature, sent there by regular nominations. Out of loyalty to party, voters chose knaves, and consequently more knaves came forward to be chosen. Self-nominations, however, enabled the people to choose the "best men" from their neighbours, making for a better legislature.23 "J.S." exploited a related theme, which critics of party power had stated before the election; pointing out that the next legislature must set up the court system under the new constitution, the Utica Columbian Gazette had predicted that judges chosen for party reasons would sully not only the justice that New Yorkers received at home but "the character of the state abroad. "24 With its character sullied, the state would be less able to protect its corporate interests within the Union. "Abroad" meant the South, where self-nomination had been a common practice, contributing to a leadership that seemed to combine personal independence and pride with a capacity for public service and an ability to defend the region. Standing for the assembly from Dutchess County, Alfred S. Pell appealed to fears that the South would dominate New York in spite of the state's population and wealth. He argued that the Bucktail system of regular nominations discounted excellence, undermining New York's influence in Washington. Gerrit Smith, the Madison County landowner, claimed that New York voters had virtues which Southerners should envy - virtues best expressed through self-nominations but denied by the regular process, a process which began with notices put up "in two or three bar-rooms" and which quickly degenerated further. Smith alleged that in the American South, self-nominations had "a peculiarly deletrious [sic] influence upon the public morals," but he said that there was "almost a national difference of character between the people of the Northern and the people of the Southern States." New Yorkers could

68 "First Fruits of the New Constitution"

"not ... be bought by wines and meats," and consequently the open process of self-nomination would allow their moral qualities to have effect, ensuring the triumph of excellence of character, rather than disorder as in the South.25 D I V I S I O N OVER THE TAX I S S U E All these influences - the threat of self-nomination and other challenges to regularity, the unusual character of the 1823 assembly and the salience of local interests - affected the manageability of the legislature. Throughout the legislative session of 1823, the Bucktail Republicans proved to be a divided and intractable group. The former Federalists among them stood out, some pulling in different directions. A few of these converts, men linked to the Van Buren faction, led conspicuously in trying to impose political subordination. They largely failed, their efforts in part undermined by sharp exchanges over banking and taxation. Fissures widened, making the task of legislative management difficult and limiting the party's power to harness rebellious local leaders within the framework of a hierarchical political order. A wily upstate High-Minded Bucktail with an interest in banking reintroduced the tax issue. On 5 February, James Lynch of Utica offered "an act ... facilitating the assessment of taxes on personal property." Introduction of the bill pointed up the fact that the late comptroller, John Savage, who was now chief justice of the state's supreme court, had still not produced the "general system of taxation" requested by the previous legislature. Twelve days later his successor, William L. Marcy, sent to the houses, over Savage's signature, the "Report ... of a General System of Taxation," together with a tax bill. The thrust of Lynch's two-page bill, the report, and Savage's nineteen-page bill was similar. All three provided for the taxation of the capital stock of corporations, banks included, along with personalty, mortgages, bonds, and debts due from debtors able to pay.26 Lynch's proposal drew energy in the assembly from upstate sentiment that mingled demands for a protective tariff with hostility to the banks and merchants of New York City. George McClure, a pro-tariff woollens manufacturer from Steuben County, pinpointed the source of evil as the "money lenders in Wall-street," who lent much to importers but little to manufacturers. Speaker Peter R. Livingston chimed in to belittle the patriotism of the merchants, and Lynch demanded "inducements" to shift capital to manufacturing. Victory Birdseye, from a Bucktail enclave in Onondaga County, wanted to cut the lawful rate of interest to 6 percent, disallow compound interest, and tax bank stock.27 Aware that demands for tax relief and expansion of the money supply had

69 The Troubles of the Party in Power

emerged amid enmity towards the City of New York, William Coleman of the New- York Evening Post greeted Lynch's tax bill by sputtering about "acts of hostility of the country against the city ... a jacobin war against property."28 Coleman spoke disingenuously, for he knew that a weaker but parallel effort to tax more fully had been made in the city's common council.2? The issue of extended city authority to tax dropped from sight, but the state tax bill, firmly backed by upstaters, remained a threat. Coming before the senate late in March, it specified taxation of the personal property of nonresidents and the capital stock of corporations. This upset the agents of foreign landowners as well as city merchants. Robert Troup, who was foremost in protecting the personalty which landowning nonresidents accumulated, had attempted to ingratiate himself with the Bucktails by his attacks on Clinton. But he now employed a Clintonian lawyer, Samuel M. Hopkins, as his agent to fight the elements of the law that might injure his employers. When Paul Busti of the Holland Land Company engaged Thomas L. Ogden, another non-Bucktail lawyer, for the same purpose, Troup welcomed his effort. Clinton knew that two old foes had shifted closer to his camp.3° With "country members" eager to tax the personalty of aliens, Hopkins's efforts failed, in Troup's words, "to arrest the wild career of the assembly," though Hopkins and Ogden found it easier going in the senate, which contained more than twice as many lawyers. There, HighMinded John A. King, whom Troup had urged Hopkins to contact, managed to achieve some changes to the bill. Excision of the word "agent" protected written obligations to foreign landowners and goods in transit owned by nonresidents. The senate also struck rents from the list of taxables.3' King and the other downstate senators nevertheless lost on seven votes that would have modified the taxation of corporations, even though they had received some help from the Upper Hudson. It had come from John Cramer of Saratoga County and Melancton Wheeler from neighbouring Washington County - who, like John Sudam of Kingston, another ally, was one of the High-Minded. One equally firm westerner was the former Federalist, Alvin Bronson of Oswego, business partner of the High-Minded flour merchant, Theophilus S. Morgan. Martin Van Buren, who had left Washington to come to Albany, assured King that he too opposed the tax bill.32 But this gave King little comfort, for the downstate senators and a key group of antiClintonians had been isolated in defeat. Van Buren, with reason, did not profess his opposition publicly, for the assembly had already approved the tax by a vote of ninety-one to twenty-nine, with the Bucktails backing the measure firmly. Men with anti-Clintonian records, Skinner appointees, and especially those

70 "First Fruits of the New Constitution"

who fitted both categories had exceeded the assembly's 72 percent level of support for the bill. Equally noticeable, all of the independent Bucktails who had been irregularly nominated voted for its passage.33 Opposition in the lower house, although weak, had clustered in ways that could severely strain Bucktail unity. New York City members, along with Kings, Queens, Suffolk, and Rockland assemblymen, voted against the law, while men from the Albany area resisted noticeably. Lawyers, substantial manufacturers, and builders tended to line up against farmers, who voted for the bill quite solidly. The lines of division by livelihood and region stood out. Heedless of party unity, the downstate assemblymen, led by HighMinded Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, lashed out. Immediately after the bill passed the assembly, Samuel S. Gardiner, the New York City attorney who had served as secretary of the Constitutional Convention of 1821, presented a memorial of protest for his fellow Manhattan assemblymen, regulars all. He read their charges of injustice and their predictions of commercial disaster. A brief, sharp debate ensued, and the house easily overrode the city members' protest. The following day Samuel Strong, a Long Island Bucktail, moved to consider repeal of the 1819 law suspending the power of the Canal Commission to assess and tax land within twenty-five miles of the canals. The Bucktails were split about evenly when the motion to table this proposal was passed,3* but an agricultural area that supplied New York City with produce now shared in protesting the tax law. D I V I S I O N OVER B A N K S

Like the issue of taxation, the question of whether more banks ought to be incorporated had largely been absent from the newspaper editorials and polemic comment preceding the election of 1822. The assemblymen of that year heard that banks "had thrown a flood of paper on the community, far exceeding the amount required for all the legitimate objects of commerce ... [and] had proved ruinous to many ... citizens."35 Under the new constitution, banks had to have support from two-thirds of both houses, so the game of winning a charter now demanded more votes and more cunning. Two proposed banks drew much attention in the 1823 lower house. The success of one of these proposals and the failure of the other left a residue of discontent. Late in January, James Lynch reported on the proposed Bank of Rochester, noting that "under proper limitations" and provided it was "well regulated," a bank in Rochester would not cause harm. He found the proposal "reasonable," though he opposed any large increase in banking capital. A week later, his tone was much

71 The Troubles of the Party in Power

more enthusiastic as he dealt with the Tradesmen's Bank. Burgeoning northeastern New York City had been "deprived" of a bank, he argued, and the Tradesmen's Bank was sorely needed. It would serve the industrious mechanics of Manhattan and not "so much" those who "engaged in foreign commerce";36 the "middling interest," rather than great merchants, would benefit from it. The financial geography of Manhattan underscored Lynch's words. At this time there were eight banks on Wall Street with a total authorized capital of $13,490,000, and the branch of the Bank of the United States at 65 Broadway moved to Wall Street the following year. Off Wall Street, the foremost were the Franklin Bank, situated on the corner of Cherry Street and Franklin Square, and the North River Bank, which had opened its offices across town, near the Hudson. These smaller banks had an authorized capitalization of only $500,000 each. The $600,000 Tradesmen's Bank would do business more towards the centre of the island than the Franklin Bank, yet it would be farther from the precincts of Wall Street than either the Franklin or the North River bank. Artisans and lesser merchants from the upper wards might readily travel to the Tradesmen's and not meet the disdain that greeted them when they sought credit in Wall Street, n Advocates of the Tradesmen's Bank saw it as a needed engine of economic democracy. Mordecai Noah linked his support with his failure to receive Tammany's undivided backing for the office of sheriff. As the legislature began its deliberations, he explained that because he had supported the "democratic, enterprising and industrious" upper wards in their petition "for a paltry Bank or two, or an Insurance Company," he had brought down on himself the wrath of the leaders of the wealthier wards south of City Hall. In the assembly, George McClure echoed Noah's sense of outrage: "If an honest mechanic presents a note of small amount for discount, those overgrown aristocrats ... will ask him ... who are you sir\" McClure threatened to vote against the Tradesmen's Bank if the bill failed to name "dealers in domestic goods and mechanics" as directors.^8 McClure's threat pointed up the fact that family and regional interests explained Lynch's reports on both banks; neither interest promised any benefit to western New Yorkers. Lynch had a close connection with the Tradesmen's in Robert Tillotson, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, who was the brother of Lynch's wife, Janette, a granddaughter of Robert R. Livingston. Tillotson readily made use of Lynch's influence in the assembly, and the bill named Tillotson as a director.39 The reason for Lynch's coolness towards the Rochester Bank also seems clear. Canandaigua and Rochester competed as western centres, and Utica's financiers wanted to secure their stake

72 "First Fruits of the New Constitution"

in both. Lynch had long served as a director of the Utica branch of Canandaigua's Bank of Ontario, which operated with one-half of the bank's $500,000 capital. Nathaniel Rochester wanted a completely independent bank for his village. In 1822 he had blocked a bill giving Rochester branches to both the Bank of Utica and the Bank of Ontario, and he had then lent a hand in drafting the 1823 bank bill. Meanwhile, the Canandaigua directors continued to hunger for a Rochester branch. Since John Bowman, a novice, had replaced Nathaniel Rochester in the assembly, it seemed that they might more easily succeed.40 No Canandaigua proposal came before the legislature of 1823, but the Bank of Utica, which had a branch at Canandaigua, and the Bank of Ontario combined to send a delegation to Rochester in a vain effort to dissuade the villagers from pressing for their own bank. The opposition in the legislature had more effect. Speaker Peter R. Livingston, Janette Lynch's uncle by marriage, proved to be the Bank of Rochester's most forceful foe. When the Bank of Rochester came before the Committee of the Whole, the Speaker used his considerable powers of declamation. Banks were aristocratic, he maintained, and at their hands the farmer suffered greatly. Banks lured them into "borrowing money on speculation," and depreciating bank notes taxed them heavily.'*1 Three times the Bank of Rochester failed to win two-thirds of the assembly. New York City members, rather than risk showing enmity to the major city banks, voted solidly for it, just as they repeatedly voted for the Tradesmen's Bank. Otherwise, support came from the northeast, the extreme western portion of the state, and the Rochester area, from which many independents had been elected. The critical weakness lay in the shallow arc counties centring on Utica and running from Jefferson to Otsego. Ten assemblymen from this area voted against the Bank of Rochester and immediately afterwards voted for final passage of the bill establishing the Tradesmen's Bank. They did not vote for the Bank of Rochester when it twice again came up.42 If five of these men had changed, the Bank of Rochester would have won its charter. Monroe County men in the legislature perceived an effort to continue their village's tributary to Utica as a financial centre. Responding aggressively, they struck at the Bank of Utica. Before the legislative battle was over, a Rochester senator presented the upper house with allegations against this bank, asserting that it kept an illegal office of discount and deposit in Buffalo, that it charged unlawfully high interest rates, and that it had run up excessive debts. The senate recorded these allegations in its journal but refused to order an investigation. Assemblyman John Bowman had even less success when he made the same accusations in the lower house. The house tabled them on the motion of James Lynch.43

73 The Troubles of the Party in Power

Throughout, the regulars had failed to swing their weight behind the Rochester charter. The independents backed it firmly, but regulars who had been active Bucktails (especially those who had recently been state appointees) persistently gave less support to the Bank of Rochester than they gave to the Tradesmen's Bank. Nathaniel Rochester thought it was the Van Burenites at Albany who orchestrated this resistance. Early in the session, he had tried to marshal regulars behind the bank. Having gone down to defeat at the head of the Genesee County Bucktail ticket in the hard-fought 1820 election, and having presided at the caucus that nominated Yates and Root, Rochester had appealed to Benjamin Knower of the Mechanics and Farmers' Bank of Albany. This Van Burenite banker took about two weeks to answer and then announced that Rochester must be satisfied with a branch of the Albany bank or a bank to which the Mechanics and Farmers' Bank subscribed between one-half and three-quarters of the stock.** The Regulars' strength and discipline in Monroe County had faltered badly, providing justification for Knower's decision. Not only had the contest for sheriff shown a formidable reserve of Clintonian power, but twelve of the twenty-six independents came from Monroe and the three counties next to it. Huntington, moreover, had carried Monroe by a margin equal to 9.2 percent of the total vote. Although Nathaniel Rochester managed to have county buildings sited near his property, it was Clintonians, led by Francis and Matthew Brown, who controlled the village government. A veritable phalanx of Presbyterians of New England background, their number included more manufacturers than Nathaniel Rochester's rather mercantile Bucktail following. Considering the village's growing importance as a processing centre for a rich agricultural hinterland, the Brown faction might dominate an independent bank set up in Rochester. Moreover, Rochester's sometime business partner, Thomas Hart, was Henry Clay's father-in-law. Rochester had made political use of this connection and would swing behind Clay for the presidency. 45 Knower thus had little choice but to support Lynch. Following the events in the legislature, De Witt Clinton could anticipate that western New Yorkers, moved partly by the desire for more credit, would wear regularity loosely. As it happened, the westerners gave the Van Burenites little backing when the legislature chose presidential electors in 1824. At the beginning of April 1823, the Van Burenite leadership began to display its preference for Crawford, and soon afterwards Nathaniel Rochester embraced Clay's cause. Crawford strength in the 1824 assembly proved greatest in the central counties running south from St Lawrence and Herkimer to Delaware and then westward to Cayuga, an area concentric with that in which support for the Bank of Rochester proved fatally weak. Twenty-five of the thirtynine assemblymen from this region voted for Crawford electors.''6 To

74 "First Fruits of the New Constitution"

the west, Crawford received only two out of twenty-six votes, and eleven of the eighteen assemblymen who came from within fifty miles of Rochester voted for the nomination of Clay electors. The banking struggle of 1823 had preceded the split on the presidency, and the lines of fracture coincided. D I V I S I O N OVER T H E J U D I C I A L S Y S T E M Supreme Court Judges The third major set of questions facing New York leaders in 1823 also created friction among Bucktails and sowed dissatisfaction against the Van Burenite leadership. Organizing the new state judicial system posed a problem with three elements. Two involved the lower tiers of the system: establishing a system of circuit courts and selecting justices of the peace. Before the legislators worked out the nature of the circuit courts, however, there was a third matter to be dealt with: the appointment of the three judges of the new supreme court, the Constitutional Convention having reduced its membership by two. Yates's handling of this patronage question hardened the opposition against him, and the task of satisfying men who wanted to be high court judges reemerged in late March 1823, when a seat on the United States Supreme Court became vacant. Its re-emergence gave Clinton the opportunity to lash down a cannon that had been loosened by the appointments to the New York Supreme Court. In doing so, he also emphasized his opposition to the new tax law. Clinton's brother-in-law, Ambrose Spencer, hoped that Yates would maintain him as chief justice of New York, perhaps with one or two of his colleagues from the former five-man court. Yates did nominate Spencer and two of the other judges, but the senate rejected them, quickening expectations already in motion. John Cramer, legislative chief for Samuel Young, had been working for the appointment of Lieutenant-Governor Erastus Root, which could boost Young's chances to win the nomination for governor in 1824. Since, in the Constitutional Convention of 1821, their factions had established themselves as the more radically democratic segments of Bucktailism, a fusion of the followers of Young and Root seemed logical. Meanwhile, in another quarter, John A. King had thought of William A. Duer for the court. Yates denied Cramer and King time to act. He immediately sent the senate the names of three Van Burenites. Although the Young faction was "highly dissatisfied and ... disposed to push Matters to the Extreme," the senate accepted two of these men. Yates then repeated his earlier nomination of Supreme Court Judge John Woodworth, whose reap-

75 The Troubles of the Party in Power

pointment was confirmed after an acrimonious debated Two weeks later, the Young faction lost in the choice of the comptroller, a loss that further challenged Cramer's influence in the senate.*8 One Clintonian observer reported to Congressman John W. Taylor that the presidential question by this point had ceased "to excite the least interest or attention" as "the opposers of Yates" began to gather.49 Having been rejected by the senate and dropped by Yates, Spencer seethed with "indignation and contempt, at ... the band who now rule the state, with a rod of iron," and he promised to give his "feeble aid" to free New York's "insulted & abused people" from these plunderers. Yates, Spencer now judged, could "never be re-elected," for "his own party revile & denounce him as a fool."50 It was not far-fetched for Spencer to think of supplanting Yates as governor: he had developed an extensive knowledge of local leaders during his years as a judge; and to break up the Clintonian forces, Bucktail managers might encourage his ambition. On the eve of the Utica convention of 1824, the Albany Argus was to report that the convention's choice lay between Clinton and Spencer, an analysis by then offered in desperation.51 Even before Yates proposed his first set of nominations, Spencer had embarrassed Clinton by setting up the semiweekly Albany Democratic Republican. At least it offered a target for Bucktail newspapers. More importantly, this sheet - which was "very feeble," in Clinton's view - opened fire against the High-Minded Federalists who had garnered many of the judicial posts. Responding skilfully, the New- York American edged towards the popular election of justices of the peace - ground that Clinton might want to occupy.52 Second, the American charged Spencer with fomenting the "spirit of hostility to the city which has been manifested by the Legislature during the present session." According to the American, even though Spencer had not created the tax bill, he had, like Clinton, habitually sown discord and so fostered the atmosphere in which the law was passed.53 Third, the newspaper linked Clinton to Spencer's presidential politics. Spencer preferred Crawford, and the American now claimed that Clinton, Noah, and both Spencer and his son John had combined to support the pretensions of the secretary of the treasury.5* In its second and third thrusts, the American painted Spencer and Clinton as "Radicals," a charge that could cause those who were offended by the new tax law to be hesitant about supporting either of these brothers-in-law. In Washington politics, Radicalism emphasized the economy in government expenditures that attracted to Crawford Old Republicans who feared costly, centralizing, and oppressive power.55 This Radicalism affronted President Monroe and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, who shared the vision of a united national elite, com-

76 "First Fruits of the New Constitution"

manding deference, exercising power through a vigorous national government, and remaining unhampered by party commitments or the excesses of democracy.56 Largely comfortable with this vision, the American judged the Radicals to be "rigidly parsimonious with respect to all necessary as well as incidental expenditure for the service of the country. To avoid "difficulty," maintained the American, the Radicals would "prevent the people from feeling the weight of government, that their inquiries may not be directed to the manner in which it is carried on. "57 But the High-Minded Federalists would have the people bear the weight of government and would answer their queries to explain why the weight was good for them. Mordecai Noah, on the other hand, endorsed the Radical demand that "millions ... not be wasted on army establishments in a country separated from all other nations." But his greatest concern was "that barrier, which one of the meanest principles of our nature has erected between the rich and the poor - the aristocracy and the democracy." He stated: "Wealth has assumed a supremacy, even over the more dignified and imperishable charms of morality and intelligence. It is true that our monied aristocracy is of recent growth, and is composed of motley materials; but it is, nevertheless, not the less pompous or troublesome." Noah held that "the contest between democracy and aristocracy," a struggle between good and evil in man, would determine whether the promise of the United States either survived or withered.58 The death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brockholst Livingston on 18 March allowed Clinton to work on Spencer's hunger for judicial office, obliging his brother-in-law to deny both Crawford and Radicalism. Even if Clinton could not manoeuvre Spencer onto the court and out of New York politics, the exercise would provide leverage to twist Spencer's inclinations and govern his will. By negotiating through the New York City Calhounites (able opponents of the "violent Jacobinical spirits" who threatened social order and the security of wealth),59 Clinton hoped to convince this energetic body of young men of his hostility to the legal and judicial implications of Radicalism, making clearer his antipathy to the new tax law and his alignment with Kent's understanding of the law generally. Moreover, if Calhoun dropped out of the race, Clinton might be able to harness the New York Calhounites to attract Southern backing. In Charles G. Haines, Clinton had a ready go-between who wanted to raise a following among young men. Haines had embraced the relatively youthful Calhoun as the candidate of "the rising young men throughout the nation." Working for Calhoun, Haines felt that he could "get all the young Members of Congress. Get hold of all the young men of the army who have left it ... Get all the young men of the bar."60

77 The Troubles of the Party in Power

As Clinton urged Spencer's candidacy, he assured Haines that they together strove "to frustrate the reign of jacobinism." Expressing the hope that they could ensure that "the purity of the Ermine might be protected and ... the views of bad men defeated," Clinton added, "We must arrange a party for the ensuing campaign on the ground of measures - after achieving victory we can then make such selections of men as will best promote the general good."61 With these words, he paid tribute to the New York Calhounites and cultivated their hopes. The core of the Calhounites, almost all of whom were forty years old or less, did possess formidable skills and connections. Along with Haines and Henry Wheaton, the reporter of the United States Supreme Court, stood Monroe's son-in-law Samuel L. Gouverneur, Joseph G. Swift, who had once been chief engineer of the United States Army, and John Adams Dix, recently an army major and now a student in Haines's law office. Two others, aided by Wheaton, would serve as their journalists: Charles Kitchel Gardner, who had been adjutant general of the army of the North; and Selleck Osborn, a Connecticutborn printer whom Calhoun had known when a law student at Litchfield.62 Henry Wheaton had begun to negotiate with a subcommittee of New York City's General Republican Committee to obtain what Calhoun thought valuable - a newspaper established with Tammany's endorsement. By the end of May, the New-York Patriot appeared. Calhoun specified that it engage Noah's Advocate and reduce it to "the organ of a mere faction." He felt that victory would "be easy in the city," but told his followers to expect that "an attempt will be made to excite the prejudices of the country against you." His words meant that some means had to be found to diminish the hostility towards the merchant community of New York City expressed in the tax law. To that end, his followers should rally "the sound portions of the Republicans, Clintonians and Federalists."63 Spencer, aware that Crawford's influence over Monroe paled before that of the secretary of war, could not discount the New York City Calhounites. He had also to consider the number of New York applicants for what had become the state's place on the United States Supreme Court. Before the secretary of the navy, Smith Thompson, finally accepted the post, the list became quite long. At the beginning of July, De Witt Clinton believed Roger Skinner, Ogden Edwards, William P. Van Ness, and Charles Baldwin to be among the New York candidates, names that he would not hold back from Spencer.6* Spencer had to contend with two other serious and apparently strong competitors, both of whom Clinton noted. Martin Van Buren, his hold on the helm of Bucktailism loosened by divisions in the legislature and

78 "First Fruits of the New Constitution"

upheavals on the local level, wanted to join the Supreme Court. Monroe had first tried to give the seat to Smith Thompson, who had not accepted, thinking himself a presidential possibility. Thompson offered to urge Van Buren's appointment on Monroe. Van Buren, unaware that Thompson had not firmly declined, consulted Rufus King, who favoured Secretary of State John Quincy Adams for the presidency and pointed out that if Van Buren sat on the Supreme Court he would have to retire from party politics. Van Buren concurred, and King undertook to write to Adams. Van Buren then told Thompson that he wanted the appointment before there began the "unpleasant" political "excitements" involved in marshaling New York Republicans behind a presidential nominee. Four days later, fearing that he had revealed himself too much, Van Buren sent Thompson a note denying that "retiring from party politics ... is ... my object."65 Henry Wheaton, the other prospective jurist named by Clinton, was young, but as reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court, judge of the New York City Marine Court, and legal author, he had won plaudits.66 These achievements heightened Wheaton's chagrin at the behaviour of "our Dutch Governor." Wheaton remarked that "judging by his standard of qualifications for the highest stations, I am not likely to be thought of for the lowest."6"7 Chafing to advance, Wheaton ran hard for the Supreme Court seat, marshalling endorsements from John Rodgers, senior officer of the navy, from William Paulding, Jr, chairman of the General Republican Committee of New York City, and from such scholars as Job Durfee, Edward Everett, and David Hoffman.68 Knowing that he faced stiff competition, Spencer shifted away from Crawford; he protested independence and changed his stance gradually, but he did change. General Jacob Brown, the commander of the United States Army, acted as a link with Calhoun in this process. By midApril, Brown concluded that Spencer was "seriously thought of by the President," an opinion based partly on the concessions that Spencer had begun to make earlier in the month.69 Brown then told Spencer, "It is said that you are with the Radicals and radically opposed to the system of policy pursued by the present adm[inistratio]n," and he added, "Mr Monroe is most justly tenacious of his public character and Mr Calhoun goes with him all lengths against the levellers or Radicals of the County."70 Equating "levellers" and Radicals, Brown expected Spencer to disavow not only Crawfordite economizing but the hostility to concentrated capital to which Noah gave voice. This was especially important given "a notion afloat" that Spencer and Van Buren had "an understanding" that would be revealed "in a few months.'*71 Brown feared that if the tax law proved popular, Van Buren might out of necessity embrace Noah's Advocate as the true voice of New

79 The Troubles of the Party in Power

York Republicanism. Spencer and his Albany Democratic Republican might join him, alienating the "opulent men" whom Clinton expected would "guard the rights of property."72 Spencer claimed that he favoured "a respectable military force in time of peace, possessing the germ of an army," and he backed a strong navy. Although he questioned the money spent on forts, he endorsed West Point and accepted federal expenditures for transportation improvements, a concession that Clinton hoped would gain support for Spencer in Pennsylvania.73 Still, Spencer had not yet addressed himself to Radicalism as "jacobinism," and Clinton urged him to say the right words. The tax law helped. Three days after it passed the senate, Clinton and Spencer conferred twice, and Spencer sent Brown a long letter that included an essential passage: "All I can say, now that I understand what the local signification of radicalism is, that I never have been & never can be a radical. "7* Clinton drew up a letter to follow up on Spencer's message to Brown. Learning of a "favorable disposition ... in the National Administration to cultivate ... [his] powerful party," Clinton laid claim to lead New York anti-Radicalism against "the levelling and prostrating principles introduced by the dominant faction and the disorganizing measures [that] ... have roused the resentments & excited the apprehensions of our best and most respectable Citizens." They would mobilize against the "coalition" and destroy "the coalesced powers of jacobinism," he said; the appointment of Spencer to the Supreme Court of the United States would provide "a powerful auxiliary" in this effort and would stand as a bulwark against the "dangerous faction" of the secretary of the treasury.75 Although the failure of Spencer's candidacy ultimately deprived Clinton of the most tidy solution to his political problems, Spencer could not now pose as the champion of New York's "insulted & abused," and he became less "really misery" for Clinton.76 Indeed, after the announcement in July that Smith Thompson had been awarded the Supreme Court seat, Clinton glowed in the support that Spencer began to give to his objectives and tactical plans.77 Circuit Courts President Monroe's choice of Thompson had resolved Clinton's judicial problem by the summer of 1823, but the Van Burenites were not so fortunate with their problems. The work of moulding the second-highest level of New York State judicial patronage fell to two prominent former Federalists - Senators Sudam and Wheeler. John Sudam, a wellestablished practitioner, prepared the bill that would set up the four to eight circuits authorized in the new constitution.78 The newspapers

8o "First Fruits of the New Constitution"

emphasized the three basic elements in Sudani's proposal. Rather than eight districts, he would have five; they would all be manned by "ambulatory" judges, who would hold "their respective circuits alternately" and would have chancery jurisdiction in specified cases; and the state's supreme court, which formerly had sat in Utica, New York City, and Albany, would sit only in Albany.79 Senator Wheeler, acting for the Young forces, presented an alternate bill. With the help of Samuel Beardsley, a Utica lawyer, he attacked the Sudam bill as professionally elitist and politically oppressive, imposing a combination of legal and party hierarchism. According to Wheeler, the Constitutional Convention of 1821 had met in order "to bring home" to the people "the organization of all delegated powers," and neither the limited chancery for district judges nor the confinement of the supreme court to one place fitted with that end. Albany sittings meant that "all the legal business ... would fall into the hands of those who live between New York and Albany." Insisting on eight judges, Wheeler laid bare the central political point. Having only five "snug places" left open as rewards for "party zeal ... to gratify the starvelings of the day," the unexpended patronage enforced discipline. Sudam ignored the comment on party. As to lawyers, he announced, "The time has arrived when the trade of the law will be separated from the profession."80 Hope for the architects of subordination glimmered only briefly, however. Critics of limited equity jurisdiction paused when the Van Burenite Edward P. Livingston suggested four circuit judges and two vicechancellors, a compromise that would provide the public with more ample judicial services. Reflecting the High-Minded hunger for legal patronage rather than Sudani's concern to impose political discipline, the New- York American discovered merit in separating equity and common law jurisdiction, and raised the ante to four vice-chancellors. But John A. King pointed out the flaw: the vice-chancellors could not, constitutionally, have tenure. Thus, the compromise evaporated, and Wheeler's version of the circuit system passed the senate in late March.81 While the bill was before the Senate, Root, Cramer, and Young had kept in touch with Clinton, sharpening his awareness of the opportunities presented by the circuit court issue.82 Throughout March, Clinton also had conferred with Judge David Woods of Madison County, a longtime supporter. Then, on 7 April, with the bill before the lower house, they met with David Woods's younger relative, William, a Clintonian who had regularly been nominated to the assembly from Steuben County.83 Armed with information about the business that must face a circuit judge, William Woods proved that there was enough work

81 The Troubles of the Party in Power

for eight judges and far too much for four, and he beat back Gulian Verplanck's effort to resurrect the Sudam version of the court. The regular proposal, he argued, denied the promise of a system that made equity jurisdiction readily available; eight judges, moreover, would not be too heavy a burden for the taxpayer. In fact, the "yeomanry," the small property owners, would cease "to pay tribute to a few individuals around the capital of the state" who had been "fattening upon the misfortunes of the country." George McClure chimed in to berate "the lawyers of the capitol" who hungered for "that patronage which they have been wont to receive ... at the expense and ruin of the country."8* McClure directed his appeal to the "farming interest" for its more substantial representatives supported Wheeler's proposals rather than those of John Sudam and Gulian Verplanck. On 11 April the assembly voted sixty-nine to forty-four for eight circuits, and eighty to thirtyfour for extensive equity jurisdiction. The northern and western extremities of the state backed both measures firmly. Equally striking was the behaviour of sixteen assemblymen who came from scattered points in the remainder of the state and were known in their counties as substantial farmers. None of them would oppose the regular Republicans at the end of the 18205; now only one of these prominent farmers voted against each motion. Farmers who left less of a mark in their communities did not rise above the assembly's general level of approval of these portions of the new law, but the men who combined farming with another form of enterprise tended to follow the same path as the prominent farmers. Equally significant, the twenty-one assemblymen who had held elective local office in combination with an office given by the Council of Appointment, and who had received a better appointive position in 1821, were fairly united for eight circuits and extensive equity services.85 The assemblyman who had a firm local political and economic footing would not readily accept party control through judicial hierarchy: courts should provide a service, not party order. Although Van Burenite control was strong enough to block the Bank of Rochester and to keep a representative of the Young faction off the U.S. Supreme Court, it could not mould the district court system to bolster regular discipline. Recent patronage had failed to make assemblymen prefer Sudani's new-model regularity; and local men with economic leverage valued fuller legal services delivered by judges fixed in their own locality more than they valued party regularity. Men who appeared to be able managers, capable of offering services to their neighbours, balked at backing a system that was bound to limit their influence by making judges more remote and more dependent on party authority.

82 "First Fruits of the New Constitution" Justices of the Peace Outside the legislature, the choosing of the justices of the peace presented the regular leaders with another opportunity to assert control. The procedure had been scheduled to take place in each county on 18 February, almost two months before the Wheeler bill passed the assembly. Thanks to Martin Van Buren's resistance in the Constitutional Convention, the new constitution did not provide for the popular election of these local officers. Instead, it directed the county supervisors to settle on a list of nominees. The judges of each county court were also to make a list. If the lists agreed, the justices were considered to have been chosen. If not, the governor was to select from the nominees.86 On Christmas Eve 1822, De Witt Clinton had revelled in the thought that this process would "cover the State with confusion and fill it with uproar." It did put county judges (many of whom were newly appointed) at odds with county supervisors. Expecting trouble, High-Minded Morris S. Miller of Utica faced the day bravely. Just before the judges and supervisors of Oneida County met, he told the Albany mayor and state senator Charles E. Dudley, "A good deal of excitement prevails here ... but the Judges ... will pursue a straight forward course, and abide by the event." He later reported that the judges had taken "strong Republican ground and maintained it all through," but that the two sets of officials in Oneida County, the most populous after New York, had agreed on only half of the eighty justices.87 Disputes broke out elsewhere. In Erie County the judges, disregarding the constitution and statute law, proposed that the supervisors meet individually with them and arrange "for their particular towns," a procedure that would enable the judges to overawe each supervisor. Oziel Smith, the Clintonian supervisor of Amherst (who was angered that the last Council of Appointment had stripped him of his other offices and was determined to see Buffalo's harbour succeed), rallied the entire board against the manoeuvre. As in Oneida County, the judges and supervisors produced three lists. They agreed on some men and then sent the governor two sets of names over which they differed. A majority of the supervisors wanted justices who, in the words of a Bucktail observer, were nearly all "Federal & Clintonian."88 Clinton and the legislators saw the "uproar" over the justices at close hand. The supervisors and judges of Albany County met in the Capitol and there disagreed over thirteen of the thirty-two justices for the eight towns that lay around the City of Albany. When it came to the city itself, they clashed even more sharply. An 1821 law had set up a threeman court for the city. Although it was a court of record with its own

83 The Troubles of the Party in Power

clerk, its judges had the status of justices of the peace. The county judges, however, claimed that they alone should name men to this court. The supervisors of the rural towns responded by reaching for the right to nominate five justices of the peace for each ward, while the antiClintonian supervisors of the city met the judges head-on by naming the three city magistrates independently.89 The regular county judges thus faced a dual revolt. Newspapers reported other disagreements. In Westchester, the governor had to make the final choice of thirty-one out of eighty-four justices; in Dutchess, eleven out of sixty-four; twenty out of forty-eight in Rensselaer; about one-third of Genesee's allotment; and ten of Ontario County's sixty-four. The court houses of Otsego, Saratoga, Monroe, Ulster, and Delaware witnessed comparatively minor disputes.90 In these counties and elsewhere, punishing exchanges nevertheless took place before the major figures of each county left with as full a list of justices as they could hammer out. Not only was the self-esteem of the supervisors bruised in the awkward process, but raised expectations had been rudely thrust down. At Canandaigua, for example, "so many applicants presented themselves, that there were far more dis-appointments than appointments."91 Yates's position became more precarious. The Bucktail former congressman, Reuben Hyde Walworth, heard that the judges and supervisors of Clinton County had not agreed on all the justices. Writing from New York City to Azariah Cutting Flagg, whose Plattsburgh Republican glossed over the dispute, he belatedly expressed the hope that "appointment has been made in conformity with the wishes of the inhabitants" and suggested that it was better for the judges to give way than to toss the problem to the governor. On 21 February, John A. King reported to his father that Yates had already learned of failures to agree in fourteen or fifteen counties, giving him the dubious "right" to appoint for many a town. King concluded, "This will end in a proposition to amend the Constitution for the purpose of Electing the Justices - which it is now regretted ... the Convention did not adopt." Charles King's New-York American soon attacked Yates's preference for the judges' nominees as "a singular perversion of... a democratic procedure" that would turn the "direct representatives" of the people into "political partisans" scarce likely to provide justice.92 At variance with voters recently empowered to choose county officers, Yates stood in danger of stirring up widespread opposition. Clinton's expectation of sweeping change grew. From the west, Samuel Wilkeson brought him news that the counties of Erie, Chautauqua, Niagara, Genesee, Livingston, and Ontario were "up in arms about the appointments" and that a revolution was "inevitable." Clinton be-

84 "First Fruits of the New Constitution"

lieved that the widespread discontent would feed on the feeling that the regulars had denied citizens a chance to say whom they preferred for their county judges. Now, Yates had compounded this error by making a "rule of taking the Judges instead of the Supervisor's list," so that "the voice of the people is set aside and the most contemptible blackguards appointed Justices. "93 The Clintonians began to argue that the local officers were the best people to choose magistrates of wisdom and virtue. Elisha Camp of Sackets Harbor in Jefferson County hammered away at a central point when stating in the Sackets Harbor Jefferson Republican that supervisors were popularly chosen officers who knew their fellow townspeople well. They, rather than the judges, should select justices, who should be chosen "without Reference to Parties, but merely to the Qualifications of the Candidates."9* Spencer's Democratic Republican agreed. Earlier, the Albany Argus had sought to meet similar criticisms by insisting that "public assemblies" had informed the judges of the "will of the people." The Democratic Republican echoed Gerrit Smith's condemnation of these occasional meetings, which were called "upon short notice, at some tavern" and reflected "the ambitious views of a few intriguing demagogues of the county."95 Bar-room conspiracies threatened to deny citizens the services of the best local men. With elites at all levels in mind, Clinton began to weave together the evils of the tax law with the enormity of the regulars' plans to mould the judicial system. Telling Henry Post of the resistance to the Van Burenite efforts to dominate the selecting of justices, he shifted quickly to expand on the threat that the taxation of personalty posed: "The destroying angel is at work and mowing down our best men and best institutions with the Scythe of death and unless arrested in his career by the united exertions of the wise and the good, we may bid adieu to the prosperity of our Country and shed a tear over the shipwreck of the best hopes of man!!!"96 Antiregular leadership that focused on political oppression might awaken New Yorkers to the folly and unfairness of burdening men of wealth, rendering the law harmless, he believed. The new judicial system carried a message of oppression down to the town level, where it might bear fruit. THE RIPENED FRUITS OF VICTORY As Clinton worked through the related meanings of the tax law and the regular approach to the judicial system, Van Buren sought to maintain order and discipline among the regular forces by centring attention on the nation. On the evening of 22 April 1823, "a meeting of the Republican Members of both branches of the Legislature" gathered

85 The Troubles of the Party in Power

in the assembly room of the Capitol, with about 90 of 160 members attending. Erastus Root presented resolutions which Van Buren had prepared and which argued that "a convention" made up of congressmen would best represent the "different quarters of the Union" and the "various classes of the community." The congressional caucus cherished "national feelings" and would make a presidential nomination that was best suited to "preserve unbroken" political ties throughout the nation. Some members present vainly objected to the condemnation of state nominations, but the meeting ignored them and moved listlessly to its climax. Van Buren's defence of the congressional caucus was, in John A. King's words, "adopted, with as little feeling and enthusiasm as I ever witnessed at a public Meeting."97 Although Van Buren had managed to commit about two-thirds of the regular legislators to the congressional caucus, an ominous sign of disunity soon appeared. The New-York American published the caucus resolutions of 22 April but demanded "that the vote of this state in caucus be in consonance with the sentiments of the people ... [as] fully and fairly expressed at the next election." The American expected that New Yorkers would elect to the next legislature "a large majority of men favorable to a northern candidate."98 About this time Clinton let Henry Post know that Van Buren "really looks out of sorts."99 Clinton had reason to think that Van Buren looked glum. As the Bucktails assumed responsibility under the new constitution, regular power appeared to fray at several levels. Van Buren insisted on the authority of the congressional caucus, but the leading High-Minded newspaper responded by denying that a caucus nomination should automatically command the vote of New York's legislators. Many New Yorkers of New England background would share the Kings' preference for John Quincy Adams, and they might demand the right to express it. Support for the popular election of justices of the peace could easily fuse with pressure for the popular election of presidential electors, culminating in demands that the voice of the state speak from the polls rather than through party authority at the state and national levels. Within the legislature and at the local level, regularity had begun to unravel in ways that made submission to party discipline and the acceptance of party arguments harder to ensure. The law establishing the circuit court system denied patronage possibilities to the regular leaders; opponents of the regular bill defined it as a device conceived in defiance of the needs of modest property owners and as an engine to profit an elite of lawyers. Regular power therefore appeared the more threatening, for it could bring expensive litigation rather than the security of property and simple justice to every man's door. The role of the High-Minded Van Burenites in pressing for this unsuccessful reg-

86 "First Fruits of the New Constitution'

map 1 new york city in 1824

ular measure suggested that a legislative and party "aristocracy" meant to rule in spite of the recent steps towards greater democracy. The defeat of the regular plan resonated with the widespread disagreements over the justices of the peace - turmoil that followed quite naturally on the intraparty disputes that cropped up in the election of county clerks and sheriffs, and on the choosing of an assembly that was relatively unfamiliar with Albany ways. New Yorkers, in November 1822, for the first time had an enlarged measure of power in selecting sheriffs and clerks, and the new constitution promised them at least indirect influence in the selection of the lesser magistrates, the justices that would live among them. Nevertheless, the elected officials through whom citizens might express their will - the county supervisors - had too often been overridden, which suggested that magistracy at the local level might become more an instrument of distant power and party "interest" than it had been in the time of the Council of Appointment.

87 The Troubles of the Party in Power

If made an instrument of party power in the legislature and caucus, magistracy might serve more to exploit than to protect. In the tax law, the 1823 legislature revealed regular inability to protect commercial and manufacturing capital. The Van Burenite regular leaders only succeeded clearly when they blocked the expansion of banking capital in western New York, an accomplishment in which they relied on and served the interest of the High-Minded legislator who had introduced the tax law. With the passing of the depression and the diminution of antibank sentiment, even this species of regular control might be hard to enforce. Clinton's cultivation of Jacob Barker suggested a willingness to expand the money supply by the incorporation of banks and insurance companies. Although expansion was a potential source of instability, it could promise to spread prosperity and personalty, sapping the enmity towards commerce that fed into the new tax law. By such means even Noah's Radical thunder might be stilled. Meanwhile, Clinton had forced Ambrose Spencer down a path that led away from Radicalism. It did not lead towards the Supreme Court of the United States, and the fact that Clinton had managed to steer his proud and stubborn brother-in-law seems to have made clear his mastery in the relationship. Conceivably, Clinton would be the man to keep men secure in the fruits of their labour both in Wall Street and in the towns and villages of New York. The political atmosphere had ripened in a way which suggested that those who represented the financial centre might cultivate sympathy among town and county leaders. Logically, they needed to obtain the support of upstate financial leaders, the bankers and insurance company officers whose proliferation the new constitution tended to restrain.

4 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion": The Clintonian Contribution to an Opposition Position

The initial political developments under the constitution of 1821 invited opposition that could demonstrate that party regularity subverted true republicanism because it thwarted the will of the people. Partisanship had become part of the texture of American political life. Still, it rested uncomfortably beside the belief that there was a single and common good that might be subverted by the advocates of a particular interest. This attitude, feeding on regular embarrassments under the new constitution, invited opposition that would urge means other than party effort to fulfil the promise of republicanism for New Yorkers - a promise that might emphasize opportunity for personal fulfilment in an ordered society rather than the security gained through political order and discipline. De Witt Clinton accepted this invitation. Before the next election, without explicitly "taking the field" as a candidate, he offered a powerful if oblique condemnation of party oppression, corruption, and conflict - powerful because it drew on the ideals of harmony and revolutionary purpose, and because of the varied elements that Clinton managed to weave into the fabric of his assertion of purpose: the security of capital and the sovereign will of the people; religious tolerance and salvation for men and women of independent conscience; a celebration of the capacity of the individual to achieve knowledge and prosperity; and a celebration of the partly completed canal system as the gift of liberal magistracy. Charles G. Raines prefaced these assertions with the vision of an urban society in which responsible professional men could be counted on to work for opportunity, fairness, and benevolence. With

89 Contribution to an Opposition Position these ingredients, Clinton sought to appeal to those who wanted fuller use of the more widespread franchise, to those who were concerned about the security of their investments, and to the many who wanted a tangible plan for prosperity and some affirmation of their capacity to prosper. Clinton's analysis of the "great Republican family" convinced him to press ahead before the voters chose the 1824 legislature. Leaving aside his own following, and also the High-Minded Federalists, whom he did not view as Republican family members, he saw four sections in the "body" of Republicans in the state. The Yates men and the Van Burenites clung to each other in tenuous alliance. "The most active and numerous" of the rest, the following of Samuel Young, he deemed "decidedly hostile to Van Buren & Yates." Erastus Root's "noisy and dangerous" band of "Mountain men" could be found "fraternizing occasionally" with Young's supporters, and Clinton thought them unfriendly to Van Buren. "Vibrating between Young and Yates," they wanted "to set up for themselves," so no faction could rely on Root's men as allies. The Van Burenites, "opposed to every other section and entirely devoted to the elevation of their chief," had isolated themselves in spite of the Yates alliance. In view of Van Buren's "inordinate vanity - and from his enthusiastic references to himself," Clinton concluded that the senator intended to become president.1 Those who adhered to Van Buren expected to travel far with him. Clinton and Young worked to keep open the possibility of an alliance against Van Buren. Welcoming overtures from the Saratoga County leader, Clinton sought to shield him from responsibility for at least one excessively large payment on a canal contract, and during the spring and summer of 1823 he continued to record with satisfaction the friendly signs made by Young and his manager John Cramer. Clinton considered that Young had been "much of an imbecile" for voting with the majority when the June meeting of the Canal Commission had defined Black Rock as the terminus of the Erie Canal. Young, however, sensed that the logic of politics meant that the breach could be repaired, and he quickly made amends by sending Clinton "a specimen of ... a degenerated race of herring" from Ballston Lake, plus a swallow - deferential offerings that acknowledged Clinton as a savant.2 Their behaviour over the next year demonstrated that both men knew that an alliance of Clintonians with Young's faction, and even with the Mountain faction, promised much if correctly managed. Based on the repudiation of caucus nominations and on affirmation of the sovereignty of the people, the arrangement, sealed by a convention of delegates, could mean the governorship for Young and the presidency of the United States for Clinton. Clinton remembered that in March 1817

90 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

he had been nominated by a "convention" composed of twenty senators, seventy-five assemblymen, plus thirty-three Republican delegates from constituencies that had sent Federalists to the legislature. The meeting, more broadly representative than a caucus, had claimed "to concentrate ... public sentiment"; and Southwick's Albany Register, finding nominating caucuses "obnoxious in the eyes of the people," had praised the convention because it had "wisely Confirmed the Nomination of the People. "3 A convention nomination would thus enable Clintonians to claim consistent deference to the will of the people, and this would take the edge off the hostility to wealth that had found expression in Noah's Advocate and in the tax law. With the hostility towards personal wealth defused, the support of men of means might be readily marshalled. C L I N T O N I A N C O M M E N T ON THE TAX LAW Clinton believed that the new tax law would bring him this support. The broadly conceived Clintonian campaign began before the legislature rose, and it began with the tax law. Confident that the measure would "rip ... up" his opponents, Clinton told the cashier of the Franklin Bank, "It has already alarmed the property of the Country and property when it acts must rule."'* Clinton assured John Pintard, secretary of the Mutual Insurance Company, that the law met his "open and unqualified reprobation"; it would pass because "the Van Burens and other would be great men" backed it. Yet men of wealth and commerce must not despair, he said: "Nothing is more easy than to prevent the recurrence of similar calamities and to extinguish this evil - Opulent men must guard the rights of property - Wise men must uphold the substantial interests of the Country ... by the use of those honorable and enlightened measures which Providence has placed in their hands for the protection of the Republic against the harpies of faction and the votaries of jacobinism.'^ Now was the time for wealthy men, in company with men wise in the ways of political economy, to refurbish and preserve social and political harmony; it could be done with ease. Clinton had acquired a firsthand knowledge of the way the tax proposals of 1823 struck the opulent men of New York City. After informing the former comptroller, Archibald Mclntyre, that he was coming to Manhattan, he stayed there from mid-January until the last week in February. He found the city "in turmoil and uproar" and concluded that the political hostility towards him there was "wearing away." Towards the end of his visit, he wrote to his son Charles that the business that had brought him to the city was "very nearly & satisfactorily closed." This business included an agreement with the directors of the

gi Contribution to an Opposition Position bank of the Manhattan Company, who voted to accept "any settlement" that director William Lawrence could arrange for the money that Clinton owed. Two days before his departure, the New-York Statesman began to lament at length that the tax law would "impair confidence in all funds created under the laws of this state."6 Clinton returned to Albany personally and politically right with Wall Street. The next major Clintonian statement on the tax law came from Haines, who had established himself as a model of benevolence and civic virtue for those who cherished opportunity and personal discipline. Since moving to New York City, the New Hampshire-born lawyer had become a director of the New-York Academy and a manager of both the New-York County Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and Domestic Manufactures and the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism.' Haines spoke as an advocate for a broad middling interest, which included lesser merchants, artisans and mechanics, and lawyers who were labouring to establish their practices. These men felt that the auction system represented arrangements that excluded them. In 1823, Haines's 1821 criticism of this system for the importation and sale of goods was republished in a pamphlet which condemned it as a "gross, palpable, and unequivocal monopoly, inconsistent with the nature and spirit of our free institutions."8 Haines's United States Law Journal, and Civilian's Magazine, which began publication in 1822, sought to appeal to the common concerns of lawyers, merchants, and traders. The word Civilian in the title suggested the kind of concise and useful law that would enable a businessman to make his plans without fear. The journal reflected an awareness of the hostility felt for the legal profession and of the possibility that both lawyers in practice and the judiciary might suffer from political change.' Haines did not intend to confine his readership to lawyers. The first three issues, appearing before April 1823, explored problems important to merchants and manufacturers, particularly those whose limited finances made them sensitive to legal costs. These early numbers of the journal included three cases in which Jacob Barker was central. Known to be litigious and certain of his capacity to argue his own case, Barker stood as an independent and fearless champion of the trader and artisan.10 His presence in Haines's pages invited the attention of untrained men who sought to save self-respect and money by handling their own legal problems. Haines's efforts to serve this constituency and the city were not limited to his Law Journal. In a memorial to the legislature, he opposed the section of the Sudani bill that proposed to confine all four terms of the New York Supreme Court to Albany. "Merchants and others" who were "embarked in extensive and complicated concerns" would be

92 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

obliged to leave their business and pay perhaps "double retainer and double fees" if they hired counsel "out of the city," Haines argued." Moreover, lesser lawyers in the western part of the state and in New York City should have the opportunity to plead before the state's supreme court even if they did not have enough business to warrant a trip to Albany. Haines concluded his memorial by deprecating "any state of public concern that should create hostility ... between the city and the country - between the commercial capital, and other parts of the state." He pointed out that "a blow to the prosperity of the city of New-York, would ultimately be felt by the most distant villages." Printed in both the New-York Statesman and the New-York Evening Post and made widely available for signatures, Haines's admonitions contributed to preserving the Utica and New York terms, though they did little to slow the passage of the tax law.12 Haines had often acted as a public advocate for troubled New Yorkers. In 1821 he had called for the reduction of New York City taxes to give the property of defaulters more protection from sale at public auction.1 3 A year later he had demanded rent relief for city tenants who had lost income during the summer's yellow fever epidemic.11* The following year it was the prisons that drew his attention. Fear of competition from prison labour hardened the attitudes of mechanics, and at the end of January 1823 "a general meeting of the mechanics of the City of New-York" urged that the prison in the city be replaced by one "a few miles distant," in which inmates would be set tasks that would "render the prison the dread and scourge of the profligate." They recommended the treadmill; with it, prisoners could grind grain for their own coarse and meagre fare.!5 Haines tempered this rising hostility. His 1822 report on the prison system, drawn up for the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism in the City of New York, held that the United States had developed a "criminal system so mild, so rational, and so well proportioned ... [that] it attracts admiration among the most polished states of the world." He warned that "revolutions in public opinion" could erase the gains wrought by wise and good men.16 Recognizing that this lawyer's meliorism added lustre to Clinton without directly implicating him, the Bucktails viewed Haines with uneasiness and irritation. In April 1823, James Campbell, the Van Burenite surrogate of New York County, who was "sick and wearied of seeing [Haines's] name eternally before the Public," concluded that "persons residing out of the City ... will begin to believe that his presence or services are absolutely indispensable in all our City transactions of a public nature."17 Haines's leadership in reform made his criticism of the tax law of 1823 a statement on which Clinton could build without alienating the

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groups that Haines defended. The statement was delivered on i April, three days before Campbell vented his spleen. Called with less than a day's notice, the meeting before which Haines spoke gathered at halfpast seven on that spring evening. People "of all the different classes" jammed into the large courtroom of the City Hall, the crowd overflowing to the halls of the building, with six or seven thousand present by one estimate. The Clintonians managed the event deftly. William Bayard moved that Stephen Allen, the Bucktail mayor, take the chair; then Philip Hone settled in as secretary. Cries from outside the courtroom demanded that the meeting adjourn to the park in front of the City Hall so that all could participate, but although this uproar at first hampered Haines's speech, he continued. When he finished, John Anthon defended the resolutions presented. Anthon was prominent in the Court of Common Pleas and was a master of facts rather than an orator. He spoke at "considerable length." The meeting then approved the resolutions and struck a committee to carry the protest to Albany. Since anti-Clintonians such as Allen, John Targee, and Michael Ulschoeffer were named to this committee, the regulars could not condemn the meeting in spite of the roles of Bayard, Haines, Hone, and Anthon.18 Haines had described the fragility of the city's capital structure, emphasizing that its collapse could have widespread effect. He repeated a point made the previous year - that the capital of most banks and insurance companies rested on the hypothecated stock of other banks and insurance companies. A tax on the capital stock of all institutions meant that the same property would be taxed several times, overly burdening credit and thereby retarding commerce. Moreover, although foreign capitalists might be willing to bear a small tax now, the fact that the government of the state had taxed capital at all created fear of future taxes. Not only would city credit dry up, but withdrawal of funds would weaken county banks and make loans for the completion of the canals harder to mount. Haines conceded that much personal property had escaped taxation, particularly in the City of New York, where some people were assessed for a one-quarter or one-third of their personalty "while others have been assessed for more than their just portion." He hoped "that a law might be framed through which the whole property of the rich might be reached, without any resort to new, untried, and dangerous systems of finance, without taxing capital in the shape of stocks, and without laying the weight of a finger on foreign capital."19 If such a suggestion had come from a speaker without a reform record, Manhattan residents might have deemed the prospect hollow. But Haines's record made more credible the hope that the opponents of the tax law wanted to defeat

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it because it threatened the prosperity of the community and that they were willing to support a system of taxation that was just. C L I N T O N , T H E BISHOP, A N D T H E B I B L E The City Hall meeting fitted with Clinton's plan to condemn "pernicious measures" while keeping out of view the "proper men" to be supported as candidates while public opinion took the appropriate shape.20 This did not mean that Clinton intended to keep himself under wraps throughout the summer and early fall. He intended to foster the "complete revolution in public opinion" that would make possible his return to office,21 and he made use of the beachhead that Haines had developed, widening and deepening it. Because Clinton had defined his responsibilities broadly, he could stand forth at occasions that were not readily targeted by partisan fire. For instance, to attack him politically when he acted as a religious, scientific, or educational leader invited condemnation, even though Clinton wove political messages into the words he spoke. Clinton first chose a religious forum, there to build on the democratic, postmillennial strain in American Christianity - the belief that American society, its members, and its institutions could be made perfect enough to receive Christ in His Second Coming. Episcopalian Bishop John Henry Hobart, who pitted his authority against this essentially nonsectarian strain, provided a serviceable foil.22 Towards the end of the Civil War, the Rev. James McFarlane Mathews, the longtime minister of the South Dutch Church in Garden Street, in New York City, recalled a De Witt Clinton who thought that ties between a learned ministry and men of "cultivated minds" was essential to the balance between freedom and order. McFarlane remembered that Clinton had expressed admiration for John Calvin for teaching "the leading principles of freedom and popular rights," including the right of the people to choose those who governed them.23 Clinton held office in two closely related organizations, both of which met in New York City on 8 May 1823. Clinton had been a vice-president of the Presbyterian Education Society at least since May 1819. In 1823, under the presidency of Jonas Platt, the other vice-presidents included not only Eliphalet Nott but five eminent Federalists: James Kent, Richard Varick, George Huntington, Aaron Ogden of New Jersey, and Jacob Burnet of Cincinnati (whose half-brother, Isaac G. Burnet, the mayor of Cincinnati, was a leading Ohio Clintonian). The other body meeting on that day was the American Bible Society, of which Clinton had been an officer since i8i6. 2 4

95 Contribution to an Opposition Position Clinton chose to attend the Bible Society's meeting. It offered him an opportunity to capitalize on religious controversy and to affirm his close relationship with the kind of independent Federalist found on the officers' list of the Presbyterian Education Society. In 1822, John Jay, president of the American Bible Society, had closed his yearly remarks by admonishing the society's opponents to "refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if... this work be of men, it will come to naught, but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it."25 Jay had directed his words at his fellow Episcopalian, Bishop Hobart. Hobart ardently defended devotionalism and the episcopacy, often in print.26 He had taken a strong stand against Bible societies even before the American societies coalesced as the American Bible Society in 1816. In a pastoral letter of April 1815, Hobart had held that the Book of Common Prayer "contains the purest exhibition of that evangelical truth which the Bible reveals" - a proposition which guided the Episcopalians of the Bible and Common Prayer Book Society. Churchmen should not combine work for this society, stated Hobart, with efforts on behalf of interdenominational Bible societies, for the latter were dominated by non-Episcopalians, Presbyterians mostly, and these sects did not enjoy the true three orders of the ministry: bishops, priests, and deacons. Episcopalian participation therefore threatened the regular ministry of the church, subverting consecrated authority. Hobart repeated these objections when the American Bible Society was formed in I8i6. 2 ? Taking account of the strength of the Low Churchmen and evangelicals among Episcopalians, Bishop Hobart did not at first belabour the interdenominational Bible societies in print as vigorously as he had assailed earlier foes. Moreover, he was aware that the first officers of the American Bible Society included a number of men who were important in the life of his own Trinity Church.28 Hobart therefore bided his time, following an essentially defensive course. In 1817 the General Convention of the Episcopal Church authorized the establishment of a theological seminary in New York City, an institution to be under the general authority of the church rather than under diocesan control. Fearing that it would become an instrument of the evangelicals, Hobart held back his support. The seminary began to founder and then moved to New Haven. The bishop had thus avoided losing control of the education of priests in his diocese. The next step was even more promising for Hobart. Meeting in Trinity Church in the fall of 1820, the diocesan convention strengthened his hand when it set up a Protestant Episcopal Theological Education Society, which was charged with "the promotion of theological education,

96 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

by the establishment of professorships, and by furnishing aid to candidates for holy orders." The bishop presided over a board of trustees which had the power "to make bye-laws, rules, and regulations ... respecting the establishment and government of schools or seminaries for theological instruction." The money for a school came in 1821 when Jacob Sherred, a New York merchant, left $60,000 for the establishment of a seminary in New York State. Legal opinions confirmed that it would be under diocesan control.2^ The bishop now pressed for the purity of his church. He delivered an address at the opening of the seminary, making it clear that he expected to furnish the Episcopal Church with "a clergy ... who will proclaim and defend her doctrines with talent, and with force and persuasion.'^0 Then, speaking before the diocesan convention in midOctober 1822, he condemned the Bible societies as "erroneous in the principle on which ... they are founded - the separation of the Church from the Word of God"; they served to "inculcate that general liberality which considers the differences among Christians as non-essential." Turning his attention to John Jay and Matthew Clarkson, both his parishioners, Hobart stated that although they no doubt acted as leaders of the American Bible Society from "a sense of duty," they were misguided. 3' At the beginning of February 1823, the managers of the New York Auxiliary Bible and Common Prayer Book Society produced a report which John Pintard and other Episcopalian evangelicals found offensive. 32 It was probably shortly after this that John Jay's son William began to pen his eighty-page anonymous letter to Hobart. Defending the roles that his father and Clarkson played in the American Bible Society, he pointed out that interdenominational Bible societies enjoyed widespread support, not only among the Episcopal churches of the United States but in the Church of England and the Church of Ireland, and in a number of continental communions that were organized under the leadership of bishops. Churchmen in those monarchies behaved more liberally than Hobart, asserted Jay. He pointed out that the Bible and Common prayer book societies distributed far more prayer books than Bibles and thereby denied Christians the opportunity to explore scripture fully and come to an understanding by their own efforts. In Jay's view, the Episcopal priests who supported interdenominational Bible societies displayed appropriate confidence in the ability of the many to learn and understand. Moreover it was they, rather than the clerics who submitted to Hobart, who had first established Sunday schools. Finally, Jay warned that Hobart's hostility to Bible societies ran the risk of encouraging enmity between sects, and even schism in his own church. Charged with sowing seeds of disharmony, Hobart made

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haste to reply, and the two men conducted a war of pamphlets during 1823.33 Clinton weighed carefully whether to appear at the Bible Society's May meeting. Although he had been invited in January, he did not decide to attend until 24 April. Nine days earlier he had asked John Pintard's opinion whether it would be wise to offer an address. Pintard, who served as the society's accountant and recording secretary, had long been at odds with his bishop over the question of interdenominational Bible societies. Also, he felt that the Episcopal seminary in New York City should be under the control of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Responding to Clinton's query, Pintard sent him a copy of Jay's pamphlet as soon as it was available. Clinton found it "a triumphant & overwhelming performance ... a work of uncommon excellence," and he promised to offer his "humble testimony" to the merits of the society.34 Pintard arranged for Clinton to speak first, after offering a few words in praise of John Jay, the patriarch of New York Federalism.35 Clinton opposed Hobart not merely because of the bishop's ideas about religious authority, but because Hobart tended to work through the High-Minded Federalists and their associates. Nathan Williams and Morris S. Miller of Utica were both deeply committed Episcopalians. Williams shared the bishop's belief that authority demanded unquestioning deference, and Hobart had made Williams a vice-president and manager of the Theological Education Society. The relationship of Miller and Williams to Hobart was sufficiently close that John C. Spencer and other members of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in the Western District recognized the need to have these two men present when basic questions were to be decided.36 When problems arose in Albany, Hobart turned to Gulian Crommelin Verplanck and William A. Duer. They attended to the bishop's educational objectives - appropriate in Verplanck's case, for in December 1821 the trustees of the General Theological Seminary had appointed him professor of the Evidences of Revealed Religion,3? and neither Clinton nor Jay anticipated that Verplanck would temporarily retreat from politics after 1823. Three other Hobart men appeared to be as firmly fixed: Morris S. Miller remained the first judge of Oneida County, and on 21 April the senate confirmed the appointments of both Duer and Williams as circuit judges.38 The bishop's political mainstays had lodged themselves in the new judicial system, and the assembly Van Burenites had been led by a scholar from Hobart's seminary. The religious work of Williams, Miller, and the younger Spencer demonstrated Hobart's desire to see his church grow in western New York. During his yearly travels through his diocese, he fixed on Geneva

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as the seat of a future Episcopalian institution of higher learning. From an academy under the wing of the church, he hoped to evolve a college and a seminary. To this area had come many immigrants from the South with slaves and the money to buy land, contributing to Episcopalian strength. On them, Hobart might rest the future of his academy and college. By 1823 he had made some important gains for his project, which challenged the Yankee Presbyterians, who regarded the village at the head of Seneca Lake as a centre for their faith and culture. In 1821, New York City's Trinity Church had transferred its financial support from Fairfield Academy in Herkimer County to the academy in Geneva, a move cheered by the Bucktail Geneva Palladium but greeted in silence by the Clintonian Geneva Gazette. The following year, William A. Duer had brought before the board of regents a report that favoured chartering the academy as a college, provided it met financial requirements; when Clinton spoke before the American Bible Society, the Geneva Academy project heralded a college that was Southern and Episcopalian in tone.39 Clinton's words would touch on lines of division reaching beyond New York City. The May meeting of the American Bible Society opened with a parade. The participants gathered at nine in the morning in the society's large new building on the west side of Nassau Street, between Ann and Beekman. With Matthew Clarkson ready to preside in the absence of the aged and ailing John Jay, and with De Witt Clinton and Richard Varick holding places of honour, the procession moved out of its quarters, over to Broadway, and then down four blocks to the City Hotel. Clinton, in the company of venerable Federalists, strode out into the spring rain to come before the fullest meeting the Bible Society had ever had.4° After the Rev. James Milnor read Jay's address, Clinton moved a resolution of thanks and began his remarks. He warned that it was an error "to substitute the exposition of the priest for the will of the Deity." God had revealed His will, and man was able to receive it; no man could speak for "the obsolete exploded doctrine of the danger of illuminating mankind ... without entertaining erroneous views of the fabric of human society and of the high destinies of religion." Revelation of man's "future state" had been accomplished by Christ's mission, which "afforded clear demonstrations of the life to come," knowledge that banished a catalogue of sins and crimes. Public law did not reach all transgressions, said Clinton; the remainder had to be controlled by the "law of opinion," which like the legal codes of men, derived much of its weight "from the influence of a future world." In sum, "the sanctions of religion compose the foundations of good government; and the ethics, doctrines, and examples furnished by Christianity exhibit the best models for the laws of opin-

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ion." Organizations such as the American Bible Society, where "peace is declared among the most discordant sects - and the parti-colored coat of Joseph is exchanged for the seamless garment of Christ" - presented these pure and "high doctrines" of religion to the public. In their cause, the members of the society must prevail, even though they faced "mountains of sophistry ... piled on mountains of invective."^1 The republic must rest on the bedrock of Christian public opinion, unperverted by sectarian authority and informed by a sense of the capacity of each believer to understand revealed truth. Harmony came out of that individual quest, not the imposition of authority. Clinton held that individual spiritual enlightenment provided the moral instruction that made a Christian social order possible. Efforts to impose authority threatened enlightenment and hence threatened order; party leaders as well as bishops might therefore bring discord. Since both erred morally, socially, and politically, they were bound to fail. New Yorkers of the time sought spiritual truth with intensity, imagination, and independence. Five months after Clinton spoke, Joseph Smith of Manchester found his way to the Book of Mormon, and two years earlier Charles Grandison Finney of Adams in Jefferson County had undergone a conversion which heralded his career as a preacher impelled by a self-taught theology.42 Finney and Clinton emphasized a common theme: the capacity of the individual to cope. Clinton developed this theme from the vantage of a market system which he had helped make more lively, knowing that men must have the confidence and determination to act for themselves, at the same time remembering that they were their brothers' keepers. As to the Bible, he agreed with William Jay: the individual citizen should be trusted with the full manual rather than with a stripped-down set of instructions. Clinton's remarks drew vitality from respect for spiritual and intellectual independence. By centring his criticism on Bishop Hobart, however, he struck at the High-Minded. The Republican regularity of these quondam Federalists, fuelled by hunger for office and power, stood as a partisan counterpart of the bishop's churchmanship. Clinton's appeal for religious harmony and his denunciation of sectarianism cloaked a condemnation of party as an instrument of intolerant power bent on persecuting Federalists and Clintonians who refused to disavow their respect for liberal leadership. Clinton stated this message clearly enough, and before mid-July his American Bible Society address had made its appearance in upstate Federalist newspapers.43 AGAINST THE PREDOMINANCE OF THE FEW

Continuing to cultivate elites as they stood outside party, Clinton again stressed the themes of personal independence and order in a midsummer

ioo Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

speech that he regarded as one of his most important statements. On 12 July, Eliphalet Nott, in need of a Phi Beta Kappa speaker and still determined to preserve Union College's independence from the regents, approached Clinton, who welcomed the opportunity to vex that board, which he no longer troubled to attend.44 Settling down in a "very oven of over-powering heat," he drafted an address in two days. Although he was confident that "the public sentiment is with us," he believed that the difficulty was "to make it speak": he wanted to sow perceptions and phrases that could be picked up and used by the moulders of opinion. On reviewing what he had written, Clinton felt that he had achieved this and that he could offer "more matter of an useful & patriotic nature than has ever been delivered in an hour."** The reception of the speech in the crowded Presbyterian church of Schenectady confirmed his confidence. He sent printed copies to John Adams, John Jay, and Andrew Jackson, and before the year ended the speech appeared in at least eight newspapers and in pamphlets published in New York, New Haven, and Albany.46 Clinton spoke in the vein of New York City's pre-revolutionary Independent Reflector, recalling William Livingston's desire to see the city become a centre of liberal and professional learning. Livingston had envisioned an American Athens, where men - untrammelled by Anglican "priestcraft," and recognizing social distinctions - gave "becoming regard to those who are advanced by the Wisdom of the Common Wealth. "47 Clinton, embracing Thomas Jefferson's commitment to liberty and progress, also said much about upheaval and convulsion. He accepted the evils of revolution for the sake of a greater good, and held that an American should take pride in the fact that "the principles of the American revolution" had become the "text-book of liberty" on which people in Greece, Spain, and Latin America were trying to build. To say that these people "are unfit for free government" was to ignore the effect of oppression: "The sweeping hand of despotism has confounded in one mass all the delicate coloring, the lights and shades of the picture." People appeared incapable of self-government only because of the oppression they had borne, argued Clinton. He granted that "great follies" could come with revolutionary upheaval, but these "transient mischiefs" were "mild when compared to the permanent calamities of arbitrary power." Clinton reduced the choice to a single alternative: "Either the happiness of the many or the predominance of the few must be sacrificed." Only through liberty could men find the ways of being free. To make the discomfort of drastic but liberating change more palatable, he contrasted revolution with arbitrary power: "The one is a sweeping deluge, an awful tornado, which quickly passes away; but the other is a volcano, continually ejecting rivers of lava

ioi

Contribution to an Opposition Position

- an earthquake burying whole cities in ruin."*8 Oppression must be understood as an active and malign force. Clinton defined the sources of tyranny and stated remedies for oppression in a way that might have rung true to members of the later Whig Party: "Almost all the calamities of man ... are ... to be imputed to erroneous views of religion, or bad systems of government." Clinton followed this proposition by stressing the incompatibility of liberty and power: "Either the predominance of intelligence will destroy the government or the government will destroy it." Unperverted Christianity taught the natural equality of man, he said. With the invention of printing, men had begun to discover both their capacity to rule themselves and the rights they shared equally. Further diffusion of knowledge would increasingly secure these rights and would provide greater ability freely to realize the public good, fulfilling the republican and democratic thrust of Christianity.49 Escape from tyranny and progress towards greater liberty was not irreversible, continued Clinton. Good citizens must guard against the "tendency of all human institutions to debasement." Guarding meant that education must be pursued in earnest. The learning that would carry people to higher levels of liberty in a unified republic - or at least keep them from slipping backward - would "attend ... the sacred cause of science" as well as religion. Advanced education must encompass moral and religious values and the laws of nature.5° The laws of nature provided the means by which morally informed patriots served their fellow citizens, and this service would maintain the forward thrust of the republic and dispel charlatanism if investigators paid heed "exclusively to the facts. "51 Americans must face the facts of their own condition, not allowing themselves to be led astray by leaders of factions - those "degenerate and unprincipled sons" who chose to "unite in a common crusade against the public good." It could "not ... be concealed that a spirit [was] active in the community which [tended] to the destruction of the Union," and this could be confronted only by statesmen, not by selfseeking politicians who were uninterested in the nature and roots of sectional difference. Most likely, the foundation of sectional discontents rested on a "moral" difference that was traceable to the institution of slavery, which "generates an anti-commercial and anti-manufacturing spirit." Clinton balanced these remarks by emphasizing the republican character of the South, a character which, paradoxically, rested on slay^ ery. He reminded his audience that slavery "produces a lofty sense of independence - which is among the strongest preservatives of our republican governments." In a world of repressive monarchies, the Southern spirit would serve as a necessary bulwark for the republic.

102 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

Different though the North and South might be, unity of mind founded on economic interdependence could be cultivated and achieved, maintained Clinton. He held that "to protect manufactures is to advance the growth of the raw materials of which they are made ... and to promote the wealth of any member or section of the Union, is to enhance its ability to use the fabrics and to consume the productions of the other." If this relationship was understood, "the growing expansion of liberal feelings, and the illuminating progress of political philosophy" would presage a breadth of mind that made for cooperation, tolerance, and compromise.s2 Over time, the intellectual development that would come with scientific exploration and the expansion of education would contribute to the understanding and discipline that would help create an enduring and well-governed Union. In the meantime, statesmen had to build the economic foundations that would foster the fulfilment of American nationhood. Without the work of intellectually competent men, party rule would stifle salutary change. Clinton felt satisfied that the speech "had enough about republicanism," but he pressed Henry Post for his opinion on the published essay "as a prudential... measure."53 He had endorsed revolution, holding turmoil to be an acceptable price for eventual progress. Anticipating a central strain of Whig thought, Clinton had emphasized the importance of public education to the maintenance of order and the conduct of government in a free republic. Provided through monitorial schools and Bible societies, education instilled values, basic skills, and self-control. Time and development would make Clinton's republic work. Hoping to appeal both to those who wanted change and to those who wanted order, he had omitted explicit exploration of the factor of time, but his republic was not to be frozen as it was in an eternal present. The principles of the Revolution did imply change. Clinton had argued that Christianity stated the equality of men, and he had assured his audience that "there is nothing 'under Heaven's wide hollowness,' which does not furnish aliment for the mind," presumably all minds.54 Yet by insisting on the virtues of Baconian empiricism, he had bent towards if he did not wholly embrace a particular strain of Presbyterianism - Old School Calvinism, which was becoming predominant south of New York and among the Scots-Irish, and which stressed individual salvation rather than social change. This Calvinism affirmed the absolute sovereignty of God, the duty of man, and the pre-eminence of divine law in nature and in the order of human affairs. Since the law that ordered human affairs was God-given, humanity must wait on "providential progress." Clinton reflected this attitude as he dealt with slavery, regarding it as an evil that must pass in time, but which, for the present, contributed to the republicanism of Southerners.

103 Contribution to an Opposition Position The Old School felt uncomfortable when men of limited formal education took seriously both Enlightenment praise of free inquiry and the democracy implicit in the Revolution. The excess of intellectual confidence among the unschooled had begun to multiply American religious sects unduly, threatening religious order and perhaps social and political order. 55 Clinton's participation in the work of the American Bible Society and the Presbyterian Education Society did not endorse unrestrained religious speculation or unqualified millennial expectation. He envisioned disciplined progress in which the basic skills of men informed of their duty were employed under the guidance of a wise and knowledgeable elite. Still, current political conditions made practical Clinton's emphasis on revolution. Carefully cultivating people capable of forming the opinion of others, he sought to ready them for quick and decisive political action against the deceiving "jacobins" who meant to impose oppressive party rule. With this in mind, he made one of the few changes in the manuscript of the address as he prepared it for publication. He had spoken of "cities" being buried by the lava of tyranny, thereby hinting of the Bucktail power which had imposed the tax law. He scratched out "cities" and replaced it with "countries."56 This change shifted attention from the northern and western tax revolt against New York City and Albany, and demanded that the voters question the Van Burenite contention that party regularity must be the cement of the nation. Revolution within New York might better preserve the Union. FOR THE P O P U L A R ELECTION OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS

To return to the governor's office or to win New York support as a presidential candidate, Clinton had to demonstrate that he could reach beyond the audience that had heard his Phi Beta Kappa address. At the very least, he had to specify how moulders of opinion should present his more purely political case. By the time Nott asked him to speak, Clinton had decided that demanding the popular election of presidential electors on a general ticket would disrupt Van Burenite efforts to control the Bucktail herd. Empowering the voters to choose the electors rather than leaving the choice to the legislators would fulfil the democratic thrust of the Bucktail's new constitution. On the other hand, Van Buren's support of the caucus and Crawford meant that Van Buren had to defend the legislative choice of electors; but Crawford could not command the backing of New Yorkers at the polls, and Van Buren became open to the charge that he had promised the electoral vote of the state in return for something. To deliver, he had to manage the legislators

104 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

when they chose the electors. Clinton thought the people of the state were ready to be made suspicious, to be aroused, and to revolt against party power. 57 Clinton estimated that most New Yorkers who had immigrated from neighbouring states stayed in touch with the friends and relatives they had left behind. Of the surrounding states from which people came to New York - Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and the six New England states - all except Vermont had practised the popular choice of electors in 1820, and five of them had chosen their electors on general tickets. (In 1824 Massachusetts would shift from popular choice in districts to a general ticket system. The inhabitants of the New England states would lean towards Adams, increasing the pressure for the popular election of electors.) Clinton reasoned that if there was a general system in place, he might win the largest bloc of electors - thirty-six - which would enable him to shoulder aside Adams, whom he regarded as the most formidable contender.58 Clinton picked the pseudonym "Washington" when, on 26 July, he settled down to write, intending to "demolish faction" by advocating the popular choice of electors on a general ticket. The name evoked the memory of the liberating father of the republic at a time when household manufactures were declining and when commerce was driving its wedge into the benevolent patriarchy of the corporate family and the workplace. Only somewhat veiled in anonymity, Clinton posed as a creative and liberal father to all, fighting against oppression and opening possibilities. Having dwelt on the emptiness of magisterial power in New York State, he claimed Washington's mantle and thereby his own right to restore true liberty and harmony in the republic. He, as magistrate, would face down the unneighbourly values of the marketplace which had come to dominate legislative life. He would both reflect the will and serve the common good of the people, becoming the quintessence of republican monarchy that George Washington had imbibed, if only indirectly, from Viscount Bolingbroke's Idea of a Patriot King.59 On finishing his five brief essays, Clinton commented: "They are plain and short. The facts are undeniable & the reasoning irresistible."60 He had stated his case pungently, weaving through the pieces a unifying strain - legislatures were a seat of corruption and should have no part in the choosing of the nation's chief magistrate. Citizens had ample evidence of "the movements of corrupt and profligate men, in all parts of the country," he observed, and these men's well-known activities gave "reason to fear that we are on the eve of a great political convulsion, which may shipwreck the hopes and fortunes of America." Furthermore, it was "generally believed" that the votes of New York had been "sold in the political market at Washington." Offering suspicion as fact, he

105 Contribution to an Opposition Position concluded that a "notorious adventurer ... has by a system of bargain and sale ... attained unmerited consequence ... and after much prudery and some hesitation, pledged the votes of New-York on the tender of carte-blanche"; and by "abominable prostitution," this strumpet in politics would gain high office as secretary of state or ambassador.61 Pointing out that the Constitution of the United States specified that neither federal senators nor representatives could be electors, Clinton held that caucus nominations usurped a power of election that was meant to be left with the people. Congressional nomination, heretofore tantamount to election, created great risk of corruption, he warned, for it was "easy ... to seduce members of Congress, and ... difficult if not impracticable, to corrupt the people." This second objection to congressional nomination applied equally to the legislative choice of electors. In New York, eighty-one state senators and assemblymen, representing a minority of the state's population, might combine to cast its electoral votes. So small a group could readily be approached by a foreign government as by domestic intriguers, whereas the 260,000 New Yorkers entitled to vote could not be effectively purchased.62 Clinton broadened this point to condemn the iniquity of state legislators generally. They sold their votes to charter "moneyed institutions" and then retired "with purses well replenished with gold," thumbing their noses at the public as they went. "Ill-omened vultures," the lobbyists had become "a distinct profession," and only rare souls resisted them.63 Having defined legislators as men who put laws up for sale, Clinton strove to make graphic the corruption embraced by the selfseeking "myrmidons of faction." In the centres of power, "day after day, night after night," the nation's "most profligate and unprincipled men" held "their political orgies"; and over them circled "the vultures of pollution and depredation," wheeling above scenes where "the purity of ... magistracy" had "been assailed by the vilest offers of pollution."64 The Van Burenite "cabinet council" had kept silent about the manner of choosing presidential electors, and Clinton charged that they were busy picking candidates for the state's legislature who would kill any bill that gave the choice of electors to the voters. Since these legislators would meet again in November to make their choice of electors, they would receive extra pay for an extra session. To put an end to their scheme, said Clinton, the people had only to insist that the one great gain made under the new constitution - the right of more voters to choose more officials - now be honoured. Suggesting that Van Buren would rule as King Saul, he recalled that "the Jews abandoned a theocracy to be governed by a king." Then he challenged New Yorkers: "If the people of this state will submit to the vilest usurpation and

106 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

consent to a deprivation of their high franchise, then they ... deserve the bridle in their mouths and the whip on their backs."65 If New Yorkers could no longer choose their own chief priest, they had at hand a David prepared to rescue them from tyranny. This was a shrewd remark, for sympathetic clergy would welcome the implicit comparison of Nott to Ahimelech and would more readily spread "Washington's" message.66 Just before he made this statement, Clinton quoted at length from the message he had given to the November sitting of the 1820 legislature, when he had warned of the inevitability of "intrigue" in the legislative choice of electors, an evil that could be avoided if the "sovereign authority" - the voters - were to do the choosing. Taking to task those purists who favoured the choice of electors in districts, he had pointed out that states in which the voters were divided could, under a district system, be outvoted by states in which the voters supported one candidate. Until an amendment to the United States Constitution provided for the nationwide choice of electors by district, the safe course for New York was a general-ticket law. As Clinton warned in the third piece of his "Washington" series, election by general ticket would ensure that Virginia could not outvote New York.67 A general ticket meant that a Northern candidate would have a better chance. By pointing out that in 1820 he had recommended that electors be popularly chosen, Clinton both staked a prior claim to increased democracy and spoke for power at the town level. Now property qualifications no longer limited participation of white male adults in state elections, making it logical to remove the legislators as intermediaries.68 Equally important, the thrust of his polemic defined party as a corrupt creature of legislative power, a creature of bargain and sale sharing the morality and power of the remote market centres. If this point was accepted, it followed easily that the leaders of the Bucktails were acting as a secretive knot of men who served only their own interests, not those of their neighbours. Convinced that he had cast damaging light on Van Burenite plans, Clinton saw to the widespread publication of the "Washington" essays. They not only appeared as a pamphlet. After the Schenectady Cabinet printed them during the first week of August, they made their way into at least fourteen other newspapers before the end of October.69 One roving postal investigator reported that " 'Washington' had a great tendency to 'fan the embers.'" Western New York opinion had "absolutely changed," with the Bucktails much "cut up" by the "doctrine of ... Electors."70 Something else had changed. Reading "Washington," even a dull Bucktail could discern De Witt Clinton looking out from behind the veil of retirement.

107 Contribution to an Opposition Position CLINTON A S S U M E S T H E M A N T L E O F "CANAL GLORY"

While presenting his political case in the guise of Washington, Clinton seized every opportunity to dramatize his achievements as the architect of an integrated and dynamic economy. The success of the opening of the sloop lock between Troy and Lansingburgh on 10 September encouraged him to repeat the ceremony. Planning this first show, Clinton looked forward to "great goings on, cannon, dinner, ball and thousands of people." James Kent was prominent in these festivities. The sloop Royal Oak, bearing Clinton, Kent, and Samuel Young, rose between two companies of elite militia who were lining the sides of the lock. At its masthead, the spectators saw a very large flag bearing the chancellor's name, the implicit message being that the largest lock in America would not have been completed had William A. Duer been allowed to block "the enlightened policy of this state."71 Writing anonymously, Clinton prepared a detailed description of the ceremony for the Albany Daily Advertiser. In it, he argued that opening new communications by such works as the lock created "more markets," which in turn meant that "more competition would be created," breeding the rivalry of different people in different places to satisfy the needs of consumers and leading to general prosperity. If Troy were the sole entrepot of the Upper Hudson "the competition of places would be destroyed," for the merchants of Troy could easily combine, and "the farmer and manufacturer would depend on the volition of the merchant.'*72 Crafted not only for farmers but for the many newly enfranchised journeymen who aspired to become masters and saw their employer more as a model than as an economic foe, Clinton's statement suggested that the canal gave freedom from the local tyrannies which held such people back. Although Clinton had written up the day's proceedings with care, he did not seek publicity for them, for the opening of the Erie Canal into the Hudson at Albany in October would be a better way of exploiting the capital's function as "an infallible barometer of the general sentiment" which "receives and communicates impressions."73 State printing contracts and the partisan newspaper systems encouraged by these contracts had made Albany a communications centre; the regular Albany Argus would not be able to ignore a major drama staged in the capital without failing to participate in the forming of that "aggregation of individual sentiment" which made up the sovereign public opinion.74 Reports of the Albany celebration would make their way into newspapers filled with material meant to prepare voters for the election that was to take place in the first week of November. Clinton

io8 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

urged that sympathetic "gazettes be filled with appeals to the good sense and patriotism of the people," admonishing them to support the "doctrine of electors" and oppose a caucus nomination in Congress.75 Merely a leading actor in the theatre of celebration, he could not be directly tied to the verbal pounding that the regulars would receive. On 19 September, Samuel Young and Clinton met. Shortly afterwards, Mayor Charles E. Dudley received a message from one of the canal commissioners which led him to schedule a special meeting of the common council for three in the afternoon. The Albany Daily Advertiser had already appeared on the streets of the city, carrying not only the last number of "Washington" but also a notice requesting all the citizens of Albany who wanted to celebrate the passage of the first boat from the canal into the Hudson to meet at the Capitol at four o'clock. Two committees of arrangements were struck on that day, and Clinton supporters came off quite well in the nine-member body named at the public meeting: it included William James, Peter Gansevoort, Solomon Van Rensselaer, and Israel Smith (one of the founders of the Albany Chamber of Commerce). After conferring with Clinton, Young recommended to both committees that they schedule the celebration for Wednesday, 8 October - the day after the senate, sitting as the Court of Errors, would hear its last case. Members of that body would thus be free to participate.76 With the date set and made public, Clinton wrote to Post, Pintard, and others, asking them to attend. Then he moved to place himself at the centre of the celebration. The common council had specified that Dudley would offer "a congratulatory address to the canal commissioners," that was and the "Order of Arrangements" published in the Albany Argus on 3 October listed only that speech. The following day, Clinton told Henry Seymour, the Bucktail secretary of the Canal Commission, that he would, as a courtesy, "make a very brief & general reply to the congratulatory address" of Mayor Dudley.77 The Argus also carried a notice stating that Clinton, as general grand high priest of the General Grand Chapter of the United States, requested the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the State of New York to meet to participate in the ceremonies, and that he invited all subordinate chapters to attend in their regalia. Ezra Ames, the Albany painter who was grand high priest of the New York Chapter, had already prepared the key symbolic element of the celebration, the metal plate which the Freemasons would place beneath the capstone of the lock at the Albany Basin.78 A report of the proceedings at Albany would stimulate the imagination of the many who could not be present and who might not even read the printed speeches, but who had witnessed the cornerstones of local buildings laid with Masonic ceremony. Ames's chapter, one of

109 Contribution to an Opposition Position

the better jewelled and gowned in the state, had spent $600 on new crimson robes for its officers in 1817.™ Masonic opulence at the site of a great public work would argue that prosperity would spread from the efforts of munificent men who were devotees of intellectual and moral improvement. The grandeur of "red" Masonry would suggest the plentitude which the republic, properly led, might provide. The vision may have had an unexpected influence, for Joseph Smith later remembered that at this season in 1823, Moroni appeared to him in a robe of brilliant white to tell of the buried plates on which the Book of Mormon had been written.80 While Ames laboured on the preparations in Albany, John Pintard, not given much notice, hastened to drum up Manhattan celebrants. On 3 October, two days after Clinton wrote to him, Pintard held a meeting at Cadwallader D. Colden's law office which was attended by Haines, another lawyer, and six men who were closely tied to the city's banks and insurance companies. The Bucktails whom Pintard had invited - collector Jonathan Thompson, naval officer John Ferguson, recorder Richard Riker, and John Targee - all stayed away. George Newbold, the cashier of the Bank of America, sent his excuses and good wishes.81 Pintard and his friends had some success in mounting a New York City presence at the Albany celebration. After pressing Stephen Allen into the chair at a noon meeting at the Tontine Coffee House on 6 October, Golden and Robert Bogardus (a Clintonian lawyer who had served as president of the Franklin Bank) took over. The meeting quickly approved a list of more than sixty men, politically a varied lot, to go to Albany.82 The steamboat Richmond had been scheduled to leave at nine the next morning, carrying representatives of the whole "Republican family." Since only about fifteen men showed up, the organizers rounded up volunteers. Up the river, at West Point, they loaded on the academy's band. Although Superintendent Sylvanus Thayer chose to steer clear of the doings at Albany, Richard Willis, the leader of the band, made up for his chief's absence. He had prepared a composition which soon became known as "Clinton's Grand Canal March." It was played whenever Clintonians could manage to scrape a few musicians together.83 The band helped redeem the failure to dragoon a good portion of the Tontine list onto the Richmond. So did a meal which the Clintonians arranged at the New-York Coffee House. At three in the afternoon of the day of the celebration, some 150 men sat down before a four-foot baron of beef. "Game of every description" and Galapagos turtle surrounded the main course. After eating their share of sirloin and the other "luxuries and dainties," the diners turned to a very large pigeon

I io Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

pie. Simultaneously with the incision, two live carrier pigeons bearing poems in praise of American science and the union of waters began to flutter about the room. Clinton was toasted, Jackson was toasted; and Joseph Gardiner Swift, surveyor of the Port of New York and president of the banquet, raised his glass to "More love - More wealth - More wine."84 At Albany, as dawn broke on 8 October, the thud of cannon echoed across the Hudson Valley. To a national salute of twenty-one guns and the peal of bells, the two committees that had arranged the celebration moved off by carriage to join Clinton and the other canal commissioners, who were nine miles to the north, at the point where the Erie and Champlain canals met, and where they all breakfasted aboard the packet De Witt Clinton before heading south on the canal. At Gibbonsville, almost opposite the point where the Poesten Kill entered the Hudson, two other packets awaited them. First, there was the Chief Engineer, which carried the members of the Albany Military Association and their band. This packet took the lead, and the Henry Seymour fell in line behind the De Witt Clinton. More cannon boomed out as the Chief Engineer came in sight of the United States Arsenal, where the three boats stopped to pick up the officers of the post. Farther on, almost opposite Wynant's Kill, a fourth packet, the Chancellor Kent, entered the line just behind the De Witt Clinton, leaving the Henry Seymour in the rear. "The banks of the canal, the bridges, and the roads, were thronged with carriages and citizens, and the whole presented a mass moving onward to the rich music of the band, with flags displayed, and with every indication of joy." At fifteen minutes after noon, the boats passed under the new bridge at the base of Lawrence Street and entered the small basin that led to the Albany lock. At this point the De Witt Clinton manoeuvred ahead of the Chief Engineer and entered the lock.85 Meanwhile, the Masons had made ready. After robing at the Masonic Hall they had adjourned to the arsenal, which stood at the southeast corner of Lawrence Street and Broadway (then called Market Street). There the grand officers put on their crimson robes and their band tuned up. From the upper story of the arsenal the Masons could see the canal packets coming, which enabled them to set off so that their procession crossed the Lawrence Street bridge just as the De Witt Clinton was passing under it. Their column of officers and priests - with one man carrying the Bible and the square and compass, another the plate and scroll, some others carrying white wands, others drawn swords, still others with ceremonial silver vessels filled with the substances that would sanctify the lock - lent esoteric majesty and the trappings of honour.

111 Contribution to an Opposition Position While the De Witt Clinton waited in the lock, the Masons laid and consecrated the capstone. The people who lined the side of the basin, stood along the pier, or looked on from windows and roofs would not be able to hear the prayers and chants of the Masons, but they could see their movements and the work of Philip Hooker, the architect. Using eight large tree trunks, Hooker had thrown an arch over the width of the lock, with adjacent, smaller arches standing on each wall. The formal capitals of the columns had been fashioned from autumn foliage and evergreens, which decorated the arches as well. On approaching the lock and arches, the Masons' front ranks had divided. The highest officers passed through them and circled the lock once. Coming to the arch on the northern side, they set in place the metal plate, which bore the names of the canal commissioners, topped by Clinton's as their president; they then put the capstone over it. Consecrating the stone with corn, wine, and oil, Ezra Ames prayed that "the all Bountiful Creator of the universe bless the inhabitants of this State with all the necessaries, conveniences and comforts of life." After the officers had circled the lock three more times, the Masonic proceedings drew to a close, punctuated "by the discharge of nine cannon, by three times three, with a flourish of music between each three." At this point the De Witt Clinton descended in the lock to emerge into the lower basin.86 Dr Samuel Latham Mitchell briefly delayed the passage from the lock. Ever treading the thin line between ceremony and spoof, between Enlightenment optimism and Romantic self-consciousness, he had arrived that morning with the New York City delegation, armed with two bottles of water, one from the mid-Atlantic, the other from the Indian Ocean. At the request of "several respectable citizens," he poured some water from the bottles into the lock, hallowing it in the name of "Great Neptune." Having sanctified the union of worldwide and internal commerce, Mitchill suggested that the "the chemical analysis of these specimens of the marine fluid is a great desideratum" and that "a faithful report of their contents from the scientific gentlemen among you ... may be registered among the proceedings of this happy and glorious day."8? When the barge floated onto the waters of the Albany Basin, the two twelve-pound field pieces stationed on the heights of Albany fired, the light artillery on the pier fired, bells pealed, and the "assembled multitude" shouted. From the deck of the packet, Clinton could now see the result of Solomon Van Rensselaer's work as marshal. Moored in the Hudson, opposite the lock and on the far side of the foot of the pier, lay the steamboats Chancellor Livingston, Richmond, and Fire Fly, "crowded with beauty and fashion, and decorated with flags." Spectators peopled the land side of the basin, and on the pier waited the

112 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

groups that would parade to the Capitol, the line-up there expressing Clinton's claim to lead in unison the varied elements in New York society. Headed by six of the elite uniform companies which provided their own uniforms and accoutrements, it included Governor Yates and other high state officials, the senate, and dignitaries from benevolent societies and mechanic societies. Last came the members of the Society of Apprentices. Not slotted into the original arrangements, they had been brought together on Market Street, probably when the New York City delegation pointed out that Manhattan women had provided them with a flag.88 Clinton reviewed the groups assembled on the pier as the De Witt Clinton, towed by the oarsmen of twelve yawls, made its way down the inside of the pier and then up the river side to a point immediately behind the steamboats. There the mayor and the canal commissioners disembarked and fitted into line immediately in front of the engineers. A cannon on the pier sounded, and the march began. Led by Solomon Van Rensselaer, the column wended its way to State Street, turned to the right, and climbed the steep hill to the Capitol Park. Throughout the march cannon thundered. The guns on the hill fired a national salute, and the guns on the pier echoed shot for shot and then fell silent. The upper guns continued until they had boomed out fifty-four more times, once for each of the state's counties - except for one, for there were then fifty-five counties. Fifty-four discharges had been specified in the published general orders for the day, leaving Yates to reflect on the missing county as he drew near the flag and the evergreendecorated pavilion in the park. Clinton and the other commissioners, Dudley and his common council committee, and William James and his citizens' committee took their places in the pavilion. There were no seats there for the members of the Bucktail senate and none for the governor: the missing boom was the new county named "Yates."89 The mayor of Albany rather than the governor represented the Bucktails and led off with an assertion of Van Burenite legislative and fiscal responsibility. "Some of the ablest asserters of the people's rights, and most faithful guardians of their treasure" had been cautious about committing the state to "an undertaking of uncommon magnitude and indefinite extent," he stated. The "prudence and circumspection" of these legislators had been embodied in the canal law of April 1816, which had authorized surveys and estimates. Equally praiseworthy, the commissioners of the Canal Fund - the lieutenant-governor, comptroller, attorney general, surveyor general, secretary of state, and treasurer merited "great praise" for "procuring loans on the best terms." The late Constitutional Convention had aided their work when it specified that a number of taxes be appropriated to defray the cost of the canals.

113 Contribution to an Opposition Position

Finally, referring to the acting canal commissioners - Young, Holley, Seymour, and Bouck - Mayor Dudley lauded their "admirable course ... in making contracts in every practicable case ... at the lowest possible rate of compensation." Clinton responded briefly, emphasizing the importance of sound public credit and the peaceful use of money for the development of a more prosperous society. "It is believed that there is no instance on record of the payment of a large public debt," he said, and consequently the state should avoid the "greatest calamities" by regularly setting aside money to meet its obligations. Then Clinton reminded his audience of the eve of the War of 1812, when he and Gouverneur Morris had failed to obtain federal funds for the Canal: "We ... hope that this state will present another great example to mankind by the speedy discharge of a debt ... incurred, not for promoting the effusion of human blood ... but for encouraging the arts of civilized life, strengthening the ties of social connexion ... and advancing the great interests of productive industry." Capital, he argued, should be invested to make all members of society more prosperous, creating a way of life more richly interdependent, more specialized, and more mentally demanding and satisfying. New York must therefore have "resources that will enable her ... to bring the blessings of moral and intellectual cultivation to every man's door." Clinton, stressing the responsibility to spend to enrich the lives of New Yorkers, defined fiscal responsibility in terms of creditworthiness rather than thrift. William Bayard, speaking for the city delegation, offered comment that hinted at Clinton's right to be the "northern candidate" for the presidency. In 1823 political turmoil gripped Illinois: one party of citizens seemed strong enough to revise the state's constitution and turn Illinois into a slave state. The threat refreshed the memory of the dispute over Missouri and sharpened awareness of the fact that New England lay at a greater distance from the states above the Ohio River than did the South. Bayard pointed out that the canal joined the "waters of our inland seas with the Atlantic," serving to "unite a large portion of our people in strong ties of a community of commercial interest ... and [to] secure & consolidate the union of these States." Thus, the canal would preserve "the example of a representative government founded on the people's will." Bayard equated Northern union with the maintenance and survival of true American republicanism. Investment by the State of New York ranged beyond the welfare of its citizens: it promised to forge a united North, perhaps saving the republic. William James made the longest speech of the day, drawing together and extending themes offered by Clinton and Bayard. Prominent in Albany, he could claim as much as Dudley to be the voice of that

114 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

city. Certainly, he spoke for his friend, Clinton. Above all, James emphasized the transforming nature of commerce. The links to the states to the west must foster the "liberty and happiness of man," he said. The understanding of that happiness would develop because commerce, improved by transportation, brought economic growth and "superior intelligence." Given this pattern of development, "neither tyrannical aristocracies, or intriguing demagogues" could "ever succeed in corrupting our citizens, or blighting our liberties." An increasingly diversified society and economy, emphasizing special skills and functions, but held together by a common respect for liberty and property, could not be gulled by pretension or appeal to "passion." James then observed that God had singled out particular men as His special "instruments" for promoting a "great enterprise." When their providence-ordained work had been completed, the people might indulge in the "pleasing passion" of gratitude. The Grand Canal existed because God had provided "a man possessing every quality calculated to arrest public attention and confidence," able to marshal support for it. Whereas Dudley had defined the April 1816 statute as the legal foundation of the canal system, James drove home Clinton's prior claim by pointing to John Pintard in the audience - the man who had been secretary of the December 1815 meeting from which had come De Witt Clinton's memorial for an Erie Canal.9° After this, the celebration wound down. Clinton stood back and judged it a success. The political give and take had continued as sparring over food and wine. Men who scanned the published toasts to measure combativeness would find Clinton's supporters jabbing with spirit. Two thrusts particularly pleased him: when Stephen Van Rensselaer gave "Thomas Eddy & Jonas Platt, the earliest & most efficient friends of the Canal System," the patroon appealed to Quakers and Federalists; and when Hosack concluded the toasting with "the Waters of the Canal, may they cool the fever which has lately disturbed the tranquility of the state," the physician reminded New York investors of their fears.91 On 6 October, Alexander Bryan Johnson, a Utica banker and a creditor of a number of canal contractors, had written Clinton that the chief benefit of the Canal might be "the consolidating & other political influences it exerts over our state; & over many, perhaps all, of our confederate republics." Delighted with Johnson's comment, Clinton now replied that "the ceremony was impressive beyond measure." Accepting the Albany Daily Advertiser's estimate of fifty thousand spectators, he thought that "never was there more sincere and general joy."92 The work of consolidating, meshing people and areas into a harmoniously functioning whole, had been lauded, and the word of the achievements of God's man had been proclaimed to harvesttime New York.

115

Contribution to an Opposition Position

The press of the state covered the celebration of 8 October rather fully. The Albany newspapers and several New York City journals carried both the speeches and the events of the day.93 Outside these centres, the words of Dudley, Clinton, James, and Bayard appeared in Cooperstown, Utica, Waterloo, and Homer newspapers.94 Although six hinterland Bucktail newspapers ignored the event, at least twenty-four papers in twenty-one centres outside Albany and New York City reported the festivities, often including the toasts given at Rockwell's and the names preserved under the capstone. Only the Palmyra Wayne Sentinel reported the celebration and the burying of the plate without mentioning Clinton's name.95 From his position on the Canal Commission, Clinton had managed to create a media event on the eve of the election of 1823. THE M E S S A G E OF A L I B E R A L S T A T E S M A N

Without shedding the fiction of his political retirement, Clinton had, since the spring, engaged in a vigorous campaign of political propaganda. He counted on drawing Young's following to his support, but he did not expend most of his energy in establishing ties with factional leaders. Instead, often tapping powerful religious currents, he sought to build broad public favour which could be marshalled behind his candidacy for the governorship or the presidency. The fragility of Bucktail cohesion made it possible to appeal directly to a variety of groups. On Manhattan, Clinton relied on Haines's cultivation of diverse constituencies. Haines's City Hall speech had held up the Bucktail failure to protect the economy of Manhattan and suggested that Clinton and his followers would settle the tax question so that credit would be available, the growth of capital would not be inhibited, and the wealthy would bear a fair share of the tax burden. While Clinton sought the financial backing and active involvement of monied men, he also meant to have the votes of the city's artisans and workers. Similarly, the Northern union that James and Bayard promised meant that young farmers who moved west would not be obliged to compete against slave agricultural labour to earn a stake on a farm. Rather than propose fiscal alternatives, Clinton mounted an oblique attack on the High-Minded Federalists who had acted as legislative managers for the Van Burenite leadership. His speech before the American Bible Society condemned Bishop Hobart's efforts to defend hierarchical authority. This condemnation served to link closed-minded spiritual authority with the efforts of Verplanck and Sudam to establish a judicial system that threatened political and professional elitism. Clin-

116 Towards a "Revolution in Public Opinion"

ton stood for free access to scripture and for confidence in the ability of people to read and eventually discover truths that brought spiritual and social prosperity. He thereby deferred to the local leaders who were concerned to guide and mould opinion, managing the progress of enlightenment through Bible societies or through their professions. Undisturbed by "jacobinism," the people would prefer to order their lives through revealed truth; the discontent with the new arrangements for choosing justices of the peace augured well. Clinton endorsed change. Praising revolution, he condemned tyranny. Condemning legislative faction and political bargaining, he demanded that the people - meaning enfranchised males - choose the presidential electors. Calling for an improved transportation system, he promised to undo mercantile monopolies that exploited farmers and manufacturers, thus denying economic opportunity and growth. Popular power and general prosperity could be had because the people were capable of enlightenment; necessarily, they must learn by doing. Although Clinton emphasized a Baconian empiricism that fitted with Old School Calvinism, he insisted on the necessity of liberal, "scientific" analysis in the planning and management of human affairs. A good lawyer, such as Kent, did his duty well when he discredited a position that was not informed by broad considerations of policy and improvement. The law as a science must serve prosperity rather than property. The thrust of this position tended to give power to judges and executive officers, who could see the means of future prosperity, and to deny power to legislators. Clinton's confidence that more education for more people would ensure social and political order fitted closely with his faith in the effects of economic expansion. Rightly managed expansion brought what Alexander Bryan Johnson termed "consolidation." Consolidation tied citizens together in ordered harmony, even when they did different things in different places. Improved transportation and education implied, for Clinton, an increasingly successful adaptation by New York's population rather than a rootless, place-to-place movement of people without particular skills. The most disciplined and "scientific" would lead by example in honoured callings: law, medicine, engineering, and science itself. Clinton's egalitarian and educational preachments strongly implied a meritocracy marked by excellence and unselfish dedication, a meritocracy that might question the credentials of gentleman scholars of his stamp. In the Clintonian view, however, human relationships had to be defined by means other than High-Minded and Van Burenite political management, which seemed to have no end but partisan power in the service of interest. Lecturing the captive Yates at the Albany celebration, De Witt Clinton and his friends promised to preserve the republic and provide prosperity through liberalism and capitalism.

5 "A More Temperate State of Things": The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

The Albany celebration completed Clinton's initial effort to build on social and economic factors in American life while condemning party regularity and legislative dominance. Having dramatized his message, he counted on the tax law to bring support from wealthy New York City men who would supply funds and inspire organization.' Nathaniel Carter of the Statesman and Carter's friend Charles Haines had begun to forge a position designed to attract their backing without alienating the many New York City voters who struggled to cope with the burden of high rents and declining opportunities for artisans and mechanics.2 Clinton extended their work not only by emphasizing the rightfulness of change; he also championed the power of free citizens, each possessed of the knowledge of God and the practical knowledge that enabled people to prosper. After presenting this subtext as a religious comment in New York City, Clinton had stressed its political implications when he spoke in Schenectady and when he wrote his "Washington" essays in Albany. Although Clinton believed that the capital area both fostered and mirrored public opinion in the state, he had to know at firsthand the drift of feeling on Manhattan and in its surroundings and to spy out any possibilities that might crop up to make that commercial centre receptive to the visions of leadership and social order which he had sketched out. He had also to assess the possibility of drawing in unhappy regulars and finding common ground to enable the city merchants for whom William Bayard spoke to stand with upstate rural voters who wanted to tax banks and elect their justices of the peace. Clinton and

118 "A More Temperate State of Things"

those who were willing to back him had to identify local leaders, men who could endorse the future of the republic as described by Bayard and William James, an essentially metropolitan conception that turned on the role of New York City and its environs. A recently projected New Jersey canal enabled Clinton to shift to Manhattan while maintaining the posture of a promoter more interested in "canal glory" than in office. In 1822, George P. Macculloch of Morristown, president of the Morris County Agricultural Society, had argued for a canal that would cut across northern New Jersey and link the Lehigh and Delaware rivers with New York Bay, providing the City of New York and northern New Jersey with access to anthracite coal. Macculloch presented his case to Clinton in the spring of 1823.3 Clinton arranged to look over the route with Benjamin Wright, and with that engineer he set off for New York City five days after the Albany celebration. The two men departed from David Hosack's house, Clinton's base of operations until he left the city at the end of November.'* Returning to New York City after a week in New Jersey, Clinton eventually drew up a report that advocated a state-built canal, which he predicted would turn New Jersey into "the greatest manufacturing country in America." However, he held back publication of the report until after the November election.5 Clinton was not an invisible presence on Manhattan. New York City newspapers reported that he had come to explore the New Jersey canal and to build up interest in the project.6 Occasionally, a Manhattan supporter linked his name to heroic liberalism in Europe and Latin America,7 but friendly newspapers continued to emphasize that he was a retired statesman who no longer sought political fame. The NewYork Spectator defined him as "a private man," resting his "claims to ... gratitude ... upon his measures for internal improvement."8 A piece that the Evening Post copied from the Baltimore Morning Chronicle argued that Clinton could "never expect to accomplish another project equal in ... grandeur to his present one"; he should stay with it and then retire "in the bowers of literature."9 Some people, such as the Calhounite Henry Wheaton, believed Clinton to be permanently vanquished: "If it were worth while to break a butterfly on a wheel, we could easily demolish him."10 Sidelined, and comfortably lodged in the wealthy Third Ward, Clinton observed an election in which New York City started to change from an unfriendly constituency to a fertile source of votes. T H E 1 8 2 3 C A M P A I G N : LONG I S L A N D The struggle for New York City's seats had actually begun almost two months earlier on eastern Long Island, a New England enclave and

119 The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

scarcely a Clintonian bailiwick. Suffolk County was part of the largely rural First Senate District, which besides New York County - the Island of Manhattan - included the counties of Kings, Queens, and Richmond. John A. King, angered at the passage of the tax bill and "extremely violent on the Presidential question against Crawford," chose to retire from the upper house.11 The departure of this son of Rufus King presented a clear challenge: the Van Burenite regulars must elect from the First District a state senator who would stand by the choice of the congressional caucus. Clinton and the New- York American agreed that if they succeeded it would increase Van Buren's capacity to marshal regular senators to block any bill granting the popular election of electors.12 Heightened interest in tariff protection made it unlikely that the regulars would easily be able to duplicate the 52.9 percent of Suffolk's vote that Daniel D. Tompkins had won in 1820. Long Island's extensive sheep raising generated some pro-tariff sentiment, and more came from the whalers of Sag Harbor, who wanted protection against imported Russian tallow. Hemp growers there questioned the meaning of Crawford's call for a "judicious revision" of the tariff and his opposition to the pro-tariff memorials coming before Congress.13 The question of the popular choice of presidential electors drew strength from this Long Island protectionism. One of the first signs of difficulty for Clinton's foes came in Southampton, where on 3 September, pro-Adams Republicans met to pledge support only to candidates who favoured the popular election of electors and were "known to be friendly to domestic manufactures."14 When Mordecai Noah charged that Clintonians had a hand in the Southampton meeting,15 Charles King's American pointed out that Southampton had not backed Clinton: "in the wars of 'unchastened ambition'" it had given "a round 400 for the suppression of that ambition." Noah, according to King, had denounced a legitimate Republican meeting called to send four delegates to the county's convention.16 But an East Hampton meeting, tepidly endorsing tariff protection, warned that the Southamptonites should remember that the hierarchy of county and district conventions, topped by state and federal caucuses, had served them as a "barrier to the encroachment of bold ambition."17 The Suffolk County convention of 7 October did not dispel the appearance of division among regulars. After nominating two candidates for the assembly and choosing two delegates to the senate district convention, it attempted to hold bolters in line by requesting all candidates to the legislature "to ... procure a law ... providing for the choice of electors ... by the people."18 Unsettled by signs of revolt, the Long Island regulars responded artfully at the senate district level. Their convention met in Brooklyn on

120 "A More Temperate State of Things"

15 October and promised that if the people wanted the popular election of electors, they would have it.1? This meeting put forward Abel Huntington, a Connecticut-born East Hampton surgeon, for the upper house. A firm regular, Huntington had won a seat in the last senate to sit under the constitution of 1777 and might blunt a thrust from Sag Harbor's venerable ex-congressman, Ebenezer Sage, who was also a Connecticut-born physician and an anti-Clintonian, but was a protectionist.20 Huntington's nomination reflected physicians' fears of the tide of "root doctors" that the New England-based Thomsonian movement encouraged. Long Island medical doctors had been politically active.21 Their political experience and their concern to impose professional authority could jibe logically and politically with Van Burenite regularity, David Hosack notwithstanding. Undismayed, the Suffolk Bucktails continued their revolt. Convening on the day after the senate district convention met, they protested one of the two assembly nominees chosen by the regular county convention. Dr Charles H. Havens, a member of two previous assemblies and county clerk since 1821, lived in Smithtown and therefore represented the western half of Suffolk. The Republicans of Brookhaven, immediately to the east of Smithtown, argued that their town paid one-fifth of the county tax and had one-fifth of Suffolk's electors, and that "agreeable to public usage" it should have the "right of nominating" from western Suffolk. They denounced the congressional caucus, endorsed the popular election of electors, and named Josiah Smith as their candidate. Not a supporter of De Witt Clinton, Smith had long served in local offices only - wreckmaster, president of Brookhaven's Board of Trustees, and coroner - but the men meeting at Patchogue felt they could trust in his "integrity, economy and talents" because he was "universally known as a practical farmer, and an honest upright man."22 The opposition nomination to the senate came four days later, on 20 October. The sixty-nine-year-old Sage presided over a Sag Harbor meeting attended by men from Southampton, East Hampton, and Shelter Island. Pointing out that Huntington had been a member of the committee that drew up the East Hampton resolutions, they reasoned that he really opposed giving the voters the power to choose presidential electors. David Gardiner favoured popular election, so they nominated him for the senate. A wealthy, popular, forty-year-old lawyer, Gardiner lived retired from his profession on Gardiner's Island. He actively favoured Calhoun, his Yale classmate, and since he had studied law with Surrogate Sylvanus Miller, he probably was familiar with New York City personalty interests. The Suffolk Republican convention of October 1822 had put his name forward for a county judgeship. Appointed in early February, Gardiner had declined the office immediately after the

I2i The Emergence of an Opposition Movement New- York American published the protest of the city's common council against the impending tax law.23 Another Sag Harbor meeting, on 24 October, cleaned up the question of the assembly candidates by endorsing Gardiner and Smith and keeping the second regular nominee, Hugh Halsey of Bridgehampton. His nomination had been "got up" in the wrong way, but he backed the popular election of electors. His other qualifications went unmentioned. Like Sage and Gardiner, Halsey had been graduated from Yale. More important, this thirty-year-old lawyer, an assembly Bucktail in 1822, enjoyed upstate experience and links with prominent anti-Bucktails. His classmates at Yale had included the sons of Thomas J. Oakley and Philo Ruggles, both Clintonians; after studying law with Franklin Viele in Waterford, Halsey had practised in Madison County for about three years. Having "been around," he balanced the fifty-one-year-old Smiths This Sag Harbor meeting completed the pre-election phase of the Suffolk revolt against Van Burenite regularity. The revolt had begun in early September, well before the meeting of the ward committees of New York City on I October, and this phase had largely finished before the 27 October Tammany Hall meeting that was scheduled to receive the report of the Republican nominating committee for New York City and County. Since Suffolk shared the senate seat that John A. King had occupied, and since its assembly delegation had earlier joined in the protest against the tax law, the political developments on eastern Long Island served to show to Manhattan commercial and political leaders the issues that might pass muster in rural New York. With roughly one-half of Oneida County's population, Suffolk had less than one-tenth of this moderately "industrial" interior county's investment in manufacturing.2' Even so, tariff protection appealed to many of Suffolk's citizens. If this issue widened some gaps in the Bucktail ranks, the popular election of presidential electors proved at least equally effective: it appeared to bridge the social distance between very different candidates. Although physicians had been successful in recent Suffolk politics, Havens and Huntington encountered stiff resistance when charged with opposition to the doctrine of electors.26 Their profession might prove more a liability than an aegis of authority. David Gardiner stood out as the most important figure in the Suffolk campaign. He had declined to accept office from Bucktail leaders when the tax law threatened the personalty and economy of his portion of the state. His senate candidacy showed that the doctrine of electors could bring a wealthy man from the political sidelines and perhaps send him to Albany. The issue, properly used by the anti-Van Burenites of southern New York, formed an ideological shield that could deflect

122 "A More Temperate State of Things"

the enmity of upstaters towards the commercial and financial power that centred on New York City. T H E 1 8 2 3 C A M P A I G N : N E W Y O R K CITY

In New York City, the question of the popular election of presidential electors became central to the campaign; the tax law, along with other economic issues, generated undercurrents that rippled to the troubled surface. By the time Clinton arrived in New York City, men who had been united as his foes snarled at each other in print. The Calhounite New-York Patriot stated the doctrine of electors with righteous fury, goading Mordecai Noah of the National Advocate to scorn. Dismissing the Patriot as an "obscene paper" that indulged in a "vulgar and gross style," Noah concentrated on a more elaborate and serious duel with the American.21 While the Bucktail factions heatedly aired their differences, Clinton's major newspaper took advantage of their differences to assume a conciliatory posture, a delicate task when the Statesman praised Crawford's presidential opponents. Beginning in August, King's American had condemned Noah's cherished party regularity as the device of hypocritical men who valued power more than the will of the sovereign people.28 The newspaper alleged that the New Yorkers among the "cabal of politicians" who opposed Adams and backed Crawford intended to betray the people of the North; to secure Southern support, they had joined in the plot to change the constitution of Illinois, which would make slavery legal in that state. This violation of the spirit if not the terms of the Northwest Ordinance would only succeed if the "Treasury influence" was elevated to the presidency.29 According to the American, "Mr. Crawford's Regents" in the state capital had made their bargain with the "Potentate of the Treasury" and must "lay at his feet the electoral votes of the State." This subversion of New York's independence threatened to transform its citizens into bondsmen, sacrificing their claims to virtue and character, warned the American.^0 The popular election of presidential electors would redeem New Yorkers. In response, Noah charged that resistance to the regular nominees came from old enemies who sought to disrupt the nominating process and eventually divide the United States. They placed factious interest and local power above all else, social order included. Disrupting the mechanism of the Republican Party would destroy the one system devised to distil the will of the people.31 Claiming that the opposition to this end cunningly sought to "break down party distinctions," Noah easily shifted to the threat of "disorder." There was but one legitimate party in the American republic, he held, and if the discipline of this

123 The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

party were to falter, "a terrible, convulsed and revolutionary state of things" would result: "Quarrels, duels, bribery, and corruption; and finally, the people will never recover their lost power." With the strong and the assertive unrestrained by the party, most Americans would lose the capacity to influence the way power was used; consequently, Republicans should resist the efforts of the "bold, and audacious ... against the harmony and ... ascendancy of the great democratic family. "32 Noah equated party unity and purity with national unity. Adams's supporters, he stated, had made dangerous and unsettling attacks on Southern slaveholding, recklessly leading the people towards disunion and the fulfilment of the old scheme of a "Northern Confederacy, "33 Noah's words built on the sense that plain republicans and planters, people closer to the agrarian and face-to-face communal heritage of the republic, must stand together against "adventurers" - presumably, commercial men who in their schemes for profit were prepared to rip apart both the republic and the fabric of day-to-day life. Standing largely aloof from the exchanges between the Advocate and the American, Carter's Statesman staked out a position of temperate opposition to the Bucktail regulars who supported Crawford. Carter urged that voters set aside "every party feeling" and support candidates on their merits. Under the heading "Democratic Republican Meeting," the Statesman published the resolutions and ticket chosen by the regulars, noting that they had pledged themselves to change the mode of choosing electors. Beneath their names stood the resolutions and names of the opposition "People's Ticket," which had been presented at an uproarious Tammany Hall meeting a week before. The Statesman offered another conciliatory gesture. The Tammany Hall meeting had renominated two members of the previous New York City assembly delegation - John Rathbone, Jr, and William A. Thompson. One anonymous contributor extolled the pair's opposition to the tax bill as a defence of both the city's interest and the "funds of the widow and orphan." He urged their re-election - counsel which suggested that the evils of the tax law outweighed the evils of regularity. 34 Throughout the campaign Nathaniel Carter continued to take the same stand, no doubt consulting closely with Haines. While on the one hand they offered concern for those who benefited from personalty, on the other they offered thoughts on currency that were designed to help the people most harmed by.bad bank notes. At the beginning of the fourth week in September, the Statesman announced, "We are ... in a fair way of getting rid of ... uncurrent money ... which ... is the only current, or circulating medium of the city." Carter was referring to the notes of upstate banks and those in Connecticut and New Jersey. Because these banks refused to keep money on deposit in Manhattan,

124 "A More Temperate State of Things"

New York City bankers did not honour their scrip. So their notes stayed in circulation and depreciated, becoming a burden to the merchant and even more so to the traders, mechanics, and labourers who accepted them and then paid inflated prices for necessities. The Statesman argued for a beneficial change that would meet "the interests and wishes of the people." The policy that Carter wanted finally took shape in a notice sent out in late October by Lynde Catlin, chairman of the Committee of Banks in the City of New York. It required country banks to keep on deposit in New York City both drafts on city banks and notes issued by Manhattan banks. If country banks failed to provide this reserve for the redemption of their notes, they would face a demand for specie. No longer would people pay what Carter termed the "vexatious tax ... levied by ... uncurrent notes ^ Opulent men had acted to protect the less fortunate. Social harmony, resting on the concern of wealthy men for poorer citizens, fitted with the regional interdependence that would make for "consolidation." The Statesman played on these themes from August through November 1823. They emerged as the newspaper urged the wisdom of building roads and canals and providing encouragement to American manufactures. Manufacturing and internal improvements would not undermine American shipping or erode the economic strength of the country's ports. Rather, they would ensure national independence and prosperity, asserted the Statesman. For if Americans processed their own raw materials, the Union would be more closely bound together, unemployment would be relieved, and less American money would find its way abroad.36 Coastal shipping and the Latin American markets which Clinton hoped would buy American products would take up any slack in such ports as New York. Emphasizing transportation improvement in tandem with protection for manufactures kept Clinton's name in the minds of the Statesman's readers, but Carter and Haines could not ignore the other more clearly visible presidential candidates. During September they often spoke of Calhoun, predicting that a Calhoun presidency would bring widespread improvements in public education, an end to monopolies, universal suffrage, and both free trade and protection of industry. 3? Although Clinton estimated that "Calhoun stands as much chance to be President as Haines does to be Great Mogul," he encouraged his young friend to praise the South Carolinian - though he was concerned that Haines might prematurely damage Calhoun "by laying praise on him with a trowel. "38 By the time Clinton made this comment, Carter had discreetly edged Calhoun out of his columns and had assumed a posture of impartiality towards the known presidential candidates. Earlier, before his praise of Calhoun, a relatively safe object of adulation, Carter had

125 The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

touted Henry Clay. Clinton had tolerated this until the late summer, when he had complained that the Clayite strains in the Statesman were "greatly resented by our friends at Buffalo. "39 Clinton's uneasy feelings diminished only as Calhoun's name disappeared from the Statesman, which then assumed a more Clintonian hue. This shift took place through late September and early October as the newspaper gave publicity to a project that interested Clinton almost as much as the Morris Canal - a canal that would cross the northernmost counties of the state, uniting Lake Ontario with Lake Champlain and then, via the Champlain Canal, link it with New York City. The Bucktail judge, Reuben Hyde Walworth, chaired a meeting in Ogdensburg that Carter publicized. With him were such known Clintonians as David C. Judson of Ogdensburg, Samuel Partridge of Potsdam, William Hogan of Fort Covington, and Asa Hascall of Malone. Their resolutions pointed to the effects of the British Canada Trade Act of 1822, which imposed a heavy duty on American timber products sent down the St Lawrence.*0 This had meaning for New York City. Given the proposed canal, more ship timber from the north would be able to make its way to the East River yards of Manhattan, rather than to Quebec and Montreal. Carter also linked Clinton's name and his conception of executive office with the popular election of electors. As the paper's praise for the secretary of war disappeared, a series of essays by "George Clinton" echoed Clinton's "Washington" pieces. Appealing to the "REPUBLICAN PARTY of... New-York," and "to all those who are attached to republican institutions," the author demanded that the rights of the voters not be "exposed to the intrigues and selfishness of a few designing men at Albany." The essayist in the Statesman defined presidential power broadly, stating that "The President of the United States settles the policy of the nation" and that by careful management of the nation's economy he must foster republicanism and regional, even worldwide, harmony. The president's art, said the writer, posed no conflict with the "sovereign authority" of the people, because "the people are always right in their motives."41 Harmony and prosperity might not spring automatically from the daily works of the people, but the eminent man would summon forth the means and the people would come round, moved by their collective decency and good sense. The commentary in the Statesman, marked by an emphasis on reconciliation of interests, contrasted with the well-publicized dissension among the Bucktails in the city election. The Regulars' preparations had begun in an orderly way, suggesting that party discipline might remain intact. On 18 September the General Republican Committee met at Tammany Hall and gave notice that the Republican voters should

126 "A More Temperate State of Things"

gather in their wards on i October. Voters of each of the ten wards would then pick a ward delegate to the senatorial convention. Seven more men were to be chosen from each ward to sit as members of the customary "General Nominating Committee for nominating Members of Assembly." This body would meet at Tammany Hall on the evening of 8 October to begin the work of hammering out an assembly slate for the entire city.42 The doctrine of electors helped disrupt some ward meetings. Resolutions demanding the popular election of electors passed easily in both the First Ward and the Third Ward (the two constituencies with the highest portion of $250 freeholders in the new electorate) and also in the Tenth Ward (the next poorest by this measure). The Sixth Ward - bordered by Grand Street on the north and wedged between Broadway on the west and Park Row and Chatham and Bowery on the east witnessed a furious struggle. Initially, Van Burenite regulars dominated the meeting, putting their man in the chair. But the order of the meeting unravelled when they pressed through a slate of nominees to the senate district convention and the General Nominating Committee. Repeatedly, resolutions demanding the popular election of electors came from the floor to be "carried over and over again by an overwhelming majority." Failing to muzzle these resolutions, the chairman left, and the dissidents demanded that the stoneware manufacturer Clarkson Crolius take the chair. Crolius made it to the chair, but some regulars dethroned him, while others broke the lamps and snuffed out the candles in the room. Crolius, a resilient politician and a former grand sachem who had laid the cornerstone of the first Tammany Hall, declined to accept defeat. Borne forward by a commitment to the popular election of electors and to Henry Clay and tariff protection, he gathered his troops at Dooley's Tavern, where they vowed to support only candidates committed to changing the electoral law at the next session of the legislature.43 After the ward meetings had chosen the members of the General Nominating Committee, the Calhounite Patriot claimed victory: only oneseventh of the committee favoured keeping the choice in the hands of the legislators.44 Clinton, knowing that Van Buren claimed five out of every seven men on the committee, disagreed. He held that the Crawfordites, because of "the laying back of the serious part of the Citizens," really commanded a majority of the nominating committee.45 The committee did include several prosperous men closely tied to the city's financial institutions - Isaac Pierson, Jacob Drake, John Morss, George Zabriskie, and John L. Lawrence, among others - but Clinton gauged its political cast better than the editors of the Patriot. On the day following the ward meetings, the Republican General Committee moved to stake out a course for the nominating committee. It endorsed the

127 The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

congressional caucus and observed that a federal amendment specifying direct election by the people would keep the presidential election out of the House of Representatives. For twenty days following this pronouncement, silence fell over the proceedings of the nominating committee, which eventually found its voice on 21 October. After pledging themselves to support the caucus candidate, the committeemen deferred to the doctrine of electors and recommended that the next legislature pass a law enabling the voters to choose electors on a general ticket - if the measure jibed with the "welfare and perpetuity of our party. "46 Despite his conclusions about the make-up of the nominating committee, Clinton judged that regular unity had weakened, and he observed that the results of the I October ward meetings were "not to be regretted if an opposite ticket is brought forward which will doubtless succeed."« Clinton assured his eldest son that "things never stood better." He knew that Crawford was "dangerously ill," which encouraged him to predict that the regular Bucktails would face difficulties when the nominating committee reported its assembly slate at Tammany Hall on the evening of Monday, 27 October. There would be "the most turbulent commotions," he predicted, because among the Manhattan Bucktails "the animosities & dissensions are of the most furious character. "48 Meanwhile, fury brewed on the Calhounite side. On 19 October, after returning from a visit to his native Rhode Island, Henry Wheaton learned that the nominating committee would propose a ticket "with only 2 or 3 of our men on it." Determined not to submit, he planned to "appeal to the People at the General Meeting when the ticket is reported," and "if they ... resolve the meeting in riot & confusion, according to the usual Crawford tactics, we shall make our own ticket, & ... carry it."49 Having learned from the ruckus in the Sixth Ward, Crawford's opponents prepared to pile one meeting immediately on top of another. Normally, the nominating committee would have met downstairs and then, at seven, filed up to the public meeting room. But on 27 October, the regular majority of the nominating committee, reinforced with friends, assembled early in the main meeting room of the hall and locked the doors. Outside, a crowd of more than two hundred men gathered. At about a quarter to seven, fifteen minutes before the meeting was to begin, the doors were opened, and the waiting men began to crowd in. However, before they could all enter, the Fourth Ward curriers the stalwart Tammany regulars of the east-side Swamp - moved to take control of the meeting by naming the chairman. Those already in the room seated the chairman, and he hung on, helped by the commander of the dissenting forces, Robert Swartwout. Sure of the strength of his faction, Swartwout urged everyone to settle

128 "A More Temperate State of Things"

down and await the presentation of slates. When the nominating committee started to read its resolutions, shouts again filled the room, the din swelling when the secretary read Abel Huntington's name. At this point, Swartwout moved that the opposition slate be presented, and the regular chairman sought to keep order by helping Swartwout clamber atop the table where he stood. Then, recognizing that he had surrendered control, the chairman declared the meeting adjourned and fled from the room. Swartwout and the table eventually came crashing down during a regular assault, but not before he had read the names of the People's candidates for senate and assembly into the cacophony of shouted "ayes" and "noes." Nathaniel Carter told his readers that he waited until the hall cleared a bit and then went to the rooms below "to enquire of the 'knowing ones' if any regular nominations would be made during the evening." They told him that "both tickets had been regularly carried by handsome majorities." Carter passed this bit of impartiality on to his readers in the next day's Statesman in his report of the meeting's upheavals. The Patriot, the Commercial Advertiser, and the Evening Post chimed in, also revealing regularity reduced to disorder. 5° The following day Clinton weighed reports by secondary leaders who visited him at Hosack's. He concluded: The reign of King Caucus is at an end and the people have taken their concerns into their own hands. The change is visible in the conduct of all you meet. The violence of party is exercised ... against the Authors of violence & frenzy and they are now suffering on the rack of tortures which they had prepared for others and this by mutual infliction ... The respectable men who have been inadvertently seduced into this vortex will now withdraw from its influence and a more temperate state of things will ensue favorable to the liberty, good order and ... character of the State.5'

A shift by the "respectable men" who had mistakenly lent themselves to the "regularity" of party would complete the return of political and social life to tranquillity. Abandoning party, they would again lead, but now by virtue of their status. Still, Clinton reflected, they had learned to heed public opinion: "In a change of politics, the people leave the leaders and effect the change."52 The democratic thrust of the doctrine of electors seemed to present no real threat to an elite - or to a magistrate - wise enough to respond to popular demand, at least this demand. Clinton had correctly perceived a clash of party men against party men. Only one of those on the People's ticket, Charles Town, had lately been at odds with Tammany. Three People's nominees - Clarkson Crolius, Jacob Drake, and Isaac Pierson - had been foremost among the

129 The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

New York City Bucktails. Three others - Samuel S. Gardiner, Thomas Hyatt, and John Morss - sat as regulars with Gulian Crommelin Verplanck in the 1823 assembly. Both Hyatt and Morss stood on the regular ticket and on the People's slate, as did David Seaman. Seaman, like Henry Wheaton and James Benedict, the remaining People's men, had been recently (though very modestly) Bucktail. In Wheaton's case, his limited activity reflected no liking for Clinton; it was largely the result of the heavy burdens he bore as justice of the New York City Marine Court and reporter of the United States Supreme Court. Old Clintonians, seeking to ride the doctrine of electors to power, had not taken over the People's ticket. The men on the People's ticket made a moderately formidable slate in wealth, status, and the capacity to rise on Manhattan, and the antiregular candidates tended to have a strong entrepreneurial cast and an interest in banks and insurance companies. Three men ran on both tickets, muting the difference between the two sets of candidates. Two of these three resided in what was then the upper east side. A grocer and a butcher, they did business nearer toward the tip of the island. Both had participated in the founding of the Chatham Fire Insurance Company in 1822, and both would accumulate at least three other directorships over the next three years. The grocer, Thomas Hyatt, was the poorest of the three, with real estate assessed in 1824 at $3,300. The butcher, David Seaman, died in 1828 with at least three times the wealth he had held at the time of his 1814 move from Brooklyn. By 1824 he owned at least thirteen properties in the Sixth and Seventh Wards, valued at a total of $8,000, and his shares in ten more in the Seventh and Eighth Wards may have been worth $6,750. The third dual nominee was John Morss, a builder and real estate developer from the upper west side. He owned a dozen Fifth and Eighth Ward properties assessed at $23,000, and by the end of the decade his assets probably amounted to more than $100,000. Morss, who had married wealth, from time to time sat on the board of the Fulton Fire Insurance Company. The man standing at the head of the People's ticket acquired less wealth than Morss; he did not pursue happiness in that form.53 On the verge of forty, Henry Wheaton felt that deserved eminence had eluded him. He had served the Republican Party well, editing the National Advocate during the War of 1812 and providing an example of juridical skill that was much respected by the editors of the North American Review. Even so, Yates had not offered him the state judgeship that he coveted, and encouragement from Edward Everett, William Paulding, Jr, and David Hoffman of Baltimore had not sweetened his failure to move from U.S. Supreme Court reporter to U.S. Supreme Court judge.54 Acutely aware of his intellectual strength, he displayed

130 "A More Temperate State of Things"

both a righteous impatience and an insensitivity to the feelings of lesser men. Wheaton had been graduated from Brown University in 1802; whereas Samuel S. Gardiner, the other college graduate on the People's ticket (there were none among the regular candidates) had received his degree from Williams College in 1809. Now in his thirty-fifth year, Gardiner had advanced at a steady but moderate pace, taking up the practice of law, becoming a master in chancery in 1816, a commissioner to acknowledge deeds in 1818, and then secretary to the Constitutional Convention of 1821. Fortune had brightened for Gardiner in 1816 when his brother David, the People's senate candidate, had married the daughter of a wealthy brewer. Three years later David gave up his law practice and moved out on Long Island to rent Gardiner's Island from a cousin. Samuel, a man of great social grace, followed a parallel course in 1824 when he married the only child of Ezra L'Hommedieu of Southold.ss The five other men on the People's ticket had prospered. Isaac Pierson lived on Whitehall Street in the First Ward, renting a house assessed at $15,000. An iron merchant and founder with a deep interest in the development of manufacturing, he had sat on the boards of two banks and one insurance company. Two other corporations currently absorbed his attention: the Ramapo Manufacturing Company of Rockland County and the Cayuga Bridge Company, in which he was the largest stockholder. 56 Eight short blocks to the north of Pierson's home stood the Maiden Lane home of James Benedict. This Connecticut-born hatter and jeweller sat on the boards of a bank and two insurance companies and commanded the city's First Brigade of Artillery.57 Jacob Drake of Beekman Street, a grocer and provision merchant, served as a member of the boards of one bank, two insurance companies, and the New-York Sugar Refining Company. Three years later he would become president of one of the insurance companies.58 Charles Town kept his merchant's office in Wall Street but had been deeply involved in the political life of the Fifth Ward and the neighbouring Eighth Ward.59 Closely tied to the family of the Patriot John Stagg, he had early joined Tammany and had enjoyed repeated appointments as an auctioneer.60 In the years after the War of 1812, he turned from his mercantile business to banking and insurance. By the autumn of 1823, he had sat on the boards of one bank and two insurance companies. Over the next three years he would gain three more directorships.61 The last of the People's men, Clarkson Crolius, an enduring Tammany figure, had carved out the most successful career in city and state politics, including eight sessions in the assembly.62 As a master mechanic who sought to guide the aspirations of the city's artisans, Crolius had

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The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

outshone the others in his efforts to care for the poor and distressed of the city. Born fifty years before where his grandfather, reputedly the city's first stoneware manufacturer, had settled, he had helped found the New-York Mechanic and Scientific Institution.63 Although he dabbled in land investment, Crolius had kept his distance from the affairs of banks and insurance companies, an abstinence that ended with his coming stint in the legislature. While he sat in the assembly of 1824, the legislature named him director of the newly formed Jefferson Insurance Company. He quickly became its president and continued to hold that office in 1825 and i826.64 In making up their ticket, the Bucktail regulars followed the same course as the People's men in that neither slate included anyone from the Third Ward; nor did either slate include a resident of the Seventh Ward. This narrow district stretched along the East River below Corlaer's Hook, lying south of Division Street and running from Catherine Street up to Grand Street. Not only were these constituencies on opposite sides of the island, but when measured by the ratio of $250 freeholders to $5 renters or by the ratio of $250 freeholders to all those entitled to vote under the 1821 constitution, they stood at opposite ends of the scale of wealth: the Seventh Ward ranked as the poorest of the urban wards and the Third Ward as the wealthiest. Avoiding these extremes, and avoiding the First Ward, which contained the largest banks and most expensive houses, the regulars tended to draw from two different areas of the city. Two men lived in the Eighth Ward and two in the Ninth, placing heavy emphasis on the northern part of Manhattan, which was still relatively agrarian.6^ Two more came from the Fourth Ward, a constituency with many relatively prosperous artisans and shopkeepers but with a mix of wealth, which tended to make it representative of the city. The seventh man, John Rathbone, Jr, lived in his father's house on nearby Cliff Street in the Second Ward.66 The men of this ticket had not quite achieved the wealth and political prominence of the seven People's candidates. The seventy-two-year-old Jacobus Dyckman may have been the most comfortable: at the end of the War of 1812 he owned sizable chunks of Manhattan's farmland. William A. Thompson would soon have major roles in the operations of one bank and one insurance company. At this point, however, he had not yet reached beyond his law practice.67 Only Rathbone, who had suffered with his father in the Panic of 1819, had established extensive ties to financial institutions, the source of his future wealth.68 The Statesman nodded favourably towards Rathbone and Thompson on the eve of the polling. While Thompson remained opposed to the People's men and Clinton, Rathbone switched sides within six months.6?

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Both Wheaton and Dyckman - whose names stood at the head of their tickets - had been elected to the Constitutional Convention of 1821. Jacobus Dyckman's public role had been more limited than Wheaton's, though he had held many lesser municipal offices and in 1820 had appeared on a slate of electors pledged to Clinton.?0 Increasingly, Dyckman's public dignity had drawn on the achievements of his son, Dr Jacob Dyckman, one of the first members of the Lyceum of Natural History, secretary of the Literary and Philosophical Society, and a trustee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In February 1821 the Bucktail-dominated Council of Appointment had chosen Dr Dyckman to succeed David Hosack as resident physician of New York City, and the younger Dyckman had worked heroically throughout the yellow fever epidemic of 1822. After it ended, he retired to Kingsbridge in Westchester to die of consumption at the age of thirty-six. Now, standing at the head of the regular ticket, his father's name reminded New Yorkers that the city's Bucktails had once claimed a physician who, as a scholar and practitioner, promised to surpass even Hosack.?1 Just as Wheaton presumed to embody professional merit, Jacobus Dyckman reflected it. Besides, men who did not know that the son had died might in confusion vote for the father. The New York City contest between these sets of men fired Clinton's hopes. He felt that preparations for the voting went on "charmingly." Although he fretted that the contest would be close, he revelled in the results when it was over, telling Charles Clinton that "B[uck]Tailism is destroyed." He remained in the city to capitalize on the rapidly changing situation.?2 Bucktail regularity had suffered. Leaving aside the three men who stood on both tickets, the seven People's candidates averaged 16.5 percent more votes than their opponents, doing well in the wards where the Clintonian assembly candidates had shown strength in 1820. Very important for Clinton was the fact that he could perceive an emphatic relationship between his ward-by-ward strength in 1820 and the backing that Wheaton and his comrades won in 1823.73 Two populous upper wards showed signs of change. Of all the constituencies, the Seventh Ward witnessed the sharpest drop in the turnout of eligible voters compared with the 1820 elections: 25.4 percent. On the other hand, the turnout in the Tenth Ward stood at the 1820 level, but the ward had shifted away from the Bucktails. The Seventh Ward gave only 20.2 percent of its votes to the People's candidates; it had, however, been more hostile to the Clintonian ticket in 1820. Like the Tenth Ward, which had far fewer immigrants,7* the Seventh Ward was a scene of much shipbuilding. In both wards the major yard owners wielded economic weight that translated into political authority. If their authority failed to mould workers' opinions, the system of voting by

133 The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

ballot still offered the opportunity for coercion. Even with the introduction of separate ballot boxes, the law still specified that voters hand their ballots to an election inspector who was to drop them, unfolded, into the ballot box. The results suggested that shipbuilder Henry Eckford had weighed in against the Bucktail regulars. Closely identified with Jacob Barker and holding Mordecai Noah in his debt, Eckford lived and worked where he could closely follow events in both wards. His shipyard lay above Corlaer's Hook, on Stanton Street in the Tenth Ward, where he was a major owner of building lots and houses, and his home was on Water Street in the Seventh Ward, from which he sat on the General Nominating Committee.'" Clinton had kept a close watch on the Scottishborn shipbuilder, meeting with him when possible and more frequently with Barker. Both Barker and Eckford had kept their options open by making it clear that Crawford was their first choice, Clinton a likely second.76 Meanwhile, Eckford had manoeuvred to position himself as a broker in case of a regular collapse. He had dropped by the lower Nassau Street office of the American and assured Charles King that he was not the financial backer of the Advocate, nor had he an "understanding" with Noah on the presidential contest. Showing up at the Wall Street office of the Statesman, he had "advised neutrality" in the contest, a posture that Carter had already assumed.77 Apart from the presidential question, Eckford had reason to calculate that there would be profit in the success of the People's ticket. His subsequent history showed that he shared Jacob Barker's interest in the development of insurance companies and banks.78 Barker had floated "large batches" of the notes of his Exchange Bank in Georgia and might wish to follow a similar course with the scrip of any other institution for which he could wangle a charter. Eckford could be helpful here, for he needed live oak from the swamps of Florida and Georgia and kept a vessel regularly employed in bringing the timber.7* The ship could carry scrip southwards and timber northwards, an operation that would be made more secure by Crawford's friendship, either real or reputed. Significantly, many of the People's candidates and John Rathbone, Jr, had been or were to become deeply involved in banking and insurance. As assemblymen they might be likely to countenance the free issuance of bank and insurance scrip - at least more likely than Regency men such as Benjamin Knower and Martin Van Buren had proved to be.80 More money available for loans would mean that mechanics and traders might enjoy the credit that bankers tended to confine to merchants. From the career activities of the People's men, observers could piece together a fairly clear program for economic expansion; political

134 "A More Temperate State of Things"

wheelhorses might tout it as beneficial to would-be artisan entrepreneurs. The shifts in the Seventh and the Tenth Ward suggest that the possibility of credit expansion was an attractive influence. Entrepreneurial opportunity blended with the doctrine of electors in the Third Ward campaign. Clinton had carried this ward in 1820, though the anti-Clintonians had won almost three-quarters of the vote for the assembly candidates. In 1823, 60 percent of the voters supported the People's assembly ticket, and the People's men swept the polls in the ward's aldermanic contest, which was really the eye of the storm. Both splinter parties contested common council offices in wards three through six. The regulars conceded the first two wards, and the People's men conceded the remaining three. Only in the Sixth Ward did the People's men lose one of the eight seats in question, four of which were for aldermen and four for assistant aldermen. There, a regular candidate won narrowly. In the Third Ward the People's margin of victory was substantial: 141 out of about 800 votes cast, with the highest turnout in the city.8' The "Republican Electors" of the Third Ward had met in the evening of Thursday, 30 October, at the hotel that John Niles, a grocer, ran as an adjunct to his Washington Street store. It stood close to the Corporation Docks on the Hudson River and near the Washington Market - the logical outlet for the produce of the Swartwouts' New Jersey farms - and but a block east of the North River Bank and the North River Insurance Company, both of which were on Greenwich Street. Accepting the report of the ward's nominating committee, the meeting had confirmed the choice of William H. Ireland, a merchant and a Director of the Fulton Bank, as their candidate for alderman. With Robert Swartwout, James Benedict, and Charles Town, Ireland led the North River Squad, the group of entrepreneur politicians who sought to foster the economic development of western Manhattan and had opposed Barker's plans to relocate the North River Bank. Joining them in endorsement of the doctrine of electors, Ireland had presided over an earlier meeting at Niles's Hotel. That meeting had passed resolutions demanding the popular election of electors and had approved of caucus nominations only if they were "free from all bargains and anti-republican intrigues."82 The regulars tried to respond quickly to Ireland's nomination, but their first meeting broke up in disorder.83 A second meeting nominated Campbell P. White for alderman and Philip Hone for assistant. Both merchants were visibly more wealthy than Ireland. White, a director of the New York branch of the Bank of the United States, had run as a Clintonian assembly candidate in 1820. Equally significant, Philip Hone and Swartwout were married to sisters.8t Ireland's supporters built on these disarming choices by repledging themselves to Ireland

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The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

and endorsing Hone. Then they embraced the People's list of candidates for the legislature, proclaiming it the "legitimate ticket, composed of men ... in favour of giving the choice of electors ... to the PEOPLE."^ With these words, the North River Squad, following the lead of Robert Swartwout, preserved its claim to party regularity and brought to bear the political force generated by the doctrine of electors. Noah charged that Ireland ran in "open defiance of the interest of the great Democratic family," and he went on to plead the "interest of the Third Ward." At issue was the construction of a basin for canal boats. Besides new building, the project meant work to improve and repair the existing wharves, slips, and piers. "Thousands and tens of thousands of dollars are to be expended among Mechanics," noted Noah. Lacking the requisite "intelligence and liberality," Ireland, according to Noah, could not convince the common council of the worth of the basin. On the other hand, White had the qualities of character and the Third Ward real estate that would make him a convincing advocate.86 If Ireland were to succeed, the North River Squad could become an engine within the People's movement with loaves and fishes to pass out. Clinton watched the Third Ward contest closely. Hosack lived in the centre of the ward, and Clinton knew city elections well enough to perceive the high turnout there, almost 25 percent greater than it had been in 1820. His first reports of the drift of the voting came soon after the polls opened, when Philip Hone assured him, "The North River Squad is friendly," a judgment that Sylvanus Miller confirmed.87 Clinton understood that he had a potential bastion on the west side of the island, where the voting strength of loyal Clintonians could combine with local economic interest and the appeal of the doctrine of electors. With Bucktailism faltering in the Seventh and Tenth wards, and with great People's strength in the First and Second wards, the centre of the island must soon yield. Clinton carefully set down Nathaniel G. Ingraham's postelection assessment: the "swamp are ready to turn."88 By this he meant that the mechanics of the Forth and Sixth wards would soon back him. With these bell-wether districts he could secure the city that had so long been opposed to him. T H E 1 8 2 3 C A M P A I G N : UPSTATE C O U N T I E S Although New York City, as a centre of information, could influence the perceptions of upstaters, distrust of the economic power of Manhattan had achieved pointed expression during the last legislature. Thus, power on Manhattan, which was easily perceived from upstate as uncontrollable and predatory, could be a liability. Coming out of Man-

136 "A More Temperate State of Things"

hattan, however, the doctrine of electors could disarm this distrust. Political issues, rather than economic and social relations, seemed central to the People's victory in New York City. In spite of this seeming cast of the emerging reform movement, the protection of personalty from taxation and the concern to foster entrepreneurial opportunity blended beneath its surface as important driving forces. Whether there would be like-minded interests upstate to power the reform movement remained to be seen. The political cast of the remainder of the state only gradually became clear as newspaper reports and word from loyal followers came to New York City. What People's Party leaders and Clinton saw may have tempered their optimism, but it hardly destroyed their determination to ride the doctrine of electors to success. Although it is not possible to explore the inner workings of all fifty-five counties in detail, looking closely at a few more of these constituencies suggests factors that were at work in the developing reform movement to the north and west of Manhattan. Dutchess Lying midway between New York City and Albany, Dutchess County sent signals throughout the valley; its voters elected People's men to all four of the county's assembly seats.89 The Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, a newspaper that spoke for James Tallmadge, Jr, reflected the chagrin he felt when the office of comptroller went to William L. Marcy.90 But the Observer began to change tack with a series of essays by "Samuel Adams," which ranged broadly over the political process at all levels, charting an antiregular position. Adams started from the premise that self-nomination deepened the "morbid habits" of the nominating caucus by enabling one man to assume the authority that a few presumed themselves to have. Men turned to self-nomination because "the people of the state are jealous of Albany, [just as] the people of the counties are jealous of the metropolis of the county." It was the central place, the court rather than the country, that was at fault: encouraged by "professional men, and those who have their fortunes to make," the metropolis demanded too much of its hinterland. Adams acknowledged that information flowed from the metropolis, but he suggested that to offset the power of this knowledge, men from the country could pool their understanding by means of conventions. They had only to fix on "some central place in the district" and gather there. For their part, the men of the metropolis should not fear and oppose such conventions. It made more sense "for the metropolis to

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be contented with ... having the revenues of the country in a great degree poured into its coffers, and in general questions of county politics [to] stand a little in the background." Adams predicted that "such a course would soon allay ... all hostile feelings, and the metropolis would have that influence in the general politics of the county that its population and its character for political consistency deserved."91 In the framework of Tallmadge's message, the advice to Poughkeepsie doubled as advice to New York City and Washington. Adams affirmed the existence of a "corrupt band ... organized ... to divert popular sentiment from its natural channel." At the heart of this caucus conspiracy, he said, stood one New Yorker who "had dared to contract for and sell... to southern purchasers, the great and powerful state of New-York, in wealth and resource more than a third of the nation."92 If this plot succeeded, it would assuredly bring "some violent explosion," that would "probably split to pieces the members of the confederacy." Adams said that he would, however, stand by any Southern candidate who would "protect and foster such branches of domestic industry and encourage such a system of internal improvements as will promote western prosperity." This fitted with the position that Tallmadge had taken during 1823 as he moved through the southern tier of New York and into the western part of the state, following court sittings in his law practice and praising Calhoun and John Quincy Adams as he went.93 Occasionally, however, the Observer's Sam Adams shifted to commend protection and transportation improvement to unite western farmers and northern artisans and manufacturers.91* The "Samuel Adams" essays staked out a position roughly congruent with those developed by Carter in the Statesman and by Clinton in his "Washington" essays. Still, Tallmadge's failure to endorse the choice of presidential electors on a general ticket departed from Clinton's plans. Rather than reaching out to establish an alliance with Clinton, he was using the Observer to launch his own campaign for the governorship, an effort for which he had substantial assets. Well connected, the fortyfive-year-old Brown graduate had gained ground early in his career because of his ties to the family of George Clinton. He had become that governor's private secretary and then surrogate of Dutchess in 1804, only two years after his admission to the bar. Gracious, dignified, and endowed with a rich revolutionary heritage, Tallmadge had by 1818 reached the rank of major general in the militia.95 Tallmadge had concluded his one term in Congress by igniting the Missouri question. After that, he ran for the state senate from the Southern District. He lost, and Clinton then failed to give him the attorney generalship he coveted. The appointment of Thomas Jackson Oakley, a Dutchess lawyer who had replaced Tallmadge as surrogate in 1810,

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compounded the injury.96 Both John Quincy Adams and Jabez D. Hammond perceived Tallmadge as a politician who believed that tact, management, and factional manipulation rather than commitment to principle spelled out the art of politics.97 Under pressure from the growing strength of Bucktailism, Clinton had dumped a political relative who combined flawed judgment with talent. For their part, the Bucktails had hesitated to give Tallmadge a commanding post and had appointed him a loan officer. 98 Tallmadge resisted relegation to the sidelines. Twelve years earlier he had become president of the Poughkeepsie branch of the Bank of the Manhattan Company. Three years after that he had served as an incorporator and original director of the Dutchess County Insurance Company, and as late as August 1823 he had won re-election to its board. He was also the Poughkeepsie agent of the Farmers' Fire Insurance and Loan Company of New York City and sat on its board. When the Dutchess County Bank was incorporated in 1825, Tallmadge would become one of its first directors." Meanwhile, armed with local financial influence and able to bring funds from Manhattan, he might have sufficient leverage to command the regular machinery of Dutchess. The Tallmadge Republicans of Dutchess moved at the time "Samuel Adams" appeared in the pages of the Observer. Meeting twice in late August in Poughkeepsie, they conceded that caucus nominations had served "when a lowering sky overshadowed our political horizon." Now, the needs of "agriculture and manufactures ... twin-sisters" and the common good of the "great republican family" demanded new procedures.100 A member of the Republican Central Committee of the county chaired these meetings, and this committee soon called for "an interchange of sentiment ... for the harmony of the party" and set the date for the nominating convention of the assembly quite late - 25 October.101 Tallmadge needed time to deal with a maverick Clintonian and to make sure of his hold on Dutchess's Bucktail Republican Party. At the beginning of October, Alfred S. Pell of Hyde Park and Manhattan nominated himself for the assembly and began to campaign vigorously. Pell condemned the caucus, lamented the North's long submission to the South, and promised to stand behind "any measures ... that tend to promote domestic manufactures, domestic agriculture, and domestic commerce."102 To this task he could bring the weight of patrician presence, family connections, and wealth, although his hold on the latter seems to have occasionally been precarious.103 Pell's entrance as a self-nominee hardened regular attitudes at the town level, dividing the Republicans whom Tallmadge hoped to take over. Without rejecting the popular choice of electors, some Bucktail town meetings endorsed regular nominations, pronounced caucus nom-

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inations legitimate, and denounced "sowers of discord," making it clear that they would not send "Peoplish" delegations to the county convention.I04 Other town meetings aggressively attacked regularity. In Fishkill, the Republican meeting, chaired by Abraham H. Schenck, one of the owners of the Matteawan cotton mill, declared that the existing system of choosing electors was "inconsistent with the spirit and character of our democratic institutions" and that Dutchess assemblymen must work for the popular election of electors.105 The Poughkeepsie Republicans had split two weeks earlier when TalImadge's Poughkeepsie supporters brushed aside the regulars' assembly candidate, Henry A. Livingston.106 This led to two 25 October county meetings at Pleasant Valley. The Tallmadgites called a "People's Meeting" for the morning, and it behaved as a convention, though few among them had been regularly chosen as delegates. Nominating Tallmadge and Pell, they maintained that returning power to the people would make way for the choice of a president who was "friendly to the manufacturing, agricultural and commercial interest."107 Later in the day, the regular delegates announced that Bucktail Republicans, by extending the franchise, had "achieved a memorable victory over the monied aristocracy of the county." Schenck, the chairman of the regular county convention, now broke with the regulars. He eventually backed Tallmadge and Pell, added two men to the ticket, and had that ticket printed for distribution at the polls.108 Ignoring Schenck's unhappiness, the regulars nominated two locally prominent physicians and two men who had held local office, a selection that built on deference to the town and village leaders who had been prominent in the previous assembly.109 By comparison, the two men added to the People's ticket behaved as aggressive and wide-ranging businessmen, making a slate that represented the milieu in which money and goods moved about.110 The People's ticket carried narrowly, with 52.9 percent of the vote, its pattern showing that the political alignment of 1820 had greatly changed.111 Tallmadge, those who stood with him, and Schenck promised a larger pie, created by a policy that would balance commerce, agriculture, and manufacturing. In their hands, the doctrine of electors stood for the promise of economic management that could foster manufacturing growth; within the house of regularity entrepreneurs stood condemned as aristocrats. Oneida Oneida County had one more assemblymen than Dutchess; only New York City outweighed Oneida's five members. The excavation of the Erie Canal, which had begun at Rome, crossed Oneida, and within

140 "A More Temperate State of Things"

the county's borders manufacturing had made considerable progress. Horatio Gates Spafford estimated that Oneida had "now probably more capital employed in manufactures, than any other County in the State" - though this was not in fact true. The 1823 Digest of Accounts of Manufacturing Establishments showed almost twice as much invested on Manhattan. Moreover, in per capita terms, Oneida came behind Rockland, the seat of Isaac Pierson's ironworks, where $206.83 per voter was invested in manufacturing, more than the $94.27 for each voter in Oneida County. Still, Oneida, with more than six times as many enfranchised men as Rockland, stood second highest, its figure well above the forty-county mean of $29.78. Agriculturally rich as well, Oneida combined the elements that Clinton and Tallmadge promised to integrate to ensure republican prosperity.112 The regular Bucktails moved early and aggressively to capture Oneida. Their county convention met on 19 September and chose assembly candidates and the county's delegate to the senate district convention. Meanwhile, the Van Burenite paper in Utica, the Oneida Observer, defended regular nominations as the "only method of harmonizing public sentiment" and denounced the opponents of the congressional caucus as furtive and intriguing Federalists who risked throwing the election into the House of Representatives, a step that would sacrifice the sovereignty of the people."3 The Clintonian Columbian Gazette, the rival Utica paper, held its fire until the fourth week of October, two weeks after the Agricultural Society's meeting and fair, and one week after the publication of the proceedings of the canal celebration at Albany. Then it challenged the improving spirit of Oneida County. The editor found it remarkable that New York State, so advanced in its internal improvements, lagged so far behind in its manner of choosing presidential electors. Oneida County, especially, had shown itself to be backward. "In this county the subject has received less attention than in any other," noted the editor, and he urged its citizens to recognize that the best means of keeping the legislators "pure and unsuspected" was to deny the power to form "combinations and cabals." Yet by the time the Gazette offered this remedy, all five regular assembly candidates had declared that they would support the change. "4 On the day before the regulars made their declaration, a meeting held in the Whitestown Court House chose an opposition ticket, which embraced the doctrine of electors.115 Oneida voters now had two rather different slates. Except for the thirty-one-year-old John Ruger, all the regular candidates had been active Republicans before the War of 1812 ended. In 1820 all had campaigned as Bucktails except Ruger and the man at the head of the regular ticket, Apollos Cooper, a Republican

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who had begun his career as a carpenter and had chaired the Clintonian county convention of i820.n6 Both men leading the Whitestown ticket, George Huntington and John Storrs, had repeatedly sat in the legislature as Federalists. Thomas Emmons Clarke had served on the Whitestown Clintonian Committee in 1821, but the remaining two antiregulars had filled only local offices - no defence against the charge that their Republicanism was suspect.117 In their nonpolitical outlines the tickets contrasted fairly sharply. The men on the Whitestown ticket appeared to command more wealth; all the men on the regular ticket except one farmed for their living or combined farming with other activities. The one extensive farmer on the Whitestown ticket probably relied on his hotel for much of his income. One or perhaps two regulars had been interested in the development of financial institutions; two opposition candidates clearly favoured manufacturing and transportation ventures. Three regulars had been born in New York State, while four men on the Whitestown ticket had immigrated from New England. A strong religious background and commitment marked the Whitestown ticket; two of the men standing on it had grown up as ministers' sons, and two others had given themselves freely to the educational and missionary work of the Presbyterian Church. Of the regulars, only Cooper left a record as an active churchman. Finally, four of the five on the Whitestown ticket represented Oneida County towns in which a sizable portion of the population was engaged in manufacturing. This was true for only two men on the regular ticket. The regular ticket won, with Cooper garnering the highest number of votes for the assembly.118 Yet Clinton's 1820 backing, though frayed, did not unravel. In 1820, the combined Federalist and Clintonian assembly vote and Clinton's gubernatorial vote had corresponded closely: the Oneida County towns favouring the Federalist assembly slate and the towns leaning towards the Clintonian slate had both favoured Clinton for governor.1 J 9 In 1823 support for the Whitestown ticket paralleled both the Federalist-Clintonian vote for the assembly of 1820 and the vote for Clinton.120 Clinton's supporters had drawn together to run a hard race in which the regulars had to swallow the doctrine of electors. Clintonians familiar with Oneida could also discern that manufacturing had left its mark on the voting. In the 1823 struggle for assembly seats, the wealthier towns tended to vote against the regular ticket; whereas, even more emphatically, towns with many people engaged in manufacturing, either as independent artisans or as factory workers, leaned towards the antiregulars. Generally, the more artisans and factory hands there were in a town, the more it voted for the Whitestown ticket - but with an exception, for when the proportion of people engaged

142 "A More Temperate State of Things"

in manufacturing rose above 380 per thousand voters, the tendency sharply reversed. This did not establish a decisive pattern, however, since only one of the four manufacturing towns that provided stronger support for the regulars actually gave them a majority. This was Whitestown. With eight cotton and woollen factories, it had the highest ratio of people engaged in manufacturing and was the most industrialized of the Oneida County towns.121 Evangelical fervour could mute the uneasiness created by the growth of manufacturing. Two years later Charles Grandison Finney led a revival in Oneida County, beginning in the regular town of Western, "the moral condition of... which has always been dark." The spirit of holiness moved forcefully into the factories, where earlier, in 1819 and 1821, it had proved feeble. In 1826 the Holy Spirit stirred many desperate factory hands, mainly women and children. The mechanics who cultivated Socinianism as an expression of their independence resisted.122 One such naysayer passed judgment on the likes of the pious Yankees on the Whitestown ticket. Ephraim Perkins put together a pamphlet that expressed the reservations of men who could not find the hand of God in the revival movement. Behind the Bible societies and missionary societies he saw a "great design to secure the influence of statesmen" - an influence that would centre in New York City and smother the intellectual and spiritual freedom of the entire country with the combined power of money and missions.123 Perkins turned Clinton's Phi Beta Kappa address upside down. Albany Albany County sent only three men to the assembly, but since it surrounded the theatre in which the legislative drama and much of the judicial politics of the state took place, its votes could abet political ascendancy. Although the City of Albany had experienced growth and a real estate boom during the War of 1812, the economic changes that stirred the life of Oneida had less of an impact on the capital county. The Van Rensselaer estate, which covered most of the county (except for the City of Albany and, in the southeastern corner, the town of Coeymans), made up the largest block in the county's enduring political foundation. The tenants held their farms by "durable lease," virtually freehold tenure, paying the patroon ten to fourteen bushels of wheat per hundred acres and sometimes meeting other requirements - for instance, four fat fowl and a day's work with a team of horses or oxen. The landlord reserved the timber and mineral rights, and the tenants paid the taxes. Yet Stephen Van Rensselaer readily forgave the rent of tenants who found it difficult to pay, and he allowed other tenants,

143 The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

if they so wished, to commute the fowl and personal service by cash payments.124 Not all voters deferred to Van Rensselaer's Clintonian-Federalists politics. Some towns followed a contrary course, usually reflecting the make-up of their population. Berne and especially Rensselaerville, both of which had recently been wilderness, joined Coeymans in behaving as bastions of regular strength. Rensselaerville, in the rugged southwestern corner of the county, was inhabited by immigrants from New England and had grown more recently than other towns. Germanspeaking Swiss had populated Berne, immediately to the north of it. Others of their tongue had followed, and German was long used not only in Berne's Lutheran Church but in the Reformed Church as well. Like Coeymans, which had received an influx of New Englanders, Rensselaerville and Berne were probably less Dutch - and Scots - than the remainder of Albany. The voting pattern of the towns reflected their geographical position as much as their ethnic and economic make-up. Rensselaerville's Yankees had close ties with the New Englanders in the Schoharie County towns of Broome and Jefferson, where more men held their own land. Similarly, the people of Berne, who had early displayed uneasiness with the Van Rensselaer leases, looked westward to the Schoharie town of Middleburgh, where German was the language in six out of nine churches. Coeymans, through the village at Coeymans Landing, looked out on the freely moving world of the Hudson River. These three peripheral towns had less sense that they were part of the feudal milieu of the Albany County portion of Rensselaerwyck; like them, the City of Albany tended to vote against the manor. Since, in the cases of Rensselaerville and Coeymans, a higher proportion of people lived by manufacturing than was the case in the other rural towns of the county, this in part expressed the alignment of mechanic populations with a similar constituency in Albany. I25 The regulars framed their 1823 assembly ticket to take account of these factors and others. They chose as their Albany candidate a wealthy auctioneer and commission merchant who had been a member of the Mechanics Society. John Stillwell had begun his prominent role in the Republican politics of the capital fifteen years before. Having served as a commissioner of the Albany Basin, he could claim some portion of the success celebrated on 8 October. Moreover, he had positioned himself to become an arbiter in Albany's financial life. Two years later, in 1825, when applicants publicly questioned the fairness of the distribution of the stock of Albany's new Commercial Bank, it was Stillwell who presided over the meeting of merchants and other citizens called to lay the issue to rest.126

144 "A More Temperate State of Things"

Seeking to remove the barrier between the City of Albany and the rural towns, the regulars held their convention in the populous rural town of Bethlehem, as they had done for the previous three years. There they completed their slate by choosing a Berne farmer and Coeymans resident who combined farming and milling. Both were older men, and both had been active Republicans since Thomas Jefferson's first term in the presidency. The Coeymans Bucktail had served as a justice since 1803, and the Berne farmer became a county judge in 1823 in spite of his Clintonian record.127 Less flexible and accommodating, the antiregulars followed a rotation plan that had been laid out more than a year earlier. In June 1822, "Federal Republican Delegates" from the wards and towns had issued a "regulation" to govern the nomination of assembly candidates. They had established three nomination districts, with Albany guaranteed a place on the slate. The second district's place would rotate among one set of towns and the third place among another. By this system, it now became the turn of Watervliet to offer one nominee and for Westerlo to offer the other. Neither of these firmly antiregular towns needed encouragement to support the "People's ticket."128 To follow the arrangement, however, was to accept the label Federalist. The anti-regular "electors" put up as their Albany City nominee the lawyer who had served as the Clintonian-Federalist surrogate of the county. Next, the People's men picked two youthful candidates, both of whom were comfortable with the gentry of the county. One, a pleasant-mannered thirty-six-year-old physician, had come from his native Connecticut to study medicine with a relative. He had established a practice in the hamlet of Chesterville, had become a school inspector, a prop of the Presbyterian Church, and had married the daughter of a wealthy Chestervillian. But he had soon moved on and thus did not have the firm roots of the regulars' rural candidates.129 Thomas Hillhouse of Watervliet, the other antiregular, was a figure quite different from either of the two regular rural candidates. A large landholder and an improving gentleman farmer, he owned "extensive and beautiful grounds ... on the Troy road." Hillhouse played a leading role in the Albany County Agricultural Society, and farmers from the expanse of towns south and west of Albany knew him as one closely linked with the society's president, Stephen Van Rensselaer, whose mansion also stood beyond Albany, in the distant northeast corner town of Watervliet. '3° Farmers who read the Albany Gazette, the biweekly version of the county's antiregular newspaper, might have thought about Hillhouse as they contemplated the annual address that John Chester, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, delivered before the agricultural so-

145 The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

ciety at the Capitol on 15 October. Chester gave much attention to the farmer's need to be thrifty: "If he emulates the extravagance of the city in his dwelling, his equipage and his dress ... he will ... sink to utter insignificance and unpitied ruin"13! - fit punishment for one who failed to accept his station. Political democracy was another matter. From the outset of the nominating process, the antiregulars denounced efforts to "retain the power of choosing the electors of President and Vice President in the Legislature, as evidence ... of an intention to stifle the true sentiments, and subvert the wishes of the people of this state." They held that since the Albany regulars had failed to endorse the popular election of electors, they must be "under the influence of dictators, who feared ... public opinion; and ... preferred the 'discipline of party' to the interests of the people."132 The regular Albany Argus acknowledged that neither the regular county convention nor the city meeting that endorsed the nominees had passed resolutions urging the next legislature to provide for the popular election of electors in 1824. The paper explained that the regulars trusted "in leaving the matter to the wisdom of the legislature" and that "nothing doubting ... they will ... give all to the people that the people desire." Presuming that the "popular sentiment" to which the antiregulars appealed might fade, the Argus urged "steadfast republicans" to close their ears to "noisy demagogues." Really aristocratic Federalists, they intended to disrupt the party's organization, heedless that it protected New York's "weight" in the Union.'33 The regular assembly ticket carried with 52.6 percent of the votes cast, but the voting pattern showed a close correspondence with that of 1820, when Clinton had carried the county with a 15.2 percent majority. Clinton's forces had fallen back, but they seemed as intact as in Oneida County.'34 Believing that, with the right leadership, the antiregulars would have surged forward, Clinton commented: "The election in Albany [County] was lost by sheer carelessness. There was no notice to the several towns of the names of the candidates or ... tickets sent."135 The Albany antiregulars had mouthed the right principles in their haphazard campaign, but it had lacked the social and economic understanding that made for opposition vigour in New York, Dutchess, and Oneida counties. They would correct their mistake in 1824. RESULTS OF THE 1 8 2 3 E L E C T I O N

The election of 1823 at the local level displayed some faces that fitted with what Clinton prescribed for the people of New York State. He had emphasized the need to encourage manufactures as an element in the development of a complex economy that would be overseen by a

146 "A More Temperate State of Things"

strong executive and a board that would consider more "internal improvements." Yet he also presumed that local leaders must wield vital creative power: development could be fostered by men like Schenck. Such men, absent in the People's effort in Albany County, could bring economic expansion and integration within a developing system of domestic transportation.136 Clinton also juxtaposed religious faith and political economy, and candidates such as the antiregulars of Oneida County blended an entrepreneurial cast with Christian piety. More vigorously mixed with political democracy, these elements might bring a substantial People's victory. At this point, the People's men had no more than a firm foothold. As returns came to New York City from the remainder of the state, the outlines of the legislature that would sit in 1824 became clearer. The senate registered the least change. With ten out of thirty-two seats available, the People's Movement had captured only two. Contesting seats in only four of the eight senate districts, the antiregulars had not fared too badly where they felt that they had the district organization to make a stand. The success of eight regulars did not, however, augur well for a change in the electoral law.137 The antiregulars established a stronger presence in the assembly. By the end of November, the Van Burenite Albany Argus had identified 34 members of the 128-man lower house as the "Opposition."138 Serving as the vanguard of the People's Movement, they would press other members of the assembly to back the popular election of both electors and justices of the peace. Many regular assembly candidates had endorsed the doctrine of electors, and these electioneering commitments would provide the antiregulars with a base on which to build as they brought pressure to bear on the regulars of the senate. Yet for Clinton it remained unclear whether a friendly party could take shape out of the stuff of these People's men. Only seventeen of these assemblymen had earlier given support to Clinton in his struggle with the Bucktails. Clinton could readily discern other traits of both parties in the new assembly. Three-fifths of the twenty-six antiregulars of the previous year had come from the Rochester area and lived within seventy-five miles of Nathaniel Rochester's growing village. None had represented the counties that make up present-day New York City or the remainder of Long Island. Now the base of legislative opposition moved to the region that expressed the greatest unhappiness with the new tax law. Twenty-five of the People's men who sat in 1824 came from the eastern Mohawk-Hudson Valley area and Long Island counties; a dozen of them came from New York City and Long Island alone. The People's assemblymen of 1824, indeed the entire lower house of that year, differed from the assembly of 1823 in one important par-

147 The Emergence of an Opposition Movement

ticular: in family relationships, it was one of the most well-connected assemblies to sit since the War of 1812. (On the other hand, the previous lower house had been the least endowed with connections). Familiarity with local men gave Clinton knowledge of the family ties among New York State's political participants. Men closely tied to the participants in the years 1815 to 1828 filled an average 41.8 percent of the seats in the eight assemblies that sat between 1815 and 1822.^9 The average index of relatedness for the eight assemblies sitting from 1825 through 1822 was 148.6, not very different from the 147.5 for all assemblies sitting from 1815 through i828.I4° Averaging 3.9 ties per related man in the 1815-22 period, these particular members profited by shared political and social knowledge and by the influence that family networks could bring to bear. In the 1823 assembly the proportion with relations of this description reached a nadir for the 1815-22 period: 32.8 percent. With 3.81 ties per man, the 1823 assembly fell below all other assemblies except those of 1817 and 1821, and its index of no fell below the 121 and 124 scored by those assemblies, culminating a postwar secular trend towards social democracy in the assembly. The lower house therefore had an elite component noticeably weaker than its predecessors, a contrast heightened by the composition of the Constitutional Convention that had preceded it. Half (52.4 percent) of the 126 men attending the 1821 convention had extensive links to men who were active in the 1815-28 period, with 6.62 ties per related individual, yielding an index score of 336 for the convention. If the assembly of 1823 stands out as the least "connected," and by that measure the least elite lower house sitting between 1815 and 1828, the assembly of 1824 was one of the most elite lower houses of the fourteen-year period, scoring 160 on the index of relatedness. Only the assemblies of 1815 (173), 1816 (229), and 1826 (191) ranked higher. Nearly one-half (46 percent) of the men of the forty-seventh assembly had close family ties to state-level participants, a proportion exceeded only by the 1817 assembly (46.8 percent). Moreover, those 1824 members with ties averaged 4.08 per man. If more distant relationships are added, extending the family networks of the members of the 1824 assembly, the proportion of individuals related to other men who were politically active in the 1815-28 period increases to 58.6 percent, the highest for any lower house (compared with 43 percent for the 1823 assembly, the lowest). The antiregulars of both years also contrasted sharply with each other and, given their index scores, at least moderately with the remainders of each assembly. Ten (40 percent) of the independents who won election in November 1822 had a total of only 22 moderately close ties to state-

148 "A More Temperate State of Things"

level participants, yielding an index of relatedness of 68 for their group. On the other hand, 15 (44.1 percent) of the 1824 People's men enjoyed 78 ties, scoring 214, three times as high as those predecessors. The antiregular movement of 1823 appeared as a rebellion of western outsiders; observers could perceive the People's Movement as an eastern elite front. Finally, comparing the partisan groups of the 1824 assembly, Clinton could see that the People's men tended to come from walks of life different from their regular counterparts in the assembly. Among the antiregulars, lawyers and merchants combined outnumbered farmers by two to one; among the regulars, 50 percent more men depended on farming than the merchants and lawyers among them put together. This made the predominance of farmers among the 1824 regulars about equal to the proportion of farmers among both regulars and antiregulars in the 1823 assembly.141 The 1824 antiregulars stood out in their financial roles. A People's man, before sitting in 1824 (and also over his whole career), had developed a record substantially different from the regulars of 1823 and 1824, and also from the 1823 antiregulars. He was more than one and one-half times as likely to have served a bank or an insurance company in some office, ranging from commissioner to distribute stock to president. Before sitting in the assembly, he would have served twice as long, and he would serve longer afterwards also.142 Even before the Albany Argus had published its final version of the line-up in the assembly, Clinton had learned much about the outcome of the elections. He mused over the results, noting that there was "aristocracy in everything." Even in "the Alms House," there were "higher beds in each room for the directress of the apartment. "J43 The "directress" did not inherit her role but came by it through force of character, one essence of aristocracy for Clinton. Another was "talent." Clinton knew from his own experience that family connections could enhance and nurture both. The voting turnout had not been high.144 Yet from Clinton's postelection vantage, republican citizens had deferred; men from the entrepreneurial and professional elite that must lead to republican prosperity had established a firmer hold on power.

6 "The Gordian Knot": Public Opinion and the Politics of Legislative Blockage

The People's men held only one-quarter of the seats in the assembly that began its work in January 1824, yet the doctrine of electors could capture other legislators. If the increasing popularity of the doctrine forced an electoral bill through the legislature, the Clintonians might command the presidential vote of the state, as they had in 1812. This prospect challenged the regular leaders. They had lost control of the legislative process during the previous session, and if they failed again, party regularity would become hollow. During the coming session the Van Burenite regulars would again draw heavily on High-Minded Federalist skills, but they needed to forge effective legislative leaders cut from Republican cloth. From the regular viewpoint, the question before the legislature of 1824 was the role of legislative management in the political life of the republic. After President James Madison had carefully groomed James Monroe as his successor, the congressional caucus had begun to atrophy as a nominating device, fraying the fabric of congressional power at the federal level. The sovereignty invested in the presidency had increasingly appeared to be self-recognizing, mirroring itself and the sovereignty vested in the people, which threatened to sap some meaning from the lives of men who, like Martin Van Buren, had made their way to the national legislature. When regulars emphasized the need to maintain the unity of New York's electoral vote as a bargaining instrument, they hoped that the state's voters would respect the ability of leaders in the legislature to choose a ticket that would serve as an instrument in a combined state

150 "The Gordian Knot" and federal legislative effort to mask New York's heterogeneity, to exploit diversity in the Congress, and to deal with the power of the presidency. The assembly of 1823, with relatively few members tied by personal or family experience to the legislature, had confronted regular legislative management. Now, the unleashed force of democracy again threatened this management in a legislature that was more elite in make-up, putting at risk the order and discipline of regularity. Resolutions passed in the Albany County town of Coeymans in late January 1824 laid out the regular position on the doctrine of electors. Emphasizing the need for ordered and managed decision making, the Coeymans resolutions denied that presidential politics really interested the "common people"; they must not be led astray by the instruments of Clinton, who would attempt to beguile them by visions of "golden days of commercial prosperity." Party discipline protected against that danger, noted the Coeymans gathering. Party discipline demanded deference to the legislators, who were charged with the responsibility of making informed decisions and were capable of delivering substantial gains. By contrast, those who posed as the friends of the people offered only a "gilded pill."1 If the people were to swallow that pill because they believed they knew enough to decide for themselves, they would lose. The voters should not allow the spirit of commerce to seduce them; by this spirit the People's men, as surrogates for Clinton, would seek to entice them. Clinton's hopes, conversely, turned on the prospect that public pressure, feeding on individual aspirations, would force the passage of a law specifying that in 1824 the voters would choose the electors and would choose them on a general ticket. Clinton understood that his loss of office following on the success of the new constitution had cut down his presidential chances, but he believed that state and regional pride could work change, setting in motion a flow of support from other states, including Southern states which envied Virginia's long predominance at the centre of the nation. Although Clinton had used state power to build a monumental canal, he sought to embody inspiration and vision as much as management, especially vision that would spark and draw on the vitality in the fields and villages of the republic. Unlike Van Buren, Clinton expressed no fear of the popular election of justices of the peace; "jacobinism" only threatened when political opportunists sought to turn the many against the few who would lead them. Party regularity therefore threatened social harmony; public opinion expressed that harmony and directed society's energy. Clinton's postwar national reputation rested on the promotion of New York's canals, and it was through canals that he sought to build his support to the west, not only by lending engineering talent but by giving

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The Politics of Legislative Blockage

advice about the availability of New York City money.2 In January 1823, however, Clinton had feared that an early Ohio effort to nominate him would prove abortive, and he had hoped that Ohio would hold back until New York showed signs of the inevitable "complete change."3 But a member of the Ohio legislature had soon assured Clinton that a caucus held that month had not dealt his chances a fatal blow, though this legislator agreed with another Ohio Clintonian that New York must first produce a "revolution" in Clinton's favour.4 Ohio nominations for Clinton were to continue, such as the Clinton-Jackson ticket put up at Steubenville at the beginning of December 1823, but until New York committed itself to the popular election of electors on a general ticket, they would be bubbles, briefly to rise and then burst.5 "Canal glory" was not enough. As he waited for New York's response to the doctrine of electors, Clinton kept open a channel of communication to Ohio's canal builders by working through Micajah T. Williams, a Cincinnati Clintonian who served in the Ohio legislature and on the Ohio Canal Commission. Williams advocated a canal between the Ohio River and Lake Erie and another around the falls of the Ohio near Louisville, which would open the state to the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. In November, when Williams was visiting New York City, Clinton drafted a letter holding out hope that financing would soon be readily available for Ohio's canals, an assurance that would be useful when Williams faced the Ohio legislature. Williams had talked to Martin Van Buren and had concluded that the regulars meant to use the New York Senate to block any electoral law; but he told Clinton that with Ohio secured for him, Indiana and Illinois would surely follow. Williams departed armed with letters from the financial leaders whom Clinton had been seeing.6 Clinton's press sought to capitalize on Williams's visit and on the possibility of Ohio building. Carter's Statesman carried an essay in support of the Ohio canal by "the Voice of New York." It predicted that if canals crossed Ohio, an area largely populated by free workers would "be tributary for all its foreign supplies to New York." New Yorkers were given to understand that they would gain more than profit by investment in an extension of New York's canal system: "Already ... have the manufacturing and agricultural classes interchanged the amulet of peace, and ... formed an indissoluble union - already has the spirit of our great work ... infused a new and better tone into the public mind." The growing canal system made up "a nucleus round which all the best interests and feelings of our common country will form themselves," the Statesman informed its readers. Canals would "embrace this mighty empire, diffusing ... the choicest blessings, till

152 "The Gordian Knot"

its proud waves roll upon the shores of Europe, and sweep from their foundation the altars of priestcraft, and the throne of legitimacy."? The Clintonian vision of the power of a commercially integrated North saw a regional culture becoming an international force. The men of commerce and finance to whom Nathaniel Carter offered this vision helped sustain Clinton's optimism by lifting his financial burdens. When a New York City bank refused to accept Clinton's check for $125, Isaiah and John Townsend, the Albany iron merchants and steamboat operators, substituted theirs.8 A judgment for $6,176.63, which the Bank of America had won against Clinton in 1819, still weighed on him. In December 1823, Philip Hone, Thomas H. Smith, Stephen Whiting, and William Bayard paid $1,100 to the bank to defray the interest. John Anthon later said that Clinton knew nothing of this and that John Hone had organized the effort, intending "to prevent the injury and inconvenience which Gov C might sustain by a prosecution ... at that particular crisis."9 Clinton would not have to worry about personal finances as he developed support for the electoral law and his candidacy. Ohio remained a possibility for Clinton, but, in Pennsylvania, Stephen Simpson had proved difficult to manage. Awaiting change in New York State, Henry Post had encouraged Simpson's Columbian Observer to support Andrew Jackson, hoping that the general might serve as a stopgap until the Observer brought Clinton forward. Simpson, however, had to keep his new journal underway in the face of two hardy competitors: John Binns of the Democratic Press and Richard Bache of the Franklin Gazette. All three newspapers backed John Andrew Shulze for the governorship of Pennsylvania, but this did not stop them from sustaining a lively newspaper war. Rousing though their exchange was when they agreed, all three hit their stride after they had chosen sides for the presidential contest. Binns took Crawford, Bache took Calhoun - the candidate of Pennsylvania's well-connected Family Party - and even if Simpson wished to do so, he could not soften his backing of Jackson and shift to Clinton as the yet-unnamed heir of Washington and Jefferson.I0 When Post objected, Simpson professed himself "astonished that you object to Jackson, when you remember, he was frequently ringed in your Letters, as the most eligible Candidate next to Clinton." The editor refused to throw his engines into reverse: "We have got entangled in our own devices - we have gone for him till we cannot well go back." Simpson sensed that he was moving with the strong current that would overwhelm the Family Party and would lead to Jackson's nomination on 4 March 1824 by a Pennsylvania state convention meeting at Harrisburg. "We are now emphatically the State Paper," he observed. "Mr

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The Politics of Legislative Blockage

Shulze is our Governor & we swim successfully down the stream of popular approbation." When Clinton was shown the response that Post had received from Simpson at the beginning of April 1823, he lamented sadly, "I am afraid that Simpson is playing for himself."11 After this, although Simpson's columns praised Clinton's learning, the editor's choice for president was emphatically Jackson, "now on his farm, retired from public life," and therefore not sullied by the Washington "court."12 As for Clinton's presidential prospects, at the end of the summer of 1823 Simpson cast responsibility from his own shoulders: "Nothing is yet said ... & it appears nothing will be - till it is too late, out of N[ew] York." To drive the point home, he artfully told Post, "I have all along doubted the wisdom of your policy of keeping him back."13 Within New York State a few peripheral factors served to bring some pressure on the legislature to pass an electoral law that might enable Clinton to come forward. First, events beyond the Atlantic pointed to the importance and fragility of liberal government, providing Clinton and the People's Movement with a European setting with which to frame the struggle to revise New York's electoral law. Clinton, however, approached this backdrop with an acute sense of its meaning for presidential politics and an awareness that not all Americans would perceive developments there in the same way. Since Alexander Ypsilanti had crossed the River Pruth on 6 March 1821 in his bid to carve a Greek empire from the Ottoman empire, the cause of Greek liberty had assumed increasing importance for Americans. Other antagonists of entrenched power - the liberals of Spain, Italy, and Latin America - competed with the Greeks for American attention. As for the forces of repression, apart from the Turks, there was the spectre of the Holy Alliance, made up of the most autocratic elements of the Quintuple Alliance. These forces won critical rounds. The brief Neapolitan and Piedmontese revolutions succumbed in March and April 1821, and in late August 1823 the Battle of Trocadero ended Spanish liberalism. While Latin American liberators fared well behind the curtain of British sea power, at the end of 1823 the contenders on the Continent had dwindled to the Holy Alliance and the very combative Greeks and Turks. Clinton and the People's men gained momentum from the Greek cause. For political reasons, Clinton thought that the backing of the Greeks should be kept within bounds. Reading over Monroe's message to Congress of 2 December 1823, Clinton passed over the president's reference to the "heroic struggle of the Greeks" and suggested to Charles Haines that "the President's appropriate Eulogium on the people" should "be republished emphatically."14 Monroe had defined "the people" as

154 "The Gordian Knot"

"exclusively the sovereign" and had admitted, "We are all liable to error, and those who are engaged in the management of public affairs are more subject to excitement, and to be led astray ... than the great body of their constituents, who, living at home ... are calm but deeply interested spectators of events."15 Letting the essence of the Monroe Doctrine pass, Clinton concentrated on the exercise of power at the grass roots to restrain the excesses of government power. If the anticipated electoral law was to succeed, undue heed given to foreign affairs might crystallize statewide support for Clinton's most dangerous opponent, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Rufus King, determined that Adams should win, urged Henry Wheaton to fight for the electoral bill by pounding away at "all the arguments wh[ich] betray ... the character, & very essence, of our institutions; every thing in discredit of the holy alliance, and their kindred associations in this country."16 Van Buren must go down with Metternich and the Turks, he meant, and John Quincy Adams must rise. Consistent with this, Charles King's New-York American gave special attention to the sufferings and possibilities of the Greeks as the new legislature made ready to come to grips with the electoral issue. The editor thought it useful that the attention of Americans had been drawn to the great tests of foreign affairs, for they could now select a president who, "with firmness of purpose and American principles, unites caution and sagacity."17 Some, though not all, Clintonians considered Southern feelings as they approached the Greek question. Concerned to offset the perception that he had been hostile to the South during the settlement of the Missouri question, Clinton concluded that his followers should not needlessly emphasize the iniquity of slavery.18 The New- York Statesman let the South speak for itself, abstracting fully the exchanges between Daniel Webster and John Randolph of Roanoke. Webster belaboured the Turks as much as the Holy Alliance.19 Randolph stood firmly behind the Turks. The values of one people should not be imposed on another, he argued, and Turkish foreign policy and international behaviour had "been much more Christian than that of the 'Most Christian,' or 'Most Faithful' Majesties of Europe - for she has not interfered ... in the internal affairs of other nations," slavery included.20 Hinterland antiregular newspapers continued to lament Turkish oppression of the Greeks and the dark presence of the Holy Alliance;21 but with the publication of Randolph's words, the Clintonian metropolitan press edged away from the Greek cause. About the same time that Carter printed Randolph's statement, Noah's Advocate skirted the slavery issue and emphasized the value of American trade with the Levant and the folly

155 The Politics of Legislative Blockage

of irritating the Turkish government.22 In the Statesman, the South spoke for itself. Carter meanwhile built on European miseries that would eventually be attached to Van Buren's Albany managers, especially "Regency" appeared as a political term. Beginning in December 1823, the Statesman ran a series of essays under the title "People's Apology," berating the "junto" and the "oligarchy of legitimates" that maintained the "bigoted creed" of regular nominations. "Bigoted regulars" exercised a "moral tyranny" that brought social strife, which took the form of a "perpetual resort to the primary assemblies of the people," declared the Statesman. Since these were not the times that tried men's souls, these "assemblies" became discredited by overuse. Dominated by a few interested individuals, the local conventions functioned as part of a system of managers that reached down to prevent the restoration of the "family character" of American society. This system resurrected Federalism, now dead, as a straw man to delay the realization that "in respect of republicanism this is the day of the people, not of a party."23 From the apparition of the Holy Alliance, Carter had distilled a message designed to serve local leaders, intimating that oppression in New York took the form of machinery that created a "political aristocracy." In the context of New York politics, the antiregulars had thus begun to toy creatively with the image of European repression. They would soon be condemning "legislative aristocracy." GATHERING SUPPORT FROM THE MEDICAL PROFESSION Quite apart from the press, Clinton needed the support of New Yorkers who could mould opinion and would stress his competence for the presidency - or, failing that, the governorship. For one, he needed assurance that the medical profession would not turn to the regulars as a shield against popular medicine. His friendship with David Hosack served him well here. He had no doubt of Hosack's loyalty, nor did he doubt Hosack's ability to extend his influence.24 Dr John W. Francis of New York City, Hosack's ingratiating second self, had already set to work upstate before Clinton made his election-time visit to Manhattan. In late August, Francis had circulated, declaring that the Bucktail health officer of the Port of New York was responsible for a yellow fever panic in the interior of the state. He stated publicly that he agreed with the "better informed medical men" of middle and western New York in their diagnosis of an endemic "bilious remittent fever" that was "totally distinct from yellow fever. "^ Travelling about after conferring with Clin-

156 "The Gordian Knot" ton,26 Francis impressed on practitioners his appreciation for their learning while maintaining that a political appointee in New York City held the power to embarrass medical men throughout the state. Francis laboured to forge an alliance between Hosack's supporters on the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons and in the Medical Society of the County of New York, on the one side, and the members of the hinterland medical community, on the other. Hosack sought this alliance in order to gain the power that would strengthen his hand in the college. More broadly, Hosack sought to defend the medical profession - the "regularly trained" physicians - as the scientific patriciate capable of providing sound medical care for all citizens. The college would provide authenticated skills, and authenticated services made widely available would establish professional authority so strongly that it would never fall before an onslaught of root doctors. The battle for control of the College of Physicians and Surgeons left wounds, and Hosack deftly tended them. Uniting the professorships of clinical medicine and the theory and practice of medicine reduced the cost of medical training. During this period, physicians often hoped to pass on their patients and practices to their sons. The fact that Hosack had assumed the responsibilities of Dr William Hammersley at the reduced rate set by the regents in 1821 promised to put many New York physicians in his debt.2? During this period Hosack also gained the support of Dr John Stearns of Waterford, who had played a leading role in the development of the Medical Society of the State of New York, over which he presided from 1817 to 1821. Moving to New York City in 1819, Stearns at first opposed Hosack in the struggle for control of the medical school.28 By March 1823, however, the two men had drawn together on a common ground, the pathology that emphasized the fluids of the human body - the humoralism which Hosack had long urged with little company.29 The New York City humoralist revival of the early 18205 expressed but one dimension of the profession in the time of Hosack's ascendancy. In early 1823 the committee on bylaws of the county medical society reminded Manhattan physicians that they merited "the contempt of the public" when they revealed themselves "sometimes too selfish, and sometimes too indolent." Although it would mean about one hundred papers a year, the committee suggested that each member of the society present a case or a medical essay. Immediately after their chairman reported, Hosack presented a case, and in January 1824 he spoke on "the diseases communicated by the parents to the foetus in utero."30 This subject pointed to the matter of problem births. The society soon held that poor women should be freed from the danger of "ignorant and intemperate mid wives." To handle appropriate cases, the organization would

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provide two consulting physicians and at least two accoucheurs for each ward.31 The physicians appeared charitable, behaving as medical counterparts of Haines, as Hosack came to the fore among them. By the beginning of July 1824, both the state society and the county society had chosen presidents friendly to Clinton. In Albany, at the February meeting of the Medical Society of the State of New York - which, as usual, met while the legislature was sitting - Alexander Coventry of Oneida County won another term as president. In his address, the Utica physician pointed out that he had long worked far from city resources, and he described his lengthy experience with varieties of "endemic fever" in the more freshly settled areas of upstate New York.32 After the business of the day, Coventry spent the evening with Clinton and his family, making it clear that he had supported the administration of "the Governour."33 Later, in his July 1824 inaugural address before the county medical society, Hosack referred deftly to Clinton's scientific interests. He recommended that the county medical societies purchase meteorological instruments so that physicians might learn more of the relationship between climate and disease. (Many New Yorkers knew that Clinton, long concerned about this relationship, took the outdoor temperature three times every day).34 Hosack then turned to his objective. "To give dignity to an elevated and liberal profession," he said, his colleagues should banish the memory of the "party feuds" that had disturbed the county medical society. Second, Manhattan physicians should set an example for the profession in the remainder of the state by enforcing the licensing act of 1813 against "ignorant pretenders" in the city and its vicinity. By doing this, they would perform "an act of justice to the profession, and especially to the public." The county society, according to Hosack, had shown the way by providing the code of professional ethics which the state medical society had recently approved. The code sought "to regulate the intercourse between the members of the medical faculty ... upon such principles, that their observance cannot fail to preserve that elevation of respectability to which the profession has attained in the most cultivated ranks of society."35 Completed in February 1823 by a committee led by James Manley, a former opponent of Hosack, the code laid out "rules ... for the observance of physicians and surgeons, in their intercourse with each other."36 Nine years earlier, Clinton had expressed regret that the "prevalence of intestine feuds and animosities" had diverted the medical profession from its responsibilities.37 Medical squabbling seemed now to have been laid to rest in a Clintonian-administered peace. These developments in the state and city medical societies told observant politicians that dominant influences in a major profession, striv-

158 "The Gordian Knot" ing to order and defend itself, could lean against the regulars. The regulars also lost ground in a long struggle that went on virtually in the midst of the lawmakers, a struggle that at first glance had little to do with medical services. The Struggle for the Mayoralty of Albany Ambrose Spencer, who was now practising law and was feeling demeaned by pleading before the bench he had once sat on, decided to become the mayor of Albany. Clinton privately condemned this "silly ambition" because it "crosses our plan and will produce irritation in a quarter where there ought to be conciliation.'^8 The Young faction might view Spencer's drive for the mayoralty as an effort to ease himself into the governorship while Clinton sought the presidency. On the other hand, Clinton would stand to lose if he revealed that he had little control over Spencer's actions. Clinton therefore decided to keep mum. However, his silence did not shake the optimism of Carter, who read Spencer's drive for office as support of Clinton and counted it a "great point. "39 Carter's judgment may have been the more accurate. The long struggle for the mayoralty sapped the strength of regular popularity in Albany, particularly when the question of public health became involved. Spencer's fight for office took place in the Capitol, where both the legislature and the Albany common council met. Spencer tussled with Mayor Charles E. Dudley, whose term would end with the new year. A prosperous Albany merchant who had become more wealthy and more firmly tied to Federalist circles when he married Blandina Bleecker, Dudley sat on both the state senate and the inner councils of the Van Burenites.40 The efforts to transfer his office to Spencer began on New Year's Day when the twenty-two-man council divided evenly five times on a motion that Dudley's tenure had ended the previous day.41 The deadlock continued, with some rearrangements in the regular line-up. On 12 January, Spencer's opponents presented a new mayoral prospect in an influential Fifth Ward lumber dealer.42 Nevertheless, Spencer's supporters stood by him through flurries of ballots: twentythree on 26 January, and ten on 9 February, with the contest so heated that motions to adjourn brought even divisions. The council only rose when Dudley, who, along with the recorder, had been voting against Spencer, voted a second time to break the tie. Then, in early March, Spencer faced a third opponent, John Lansing, Jr, the seventy-yearold former chancellor, an old foe of Clinton and Spencer, whose candidacy did not last long. The council tied on one vote, tied on a motion

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to adjourn and then Spencer carried the election when one of his foes cast a blank ballot.43 The resistance to Spencer had collapsed after his backers skilfully intruded the question of offices for physicians, firmly linking it to improved medical services for Albany's citizens. In January 1821 the common council had increased the number of city physicians from one to two. On the January day in 1824 when the council went through its most extended balloting for mayor, one Spencerite proposed the appointment of a committee to consider another increase in the number of city physicians, whereupon the council struck a five-man committee that included three Spencerites. These three reported that two physicians could not attend adequately to the needs of the poor. They maintained that the city medical men did their work well but faced more cases than they could handle: Albany needed five physicians, one for each ward. The anti-Spencer committeemen dissented, doubting the competence of the three men whom the Spencerites had in mind, and arguing that the unscrupulous poor could not impose on the two shrewd men already in place. In effect, the anti-Spencerites offered only limited patronage combined with praise and more work for the two who held appointments; the Spencerites offered not only praise but less work and more patronage and public recognition for the medical profession, as well as better care for the poor. Both sides remained consistent. During the session that followed Spencer's election, all ten Spencerites present voted to confirm the two city physicians in their positions and to add three more. All nine opponents of Spencer voted against the appointments.44 Throughout the struggle over the mayoralty, the Albany Argus demanded that the voters understand the ongoing dispute to herald a Clintonian-Federalist grab for power,45 but the Clintonian press gave comparatively restrained notice to the battle in the council chamber. Most aggressive, the Albany Daily Advertiser argued that Dudley was not a member of the common council for electoral purposes, so his behaviour was doubly questionable because he had voted after he ceased to be mayor. The Albany National Democrat merely recorded the tallies in the council, while the New- York Statesman disclaimed personal hostility to Dudley and mildly reproached him for setting an "antirepublican" precedent by voting.46 On coming to office, Spencer sounded conciliatory. He asked that "all past dissentions ... be buried in oblivion, and that harmony, good will and mutual respect be restored. "47 Spencer had assumed an appropriate posture. Clinton and Hosack, distinguishing the interest of a profession from self-interest, maintained that when public men placed their responsibility to serve the people

160 "The Gordian Knot" foremost they would redeem the "character" of their profession, making it - politics, medicine, or law - deserving of power and authority. With professionalism redeemed, neither root doctors nor pettifoggers nor politicians could mislead the public. Similarly, the end of partisan disputes would redeem the "character" of New York State. This prediction was to emerge as a central Clintonian theme in the struggle for office in 1824. The wrangling over the Albany mayoralty appeared as factional selfishness, and the perception of New York as a dysfunctional member of the Union could spread if the Legislature failed to behave properly, uniting the state behind its great man, restoring respect in the state and within the nation. T H E BATTLE O V E R T H E E L E C T O R A L BILL B E G I N S

Clinton's hopes fed on the environment in which the forty-seventh session of the New York State legislature met. It was his belief that public opinion might move the men who sat in the assembly and senate. He defined the electoral law as the "Alpha & Omega. "48 Without it, any thought of a Clinton presidency faded. Facing this "crisis," he also became aware that his tactic of political silence and retreat had left him with little direct leverage in the legislature. He had staked everything on "public feeling" and on the capacity of nonparty elites to mould that feeling. Lacking any substantial power to manipulate votes in the assembly and senate, he sought to cement an alliance through which he might guide the lawmakers. In December 1823, Clinton concluded, "If we secure [John] Cramer's interest the electoral bill will certainly pass."49 With that accomplished, he believed he would be like Themistocles after the battle of Salamis - the second choice of each proud general and by default the first choice of all.5° Cramer, a wealthy Waterford lawyer, could bring his weight to bear in the senate and guide Samuel Young's forces in the assembly, and Clinton accelerated his efforts to cultivate both leaders, "Cramer & Co." William James went to talk to Samuel Young, who affirmed his support of the law but stressed that "the man" should "be kept out of view." Uncertain of the depth of Young's commitment, Clinton urged Henry Post to "reason [Cramer] into right." In early January, Clinton believed that Cramer would work for the popular election of electors. By the middle of the third week of that month, he was certain. Cramer then came to see Clinton for a "glorious Midnight interview."*1 Critical support, coming under cover of night when Clinton's door would not be watched, thus seemed securely in hand before the bill made its way to the senate.

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New York's secretary of state, the regular William L. Marcy, took seriously the threat that Clinton posed. Marcy told Martin Van Buren that he feared Cramer had gone over to the People's men and that Clinton and Spencer now guided the antiregulars. Clinton, Marcy believed, could win all the electoral votes of the state if the electoral law passed with provisions for a statewide ticket rather than the choice of electors in districts. Exploring the logic of a Clinton-Young alliance, Marcy speculated that Samuel Young would become the People's candidate for governor and that the regulars would soon face "People's senators in each district & People's Members of assembly in each county." If elected to the legislature, they would "operate conjointly and prove a mass of congregate materials which for a single onsett will be far from being harmless to the republican party. "52 With Clinton angling for the presidency, Young's followers and the People's men would join to create an effective state opposition party. Marcy's analysis emphasized party building. Clinton differed in one important respect: he took heart from the hunger that he saw in factional leaders. Clinton believed that several men wanted the governorship, Young and Yates being the obvious contenders. The others included Edward P. Livingston, Henry Seymour, Erastus Root, and Peter B. Porter. None of these men, nor any of those who eyed the post of lieutenantgovernor, would "turn his back on the people & commit political suicide"; they would not oppose the popular election of presidential electors, nor would they align with the Van Burenite regulars if those regulars blocked an electoral bill.53 Clinton faced the 1824 session ready to build on the hopes of other men and certain that, if the law failed, he would become governor of New York in their stead.54 Clinton erred in his assessment of most of these men. For example, as the battle over the electoral bill developed, Edward P. Livingston resolutely expounded the regular view for his estate manager. He had no doubt that, with a general ticket of electors chosen by the people, New York's votes "would be obtained by the Federalists for Mr Clinton." Election by districts, however, would scatter the state's electoral vote and "reduce our influence at Washington to [that of] a third rate State." Livingston claimed that he could accept the popular election of electors if "the mode" was "made uniform throughout the Union. "55 He could not, however, accept the thought of New York congressmen being less than equal; their dignity must reflect his. Governor Yates spoke before Livingston, and he spoke publicly. Every newspaper in New York published what Yates said in his message of 6 January. Read widely, his speech would decide his political future and could shape the fate of the electoral bill. Clinton, like others, had

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heard that Yates would have the vice-presidency of the United States if he stood firm against the popular election of electors, but Clinton dismissed the idea as farcical and expected the governor to call for change in the electoral law.56 Yates did not say what Clinton wanted to hear. Following the regular line, the governor argued that it was "manifest, that the manner of electing may have an essential effect on the power and influence of a state ... by either dividing the votes, or enabling the state with greater certainty to give an united vote." The "evil" of this disparity of influence would remain "until a uniform rule" was "ingrafted in the constitution of the United States." Yates anticipated that there would "shortly" be an amendment, and he left it to the legislators to decide "whether, under existing circumstances, the present manner of choosing electors, ought ... to be changed." Ignoring the fact that the New York legislature had cast a divided electoral vote in 1808 and could do so again in 1824, Yates accepted the assumption that the legislative choice of electors would unify the state's presidential vote, saving its dignity and weight.s? He followed the regular line. Yates's words told the People's men in the legislature that they must fight hard for a change in the electoral law. Henry Wheaton and James Tallmadge led the People's men in the assembly, where they faced two youthful and resourceful regular managers, Azariah Cutting Flagg and Thomas Glasby Waterman. Waterman, a High-Minded Federalist, a Yale-educated Broome County lawyer, and an Episcopalian, would soon leave the practice of his profession to gain wealth by dealing in land and lumber. Flagg, at thirty-four (two years younger than Waterman) had honed his political skills during twenty-three years of experience as a printer. Since 1811, he had guided the Plattsburgh Republican, the key Republican journal of the "North Country." Waterman was to switch to the Whigs in 1834, but Flagg remained a leader in the Albany Regency and in the councils of the Democratic Party. His accomplishments of 1824 did much to earn him that place.58 Rufus King offered warnings and advice to Wheaton. The regulars would try to postpone the electoral law for the present election, he predicted. Beginning with the choosing of a speaker, they would play on country assemblymen's hostility to the members from the New York City area; and since the People's men could not muster broad support behind a figure such as Samuel S. Gardiner or even a suitable westerner, they should avoid country enmity by acquiescing in the election of an upstate regular as speaker - for instance, Richard Goodell from the very northern county of Jefferson. Then, counselled King, to regain the initiative, Wheaton should attack the iniquity of tyranny, compare the extralegislative junto in Albany with the Holy Alliance, and em-

163 The Politics of Legislative Blockage

phasize the contempt in which it held the intelligence and integrity of the people.59 The assembly elected Goodell by 116 to 9, and the regular leaders went on to box in the People's men. Even before Yates had delivered his message, Wheaton, moving aggressively, righteously gave notice that he would bring in an electoral bill. Flagg then quickly moved to refer the subject to a select committee.60 Calling the electoral law an "exclusive effort from the city," Flagg said that "the views of the members from the country should be consulted in a matter which at least equally interested them."61 The proposal for a committee passed, despite firm opposition from the People's men, backed up by a quarter of the remaining assemblymen.62 Van Buren's Albany managers glumly reported that the electoral bill would pass because too many members had given "indiscreet pledges" to win their elections and because "the opposition has ... a distinct and prominent ground to rally upon - while our people have been left to stare at each other in utter amazement & consternation.>163 They were unduly pessimistic: if Flagg had to retreat, he would do so in good order. Wheaton, confident that he could shame the country regulars into submission, disdainfully fought efforts to run the committee as a closed council. Chaired by Flagg, it included five other Crawford men and also James Finch, Jr, (an Adams supporter from Orange County), James Mullett, Jr, (a Chautauqua County Clayite), and Wheaton. Flagg did not call them together for five days, giving himself time to cultivate sympathetic members. Then visitors and men from both houses crowded the room where the committee met. After forty-five minutes of halting discussion, during which Wheaton and Finch sought to win support for a general ticket chosen by plurality, Mullett moved that the committee adjourn for two days. When they again gathered, Flagg announced that the majority of the committee members had told him they wanted to "be alone." Wheaton protested that other legislators had an "unquestionable right" to attend, and none of the men who had revealed their minds to Flagg now spoke up to advocate secrecy. As the regular members proceeded to set aside Wheaton's bill for one read before the committee by Mullett, Wheaton browbeat Silas Bowker, a Cayuga County farmer, into silence when the latter said he had a "difficulty" with Wheaton's bill.6' In the assembly, John Ruger, a bitterly anti-Clintonian lawyer and farmer from southern Oneida County, flailed away at a resolution confirming the right of members to attend committee meetings. Pointing out that committees often met in the quarters of members, he said that "in such a committee there must be crude ideas advanced, and

164 "The Gordian Knot" if those were communicated to the world, in a perverted and improper manner, it would be injurious." Flagg backed him up, observing that "many persons enter a committee room, and throw out useful ideas there, who would not feel a confidence to express themselves before a crowded auditory. "^ A motion to postpone the resolution until the third Monday in February was passed by eighty-two to thirty-four, with seven People's men voting to delay consideration of openness and with three absent. Wheaton's personal and professional qualities limited support for the bill and helped place formulation of the law in regular hands.66 If Wheaton's qualities as a "born marplot" served the People's men ill, so did Clinton's presence in Albany.6"7 It allowed Mordecai Noah to nettle Wheaton with imaginative charges, surmising that although they seemed furious against the late governor, "the seven wise men" of the New York City delegation were prepared "eventually to go for Clinton." Charles K. Gardiner of the Patriot was, according to Noah, a closet Clintonian, and Wheaton was really the leader of Clinton's forces in the legislature. In Flagg's select committee, Wheaton, according to Noah, had voted against Mullett's proposal for a law that would provide for the election of a general ticket by majority; he must therefore be privy to a Clintonian conspiracy to take the electoral vote of the state by a general ticket elected by a plurality.68 In late January, Noah elaborated further on the opposition "plot," offering predictions designed to appeal to fears of New York City domination. Even if they did not succeed in passing an electoral law, the People's men would hold a summer convention at Utica and nominate Clinton for the governorship, charged Noah.69 Behind the scheme there stood "a few republicans of the lower wards [who] had grown rich and aristocratic, and felt that they had a right to rule the whole party ... and now are the united Clintonian party against the old democratic party of this a'fy."70 In this context, the purpose of a Utica convention was plain: it would give the illusion that the People's Movement had strong country backing and was not orchestrated from the metropolitan centre of the state. The allegations threw Wheaton on the defensive and moved him to respond. On the last day of January he rose in the assembly and "took occasion to repel ... a direct charge ... against him and his honorable friends, that their motive ... was to promote the election of ... the peaceparty candidate against Mr. Madison in 1812." Denying that the People's men would ever support Clinton, Wheaton ignored Noah and attributed the charges of Clintonianism to "the worms of corruption who crawl about this city.'*71 Wheaton had spoken of Clinton's 1812 candidacy but avoided denouncing Clinton's praise of "the golden days

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of commercial prosperity." Skirting the negative images associated with Clinton as a defender of commerce, Wheaton offered a rebuttal that failed to come to grips with the manner in which the regulars had linked the People's men to one facet of Clinton's complex political persona. Thomas Waterman also helped to throw Wheaton off balance. The Broome County regular built on Flagg's successes to oppose the general ticket elected by plurality, which both Clinton and Wheaton favoured. He argued that a slate of electors so chosen could not represent the wealth and power of New York; nor could it truly represent the people. Moreover, under Wheaton's proposal "it was probable or possible ... that the entire ticket might be located in the city of New York." Having delivered this thrust, Waterman presented a bill that proposed election by majority vote but with electors "taken from" congressional districts, two coming from each of the two districts that had "the greatest excess of population.'*72 Backed by Flagg, Waterman offered his plan not only to suggest that the Wheaton bill was a New York City plot but to draw fire from a central defect of the bill written by James Mullett and reported from the Flagg committee. Under Mullett's general ticket by majority, if no ticket won a majority, New York would lose its presidential vote unless a special session of the legislature convened and chose the electors. In view of the presumed public support for the popular election of electors, the assemblymen felt pressed to support a law specifying a general ticket elected by plurality, even if it increased the possibility of Clinton carrying all the state's electors. Then Waterman intervened to lift this burden. He proposed that a plurality of the votes given in a district be enough to elect an elector if none of the electoral candidates for that district won "a majority of all the votes in this state."73 Waterman pointed to New York City and its surroundings as a powerhungry portion of the state. Then he went on to argue that Wheaton could not guarantee that his bill would ensure that the electoral vote of the state would "be united on one presidential candidate." If the People's men of New York City had their way, the state could be dangerously "distracted in its electoral vote," he argued.74 A divided ticket elected by plurality would be even less meaningful than a divided ticket elected by a majority; it would show that interests in the New York commonwealth could be played off against each other. The regular leaders hoped that many assemblymen, especially Crawford supporters and Clayites from the western part of the state, covertly opposed any change in the electoral law. At this point, two Bucktails who later voted for Clay electors pressed forward an amendment that would alter Waterman's bill to specify the election of electors by a plurality rather than by a majority. This failed on 4 February by a vote

166 "The Gordian Knot" of sixty-four to fifty-two. The Adams men supported the motion firmly, but all thirty-nine Crawfordites present voted no, and so did seventeen of the twenty-eight attending Clay supporters. The Van Burenite regulars had defeated election by plurality, but with differences over presidential preference among the Bucktails coming briefly to the surface. The Waterman bill was then quickly passed by a vote of one hundred to five.?5 Edwin Crosswell, the new co-editor of the Albany Argus, predicted that the success of the bill in the lower house meant "defeat [of] the scheme of Tallmadge & Co. to give the electoral votes [of the State] for Mr. Clinton." Henry Wheaton professed satisfaction even though the assembly had set his bill aside. Although Wheaton recognized that the Waterman plan, as a district system, could divide the state's electoral vote, he felt confident that the senate would not "dare to reject it." Certain that proceedings had laid both Crawford and Clinton low, Wheaton left Albany to take up his duties as reporter of the Supreme Court in Washington.?6 THE ELECTORAL BILL AND PUBLIC OPINION On the day before Yates had addressed the legislature, Eliphalet Nott had visited Clinton and suggested that the bill could not pass the senate because of the opposition to Clinton in that body. Clinton had concluded that Nott's suggestion "was thrown out with a view to make me decline." Although he recognized that the Union College president might have spoken the truth, he proudly reflected that he had become the "argument ad terrorem." He gave Nott "a pointed negative," taking comfort in the thought that "if the law fail, we will have the pleasure of ruining the Agents." Clinton continued to believe that "the people will come out with a thundering voice."77 There were indeed rumblings, but not the loud and well-timed thunder he hoped to stir up and hear. After talking to Nott, Clinton wrote to Francis Granger, urging that the people should be encouraged to speak "in a language that cannot be misunderstood." Little more than a week later, he again wrote to the younger man, pressing him "to spare no exertion" in marshalling public opinion, for even "the Gordian knot [that] lies in the senate" could "be easily loosened by the fear of the people." Henry Post received similar exhortations to "get up meetings" and arrange letters to the legislators.78 Not many wheelhorses responded as Clinton wished. Granger did sit as secretary of a Canandaigua February meeting that advocated the popular election of the justices of the peace.79 Yet mindful of the Noahs of western New York such as Oran Follett of the Batavia Spirit of the Times, Granger did not foster Ontario County protests to pressure the legislature on the presidential question.

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Meetings cropped up elsewhere. Clinton saw to it that after being given publicity in friendly newspapers, they received full notice in the city's National Democrat, there to edify the legislators. Supporters of the doctrine of electors held two meetings in Albany County before the legislature convened. One of these was in the Capitol on the evening of December 24. It was timed and arranged to steel Yates against the "wicked and unhallowed attempt to barter away the electoral votes of this state." George Merchant presided. A Princeton classmate of James Madison, he had long survived as a figure in Albany's Republican politics. Now, after two years of quiet observation, the canny sixty-seven year old made the shift that would take him to the Utica convention in September. Under Merchant's aegis, Clinton thought of his forces as "attacking the Lion in his den."80 The other Albany County meeting was held in the town of Bethlehem and was less publicized than Merchant's gathering at the Capitol. It drew on Clinton's "Washington" essays to argue that election by the legislature was "aristocratic," whereas choice by the people ensured purity, "because two hundred and eighty thousand freemen can never be corrupted by the largesses of profligate men, and ... misled by the seductions of unholy ambition." Republicanism in this context meant democracy, which the new state constitution had brought towards fulfilment. To betray pledges to stand behind this new assertion of the power of the people would "dishonour the republican party."81 Supporters of the popular election of electors held eleven other meetings that received newspaper notice before the electoral bill came to its critical pass in the senate. These meetings were limited evidence of swelling grass-roots support for the bill or for Clinton as president. Three (the 24 January meetings in Monroe, Orange County; in Riverhead, Suffolk County; and the meeting seven days later in Seneca, Ontario County) were managed by people who played, at best, minor roles in state politics.82 The remaining eight were "got up" by relatively prominent figures - men who were active in state politics, were successful entrepreneurs, or, in some cases, had inherited wealth. Still, they were not uniformly leaders on whom Clinton or Post could easily call. Some of them had been Bucktails or were People's men who sought candidates for the governorship other than Clinton.83 One set of resolutions warned that the people would respond with wrath against the aristocratic presumption of any legislators who opposed the electoral bill: "All arguments against a popular choice of electors which are predicated on the danger of division in the republican party, and intemperate heats among the people, are wholly unworthy of the republican character."84 A central New York observer offered an equally credible opinion when he assured a New York City correspondent that "on the subject ... the Mass of the Community

168 "The Gordian Knot" are dead - they seem to have no wishes ... The Commotion is all at Albany. "8s Undismayed by the quiet of the thunder sounding across the winter fields, Clinton continued to send Post optimistic letters designed to move the banker to ever greater exertions. On the day after Yates delivered his message, Clinton prematurely but correctly predicted, "The law will pass the Assembly by a great majority ... All sides [are] in favor of it."86 In the middle of January he informed Post that only four senators would not see reason to support the electoral bill, and eight days later he listed seventeen members of the upper house who would certainly vote for it; five of them later supported postponement until November.87 The day after Clinton made this prediction he again wrote to the bankers, confident that his "letter of yesterday must have been an elixir" to Post, "a cordial to mental dejection and anodyne to pain." Thus relieved, Post had his orders: "Prevent a caucus at Washington."88 The instruction exceeded the power of Post's Washington agent to bring public opinion to bear, and it made little sense tactically. Since the caucus was already a discredited procedure, the sixty-six-man meeting of 14 February in the House of Representatives further damaged the candidacy of the ailing Crawford.89 CLINTON T R I E S TO BACK THE B I L L IN THE LEGISLATURE

Before the assembly passed the electoral law, Clinton began to oscillate between confidence and desperation. He felt compelled to reach out of his relative political isolation and to sway members. As Flagg's committee deliberated, he admonished Post: "We want help up here - Why is not Haines up?"?0 Five days later, he again told his New York City factotum that Haines had to be in Albany and active while the legislature was in session, even if Joseph Swift had to bring him up. After another plea to Post, the reluctant Calhounite belatedly arrived and presumably set about the work of persuading the assemblymen who supported Clay, Adams, or Calhoun that they had a common interest in the passage of the electoral law. Haines might even have made believable Clinton's threat that if they held back, "we will support even Crawford in preference."91 Haines doubted that he could accomplish much. Clinton had earlier enlisted Solomon Van Rensselaer to urge Haines on, and Haines had responded with the rhetorical question: "Do you really think, under all circumstances that the Electoral Law will pass?" Yet he presented himself to Clinton as one who was "in high spirits and ... convinced that every thing was going right."92 Haines departed from Albany after

169 The Politics of Legislative Blockage

the Waterman bill went to the senate. By late February, with the law stalled in that house, he was in Washington preparing to defend the constitutionality of New York State's insolvency laws before the Supreme Court.93 Legal business, devotion to Calhoun, and Washington presidential politics would soon deprive Clinton of his most presentable lobby agent. He thus reached out towards other, often different, material. On 19 January, after talking with Isaac Kibbe, John Crary, and McDougall of the National Democrat, Clinton ticked off for Post the forces he expected to marshal: Mr Kibbe is here on the business of the Buffalo Sufferers and ... I believe usefully employed in doing good. He is intimate with [John] Blakeley, [James] Ganson, [Peter] Hager [n] &c. and says that the electoral bill can be passed without restrictions. It is to be reported tomorrow. He thinks that [Ferris] Pell, [Dr Joshua] Secor and [William W.] Gilbert will be singularly useful. He is to write to Stephen Bates (who is an host). [Matthew] Carpenter [Dr John] Russell and [Halsey] Rogers [are] to be on the ground and thinks that he can manage them all. Let these Gentlemen come up as soon as possible and scatter themselves. Communications can be made to and from them which I cannot and ought not to know.94

By late February, the legislature had passed a law establishing a commission-managed fund for residents of the Niagara Frontier who had lost property during the War of 1812. After his success in this effort, Kibbe stayed in Albany throughout the session and continued his visits to Clinton's home into April. Ferris Pell, Alfred S. Pell's younger brother, came less frequently, but Dr Secor called almost as often as Kibbe.95 Blakeley of Otsego County, Ganson of Genesee, and Hager of Tompkins - three Assemblymen - could wield some influence on members from central and western New York. The other men to whom Clinton referred might work from the lobby to attempt to direct events in the legislature. Most of them combined financial influence with useful political experience. Until 1823, Ferris Pell had been the agent for the state in settling demands against the federal government for war expenses, and he looked after many claimants. His work was criticized, but two years would pass before the state indicted Alfred and Ferris Pell for conspiracy to defraud in the sale of the stock of "monied institutions." Meanwhile, an 1823 senate report had approved Ferris Pell's accounts, and he could call on the men indebted to him.96 Two of the men whom Clinton mentioned were New York City figures older than Pell. Gilbert, once a member of the Committee of One Hun-

170 "The Gordian Knot"

dred of 1775, could have brought revolutionary legitimacy to the People's cause and the experience gained from years of service in the New York City common council and the state legislature.97 There is no record that Gilbert and Clinton saw each other at this time, but Kibbe may have lured this aging Clintonian wheelhorse to Albany. Secor, who at times held the office of coroner in New York City and had known Clinton for at least sixteen years, was only something less of a stalwart.98 In partnership with his brother Elijah, a merchant, Secor pursued some imaginative if annoying ways of attracting money. Late in 1824 the two men petitioned the New York City common council not to force them to remove the giant "wheels of Fortune" which they had placed above the front of their Chatham Street and Broadway lottery offices. The moving signs had brought "Complaints ... as projecting further into the Street than allowed by Law."99 The common council found the Secors sufficiently persuasive, and it dropped the prosecution and gave the "wheels of Fortune" five more months to whirl.100 Judge Rogers of Warren County may, like Kibbe, have used his influence during the 1824 session for very direct gain. In a later investigation, one witness testified that Rogers and Kibbe had expected to receive $1,000 each for their efforts to secure banking privileges for the New-York Chemical Manufacturing Company.101 According to other testimony, Carpenter of Tioga County had a lower price - $250; if this was true, the sum had purchased a politically agile sixty-four-year-old militia major general who had supported the Republican Party since 1802 and had sat in the Constitutional Convention of 1821. Throughout, Carpenter had kept in touch with Clinton, but the regulars had never openly disowned him, confining themselves to minor harassment when he ran for the assembly in i822.102 The remaining two men, both in their early fifties, had worked for the Republican Party for many years, and both had followed Clinton when the party split. John Russell of Cooperstown had also pursued a bank charter. In 1813 he had taken a leading role in trying to charter the Otsego County Bank, which had slated him for a directorship. But the 1824 legislators proved no more cooperative than those who sat in 1813, and not until 1830 did Russell hold office in a properly chartered bank.103 Stephen Bates of Canandaigua, the other man, had settled in Ontario County in 1790. Within the next twenty years, he opened a hotel, won appointment to the office of sheriff, and established himself as a leading local Republican. Becoming a Clintonian, he sat in the New York senate from 1816 through 1819. Bates had the reputation of being an honest canal contractor who sought to combat fraud, and his banking ties were more limited than Russell's. In 1815 he had subscribed to the establishment of a Canandaigua branch of the Bank of

171 The Politics of Legislative Blockage

Utica, and his brother had been a director of the Ontario Bank in i8i3. I0 4 C L I N T O N ' S P L A N TO A R R E S T B A N K B I L L S F A I L S

Clinton shared Gideon Granger's appreciation for Bates as a man of steadfast character who would stand against iniquitous opponents "like a wall of brass."105 Yet ends other than the Tightness of a change in the electoral law probably moved most of the men on whom Clinton chose to rely. Whatever their motives, Clinton expected them to foster a scheme by which he hoped to push the bill through both houses. Haines briefly became a party to this key plan when, on dining with Clinton on 27 January, Clinton won his agreement to a "project ... to arrest all the banks until the bill passes."106 Stalling the engines of commercial expansion would move New York State further down the path of democratic republicanism. This effort entailed building on the antibank feeling in Albany's "Bullion Democrats" - hard money men who, according to Clinton, had made up a large portion of the December meeting over which George Merchant had presided. Southwick's newspaper contributed by publishing an article by "a merchant" who lamented the scrip pumped into New York City by the Eagle Bank of New Haven, Connecticut, an institution that had begun to issue "a sett of bills, for which specie cannot be demanded, nor recovered by law." The piece ended with the hope "that our legislature will watch with a jealous eye, every attempt to substitute a paper for a specie currency." By the third week of February, Clinton was concluding that "banks are getting unpopular here."107 Clinton announced his plan of attack to Haines after the assembly's regular-dominated Committee on Banking and Insurance Companies had reported six major bank bills, which made it apparent that the chartering of banks would be a central question during the session.108 Clinton believed that Haines, Kibbe, and other lobbyists could convince men who wanted a general ticket by plurality to hold back their votes for charters until the senate and assembly supporters of those charters gave their assent to a suitable electoral bill. In the six assembly rollcall votes on banks that had taken place before the passage of the Waterman bill, Clinton could perceive some foundation for the tactic of holding up bank bills. Crawfordite regulars, in four of those votes, had given higher levels of support to the progress of bank bills than the People's men had, the difference clearly standing out in three roll calls: the People's men seemed capable of holding their votes back to trade. Clinton's agents may have employed the tactic in the hope that they would be able to swing Clayite votes to transform the Waterman bill

172 "The Gordian Knot" into a statute specifying election by plurality. The People's men had strongly supported the Committee of the Whole's report on the Bank of Rochester, but they drew back sharply when it came to the final passage of that charter on 30 January. Clay men, particularly those from the western part of the state, favoured the Bank of Rochester. Although Clinton had doubted Clayite eagerness for the electoral bill, it seemed possible to trade support for a bank that Clay men wanted.109 The plan, however, was not suitable for mounting sustained pressure in the legislature. Clinton had failed to allow for the strength of the probank feeling among the People's men. They had withheld support from some banks in order to force backing for the banks they favoured. As the session began, Alfred S. Pell had given notice that he would "at some future day, ask leave to bring in a bill for the purpose of incorporating banks and insurance companies, by authority of a general act."110 The voting pattern of the People's men in fifteen divisions following the passage of the Waterman bill gave further evidence of their desire to expand the sources of credit. In votes on the progress of bank bills, the People's men, in sharp contrast to the Van Burenite regulars, were markedly more favourable to the incorporation of banks than the remainder of the assembly were.111 Only much later in the session did Clinton admit that the plan "to oppose banks until the bill passed could not take place because the prominent friends of the bill are all the advocates of banks."112 He also overlooked a tactic which the Van Burenites employed to reduce the pressure for the incorporation of more banks. In the face of weak resistance from the People's assemblymen, the Van Burenites strongly backed bills to charter insurance companies. Although these institutions might lend money to entrepreneurs, regular-appointed state judges could block their capacity to issue notes that would become part of the circulating medium of New York, thereby making these companies hostages of the Albany Regency.113 The regulars built on this possibility in the senate. There, too, they supported the insurance companies. Reporting for the senate's committee on banks and insurance companies, Alvin Bronson of Oswego, a merchant and forwarder who had "a number of vessels on lakes Erie and Ontario," praised the services provided by marine and fire insurance companies. He readily acknowledged that the competition created by the incorporation of more insurance companies made it all the more necessary for them to seek profit by lending their capital, which "may be all, or nearly all loaned on real estate, properly pledged."I]4 After this, only two of the dozen insurance companies that won new charters during this sitting faced roll-call votes.115

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Bank Bills and the Electoral Bill in the Senate Bank charters, in spite of John Cramer's continual support for these bills, faced a greater obstacle in the senate. Even as he visited Clinton to pledge that the electoral bill would pass the senate, Cramer consistently cast votes that pushed bank bills towards passage. The critical vote on the electoral bill took place on 10 March. Dividing seventeen to fourteen, the senate then approved Edward P. Livingston's motion to postpone consideration of the law until November. In the days before that vote, Cramer led a group of sixteen senators, who followed him at least 70 percent of the time on seven critical banking roll calls. A looser but very effective bloc of only seven senators opposed them. This bloc centred on John Sudam, the ex-Federalist and sometime Clintonian who, with Charles E. Dudley, commanded for the Van Burenites in the senate.116 Twenty days after postponement of the electoral bill, as the senate again considered bank bills, the bloc of seven relaxed their guard; three new banks emerged. The Fulton Bank and the Long Island Bank won charters, while John C. Morrison's New-York Chemical Manufacturing Company became the Chemical Bank. Even so, the regulars who had voted to postpone the electoral bill remained sufficiently antibank to defeat a charter for the Dutchess County Bank - a project much favoured by the People's men - and to postpone both the consideration of the grant of banking powers to the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company and the chartering of the Commercial Bank of Albany, an institution that might offset the power of the Mechanics and Farmers' Bank.117 Small and evanescent though the Sudam group was, given the twothirds rule, it stalled the progress of bank bills until the legislature firmly shelved the popular election of presidential electors for the 1824 contest. The manoeuvre showed that senate regulars meant to connect political order with the grant of economic opportunity. In contrast to the 1823 session, the regular senate leaders now had the leverage to trade economic concessions for an arrangement that promised to keep power in their hands. Men in both the Cramer bloc and the Sudam bloc voted for postponement, seven in the former group and five in Sudani's group. The promise eventually to relax opposition to bank bills purchased support for the motion to postpone and at least avoided the even split that would have obliged Lieutenant-Governor Erastus Root to use his casting vote. If Yates were not renominated, continuity would be all the more needed on the regular ticket. Root could provide this, and he might be a more valuable candidate if he managed to remain above the fray.

174 "The Gordian Knot"

In the senate, Cramer had attacked the regular contention that the electoral law should not be further considered until Congress had fully weighed amending the United States Constitution to allow popular election by districts. He had forcefully advocated immediate change in the law, and he voted against postponement, as did his close associate Melancton Wheeler.118 Still, Cramer also wanted a law that would give banking privileges to the Chemical Manufacturing Company. Although he may not in fact have accepted an alleged payment of $5,000 for his work on behalf of the Chemical Bank, testimony taken during the investigation of the bank's creation repeatedly named him as an active supporter. The charter change, along with the bills to incorporate the Fulton Bank and the Commercial Bank of Albany, had failed to win the necessary two-thirds support in a series of votes on 8 March."9 Bronson's committee on banking held back consideration of the Chemical Bank until the beginning of April. This blocked Cramer's capacity to agitate the issue of the electoral bill aggressively and eroded his moral authority. As the end of the session neared, Cramer grew increasingly aware that with the electoral bill stalled, De Witt Clinton would very likely become a candidate for the governorship, leaving Samuel Young with little purchase on power. Logic demanded that Cramer seek a full accommodation with the regulars. THE L E G I S L A T O R S P R E P A R E TO FACE THE VOTERS

Henry Wheaton had returned to the assembly a week before these bank bills passed, hoping to pry the electoral bill loose. Given the underlying softness of support in the assembly, he could not effectively pit the lower house against the senate. But he could at least bait the regulars, and so he contributed to the public perception of the legislature's proceedings and of Governor Yates. On i April, Wheaton laid on the table resolutions pointing out that it was "publicly rumored" that the senate had postponed the electoral bill, and inquiring of the upper house what it had done with the measure. Since the bills on the Chemical, Fulton, and Long Island banks had passed through the senate earlier that day, Wheaton knew he had a slender chance of reviving consideration of the bill. When the assembly took the resolutions from the table in the afternoon, Flagg excoriated Wheaton for his lack of respect for the upper house. Responding, Wheaton condemned Yates along with the regular senators for their "continued usurpation in defiance of public opinion."120

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The Regulars Abandon Yates and Nominate Young Wheaton had failed to revive the electoral bill, but he had added to the embarrassments of the regular caucus that met on the evening of Friday, 2 April. Although the Van Burenites had bottled up the electoral genie in the senate, they had to find a suitable gubernatorial candidate. Yates, awkward at the beginning of his term, had by now become the butt of ridicule. The tax law had passed during his governorship, and he had installed many unwanted justices of the peace. Clinton had upstaged him in the canal celebration the previous year, and at the beginning of the 1824 session Yates seemed to squander his political integrity, presumably for a mess of potage which the public soon might see. Then Charles A. Clinton and Simeon De Witt Bloodgood had savagely chipped away at the governor's fragile dignity in a series for the Albany Daily Advertiser and the Albany Gazette. These "Buffalo" pieces developed a theme throughout the winter sitting of the legislature. They mocked Yates's pride in his "most rigidly consistent ... views, principles and objects." By repeatedly referring to one particular Yates story, they portrayed the governor as a parochial and pusillanimous Schenectady Dutchman: "Indeed we submit to his friends, whether it is not much worse for him now, than when, being importuned to take a look at Canada, he declared he did not think it proper 'for de axacative to axpose himself to de anemy.'"I21 Yates's peacetime behaviour failed to meet the standard of wartime bravery. Jabez Hammond remembered that "every morning" Buffalo threw Albanians "almost into convulsions of laughter, at the expense of the governor."122 Needing another candidate, Yates's former political friends felt out the wealthy and marmoreal new chancellor, Nathan Sanford, whose nomination would cement Clay men to the regular cause. Moreover, if Sanford let his name go before the caucus, Yates might feel that he could withdraw with some grace. This would spare the regulars the charge of ingratitude, which particularly concerned Flagg and Senator Silas Wright, newcomers to the legislature. Sanford, however, showed "his usual sagacity in discerning the signs of the times" and refused to comply unless the entire legislature endorsed his candidacy. The regulars made the necessary choice: the io6-man caucus rejected the governor. Then, on the motion of an ex-Federalist and after speeches by John Sudam and Melancton Wheeler (both former Federalists), they nominated Samuel Young in a sixty to forty-five vote.I23 This choice had the potential of sowing the seeds of demoralization among the People's men, for Young had commended the electoral bill, and Cramer

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had worked to build up support for him in the People's caucuses that had met during the session.I24 Some of the fifty-four men who did not attend the caucus yet who wanted Young's candidacy remained away that Friday evening because they anticipated the outcome of the contest for the second place on the regular ticket. In a seventy-five to eleven vote, Erastus Root defeated state Senator James Burt, a Baptist deacon and an Adams man who had opposed postponing the electoral law.125 The regular nomination of the freethinking and bibulous Root helped hold the People's men together, but their lines proved ragged in an important vote taken the following Monday. An amendment to the New York constitution - the popular election of justices of the peace - would pass only if it won a majority of the whole house (i.e., with sixty-five in favour); it went down to defeat, with fifty-seven yeas to fifty nays. Three People's men voted no and six were absent.126 The People's Men Rally At this point, the People's leaders of southern New York took charge and began to mould a party. They called a "meeting of Republican Members of the Legislature, friendly to the passage of the Electoral Law." Condemning Root because he had exerted his "utmost influence to defeat the [electoral] bill," Wheaton, Isaac Pierson, and David Gardiner produced the lengthy address which the regulars had failed to issue from their nominating caucus. They explained the blockage of the electoral bill through legislative intrigues that had denied the people their rightful sovereignty, and they called for a nominating convention to meet at Utica on 21 September.127 Following their caucus of 7 April, the People's men rallied in the assembly, bringing up Wheaton's resolutions again. Flagg again condemned the city member's lack of respect for the upper house, and he sharply questioned the motives behind Wheaton's concern for the political rights of the people, asking, "What kind of combinations and management, carried half a dozen bank charters through this house?"128 Tallmadge challenged Flagg to itemize his charges of bank influence, and he defended the lesson that Wheaton had read the senate championing "public liberty" against "caucus dictation. "I29 The assembly voted the resolutions down, fifty-five to forty-eight, but the ranks of the People's men had tightened up and grown a bit, and almost a quarter of the regulars who had participated in Young's nomination left for the lobby.130 The new party stood poised to reach for support outside southern and eastern New York. Condemning "aristocratic" legislative oppression, the party faced a regular leadership that was unready to

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be specific about bank corruption. Having embraced Cramer along with Young, the Van Burenites had yet to purge themselves. Finally, through Flagg, they had resorted to a defensive tactic which demanded deference to a legislative "aristocracy." Nevertheless, the regulars had effectively recovered and had shown that they could tie up their opponents. Clinton had proved ineffectual if not dreamy. The tactics he had worked out with Kibbe had been turned against him to block the electoral bill in the senate; the one major element of the "great Republican family" that he hoped to incorporate into his following had gone elsewhere. Although he had met regularly with Cramer before the electoral bill was postponed, Clinton had given no sign that he anticipated so emphatic a shift by the Young faction. He had also indulged in vain hopes for a surge of public feeling. Appreciation for his leadership in New York kept Clintonian strength alive, but the state's electorate registered no widespread surge of support for the electoral law as a means of sending Clinton to the presidency. If New Yorkers cherished the thought of their late governor as chief magistrate, it was not in the context of the nation. Yet Clinton fathomed Young's shift before Henry Wheaton, who admitted that he was unable to "penetrate the secret of the arrangement by which Yates was dropped & Young brought forward." Wheaton explained the shift as a grab for boodle: "Cramer & Young care not a fig for Mr Clay, or any body else, if they can gather the spoil of State patronage, contracts, &c."131 Clinton did not echo Wheaton's sense that the People's cause had been "shamefully betrayed" by Young and Cramer, but when Cramer called on him in late June he took careful note of the other man's demeanour. Neither of them broached the subject of politics as they chatted. Clinton recorded that he "never saw a man in deeper distress," an opinion he believed others shared. "The certain fate of his friend Young (if a prudent opposition is made) and the developments about the Chemical Bank" had caused Cramer's dejection, he observed.132 At this point Clinton understood how much the regulars had accomplished. Cramer had joined the element that displayed the most hostility to the creation of new banks, expecting, with Young as the regular candidate, to establish a measure of control over the Van Burenite leadership. This would have blunted regular critics such as Flagg, whose antibank probes could have been a threat if Young had gone over to the People's side. By the beginning of the summer, however, Cramer probably realized that a gubernatorial candidate running under the aegis of Van Buren would most likely lose. Moreover, win or lose, he could not count on the Van Burenites to block an investigation of the process by which the New York Chemical Manufacturing Company

178 "The Gordian Knot" had become a bank, leaving substantial doubt about the integrity of Young, who could probably only recover if he distanced himself from Cramer. Cramer's state of mind suggests that he belatedly sensed the canniness with which the ex-Federalist leaders in the regular caucus had acted once Sanford had rejected the nomination. Ignoring the qualms of Flagg and Wright, they had opened the possibility of strengthening over time the Republican element that was most committed to exercising firm control from the centre, the Regency-led Van Burenites. To attract votes, they had put in harness the faction given to the vocal recognition of the rights of the "sovereign people" and to the venturous practice of possessive individualism. People with substantial personalty to protect had to weigh whether the course of this regular leadership or the course of the People's men, with or without De Witt Clinton, offered the most promise.133 In the senate, regular conservatism had found powerful expression. John Sudam tenaciously restated and developed the regular argument that a change in the electoral law during this contest, which involved so many candidates, would reduce the power of New York's leaders to bargain with the federal government. Nor, in Sudani's view, was the failure to change the electoral law a usurpation of the constitutional rights of the sovereign people. He pointed out that a number of New York statesman who respected the federal constitution had honoured the old electoral law.J34 Law, interest, and memory bade caution, all in the name of the collective interest of New Yorkers. Clinton's cast of mind differed from Sudani's. While Sudam emphasized the legitimacy of differing opinions in the face of "artificial tumults and political excitements," Clinton pointed to differences in moral character; he judged that "Sudam in the Senate is leader of the base."135 Consistent with this, the assault mounted on Yates by Francis Bloodgood and Charles Clinton portrayed a pusillanimous man easily led astray from his own principles. From Clinton's vantage, men too often departed from republican principles for the sake of power. Cooperating with others, they made an aggregation of bad character that formed "corruption" established through "intrigue." Clinton believed that these twin spectres would move "public opinion" to condemn the legislative choice of electors and to demand that electors be chosen openly by the people. Unintentionally, the Coeymans resolutions confirmed the Clintonian point when they said that the "common people" were not interested in presidential politics; their lack of selfish interest made their votes valuable for the public good. The authors of this manifesto would have quickly rejoined that Clinton willingly worked through men who went to the lobby of the leg-

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islature to dangle "gilded pills" before assemblymen and senators, but the charge that he fostered commercial opportunities that corrupted the citizens of the republic did not greatly trouble Clinton. Maturing in New York City, he had early imbibed an appreciation for the ways in which republicanism and economic growth could mesh; the everlarger pie that came with expansion in commerce and manufacturing and better agriculture would, in his view, ensure rather than endanger the virtue of citizens. Clinton therefore did not feel uncomfortable with such men as Barker, Cramer, Kibbe, or Secor, and he drew no explicit distinction between them and less risk-prone friends in business such as William Bayard, William James, and John Jacob Astor. Clinton warned of the possibility of government repression that would throttle expression and thwart venturesomeness. Government, when reflecting the character of liberal and enlightened statesmen, would employ its power to release the energies of its citizens. Statesmen who were truly concerned for the public good and for public improvement would make sure that government power neither repressed citizens nor served the selfish ends of office holders. Men of character in the government could defend the liberties of citizens and bring their fuller liberation through the wise and selfless use of power. Power should release, not control. Clinton knew New York State and its public men best. He therefore shifted his sights quickly and light-heartedly when the state senate postponed the electoral law. The time had come "to make a thundering noise about the negation of the bill" and to concentrate on regaining the governorship. He did not hesitate in his choice for the presidency; he would have been pleased had he heard Henry Wheaton muse that "Jackson passes through the bowels of the common People, without any support from leading politicians of any party - Where he will stop, heaven only knows."136 Clintonian weight now swung more squarely behind Jackson, making it less possible to condemn Clinton as the peace candidate of 1812 or the corrupting purveyor of "golden dreams." Aware that Jackson had little backing among New York legislators, Clinton relished the prospect that the Tennessean could carry most of the South and West and would stop only at the presidency.137 Three days after the regulars had won their legislative victory, he instructed Post "to prepare the minds of our friends in the other states ... in a very confidential manner to be for Jackson."138 Meetings soon gathered to nominate the general and to echo Clinton's affirmation that Jackson's "services to the Country [are] greater than those of any of the other candidates - and his integrity unquestionable."139 Jackson's service had begun during the Revolution, and the

i8o "The Gordian Knot" meetings suggested that he was reviving the fading virtues of that time, a refrain that would swell during the summer and early fall. Clintonian managers called the first meeting, held in New York City, for the last day of March but rescheduled it for 8 April. Attended by "all the Clintonians of Every Calibre," the arrangements heralded an emphasis on the linkages between revolutionary republicanism and Clintonianism. The Albany meeting, which was held the day after adjournment, coupled memories of the Revolution with Clinton's vision of economic growth. Both meetings endorsed the proposed Utica convention, making clear the shift of Clinton's attention.1*0

7 "One Republic Not Ungrateful The Shadow of Magistracy Lengthens across Generations

Out of the governor's office, Clinton crafted a message that addressed the wants and fears of New Yorkers: he assumed the posture of a liberating father and magistrate. Writing as "Washington," speaking before the American Bible Society and at Union College, he defended the liberty of an informed and Christian people to fulfil themselves by deferring to no authority but themselves. He said this after the voters of New York's towns had won the power to elect county officers and after the regular judges had denied the authority of town officers to choose town justices. The increased chartering of towns expressed the determination of local leaders to enhance the power of the people "in their primary assemblies," and Clinton had throughout made an effort to appeal to local spiritual leaders, enlisting their influence in the resistance to distant "kings." The paternal strain in Clinton's message addressed experiences that touched many new voters and the communities in which their lives centred. In the early 18205, these communities were sensitive to economic forces that trespassed on their prosperity and social peace, bringing "increased rivalries of the villages."1 Commerce, as Mary P. Ryan has pointed out, also introduced its "divisive wedge into the corporate family." In urban areas of the state, the household production of goods yielded to other arrangements, in which beneficent fatherlike authority was absent as it increasingly was.2 Improved transportation and the economic depression made external forces more threatening to the family, the town, and the village. The townspeople felt the sharp edges that pressed them ever in the direction of "scarcity, mobility; toward

182 "One Republic Not Ungrateful" internal complexity; toward integration with the larger society. "3 This pressure fed the anger that found an outlet in the tax law and in the condemnation of the state's financial centre. It fed the fear of distant power and the desire to limit that power, and thus fuelled the "doctrine of electors." Clinton confronted and channelled this anger. He claimed the right to direct it. As a Masonic high priest, he dramatized his accomplishment as a creator of the canal system and the prosperity it heralded. He presented himself as a masterful father to the state at a time when patriarchal revolutionary authority was fading with social change and with the passing of James Monroe's generation. Choosing the name "Washington" to veil his next appearance, he did more than revive the memory and hopes of the Federalists who had formed Washington benevolent societies. The name implied a persona. With it, Clinton sought to represent a truly benevolent and liberating father, and therefore a rightful republican successor to authority in a world of monarchs who governed oppressively. George Washington represented the battle-won manhood and creativity of the republic, and to him, to the authority of his character, its sons were obligated; they had to seek the political liberty that Clinton demanded. The memory of Washington's character conveyed the message that great men led, moved by personal pride and a sense of honour. So defined, the great man strove to emulate the highest level of statesmanlike achievement and therefore stood far above hunger for the mere pelf of office.t Citizens could trust him; he could serve as a model. Clinton built on Washington's image to lay claim to public gratitude as a liberator of social and economic energy and to demand that New Yorkers seek political liberty. In making this demand, he also claimed their support - first for the presidency and now for the governorship. It was not clear that Clinton's claim would be honoured. He set much store by his attempts to associate himself with the doctrine of electors, but the strength of popular support for the doctrine remained moot. Some sympathetic newspapers regularly listed as notorious culprits the seventeen senators who had voted to postpone the bill. Others foretold a burst of public feeling that would ensure passage of the electoral law; they anticipated that reports of protest meetings would soon fill their columns.5 Still, the voting public had not risen up. The Van Burenite newspapers continued to make a point that was meaningful to New Yorkers who wanted to see their state treated fairly in the distribution of federal patronage and funds, and in the shaping of tariff legislation. These papers insisted that postponement of the electoral bill was necessary to guarantee that the "united strength of the state ... be felt in the next Presidential election."6 The Regency stood on the

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principle which Alexander Hamilton had thrust forward thirty-six years earlier at the New York convention that ratified the United States Constitution: "You must place confidence; you must give power."7 Power at the grass roots had stirred, but this had not erased the need to trust party leaders in the legislature to negotiate for their constituents. Nor had Clinton's forces proved that they could capture the People's Movement and mould it to his liking. With the departure of Samuel Young and John Cramer from the People's camp, Clinton lost two allies who had at least given lip-service to the popular election of electors and could appeal to the Bucktails. Since neither Young nor Cramer had recanted their support for the popular election of presidential electors, Young's caucus nomination did not eliminate him as a competitor for the nomination of the People's Party. In September, with the April caucus long past, the Utica convention might endorse Young in the name of both Republican harmony and the sovereignty of the people. By choosing Young, the People's convention might embrace the canal system and, substituting one of their own for Erastus Root, take over the New York Republican Party in the name of sobriety.8 Clinton faced four other competitors for the Utica nomination. Henry Huntington's showing in the 1822 campaign gave him at least a formal claim to Clinton's mantle, and Ambrose Spencer had displayed mettle in the lengthy fight for the mayoralty of Albany. Discontent with the new judicial system would soon force the Regency to suggest extensive reform to ease the strain on the state's clogged courts.9 Building on these problems, Spencer could mount an appeal that would reach far beyond Albany. Congressman John W. Taylor's light had somewhat faded after the struggle over the Missouri Enabling Bill and after he had lost the speakership of the House of Representatives. Independent of both the Van Burenites and Clinton, he nevertheless remained one of the state's leading national figures. Taylor reminded New Yorkers of this in June by a letter to his constituents that ranged widely over the problems before the federal government.10 James Tallmadge, Jr, was the fourth possibility. During the 1824 session he spoke to the New York State press, recasting the message that Clinton had begun to deliver in the spring of 1823. Tallmadge proclaimed the evil of the caucus to be "as old as the Christian era." He elaborated: "When universal despotism swayed its iron scepter over the civilized world ... 'the whore of Babylon' called her caucus, and fulminated ... decrees of denunciation against" Martin Luther. The men of the church made perverted use of their power, argued Tallmadge; he thought it best that "all office holders be excluded from all consultations of the people whenever they convene to nominate their rep-

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resentatives." Thus purified, "a town, county, or district convention could ... then express the public wish."" Tallmadge probed the history of New York election law to illustrate the willingness of office holders to defy the sovereign people. He noted that the preamble of the 1792 electoral law said that there was "not sufficient time to give the choice of electors to the people ... and the same recital of time ... has been continued down to within a few years." Although Tallmadge praised the memory of George Clinton, he dramatized the persisting legislative lie as a betrayal of revolutionary debts: "Imagine yourself superannuated, and unable to wield your sword or guide your pen ... listening] to the executive communication, advising you to await a more 'propitious period* for the completion of all your toils and all your hopes."12 Tallmadge made less effort to establish himself as an opponent of the taxation of personalty. Three days before the legislature adjourned, he delivered his last major speech on the electoral bill. Shifting to discussion of the financial needs of the State, a topic made compelling by the default of Canal Commissioner Myron Holley, Tallmadge rhetorically combined taxes, the political rights of the sovereign people, and Christian values: "It is ... 'we the people' who pay your taxes ... Confide the liberties of the country, to the keeping of an intelligent and free people, and you place your treasure in hearts where thieves cannot break through and steal, where moths cannot come, or rust corrupt!!!"^ From the vantage of William James and William Bayard, James Tallmadge spoke as one attempting to stir the many, but not as one wanting to bind all in harmony. Moreover, his rhetoric smacked of a willingness to appeal to hard money sentiments. CLINTON R E M O V E D FROM THE C A N A L COMMISSION

A resolution pushed through the legislature as the last act of the winter sitting eventually cut down the chances of Clinton's competitors. Late in the morning of Monday, 12 April, Senator John Bowman, a Rochester lawyer, introduced a motion to remove Clinton from the Canal Commission. It passed twenty-one to three in the last recorded vote of the upper house, with only Cramer and two other senators opposing. David Gardiner and Isaac Ogden of Delaware County, who by now were identified with the People's party, had left the chamber. When the resolution came before the assembly, just before the scheduled noon adjournment, two-thirds of the men who had declared their support for Young's nomination voted for it; only half of the members who had refused this test of regularity voted against Clinton's removal. More

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than one-quarter of the nonregulars were absent. Within this body of "opposition" assemblymen, the thirty-four People's men fell into disarray. Of the twenty-four who were present, fifteen voted against removal, while Tallmadge and Wheaton were among the nine People's men who voted to remove Clinton.1* The Van Burenite leadership had thus successfully divided its opponents over Clinton's role in the development of the state. Clinton shortly afterwards alleged that the measure had come forward in the assembly with the "complete understanding" of John Sudam and Wheaton, who had gone "about among the Members to get the resolution passed."15 This was not in fact the case. The senate had asked that the legislature sit until five o'clock in the afternoon, but the majority in the assembly, including Wheaton, Tallmadge, and twenty other People's men, had insisted on ending the sitting at noon. That morning, Clinton and the other members of the Canal Commission had known that a removal motion was possible, and doubtless the assemblymen shared this knowledge. A longer last day would have given the Van Burenite senators more opportunity to badger the assemblymen into changing a pending bill, which Azariah Flagg had contrived, to reduce the number of canal commissioners to three. These senators could not accept an assembly amendment that would have subjected to annual approval a key piece of regular Bucktail patronage - the office of superintendent of the Onondaga Salt Springs, which had long been held by a strong Crawford supporter. This office holder's local influence was also at risk because of William James's impending purchase from Henry Eckford of the Walton Tract of Onondaga County, a transaction completed in May. If the superintendent's office and influence was put at risk, regular power in central New York would be weakened and the People's men and Clayites would more effectively be able to angle for the support of western Bucktails. Consequently, both Wheaton and Tallmadge opposed the senate's demand for excision of the amendment. The senate regulars learned of the assembly's determination to adjourn at noon and knew they could not edge Clinton off the board simply by reducing the number of commissioners. The senate therefore immediately passed the removal resolution.16 Along with the other People's men, Tallmadge and Wheaton then had to deal with a proposal that focused attention on Clinton. If they voted against removal, leaving Clinton free to use the canal to state his virtues, they would have found it harder to deny the charge that the People's Movement was Clintonianism in disguise. They would also have found it harder at Utica to transform the movement into an instrument to dominate the Republican Party.

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Martin Van Buren later recorded that the legislature had deprived Clinton of office not only "without notice" but also without "specific complaint."*? Wheaton agreed; the regular leaders had sought to catch the People's men off balance and cast them as Clintonians, thereby limiting their capacity to challenge Van Burenite dominance of the regular machinery. Immediately after adjournment, Wheaton wrote to Senator Rufus King, assuring him that the resolution was a "contrivance of the faction to fix on us the imputation of partiality" to Clinton and that the regulars were "mortified to find that the most conspicuous members on our side of the House voted for the Resolution."1* If the regulars could not lure all the People's men into opposing Clinton's removal, they could at least expect to divide their opponents along the line where former Clintonians stood beside former Bucktails. Wheaton took satisfaction from the fact that he had wound up on the anti-Clinton side. The Van Burenite regulars sought to deny Clinton a public platform and to divide their opponents, yet division in their own ranks also had led them to act. Bowman, who introduced the resolution, had been willing to accept the assembly amendment to the commission bill, and since he preferred Clay for president, he differed from the Crawfordite senate leaders John Sudam and Charles E. Dudley on this point as well. Although the nomination of Samuel Young, a known Clayite, must have pleased Bowman, it posed a problem for the regular leaders in Albany and for Van Buren in Washington. Martin Van Buren wanted a sceptical Rufus King to believe that Young and his forces stood ready to give their backing to Crawford and that the nomination of Young meant regular solidarity on the presidential question. *9 Open Bucktail divisions increased the difficulty of Van Buren's task. The Albany regulars had not produced the customary address when they nominated Young on 2 April; not until the day after the legislature adjourned did the Albany Argus publish a statement approved by a second caucus, which met a week after the nomination. Its message defended the caucus nominations of Young and Root as the results of tried Republican procedure. The men who signed it - headed by Bowman - nevertheless declared that they "did not intend to express an opinion for or against either of the distinguished individuals now before the public as candidates for the presidential chair"20 - words that testified to the need for some greater token of regular unity. The pro-Adams assemblymen had not been inclined to remove Clinton, but a very large majority of the Clayites had joined the Crawfordites in voting for the removal resolution.21 Crawfordite and Clayite regulars departed for home during this week before Easter with at least the same blood on their hands. Lacking common ground on the presidency, it

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might bind them together through whatever political storms the summer would bring. Party unity had narrowly prevailed. Bowman's introduction of the resolution and his name on the postadjournment message expressed this accommodation. The Clintonians had responded to the attack on their chief by offering republican idealism seasoned by the presence of commercial accomplishment. When the resolution had come before the assembly, Henry Cunningham - at thirty-three, one of the youngest members of that body - had developed themes that would stand out in the campaign to restore Clinton to office. Clinton, seeking only the "honor and welfare of his state," said Cunningham, had been as imperturbable as "a Christian martyr" and had "asked nothing - received nothing - nor did he expect anything but the gratitude of his countrymen." Yet now the members of the legislature were prepared to commit "the sin of ingratitude," leaving them "disgraced in the judgement and good sense of an injured but intelligent community," which would recognize "that this resolution was engendered in the most unhallowed feelings of malice, to effect some nefarious and secret purpose."22 New York State, guided by foul motives and foul emotions, had denied a creative servant his due. Cunningham's widely published speech addressed the anxieties of men too young to have served in the War of 1812 and for whom the Revolution was beyond memory. Increasingly entangled in the lively market economy of liberal capitalism, their appreciation for individual opportunity blended with a sense that they were engaged in "some nefarious and secret purpose." Their consciences, their very definition of themselves, wrestled with a central element of their heritage - the understanding of public and communal liberty as a freedom in which all, in harmony, found honour, place, and prosperity. Revolutionary sacrifice had purchased this liberty. Jackson had suffered in the turmoil of the Revolution, and Clinton had witnessed it as a child, as his uncle and father had made contributions to the freedom of New York State. Learning statesmanship from his uncle - the legitimate republican George who had followed on royal George - Clinton had carried the commitment of revolutionary fathers to communal liberty and honour into the doubtful present. His removal therefore demanded expiation. Younger men might redeem themselves by supporting him against the somewhat older men who dominated the legislature. The Albany Daily Advertiser printed Cunningham's speech four days after Clinton's removal from the Canal Commission. A notice of an evening protest meeting accompanied it. Held in the Capitol, with "two of the surviving patriots of the revolution" presiding, the meeting assembled to "breathe a spirit of indignation worthy of a people who

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have seen the interest of the state sacrificed, and its honor degraded and tarnished." The proceedings stretched over two days and emphasized the links between patrician virtue and the security of the public liberty of the state. Praise flowed for Clinton as the man of "patriotic devotion" and "high and commanding talents" who had served "with unremitted ardour" and "without pecuniary reward." His dismissal from the board offended "the moral sense of every honorable man, and [was] unparalleled in the political history of this country"; it was the result of "that malignant and insatiable spirit of political proscription, which has already so deeply stained the annals of our state." After this Good Friday meeting adjourned, a band paraded down State Street playing "Clinton's Grand Canal March" to serenade the martyred hero at his Pearl Street mansion. The following day William James arrived with eighteen men to present the meeting's resolutions and address. In responding, Clinton dwelt on the role which the two revolutionary patriots had played in the meeting: "The eyes of these worthy and honorable men are now emphatically fixed on eternity, and their opinions on the concerns of this world must be as impressive as they are disinterested. "23 Chairman John Tayler's eyes may have often focused on heaven, but his extensive holdings in land, lumber, banking, turnpikes, water works, and manufacturing demanded that he pay close attention to New York affairs. Approval of the men who fought to establish the republic outweighed the endorsement of party; Tayler's chairmanship stated that entreprenurial achievement also stood as a bulwark of public liberty. Unimpressed by the earlier Jackson meeting in New York City, Charles King reported to his father, "The meeting for Clinton at Albany was numerous and zealous - that to be held here will be more so."24 The arrangements, as at Albany, stated the sources of power and authority that Clinton's friends meant to tap. Robert Bogardus took charge at the outset. A fifty-two-year-old Federalist-Clintonian lawyer, he stood for martial patriotism and aggressive entrepreneurship. During the War of 1812, he had commanded first one of the city's elite regiments and later the state's Third Military District. With the return of peace, he had become increasingly involved in some Manhattan corporations. He served as the first president of the Franklin Bank and subsequently sat on four corporate boards with Henry Eckford, the most recent being the board of the Gas Light Company of New York City. Bogardus's political allegiance was clear: a pallbearer at the funeral of Clinton's first wife, he supported Andrew Jackson with enthusiasm. More subtle, Bogardus's ties with Eckford signalled to the "knowing ones" that alignment of New York City Crawfordites and Clintonians would be important in the coming state election.25

i89 The Shadow Lengthens across Generations

Bogardus nominated Colonel William Few to the chair, thereby providing a Jacksonlike presence. A tall, slender man, his face chiselled with gravity, Few was nearly seventy-six years old. Born in Maryland, he had spent many of his early years in the North Carolina back country. Moving to Georgia after the suppression of the Regulators' Movement, he had joined the revolutionary cause. He served in the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and became one of Georgia's first United States senators. Settling in New York City when he was fifty-two, he soon became a member of the state assembly, the city's common council, and the Manhattan Company's board. Colonel Few presided as an icon of the early history of the republic.26 Active political partisans ordinarily served as the secretaries of meetings, but John Rathbone, Jr, had not held office before he won a seat in the 1823 assembly. He had run again in November 1823, the wealthiest man on the defeated regular New York City ticket. Rathbone's newfound desire for a place in the legislature coincided with the passing of the tax law. As a well-established merchant dealing in salt, wine, and fine wood, and as a director of the New York branch of the Bank of the United States and three insurance companies, Rathbone could only rue the effects of the new tax law. His hopes for profit from Ohio canal stock gave him additional reason to appreciate Clinton and to shift ground.2? Rathbone's presence as a presiding officer suggested that men who feared the taxation of personalty should turn away from the regulars. The arrangers of the protest meeting had circulated word that Thomas Addis Emmet, the lion of Irish-American legal orators and a symbol of revolutionary struggle, would address the crowd in the park, but Charles G. Haines readily filled in when court proceedings delayed Emmet. Reiterating earlier themes, Haines said that Clinton's vision had created a work that "strengthens the union of the east and west." By "facilitating the rapid circulation of capital," the canal not only promised to bind the states immediately south of the Great Lakes to the Northeast: it promised to make "the city of New York the grand emporium of the western continent." Haines shifted towards new ground when he argued that to deny the worth of such an architect of growth was to deny the future of the city and the nation, and consequently New York must restore its "degraded" public character, now blackened by a "petty act of party vengeance." A crowd that behaved quietly but may have numbered as many as eight thousand had gathered to hear Haines. Resolutions passed without dissent, and the meeting approved a committee of thirty-one men to pay respect to Clinton and to publicize the proceedings. The chair announced adjournment, the assembled people cheered nine times, and

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the throng quickly and silently dissolved, leaving the editors of the Statesman to muse that "a meeting ... so quiet and orderly in its proceedings, has never been held in this city."28 This comment suggests that obedient and orderly clerks had been called out to do Clinton honour. It recalled an event that had taken place seventeen days earlier, attracting attention throughout the state. The background of this drama served, by contrast, to emphasize the importance of Clintonian virtue. At its centre, surrounded by one of three hollow squares of soldiers, had stood John Johnson, an immigrant from Ireland. On the morning he went from the prison on Grand Street to his execution, "a considerable portion of the Park and the space in Broadway ... was nearly filled with men, women and children, on foot, in carriages, on carts and on horseback." "Every window" along the two-mile route to the gallows "showed from ten to twenty faces." People stood on roofs, hung on trees, and about twenty thousand in the estimate of one newspaper waited in the fields of Twelfth Street to watch Johnson die.29 Newspapers throughout the state gave extensive coverage to the turnout and execution, as they had earlier done with Johnson's trial. New Yorkers knew that Johnson had operated a boarding house, had lured to that house a traveller from Boston named James Murray, had bashed in the head of the sleeping man and then taken the money from his chest.3° Trust could not be placed in Johnson; the hatchet that descended on Murray's head might find its way to the skull of anyone who placed too much faith in the integrity of another. The chance counterpoint between Johnson's crime and execution and the effort to lionize Clinton promised to deepen widespread feelings. Although Clinton had done much to increase the movement of people and things, he offered a statement of personal responsibility that was made more precious as selfishness and distrust appeared to spread in a society of strangers. When Clinton replied to the New York City delegation from the park meeting, he spoke of the distrust and enmity that increasingly burdened the citizens of the state. He said he had chosen to remain on the Canal Commission after becoming governor because his "retirement might be considered as an abandonment" of the work. He asked, "If this undertaking were now presented to the community ... would not its fate be questionable ... [given] the increased rivalries of the villages, the conflicting interests of individuals, and the accumulated influence of other causes?" An Erie Canal or a Champlain Canal proposed in May 1824 might have failed for at least two reasons. New York's statesmanarchitect had been struck down, and the state's corporate sense of purpose languished in a tainted social and political atmosphere which made capital as vulnerable as the money in Murray's chest.

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Clinton added that the canals both vindicated and strengthened republican government. They "demonstrated that the people of this country have had the heads to conceive [and] the hearts to undertake ... the most useful and stupendous work of the age." When New Yorkers enjoyed both freedom and harmony, their community proved capable of great creative energy that could feed on itself, he observed. In the canals, New Yorkers promised to redeem themselves, perfect themselves. The canals promised to generate enough income not only to meet New York's fiscal needs but to "realise a vast fund, applicable to all the objects of human improvement." Money, abundant money, would enable the state to foster the moral and social order on which the republic must rest. Clinton predicted that "when every child in the state shall become the child of the commonwealth, and shall receive the blessings of education at public expense, then we may be assured that neither fraud nor violence, neither intrigue nor corruption, can destroy the sacred temple of liberty." Having offered this promise, Clinton returned to envisioning a united North and West that centred on New York City. Forming "a bond of union between the Atlantic and western states," the Erie Canal would "prevent the dismemberment of the American empire." With the Union thus secure, New York City would "become the granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of manufactures, the focus of great monied operations, and the concentrating point of vast, disposable, and accumulating capitals."}' Manhattan would draw on the commerce of the interior and the ocean to become the place where the children of the commonwealth prospered most. The Union's energy would centre there, the seat of the empire within. Although Clinton emphasized New York interests, the anti-Crawford press in other states hastened to condemn his removal from the Canal Commission. Clintonian editors eagerly picked up these comments to bring home the corporate dishonour of the state, contrasting Clinton's mental qualities with party "violence." In the Auburn Cayuga Republican, for example, there was a quotation from the Philadelphia Gazette, which defined the partisan legislators who dismissed Clinton as "men of little souls and narrow minds," resembling the Athenians who ostracized Aristides because "they were weary of hearing him called the just."32 Shortly afterwards, the Republican reported the Baltimore Morning Chronicle's judgment that Clinton might "triumph" over the "ineffectual hate of little minds." Side by side ran the prediction of the Richmond Constitutional Whig that the result would be the "complete overthrow and prostration of the Van Buren party, which has been guilty of this act of gratuitous and outrageous violence and proscription.'^ At the beginning of May, the Albany Daily Advertiser copied

192 "One Republic Not Ungrateful"

another rebuke from the Baltimore Morning Chronicle - that "De Witt Clinton ... received ... legislative ingratitude for his services will shortly be told in the cabinets of kings, emperors and princes."34 These potentates, said the paper, would take heart in the widely visible stain on New York hands. The assertion that the legislature had sullied the corporate honour and integrity of the state took firm root in Clintonian discourse at this time. Clinton's supporters would build on it with increasing emphasis during August and September, mounting a powerful appeal for Clinton's nomination. The miscreants who had betrayed New York's liberties and undermined her influence in the Union also threatened the credibility of the United States, ran the argument. Only a proud man who sought to emulate the highest statesmanship could restore the capacity of the state to enjoy public liberty, and so guarantee its freedom and prosperity. 35 New Yorkers owed it to themselves and to their fellow Americans to restore him to office. While Clinton's removal began to reshape the antiregular position in the press, Clinton and his opponents were weighing the possibilities of the Utica convention with increasing care, their attention having been sharpened by Joseph Yates, who unexpectedly started to move as a loose cannon. He refused to be cast aside lightly and added to the heat that developed following Clinton's dismissal. Believing that he could beat Young by 30,000 votes in the contest for the governorship, Yates decided to call the legislators back into special session later in the summer and demand that they pass the electoral bill. Not quiet about his plans, the governor headed down to Manhattan to gather the funds and support to back a campaign to retain his office.^6 About the same time, early May, Clinton went to New York City to attend to the work of the American Bible Society, the Presbyterian Education Society, and the American Academy of Arts. While there, he planned to visit Queens County, hoping, among other things, to encourage the kind of First Senate District candidacy that could carry New York City. 37 Moreover, by directly observing the effect of Yates's visit to the nation's "grand emporium," Clinton could learn whether southern New York would send the right delegates to the Utica convention. 3s Because of the threat posed by Young, by the possible candidates on his own side of the political fence, and now by Yates, Clinton could not be sure that his route to office lay through the People's convention. The public discontent over his removal might open another route. He therefore propped his options open before leaving Albany. When Solomon Southwick's National Democrat printed Clinton's reply to the New York City delegation that had come from the meeting in the park,

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the newspaper also published a statement by Assemblyman Alfred S. Pell, who had recently conferred with Clinton. The nub of Pell's message lay in his rejection of the Utica convention. It would not be free of the "cabals ... intrigues ... dissentions" that plagued New York State politics, and it would therefore deny a "fair expression" of the public's wish for a particular candidate, argued Pell. Candidates for governor and for senate and assembly should therefore announce themselves or stand at the behest of their "personal friends." If a proven citizen leader were nominated by his friends, New York might no longer be "humbled by the exposure of domestic feuds abroad," and "in the national councils" its representatives could effectively "unite upon leading questions affecting the state weal."39 A convention, on the other hand, offered no assurance that the state would be freed of the divisions that had cropped up in the legislature. As Pell's statement appeared on the streets of Albany, the "Republicans" of that city met in their wards. Watched by Clintonian leaders, they nominated candidates for local offices and then, in order to link state, national, and city politics, they ground out resolutions that condemned the caucus and the postponement of the electoral law. Each meeting concluded by recommending that the voters of Albany County meet in their towns and wards to take measures to send delegates to the Utica convention.^0 The meetings signalled the beginning of a campaign to spread the People's Movement upstate by taking firm control of the government of the capital and the surrounding county. If Clintonians brought Albany County under control, sympathetic convention delegates might be chosen from other upstate counties, and the path to the convention would be opened for Clinton, even if the People's men of southern New York resisted. In New York City, Clinton faced evidence that hostile People's men would vigorously contest control of the convention. Although Henry Wheaton had lost ground because of his vote to remove Clinton from the Canal Commission, he was determined to have his way at Utica. In William W. Todd he had an influential ally, who could add financial and political strength. Todd, a wealthy salt merchant and a nephew by marriage of John Jacob Astor, had been expanding his stake in banks and insurance companies. A member of Tammany Hall since 1805, Todd had become an active sachem after the struggle to revise the 1777 constitution had begun. With the coming of the tax law, he had followed David Gardiner's path, throwing his weight behind Wheaton and the People's Movement.41 Wheaton and Todd moved to take over the New York Republican Party. Chaired by Todd, and with Wheaton as secretary, the city's Republican General Committee met at Tammany Hall on 5 May. It crit-

194 "One Republic Not Ungrateful"

icized the nominations of Crawford and Gallatin on the grounds that they had been "made in a Caucus consisting of a MINORITY of the Republican members of Congress." As for Young's nomination, the presence of the seventeen senators who had voted to postpone the electoral law sullied regular procedures. This left the convention at Utica as the only arena that was pure enough to make regular nominations for the Republican Party. Republicans "in the counties" should therefore elect delegates to the "REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION" to meet at Utica/2 Observers understood that if the followers of Wheaton and Todd could elect enough delegates, they might capture the party and the convention by confirming Young's nomination. Since Root was viewed as profane, bibulous, and impious, he already bore the brunt of much antiregular criticism, both public and private, and the convention would not back him.4^ By late September, the regulars might accept his sacrifice as a step towards victory. Still, Wheaton wanted to influence national politics, so the general committee drew attention to the fact that one purpose of the Utica convention could be to endorse a presidential candidate. This compounded the threat to Van Burenite regularity. The Clintonian press therefore helped spread the Wheaton-Todd resolutions. Jacob Barker, on the other hand, enabled Clinton to appeal more directly to New York City regulars, many of whom were Crawfordites. Meanwhile, Henry Eckford limited the capacity of Mordecai Noah to condemn Clinton and the monied aristocracy at the tip of Manhattan. In preparation for the 1824 campaign Barker established the New York National Union, and by May he had brought in Samuel H. Jenks to edit it.44 By June, Eckford had obtained control of the National Advocate and had curtailed Noah's editorial freedom. He forced the outraged editor to submit his writings to a "young man" whom Eckford had sent from his shipyard and placed in the Advocate's office as an "overseer" in order to make certain that there would be "no personal attacks on private individuals."45 The frustrated Noah eventually decided to quit, announcing that Eckford was "attached to ... Mr. Clinton, and secretly aiding his cause." Linking Barker and Eckford, he suggested objectives that made it possible for the pair to fund a Clintonian People's effort amply. Noah alleged that there was "a small select party in this city, who ... not only attempt to control ... political affairs ... but are industriously employed in managing the whole moneyed operations of the city." They employed lobbyists, he said, to push through charters for speculative profit, and "they mingle in the affairs of the Banks and Insurance Companies ... vamp up old and broken charters, and inundate the country with their bills."46 Quick money, not party regularity and the welfare of artisans and mechanics lay closest to their hearts.

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From the outset, the National Union addressed the constituency of Noah's Advocate. In January 1824 it began a series entitled "Auctions - Commerce - Manufacturing - Agriculture" and a series on "Money." In these pieces the National Union attacked the auction system as a device that gave wealth to a few and impoverished many. Secondly, it argued that no harm would come if each New York town had its own bank, provided these banks did not issue notes in small denominations - less than ten or twenty dollars. An increase in larger country notes would not pose a danger because, according to Jenks's newspaper, New York City bankers returned those notes to their source with such efficiency that note brokers had little business. City mechanics might therefore have both more available capital and wages in specie.1*? On I May, as Clinton travelled towards Manhattan in the Chancellor Livingston, the National Union announced that it supported him for governor and that it supported Senator Isaac Ogden, a Delaware County millwright and manufacturer, for lieutenant governor.& Briefly lamenting the "deep stain" made on New York by Clinton's removal from the Canal Commission, Jenks quickly moved on to undermine regular support for Young by ranging over issues of economic justice and party regularity. According to the National Union, the "Lobby Corps" had a clear objective: the passage of particular bank and insurance company charters without bonuses to be paid into the state treasury. Not denying that Young's nomination was regular, the editor of the National Union professed "a firm belief" that it "was specially connected with the passage of the laws incorporating the Fulton and Chemical banks without bonus, when a very large bonus might have been obtained." Jenks made his point obliquely, implying that party regularity, when unsullied by "interest," gave mechanics some chance to control the political and economic institutions that dominated their lives; but the regular leadership had compromised it. Jenks maintained that those who had placed their hope in regularity should turn to Clinton. He pointed out that Young's flirtation with the People's Movement meant that Young had intended to oppose the regularly nominated candidate. Since political hypocrisy and bank corruption had sullied the regular nomination, it became appropriate to select a candidate by his "fitness or qualifications ... for the work to be done." Clinton was not only fit; having been rusticated by the party, he had learned his political errors. With victory at the polls, he would restore regularity if "the members of the great republican family [were] disposed generally to return to party discipline." The Union sought to win New Yorkers to Clinton no matter what their presidential politics, but it edged towards the caucus candidate. Upstate leaders knew that Ogden wanted Adams to be president.^ While stating a "decided preference" for Jackson during the following weeks,

196 "One Republic Not Ungrateful"

the Union warmed towards Crawford - a candidate attractive to New Yorkers, who feared the damage that protectionism and hostility to the South could do to their livelihoods. Jenks reasoned that Jackson did not command the support of most New Yorkers, and "individual preferences ... must always yield to public opinion." As governor, Clinton would be able to "harmonize" with Crawford as president.50 Ogden had led in the call for a convention, but Jenks skirted this fact. After the publication of the Todd-Wheaton resolutions, the National Union voiced the "hope [that] no ... Convention will take place." With the people awakened to "the very great and corrupt influence" which the lobby exercised over the legislature, public opinion stood solidly behind Clinton. Jenks predicted that the "enterprising set of conspirators, who have an organized system ... throughout the state" would take over the convention. Rather than offering this opportunity for "lobby corruption," voters should "in their individual capacity ... go forward ... and establish a new order of things."'1 Lobby corruption, according to Jenks, raised questions about the purity of the People's men of New York City. They appeared too close to the ex-Federalists who took their cues from the New York American. Jenks warned that if men of this ilk were able to infiltrate the caucus and the People's Movement, transforming it into an "American diadem party," a new version of the Federalist Party, surely they would be able to manage the elections to the Utica convention by rigging the nomination of candidates and by packing meetings.52 At Utica, the aristocratic Federalist conspiracy and the conspirators who won comfortable banking charters might unite. The old enemy, like Satan, still threatened. THE S P E C I A L SESSION OF THE L E G I S L A T U R E , A U G U S T I 824

Clinton's five-week sojourn in New York City as a very visible mute tribune ended with an artillery company of New York's Second Regiment changing its name to the Clinton Guards so that it might more appropriately escort him when he visited the city." Yates, however, had control over the next significant event. His undated proclamation calling for a special session of the legislature appeared in New York City newspapers on 4 June. The governor explained to New Yorkers that he had expected the United States Constitution to be amended to provide a uniform system for the popular election of presidential electors; but this had not happened, and consequently "the people of this state appear much agitated and alarmed, that their undoubted right to choose electors ... is still to be withheld from them." Yates called the legislature to meet on 2 August "to quiet the minds of the people. "54 During the

197 The Shadow Lengthens across Generations

intervening two months, Clinton remained quietly in motion. Meanwhile, widespread attention shifted to the showdown between the governor and the regulars. As the special session drew near, Albany became "thronged with strangers." On the day before the legislature convened, one visitor found "all the public and boarding houses ... filled already & more Room wanted."55 The session drew a broad spectrum of men and women who anticipated a testing of American political values. A spate of people descended on Clinton. He saw four members of Parliament, the artist John Trumbull, Hezekiah Niles of Niles' Weekly Register, General Alexander Macomb of the United States Army, and Joseph Blunt, who managed the New York State campaign of John Quincy Adams. Crammed into the galleries of the assembly, from which emerged the most widely publicized debates, visitors witnessed proceedings in which the disorder at times threatened to turn to violence.56 In spite of the fury, enough regulars held firm. Essentially, they argued that the governor's call violated the New York constitution and wasted money; and, that the lower house had no right to interfere in a matter that was still before the senate. The People's assemblymen, well prepared and buoyed up by applause from the spectators, elaborately assaulted the latter argument with precedents drawn from New York and British legislative practice. A victory by the regulars in the bastion of the upper house nevertheless came easily, if with subterfuge. On two occasions John Cramer made a show of supporting immediate passage of a law providing for the popular election of electors, yet he supported an early motion to adjourn. The success of this motion enabled Erastus Root to declare out of order consideration of a proreform resolution that struggled through the assembly and came before the senate. With this ruling, the five-day session ended, leaving Yates censured for an "indiscreet use of the executive prerogative."" The Van Burenite regulars had won their procedural victory at a high price. Not only had they relied on a mixture of parliamentary quibbling and trickery; they had suffered the visible loss of some allies. The Clayites had tended to join Adams supporters to back the assembly resolution favouring passage of an electoral law, leaving the Crawfordites largely isolated in opposition. The vote gave observers reason to think about possibilities as they looked forward to the fall session in which the electors would be chosen.58 A Clay-Adams alliance might supplant the cluster of Clay and Crawford men on which regular strength rested. Moreover, the regulars' abuse of legislative power, the presence of British visitors, the presence of women, and the references to parliamentary procedures reminded New Yorkers, women as well as men, of the British Parliament's investigation of Queen Caroline. As noted in an earlier chapter, that "trial," which had been undertaken to free

198 "One Republic Not Ungrateful"

a profligate king (the former Prince Regent) from his wife, had filled the pages of New York newspapers with reportage that was often favourable to Caroline and was consistently unfavourable to George IV and his Tory managers in the House of Lords. After Nott had introduced the term "Regency," the New-York American had, in September 1823, linked it to the electoral issue, saying, "This is the question ... which the Regency at Albany dreads ... because, like all other regencies, they dread any measure which tends to impart power and consequence to the people."59 Now, after the August 1824 session, Regency was to become very firmly attached to the regular managers at Albany, making them a more ready object of scornful discussion for all members of unsympathetic New York households, and perhaps making some regular households sympathetic to the People's cause. Plenty of discussion ensued. Throughout the remainder of the summer and into the early autumn, newspapers and pamphlets spread the debates throughout the state, driving home to readers the groups and interests to which legislators on both sides hoped to appeal. The proud, acerbic, and impatient Henry Wheaton, defending both the governor's prerogative and the assembly's right to address business before the senate, led in learned dissection of the regulars' procedural arguments. If Wheaton strove to win the admiration of those impressed by erudition, James Tallmadge, Jr, purposefully blended his refutation of the regulars' legislative chicanery with words meant to cultivate the voters' distrust of the men who wielded power in Albany: "When we ... mingle with our constituents, some of us will have questions put to us very difficult to be answered ... The honest farmer ... will say to you, I have a book of higher authority, than the rules of your house ... and I have long since learned, that, 'he, who is not for us, is against us!!'"60 Alfred S. Pell hammered away at the senate, mocking the manner in which the regulars of the upper house had dangled the prospect of bank charters to work their political will. He reminded the assemblymen how, during the winter and spring, they had seen the "patient investigation which the senate was willing to give to various bank bills." The senate had repeatedly rejected and reconsidered those bills until it became "the admiration of the state." The senators had then "closed the drama, by a pure unbiased vote of approbation and acceptance, to the utter astonishment of the public, and no doubt to the delighted surprise of the applicants."61 While blocking the electoral bill, the regular legislators had toyed with the aspirations of those who wanted to expand investment opportunities and the supply of credit, claimed Pell. He condemned the regulars' unwillingness to grant charters with liberality and their capacity to use this power to warp the political process. His words had meaning not only for those who disapproved of

199 The Shadow Lengthens across Generations

the Chemical Bank but for westerners who were annoyed because John Bowman had arranged the distribution of the Bank of Rochester's stock to place control in the hands of local regulars.62 Azariah Flagg responded sharply to this and to the derision of the High-Minded, especially Sudam. He pointed to the galleries, observing that they were not filled with Tallmadge's "yeomanry of the country." This being the case, he found something specious in the call of the legislature. Yates had gone off to New York City and had only then issued his proclamation. "Out came fifty-seven notices of applications for new banks and insurance companies, some of them before the proclamation." Clearly, there was "management somewhere." Flagg suggested that the behaviour of the spectators in the gallery meant that "that bank aristocracy, the Governor's influence, lobby influence, and stage effect were all intended to bear on this legislature.'*3 Flagg did not venture too far with the insinuation, for he knew that it was not only the Chemical Bank that was under attack; antiregular newspapers had recently assumed a posture of hostility to financial adventurism. At the beginning of June, the editors of the Albany Daily Advertiser had reported that they had heard of fifteen applications for charters, all from New York City, which showed by "sad experience" that the new two-thirds rule could not restrain the "mania." The Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer agreed, lamenting that the "speculators of New York are put to their wits' end for pretexts for more banking institutions"; the proposed Masonic Bank of the State of New-York, seeking a charter "under the specious pretence of assisting the widows and orphans of deceased Masons," seemed a transparent example.6t William Coleman of the New- York Evening Post speculated that an "application will be made in a few days, for an Air Balloon Company ... to convey ... passengers, goods, and chattels ... to all parts of the globe, and eventually to the moon and planets." The head office would be "located in the Isle of Sky" with branches soon established on "the distant planets."65 All this criticism of the swelling interest in banking argued for an antiregular candidate who was less open than Clinton was to condemnation as a purveyor of "golden dreams," which could mean Spencer or Tallmadge. Twelve years earlier, Spencer had opposed both his brother-in-law's presidential candidacy and the ill-begotten Bank of America. Moreover, rumours circulated in the wake of the August meeting that Clinton had "positively" declined to stand for the governorship and that Spencer had announced this as fact.66 In February 1811, George Clinton's casting vote as vice-president had ended the effort to recharter the First Bank of the United States, an act that seemed to mean he was free of commercialism. By regular praise of George

200 "One Republic Not Ungrateful"

Clinton, Tallmadge sought to assume the mantle of purity worn by the state's first great Republican. After the special session was over, Clinton dwelt on reports that two central New Yorkers had taken up the business of campaign management, one working for Spencer and the other for Tallmadge.6? In another quarter, John W. Taylor, Young's fellow Saratogan, soon heard that he must try for the governor's office. In early August, Joseph Blunt told Taylor that Isaac Ogden had agreed to stand against Root for the lieutenant-governorship and that Ogden "thinks no man will run so well as yourself against Young." Blunt believed that few Bucktails would swing to Clinton and that if Clinton was defeated, the marginally pro-Adams Bucktails in the legislature would revert to regularity and back Crawford. Nor could Tallmadge, whose vote for removal had offended the Clintonians, unite "the friends of the electoral law, cordially in his support." If Taylor did not want to run, said Blunt, he must at least empower someone to decline for him at the Utica convention; a "nomination by the Convention which would not be accepted ... would inevitably ensure a triumph for our opponents" in the presidential election.68 Blunt pressed Taylor to leave the relative calm of Congress so that Adams might have the presidency. Clinton agreed with one premise from which Blunt worked, but he arrived at a different conclusion. He told Post that "the only way to rescue the State from Crawford is to over-awe the Legislature by the results of the ensuing [State] election." Young's nomination at Utica meant a slate with at least a majority of Crawford electors, reasoned Clinton. Conversely, union behind himself as the antiregular candidate could swing the electoral vote of the present legislature. Dismissing Tallmadge and Spencer as credible candidates, he concentrated his attention on Taylor, whom he defined as a pawn of the Southerners. "Calhoun & Co" had launched a movement towards Taylor, he observed, by drawing unwitting Adams men into their plans. "C & Co" were playing the old Virginia game, "the keep down system"; they were intervening in New York's politics to block the rise of its statesmen or, more accurately, its one great statesman - to national prominence, an interference that must not be tolerated. Clinton told Post to set his Washington correspondents aright.69 By making it clear that he intended to fight, Clinton offered Adams supporters the alternative of a Utica convention united behind Clinton or a legislature that might swing to Crawford. PREPARATIONS FOR THE UTICA CONVENTION

Following the special session, Clinton had responded quickly and effectively to the emerging signs of a Taylor candidacy, having already

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arrived at tactics that balanced national and state politics. Two months earlier, Yates's proclamation had set Albany's antiregulars in motion, and they had put in place a state organization of sorts. The "Republicans of the City" had met just before Clinton returned from Manhattan. Praising Yates for his "due regard" to "popular opinion and popular rights," they had urged "republicans of the county" to set a time and place for a county meeting that would choose three delegates to the Utica convention. Then, to guide distant operations, the Albany managers had established a ninety-eight-man committee of correspondence. At the heart of this group were William James, Jabez D. Hammond, and fifteen men who had been leading members of the 1820 state Clintonian committee of correspondence.?0 The creation of this committee did not guarantee Clinton unquestioned support. Near the top of its roster stood the names of John Townsend and two others who had ties to Ambrose Spencer.?1 Another, Alfred Conkling, doubted that Clinton would distribute patronage to the deserving and wondered if the elements he sought to combine would long hold together. Conkling concluded that a "new administration commenced under [Clinton's] auspices would be wanting in that principle of vitality & stability [necessary] to render it durable."72 The Albany meeting had nevertheless unveiled an upstate antiregular organization with a vital pro-Clinton element that centred on James and Hammond. Helped by New York City wheelhorses such as Haines, they could hold back other aspirants, and Clinton might do his part by outshining any credible opponent to emerge from the Clintonian ranks. Now centring his attention with increasing closeness on winning the governor's office, Clinton had carefully weighed the relationship of presidential candidacies against the upcoming struggle in New York. He allowed his attention to flag for a time in early July when he received news that one of his sons had died at sea," but a two-day visit by Senator John H. Eaton of Tennessee, Andrew Jackson's friend, again focused Clinton's attention. A month earlier, Eaton had told him that he expected that New York would join the whole of New England in support of Adams. Eaton believed that the "friends" of Crawford and Clay still set much of their hopes on New York. Clay had little strength outside his home state and they could discount him, but Eaton doubted that they could so easily dismiss Crawford. If the Georgian proved strong in New York, "other places" also might "be inspirited, & the face of the picture changed." In particular, Virginia might give its vote to Crawford rather than joining Pennsylvania and North Carolina in backing Jackson.™ Clinton and Eaton agreed that the special session would reject the electoral bill. Clinton explained the meaning of rejection in terms that fitted with Eaton's analysis of Jackson's prospects in New York: "As

202

"One Republic Not Ungrateful"

Mr Adams stands the only chance of successful opposition to Mr Crawford in the Legislature, he will be taken up here on principle of policy if not of preference. "75 Clinton had not abandoned Jackson, but to reduce Van Burenite strength in the legislature and among the voters, he had to avoid openly confronting pro-Adams sentiment, just as he had to defer to Crawfordite feeling to capture New York City. Conversely, Clinton forcefully resisted efforts that he saw as being inspired and contrived by Calhoun to lure his backers into supporting Adams unreservedly. Calhoun, he concluded, meant to entrap the Clintonians in a rejection of both Crawford and Jackson. Apart from Clinton's need to cultivate Crawfordite support, both Clinton and Jackson had to remain in the posture of restorers of republican purity who chose to run from outside a power centre that had for too long been occupied by men of the seaboard South.?6 With these balances defined, Clinton could observe if not manage the process of choosing convention delegates. Reports from Haines led Clinton to believe that New York City might eventually be secured for him," but his confidence fed more steadily on word from places where Clintonian organizers set out to show that he could at least divide the convention. For example, when the Montgomery county court met at Johnstown, the "friends of the electoral law" yoked together two consistent antiregulars and two ex-Clintonians who had turned Bucktail in 1819 and were capable of wavering back.78 At the southeastern extremity of the state, in Suffolk County, the town delegates met in convention on 10 June to choose the men who would go to Utica. The resolutions they approved echoed Clintonian antipartyism. Pointing to those who blocked the electoral bill, they predicted that such "an obstinate, disciplined and active party ... if not resisted, will hereafter serve as a basis whereon to erect an aristocracy." One of the two delegates appointed by the meeting had been a regular.79 The advantage gained by choosing the right men early outweighed the need to be scrupulous about procedures. Schenectady County's antiregular leaders picked their delegate not at a convention but in a lateJune city meeting, which the regulars avoided and later condemned as being made up of "two-thirds ... federalists and the remainder doubtful republicans."80 Clinton rightly described the Schenectady delegate, Samuel W. Jones, as "our friend." Jones, a thirty-three-year-old lawyer, firmly believed that the popularity of Clinton's presidential candidacy explained the defeat of the electoral bill.8' In Genesee County, a western constituency with four assembly seats, voters "friendly to the passage of the Electoral law" met "pursuant to public notice" in a Batavia home on 7 July. A Clintonian tavern keeper presided as the men in the house chose four delegates to the Utica con-

2O3 The Shadow Lengthens across Generations

vention and set up a central committee for the county. When one delegate proved unable to attend, the secretary of the meeting replaced him, making a delegation that was at least three-quarters Clintonian. In brief and dry resolutions, the meeting condemned the "hypocrisy" of the legislature, demanded the popular election of justices of the peace, and protested the "utter disregard of the honor and interest of the State" that had been shown in the removal of Clinton from the Canal Commission. The editor of Batavia's Clintonian newspaper supplemented the resolutions by drawing on a Warsaw Fourth of July address that praised the growth brought by Clinton's "Herculean work" as "the wonder and admiration of the world."82 Ten days later, an Erie County convention meeting at Buffalo tapped the Clintonian Oliver Forward and outdid the Genesee men by nominating the New York Hercules for governor.83 During the remainder of July, county conventions rather than informal gatherings chose the men who were to go to Utica. At the beginning of the month, the antiregulars of Rensselaer condemned Clinton's dismissal and called for towns to elect men to attend a county convention. Gathering in a Troy house, delegates from ten of Rensselaer's fourteen towns held a "Republican Convention," which demanded that the special session pass the electoral law and then received the report of a nominating committee made up of one man from each town. After choosing four Clintonians to go to Utica, the delegates named four men to attend a senate district convention and ten to serve as a central committee, establishing a People's counterpart to the regular machinery of the capital district.8* Down the Hudson, in Columbia County, Clinton fared less well. "Republican Delegates" from fourteen of the county's sixteen towns met in a private home on 30 July. Alexander Coffin, who presided over the convention, had been born in Nantucket eighty-four years earlier and boasted revolutionary associations with John Hancock and Samuel Adams. He had been a leading Columbia Bucktail until the spring of 1824. The meeting chose Coffin and two other men as delegates, one of whom, the seventy-nine-year-old General Samuel Ten Broeck, had begun his service in 1776 as an ensign. Joseph Lord, the youngest of the three, had been fourteen when the Revolution began and in recent years had developed his military reputation by the publication of militia handbooks. Lord had been less active in politics than Ten Broeck, but both had been Bucktails. All three delegates would leave the Utica convention when Clinton won the nomination.^ In Columbia, the "venerables" who joined the People's Movement did not promise a Clintonian outcome; any pro-Clinton set of delegates chosen by less formal means might have faced a serious challenge.

204 "One Republic Not Ungrateful"

Apart from the July conventions in Orange and Delaware counties, which chose no Clintonians among their six delegates,86 Clinton appeared to sustain his most severe setback in New York City. On 6 July the New-York American, which by now was clearly backing the Wheatonite element in the People's Movement, carried a notice that the Republican General Committee, chaired by William Todd, would meet the next day. The committee then directed that mid-afternoon ward meetings be held on 13 July, each meeting to elect three delegates to the county convention that would meet at the Fulton Hotel six days later and choose the ten delegates to the Utica convention. Appearing in the American on 12 July, the notice of the ward meetings gave most men little chance to break away from their work and attend the gatherings. The delegates chosen at the two-day county convention included not only Todd and Henry Wheaton, but eight other men who were not friendly to Clinton.87 Clinton condemned the slate as a Calhounite contrivance to undermine Jackson by fielding Adams men. Equally heinous, "the appointment of Wheaton ... is a bare-faced insult and must be met as such."88 The National Union quickly sought to discredit the city delegation. It accused the "junto" of calling the ward meetings without giving sufficient notice to Clinton's supporters. In spite of this, according to the Union, in five of the ten ward meetings, sizable majorities had favoured Clinton, and three meetings had divided about evenly over his candidacy. But although they were able to demand representation, those who wanted Clinton's nomination had too often accepted compromise slates or, confused and unprepared, had voted for delegates put up by Wheaton's faction. Outnumbered sixteen to fourteen in the county convention, the Clinton men had struggled without avail to gain two or three of the ten Utica delegates and to keep Wheaton from going to the state convention. Jenks argued that the result did not reflect public opinion: "The junto who succeeded, had not fifty friends assembled in the whole city."*9 Although Clinton proudly complained of Southern meddlesomeness and trickery in New York City, his failure to win its delegation did little real damage. First, the Wheatonite victory in New York City shielded him by default from the regional hostility and antibank sentiment that upstate New Yorkers tended to focus on Manhattan. Second, the strength of his backing in the city remained untested; he had avoided risking a premature division among the voters. This gave him the opportunity to develop stronger support on Manhattan and in southern New York through the press, through meetings, and by convincing leaders in that area that they would be dangerously at odds with the more populous interior of the state if they did not fall into line. The convention

205 The Shadow Lengthens across Generations

opposition of Wheaton's delegation and other Lower Hudson delegations could thus be isolated and nullified. The work of neutralizing Wheaton's delegation began soon after the special session. The New York Statesman reported that on 12 August the large room in the Tontine Coffee House used by the Chamber of Commerce was filled with men who represented "the talent, wealth, and influence of the city." They had come in order to endorse Clinton's candidacy in a carefully staged drama. Robert Swartwout made the motion that brought to the chair an embodiment of mechanic success and spiritual rectitude. George Warner, seventy-three years old, Englishborn, who had been captain of a company during the Revolution, qualified as "hoary headed," "an old whig, and a firm and undeviating republican in the worst of times" - meaning the time of the Alien and Sedition acts. A prosperous Republican sailmaker, Warner had helped found the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, the American Bible Society, the Orphan Asylum Society, and the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of the Jews. Assessed for $41,100 in 1815, Warner played a part in the running of several financial institutions: the Mechanics' Bank of New York City, the Merchants' Bank, the Bank of the Manhattan Company, and, most recently, the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company.90 Taking his seat amidst "a burst of applause, mingled with gratitude and veneration," Warner remarked that he had been a friend of Clinton for twenty years. He immediately recognized Charles Haines, who rose to condemn those who had traded the State of New York in the "political market" as an "article of commerce." Then Haines, after touching on "the monuments of [Clinton's] former policies," emphasized a central, practical strain, announcing that "if De Witt Clinton was not the strong man for Governor; if a man of greater ^talents, more firmness, more boldness, and more vigor, united with more public confidence, could be shown, let the people of the different counties point him out." Portraying Clinton as a dynamic executive with grand plans, Haines alluded to the mark that New York was making in the world. Clinton meant not merely prosperity but republican glory; backing him would mean political victory. As Haines finished, Steven Rudd, "a plain and respectable looking citizen" who was not a known frequenter of public meetings, broke into a paean of the "wonderful great state of NewYork." The message was clear: Clintonian grandeur had the power to transform a spear carrier, ennobling all the citizens of the state. The New York commonwealth, redeemed by Clinton, would exemplify the greatness of the American republic before the world. After Rudd spoke, a "universal call" went up for Thomas Addis Emmet, the Irish-American attorney and orator, a living reminder of

206 "One Republic Not Ungrateful"

the troubles of Ireland - and a reminder that Tallmadge might not win Irish Catholic votes. When Emmet hesitated to come forward, Warner threaded his way to the orator "and literally commanded his great powers." Addressing himself to the proposed resolutions endorsing Clinton's candidacy, Emmet skilfully located oppressive magistracy among the regulars. He pointed out that the resolutions "said nothing of the proper person to be elected as our next President," and that it "was right that it should be so; for those who composed that meeting were a body of DISFRANCHISED MEN." New Yorkers "had nothing to do with making a President: they could only obey him!" Emmet then turned to Clinton as victim, observing that the "Caucus Junto" had abused a "statesman justly admired throughout the American Union and the civilized world." Unchecked, the Van Burenites would reduce the State of New York to a vessel of slavery and mediocrity. To recover "the people's rights," the authors of the meeting's resolutions not only demanded support for Clinton; they also recommended meetings to instruct convention delegates and to nominate candidates for the senate and assembly. For Manhattan, they echoed the experience of the Revolution by setting up a one-hundred-man Committee of Vigilance, composed of ten men from each ward.91 Clinton took satisfaction in the "splendor" of the Tontine Coffee House meeting, believing that it would "enforce the timid to activity and animate the resolute with redoubled energy."?2 The New York City Clintonians, appealing to New Yorkers' pride and immigrant memories of oppression, had challenged the citizens of the state to prove themselves members of a republican commonwealth of free and honorable men. They had then drawn on the memory of the Revolution to give legitimacy to the party procedures that would capture the convention, the governor's office, and the legislature. LAFAYETTE'S V I S I T

The timing and staging of the meeting built on the thirst for revolutionary legitimacy and continuity that grew as the men of George Warner's generation died off. In August this thirst heightened in anticipation of an event that was given much advance publicity in the press throughout the state. Since late July, New Yorkers had believed that "Gen. Lafayette ... the noble friend and benefactor of our country," could be "hourly expected" to arrive in the United States, where he would land in New York City. Cadwallader D. Colden's son, David, told John Townsend of Albany that the old hero would probably not leave the city to begin his travels through the country before 12 August.^

2O7 The Shadow Lengthens across Generations

Those who celebrated Lafayette during his visit - actually a fifteenmonth roaming tour of the nation by stagecoach, canal boat, and steamboat - most often addressed him by his military title, by which he represented the American Revolutionary patriciate at its most selfless, when it had led in the field. Yet because he was a titled nobleman, Lafayette's presence gave that patriciate added credibility by association.94 The military strain in the revolutionary heritage made palatable a republicanism that held some people to be more worthy than others - that there was an elite of virtue and wisdom, which was fitted by cherished honour to lead and which would lead responsibly. This elite's sense of responsibility made the American commonwealth prosperous and secure, just as the same qualities in a father made a family prosperous and secure. Clinton thought of the Republican Party as "the republican family." The party, he believed, did not have meaning primarily as an organization, although at times Clintonian Republicans had to behave as an organization. Persistent emphasis on organization to win power threatened to sully and deny what the party had to offer. Rather, it must provide what was best in the republic for the republic: able people who were committed to fostering prosperity and securing freedom from oppressive power, thereby fostering the welfare of the republican family. Party leadership blended with social and economic leadership, and guided like wise and caring fathers. Just as prudent sons should defer to parental judgment, lesser figures in a republican political organization should willingly yield to the tutelage provided by the men of proven distinction. This perspective allowed Clinton to embrace Andrew Jackson as a political comrade. Although he had been denied an active military role during the War of 1812, Clinton, as a Jackson supporter, bore witness to distinction that had been proven by courageous and successful military leadership, entailing risk that rose above any mere party motive. Just as regular party organization as an end could deny statesmanly leadership, militia reform that threatened to fill New York's officer corps with local party regulars could undermine civil as well as military excellence. Clinton's uneasiness about militia reform under the new constitution jibed with his endorsement of Jackson for national leadership. He could thus welcome the hero from France with a measure of genuineness. Lafayette's visit dramatized the idea of a familylike community and the virtues of martial distinction, vital elements in the republican traditions that Clinton sought to couple with the new and populistic doctrine of electors. Having been enlivened, these strains became fresh

208 "One Republic Not Ungrateful"

enough to wed to the political democracy prescribed by the People's men. The more credible their linkage, the more credible Clinton's command of the People's Movement became. Lafayette and the populace of New York played their parts with enthusiasm, and the timing of Lafayette's movements fitted fairly well with Clinton's needs. Lafayette arrived even later than David C. Golden expected. Carrying the hero, his son, and his secretary from LeHavre, the Cadmus entered New York harbour on 15 August, which happened to be a Sunday. Since the planned festivities would disrupt Sabbath order, the party accepted Vice-President Tompkins's invitation to stay overnight at his Staten Island home. Before Lafayette landed on the island, boatmen surrounded the Cadmus, asking if he was on board. Auguste Lavasseur, the general's secretary, recorded, "We heard them rejoicing that Lafayette's voyage had been pleasant and quick, that his health was good and ... all as if they had been children of one family, rejoicing at the return of a much-loved and long-expected parent. "95 Lafayette, ever capable of playing his role, returned as a father, coming back to a well-behaved and affectionate family. The American proceedings articulated the restoration of family. On Monday, Lafayette boarded the Chancellor Livingston to travel amid a flotilla of vessels to Manhattan Island. His old comrades from the Revolution received him on board in "a re-union of a long separated family."96 Four days later, he left New York City to tour New England. Granted more time in which to express the ways in which the general's visit touched them, New Yorkers readied receptions for his return at the beginning of September. Castle Garden witnessed the most spectacular of these. Night had fallen, and the interior of the garden "was illuminated by a thousand torches, the brilliance of which was reflected by numerous stands of arms." After the general took his seat, "a grand transparency was suddenly uncovered" which "presented an exact picture of his residence at Lagrange ... [with the] inscription below it, 'Here is thy home.'" The "family festival" made Castle Garden and Lagrange as one.9? The women of New York responded eagerly to Lafayette's presence. When the James Kent arrived in the middle of the night to transport Lafayette's party from the Castle Garden celebration up the Hudson River to Albany, many women unexpectedly decided to become travelling companions. So many climbed aboard that most of the men on the eighty-berth boat had to catch what sleep they could on deck. At Troy a woman educator, Emma Willard, welcomed him to her school for girls. Lafayette went "into the interior of the establishment, where no other man went with him," and soon "angelic voices" could be heard singing, "To visit us thou hast left thy beloved family in a distant land

209 The Shadow Lengthens across Generations

... Behold how many of the daughters of Columbia are proud and happy to salute thee by the tender name of father." Lafayette emerged propped up by the "principal ladies" of the school, his eyes brimming with tears.'8 Behind the family theme of the celebrations was an insistent military backdrop. Like the stands of arms glistening in the torchlight at Castle Garden, it reminded New Yorkers that Lafayette had proved his character on the battlefield. Military and naval exercises dominated his first days in New York City. "Nearly 50,000 persons ... assembled on the Battery" on 16 August saw Lafayette, surrounded by the military bands of five New York militia regiments, take command of the First Brigade of New York State Artillery. With the general seated in a barouche drawn by four horses, the military parade then made its way slowly through the crowds to City Hall. There Lafayette reviewed elite regiments of the state militia, the governor's guard, and the Lafayette Guards, each member of which wore a small portrait of the general on his breast.99 The memory of Alexander Hamilton underscored the meaning of the military theme. His death on the duelling field had stated that men of his station placed the highest value on their public presence. Lafayette paid homage to Hamilton during his first day on Manhattan. Leaving early from the dinner held for him, the general visited "Mrs. Hamilton, the widow of one who was ... dear to him as a friend and as a soldier of the revolution."100 Hamilton's portrait hung with those of other revolutionary leaders in the chamber of City Hall in which Lafayette received citizens for two hours daily, and Hamilton's bust was one of two that faced Lafayette when he made his way into the torch-lit arena of Castle Garden. The other bust was of Washington.101 Clinton used Lafayette's visit to mark himself as the state's man of character for the season. Careful that Lafayette should not overshadow him, Clinton finished his work in New York City before the general's arrival. Clinton would not go to New York City to pay homage to the hero; rather, he would have it known that the general would come to Albany before the election. Also, Lafayette should come after the drama of his visits to New York City and New England had spread news of his movement throughout the newspapers of the state. Clinton understood the vital importance of movement in Lafayette's visit to the United States, perhaps the most significant subtext from the Clintonian perspective. The hero was to move about widely, hallowing the market system that webbed the nation together by roads, canals, and rivers. Clinton, severed from the Canal Commission and no longer able to move with public but nonpolitical purpose, was quite content that Lafayette should travel and then come to Albany, where Clinton, in consecrating Lafayette, could affirm that he was the rightful

210 "One Republic Not Ungrateful"

magistrate of a state - if not national - family in motion, whose members were safe from John Johnson's metaphorical hatchet. Some people wanted Lafayette in Albany at the beginning of September, allowing time for his light perchance to shine on Ambrose Spencer, and thus impress delegates with the mayor's prospects for the governorship. Clinton knew that a group of Albanians hoped that his brother-in-law would stand at the head of the People's ticket, which Clinton considered "perfectly ridiculous."102 This group's interest concentrated narrowly on the survival of the Townsends' North River Steam Boat Company. Hard pressed to fight off competition after the decision of the United State Supreme Court in Gibbons v. Ogden, the monopoly owners had recently suffered a setback in Chancellor Sanford's denial of their petition for an injunction against the New Jersey-based Olive Branch.10* While in New England and under David Colden's Clintonian wing, Lafayette decided that he would not travel directly from Hartford to Albany; instead, he would return for his second visit to New York City and only then go to Albany. John Townsend had expected the general to be in Albany around 5 September. After he learned of this change of route, he dispatched Col. Charles D. Cooper to New York City to hasten Lafayette on to the capital. Persistent rain, however, repeatedly delayed the fete at Castle Garden, and Lafayette graciously stalled Cooper, refusing to disappoint the 10,000 who expected to watch the ceremonies at the tip of Manhattan Island. Cooper hoped that once Lafayette had landed in Albany, it would be possible to block the mounting efforts to lure him to Troy, which served the competing Olive Branch as a port, but Cooper lost on this score too.10* Lafayette finally approached Albany on the evening of 17 September. The city had been decorated and then redecorated to receive him. Ropes of relatively unwilted greenery and flowers were entwined around the pillars of the Capitol, and blankets of flowers hung over its railings. Inside the building, the speaker's chair had been "ornamented ... to resemble a green bower." Flowered arches spanned the streets through which Lafayette would pass. At the foot of State Street stood a "temple ... its dome and pillars ornamented with creeping vines" and housing "a pyramid, on which stood jasmines, myrtles and roses in full bloom, and ... a bust of Hamilton." By one estimate, 40,000 people, more than twice Albany's normal population, awaited the general. "Many thousands" more had "gone home sorely disappointed" by the delays, though they carried word of the arrangements. Since the Kent could not cross the bar below Albany, the General landed at Greenbush, on the opposite bank. The citizens of that village had built an elaborate flowered arch, thirty feet wide, which was sur-

2ii The Shadow Lengthens across Generations mounted with the motto "One republic not ungrateful."105 After speeches, wine, and cake in Greenbush, the party crossed the Hudson at dusk in a large "team-boat," the constant roar and flash of cannon from the Albany shore dangerously rattling the horses of the dragoons and of the carriages on board.106 Headed by a military band, the procession of carriages and uniformed militia regiments then moved through streets lit by blazing pyramids of wood. When Lafayette arrived at the Capitol, where the official ceremony of welcome took place, the crowds of people briefly made it impossible for him to enter the building. Spencer greeted him in the senate chamber, and Governor Yates followed the mayor's brief speech with one that was even more brief. Then they went off to a dinner and ball at Cruttenden's, where Lafayette stayed.I0? Clinton commanded the next day, beginning at eight in the morning. At that hour, he visited Lafayette "with a large number of citizens" and inducted him into the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York. Clinton opened his address by calling attention to his own character: "My sense of self-respect will not permit me to offer to you any expression of sentiment which is not actually cherished and which is not derived from a just estimate of your merits."108 An hour later, Solomon Van Rensselaer arrived with several uniformed companies of militia to escort Lafayette to the canal. Cannon thundered as the general set off with Clinton between banks lined with spectators. Landing at Troy, Lafayette was first welcomed by George Tibbits and then by the Chapter of Royal Arch Masons. Then, as described above, he was honoured by the girls and women of the school run by Emma Willard and her husband (who was about to attend the Utica convention as a delegate). Back in Albany by eight o'clock in the evening, the general paid some final calls before leaving in another blaze of bonfires and flaming tar barrels. Clinton came first. Lafayette, accompanied by Spencer and "other citizens," then spent an hour there before moving off to pay other brief calls.10' Thus, three days before the convention met at Utica, Clinton, standing resolutely at the centre of events, made it clear to Albany Clintonians and Spencerites that he would expect their support, both at the convention and in the election. For the second time since leaving office, Clinton had managed to place himself at the centre of a harvest-time pre-election celebration. He had not arranged events to the extent that he had in 1823, but Yates's timing of the special session and the timing of Lafayette's arrival overshadowed the losses that Clinton had sustained in New York City and the counties down the Hudson River. Morever, the Clintonian meeting of 12 August in the New York City Chamber of Commerce room anticipated dramatic themes on which Clinton could build. While James Tallmadge, Jr, attempted to exploit the memory of George Clinton, the

212 "One Republic Not Ungrateful"

MAP 2 Political Features of New York State in November 1824. Based on Kathryn Ford Thorne, comp., New York Atlas of Historical County Boundary (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993)

defender of an agrarian republicanism, Clintonian dramatization clearly linked the Revolution and the commercial growth that enabled men such as George Warner and William Few to prosper. Lafayette's return to New York City and his persistent deference to the memory of Hamilton reminded all New Yorkers that growth, development, and commercial expansion could be outcomes of the Revolution that were every bit as legitimate as agrarian democracy. This point conceded, the liberal leader who could imagine and guide development had a right to stand at the centre of events.

8 "New York Is Now an Empire": The Utica Convention and the Affirmation of Commerce

Clinton and his "friends" had exploited events to hallow his conception of liberal magistracy with revolutionary legitimacy. This fitted logically with work already under way. Over the past two years, Clinton had sought to convince political leaders and "opulent men" that he could provide for the safety of capital and foster the safe and disciplined release of individual energy. Clintonian comment on the tax law had accepted the principle that personalty ought to bear a heavier burden but held that the burden should not threaten the investments from which all would profit. Clinton had followed up by praising spiritual freedom and offering the vision of a North bound together by canals. In company with William Bayard and William James, he promised a unified region above the Ohio River and the Mason and Dixon Line where citizens might confidently move and work out their personal and spiritual salvation, their wills not paralysed by oppressive authority. His removal from the Canal Commission had meant public ingratitude; it also meant denial of a man who could plan and build for that future. According to Clinton, the right executive - and judicial - leadership could bring about this vision of the future. The partisanship that emerged in the legislature could leave the people prey to exploitative masters who centred their attention on serving particular, selfish interests. Clinton's antiparty posture fitted with his understanding of his role as governor and with his distrust of the legislature, which in turn fitted with his willingness to receive the nomination for governor by a convention or through widespread demonstrations of public support. Clinton hoped for a rapport with the distilled desires and wants of New

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"New York Is Now an Empire"

York's many citizens - a rapport that would make his leadership the embodiment of "public feeling" and therefore unhampered by legislative caution or confusion. Clinton's understanding of New York's development nevertheless implied change and risk. He sought to cloak policies that might entail new experiences - including harder work in uncomfortable circumstances - with dramatized assertions that his way drew on the tried and tested, even on the ancient and sacred. The Bible, the ancient rites of Masonry, and the heritage of revolutionary republicanism provided a set of values that justified the planning of a bold architect-statesman who could make society more ready for human fulfilment. Clinton's emphasis on the ancient and sacred could not completely dispel the spirit of risk, which was essentially at odds with Van Buren's concern to have order and regularity. During the summer, Clinton had begun to take advantage of the uneasiness that his "ambition" engendered. Made righteous by his removal from the commission, he intimated that he had no intention of going quietly into the good night of political obscurity at Utica; if he did not win the nomination, he might divide the People's Movement, frustrating whatever goals the People's men had. The man of risk therefore could put himself forward very clearly as the man behind whom all antiregulars must rally. This tactic, however, would work only if the Clintonians won enough delegates who were likely to stand firmly by him. After that, to win the election, they must build effectively on the message he had sketched out. THE S E L E C T I O N OF D E L E G A T E S C O N T I N U E S By the time of Lafayette's arrival, the selection of delegates had entered a brief second stage. In June and early July, the choice of New York City and Lower Hudson delegates hostile to Clinton had counterbalanced the aggressive Clintonian delegate selection upstate and in Suffolk County. After the July conventions in New York City and Rensselaer and Columbia counties, the process of choosing delegates had come to a halt, and attention had centred on the special session of the legislature. Then, on 14 August, the day before Lafayette's arrival and two days after the pro-Clinton meeting in New York City, two conventions had met, one in Jefferson County and the other in Albany County, both timed to stimulate other meetings. A broadside dated 23 July had announced the Jefferson County meeting. Signed by 103 men, it asked all who supported the popular election of both electors and justices of the peace "to meet in Convention" in Watertown. Although a pro-Adams Bucktail headed the list, most of

215 The Utica Convention

the identifiable signers were Clintonians. Their call condemned Clinton's removal from the Canal Commission and charged that the regulars had engineered the newly imposed mode of choosing justices in order to transform each local magistrate into "an obsequious parasite, and a mere conduit to convey the streams of corruption from the fountain head, through the veins and arteries of the whole body politic." Under such a government, they said, "a set of political drivellers" would "hurl from places of great trust and confidence, men of the most splendid talents."1 The Watertown convention chose three Clintonians, one who was suited to move in the medical circles of Coventry and Hosack, and two who were well positioned to know of the financial brew that Flagg saw heating up in New York City. Two of the men were in their mid-thirties and the third was fifty-three.2 A similar message, expressed in words and delegates, went out from Albany County. Four days after the Jefferson County broadside went to press, Albany citizens who favoured the electoral law assembled in their wards and towns to choose delegates to a county convention to meet in Bethlehem. Elisha Jenkins presided. A former mayor of Albany, Jenkins was a major figure in the Albany Insurance Company and the State Bank of Albany, and had recently been appointed a commissioner of the Albany Basin. He had remained a firm Clintonian over the past six years. Pledging themselves to support De Witt Clinton for governor "should he be nominated," the delegates chose George Merchant, John Tayler, and Zina W. Lay to go to Utica.3 Tayler was as venerable as Coffin of Columbia County, and his service in two provincial congresses, five assemblies, and eight senates made him a more formidable contender to preside at Utica than the slightly older Columbia Bucktail. Since Tayler had been Clinton's running mate in 1820 and a presidential elector on the 1820 ticket pledged to Clinton, the Albany convention had taken another step to bring Clinton closer to nomination.4 At sixty-seven, Merchant was fifteen years Tayler's junior, but he approached him in wealth. Born to German immigrants in Princeton, New Jersey, Merchant had attended college there. An able schoolmaster, he had settled in Albany at the invitation of the Albany common council, and through his marriage had acquired three thousand acres of Vermont land. Merchant had participated in the founding of Albany's Mechanics and Farmers' Bank. His name and his presence at the Bethlehem meeting invited upstate financial leaders, Bucktails in particular, to place their weight behind Clinton.s The ages of the men chosen at Bethlehem expressed design. Both Merchant and Tayler remembered the Revolution, while Zina Lay did not. This thirty-seven-year-old Westerlo physician had been an active antiregular only since the spring of l82i. 6 Both the Jefferson and the

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"New York Is Now an Empire"

Albany County conventions had chosen men in their thirties, born after the Revolution, but the composition of the Albany delegation made the implied point more emphatically: antiregular unity would in part be fostered by emphasizing links of public liberty and republican harmony forged across distant generations, an implicit censure of the factional divisions among the fortyish men in the legislatures. Clinton emphasized that he wanted "all the young men ... with us and all the Antients."? As the son of one revolutionary general and the nephew of the general who became the state's first governor, Clinton positioned himself to lead young men, who were now challenged to carry on the legacy left to them. Certainly, Clinton exploited the energy and political ambition of Charles Haines. As chairman of the General Corresponding Committee for the City and County of New-York, Haines had turned Manhattan into a centre of antiregular communication.8 Having become grand secretary of New York State's Grand Lodge in June 1823, he had already had a full year in which to draw sympathetic Masons into contact with the city as a centre of Clintonian organization.9 From there, he reached out for Clinton to other men of his generation, such as Thurlow Weed of Rochester and Gerrit Smith of Madison County. Haines, who busied himself "writing letters daily into the country," promised to defray Weed's expenses in "any Western Counties." "Now," he assured Weed, "is the time for the rising generation to secure the great State of New York for ten years to come."10 A week after the Jefferson and Albany County conventions, the Clintonian drive to muster support began to yield results. From 21 August through 16 September 1824, at least twenty-seven of the forty-nine counties represented at the Utica convention chose delegates and left some record of their proceedings in the surviving newspapers. In seven counties, conventions of delegates from the towns clearly made the choice. Four of these seven conventions met in the last week of delegate selection, which suggests that as the time for the election drew nearer, the antiregular movement more closely embraced regular forms of organization and machinery.'r The convention nomination of antiregular assembly and senate candidates followed, displaying an increasingly organized effort to take over the legislature of 1825. Clinton could count on about forty of the sixty-seven delegates chosen after the third week of August. Some might hesitate to back him initially, but given their political record, they would be likely to swing into line. The remaining twenty-seven men fitted into two categories. Seven had fought him in the past and therefore might oppose his nomination. The remaining twenty might favour neither Young nor Clinton; they had often failed to leave enduring political tracks.12 Still, few of these men

217 The Utica Convention

bolted at Clinton's candidacy. Seventeen of the twenty doubtful delegates accepted his nomination, as did four of the seven men who had recently opposed him. The anti-Clinton tone set by the early selection of the Columbia, Orange, Delaware, and New York City delegations had thus waned before the Utica convention met. As the convention took final shape, its composition confirmed the possibility of uniting Republicans who had reached Clinton's age - fiftyfive - with men in their thirties, and pitting both elements against the putative values of the age cohort that tended to dominate in the assemblies and therefore in the caucuses. Many assemblymen sitting from 1822 through 1824 (37.3 percent) were over forty but had not reached fifty - they averaged forty-three years, six months - but only 25 percent of delegates were in the same age group. They averaged more than two years older than the assemblymen and ranged more widely in age. While the convention included the same proportion of men younger than forty, it also contained many more in their fiftieth year or older. The oldest assemblyman had been sixty-nine, but there were six delegates aged between seventy and eighty-four who sat in the convention.^ As the delegates were chosen, the appeal to young men and ancients took human form. Typically, county meetings in the east picked delegates who were disparate in years, selecting older men who were well-established entrepreneurs or farmers and younger men, many of whom practised law. Fairly distinct patterns of age and region formed, which suggested that to succeed the convention would have to draw ages and regions together. Eastern river and canal counties had chosen thirteen men in their sixtieth year or older, only three of whom were likely to oppose Clinton. In the western reaches of the state, beyond Herkimer County, only one man over fifty-nine years came as a delegate. He was seventy-year-old Lemuel Chipman of Richmond in Ontario County, a Clintonian Republican who had been an army surgeon during the Revolution. '4 Including Jefferson and St Lawrence counties, these areas sent twentythree men under forty years of age. Delegations such as those from Washington and Dutchess counties united generations in a common cause; within the convention their example demanded that the old men of the east and the young men of the west and north act together, almost as fathers and sons.15 P R E P A R I N G THE WAY FOR CLINTON

The choosing of delegates did not, however, take the form of a movement to establish a new party to compete with the regular Republicans over policy. Rather, the People's Republicans of Washington County made

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"New York Is Now an Empire"

a representative statement when they insisted that they were the true "republicans," members of the one party that reflected the principles of the republic.'6 Digested for distribution in handbills and repeated in the press throughout October, similar appeals denied the regulars' claim to legitimacy. Cayuga County, to take another example, picked its four delegates in district meetings. First District "republicans" in the town of Victory held that the electoral bill had been "defeated by a majority of the old federalists in the senate," evidence of a subversive "party ... claiming to be republicans" and meaning to take the people's constitutional rights.17 The label "People's" fell largely by the wayside as local groups manoeuvred to take their place as the legitimate Republican organization.'8 In essence, they claimed to be the one party with correct principles and therefore the one party that should hold office. People's Republicans dwelt extensively on the relationship between the classical elements of the republic. The Ithaca Journal defined a true "Republican" leader as "one who in every act, obeys the voice of the People, fairly expressed; whose rules of action, are ... founded on the immutable basis of rational liberty."'9 The definition welded the will of the sovereign people to checks of judgment imposed by an informed gentry. Other editors agreed that without both this check and responsiveness to the power of the people, distant and "ambitious demagogues" would foster devices such as the legislative caucus, "creating a central power dangerous to our liberties as ... a means of securing their own objects."20 Local elites must both listen and edify. Repeatedly, People's Republican meetings and presses asserted that power centred in the legislature and exercised "for selfish and party purposes, is aristocratical in its effects."2' Moreover, if the people did not guard against the aristocratic fusion of party regularity and legislative power, they could fall under the oppressive rule of one man. "Cimon" in the Rochester Telegraph lifted the thin veil of anonymity that covered Clinton to tell voters that this species of party oppression could lead to a tyranny. Quoting "Washington," he reminded New Yorkers that their "great benefactor" had warned them that there might arise among them another Saul.22 The road away from Clintonian republicanism led to dictatorship - to domination by Van Buren's Regency and then by a Van Buren, a man not of liberal ideas but of power alone. "Cimon" rested quite comfortably with the connection between "liberty" and "theocracy" that Clinton had made. Contending that New York had travelled too far down the road towards aristocracy and dictatorship, the town of Victory meeting in Cayuga County expressed another common complaint - that the New York legislature had violated the United States Constitution when it continued

219 The Utica Convention

to "usurp the right of choosing ... electors. "23 Some meetings, such as Greene County's, broadly castigated the legislative branch for continual and knowing theft of the sovereign people's power to choose their rulers.24 "A Republican of the Old School" in the Rochester Telegraph defended Yates's call for the special summer session on the grounds that "the governor well knew that the people had been endeavoring for years to wrest from the legislature the usurped right, without success."25 An entire arm of government, not a particular expression of it in time, stood condemned. Charging the New York State legislature with defiance of the Constitution of the United States redeemed Clinton from the charge that he had attempted to block liberal revision of the New York constitution of 1777. Clintonians now more credibly held that their chief had properly opposed the first bill calling for a constitutional convention because it had conceded too much power to the legislature; the legislators had presumed that "this power was lodged in them, [and] we all know that it was liable to be indiscreetly used, leaving the Constitution in danger of being ... destroyed at scarce a moment's warning."26 Ten days before the Utica convention met, a Genesee County meeting instructed the county delegates selected on 7 July. Praising Clinton's 1820 recommendation that the voters choose the electors, the instructions defined Clinton as the preferred candidate because he had been consistent in the deference to the power of the people.27 People's Republicans held that the voters, by eradicating the evils of partisan and legislative power, could restore the dignity and influence of New York: the ballot must redeem Israel. The People's Republicans of St Lawrence County began their 10 September meeting to choose delegates with the proposition that to be a "republican" meant to act as the sovereign people willed. They lamented "the foul stain which has been brought upon our state ... by a set of men professing to belong to that party" but who "outrage the principles by which [its] purity has always been governed." A day later, the People's Republicans of Tompkins County contrasted the political degradation of the state by "an abandoned faction" with "the number and intelligence of her population, and the extent and variety of her internal resources." The "right of suffrage" was the "only important check" that citizens had; therefore it must restore New York to her "full influence in the councils of the General Government."28 Henry Post's address as chairman of the New York City Committee of Vigilance called on "our country friends to speak their sentiments" and denied that the city men sought to "dictate to the country." They merely wanted "our voice," he said, "to make part of public opinion, and ... the majority ... rule." Guided by "men of disinterested feelings,"

220 "New York Is Now an Empire"

the voters would "redeem the honour of the State" by "burying our former prejudices; forgetting local and personal attachments, and elevating to office such men as will revive confidence and respect abroad."29 The same message came from Baltimore. After attending the August meeting of the New York legislature, Hezekiah Niles set to work on a series of essays entitled "Sovereignty of the People," which started in Miles' Weekly Register on 4 September and soon appeared in Clintonian newspapers. Niles warned that the "proceedings ... in New York" imposed the rule of a few by "the same acts which we deprecated in" the Federalist Party. The acting "seat" of power lay not in Albany, however, but in Richmond; it ruled only because "foul contentions" prevailed in New York and Pennsylvania and because the electorate of New York had become inclined "to grant to a few the trouble of thinking for them." Expressing the hope that New York and Pennsylvania, both more wealthy and populous than Virginia, would overthrow caucus domination, Niles reminded his readers of a strength of Virginia: "Men of virtue and talents in that state were never fully denounced, because they happened to be at some variance with the orthodoxy of Richmond. "3° Niles praised Clinton most fulsomely in his third essay (published on 18 September), remarking that when presidents were remembered only in print, people would have a living memory of Clinton as the "benefactor" responsible for the "big ditches."^1 Yet Clinton could have led the nation as a true republican, said Niles. "His father and uncle were as live-coals of the revolution ... and he himself did exhibit a degree of talents and character"; but "it was indispensable that he should suffer the proscription," and when the opportunity presented itself, it was "eagerly embraced."32 Proscribed by Virginia in 1812 and after, Clinton, the "new man," continued to embody republican principles and revolutionary vitality, much to New York's benefit. Liberal creativity, not party, had served the state and must now redeem it from the abuses of party. By the time of the Utica convention, the antiregulars had heard that De Witt Clinton must be the man to defend the true public liberty of New York State and rescue its "drowned honor."33 The Saratoga People's Republicans had praised him as a governor who had "exalted the character of the state," and those of Tompkins County, not sharing Alfred Conkling's qualms, had demanded a nominee "of known talents and integrity" who was "free from any pledges in relation to ... appointments to office" lest the "character" of the state be "degraded."34 To defend against degradation at the hands of the legislature, citizens should rally behind understanding local leaders who appreciated Clinton's liberality and would make certain that the distant harpies of politics

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could not subject New York to the indignity of being helplessly plundered of its actual and potential wealth. As the process of delegate choosing moved forward, the People's Movement stood more fully revealed as Clintonian Republicanism geared up to protect the resources and power of local entrepreneurs, the new architects of liberty who served the public. Clinton's supporters had presented their case forcefully, but they could not assume that the other possible candidates had faded from the picture. Huntington gave no sign that he wanted to run against Young, but Spencer, Tallmadge, and above all Congressman John W. Taylor remained alternatives to Clinton, obliging men loyal to Clinton to sap the strength of his competitors within the People's Movement. Charles G. Raines stood in the forefront of these loyalists. He had met repeatedly with Clinton after the older man returned to Albany from a week's rest at Lebanon Springs.35 Helped by other New York City men, they made headway. By 4 September, when Haines left for Manhattan, he could tell Thurlow Weed that the state had been secured for Clinton. He pointed out that favourable estimations of Clinton's strength in the west had come from Robert Bogardus and Sylvanus Miller, both of whom were capable of bringing Manhattan financial influence to bear for Clinton. The cultivation of the western counties for Clinton by these men made more credible Raines's claim that counties close to New York City - Kings, Queens, Richmond, Rockland, Westchester - had "elected friendly delegates" and that even Dutchess had turned against Tallmadge because of his vote to remove Clinton from the canal board. Haines also argued that Ambrose Spencer's support west of the Hudson had crumbled. Spencer's Chenango County manager had abandoned him and now judged that Clinton must be the man: "We cannot do without him." Haines reported that in the Finger Lakes region, General Philetus Swift of Ontario had agreed that the nomination of Spencer instead of Clinton "would be fatal to us." The sixty-one-yearold Swift - a western Republican leader since he had won election to the assembly of 1807, a Bucktail until recently, and, like Bogardus, a Jackson man - had habitually landed on the winning side in Republican divisions. 36 Impressed, Weed set to work to manoeuvre his favourite, Tallmadge, into the second slot on the ticket. 37 Meanwhile, Henry Wheaton and Isaac Ogden laboured to transform the Utica convention into an Adams rally, an effort that eventually helped prompt John W. Taylor to declare that he was not a candidate for governor. On 7 September, Wheaton confronted the printer of the New York National Union and demanded that the newspaper publish a letter from Isaac Ogden which Wheaton had in his possession. It

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was dated 11 August and was addressed to the editor of the newspaper. Samuel Jenks refused, whereupon Wheaton published it in the NewYork American. In the letter, Ogden belatedly expressed surprise that the National Union had named him as a candidate for lieutenantgovernor, maintaining that he had proposed an open convention at Utica to give "a correct expression of public sentiment on the subject of the Presidency of the United States." The newspaper should stop publishing his name as Clinton's running mate, he said, and should bid "each individual... await, and faithfully abide the result... of the state council at Utica." The National Union responded by asking why Wheaton had delayed so long to deliver the letter. 38 The effort to reshape the purpose of the convention pushed Taylor towards fighting on two fronts simultaneously, pitting him not only against Young, his fellow Saratogan, but against the adherents of all who opposed John Quincy Adams for president. His vulnerability grew as Saratoga and Herkimer chose men who had strongly supported Clinton and Taylor soon made it clear that he intended to remain in the House of Representatives. On 13 September he told John L. Viele that "duties ... in Congress at the approaching session forbid me to abandon the station to which my constituents already have called me." Viele, who in Clinton's view was a man "greatly superior to Wheaton - and [one who] understands every thing," probed Taylor further to find if there might be circumstances in which the congressman would allow his name to come forward. Taylor replied that "Clinton is our strongest man" for the governorship, and he said he expected to support Adams in the House of Representatives. In spite of the urgings of Conkling, Taylor stuck to his refusal to run and told Viele that he would send a copy of it "to each of the other delegates from this county. "39 Taylor's decision lent substance to the argument that the People's Republicans must unite behind the strongest man or lose everything. Simeon De Witt Bloodgood, a close friend of Charles A. Clinton, stated the case in a very brief pamphlet that was circulated widely on the eve of the convention. Entitled A Few Words on the Crisis [in] NewYork and signed "Broome," Bloodgood's polemic began by proclaiming that the "old republicans ... have arisen ... to prostrate the faction which has so long lorded it over them" and concluded with the prediction that "if Mr. C. is not the candidate the ruin of the party may truly be anticipated [and] we shall have lost the glorious opportunity of redeeming the state."i° Bloodgood denied that either Jackson or Adams opposed Clinton's nomination, and he claimed that both John W. Taylor and Ambrose Spencer had endorsed Clinton. This left only Tallmadge, a contender unable to "name the county or district where he would obtain a majority." Emphasizing that the People's Republicans must

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"get the strongest man ... to beat the enemy," Bloodgood pointed out that the regulars would charge Clintonianism no matter whom the "peoples party" nominated.1*1 He warned the People's Republicans that if they failed to form along existing lines and behind existing leadership, they would be "without consequence in the general government, without power at home, destroyed by contemptible management and personal hostility. "^ THE UTICA DELEGATES A N D T H E 1 8 2 3 A N D 1 8 2 4 ASSEMBLYMEN COMPARED

Dr Alexander Coventry came from a meeting of the Oneida County Agricultural Society at Whitesborough to observe the Utica convention. Scanning the faces of the "antibucktail Republicans or Democrats" whom he saw gathering in the Utica court-house in the mid-afternoon of Tuesday, 21 September, he thought them "a tolerably well-looking set of men," but saw "few of your good, manly open countenances," such as he remembered at Federalist meetings.43 Still, Coventry may not have felt alien among the delegates; his presence mirrored a salient element of the 121 men who gathered at Utica, for many lawyers and doctors attended, making up almost one-third of the convention. Like Coventry, who was a farmer as well as a doctor, many of them combined their practice with another livelihood; yet most of the twenty-four lawyers (19.8 percent of the delegates) and fifteen physicians (12.4 percent) relied primarily on their professions. Proportionately more lawyers and certainly more physicians attended the Utica convention than sat in the assemblies of 1823 and 1824.44 When contrasted with those assemblies, particularly the 1823 assembly, the convention otherwise appeared less yeomanly. Only two dozen of the men at Utica (19.8 percent) left no trace of any occupation but farming, whereas ninety-three of the 1823 and 1824 assemblymen (36.3 percent) appear to have relied solely on agriculture. Second, fewer than one-third of the men who sat in 1823 had relatively close family ties to state-level participants in New York politics during the 1815-28 period, but fifty-two (43 percent) of those who went to Utica enjoyed a total of 210 of these connections as opposed to 160 for the assemblymen of 1823.45 Forty-nine (40.5 percent) of the members of the Utica convention had 114 very close (category i) ties of this nature, whereas thirty-seven (28.9 percent) of the 1823 assemblymen tallied only eightytwo comparable relationships. Third, nineteen (15.7 percent) of the men in the Oneida County court-house had either graduated from or attended a college or a medical school affiliated with a college, matching the nineteen (14.8 percent) in the assembly of 1820 - the most educated

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lower house sitting since the War of 1812. The assembly of 1823, on the other hand, with only eight college graduates (6.3 percent), had been the least educated by this measure, far below the average of 12.7 assemblymen for those years.46 Each member of the convention and of the assemblies who had been or subsequently became involved in the management or founding of a financial corporation gave his service over about the same number of years in total.47 This average aggregate service ranged from 4.5 years for the 1824 assemblymen to 5.4 years for the members of the Utica convention. The similarity of the convention with the assemblies, particularly the 1823 assembly, ended there, however. Before the beginning of 1824, only fourteen members of the 1823 assembly had been active in the affairs of these corporations. After that date, thirteen more would serve. All told, one-quarter of that house gave their services during an aggregate of 128 years, 33.6 percent of the time to insurance companies rather than banks. More of the 1824 assemblymen had ties to financial corporations. Before the end of 1824, nineteen had already served, and eighteen would later give their services, a total of 28.9 percent of the house. They served during 169 years, 36.1 percent of the time being given to insurance companies. The members of the Utica convention exceeded both assemblies. Twenty-seven had already been active in the affairs of banks or insurance companies, and fifteen more would become involved in the future, making 34.7 percent of the convention. They gave their services over 227 years, with only 16.3 percent of their recorded efforts given to insurance companies - weaker institutions whose power to issue notes was questionable.48 The financial character of the convention differed from the assemblies in another way. Although New York City held only 8 percent of the seats in the lower house, it contributed almost one-quarter of the assemblymen who had career connections to financial institutions, and the Manhattan assemblymen gave their services over a longer period than average: 7.8 years for the 1823 members and 8.4 years for the 1824 members. Yet only six, or 14.3 percent, of the convention members with similar connections came from New York City, and their service was closer to the average: 5.8 years. The Utica convention appeared to be more a convention of bankers than either assembly. In it, banker representation was more statewide than in either assembly, and the New York City delegation represented that interest less than the city delegations had done in the two previous assemblies. Although men who served as local officials sat in all three bodies, here too the convention presented a face that differed from the two assemblies.49 Town supervisors ranked among the most important officers annually elected by their neighbours. Roughly half of the members

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of each assembly filled that office at some point in their lives. Sixtyone of the 1823 assemblymen (47.7 percent) served an aggregate of 365 years, forty-seven for 218 years before 1824 and forty-seven for 147 years after 1823. Sixty-nine members of the 1824 assembly (53.9 percent) held the office. Fifty-six of that number served 274 years before that house met, and thirty-two served 108 years afterwards, a total of 382 years. Yet only thirty members of the Utica convention (24.8 percent) held office as supervisors. Twenty-six of them had served an aggregate of 125 years before the convention, and fifteen of them served 48 years after it sat, 173 years in all. The average length of service was about the same across all three bodies - between 5.5 and 6 years - but these popularly chosen local officials mattered less in the convention of the People's Republicans. This tended to be true of town clerks as well. Fifteen of the 1823 assemblymen served a total of 68 years in that office, and thirteen of the 1824 assemblymen served 34 years; only seven members of the Utica convention held that office for an aggregate 27 years. In some essentially local offices, however, the conventioneers showed somewhat more brightly. They had a larger role in the government of New York's villages, the commercial centres of the agricultural hinterland of the state. Four 1823 assemblymen served 20 years as village officers, and seven 1824 assemblymen served 19 years. Nine members of the convention held similar offices for 35 years. Many an assemblyman cut an important figure in the militia as a field officer.5° Before the end of Andrew Jackson's first term as president, more than forty-five members of the 1823 assembly (35.2 percent) had risen to the rank of captain or above. The figure for the 1824 assembly was fifty-eight (45.3 percent). By comparison, the convention appeared quite unmilitary. Only thirty-two of the men who went to Utica (26.4 percent) rose to the rank of captain or higher. Yet the conventioneers may have proved more effective off the field. Eleven (9.1 percent) had already served as quartermasters, a position held by eight members of the 1824 assembly (6.3 percent) and by only four members of the 1823 assembly (3.1 percent). The convention members also exercised more control over the legal relations essential to New York's commerce. More than half of each of the three bodies had served previously as justices of the peace, but the Utica convention contained the highest number of first judges: eight (6.6 percent) had held that office before the convention met. This was true of five men sitting in 1824 (3.9 percent) and of only one who sat in 1823 (0.8 percent). Compared with the assemblies, the convention's make-up was less representative of the agricultural majority of New York State's pop-

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ulation. The convention was a relatively well-educated body; its delegates had a grasp of the legal, medical, organizational, and above all financial services required for the commercial and manufacturing growth that interested most of its members. Although the older members of the body proudly claimed firsthand knowledge of the Revolution, generally the members of the convention gave less effort to achieving the militia rank that served as an important local emblem of honour and leadership. The men who assembled at Utica to redeem New York State exercised their leadership in other ways. O P E N I N G S E S S I O N S OF THE C O N V E N T I O N

Organizing on that Tuesday afternoon, the members of the convention put Albany's durable entrepreneur, John Tayler, in the chair. The two secretaries differed in politics and age. Alexander Coffin, originally a Nantucket sea captain, had been a founder of the City of Hudson and had often served as its mayor and as a promoter of its banks. A Bucktail whose New England loyalties demanded that he support John Quincy Adams, he later, at eighty-eight, presided at the 1828 Adams state convention. Almost sixty years Coffin's junior was Samuel Stevens of Salem in Washington County, a voluble Clintonian lawyer who later played a leading role both in the Albany bar and the Whig Party of New York State.51 With these men in place, the presentation of credentials and the selection of a committee to deal with the one contested seat took only an hour. A brief debate followed when one delegate proposed that a select committee "report on the pretensions of the several candidates for Governor," but the former United States senator, Obadiah German of Chenango County, objected, arguing that this "sort of subcaucus" might foster rather than allay divisions. By four o'clock the session adjourned, leaving the delegates, as German said, to "take all pains to ascertain, during the night, who would be the most proper candidate."52 When the next morning's session began, the Clintonian People's Republicans moved forcefully against the former Bucktail element led by Henry Wheaton. They tarred Young and Root as the caucus candidates and sought to bring the convention quickly to a vote. Shortly after the roll call, George Merchant offered a resolution that condemned "the system of legislative caucuses" and pledged opposition to Young and Root. When Orange County's Samuel S. Seward moved to table the resolution, the Clintonian delegate from Putnam County expostulated that they had met to "demolish ... the old structure" which now served as the device of an "aristocratic faction."53

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Haines expanded on the meaning of the "old structure" for New York State, describing how it warped the daily life of the state by "diverting the free-current of public opinion from its natural channel." Yet it worked remotely: "Two cabals, one at Washington and another at Albany ... had sent forth their decrees, and called upon a free people to ... confirm them." This left the state "degraded in the eyes of her sister states." Haines then turned to the way in which New York's economic strength seemed disconnected from political power: Great in resources, unrivalled in commerce and agriculture, and possessing a deep interest in manufactures; fertile in splendid talents and great men ... and led by intelligence - she was a mere shadow in the great contest for president and vice president... Like some distant province in a great and overshadowing monarchy, where every thing is moved by one vast machine, she may inquire, What does King Caucus decree next? What news from the Capitol? From Washington pass to Albany.54

Political power, legislative power in particular, failed to reflect New York's economic development and potential, argued Haines, and this justified the dissolution of an "old structure" which could demoralize a dynamic and growing commercial economy. The motion to table lost, forcing Wheaton to respond that Merchant's resolution erred because "it proscribed gentlemen, as well as systems." Proclaiming his readiness to oppose Young if the convention chose a candidate "less exceptionable" than Clinton, Wheaton praised Young as "the son of a mechanic, self-taught, the artificer of his own elevation and standing in this community ... an upright citizen ... who had supported the war." The regulars could condemn Clinton as aristocratic and unpatriotic, he said, but not Young. Haines parried Wheaton's suggestion that a disloyal and oppressive aristocracy lay outside the political system. Denying that he had vilified Young, Haines responded to the anticipated Wheatonite threat to bolt by promising to support Young if the Saratogan was nominated and by backing Gamaliel H. Barstow when that Tioga physician offered a substitute resolution that condemned "all nominations for elective offices by members of the Legislature ... as an assumption of power not delegated by the People."55 The convention then balloted "with a view to concentrating ... minds ... upon a certain number of individuals." After Samuel Jones of Schenectady led off with Clinton's name, three members of the New York City delegation followed closely with their nominees: James Tallmadge, Joseph Yates, and Isaac Ogden. Seward contributed Ambrose Spencer. The nomination of two Clintonians followed, more to identify other

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men of stature in their part of the "Republican family" than to stand as serious contenders; these two were Henry Huntington and Cadwallader D. Golden, who had served as mayor of New York for three years until removed in 1821. Gerrit Smith, concerned to mollify regular feelings and to avoid taxes on his extensive lands, took the opportunity to counter with the current mayor of the city, William Paulding, Jr.'6 John W. Taylor proved to be a menace only briefly. After Hermon Camp of Tompkins County put Taylor's name in nomination, Viele read to the convention the letters he had received from Taylor, which emphasized that the congressman expected the presidential election to go to the House of Representatives, where his vote and his influence in the New York delegation could help decide the issue. In the informal ballot that followed, Taylor received only five votes. Clinton came out far ahead with sixty-nine, Tallmadge and Huntington trailing with twenty-one each. Four men supported Spencer, and only Smith voted for Paulding. Clinton had the nomination virtually in his grasp when the convention adjourned to meet again at half-past two in the afternoon.57 During that session, Clinton's opponents made a last effort to block him, and the lines of division in the People's Movement became sharply visible. Wheaton presented a speech that became a regular campaign document, appearing repeatedly in Van Burenite newspapers in spite of its anti-Regency passages.58 He maintained that "where an honourable purpose was to be obtained, it might fairly be pursued by an honourable party connexion." Clinton, however, had often "grievously offended" the Republican Party. He had "again and again violated his agreements to it," persecuting those Republicans who had committed "no other offense than breathing opposition to him." Wheaton claimed that, lately, an oligarchy had gained control of the party that was the "great depository and living spring of those principles by which the liberties" of Americans were preserved. But although the party was in the wrong hands, it had nominated the right man. Wheaton now described Young as the "son of a farmer" rather than a mechanic, but still as a man "who had raised himself by his own exertions to an exalted station in society, unaided by external and adventitious circumstances." Even though Young had risen so high, he was a steady "'republican,'" asserted Wheaton, and "never swerved from the true principles of the party to which he belonged" - except perhaps for the "single instance of ... his recent nomination." Finally, Wheaton reminded his listeners that Young had been "an ardent supporter of the late war for the independence of the country." Wheaton then turned to that Clinton's career, which, he said, showed the dangers of "ambition ... unrestrained by principle." Vain and self-

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indulgent, Clinton had "always been disposed to listen to the suggestions of self-love, or of flatterers and sycophants ... [rather] than to the sterner admonitions of those who had formerly suffered in his cause, and were taught in the severe school of adversity." In Wheaton's view, Clinton had threatened national security and the moral tone of the republic. After furtively opposing Thomas Jefferson's embargo, he had bided his time "until 1812, when the declaration of war against England" had "tempted him to run as the "peace party" candidate against Madison: "During the progress of the war ... he broke his expressive silence ... when both frontiers were beleaguered by an insolent and barbarous foe. This was the moment chosen by him ... to pledge, not... successful issue from the conflict ... but 'THE GOLDEN DAYS OF OUR COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY.'" Wheaton, protesting that he wanted to keep "youthful and inexperienced men" from being "seduced by the false glare that [Clinton] contrived to throw about" himself, charged that Clinton had turned his back on a war in which the nation had shed the vitiating effects of prosperity and embraced again the Spartan dedication of the Revolution. Clinton, as presented by Wheaton, embodied the commercial selfishness that eroded the citizen's devotion to community and public liberty. The Republican Party, on the other hand, served as the sacred vehicle through which the lonely and pure citizen could rise above selfindulgence to republican virtue. For a man of Young's stamp, without family connections, the party served as the correct and indispensable road to prosperity.59 Haines responded forcefully to this attack on his friend. Listening closely, Coventry considered him "no ordinary man: his delivery is slow, distinct, impressive, and energetic."60 Haines said that New Yorkers recognized Clinton as "the man of the state" and that he had quite properly run as a Republican presidential candidate in 1812. Haines pointed out that both Martin Van Buren and Joseph Yates had supported Clinton then, and Republicans had vilified neither man. Moreover, within "what are called the republican ranks" there now stood many Federalists whose "political regeneration had been a silent operation"; Clinton should enjoy at least equal tolerance.61 Most important, his "public services have been worth millions to the state of New-York." In 1812, people had deemed it "preposterous" to connect the Great Lakes with the Atlantic. The project "was too soon, by one hundred years," they had said, and would "cost fifty millions of dollars, and fifty years of labor." Yet the Erie Canal, nearly complete after seven years, had already brought New York State "the trade and commerce of the union ... building up towns, villages, and cities, and multiplying the blessings of civilization and refinement." Thanks to Clinton's political courage, "New York ... is now an Empire," stated Haines, and if New Yorkers did not pay their debt

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of gratitude, they would sully the state and undermine its "future greatness."62 Citizens should value men with talents, education, and connections, deferentially encouraging them to behave as liberal developers. Haines warned that if New Yorkers rejected Clinton, they would betray their state and deny the new empire of commerce in which prosperity would ensure "civilization and refinement." This, however, would not happen if the voters had a fair chance to rescue New York from "legislative usurpation." Clinton, rightly, had always trusted the people; "his whole life indicated an unhesitating confidence in their uprightness and honesty." He had steadfastly adhered to the maxim "Give them light and give them power." Haines insisted that the people would support their benefactor; nominating Clinton would make victory "certain," and that victory "would prove one of those grand moral results that cheered the hearts of all honest men, and gave fresh hope of the long duration of our free systems of government." Haines had made a powerful speech, and on its conclusion "the sensation was so great, that an involuntary shout of applause burst forth. "^ Nevertheless, some delegates differed on the man if not on the means of providing hope for free government. Gerrit Smith, for instance, thought that nominating Clinton would revive "angry feelings of party," and Gamaliel Barstow expected that Clinton had more enemies than friends among the voters.6'' But spurred by Haines's words, "a great impatience began to manifest itself," and the People's convention quickly moved towards its climax. The ballot for the nomination concentrated on three men - Clinton, who won seventy-six votes, Tallmadge with thirty-one, and Huntington with nineteen. Prepared for defeat, Henry Wheaton announced that he and "those friends with whom he acted" would leave and gather at nearby Bagg's Hotel. With him went all the delegates from New York City and from Columbia, Delaware, and Seneca counties, along with Amzi L. Ball and James Finch, Jr, of Orange County, Nicholas Townley of Tompkins County, and Major Curtis of Greene County. Two Mohawk Valley men, Alexander Sheldon of Montgomery County and Samuel Dexter, Jr, of Herkimer, joined them at least temporarily, making in all twenty-two seceders.65 Unruffled, the remaining delegates immediately balloted for lieutenant-governor. James Tallmadge won this nomination easily with eighty-nine votes, Isaac Odgen and Henry Huntington trailing with nine and one, respectively. The session ended with the appointment of the committee to draft the convention's address, bringing together the fiftynine-year-old Obadiah German with four much younger men: Gerrit Smith, John Armstrong, Jr, Samuel Stevens, and Haines.66 Age and youth, at least one man who had doubts about Clinton's candidacy,

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and those who had no doubts would work together, stating their acceptance of the majority's will. THE REACTION TO C L I N T O N ' S N O M I N A T I O N

As the editor of the Batavia Spirit of the Times observed, "the campaign is now fairly opened."*7 Clinton's nomination gave the final impetus to the statement of two divergent, widespread, but coherent perspectives. Having walked out of the convention and gathered in Bagg's Hotel, Henry Wheaton's followers endorsed Tallmadge's nomination and approved an address that centred on one point that rang true to regular editors - that the choice of Clinton must "present a question respecting the personal merit and pretensions of a man instead of the great principles for which we are contending."68 Clinton's personality and role as a leader came under heavy fire from the regulars. Reporting the debates, the Albany Argus hastened to endorse Gerrit Smith's original denial that Clinton was the only man to whom the state could "look for safety." It held that Clintonians had invested too much power and hope in the executive and in one man. The Utica Oneida Observer compared Clinton's supporters to Bonapartists, slavishly obeying an individual's will,6^ and the Argus took up the same theme, saying that Clinton, like Napoleon, embodied "unchastened personal ambition" which threatened the peaceable and cooperative Republican "family."70 To that ambition he had readily sacrificed his "obsequious" followers: "Without him they are nothing: with him they feel inspirited."71 Clinton had betrayed the heritage bequeathed him by his uncle, George Clinton, who had correctly admonished New York Republicans to "esteem his talents, but check his ambition!"72 Mordecai M. Noah, restored to control of the New York National Advocate, linked Clinton's "impetuosity and ambition" with his willingness to serve as an instrument "in promoting trouble and disaffection." Clinton functioned as a "disorganizer," charged Noah, for he was always brought forward by "personal friends," who "seize the moment when his presence is to be the harbinger of dissentions and confusion," which made the "old democratic party" suffer;" devoid of gratitude for political support, Clinton represented the personal selfishness that would tear at the ordered fabric of the Republican Party and society. According to the regular press, Clinton's devotion to personal advancement had led him to relish "giving republicanism a final and fatal blow."74 A week before the election, a Buffalo editor had admonished Erie County voters: "Remember the wily serpent portrayed to the mother of mankind the illusive prospect of bliss unmingled with alloy ... Thus has every political imposter ... invariably flattered in order to destroy,

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concealing ... the blackest purposes of pride and ambition."75 By the time New York voters made their way to the ballot boxes, the regular press had told them to think of Clinton as an embodiment of the spirit of Satan, deceptive, alluring, reckless, brooking no superior, and truly eager to bring disorder to the Republican Party, on which the citizens could rely to guarantee their rights. The Van Burenites predicted that because Clinton ran as the standard bearer of a "pampered," "privileged," "overgrown," "haughty," and "monied" aristocracy, his success would mean the loss of recently won popular freedoms.?6 The Albany Argus warned of "alarming combinations which are in operation, between certain foreign governments and our own aristocracy, to prostrate ... that democracy which we practiced and established."77 Faced by such foes, regulars had to mount a coordinated statewide effort, for legislative nominations kept true Republicans "united and irresistible."78 An Oneida County regular editor warned the voters never to forget that "those who formerly held themselves aloof from the people, treating them with scornful indifference ... look upon the laboring classes as their lawful prey."79 Social subjugation and economic exploitation at the hands of a "proud and powerful aristocracy" would follow if Republicans destroyed their hard-won democracy by abandoning the shield of regular party discipline.80 Only rarely did the regulars take credit for the tax law of 1823 as a device by which "personal property, principally in our large cities ... has been made to bear its just proportion with other property."8' Nevertheless, with increasing force, they depicted Clinton as the political servant of wealth. Auburn's Cayuga Patriot answered the Clintonian Republican claim to be "friends of the people" with "Aye, the rich people ... never the friends of the poor"; and the Plattsburgh Republican devoted much space to explaining that "Clinton was opposed to letting the poor man vote." Late in October, the Poughkeepsie Republican Telegraph reported that "the rich men in every part of the state are combining their energies in a systematic monied operation to advance the political claims of Mr. Clinton." Others saw the source of plutocratic evil as being more narrowly confined to Manhattan. For instance, the Buffalo Patriot, praising Erastus Root's resistance to "all monopolies and unprincipled combinations," located the heart of the 1812 peace party in New York City. Others agreed. Printing an Ulster meeting's condemnation of that party of the "wealthy coward," the Albany Argus let its readers know that a "city aristocracy" and men who made "wealth the measure of right" had leagued with Clinton to defeat Young - who had not, the newspaper reported, been to New York City since i8i6. 8j Young took shape as an inversion of Clinton, the "pampered aristocrat." "The son of a farmer," he had "raised himself from obscurity

233 The Utica Convention

without any of those aids on which his opponent [had] relied for support. "83 Moreover, although Young had been "cast upon the world with no patrimony but his poverty," he had risen without sullying himself; he had "passed the legislative ordeal without a single bank bill sticking to his garment."8'' Inspired by the model, the regular young men of Montgomery County proclaimed that they did not "hold to the doctrine of indefeasible inheritance."85 Meanwhile, the regular corresponding committee of Oneida County contrasted the personalities of the candidates: "Young is of mild and unassuming manners and deportment," very different from Clinton, whose "austere and frozen manners forbid the belief that he holds 'all men to be equal.'"86 Shortly before the polls opened, the Argus reported that "the Clintonian city aristocracy ... declare that they cannot vote for Young 'because Mrs. Young is too much of a dairy-woman for a governor's ladyF"^1 As the voting began, the Saratoga Sentinel told voters that they must now decide whether they would accept rule by "one ... who would have DEPRESSED THE POOR, and given none but the rich the right of voting - or ... support one who nobly contributed in LEVELLING EVERY ODIOUS DISTINCTION relative to suffrage."88 Four years earlier, Clinton's casting vote in the Council of Revision had returned to the legislature the Bucktail-backed bill to call a convention to revise the state's 1777 constitution. Azariah C. Flagg's Plattsburgh Republican now explained that "if 40 or 50,000 freemen, were allowed to vote on the qualification of having done military duty, or paid taxes, then the aristocracy could not sustain Mr. Clinton."89 The Morrisville Madison Observer reported that at the Constitutional Convention of 1821, Ambrose Spencer had led "the exertions of ... Clinton's friends ... to prevent the extension of the right of suffrage," and the Utica Oneida Observer revealed that Spencer had not only resisted granting the vote to those who had done militia service or paid a highway tax, but he had dismissed the principle "that all men are born equal" as "mere sound."90 Like their opponents, the regulars struggled to enlist permanently the many younger men who had gained the franchise under the new constitution. Meetings of youthful voters became a central feature of this election, from time to time turning into struggles in which sets of partisans, each claiming to be "republican," manoeuvred to take over a hall or gathering.91 The Jefferson County "Republican Meeting of Young Men" of 23 October, which, according to the Watertown Freeman, was "acknowledged by all to have been the largest political meeting ever held in the county," supported Samuel Young because of his "unremitting exertions in the convention ... in favor of ... the abolition of that odious and aristocratic distinction of freeholders and nofnjfreeholders."92 The regular leaders exercised tight control in Platts-

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"New York Is Now an Empire"

burgh, where they arranged a meeting of "republican young, unmarried men," which gave thanks to "the Republican party for its persevering efforts ... to place all upon a footing of equality in voting."93 The regular editors and those who wrote the addresses of regular meetings sought to capture the votes and loyalty of young men by lessons in history. The Van Burenites claimed that they had long and consistently battled the forces of aristocratic Federalist oppression - quite a different record from that of Clinton, who, "Proteus-like has assumed all manner of shapes."9* They reminded their readers and listeners that they had suffered under the Alien and Sedition acts in 1798, had backed Jefferson in 1800, had supported the embargo faithfully, and in 1812 had stood with Madison against the British, the foreign allies of the domestic enemies of free men's rights. Friends to democracy should grasp what their forebears knew - that personal sacrifice and party discipline, including the discipline of regular nominations, had proven essential in the fight for popular rights; thus instructed, they would not be deluded by the Clintonian Republicans who claimed to champion the rights of the people.^ Personal sacrifice and self-discipline served to equate partisanship with civic virtue and patriotism; since Clinton had failed to embrace war in 1812, he could lay claim neither to virtue nor to Republican purity. The regulars charged that in running against Madison in 1812, Clinton, ever the self-seeking opportunist, had promised his Federalist allies that he had permanently severed all connection with the Republican Party. Denouncing him as the "peace-party" candidate, they condemned his flirtation with Federalist supporters as the act of an unprincipled and inveterate trimmer. They claimed that he had willingly served as a magnet for factious malcontents and that he valued office, money, and luxury more than he valued national honour or even the security of the republic.96 To dramatize their case, the Van Burenite editors continually repeated Clinton's wartime toast to "the golden days of our commercial prosperity."97 Then, as the campaign ended and as the condemnation of Clinton's wartime praise of peace and trade peaked in the regular press, they presented figures contrived to show that he had pocketed $164,000 from the taxpayers during his years in office, and they charged that he had "spent a fortune in high living," even as other Americans pitted themselves against the power of Britain.98 In sum, the regulars held that Clinton embodied, in excess, the species of commercialism that could threaten the order and unity of the national community, a fear that could be traced back to the failed boycotts preceding the Revolution."

235 The Utica Convention THE CLINTONIAN RESPONSE

For its part, the Clintonian press emphasized the failure of the regular candidates to support the electoral law. The Utica address said that Root had been "an open, violent, and persevering opposer of the electoral bill" and that Young, "with more of a Jesuit's cunning," had followed an "equivocal course" on the electoral question. Both men eventually responded, probably to their regret. On 19 October the Albany Argus went out to customers with Root's defence, dated 8 October, tucked in as a handbill. Root faulted the proposals on which the attention of the legislature had centred and claimed that he had drawn up a district plan early in the winter session but that the one People's man who displayed interest had failed to introduce it. Otherwise, he said, as a presiding officer he had to go by the rules of procedure, having no choice but to rule in order the motion to adjourn the summer session.100 The New-York Statesman dismissed Root's belated defence as a "flimsy ... production" that would have New Yorkers "believe he had not influence in the senate to get a proposition introduced, if he had wished the electoral law passed in any shape." Carter's newspaper reflected the tone that the Clintonian press took in approaching Root: "It would be a waste of words to enter into an examination of Gen. Root's statements, especially as it is impossible for him to be conscious of all he said and did in the Senate, on the subject of the electoral law!"101 Clintonian editors agreed that "this man opposed it inch by inch - he strangled it in a 'net of forms.'" Then, following Carter, they returned to berating the lieutenant-governor as a drunkard.102 Young's campaign statements entangled him. His first public comment after the Utica convention came in a brief letter dated 29 September, which was published by the Waterloo Seneca Farmer during the first week of October and by the Albany Argus at the beginning of the second week. Young said that he had "uniformly" stood behind "transferring the choice of Presidential Electors from the Legislature to the ballot boxes." He also said that he endorsed Henry Clay for the presidency. He added that he had covered both points in an earlier letter to Assemblyman Edward Hudson of Madison County and that he expected Hudson would publish that letter.I03 The Hudson letter of 15 September (which was more rarely republished) did not become public until 26 October, when the antiregular Canandaigua Ontario Repository printed it, mistakenly reporting that it had already appeared in the Hamilton Recorder. The tale of its publication in the Recorder may have come from Hudson; he had been

236

"New York Is Now an Empire"

elected to the 1824 assembly as a regular, but he now switched sides and would run - and lose - as an antiregular in November.104 Shunned by the Van Burenite press, the Hudson letter offered a stronger endorsement of the electoral law and a lengthy statement in favour of Clay, whose American system, said Young, would "protect American industry against foreign rivalry; ... promote an internal trade which would greatly benefit the State in consequence of her Canals; and ... create a home market for our agricultural productions."105 Young gained little from his letters. By endorsing Clay, he cast himself as a candidate who appreciated the creative use of government power. The endorsement also made it clear that he agreed with Peter B. Porter, an articulate spokesman for the many Clay men in western New York.106 In either posture, Young ran the risk of appearing to be an understudy to either Clinton or Porter, which explains the rapid appearance of the 29 September letter in the western Clintonian press. Second, the Buffalo Emporium asked why Young "did not come forward with the 'gigantic powers of his mind' ... declare the call of the [special session] of the Legislature Constitutional ... and demand that the rights of his fellowfreemen ... be no longer withheld from them?" Plainly, according to the Emporium, "the spell of the Regency was upon him: he was dumb before his masters."107 Other Clintonian presses chimed in, hammering away with the question the Emporium had put. They charged that before his nomination, Young had opposed caucus nominations, had fostered the idea of a convention to meet at Utica, had backed the establishment of a newspaper that would compete with the Albany Argus, and had planned to campaign vigorously, condemning the Regency for the postponement of the electoral law. Yet when nominated, he had dropped these plans; men who backed Crawford for president had nominated him, but his Clayite letters mocked their regularity. Determined to magnify Young's opportunism and deceitfulness, the Clintonians claimed that the Van Burenite leaders in Albany had designed the letters to win Clay voters to the regular ticket; but that once he was elected, Young would throw his weight behind Crawford.108 Taking Young at his word, however, Samuel Jenks's New York National Union scorned Young for abandoning both the electoral law and Crawford.109 While berating Young as a trickster, the Clintonian press attributed New York's dawning prosperity to the spirit of the liberal intellect that Clinton sought to embody. The Clintonian newspapers praised it by publishing an extract of the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa address that Edward Everett had given in the presence of Lafayette: "Here ... a mighty work is to be fulfilled, or never ... It is by the intellect of the country, that the mighty mass is to be inspired; that its parts are to communicate

237 The Utica Convention

and sympathize, its bright progress to be adorned with becoming refinements, its strong sense uttered, its character reflected, its feelings interpreted to ... after ages."'10 The Clintonians saw in their candidate Everett's patriot and scholar hero. The value of Clinton's liberal statesmanship served as a staple of the antiregular press. Alden Spooner's Brooklyn Star called Clinton the "Archimedes of modern times, who has by ... the energy of his intellect, raised the new above the old world.""1 Thurlow Weed declared that with New York "becoming an empire in population and resources," it was "important that her destinies ... be wielded by a man who has a mind to compass all her varied interests.""2 "Investigator" in the Onondaga Register argued that the Bucktails, by their reluctance to support the canal projects, had shown themselves "ignorant of the profound views of Mr. Clinton, and unable to comprehend his schemes when placed before the legislature.""3 A correspondent of the Batavia Republican Advocate maintained that Clinton's ambition was "of that pure cast that enfolds the good of a whole people - that has a single eye to the future," and a writer in the Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer speculated that the revenue from his canals would "present a spectacle the world has never seen before of a government defraying its own expenses, and growing rich without collecting from its citizens one cent in taxes.""4 In such a man, "ambition" benefited all. The Clintonians emphasized that Young and Root failed to embody true liberality. Nathaniel Carter readily granted that Young, a "selftaught, self-made" man, had "risen from penury." But Carter gave a back-handed compliment when he said that although Young showed "a laudable emulation to be thought a man of science and letters," his attainments were "the result of patient and plodding industry." Carter found it amusing to think of Young "in the field of nature," collecting specimens of minerals for his cabinet, going through the motions of a gentleman savant. Endowed with no more than ordinary "native talent or genius," his reading of Montesquieu, Vattel, Grotius, and Puffendorf failed to make him a lawyer of more than the "second or third rank.""5 The liberal intellect required a college education and peculiar talent. Yet the regulars could field no better a man. The New York National Union maintained that the "state-jugglers" at Albany used gubernatorial candidates as pawns while they worked their corrupt ends; "when the instrument becomes dull it will be thrown away," just as the Van Burenites had discarded Yates. Mere hunger for office would never lure a statesman truly able "to renovate the commonwealth," predicted the Union.1*6 One Clintonian Republican senate district convention dismissed Young with the typical assertion that he was "the mere creature of party" who had "never given us any evidences of strong intellect,

238 "New York Is Now an Empire"

or deep devotion to the interests of his country," and that "this great state wants for its governor a man of ten times his talent."117 Young's labours as an acting canal commissioner did little to redeem him. He had not served without pay, nor had he promised to lay down the office, and this led to Clintonian speculation that he meant to continue to receive a commissioner's salary if he became governor.118 The regular press responded by charging that Clinton had gratuitously fostered public suspicion of the integrity of the Bucktail canal commissioners and of Peter B. Porter. "9 Then, on 20 October, a mishap at Black Rock seemed to vindicate Clinton's judgment and justify his suspicions of these men, especially of Young. Porter's Harbor Company had thrown a temporary dam from the shore of the Niagara River across the uncompleted basin, raising the water level fourteen to sixteen inches between the shore and the pier running down the river. The Buffalo Emporium delivered a report that echoed through the Clintonian press: "Several cribs in the Black Rock pier were raised up by the force of the water and carried down stream, leaving an open space of about 80 feet, and ... the two adjoining cribs were turned round." There followed a massive rush of water out of the basin. Without that head of water, the editor argued, the western end of the canal would be dry for seventy miles. New Yorkers would now awaken, said the Emporium.Now the public would "be inclined to appreciate and extol the wisdom, foresight, and disinterested firmness of DE WITT CLINTON, who alone of the Canal Board, opposed himself and his reputation to this useless and ruinous project." Only his election would arrest "the temerity of speculators, and the folly and madness of some of our important functionaries."120 After this news, according to the New- York Statesman, "the whole country [was] filled with rumours of mismanagement and corruption."121 The editor of the Buffalo Journal, intending that there should be "no one ... so mad as to doubt the truth of Mr. Clinton's reasoning, or the miserable folly of Young," contrived a tale that found its way into several newspapers. He reported that, besides the pier in the Niagara River, the state had lost "$400,000 uselessly expended in excavating the Mountain Ridge at Lockport, two feet below the necessary level, in order to obtain the supply of water from Black Rock instead of Buffalo."122 If Young fell short of the ideal of liberal-minded gentleman-statesman, the Dartmouth-educated Root violently affronted it. The Utica convention address had condemned him as an anti-Christian drunkard who had been "deplorably successful in contaminating public morals." It was not merely that he led others to drink and curse. Carter asserted that this "rude ... dogmatical ... vulgar ... robust ... political gladiator," al-

239 The Utica Convention

though more able than Young, must be held to a "subaltern role." "He was organized for opposition ... and formed for party politics," and his partisanship had proved destructive: He has ... been uniform in his denunciation of liberal principles, and systematic in his opposition to every species of internal improvement ... Under the cloak ... of economy, he has ... vigorously opposed ... all measures ... of public utility. He opposed ... the endowment of classical schools, of literary and scientific institutions, of humane and charitable asylums; those ... establishments which exalt the moral character of the community and shed a lustre upon ... the state.

Root, claimed Carter, had fused contempt for the liberal mind with the negative essence of party, thereby threatening the state's future prosperity and the development of an enlightened and virtuous New York citizenry.I23 As portrayed in the Clintonian press, Root's intemperance, potential for violence, and partisanship blended to offer an image that offset the regulars' depiction of Clinton as New York's political Lucifer. I24 While praising Clinton as the paragon of a liberal elite, the Clintonian press and Clintonian meetings continued to settle the odium of aristocracy and corrupting ambition on the legislature and the regular leadership. One Columbia County antiregular reflected this common line of attack, emphasizing not only the power of a few men to control the legislature, but the moral weakness of the legislators: "To corrupt one hundred and sixty thousand electors, who are at home on their farms ... is more difficult than ... to corrupt the principles ... of a few members of the legislature, who are but too prone to listen to the seductive voice of demagogues." The "wiles of ambition," noted this critic, could easily lure the assembled lawmakers "into her vortex."125 In this view, then, the citizens, seen as contented farmers, remained pure if only because of their remoteness from the manipulators in Albany. Now they must cleanse the Capitol. The corresponding committee chosen by the Dutchess County "Republican convention" urged voters: "Go to the ballot boxes, and let your suffrages for the People's Ticket teach Legislators and the world, that the confidence of Freemen is not to be abused, their will opposed, and their rights usurped with impunity."'26 The antiregulars attacked the High-Minded Federalists not only in order to deny regular claims to Republican purity but to drive home the suspicion that, at the centre of legislative power, lurked a covert, venal, and active aristocracy. "Republican gold" had attached such men as John Sudam, James Lynch, Thomas G. Waterman, and Melancton Wheeler - all "distinguished and violent" Federalists - to the Bucktails.127 Sudani's leadership of the senate's attack on the electoral law

240 "New York Is Now an Empire"

showed that these former Federalists had not changed their "aristocratic" principles. Those principles and those "converts" had, in the mind of one western New Yorker, become the "true cause of all our political difficulties." Writing in the Waterloo Seneca Farmer, "Truth" maintained that "these apostate federalists... now principally form the Albany Regency, and rule the state with despotic sway"; moreover, beneath these aristocrats and in every county functioned "subordinate aristocracies, composed mostly of official characters."128 Thus, not only had the HighMinded Federalists engineered the destruction of the electoral bill, but they lived at the centre of a conspiratorial network that radiated out from the capital and wielded local power. The address of the Wayne County antiregular nominating convention speculated further on the structure of regular power to posit a widespread but hidden union of Federalist and Southern power. This address claimed that the Federalists of the declining Essex junto had joined their enemy to create a "combination" which had "the centre of its power ... at Richmond in Virginia," and that in New York, "young and ardent aspirants for office" entered the cabal to create "a branch of this aristocracy at Albany. "I29 The High-Minded Federalists served as the local agents of a more comprehensive aristocratic conspiracy of managers. Addressing the voters of Cayuga County, Samuel S. Seward's twentythree-old son William H. Seward dissected both the local and the statelevel organs of the conspiracy. He began with the proposition that New York was dominated by a power-hungry "combination of men" whose "principles and practice [were] at war with its best interests, its prosperity and glory." Although these men advocated reform of the constitution of 1777, asserted Seward, they hoped to preserve and control the Council of Appointment. When this plot failed, they built "an institution which unites ... the office-holders of the state from the Governor and Senate down to the Justices of the Peace" - the system by which the justices of the peace were at present chosen. This arrangement made the governor "a subservient tool of the faction" and turned "the respectable judiciaries of the county into shambles for the bargain and sale of offices." Widespread oppression resulted: "The several counties of the state at this time exhibit so many little aristocracies of officeholders ... independent of the control of the people, and all united by common ties of brotherhood."'30 The legislators and the governor thus obeyed the wishes of a coterie whose power extended through dens of like-minded men to the yeoman's very door. The Clintonian remedy demanded devolution of power from the centre to the voter, giving the voter freedom to follow liberal leadership at the local and state level. As the Utica convention met to approve its address to the voters, Jacob Gebhard, a Clintonian lawyer and militia

241 The Utica Convention

general sitting from Schoharie County, offered a resolution asking that the local conventions, which were soon to meet to select legislative candidates, endorse a constitutional amendment allowing the voters to choose the justices of the peace. Adopted easily, this resolution enabled the Clintonian Republicans to pose as restorers of the power of the people which had been stolen by the "caucus ... monster," who had "inserted himself between them and the Government."^1 Their newspapers reminded voters of words that were said to have been spoken by Martin Van Buren as the Constitutional Convention of 1821 addressed the appointment of justices: "The further this power could be removed from the people the better."'32 The message from Utica emphasized the capacity of New York to grow in national influence and to prosper when unhampered by power at the centre: "The state of New-York ... is ... degraded and disgraced by a political party, controlled by a cabal of aspiring and desperate politicians, in her own bosom." It was said that, dominated by "a faction ... a knot of men," the party of the regulars threatened the national destiny of the state as the engine of national economic growth that could provide its citizens with escape from powerlessness, economic uncertainty, and poverty. Nathaniel Carter dwelt especially on the commercial growth of New York City, boasting "that six HUNDRED NEW COMMERCIAL FIRMS have been formed in the city of New-York within the last jear!"'33 As for the state - "an empire of itself ... comprising one-seventh of the whole population ... paying about one-third of the revenue of the country" - Carter proclaimed that the time approached "when the giant will awake from an inglorious slumber, and burst the cords which have been woven by the hands of grovelling politicians." New Yorkers would then "wipe away the reproaches, with which they have been taunted by liberal politicians from Maine to Louisiana."134 Inevitably, the conditions making for prosperity would shatter the power of the Albany Regency, asserted Carter. Clintonians stood on the side of great changes that would bring dignity to New York's citizens. They must therefore come to power. Devolution simply allowed the people to work their economic and political will with fewer impediments. Upstate, Thurlow Weed predicted that New York City would become "the London of the World." He reported that, recognizing this destiny, the "inhabitants of that splendid metropolis have risen above the grovelling designs and interests of faction" and were now "ambitious of making amends to the statesman whose bold and enlightened policy has opened a communication which enables the 'far west' to pour its vast treasures into the lap of the Queen of cities." Following these comments, Weed printed Jacob Barker's statement of support for Clinton.

242 "New York Is Now an Empire"

Barker pointed out that, both in New York City's Tammany Hall and in the state's senate, he had spoken against Clinton's Erie Canal because he thought it a "wild experiment ... advocated for the benefit of individuals," but the that project had proven itself to the city and the state, and its success was due to Clinton.'35 Weed wrote as an upstate editor who was sympathetic to the onetenth of the state's population living in New York City. Carter, charged with building support there, capitalized on hinterland hostility. In the last week of October, he defended Raines's candidacy for Congress, pointing out that his friend had always sought "the commercial prosperity of the city of New-York" and that "his opposition to the tax on Bank and Insurance Companies" proved this.'36 A week later, Carter censured Young as a foe of the city. Quoting from Levi H. Clarke's version of the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention, he added emphasis as he reported that "MR. YOUNG WAS OPPOSED TO HAVING NEWYORK REPRESENTED IN PROPORTION TO THE NUMBER OF HER INHABITANTS, as she had a much greater share of floating and UNSOUND POPULATION, than the other parts of the State." According to Carter, Young and Root led the "sugar boilers," those "whose creed it was to level every thing of a liberal character ... to prostrate the influence and diminish the importance of this city." If Young and Root won office, he warned, they would place "an additional tax upon banks and insurance companies," would attack "other institutions, and attempt to check the growth and influence of the metropolis." Voters would do well to back the men who sought harmony between city and country and who understood that "if we oppress that city, we oppress ourselves; and ... we may be oppressing our children."137 The Clintonian candidates grasped the relationship between market centres and the economic growth of the state and would defend New York City against attack by the envious democrats of the hinterland. The Clintonians easily blended their vision of republican commercial prosperity with antipartyism. Condemning obedience to the "dictates of party," the antiregulars insisted that their republicanism turned on devotion to principle rather than on self-interest and "personal attachment" to Clinton and the men running with him.138 They claimed to be the true "republican" party, led by men who "well know the difference between a faction and a party; - between a set of men, combined for sinister ends ... and a party formed by the great majority of the community ... their great object in all political controversies being ... that the majority should govern."1*9 The "juntocrat," slavishly loyal to his "party" and willing to hold "that the people are often their own worst enemies," placed the welfare of that faction above all, they claimed; "for him the prosperity of the country is altogether subordinate to that

243 The Utica Convention

of the party."1''0 A truly republican party must be open and be ever ready to defend its pursuit of the commonweal. Since it represented most citizens in the state, it had every right to do so. Regular domination, according to the Clintonians, threatened public prosperity. It also threatened personal freedom, a sensitive point for many younger men. The Clintonians warned that each voter must decide whether "he will become a SLAVE ... or ... declare that which was purchased with the blood of his fathers shall not be wrested from his hands. "I41 When the delegates to the Albany County convention of Democratic Young Men met in mid-October, they insisted that they were "neither hewers of wood nor drawers of water." They claimed to "blush" for the young regulars who, "like parasites and slaves," seemed "willing to hug their chains" as they kneeled before "usurpers, intriguers, & unprincipled demagogues."1''2 "About 200" young men of Troy met and condemned the "refusal of the legislature" to pass the electoral law. The editor of the Troy Sentinel published their proceedings, commenting that freedom from "clamour about ancient party usages" would benefit coming generations: "Party discipline ... would constitute the very worst form of hereditary government ... descending from the ancestors to the heirs of faction, in as unbroken [a] succession as ever crown descended from tyrant father to tyrant son."143 Regular sons might expect in time to become masters in the system of their forebears' party; in the interim, they suffered household and political slavery. To the Clintonians, a victory by the regulars would mean Southern domination. The Albany Daily Advertiser predicted that "if ... the Regency candidates are elected, New York will be bound to the footstool of Georgia."144 The "Republican Young Men" of Hudson charged that "bar room politicians," meaning "to prostrate the power of this great commonwealth at the feet of Southern oligarchy," had made off with the people's constitutional right to choose their rulers.'« Southerners putatively paid cash to control New Yorkers. Carter alleged that Van Buren had received $1,600 from politicians of that section, the money serving to defray the costs of circulating the Albany Argus to parts of the state where the people needed more clearly to hear their masters' voice.'46 Republican young men and their families would hope to follow the course of empire westward. Their prostration at the feet of a Southern oligarchy might come when they later competed against slave labour to earn their stake. Although Clintonian Republicanism did not articulate a doctrine of free labour, it sketched a political framework in which such a doctrine might set.

9 "Root Cried Yesterday": The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

The debate between the regulars and their opponents had ranged far beyond the issue of the popular election of presidential electors. It had dwelt on the appropriate locus of power in the state government, the nature and propriety of party organization, the qualities desirable in an executive leader, the dignity and honour of the state, and the manner in which the state could best obtain its due as a commonwealth within the nation. Above all, it had focused on the relationship between commerce and the republican form of government. This problem reflected back on all the other issues. The debate gained momentum from the People's convention at Utica, which the Clintonians took over, reducing the Wheatonites from Manhattan and the southeastern counties to an isolated and powerless troop. At odds with the relatively uncommercial Wheatonites, the profile of the upstate delegates spelled out sympathy for the commercial and financial ethos of Manhattan and thereby defined a species of harmony for the Empire State. This message could allay the fears stirred up by the recent tax legislation; city and hinterland leaders, guided by men such as Robert Bogardus and Sylvanus Miller, could stand together to protect personalty and the capital that men had in their professions. The medical doctors who attended had reason to feel at home. More elite and more commercial than the 1823 assembly, the People's convention stated by association the dignity of correctly trained physicians in a changing society ordered by knowledgeable men who could presume to pass judgment on services and on currency and credit. The farmers

245 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

and mechanics whom Wheaton had wanted Young to represent would have to defer to their judgment and seek what enlightenment autodidacts might properly enjoy in the Bible. The convention, in choosing Clinton, fully aligned the People's Movement with the central thesis of Clintonian Republicanism - namely, that venturesome change, bringing greater commercial prosperity, defined the larger destiny of New York republicanism. The ties within the Union that Clintonians tended to emphasize, the arteries of empire, ran westward. They were arteries along which capital, men, and goods passed, and the Clintonians anticipated that from their movement would come firm political links. The regulars, although giving virtually no emphasis to Van Buren's Southern strategy, drew back from the first proposition. They held that commercial prosperity could undermine hard-won political democracy and threaten citizens with degradation under plutocratic rule, which would rob them of the fruits of their labour, leaving but the husk of freedom. The regulars' repeated condemnation of Clinton as the man who tempted with "golden dreams" attested to their fears - and to their temptation. Less concerned than the regulars about the prospect of increasing social and economic distance between people, the Clintonians believed that the citizenry would be drawn together by prosperity and by the possibilities for personal fulfilment. In the developing commonwealth that rewarded effective liberal leaders, there would be neither envy of the wealthy nor degradation of the labourer, for the larger pie created by the ever more lively market system would reward and satisfy the workers. Commitment to a fuller political democracy, rightly managed, simply confirmed acceptance of a pattern of growth, movement, and change that would bring comprehensive benefit, a levelling up, which was definable perhaps even in such modest items as the glassware, crockery, and china which the canals carried inland to be touted in local newspapers - and which was often deferentially presented to De Witt Clinton. His accomplishment betokened the aborning right to purchase private amenities. Both persuasions held that federal power and corruption within threatened the commonwealth of New York. The regulars insisted that the Republican Party of the state should concentrate New York's power to allow their leaders to bargain effectively in Washington. The Clintonians took a different approach. When Haines announced that "New York ... is now an empire," he gave notice that a tier of northern states already looked to New York City for capital and to New York State for leadership. New York's influence over a growing populace that profited from its leaders' creative - "liberal" - commercial vision would

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secure the state's liberty, and indeed Northern liberty. Clinton's victory in 1824 suggests that New Yorkers shared Haines's sense of the meaning of Clinton's executive leadership. Both believed that their great man would serve better in Albany than in Washington. Moreover, the victory of the People's Republicans at the local level tended to confirm the Clintonian understanding of the social and economic needs of New Yorkers. With the acceptance of this in one hotly contested election, some permanent strands of New York life took form, which would be seen in the subsequent history of the tax law and in the new face of Clintonianism and its relationship to the second party system. THE 1 8 2 4 ELECTION

In 1824 the New York voters went to the polls in greater numbers than ever before. Twice as many men voted for governor in 1824 as had done in 1820; the turnout now amounted to 73.25 percent of the enlarged electorate. The participation rate was even higher in the thirty-six counties that gave Clinton a majority, rising to an average of 77.2 percent, compared with 70.1 percent in the counties where less than half of the voters supported him. Clinton piled up a majority of 16,359 (equal to 8.59 percent of the 190,545 votes cast for both candidates). This margin of victory dwarfed both the 1.56 percent lead he had won over Tompkins in 1820 and the 1.86 percent by which he would defeat William B. Rochester in 1826. New York City shifted into Clinton's camp, giving him 53.7 percent, close to his statewide lead. Even with new voters participating extensively in 1824, the towns and wards tended to vote for governor the same way as they had done in 1820, demonstrating that their voters saw continuity in the meaning of Clinton's leadership and that most of them gave it their approval. Almost two thousand fewer men voted for lieutenant-governor, and they emphatically rejected the impious Erastus Root. He received only 41.25 percent of the vote, leaving New York politicians to ponder the value of temperance and the danger of cooperation with regular senators.1 Scanning the initial returns, Clinton could not resist crowing, "Root it is said cried yesterday. Gloria-Victoria."2 The regulars lost many legislative districts. Twenty of the thirty-four New York congressmen elected in 1824 (58.8 percent) ran on slates that also had antiregulars.3 Yet the Clintonian Republicans made their most substantial gains in the state legislature, for which they ran more often as "Republicans" or "Democratic Republicans" than as "People's" nominees, though they sometimes blended the designations.4 Organizing effectively at all levels, they fought the regulars for the eight vacant senate seats and won six of them. This brought to the upper house five men

247 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

who were clearly associated with Clinton, and a young Schenectady merchant who had left the regulars in 1823.5 For the assembly, the voters chose eighty-five antiregulars - two-thirds of the house. One of these assemblymen defected; but another, who had won election as a regular, switched to the Clintonian Republican side during the session, thereby leaving the Regency with only forty-three seats.6 The antiregular strength was fairly evenly distributed. It flagged somewhat in the northern counties tied to the Lake Ontario and St Lawrence River trade, and fell off more extensively in south-central New York, which was served by the Delaware and Susquehanna river systems rather than the Erie Canal. Still, in the assembly elections the antiregulars' ticket carried the Southern Tier counties of Tioga, Broome, Cattaraugus, and Allegany. To the north, St Lawrence, Franklin, and Essex gave them majorities. Groups of counties made up each of the state's eight senate districts, and each set sent a total of sixteen men to the assembly.7 Only four antiregulars would go to the 1825 assembly from the Sixth Senate District of the central Southern Tier area. Otherwise, the distribution of assembly seats by this measure varied little. Next lowest was the Southern Hudson River's Second District, which sent ten Clintonian Republicans to Albany; the western Seventh and Eighth Districts each sent thirteen, the highest number. In the number of counties won, the antiregulars' victory appeared less sweeping. They garnered all seats of twenty-nine (52.7 percent) of New York's fifty-five counties, but the regulars would control the delegations from eighteen counties (32.7 percent), and eight counties (14.5 percent) sent divided delegations to the assembly. The Clintonian Republican counties, however, tended, as election districts, to have more people and therefore more seats. Only three (5.6 percent) of the regular counties sent more than two men to the assembly; thirteen (44.8 percent) of the antiregular counties sent more than two. Determined to win control of the assembly, the Clintonians had carried an effective message to populous and growing counties. Turnout in the assembly elections had risen sharply, approaching though not quite reaching the level of participation in the vote for governor. Taking a sample of twenty-four counties and computing from the 1821 electoral census, it appears that the turnout of eligible voters in the election for assemblymen had been 50.65 percent in 1822 and 38.5 percent in 1823; in 1824 it reached 70.6 percent.8 Willingness to come out to vote for Clinton had some effect on races for the assembly. In the counties that leaned towards him, Clinton usually ran ahead of the antiregular assembly candidates. Both assembly and gubernatorial returns for 243 towns and wards in these counties have come down to us. In them, Clinton received 57.5 percent of the votes, compared

248 "Root Cried Yesterday"

with 56.1 percent for the antiregular assembly candidates, whom he outdistanced in thirteen out of eighteen counties. Albany County On looking at individual counties in different areas, without assuming that any particular county fully represents its region of the state, a clearer picture of the factors that fed into the antiregular success emerges. Albany County, Clinton's "microcosm" of New York State politics, elected an antiregular assembly delegation. The three Clintonian candidates won 57.9 percent of a vote that mirrored the balloting pattern in the 1820 struggle over the governorship. The regular ticket which they defeated had been chosen the day after the antiregulars captured the Albany common council in a city election that won attention in the Clintonian press of the state.* The regulars had constructed an Albany County assembly ticket that was designed to draw on the strength of firmly rooted family networks and "interests" that reached beyond the capital. This allowed organization for the Third Senate District campaign to reinforce the regulars in the struggle for the county's assembly seats, and it promised to enhance the county's influence in the legislature. At the head of the ticket stood seventy-year-old John Lansing, Jr. Twenty years before, as a prospective candidate for the governorship, he had baulked at the prospect of appearing to be a puppet of George and De Witt Clinton.10 Now Lansing was the father-in-law of Supreme Court Judge Jacob Sutherland of Schoharie County and of Edward Livingston, clerk of the assembly since 1822 and a man whose family ties stretched into Columbia and Dutchess counties. Sanders Lansing, John Lansing's younger brother, had moved west to Little Falls in Herkimer County in 1820. A Bucktail and an active Republican for over twenty years, Sanders managed family landholdings and sat on Herkimer County's court. David I.D. Verplanck, a Westerlo farmer, stood second on the regular ticket. His sister had married John McCarty of Coeymans, the county's most southerly river town, which bore the family name of McCarty's grandfather, Pieter Coeymans. By this point in his political career, David Verplanck had attended three regular county conventions while his brother-in-law had attended five meetings at that level as well as two senate district conventions.11 Moreover, the other son of General David McCarty, Richard, who had been active in Greene County's Republican politics since 1807, had wielded influence in the Bank of Hudson since 1808 and had represented New York's Eighth District - Greene and Delaware counties - in the Seventeenth Congress.12 By nominating

249 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

Verplanck in 1824, the regulars sought to marshal support from the southwestern part of the Third Senate District; and by selecting Abraham Ten Eyck, Jr, of Watervliet they intended to achieve the same effect to the northeast, in Rensselaer County. Ten Eyck bore a name frequently found in both Rensselaer and Albany counties, for his father - another officer of the Revolution and a Troy merchant who had early been interested in expanding the village's trade westward - had served as both a trustee and president of Troy. '3 The Clintonian candidates chosen by a county convention on 15 September did not boast roots quite so firm or widespread in the Upper Hudson. Samuel Stringer Lush, a forty-one-year-old attorney, had the best footing. The son of a lawyer who had moved to Albany after the Revolution, Lush had graduated from Union College and had served as Albany's district attorney during the brief wartime ascendancy of the Federalists. In 1814 he married a great-granddaughter of Robert Livingston, Jr.'4 George Batterman of Guilderland stood second on the slate. Thirty-five years old in 1824, he was probably the son of a Bostonian who had served in New England during the Revolution and had helped found Guilderland's Albany Glass Company. At the height of his efforts, Batterman ran two farms, a hotel, and a satinet factory. '5 The third man, Stephen Willes of Berne, a fifty-five-year-old country merchant, had immigrated from Connecticut around 1800. Another local entrepreneur with a bent for manufacturing and storekeeping, Willes was to locate his second store in East Berne in 1825. Through both stores he bartered for raw materials - grain, hides, and bark which he manufactured into whisky, harnesses, saddles, and shoes.16 The contest for assembly seats in Albany County pitted men marked by business and professional skill against opponents made weightier by senate district organization supplemented by family ties. The vote reflected an appreciation for Batterman's qualities; he led the antiregular ticket in eight of the county's thirteen voting districts and matched Lush's vote in two others. Willes ran behind the ticket in all these towns and wards - perhaps a comment on his reputation for tough bargaining. More regular Albany towns tended to be distant from the canal, and regular towns had more improved land in proportion to their population. Hazarding a judgment from closely contemporary figures, it seems that they also tended to report less per capita wealth.1? In sum, the strongest support for the Clintonian assembly ticket of Albany County came from voters in areas that had limited access to inexpensive agricultural land - areas where people were more keenly aware of economic opportunities that could be opened up by active and newly established leaders of known business acumen.

250 "Root Cried Yesterday" Oneida County Although New York State towns closer to the canals showed a tendency to support Clinton and People's Republicans, closeness to the canal had little effect in Oneida County. There the antiregulars carried all five assembly seats, winning 58 percent of the votes and carrying twothirds of Oneida's twenty-two towns.18 The composition of the two Oneida County slates dimly reflected the pattern of the Albany County tickets. After nominating High-Minded James Lynch for Congress, the regulars put Benjamin Hyde of Annsville at the head of their assembly ticket. This sixty-seven-year-old village storekeeper and postmaster had previously served as a member of Connecticut's legislature. In New York, he had followed in the wake of his son Austin, a Chenango County lawyer and merchant who emerged as a Bucktail proponent of lower salaries for state officials and won a seat in the 1823 assembly. Benjamin then became a commissioner to acknowledge deeds and a loan commissioner. [ 9 The choice of Benjamin Hyde to run for the regulars in 1824 offered Oneida County an assemblyman who could influence Chenango's three votes, making a possible bloc of eight assembly votes.20 Asahel Curtiss stood fourth on the regular ticket. He was a fiftynine-year-old harness maker and saddler from East Sauquoit in the more southerly town of Paris, which was becoming a centre of manufacturing. Abundantly supplied with water-power, Paris had six "cotton and woolen" factories, two iron works, four trip hammers, and the county's third-highest ratio of people engaged in manufacturing to voters. Curtiss, a Revolutionary War veteran and a leading member of the Paris Masonic Lodge, bore the title "Squire," partly in recognition of his long service in public office. Made a justice of the peace in 1805, two years after settling in Paris, he had held the office for twentysix years, and he had been superintendent of the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indians for fifteen years.21 Standing second on the regular listing, Thomas H. Hamilton, a farmer and stock raiser, came from Steuben, the county's second most northerly town. Now forty-five, Hamilton had been a leading Oneida Republican since 1804, running five times for the assembly but winning only in the last of those contests, that of 1822. He had been appointed a justice of the peace in 1805, and since 1815 he had held that office in combination with the post of side judge.22 Hamilton also served as a county supervisor and as a leader in the Oneida County Agricultural Society. He was to remain active politically but was scarcely regular. Nominated at a pro-Adams county convention in 1828, he again ran for the assembly and lost, as he did under the Anti-Masonic banner in 1830. After that he gave his energies to the Whig Party.23

251 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

The regular assembly ticket needed a visible farmer and a visible artisan - Hamilton and Curtiss - to balance the remaining two men who, like Lynch, were both lawyers marked by ties to Federalism. William H. Maynard, after coming from Massachusetts, had studied law in the New Hartford office of Joseph Kirkland. In 1811 he had acquired a stake in the Federalist Utica Patriot, which made his 1819 shift valuable to the Bucktails, though the Patriot lost subscribers. The other man, Fortune C. White, a grandson of Hugh White the founder of Whitestown, had studied law with Jonas Platt. During the War of 1812 he had commanded a company at Sackets Harbor. At thirty-seven, the youngest candidate for office in Oneida County, he was becoming known as an attorney who combined skill and influence.24 Meeting fifteen days after the regulars, the Clintonian "convention of Republican delegates" "recommended" Henry C. Storrs for Congress. As a Federalist congressman, Storrs had compromised with the South on the question of the admission of Missouri as a slave state. Not renominated in 1820, he came on board as a Clintonian. While the regular Utica Oneida Observer rebuked his "determined perseverance in support of the mercenary views of Southern slave holders," the Utica Columbian Gazette praised his "unremitted efforts to procure the passage of the new Tariff bill," which showed that he was "the devoted friend of manufactures." In electing Storrs, Oneida voters chose a legislator who sought to foster their new mills and sheep farming while placating the Southerners who provided a part of the county's raw material.2' Joseph Kirkland stood first on the list of Clintonian candidates for the assembly. Like Storrs, Kirkland was a graduate of Yale. In 1794 he had begun to practise law in Oneida County, where his uncle had established an academy for Indians and whites. About to turn fiftyfive in late 1824, Kirkland enjoyed a public and professional career that led to his selection in 1832 as the first mayor of Utica. An active Federalist since 1796, he had won election to four assemblies, sitting in 1821 as a pro-Clinton Federalist.26 Although renominated, he had chosen Congress and sat there until March 1823. Kirkland was moderately wealthy. In 1820 the assessed value of his Utica property amounted to $740 in real estate and $6,000 in personalty; this changed to $9,550 real and $4,000 personal in 1830. The marriages of his children tied him to the families of Ezekiel Bacon, Augustus and Peter B. Porter, Henry and George Huntington, and William Floyd.27 Kirkland defended manufacturing development, and his wide-ranging business interests seemed at odds with his declining personalty. A director of the Utica branch of the Bank of Ontario, he had fostered the development of four local manufacturing firms while appealing to Oneida's sheep raisers.28 Later backing John Quincy Adams and

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"Root Cried Yesterday"

Whiggery, he opposed the reduction of duties on wool. He also stood out among Utica antiabolitionists, a position that did not jibe with the antislavery posture of his socially adept and pious wife. Yet Kirkland, who became president of the Utica Wilberforce Society in 1829 and opposed Sunday transportation of the mails, left his own record of piety. A Presbyterian, he had helped found the Western Education Society in 1819 and had become a vice-president of that organization in 1821. This connection gave a westward-reaching evangelical overtone to Kirkland's candidacy, for in early 1824 the Utica Western Recorder had begun weekly publication under the aegis of the Education Society and the Auburn Theological Seminary.29 Running two Federalist lawyers and defenders of manufactures, one for Congress and one for the assembly, the antiregulars balanced their ticket with two farmers. One of them, David Pierson of Vernon, listed third, had turned his back on the regulars in 1822. That was after they failed to nominate him for sheriff, an office he finally won in 1825. About forty-five years old in 1824, he had been modestly active as a Republican before 1824 and had received appointments as a coroner and a turnpike inspector during Clinton's first years in the governor's chair. After 1825 his political career would gather momentum as he defended Henry Clay and the American System, filling a niche as a moderately prominent local Whig. The seed of his interest in fostering manufacturing had germinated in 1810, when he had helped found the Mount Vernon Glass Company. 3° Israel Stoddard from the western town of Camden, an unquestionably Republican and Clintonian farmer, stood second on the slate. Known as the "king of the Fish Creek nation," he kept an eye on voters in four adjacent towns, all of which went antiregular in this election. Connecticut-born like most of the Oneida candidates, and the tenth of eleven children, Stoddard had settled in Camden in 1798 at the age of twenty-two. Eventually he brought at least one of his siblings with him: his younger brother served as a Methodist minister in Camden. Stoddard had been a Republican leader since at least 1807, long holding posts as a militia officer, a commissioner to acknowledge deeds, and a justice of the peace. He ran for the assembly four times, finally winning as a Clintonian candidate in 1821.31 He lost again in 1822. With strong personal ties to New England, he was to support John Quincy Adams's re-election in 1828 but shifted to the Democratic Party in the 18305.32 Both men listed at the bottom of the ticket were merchants, one from the southern extremity of the county and the other from the north. Samuel Woodworth, fifty-three, had sat in the assembly of 1812. Daniel D. Tompkins, when proroguing that legislature, had held that supporters

253 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

of the Bank of America offered "corrupt inducements" and that, once chartered, it would bloat the banking capital of New York City by twothirds. After this reprimand, Wood worth stood out as one of the twentyeight Republicans who had not only voted for the bank, but had also signed a lengthy and well-publicized protest against the governor's action.33 Broughton White, nearly two years younger than Woodworth and an immigrant from Massachusetts rather than Connecticut, kept store and farmed in the town of Remsen. Coming to the county as a surveyor, he had settled in Remsen in 1803 and had gained a foothold by trading goods for ashes, by teaching school, and by lending a hand in the development of the Utica Turnpike, a company in which he owned $546 in shares by 1826. By 1850, after trying "various business enterprises," White would be worth at least $5,000. A Federalist before the War of 1812, he had been somnolent politically after it, but had revived to put his weight behind John Quincy Adams, the protective tariff, and temperance.M Apart from Stoddard, who was run to secure the western towns of the county, the men who made up the Clintonian Republican ticket stood not only on the doctrine of electors; they also stood for growth and change through manufacturing, commerce, and the expansion of banking capital. By contrast, the regular ticket promised no certain commitment to the manufacturing potential of the county. Fortune C. White had proved himself first under arms and more recently at the bar; Benjamin Hyde and sons did not clearly spell out Van Burenite attachment to economic development; and the skills and social position of Aashel Curtiss represented the increasingly antique dignity of the rural mechanic. Counting Maynard and Lynch as High-Minded Federalists, the regulars had more explicitly designed their slate to appeal to those who believed that regular organization abetted by family influence could provide reliable service to supporters who backed their "interest." As in the election of 1823, the higher the ratio of an Oneida County town's 1820 manufacturing population was to its voters, the more support that town gave to antiregular candidates; and as in 1823, when the ratio of these workers, mechanics, and mill-hands of both sexes rose above 350 per 1,000 voters, the relationship began to reverse.35 A social factor fed into antiregular support: throughout Oneida County, the greater a town's commitment to manufacturing, the larger was the population of unmarried women of childbearing age that it could sustain.36 For unmarried women, manufacturing weighed heavily in the balance against teaching; Oneida's mills rather than its schoolrooms increasingly beckoned unmarried women. Well-placed and pious Oneida women might have directed their sisters towards teaching, but this

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"Root Cried Yesterday"

leadership had close ties to the men who ran the county's mills and banks. 37 Cayuga County To the west, in the more evenly divided Cayuga County, Clinton and the antiregular assembly slate won 53.6 percent of the vote. There the men who went to the polls behaved in one respect like Oneida County's voters: the higher the proportion of single women in the population of their towns, the more they voted for the Clintonian candidates.38 This tendency, which had also been present in Cayuga's 1823 election, fits with three related factors that emerge from comparison of the 1824 vote with the 1825 state census data and the 1824 school district reports. First, the higher the 1825 birth rate in a town, the greater was the regular vote; second, excluding the relatively urbanized town of Auburn, the higher the ratio of improved land to people, the stronger was the tendency to support the Clintonians; and third, again excluding Auburn, the stronger a town's support for education, the stronger was its support for the antiregulars.39 These relationships were weak in Oneida County. Other differences between the counties also stood out. In Cayuga, a higher ratio of manufacturers to voters did not mean a higher Clintonian vote; second, a higher level of per capita taxable property did tend to have that association; and third, the Cayuga data displayed no meaningful relationship between the manufacturer-to-voter ratio and the presence of single women.*0 The Cayuga pattern suggests that the Clintonian farming towns of this county had seen more "golden days" than towns that tended to lean towards the regulars. Not marshy like much of the soil in Conquest, Cato, or Mentz (which until recently had been a producer of salt), the lands of the more Clintonian towns had developed into prospering farms. They yielded incomes sufficient to hire labour rather than relying on labour bred in the family.*1 In these towns, too, women more fully escaped a reproductive role. Their purpose shifted. As they increasingly became guardians of the moral and religious values threatened by commercialism, their influence drew on the Bible society evangelicalism with which Clinton had become associated. This influence gained strength as the reach of the Western Education Society extended.42 Quaker and Presbyterian piety expressed themselves strongly in the Clintonian towns of Cayuga, providing strength on which single women, especially those involved in education, might draw. Sempronius and Cayuga Bridge in Aurelius were the sites of active Friends meetings. Besides the Quaker "home" schools that dotted the shore of Cayuga

255 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

Lake, an "excellent Female Friends' Boarding School" flourished in Aurora. The People's Republicans received strong support in the town of Auburn. There the Auburn Theological Seminary had recently opened its doors under the direction of James Richards; Clinton, as president of the Presbyterian Education Society, knew him personally as a fellow worker. There, too, the Bennet sisters had set up Harmony House, a school for young women, which was strongly backed by Dirck C. Lansing, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, who was a founder of the theological seminary and a brother of a People's assembly candidate in Rensselaer County.43 The regulars chose their candidates in mid-October. They shaped their ticket to appeal to younger voters, to those who cherished memories of heroism in the War of 1812, and in part to those who were not at home with evangelicalism. At its head, from the east-central part of the county, stood Henry Roeliffson Brinckerhoff. A thirty-seven-yearold Bucktail, he had led a company at the Battle of Queenston Heights and now commanded the Seventh Brigade of New York's militia. Brinckerhoff lived in a separate house on his father's farm. The "Democratic Republican" young men of Owasco had met there to condemn opposition to the electoral bill as "aristocratical" and to demand the popular election of justices of the peace, but any hope that Brinckerhoff might join them turned to dust before the commitment of Brinckerhoff and his relatives to the regulars. One of his brothers had sat as a Bucktail in the 1821 Constitutional Convention, and his brother-in-law had served as a regular in both the 1823 and 1824 assemblies. They stood together, three pillars of the Dutch Reformed Church. Brinckerhoff remained a regular Democrat even after leaving for Ohio in 1836.14 Andrews Preston, a Cato merchant, nearly thirty-six, had not stood out as a Cayuga Bucktail before this campaign, but he afterwards followed the course of a regular Democrat. The impetus came from his business partner, soon to be his father-in-law. In effect, Preston, had been drawn into an ongoing family competition.''^ Only three years older than Preston, the partner had been elected as a Bucktail to the Constitutional Convention of 1821 and to the assembly of 1824. Both times he ran against his Clintonian brother, a forty-year-old farmer. The contest would continue. The partner later supported Andrew Jackson and ended his career as a Democrat; his brother backed John Quincy Adams and remained an active Whig.46 Although Preston's political career developed a momentum of its own, it began when he joined a family that had a foot in both parties. The remaining two candidates on the regular ticket came from the western, or Cayuga Lake, side of the county. They presented a face more appealing to the feelings that lay behind Cayuga's antiregular bent

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"Root Cried Yesterday"

in this election. Eleazer Carter, the elder of the two, a forty-eight-yearold Ledyard farmer who had ventured into milling and distilling, had become active briefly as the Bucktail-Clintonian split widened in 1819. After 1826, he gave sustained support to Anti-Masonry and then continued active as a quiet but substantial Whig.47 Carter moved first towards the Bucktails and then away from them. The capacity of the women of his family to exploit and develop ties outside the nuclear family - distaff ties in particular - may have influenced his party commitments. His mother shared the same great-grandfather with Peter and Augustus Porter of Black Rock and Jesse Buel of Albany, the former Bucktail editor of the Albany Argus, who would later become a Whig leader. When Carter's first wife died around 1800, he married a Buel cousin. Their two daughters, by their marriages, established family ties that eventually bound the family to the Whig Party.48 Laban Hoskins, the other western Cayuga regular candidate, a man fourteen years younger than Carter, enjoyed no clearly discernible ties to New York political leaders. Nevertheless, this merchant from the neighbouring lake town of Springport followed a course parallel to that of Carter. Regular from 1824 through 1826, he became a leading Cayuga supporter of John Quincy Adams and a very active Anti-Mason after 1828 and then a Whig in the late 18305. A Quaker in his early years, Hoskins's later politics reflected ethical concern; as the Whig Party began to break up in the 18505, he became a leader of the New YorkState Temperance Society. Childless, at his death he bequeathed $5,000 to the Cayuga Society for Destitute Children.'*' The antiregular ticket, chosen in the first week of October,5° combined older and younger men and deferred less to younger voters. Two of the men on the ticket were in their mid-fifties and two in their middle and late thirties, making an average age of forty-six, almost six years older than the average for the regulars. They showed no inclination to switch sides and tended to have more limited political careers than their opponents. All had earlier opposed the regulars, and together they defined the less stridently entrepreneurial profile that appealed to Cayuga Clintonian voters. Ephraim Coleman Marsh of Aurora and Roswell Enos of the northern town of Victory were the two younger men on the ticket. Marsh, thirtyeight, a Presbyterian and Freemason, and a printer by trade, left the most extensive political record. Settling in 1808, he farmed aggressively, introducing Saxon Merino sheep into the county, and he supported Clinton with zeal from 1817 through 1827. Later a National Republican, he participated in the 1832 fusion of Anti-Masonry and National Republicanism.'1 Marsh preferred his mother's family name

257 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

as his first name, and three of his daughters married into the families of men politically active at the state level. This reinforced the continuing antiregular bent of the "Marsh connection.'^2 Enos, a Connecticut-born thirty-six-year-old farmer, plied the trade of currier and tanner while shifting into storekeeping. He had come from Chenango County to northern Cayuga County in 1817. An active antiregular from 1822 through 1826, Enos then faded as a political figure. After 1829 he moved first to Port Byron in Cayuga County, next to Steuben County, and then to Illinois.53 The traces of his career are faint, but Enos appears to have been an "outsider" who avoided establishing ties. Although he lived in a regular region of the county, he did not seek to breathe life into his political career by joining the regulars; and unlike Marsh, he did not become a Mason.54 Fifty-five-year-old Elijah Devoe left a substantial record of Clintonian activity. He had sided with Clinton as a member of the 1819 assembly, and he remained an active Clintonian until 1827, when he failed to win election as a justice of the peace. Devoe may have derived religious and moral satisfaction from his Clintonianism. A farmer who donated to the Auburn Seminary, he had taught school in the Lower Hudson area before following the family of his wife to settle in the town of Owasco. In 1831 he signed the Cayuga County Anti-Masonic address. 55 John W. Hulburt, fifty-four, the leading man on the antiregular ticket, had served as a Massachusetts congressman before settling in Auburn, but he had lost in the 1823 assembly race. A graduate of Harvard and an Auburn lawyer, he specialized in criminal cases and was renowned as an edifying speaker. Hulburt was to act as secretary of the 1826 Clintonian Republican county convention. After that, although always ready to play a part in public ceremonies celebrating progress and the Revolution, he stood for no office other than school inspector.56 Hulburt heightened the "liberal" face of the antiregular slate. Aside perhaps from Enos, the men on it honoured knowledge as a source of improvement in the commonwealth. Hulburt and Marsh had become active officers in the Cayuga County Agricultural Society in 1818. Marsh had served as the society's auditor and Hulburt as the corresponding secretary and on the committee to set up the county fair. Not until 1821 did Brinckerhoff fill the largely ceremonial post of vicepresident.57 One element proved common to both tickets, however. In the two cases in which distaff political ties developed, they led towards National Republicanism, Anti-Masonry, and Whiggery and away from the closed, masculine ethos of party regularity sanctified by military heroism.s8

258 "Root Cried Yesterday"

Orange County Orange County, in the Lower Hudson Valley, sent four men to the assembly. Unlike Cayuga, Oneida, or Albany, its voters in 1824 returned a split delegation - two men from each ticket.59 The pattern of assembly nominations in Orange County, which served as the Sixth Congressional District, also differed from that of those other three counties in that both the Clintonians and the regulars of Orange chose their assembly and congressional candidates late in October. Not only did both sides need time to shape tickets that would appeal to waverers, but Alfred S. Pell nominated himself as a candidate for the senate from the state's Second District - Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester counties - threatening the districtwide unity which the antiregulars needed to win on both the senate district and county levels.60 He resisted withdrawing even in the wake of the opposing senate district conventions that met in Newburgh on 12 October.61 Not until 23 October did Pell bow out before the formidable antiregular senate candidate.62 To run against Wells Lake, the regular nominee, a fifty-one-year-old New Paltz farmer, the antiregular convention chaired by the manufacturer Abraham Schenck enlisted Peter S. Van Orden of Rockland County, who could draw Bucktail support. Eleven years Lake's senior and a quarter of a century older than Pell, Van Orden had joined the revolutionary army at fourteen and had risen to captain. From a family with extensive local landholdings, a merchant and farmer, he had, with Van Burenite support, become a major general in New York's militia.63 Van Orden enjoyed an anti-Clinton record. As an assemblyman in 1812, he had supported the Madison ticket of electors and condemned the chartering of the Bank of America. At the Utica convention, he had opposed Clinton's nomination.6^ The senate district conventions preceded the Orange County conventions that nominated the assembly and congressional candidates. The regulars met at the Goshen court-house on 22 October and the antiregulars crowded into the same building on the following day.65 They now had to weigh the independent congressional nomination of Walter Case, a Newburgh lawyer who had sat in the Sixteenth Congress. Case's opponents charged him with excessive sympathy for the South during the Missouri dispute, but this charge could stand him in good stead in a county with a black population almost twice the state's average.66 Welcoming a late September nomination by "a meeting of farmers and mechanics" in the town of Cornwall, home of the United States Military Academy, Case condemned "the present mode of nomination" by "delegates ... selected at partial meetings" as "highly aristocratic," and he claimed that if the "voice" of the state had "not been suppressed," it

259 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

would have spoken for Jackson, who now might not receive any support in the legislature.6? The antiregulars renominated Congressman Hector Craig of Craigsville in the town of Blooming Grove. Craig's career exemplified rapid economic and social advancement. This Scottish-born Clintonian had developed a wide range of business interests, starting with the paper mill which he and his father had built in 1790. To this he soon added a grist mill and a sawmill. A promoter of canal, turnpike, and mining corporations, Craig married the daughter of the president of the Newburgh and New Windsor Turnpike. During 1823 and 1824 he presided over the manufacturing committee of Orange's agricultural society.68 Politically adept, Craig had early established ties in New York City. Made a member of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen in 1804 and of Tammany in 1805, he won appointment as an auctioneer. Beginning in 1811, when he was thirty-six years old, Craig served as a state-appointed director first of New York City's Mechanics' Bank and later of the Bank of Newburgh. He continued an elected director of the Bank of Newburgh from 1822 through 1827. An ardent promoter of manufacturing and an early backer of Andrew Jackson, Craig continued to prosper. In 1828, his eldest daughter married William E Havermeyer, the New York City sugar refiner, and in 1830 and 1831, Andrew Jackson made him surveyor of the Port of New York and then a United States commissioner of insolvency. After the bank war began, Jackson advanced Craig to surveyor of customs of the port, an office he held for six years.6? The regulars, in choosing John Hallock, Jr, a Baptist farmer from Ridgebury in the mountainous interior town of Minisink, offered a candidate very different from Craig. Hallock was commissioned a militia lieutenant in April 1807, three months before he turned twenty-four, and did not rise above the rank of captain during his thirteen years of service. Remembered as shrewd and good humoured, he served three years as town clerk and nine years as a justice of the peace and county judge. He left a better track record in assembly races than Craig, who ran and lost in 1812. Hallock ran twice and won twice, and he also sat in the Constitutional Convention of 1821. A Republican in the 1817 assembly, he pleaded illness and avoided the caucus-convention that nominated De Witt Clinton for governor.7° Just as eight years separated the ages of Hallock and Craig, the antiregular assembly slate averaged about eight years older than the regulars' slate. It balanced two western farmers against two eastern men. The farmers - James Finch, Jr, a prominent Baptist, and William Finn - were both in their late fifties and both had supported Tompkins against Clinton.71 Neither of the other two was a Bucktail. Fifty-seven-year-

260 "Root Cried Yesterday"

old Selah Reeve, a leading Newburgh citizen, had not been an active Republican since 1811. He had concentrated on the production of earthenware, running a store, and shipping goods by both turnpike and sloop. Reeve alone among the antiregular assembly candidates had served as a commissioned officer in the militia, having been a quartermaster in Newburgh's regiment for one year, beginning in i8o8J2 The fourth antiregular candidate, Samuel Jones Wilkin, was the only one who had backed Clinton and of the eleven men running in Orange, he alone would support Adams in 1828. At thirty-one, Wilkin was the youngest candidate and the only college graduate on either ticket. The Albanybased Society for Promoting Arts and Manufacturing, founded to honour intellect and foster concern for economic development, made him a member in 1824, when it also inducted Hector Craig. A Presbyterian, Wilkin had been graduated from Princeton, had read law with his father, and in 1815 had begun to practise in the centrally located town of Goshen.73 Marriage to Sarah Westcott made him the son-in-law of David M. Westcott, a regular farmer, merchant, and printer, and a man with ties to the High-Minded Federalists.^ Relative youthfulness, more extensive militia careers, greater identification with farming, and residence in a band of towns lying on a roughly north-south axis across the centre of the county and paralleling the Hudson River - these four general characteristics distinguished the men on the regular slate from the antiregulars. The regulars marked the interface between commerce and local agrarian life. Forty-threeyear-old Nathaniel P. Hill of Montgomery, a Presbyterian, came from a family that had early purchased land in his north-central town. Remembered for his ability to make peace among neighbours, he won election to three assemblies and had become a Bucktail by 1820. Having begun his militia service as a coronet in 1806, he ended it with the rank of captain in 1821, resigning to become sheriff of Orange." Nathaniel Jones, thirty-six, the only regular candidate who had not yet served in the legislature, had been commissioned a captain in a new regiment of riflemen in 1816. A Baptist mechanic, probably a gunsmith, Jones had taught school and raised prize pigs on his Warwick farm, which grew from fourteen to fifty-seven acres between 1823 and 1824. After losing in this election, he would go on to serve in the state legislature, in Congress, and to become a canal commissioner and the surveyor general of the state J6 The remaining two men farmed in towns near the centre of the county. Forty-nine-year-old Joseph A. McLaughlin, a Bucktail assemblyman in 1822, had begun his militia service as a lieutenant in 1806, and ended it when he refused the rank of major in 1817. Like Hill, McLaughlin shifted to a civil office, becoming a justice of the peace. In 1850 the

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census takers valued his farm at $6,ooo.77 They recorded a value of $10,000 for the farm of Samuel Webb, the other regular candidate. Webb, forty, a Presbyterian, had served in the 1823 assembly. Nine years a militia officer, he had resigned as a major in 1818. He had served occasionally in state-appointed civil offices and had become a justice of the peace and then a coroner shortly before the War of 1812.78 The men on the two slates followed different paths in their later political careers. Webb left no record of political activity after 1828, and although McLaughlin wavered briefly, all of Webb's running mates eventually became Jacksonian Democrats.79 Of the antiregulars, Reeve eschewed politics to concentrate on business, while both Wilkin and Finch turned to the Whigs. Wilkin fused National Republicanism with Anti-Masonry in his passage to the Whig Party. Finch, regular again for a period, switched after Jackson's attack on the Bank of the United States. Finn, who supported Jackson in 1828, stood out as an AntiMason from 1829 to 1831.8o The 1824 contest between these tickets proved close. Clinton had a majority of only 56 of the 4,430 votes cast in Orange County. No doubt hostility to African Americans and sympathy for the discreetly pro-Southern posture of the Van Burenites drew votes away from De Witt Clinton and the People's men. This, however, was a general factor that cannot be very firmly tied to the density of the African-American population in particular towns.81 Other local interests that can be more confidently pinned down spelled defeat or success for particular candidates. Walter Case won 8.4 percent of the congressional ballots. He drew enough backing away from Craig (some in the river town of Newburgh and more in its downriver neighbour, Cornwall) to enable Hallock to win with 47 percent of Orange's vote.82 Only 22.2 percent of Newburgh's and 19.1 percent of Cornwall's voters supported Craig. Yet, together, Case and Craig had 58 percent of the vote cast in Newburgh, better than the 41.1 percent that went to the antiregular assembly candidates or the 38.7 percent that Clinton received. The river towns did not find Case's doughface reputation repellant, for Orange grew much hemp to be exported to the South for cotton bagging and the Black population was denser in the Hudson River towns. 83 In Cornwall the combined vote for Case and Craig, the total assembly vote, and Clinton's vote ranged narrowly from 47.1 to 47.8 percent. There was another difference between the behaviour of Newburgh voters and those in the town that had nominated Case. In Newburgh the most popular assembly candidates, all regulars, received between 310 and 331 votes. Cornwall's voters targeted their support differently. They gave the antiregulars Wilkin and Finn 167 and 184 votes, respectively, while giving only 98 and 99 to Finch and Reeve, who lost; and they

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"Root Cried Yesterday"

backed the regulars Hill and McLaughlin, the men at the top of their ticket, with 114 and 115 votes, giving only 38 and 28 votes to the losers, Webb and Jones. Craig, Reeve, and Finch alone among the candidates enjoyed banking connections that could antagonize the farmers and mechanics of Cornwall. Cornwall tapped into the trade of the Hudson River through New Cornwall Landing, a sloop port which, if given adequate credit, could have competed more effectively with both Newburgh and the inland centre of Goshen. The need for credit extended to more than Cornwall's exports of stone and wood. If credit had been available, the town's dairy resources could have made Cornwall butter a byword for quality, rivalling Goshen in this respect. Farmer Finch's efforts in launching Goshen's Bank of Orange County did not stand him in good stead in the river town.84 Selah Reeve, on the other hand, had made extensive use of credit at the Bank of Newburgh (of which he was a founder and director) to expand his business as the War of 1812 entered its first year. This had alienated support in the town that was the home of West Point. Reeve's relatives by marriage in Cornwall, as well as shippers and merchants, had opposed him actively.8^ Local competition had cut away at a family's sense of "commonwealth." The question of support for public education also divided the Orange voters. Almost all the candidates had at some point born witness to the importance of education in the county, the antiregulars showing more interest in Sunday schools and private academies, while the regulars gave their services to the common schools.86 The antiregular vote given by Orange County towns varied inversely with the commitment of these towns to education. The stronger a town's commitment to education (usually combined with a high birth rate), the greater was its tendency to lean towards the regulars. This relationship proved especially true when weighing votes for Craig and Case together against the support that Hallock won. It proved progressively less clear but still significant in the assembly, senate, and gubernatorial races.8? Two other factors clarify the influence of education on the county's vote, and both stand out when two deviant towns are set aside. Cornwall, pitted against Newburgh, a bailiwick of the regulars, gave strong support to Clinton, very little to Craig, and even less to Hallock. Monroe, the other town, faced desperate conditions. The decline of its iron industry dictated that the voters of Monroe should found their hopes on the encouragement of manufacturing and on tariff protection.88 They gave unusually strong support to Craig and somewhat less to Clinton and the antiregular assembly ticket. If one excludes Monroe (or both Cornwall and Monroe) the results show that the higher a town's level of per capita taxable property - and, even more, the higher its ratio

263 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

of people engaged in manufacturing to voters - the greater was its propensity to favour Clinton and the two antiregular congressional candidates. These influences also left their mark on the assembly race.8^ The Van Burenite condemnation of the antiregulars as representatives of an oppressive social and economic elite rang true to those Orange voters who preferred the regular candidates. Craig's strident support for manufacturing spelled the loss of educational opportunities for children who were obliged to work in mills. These children could obtain only limited literacy in the Sunday schools favoured by the antiregular candidates, while more affluent children could attend private schools and academies. Concern with literacy meshed with the military heritage of a county that had been the site of Washington's headquarters during the later years of the Revolution. This heritage dignified its farmersoldiers and nourished their determination to remain independent men on the land, with enough mental skills to cope with an increasingly commercial economy. The regulars appealed to this proud hope, which was now overshadowed by the enterprises on which Craig and Reeve concentrated. New York City To the south, in New York City, the Clintonian-People's campaign traded heavily on the prospects for the growth of Manhattan. Yet even as the Statesman presented a vision of prosperity for all, harmony among the People's men frayed. Although the antiregulars managed to carry the day in the assembly and senate races, their unity became ragged as powerful but muffled currents of social and economic discontent swelled. Serious problems also burdened the regulars, who failed to win the consent of their preferred assembly candidates. The turnout among regular supporters flagged when the regulars presented an assembly ticket that was ill chosen to shield Van Burenites from the taint of wealth and social place which they sought to nourish at antiregular expense. The regular Republican General Committee moved haltingly into action at the beginning of October, and not until the fourth week in October did they announce their choices. Walter Bowne stood for the senate, defying antiregular predictions that few if any of the seventeen senators who had voted against the electoral law would dare to face the voters. And the regulars found three candidates for Congress: Gulian C. Verplanck, an opponent of the tax law, and two merchants: Churchill C. Cambreleng and Jeromus Johnson. The regulars' assembly ticket quickly unravelled, however, for five of the ten candidates - all of whom were or had been merchants - declined to serve. After renewed

264 "Root Cried Yesterday"

consultations, the regulars offered the voters a slate graced with five lawyers rather than two as before.'0 The rejection by Jonathan I. Coddington and Cornelius Heeney damaged the regulars most. Coddington, an adept, durable politician, would have appealed to pro-tariff mechanics and New Englanders, especially his fellow Rhode Islanders.'1 Heeney, Irish-born, now sixty-seven, had long been a close friend of Francis Cooper, New York's first Roman Catholic legislator. A wealthy and open-handed supporter of Catholic charities, Heeney had for many years served as trustee of St Peter's Church. Quite apart from his appeal to Irish voters, this generous bachelor helped to blunt the sharp edges of life in New York City. Blessed with the experience of six sessions in the legislature, moreover, he had opposed Clinton before iSig.' 2 The antiregulars generated at least two tickets. Their Republican General Committee, which was still chaired by William W. Todd, charted the ordered steps that led up to nominations.^ The Clintonians, claiming to represent the majority of antiregulars, cried foul as two committees emerged.'* These committees produced two assembly slates. Five names on them matched, as did two of the three names on the congressional tickets, for on both of them Wheaton and Haines contested the third seat for the House of Representatives. On 27 October, a week after publishing the antiregular tickets and a day after publication of the final regular slate, the Statesman presented a new list of Clintonian assembly candidates, keeping the three congressional candidates unchanged. The Clintonians dropped two lawyers and replaced them with two Bucktails from the Wheatonite ticket - John Morss and Samuel L. Gouverneur. Morss was an Eighth Ward builder, wealthy, but with a history of representing the "mechanic interest," while Gouverneur of the Third Ward was known not as an attorney - he did not list his profession before 1826 - but as President Monroe's son-in-law and as an eloquent young man who was interested in the development of financial institutions and upper east-side real estate.'5 The switch did not unite the antiregulars, who continued to display differing public faces. Before changing their assembly ticket, the Clintonians had offered to remove Haines from their ticket, provided Wheaton bowed out to make way for a compromise candidate.'6 The Wheatonites, who had not baulked at Cadwallader D. Colden for the senate, would not budge and continued to attack Haines. Holding that "the respectable middling classes of society" made up the "People's Party," the New-York American derided him as "a young man ... having none of those ties which are considered ... permanent residence." Moreover, Haines opposed tariff increases." He was therefore not the congressional candidate for master mechanics, who had firm roots in Manhattan manufacturing but relied on transient workers. The six men who made up

265 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

the disputed portions of the antiregular assembly slates offered dissimilar profiles, particularly in wealth and future politics. Wheatonite Charles Town, a forty-six-year-old merchant, was the oldest of this youthful half-dozen. The three Wheatonites could claim greater wealth, and two later became Whigs, while two of the Clintonians wound up as Jackson Democrats.98 The remaining seven antiregular assembly candidates differed discernibly from the ten regulars. Least significant was the fact that the regulars tended to be older. They averaged slightly over forty-four years, while the antiregulars averaged slightly less than forty-one. More important, although the regular slate included four men identified at the time as practising lawyers, neither of the antiregular factions offered lawyer assembly candidates. Instead, their number included some wealthy and established "mechanics": the butcher David Seaman, the hatter James Benedict, the stoneware manufacturer Clarkson Crolius, George Zabriskie (who was later known as a stone cutter), and, finally, John Morss. As well, there was Ira B. Wheeler, who ran a dry goods store. Of the regulars, only lawyers Alpheus Sherman and John C. Hamilton later became Whigs, whereas Morss, Zabriskie, Wheeler, and Crolius all turned to that party.» Of the regulars who did not practise law, only two could pose as mechanics. One of these candidates was Isaac Minard, who had been taxed on $7,000 personalty in 1815, and owned thirty shares of United States Bank stock in 1817. Minard had evolved from a cordwainer into a manufacturer of shoes. He sold to the Southern trade and also ran a boot and shoe store on William Street in the First Ward, not a mechanic address. Brushmaker Shivers Parker of the Sixth Ward was the other regular mechanic. Of the remainder, Jonathan E. Robinson had practised law in his native Vermont (and was to return to that state and to the law before his death in 1831), but while living in New York City he functioned as a First Ward merchant. Gilbert Coutant and Thomas Hyatt had both been grocers who had broadened out in their dealings. Maltby Gelston, who had been recruited along with Brasher, Minard, Sherman, and Parker to fill the vacant places on the regular ticket, had studied law but had shifted to other activities. As notary of the Bank of the United States' New York branch, he was set on a course that would take him to the presidency of the Bank of the Manhattan Company. Gelston's connections may have lost votes among the anti-Clinton regulars, for he and Clinton had both married sisters, and this tied Gelston not only to Clinton but to one of the city's substantial landlord families. The majority of both assembly slates showed a continuing propensity to participate in the management of financial institutions, with the anti-

266 "Root Cried Yesterday"

regulars having a decided edge. At least eight of the ten men making up either the Wheatonite or Clintonian ticket followed this bent (as did six of the regulars' final list, including two of the regular lawyers, Philip Brasher and William A. Thompson). Put another way, the antiregulars offered the voters ten men who participated in the management and expansion of credit. Most important, all five of the antiregular mechanics had contributed to the development of banks and insurance companies. Seaman, Benedict, Zabriskie, and Morss, all of whom were very deeply involved, led in the polling for assembly seats, while Crolius, who ranked seventh in popularity, had shown less interest in banks and insurance companies, though he had been a founder of the Jefferson Insurance Company. Gouverneur, a Columbia graduate and not a mechanic, ranked sixth, making up for Crolius.100 Of the antiregulars elected, only Wheeler, who was eighth in the polling, seems to have had no part in the development of financial institutions during the 18205. At least two men in each of the Wheatonite and Clintonian "tails" of the main antiregular ticket left traces showing that during the 18205 and afterwards they lent themselves to the expansion of credit facilities in and about New York City.101 Nevertheless, all six of these candidates failed to win office. Had the two factions united forces, three of these men could have won, blocking the three regulars who succeeded: Robinson, Coutant, and Gelston, who were, respectively, fifth, ninth, and tenth in the poll. Robinson's financial problems may have contributed to his relatively high standing. Hard pressed after the Panic of 1819, he had sought the federal post of navy agent in 1823. If he had received it, he might have avoided insolvency, which befell him in the early summer of 1826. He sat in the assembly of that year and the next, but he failed to win the office of police magistrate in 1827, and in 1828 he retreated to Vermont, leaving his son behind as a clerk in the Comptroller's Office. Robinson's financial problems could have attracted sympathetic support from the many mechanics and traders who were struggling to pay for supplies and labour. His father and uncle had been eminent Vermont statesmen, and Robinson represented the aspirations and heritage of the many New Englanders who had come to New York City hoping to prosper - but often finding frustration.I02 Robinson's case aside, the election results suggest that if Manhattan voters wanted to expand credit facilities, they preferred banks and insurance companies developed under the aegis of established mechanic leaders rather than lawyers. I03 From 1815 through 1828, seventy-two individuals represented New York City and New York County in the assembly, of whom at least one-third had studied law. In 1824, however, no candidate listed in the city's directory as a lawyer won election either

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The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

to Congress or to the state legislature.I04 The antiregular divisions limited the chances of the five lawyer candidates, yet the four practising lawyers on the regular ticket also lost, although three of their fellow partisans went to the assembly. New Yorkers had witnessed regular lawyers in the state's senate arguing to block the popular election of electors and to condemn the legality of the summer special session. Lawyers had also defended the holders of real property in an increasingly crowded island city, in which the high cost of land and the lack of water-power made the burden of labour-intensive industry more onerous.'°5 The regulars condemned an aristocracy of wealth, arguing that disciplined partisans must confront it, but their lawyer candidates belied the genuineness of their concern for political democracy and for the economic status of the dependent mechanics and the poor. Unlike the regular lawyers, at least four of the men on the antiregular ticket gave prominent backing to societies dedicated to the welfare of the poor and to the improvement of the "mechanic classes." Benedict had joined the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen in 1810, and he now sat on the New England society's Committee of Charity and held stock in the High-School Society of New-York. Zabriskie was to become a trustee of the High-School Society when it was incorporated, and he already supported the New-York Infirmary for Treatment of Diseases of the Lungs. Morss had raised money for the Deaf and Dumb Institute, and Gouverneur's family repeatedly donated to the Orphan Asylum Society. Crolius had been a member of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen longer than Benedict. He had also helped found the New-York Mechanic and Scientific Institution in 1822 and served it as a manager. Earlier, he had sat on the relief board of the New-York Benevolent Society. Two of the successful regulars supported organizations that sought to bring order if not comfort to the lives of the poor. Robinson annually subscribed to the United Domestic Missionary Society, and Coutant was a manager of the House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents. Antiregular meliorism could encourage the "mechanic interest" to have doubts about regular postures. Nurtured by the doctrine of electors, these doubts could translate into lack of enthusiasm among prospective regular voters and a low turnout. Fearing such a response, Mordecai Noah had explained the radicals' defeat in the 1823 election: "Not more than half of the votes of the city were taken" and "of the votes taken, the four lower wards exhibited their whole strength ... while the four upper wards did not turn out more than one third of their numbers." He found the defection of the Fifth Ward - "a truly democratic ward," which was located immediately above the wealthy Third - particularly

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"Root Cried Yesterday"

threatening.lo6 The Fifth Ward was dotted with "sunken lots and tenant houses" and had few aliens, but it had the second-highest concentration of African Americans. From there, close to the Hudson, journeyman mechanics and clerks had looked around to wonder where their interest lay.10? Noah feared that their fealty might again waver. Noah anticipated correctly. Many regulars did not vote and thus contributed greatly to the antiregular victory. Computed from the electoral census of 1821, turnout in the 1824 governor's race ranged from the Seventh Ward's 40 percent and the pastoral Ninth Ward's 38 percent to the Third Ward's 67 percent. The figures for the assembly race parallel these: 38 and 39 percent in the Seventh and the Ninth Ward, respectively, and 64 percent in the Third Ward. There, Clinton received 65.8 percent support, less than the First Ward's 74.9 percent and the Second Ward's 77.2 percent but certainly more than in the Seventh and Ninth: 31.2 and 47.6 percent, respectively. Antiregular strength and turnout jibed closely. Turnout increased sharply not only with support for Clinton but with backing for all the candidates running as antiregulars and for the ten assembly candidates who won.108 The levels of turnout reflected differences that can be expressed in money and housing. In the Ninth Ward the urban housing and manufacturing conditions of lower Manhattan did not obtain. Leaving it aside, turnout fell as the ratio of poorer voters to wealthier voters rose: that is, as the ratio of $5 rentpayers, $50 freeholders, and those simply "rated or enrolled" rose in proportion to voters qualifying as $250 freeholders. Conversely, the higher the ratio of $250 freeholders to $5 rentpayers, the higher was the turnout. Even more emphatically, the strength of Clinton, the winning assembly candidates, and the antiregular assembly candidates seemed driven by the relationships which that ratio expressed. Where wealthy voters were concentrated and shared the same views, they acted vigorously to back Clinton and the People's men. Within that milieu, however, important shades of difference obtained. Golden, the antiregular assembly candidates, and Clinton did not reach their peak strength in the First Ward, which, at $1,173.47 per person, had the highest 1825 level of per capita assessed real estate. Nor did they win their greatest margin in the Third Ward, which had the highest level of $250 voters and $490.75 per capita in real estate. Rather, those candidates peaked in the East River Second Ward, which had the highest ratio of people engaged in manufacturing to 1821 voters (0.73) and an intermediate $809.13 per capita in realty.109 The support that centred here may have come from interrelated concerns that were continual undercurrents in the People's Movement: a determination to override Regency-imposed limits on the expansion of credit through banks and insurance companies; support for tariff protection; and a determination

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to keep the tax burden spread away from the personalty and real estate owned by those master mechanics who were expanding their workforce and production. Backing political reform while condemning regular deference to the South and regular "threats" to freedom fitted with these ends without touching the tax and credit questions directly. LOOKING TO THE F U T U R E

What developed from the anti-regular victory, both in the short term and in the longer run? The widespread defeat of the regular legislative candidates weakened the Van Burenites' capacity to squeeze Crawford electoral votes from the 1824 legislature during its November sitting. The Regency's attempt to press through a combination of Crawford and Clay electors foundered because of three factors: the resentment of the Clay men whom the Van Burenite leaders failed to consult, the strength of the Adams vote in the assembly, and Thurlow Weed's efforts to weld together an Adams-Clay ticket. After the defection of some Clay electors, New York eventually gave twenty-six votes for Adams, four for Clay, one for Jackson, and five for Crawford, enough to edge the Georgian into the House of Representatives.110 There his influence counted for little in the election. Clay, excluded, gave critical backing to Adams, the favourite of many New York antiregulars, and New York wound up in Adams's column. In the final days of the 1824 New York legislature, well before the machinery of the presidential election ground out its result, the regulars went on the offensive. To dramatize the manner in which the spirit of the marketplace could corrupt the legislative forum, the Regency probed the incorporation of the Chemical Bank. Chaired by John E Hubbard of Chenango, a Crawfordite regular, the investigating committee "censured ... the practice of persons regularly meeting at Albany ... to lend their aid 'for pay,'' to any application, and opposing applications, unless they are paid... thus ... casting suspicion as to the purity of legislative acts." Pointing to Isaac Kibbe and Robert Swartwout among others, the committee published testimony in which the name of John Cramer came up repeatedly.111 The press of the state gave much space to the report during the postelection lull, undercutting Samuel Young's capacity to lead the regulars and chastising the Clayites. Back in the governor's chair, Clinton took the opportunity to stress the possibilities of magisterial power, when giving his annual message on 4 January 1825. He announced that "the ... animosities which have ... impaired our ability for doing good, are yielding to a spirit of moderation and conciliation." From now on, he said, "the great prize of ambition, will be confined to a distinguished career of public spirit,

270 "Root Cried Yesterday"

unalloyed by the debasing influence of faction, which ... overlooks the prosperity of the whole."112 His vision of peace and virtue restored did not entail a return to motionless quiet in New York towns and villages. Speculating that "internal trade is most flourishing when its profits are small, and its returns quick," he looked forward to more transportation improvements. They would bring a "brisk circulation of commodities" and make easy "emigration and change of habitation."1^ New York, said Clinton, must build additional canals and establish a mechanism by which government could continue to lay open arteries of commerce and multiply markets. To achieve this, he would begin by uniting "the waters of the Seneca, Cayuga and Canandaigua lakes, and ... secondary lakes ... with the Erie canal." He continued: A connection too is desirable between the Delaware and the Hudson: between the upper waters of the Allegany, Susquehanna and Genesee rivers; between the Erie canal and the Susquehanna, along the valley of the Chenango river; between the Susquehanna and the Seneca lake; between the Erie canal at Buffalo and the Allegany river; ... between [the] Black River and the Erie Canal; and between Gravesend Bay, Jamaica Bay, Great South Bay, and Southampton Bay, and across Canoe Place to Southold Bay on Long Island.

These tasks made clear "the expediency of constituting a board with general powers in relation to internal improvements."114 Such a body could tie in remote quarters of the state, explained Clinton. It could lay out an east-west road to cross the Southern Tier of counties and arrange for the construction of a northern canal linking the St Lawrence River with Lake Champlain. That canal would break the British stranglehold on the St Lawrence River.ns At present, distance restricted the markets of these extremities of the state and their trade was "in some degree managed by barter ... as a substitute for circulating medium," which brought "impositions and errors ... injurious to morals and social harmony." Connecting them to the Hudson-Champlain artery would incorporate them fully into the New York commonwealth and would transform the life within them. They would find happiness and virtue once they were tied to the market system.116 Clinton extended state-fostered development to the minds and skills of New Yorkers. He stressed that New York should give "most liberal encouragement" to organizations such as the Horticultural Society of New York City, which improved vegetables and fruit. Similarly, "public bounty" put behind the building plans of the New York Mechanic and Scientific Institution would "increase the skill and elevate the character of our mechanic interest."117 Although Clinton believed that "our high-

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est seminaries ought to be very limited in number," he felt that the state's "fostering care" should spread public education and strengthen learned and professional standards. New York's government should supervise the funding of colleges and medical schools and the legislature rather than the regents should assume greater control over the chartering of new institutions of higher learning. The proliferation of primary schools, however, should be encouraged. New York could provide more books and more well-trained Lancasterian instructors. At the least, greater public order would result.118 Clinton warned that federal authority could encroach on the state's power to bring these benefits to its citizens, and he suggested a remedy. Drawing out the implications of the recent claim of the federal government to license boats on New York's canals, he reasoned that New York might lose its power to impose tolls; conceivably, the federal government could apply the federal constitution's commerce clause to wagons on state roads. Such a possibility threatened all Americans, for "without state authorities, there can be no civil liberty and no good government; for it is utterly impossible that so extensive a country can be bound together, unless as a confederation or a military despotism." In Clinton's view, the "centripetal force" of the federal government threatened to become overweening, given its patronage, wealth, and visibility - and, perhaps most important, given the power of the federal courts. Those courts ought not to decide cases that turned on conflicting state and federal sovereignty, argued Clinton. "A new tribunal ought to be constituted" by empowering the United States Senate to serve the states as "their natural and efficient protector against unconstitutional invasions."1'9 Acting together in the Senate, states might protect creative liberal government. Clinton linked democratization and the reduction of tax revenues. The constitution makers of 1821 had included payment of or exemption from assessed state or county taxes among the qualifications for the franchise. Yet state taxes had begun to decline: "In 1818, the state tax was two mills on the dollar; since that time, it has been reduced to half a mill on the dollar; and in a short period there will probably be no necessity for any general tax." When taxes vanished, those citizens who derived their right to vote from assessment would lose that right, clearly an unintended result. Therefore, along with other petty qualifications for voting, the state should eliminate taxpaying, "making citizenship, full age, and competent residence, the only... qualifications."120 Clinton thus bundled together manhood suffrage and the elimination of taxes, salving wounds opened by the effort to tax personalty more fully. In this context he recommended the three great political reforms that came out of the 1825 legislature: a broadened suffrage, the popular

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"Root Cried Yesterday"

election of justices of the peace, and the popular election of presidential electors.121 Clinton concluded his annual message by admonishing the legislators against log rolling to overcome the hurdle of the two-thirds rule. They should not reintroduce rejected bills, he urged, because "what is well considered does not require frequent reconsideration." During the last two sessions the legislature had frequently reconsidered bills: "By this means, a number of bills of the same kind, are accumulated for passing, and ... after the order of precedence is arranged, the pioneer bill ... opens a passage ... and they follow triumphantly in its train." Thus, bills succeeded "by the force of their associations, not by their merits," and this shook "public confidence" in legislative proceedings.122 Clinton anticipated that a flood of bank and insurance charters would gush from the 1825 legislature, and he sought to distance himself from the impending bonanza if not stop it. Currency and Credit Expansion Clinton's gesture did not nip in the bud this fruit of political change. Continuing the trend begun the previous year, the legislature of 1825 enlarged the capital and currency supply of New York State by chartering bank and insurance companies, most of which set up their offices in New York City.I23 During 1824 and 1825 the legislators created twenty-nine new insurance companies, far exceeding in number the 1818-19 spurt of seven companies. They also reduced the capitalization specified; the 1818 and 1819 legislatures had called for an average of approximately $486,000 per company whereas only $280,000 was required in 1824 and 1825. The Panic of 1819 had also discouraged the chartering of commercial banks; the state had incorporated only two from January 1820 through 1823. Now, as the People's Movement swelled during 1824 and 1825, New York gave charters to five banks and armed three corporations with banking powers. In this two-year process, the antiregulars proved more aggressive than their opponents, pulling reluctant Bucktails along with them in credit creation.I24 John Pintard lamented the many applications for charters that awaited the 1825 legislature. He found that they already tended to "break down our business very much & ... reduce the value of our Capital."I25 Others equally involved in the reform effort rode the swelling wave with a sense of the possibilities before them. Jacob Barker, confident of an antiregular victory, had been quick to grasp the opportunities offered by the changing political order. Shortly after the conclusion of the 1824 Utica convention, he had written from that village to Jacob A. Barker

273 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

of Buffalo, through whom he intended to launch an effort to gain control of the Western Insurance Company, which had been chartered earlier that year. Aware that the Western might encounter competition from a reviving Bank of Niagara, Barker sought to placate local leaders. With this accomplished, he could arrange to elect New York City men to the Western's board, and to open Manhattan as well as Buffalo offices.126 Others shared Barker's enthusiasm. Near the end of the 1825 session, John C. Spencer reported for a senate select committee appointed to investigate violations of insurance company charters. The committee had found that "most" insurance companies in New York issued notes - "strictly a banking privilege." The fonts of scrip overflowed: "Large amounts of these bonds have been issued by one company, and loaned ... and extensive injury might be produced by any measures which should affect their validity."The committee concluded that the insurance companies had knowingly violated the law, but it recommended against any further proceedings: "It hoped that the enquiry ... will enduce the companies concerned to confine themselves strictly within their charters and ... serve as a caution to the community in receiving such notes and bonds." The committee then dealt with insurance companies which had been incorporated "with the obvious intention that they should be located in the interior" of the state but which had recently "been brought into operation in the city of New-York." It found no evidence that these companies had begun to issue notes and piously expressed its belief that once they did, the courts would hold them to be violating their charters.127 Spencer had more success in holding back the expansion of private banking. Reporting a bill to repeal the laws prohibiting it, Cadwallader D. Colden argued that chartered banks drew specie from the country into the city, in part to speculate in their stocks.128 Spencer responded in a speech that appeared as a pamphlet. He maintained that farmers seldom profited from loans and that, with private banks made legal and the regulations embodied in charters cast aside, banking capital would flow more readily to Manhattan; and since this would drain the countryside of currency, the state must not turn away from its pattern of chartered banks. Men had to have money to engage in banking, inevitably an "aristocratic" pursuit, argued Spencer. The public interest demanded regulation of this elite activity, which would provide the state with a sound currency, adequately backed by specie. Failing this, branches of the Bank of the United States would intrude, enhancing federal authority at the expense of state sovereignty.129 The legislators let Colden's proposal drop.

274 "Root Cried Yesterday" The Fate of the Tax Law As currency and credit expansion continued through the issues of statechartered insurance companies, the legislature tinkered with the tax law, refining a derelict that remained on the statute books.'3° Comptroller William L. Marcy told the 1825 lawmakers that corporations increasingly baulked at submitting the required lists of stockholders; and without these revelations of privately held personalty, he could not credit the counties of residence for taxes paid on the capital stock of corporations. Equally serious, he said, county supervisors often failed to report their assessments of the corporations within their borders, and this made it impossible to charge those counties for the taxes they should have received. Some wealthy companies had commuted by paying 10 percent on slender dividends, but the officers of others had simply refused to pay.[3' A senate committee framed a law that stated the duties of local officers more explicitly and provided for penalties and legal action against corporations that failed to comply. The law went on the books, but two years later Marcy was still reporting noncompliance. Denying that the law's "intrinsic complexity" was "so great as to render it expedient to abandon the system," he argued that the amendments to the original law were straightforward and clear enough; the law was failing because "assessors in many towns either neglected altogether to put companies ... on the assessment roll, or put them down greatly below the sum at which they ought to stand."'32 Well before Thomas Skidmore of New York City began to argue for extensive political action to redistribute American wealth, the tax law, as an engine of equalization, had broken down.'33 it fell by the wayside in an atmosphere that emphasized political reform and the gains to be made by the encouragement of capitalist enterprise. Group Profiles, Past and Future Throughout these developments, some social and economic characteristics of the politically salient regulars and their opponents - the legislators and convention members - held fairly firm or developed in a consistent way. The collective profile of both jibed with the messages that their presses had attempted to deliver in the 1824 campaign, though both purposefully softened the outlines of their collective images. The Clintonian People's men who sat in the 1825 assembly included an elite that could take advantage of ties in business and politics. Thirty-five of these eighty-four men could boast eighty-four close family ties to New Yorkers who were politically active during the 1815-28 period,

275 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

and twenty-three could count sixty-two more distant ties, making, together, thirty-nine men who had at least rudimentary family networks. Thus, the antiregulars scored 156 on the index of relatedness.'34 if one includes Maltby Gelston, Clinton's brother-in-law, among the regulars, eight of these forty-four men had forty very close ties to politically active men and eight had forty-two more distant ties. Gelston, with thirtysix relationships, accounted for a large proportion; his presence in the group goes far to explain the regular average of 6.8 ties per related man as opposed to 3.7 for the antiregulars. The regular index score of 124, however, falls substantially below that of the antiregulars.135 The pattern displayed here and in the Utica convention of 1824 carried over into the Clintonian and the regular conventions that met, respectively, at Utica and Herkimer in 1826. Some evidence suggests, however, that each party adjusted the profile of its secondary leadership, fishing for support among its opponents. In other words, even as each party displayed an ensign limned out in men, it offered qualifications - to which we will come later. To repeat, the Utica convention of 1824 was about as well connected a body of men as the assembly of 1824. Still, the 1826 Utica convention achieved a relatedness score well above its predecessor - 214, almost as high as the average senate of the period. The regulars meeting a short distance down the Mohawk River produced a much lower score - 119. Consistent with these characteristics of both groups, the regulars drew more heavily on immigrants to the state, who had come largely from New England. Conversely, although almost threefifths of the Utica convention of 1824 had immigrated to New York, well over one-half of the more closely tied membership of the Utica Clintonian convention of 1826 had been born in the state.'36 The Clintonian profile, although "insider" in nature, consistently emphasized skills more useful in coping with a changing society rather than in hands-on production. For instance, more than twice as many Clintonian assemblymen of 1825 had attended a college or a medical school associated with a college, if one compares the Utica convention of 1826 with the Herkimer convention, the ratio increases to four to one. Next, the regulars relied more heavily on farming for their living. One-half of the regular assemblymen of 1825 appear to have confined themselves to that occupation, whereas this is true of only slightly more than one-quarter of the antiregulars. Fewer than one in six men at the second Utica convention left no record of an occupation other than farming, compared with more than one in four of those attending at Herkimer. On the other hand, a Clintonian secondary leader was about twice as likely to be a lawyer. This was the profession of more than one-third of the men at Utica in 1826. A regular was almost twice

276 "Root Cried Yesterday"

as likely to be a man whose mechanic skills had helped build his prosperity. Nearly the same proportion of the regulars and Clintonians kept stores or traded as merchants. Yet the Clintonians generally left a clearer record as entrepreneurs who combined several pursuits.'37 In some respects the profiles of both groups appear to be similar. One-quarter of the 1825 assemblymen of each faction had acted as bank officers, ranging from commissioner to distribute stock to bank president. Totalling the years in which these men served reveals that the membership of the parties matched each other during and before the legislature sat. The Clintonians, however, later served twice as long a period. By the time of the 1826 conventions, the regulars had turned to men who compensated for this disparity. One-third of the Clintonians became bank officials during their careers, but the regulars about matched that proportion. The convention members were even, at onethird of a year's service, before attending; afterwards, the regulars forged ahead with an average of one year, compared with little more than half a year for the Clintonians.^8 Service to insurance companies displayed a regular pattern of compensation. The four regular assemblymen who had been involved with insurance companies had given their services over a total of five years before and during the sitting of the legislature; the ten Clintonians had chalked up a total of twenty-three years. When the conventions met the following year, their numbers included twelve Clintonians who had offered thirteen years of service and fifteen regulars who had served during a total of thirty-four years.'39 Different though their men might be, the regulars showed that they had at least an equal stake in the development of financial institutions, particularly those that provided a hedge against unforseen changes and dangers. The message would not be lost on regular tax assessors. The Clintonians balanced their earlier weaknesses by putting forward men with stronger records as militia officers and as locally elected officials. Almost two-fifths of each group of 1825 assemblymen had held the rank of colonel or higher; similarly, almost one-third of the membership of each 1826 convention had at least made the rank of colonel. The proportion of the four groups that held militia commissions ranged from 59.1 percent to 72.7 percent (the regular convention delegates providing the first figure and the assemblymen the second)."*0 Roughly two-thirds of each category of 1825 assemblymen had served as locally chosen officials, the regulars giving 7.1 years of service per man over their careers and the Clintonians 6.5 years. The seventy-two convention members at Herkimer who had served as local officers of this order had given 4.2 years; their Clintonian counterparts, although only sixty in number, outdid them with 6.9 years.'4'

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The Clintonians matched the regulars in previous local service. This is remarkable, since they had tended to draw more on younger men than the regulars, especially for the Utica convention. Almost one-half of the 1825 regular assemblymen were between forty and forty-nine years of age, one-fifth were in their fifties, and 30 percent were in their thirties. None whose ages are on record were in their twenties. The Clintonian assemblymen included a contingent of twenty-two men (27.9 percent) in their fifties; only slightly more than one-third were in their forties, and another third were younger, including five men in their twenties. Somewhat less than one-fifth of both 1826 conventions were in their fifties. Yet almost two-fifths of the regulars at Herkimer were in their forties, compared with slightly more than one-quarter of the Clintonians. Most important, the total number of men aged thirty-nine years and younger constituted almost one-half of the Clintonians but only one-third of the regulars. '*2 The Clintonians, even as they had adjusted their collective profile, had increased their emphasis on recruiting men who might carry their banner in later years. Towards the "Second Party System " The young men of the 18205 - the Azariah Cutting Flaggs and the Thurlow Weeds of that decade - contributed to later party development. In particular, in spite of De Witt Clinton's continuing alignment with Andrew Jackson, the young men among the Clintonians provided a legacy for the Whig Party. Turning to the carry-over from the 18205 to later years, many members of the assemblies sitting from 1823 through 1825 and of each convention of 1824 and 1826 left some record of their political activities in the late 18205, very often in the next two decades, and some into the 18505 and i86os.^3 They made their mark as convention members and committeemen, as candidates for office, or simply as recognized partisans. Some men who continued to participate in the late 18205 failed to assume visible roles in the Whig and Jacksonian Democratic parties that crystallized around 1834. Five men who had been active after 1826, three of them antiregulars, combined support of Andrew Jackson with Anti-Masonry before disappearing and failing to become either Whigs or Democrats. Nineteen others, including thirteen antiregulars, behaved as both Anti-Masons and supporters of John Quincy Adams or protoNational Republicans before bowing out. An additional twenty-three, fourteen of them antiregulars, concentrated simply on Anti-Masonry before following that course. Finally, forty-one men, twenty-nine of them regulars, backed Jackson in the late 18205 but left no trace of participation in 1830 or afterwards.

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"Root Cried Yesterday"

Turning to those who participated during the 18305, most AntiMasons of the late 18208 continued to be active in the next two decades. Very few, however, blended Anti-Masonry with early support of Andrew Jackson. One regular of the 1823 assembly who backed Jackson and Anti-Masonry later became a Democrat; two others, each a member of the 1826 conventions, became Whigs. On the other hand, the twentynine Anti-Masons who appear to have steered clear of late 18205 presidential politics later gave their support to the Whigs. Only eight of them had been either Herkimer delegates or regular members of the assemblies from 1823 through 1825. Twenty-two men, fifteen of them antiregulars, fused support of Adams with Anti-Masonry and subsequently acted as Whigs. Still, sixty-five Adams men moved to Whiggery without making a clear mark as Anti-Masons. If the membership of these constellations is representative, New York Anti-Masonry fed into Whiggery, but no more powerfully than support for John Quincy Adams. '44 Other patterns among the political constellations sitting from 1823 through 1826 clarified over time. The antiregulars, or opposition members, of the assembly of 1823 largely stopped short of metamorphosing into opponents of the later Jacksonian Democrats. One-fifth became active Whigs, but almost one-third performed as loyal Jacksonians; nearly one-quarter of the whole group stalled along the way towards the second party system, not moving beyond initial support of Adams or Anti-Masonry. Almost half their regular opponents gave their backing to Jackson's party, but one-quarter wound up in the ranks of the Whigs. After the 1823 session, the Regency's hold on the future behaviour of its men tightened and remained consistently firm; slightly more than one in eight regulars of the 1824 assembly later were Whigs, and the same was true of the regulars in the 1825 assembly and the 1826 Herkimer convention.'45 The propensity of the antiregulars to feed into the Whig Party increased slowly, revealing the thrust of the Clintonian-People's Movement. One-third of the People's assemblymen of 1824 evolved into Whigs and less than one-tenth became Jacksonian Democrats, with onethird dropping out after 1829. The assembly regulars of 1824 acted differently. One-half went to the Democratic Party and one-fifth went to neither the Whigs nor the Democrats. Analysis of the Utica delegates of 1824 shows that the antiregulars of that year had only a marginally greater bent towards the Whigs than to the Jacksonian Democrats; 30 percent became Whigs, but about one-quarter became Democrats, and the same proportion failed to stand out as either Whigs or Democrats. The antiregular members of the assembly of 1825, however, over time leaned more emphatically towards the Whigs. Almost one-fifth of

279 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

the People's Clintonians of that house failed to continue active, but three in ten evolved into Whigs, while two in ten became Democrats. Of their regular counterparts, more than half became Democrats in the next decades; almost one in seven dropped from sight, and the same number became Whigs. The members of the Herkimer convention of 1826 fell only slightly short of the capacity of the 1825 regular assemblymen to transform themselves into Jacksonian Democrats. Onehalf followed that path, with one-fifth ceasing to be noticeably active. Somewhat less than half of the Clintonians at Utica in 1826 made their way to the Whig Party. One-seventh became Democrats, and a slightly larger proportion dropped out of sight as party activists. Of those who became Whigs, one-half were thirty-nine years of age or younger in 1826; somewhat more than one-quarter of the future Democrats at Herkimer matched their youth. The Whigs, far more than the Democrats drew heavily on men younger than the average legislator. The Clintonian Moment Clintonian antiregular and Van Burenite regular legislators and convention members had, by 1826, come to present contrasting profiles. A Clintonian was more likely than a regular to practise law, to have been born in New York, and to have attended a college or a medical school. He was more likely to combine pursuits, including the practice of law or medicine, with other activities, adventurously mixing store keeping with manufacturing, contracting, milling, services, farming, and hotel or tavern keeping. The regular, on the other hand, was more likely to farm and to concentrate on that activity. He was also more likely to know the hands-on work of an artisan. Men of both persuasions would be about equally involved in the affairs of banks and insurance companies. The regular, however, might play his part in those institutions gingerly, feeling that he had made a pact with devils so that he might share their power. Finally, the regular displayed a strong propensity to become a Jacksonian Democrat. His Clintonian counterpart, a man usually better connected, would, after 1834, almost as readily be found on the Whig side of the political fence. Their destinies departed from the nature of the struggle between the Van Burenite regulars and the antiregulars who ultimately coalesced around Clinton in 1824. Anticipating the national party dialogue of the next decade, they battled for more than control of the government, of New York: each element in the Empire State sought to establish the legitimacy and defend the future of a way of living. The regulars, uneasy with the commercialism and transportation changes, stated their fears of the aristocracy of wealth which they saw emerging. They sug-

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"Root Cried Yesterday"

gested the iniquity of that elite by alluding to Federalist misdeeds: failure to defend the republic during the War of 1812 and willingness to silence political dissent during the time of the Alien and Sedition acts. Less explicit in defence of dissent, the regulars simply pointed to the threat of "Federalists of '98"; they were uneasy with the demand for openmindedness with which Clinton had goaded them in his Phi Beta Kappa speech. Regularity, after all, implied - indeed demanded - likemindedness and unity in defence of an agrarian democracy, which was thought to have been hard-won, enshrined in the constitution of 1821, and guaranteed to all white men with a foothold in their communities. This victory and this frame of mind had made regularity less relevant to New York City, which had seen its assembly representation cut back from eleven to ten in 1822. The new constitution had opened a fissure, which invited a Clintonian counterattack mounted to exploit the fear that New York agrarians might engender on Manhattan, particularly among urban-based proprietors and financiers. The regular leaders, on the other hand, sensing the fragility of their success and the possibility of democratic excesses, became more closely wedded to party order, including the caucus; they sought to mould a judicial system that heralded hierarchical control from the bench, reaching down to the town level, where right-minded justices of the peace would steady waverers and thwart disorder.1*6 The efforts of the High-Minded Federalist law-smiths to impose political order down to the town level came to naught as upstate anticommercial and anti-urban fury found an outlet in the tax law. Clinton quickly sensed that the caucus-convention that had brought him the nomination for governor in 1817 might provide the model for a future nomination by a delegate convention, which would unite Clintonians from all quarters of the state and would avoid the impression of authority imposed from Albany or from maritime New York. Embracing this possibility tentatively, he moved to exploit the fears and the aspirations of New York City's commercial leadership, who needed someone capable defusing hostility to capital while simultaneously managing a broadened electorate, which now demanded increasing control in town and county life. In responding, Clinton crafted a positive message to capture the loyalty of men and women who wanted to believe that order in change could come out of the volition of morally informed citizens who accepted disparities in wealth and the need to respect the property of capitalists. Drawing political support from men who were at least moderately well connected, he emphasized the dignity and security of New York as a commonwealth in which a benign executive expression of government fostered economic growth through means that reached to the daily lives

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of citizens, for example, through improved transportation and basic education. Clinton's belief that a board for internal improvements should guide this process reflected his commitment to the central role of an informed elite who respected the capacity of the sciences to contribute wealthcreating innovation. Although he was a gentleman savant, his notion of magistracy pointed forcefully towards professional expertise in government. Identifying magistracy with change and movement, he registered no sense that his social place conflicted with the direction in which he pointed. Clinton instead concentrated on the possibility that the dynamic heart of the extended community of New York State could reside in a few responsible, knowledgeable, determined, and virtuous men. This heart did not beat in the legislature. In its houses, covert party management and party power created petty and self-serving cliques that had no other end than to satisfy their hunger to dominate. When Clinton spoke of the atrophy of government, he alluded to the power of these factious leaders. They could hamstring wise managers at the helm of government and create unpredictable conditions, which would thwart the essentially beneficent effects of the capitalists whose work in industry and commerce would hammer out a more unified and prosperous North. Speaking through the republican paradigm, he emphasized the virtue and effectiveness of entrepreneurs as an elite who would serve the public good. In spite of Clinton's vision, the People's Movement and Clintonianism embodied a powerful distributive thrust, moving power out from the centre. This endured. Thirteen years later, William H. Seward as governor echoed Clinton's vain plea for a board of internal improvement. As well, he mirrored Clinton's expectation that the good of the New York commonwealth might be realized without resorting to the taxation that could provide an ordered and predictable financial system.1''? Governor Seward simply ducked the tax question, whereas the People's men and Clintonians of the 18205 invested greater effort in burying it. Their task demanded ingenuity, yet it was not difficult. Although the issue generated heat in the legislature and briefly on Manhattan, the New York State press honoured it largely with silence, which meant that the question of disparities in wealth in addition to inequities in taxation slipped out of focus. Clinton believed that they would vanish into the shadows, given what "opulent men" could do and what they could provide - the funding that any board of internal improvements would need, for example. In spite of the relative silence, the tax law did help to "rip up" the regular forces. Equally important, regular power, when not pitted against a clearly identified opposition force in 1823, became a shambles,

282 "Root Cried Yesterday"

making questionable the capacity of party to mould policy, to provide order, and even to sustain itself. The judiciary suffered when the HighMinded regular legislative leaders too obviously sought to shape the court system as an engine of party power. Then, as the Bucktails broke apart in their hour of victory, Henry Wheaton showed how devastating could be the anger of a would-be judge against his own party. Finally, the question of the western terminus of the Erie Canal and the chartering of the Chemical Bank raised doubts that party men could make policy decisions that were genuinely good for the public. From the outset, Clinton correctly perceived the weaknesses of his partisan opponents and moved effectively if obliquely and opportunistically. He helped to render the tax law ineffective, in part by carefully stated associations. Clinton understood the power of drama and ceremony that could echo into remote corners of New York. He dramatically reaffirmed his commitment to the heritage of revolutionary republicanism as he welcomed his fellow Mason, Lafayette, one of the worthy few on whom the many might rely for their freedom. Clinton had already insisted that New Yorkers must respect the property and expectations of men of wealth if that few delivered prosperity to the many; with Lafayette at his side he helped to gild wealth, change, the market, and New York City - which Lafayette visited a total of four times during his tour - with republican virtue. The added gilding would give freer play to the transportation and market forces with which the men of wealth would work their magic. No less important, Clinton accomplished this as the standard bearer - the man of reliable character - of a broadly based movement. In the name of political reform, the People's men took the path-breaking step of holding the first nominating convention in New York State's history. Through Clinton and the People's men, the democratic commonwealth of New York embraced the man of opulence and his works, calling itself "empire" as it did so and, in effect, denying that democratic political power should address disparities in wealth. The word that Haines affixed to his state was laden with connotations of grandeur and prosperity; it suggested the atmosphere of political drama in which Clinton and the People's Movement linked expansive capitalist development and democracy. Glory and honour, both mined from and perpetuating the perceived goodness of empire, were also part of Clinton's and New York's political heritage.1''8 Exploiting them, emphasizing "canal glory," he drew on the legacy of civic humanism to bring People's-Clintonian success. It contributed to this success even as Clinton, counselled by his friend William James, whittled away the anticommercial thrust of this tradition. J.G.A. Pocock has observed that "humanist political thought was overmasteringly concerned with

283 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

the ideal of civic virtue as an attribute of personality." It therefore "in the last resort always turned away from the establishment of institutionalized authority to the establishment of conditions, termed liberta, in which virtue might have free play and escape corruption,"^? and neither Clinton nor James would deny the opulent man his destiny. They, however, did not act alone. The rapidly shifting, adjusting constellations of the period demonstrate a widespread and lively political self-consciousness, which crafted solutions that marginalized those few who thought in terms of the redistribution of wealth. Insofar as the shifting pointed towards the second party system, that system was conceived with the question of redistribution, much played down, just as the question of slavery was. The People's political polemics demanded the diminution of legislative power. They held that the legislature served as the seat of corrupt and oppressive aristocratic power. Their contention gained credence not only from the role of the High-Minded Federalists but from the regulars' campaign efforts to present assembly voting blocs that extended beyond county constituencies; regularity countenanced a politics of interest that was scarcely reflected in the regular press. Corrupt and aristocratic legislative power, according to the People's men, extended widely. William H. Seward in 1824 contended that the "combination of men" who worked the legislative machine controlled to the local level by means of "little aristocracies of office-holders" - words that anticipated the condemnation of the wide-ranging Masonic conspiracy.^0 Legislative power, then, stood at the heart of an evil and broad network that would deny men the "fruits of their labour."^1 The Regency would despoil them, leaving them as forsaken as George IV had left Queen Caroline, a point to which New York wives could respond, stirring their husbands' anger against the Albany aristocrats and their local counterparts. Seward's definition of the source of evil at the local level abetted the quiet work of the men who had encouraged support of Clinton before Lafayette's visit to Albany. Reaching out from New York City, Haines, Robert Bogardus, Sylvanus Miller, and other effective but relatively silent opponents of the tax law could make an important point to the kind of upstate men who attended the Utica convention of 1824: the People's Movement defined legislators and local office holders as the embodiment of aristocratic tyranny - a definition that tended to shift a moral burden from holders of personalty. With this burden removed, rectitude and capitalist energy were less likely to be seen as being at odds with each other. Accumulated wealth and expanded credit in the hinterlands of New York could more comfortably make their contribution to the development of industry and local markets. Clinton and the People's men, the Wheatonites aside,

284

"Root Cried Yesterday"

had achieved a Catonic resolution; they had smoothed the way for an easy relationship between a natural aristocracy and a natural democracy unperverted by partisan regularity. With this, Clinton came to dominate the People's Movement, leaving Henry Wheaton to execrate the "golden days" in vain. Since Clinton and the People's men had accomplished this resolution at the expense of power at the centre (except for the power resident in the just magistrate and his counsellors and, no less important, in the just magistrates of the state's judiciary), they had not run athwart the country thrust of the politics of George Clinton and Jeffersonian Republicanism, a heritage that Clinton sought to nurture. That thrust made logical Clinton's determination to defend state power even as John Marshall added "the capstone to his edifice of constitutional buttresses for a capitalist republic" - Gibbons v. Ogden,1*2 though Clinton made it quite clear that he did not defend monopoly. That thrust also contributed to Clinton's support of Andrew Jackson, though his Jacksonianism was always tempered by his own presidential aspirations; it came partly from the need to dispel memories that he had run as the "peace candidate" in 1812. Jackson's accomplishments abetted Clinton's vision of a republican commercial empire; the United States would develop as an expanding union in which, untrammelled by power at the centre, men might freely explore the paths to the prosperity that would ensure virtue. Having despoiled southeastern Indians of valuable lands, Jackson's deeds of empire promised more cotton for New York mills and for ships leaving from New York Harbor; they also promised to shift power westward and out of Virginian hands, and to move more wealth northward into the coffers of New York City merchants and banks. Neither Clinton nor the People's men attempted to change the high property qualifications for black voters that had been built into the constitution of 1821. The degradation of free African Americans had been part of the Van Burenite accommodation with the South and slavery. Although often anti-Southern in tone, the People's Movement avoided upsetting this arrangement. It therefore accommodated both Clinton's desire to build a national following and the possibility of New York support for Jackson, perhaps as running mate. Since the People's Movement both fostered and echoed Jacksonian denunciations of corrupt power at the centre and Jacksonian appeals for virtuous magistracy, it helped prepare the way for Van Buren's later shift to Jackson. Thus, a means by which Clinton hoped to unite the national Republican family under his leadership was turned to Van Buren's profit. Clinton's work strengthened the national party that Van Buren wanted to build, enabling it to rest more solidly on its New York foundation stones. This

285 The Workings and Aftermath of Victory

was a major accomplishment, undertaken in defiance of the many Adams men who populated Clintonian ranks. Clinton, in measure, anticipated the style of Andrew Jackson's presidency. In doing so, he displayed an approach that might eventually have set him at odds with a following that would increasingly find its future home in the Whig Party. Writing as "Washington," he had urged the sovereign people to demand the power to choose their chief magistrate. "George Clinton" in the Statesman had envisioned a president who would speak for the people, making articulate the goodness that might be present in them only as feeling. This Clinton would have welcomed the message that accompanied Andrew Jackson's veto of the bill rechartering the Bank of the United States. Yet Clinton had become a leader in the benevolent empire of evangelicalism and humanitarian reform, which would increasingly reach out from New York City to spread both the word of the Lord and disciplined behaviour: the reformers assumed that people should be made better. Accepting the premise that evangelicalism, at one with humanitarianism, was a discipline-oriented child of the marketplace and capitalism, Clinton cut a compelling religious figure.'53 He had promised and then managed the planning of the longest inland lock canal in the world. He had proved he had the self-discipline to work for the betterment of others, to bring prosperity and virtue to a society that might more fittingly receive the Lord. When Robert Troup and Elkanah Watson attacked Clinton's role in fostering the Erie and Champlain canals, they undercut not only his reputation as an architect of New York's political economy, but they denied him the authority to guide the lives of New York men and women spiritually. His removal from the Canal Commission spelled ingratitude; it also affronted the cognitive underpinnings of the benevolent evangelicalism. Erastus Root's candidacy for the office of lieutenant-governor similarly insulted that frame of mind; Root's tears in defeat spelled pious victory. The removal of Clinton and the candidacy of Root defied a cast of mind that would become central to the political culture of Whiggery.'54 As Clintonianism matured in the aftermath of the People's Movement, it became increasingly the creature of men who chose to support the Whig Party in the 18305. Like their regular opponents, Clinton's relatively youthful and relatively elite followers adjusted their public image to attract more votes, a sign that they were self-consciously shaping a powerful political force. Since Clinton died in February 1828, he did not have the opportunity to discover whether these men would long brook his continuing link to Andrew Jackson. Death also denied him the knowledge that Erastus Root stopped drinking and swearing and died a Whig.

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Appendices

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APPENDIX A

Relationship Categories

CATEGORY 1 RELATIONSHIPS adopted daughter married aunt married brother of aunt married brother married sister of wife of brother married sister-in-law of brother of brother married sister of brother married stepsister of brother-in-law of brother married aunt of brother married niece of brother married cousin of brother married adopted dahter of brother married half-sister of brother married daughter of brother's wife's sister married cousin of cousin married daughter married son of daughter married nephew of daughter married uncle of daughter married daughter married brother of

daughter married half-nephew of daughter married brother-in-law of daughter married brother of wife of daughter married cousin of father of father married sister of great-nephew married daughter of great-uncle of half-brother of half-brother father of half-brother married niece of half-nephew of half-sister married cousin of half-sister married brother of half-sister married married adopted daughter of married sister of married aunt of married half-sister of married daughter of married cousin of married niece of mother married

290

Appendix A

nephew married sister of nephew married half-sister of nephew married daughter of nephew of niece married niece married son of niece married half-brother of niece married brother of sister stepmother of sister married sister married brother-in-law of sister married uncle of sister aunt of sister married son of sister married cousin of sister married brother of sister married nephew of sister's stepdaughter married son of son married sister of son married son married niece of son married daughter of son married cousin of

step aunt married step brother of stepfather of stepmother second cousin of stepmother cousin of stepmother sister of stepmother's sister married brother of stepmother's brother married sister of stepsister married stepsister married brother of uncle of uncle married sister of uncle married second cousin of wife's sister married wife's brother married wife's aunt married wife's father married sister of wife's niece married wife's brother married sister of wife's cousin married wife's half-brother married daughter of wife's brother married daughter of

CATEGORY 2 R E L A T I O N S H I P S aunt married cousin of aunt married cousin-once-removed of aunt married uncle of aunt married cousin-once-removed of wife of brother married niece of wife of brother married cousin-once-removed of brother married second cousin of brother married cousin-once-removed of wife of brother's wife's aunt married brother's wife's aunt married brother of brother's wife's cousin married brother's wife's second cousin married

brother's widow married father of brother's sister-in-law married brother's sister-in-law married son of brother's father-in-law married sister of brother's wife's cousin married brother of brother's wife's cousin married sister of brother's wife's niece married cousin-once-removed married father of cousin-once-removed married niece of cousin-once-removed married sister of cousin-once-removed married son of

291

Relationship Categories

cousin-once-removed married uncle of cousin-once-removed married sisterin-law of cousin-once-removed married nephew of cousin married nephew of cousin married niece of cousin married sister of cousin married half-sister of cousin married daughter of cousin-once-removed uncle of cousin married brother of cousin-once-removed of cousin married sister-in-law of cousin-once-removed married halfsister of cousin married uncle of cousin uncle of cousin-once-removed married cousin married son of cousin-once-removed married aunt of cousin-once-removed married halfbrother of cousin-once-removed married daughter of cousin-once-removed married brother of daughter married cousin of brother of daughter married cousin-onceremoved of daughter married second cousin of daughter married second cousin of wife of daughter's niece married daughter's sister-in-law married father married cousin-once-removed of father married great-aunt of father married widow of brother of father married second cousin of great-niece married son of

great-nephew of great-niece married great-aunt married father of great-uncle married sister of half-cousin married married cousin-once-removed of married second cousin of married aunt of wife of married great-niece of married niece of wife of married sister of wife of mother married uncle of mother married cousin-once-removed of mother married uncle of wife of nephew married niece of nephew married cousin of nephew married cousin-once-removed of nephew married second cousin of nephew married sister-in-law of niece married second cousin of niece married nephew of niece married cousin of niece married cousin-once-removed of niece married brother-in-law of second cousin married second cousin married daughter of second cousin married brother of second cousin stepmother of second cousin married nephew of second cousin married niece of second cousin of second cousin married son of second cousin married sister of sister married cousin of uncle of sister married cousin of wife of sister married cousin of brother of sister married uncle of wife of sister married great-uncle of sister married second cousin of wife of

292

Appendix A

sister married second cousin of sister married cousin-once-removed of wife of sister married brother of wife of sister married cousin-once-removed of sister's niece married brother of sister's sister-in-law married sister's niece married sister-in-law married uncle of sister-in-law married cousin of sister-in-law married cousin-onceremoved of sister-in-law married second cousin of son married sister of wife of son married niece of wife of son married second cousin of son married great-niece of son married cousin-once-removed of son's wife's sister married son's wife's aunt married uncle married mother of uncle married sister-in-law of uncle married aunt of uncle married great-aunt of uncle married cousin of wife of uncle married cousin-once-removed of uncle married cousin of widow of cousin-once-removed married wife's nephew married sister of wife's nephew married daughter of wife's half-nephew married daughter of wife's niece married son of wife's niece married nephew of wife's niece married brother of wife's sister married brother-in-law of wife's cousin married uncle of wife's great uncle married aunt of wife's great-aunt married wife's great-aunt married uncle of wife's great-niece married wife's cousin married stepsister of

wife's uncle married mother of wife's uncle married niece of wife's uncle married sister of wife's uncle married sister-in-law of wife's uncle married daughter of wife's uncle married aunt of wife's sister married cousin-onceremoved of wife's sister married cousin of wife's sister married nephew of wife's sister married son of wife's sister married brother of wife's second cousin married sister of wife's brother married niece of wife's brother married sister-in-law of wife's cousin-once-removed married wife's cousin-once-removed married brother of wife's brother married cousin of wife's aunt married brother of wife's second cousin married wife's second cousin married brother of wife's second cousin married daughter of wife's second cousin married son of wife's cousin-once-removed married daughter of wife's cousin-once-removed married father of wife's cousin married nephew of wife's cousin married niece of wife's cousin married sister of wife's cousin married sister-in-law of wife's cousin married half-brother of wife's cousin married daughter of wife's cousin-once-removed married sister of wife's cousin-once-removed married son of wife's cousin-once-removed uncle of wife's cousin married brother of wife's cousin married son of

APPENDIX B

Tables

Table 1 Relationships: New York Assemblies, 1815-1828

/

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828

115 174 95 130 126 111 106 110 82 137 124 155 113 135

113 154 74 70 89 54 60 64 78 104 104 102 58 66

535 619 382 569 415 421 430 567 545 518 595 696 383 529

41 52 47 49 43 48 49 47 37 50 43 50 42 44

26 37 31 24 26 20 26 29 25 35 31 26 19 28

47 59 52 54 48 49 52 56 42 59 51 53 45 49

115 126 126 126 126 126 126 126 128 128 128 127 128 128

173 229 121 144 153 128 124 116 110 160 150 191 125 141

Columns: 1 Date of assembly 2 Number of category 1 relationships 3 Number of category 2 relationships 4 Other relationships known at this writing 5 Number with category 1 relationships 6 Number with category 2 relationships 7 Number with relationships in categories 1 and 2 8 Population of the body 9 Index of relatedness

294

Appendix B

Table 2 Relationships: New York Senates, 1815-1828

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828

40 53 49 48 48 43 45 50 67 61 49 57 61 47

51 50 45 40 28 38 34 30 34 29 26 32 39 30

191 304 267 227 214 162 152 213 296 193 136 192 231 109

14 19 19 18 18 16 17 20 17 17 17 16 14 11

13 12 12 13 9 9 10 11 10 10 8 9 11 8

15 19 19 18 18 16 17 21 18 18 17 16 15 12

32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32

265

Columns: 1 Date of senate 2 Number of category 1 relationships 3 Number of category 2 relationships 4 Other relationships known at this writing 5 Number with category 1 relationships 6 Number with category 2 relationships 7 Number with relationships in categories I and 2 8 Population of the body 9 Index of relatedness

322

294 275 238 253 247 238 298 266 234 278 292 221

295

Tables

Table 3 Relationships: Conventions and Other Groups, 1815-1828

/

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

KT C17 HM CC20 C21 U24 U26 H26 AD JR AM

217 129 161 196 252 114 129 103 82 119 30

208 115 118 116 185 96 150 61 97 56 23

957 414 607 715 980 440 510 431 349 564 156

57 48 38 63 64 49 46 36 30 40 19

36 32 30 37 39 33 29 28 23 24 11

60 54 42 66 66 52 54 43 36 45 24

106 126 55 173 126 121 111 115 115 115 81

381 172 459 172 336 164 214 119 130 135 52

Columns: 1 Group 2 Number of category 1 relationships 3 Number of category 2 relationships 4 Other relationships known at this writing 5 Number with category 1 relationships 6 Number with category 2 relationships 7 Number with relationships in categories 1 and 2 8 Population of the body 9 Index of relatedness Rows: KT Signers, 1816 Federalist address CI7 Members, 1817 Republican caucus-convention HM Signers, High-Minded address, 1820 CC20 Signers, Clintonian address, 1820 C2I Constitutional Convention of 1821 U24 Utica convention of 1824 U26 Utica convention of 1826 H26 Herkimer convention of 1826 AD Adams state convention of 1828 JR Jackson state convention of 1828 AM Anti-Masonic Utica convention, 1828

296 Appendix B Table 4 Regressions for Assembly Elections, 1823, Selected Counties

Raw no. County 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

New York New York Dutchess Dutchess Dutchess Dutchess Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida Albany

y

No. of

X

towns/ wards

Ind. var.

Dep. a var. Intercept

b

R

Slope

Correlation

10 10 9 12 9 12 21 21 21 17 17 17 13

E C

a a a a a a c b b b d b

1.406 1.24 -0.61 -0.58 -0.3 -0.3 0.99 -0.71 -0.69

C C E E F F C D G G C

b

0.039 0.026

0.79

0.8

0.62 0.64 0.02 1.07 1.05 0.86 48.82

0.89

1.2

0.767 0.798

-0.44 -0.41 -0.28 -0.27 0.99 -0.77 -0.75 -0.0024 -0.46 0.75 0.25 -0.0012 -0.69 -0.96 -1.08

Significance

0.01 0.006

0.23 0.19 0.46 0.39 0.0000 0.0001 0.0002

0.06 0.0001 0.002 0.0000

Dependent variables: a People's assembly vote, 1823 b Regular assembly vote, 1823 c Vote for Clinton for governor, 1820 d Per capita taxable property Independent variables: C Vote for Clinton for governor, 1820 D Per capita taxable property E Clintonian assembly vote, 1820 F Aggregated Clintonian and Federalist assembly vote, Oneida County, 1820 G Ratio of people engaged in manufacturing per 1,000 voters Rows 3-6: Regressions in rows 3 and 5 cover nine towns whose borders did not change from 1820 to 1823. Regressions in rows 4 and 6 cover eight new towns that were aggregated as three units to make a total of twelve "towns." Rows 10-12: Regressions for the seventeen towns for which economic data is available

297

Tables

Table 5 Assemblies of 1823 and 1824: Livelihoods Assembly/ Group

/

2

3

1823 antiregulars 1823 regulars 1824 antiregulars 1824 regulars

11

38 7 37

42.3 37.3 20.6 39.4

13 7 12

5

4

5

6

19.2 12.7 20.6 12.8

3 15 9 13

11.5 5 14.7 21 26.4 7 13.8 19

7

8

9

19.2 1 20.6 6 20.6 0 20.2 6

Columns: 1 Number of men who appear to have farmed only 2 Percentage of whole group who appear to have farmed only 3 Number of whole group who practised law 4 Percentage of whole group who practised law 5 Number of whole group who were merchants 6 Percentage of whole group who were merchants 7 Number who engaged in or directed hands-on production of goods 8 Percentage of whole group who engaged in or directed hands-on production 9 Number of whole group who practised medicine 10 Percentage of whole group who practised medicine 11 Total number in group

10

11

3.8 5.8 0 6.4

26 102 34 94

298

Appendix B

Table 6 Assemblies of 1823 and 1824: Service to Financial Institutions Assembly 1 Group

/

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1823 antiregulars 1823 regulars

6 26 14

23.1 25.5 41.2 24.5

1.00 1.00

3 11 8 11

11.5 10.8 23.5 11.7

0.31 0.48 1.09 0.36

3 20 12 19

11.5 19.6 35.3 20.2

0.77

1 824 antiregulars 1824 regulars

23

2.44 0.95

0.67 0.97 0.67

Columns: 1 Number of men who served as officers of banks and insurance companies over their entire careers. (Row 1 figures do not include service rendered to insurance companies. Alone of the four groups, the 1823 antiregulars held no offices in insurance companies) 2 Percent of whole group who served as officers of banks and insurance companies over their entire careers 3 Years served per member of whole group by those who served 4 Number of men who served as officers of banks and insurance companies during and before they sat in the assembly 5 Percent of total group who served as officers of banks and insurance companies during and before they sat in the assembly 6 Years served per member of whole group by those who served during and before they sat in the assembly 7 Number of men who served as officers of banks and insurance companies after they sat in the assembly 8 Percent of total group who served as officers of banks and insurance companies after they sat in the assembly 9 Years served per member of whole group by those who served after they sat in the assembly. (The figure in row 1, column 9, the average of years served after sitting for the whole group of 1823 antiregular members, is high because of the contribution of one man. John Van Deusen helped found the Hudson River Bank, and newspaper notices indicate that he served as director during thirteen of the years between 1831 and 1854. One other man in the group served six years after sitting in the 1823 assembly, and a third served one year)

299 Tables Table 7 People's County Meetings and Conventions, 21 August through 16 September 1824 No. County

Date

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Cayuga Clinton Dutchess Greene Herkimer Kings Monroe Niagara Oneida Onondaga Ontario Orange Oswego Otsego Queens Richmond Rockland St. Lawrence

28 Aug. 1 1 Sept. 4 Sept. 21 Aug. ? 21, 26 Aug. 14 Sept. 8 Sept. 14 Sept. 26 Aug. ? 16 Sept. 10 Sept. ? 27 Aug. 6 Sept. 28 Aug. 10 Sept.

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Saratoga Schoharie Seneca Tompkins Ulster Warren Washington Wayne Westchester

11 Sept. 28 Aug. 10 Sept. 6, 11 Sept. 1 1 Sept. 15 Sept. 14 Sept. ? 21 Aug.

Convention Yes Yes

Yes Possibly

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Source Auburn Free Press, 1, 8 Sept. Pittsburgh Republican, 18, 25 Sept. Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 8 Sept. Catskill Recorder, 3 Sept. Schenectady Cabinet, 14 Sept. Brooklyn Star, 2 Sept. Rochester Telegraph, 21 Sept. Lewiston Niagara Sentinel, 10 Sept. Utica Columbian Gazette, 21 Sept. Albany National Democrat, 1 Sept. Canandaigua Ontario Repository, 8 Sept. Goshen Independent Republican, 20 Sept. Utica Columbian Gazette, 21 Sept. Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 20 Sept. Brooklyn Star, 2 Sept. New- York Statesman, 15 Sept. Brooklyn Star, 9 Sept. Republican Meeting ... of the Towns in the County of St. Lawrence, ... in ... Canton, on the 10th day of September, 1824, NYHS Saratoga Sentinel, 15, 22 Sept. Canadaigua Ontario Repository, 15 Sept. Waterloo Seneca Farmer, 1 5 Sept. Ithaca Journal, 1 5 Sept. Kingston Plebeian, 15 Sept. Plattsburgh Republican, 9 Oct. Salem Washington County Post, 6 Oct. Wayne Sentinel, 6 Oct. Delhi Delaware Gazette, 8 Sept. and Mt Pleasant Westchester Herald, 3 1 Aug.

300

Appendix B

Table 8 Age Groups in the 1824 Utica Convention and the 1822-1824 Assemblies 1824 convention 1

No.

81-85 76-80 71-75 66 70 61-65 56-60 51-55 46-50 41-45 36-40 31-35 26-30 21-25 Total Individual mean age Group age std. dev. Individual std. dev.

1 1 1

1.9 1.0 1.0

5 7 7 10 10 17 23 11 8 2 104

4.8 6.7 6.7 9.6 9.6

Age Group

%

16.3 22.1 10.6

7.7 1.9

100.0

12.8

1823 assembly

1822 assembly

No.

No.

No.

3 8 14 18 24 24 12 6 2 111

%

2.7 7.2 12.6 16.2 21.6 21.6 10.8

6.0

7.9 8.6

3

9 9 21 15 30

5.4 1.8

14 4 1

100.0

106

%

2.8 8.5 8.5 19.8 14.2 28.3 13.2

3.8 0.9 100.0

43.2

43.5

45.9

6.2

1824 assembly

7.1

8.8 8.7

1 5 4 11 22 18 21 17 3 102

%

1.0 4.9 3.9 10.8 21.6 17.6 20.6 16.7

2.9 100.0

43.8

8.3

7.8

7.7

8.6

'The average age for the 319 assemblymen tabulated here is 43.5, with a population standard deviation of 8.7. Note that the standard deviation of the individual ages in the 1824 convention is almost 50 percent higher than that of the assemblymen, but the standard deviation of the numbers in the age groups in the convention is lower.

301 Tables Table 9 Convention of 1824 and Assemblies of 1823 and 1824: Occupations, Education, and Service to Financial Institutions

1824 convention 1823 assembly 1824 assembly

1

2

3

4

121 128 128

19.8

19.8 14.1 14.8

12.4

38.,3 34,.4

5.5 4.7

5

6

7

17.4 14.1 17.2

18.2 20.3 18.0

15.7

6.3 9.4

8

9

22.3 10.2 14.8

227 128 169

Columns: 1 Number in body 2 Percent fanners 3 Percent lawyers 4 Percent physicians 5 Percent merchants 6 Percent who engaged in or directed hands-on production 7 Percent who attended or graduated from college or attended a medical school affiliated with a college 8 Percent who had previously served as officers of banks or insurance companies 9 Aggregate of years during which or over which service to banks and insurance companies was given

Table 10 Convention of 1824 and Assemblies of 1823 and 1824: Service in Local Offices and Militia Officers

1824 convention 1823 assembly 1824 assembly

1

2

3

121 128 128

21.5 36.7 43.8

11.7 10.2

5.8

4

5

6

7

7.4 3.1 5.5

26.4 35.2 45.3

9.1 3.1 6.3

6.6 3.9 0.8

Columns: 1 Number in body 2 Percent who served as supervisors before sitting 3 Percent who served as town clerks during their lives 4 Percent who served as village officers during their lives 5 Percent who rose to the rank of militia captain or above before the end of Andrew Jackson's first term (1833) 6 Percent who had served as quartermasters 7 Percent who became first judges before or during sitting

302

Appendix B

Table 11 Regressions for 1823 and 1824 Elections: Albany and Oneida Counties

Row no. County 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

NY State Albany Albany Albany Albany Albany NY State NY State Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida Oneida NY State NY State Oneida Oneida

No. of

X

towns/ wards

Ind. var.

366 12 13

8 7 6 420 404

21 20 20 21 17 21 17

21 17 17 15 399 383 20 20

A

A

D I I P D D D M M M M S S S S E23 E23 E24 E24 E24 E24

y

a

R

Dep. var.

Inter- b Slope cept

Correlation

a b b b b b a b b

0.22 0.75

a b s s

b b a a c c

a b a b

0.7

0.92

0.9

0.28 0.53 0.53

-

0.32 0.33 0.046 0.047

0.61 0.82

0.71 0.89 -0.049 0.58 -0.053 -0.7 -0.054 -0.88 0.00168 0.61 -0.003 -0.003

-0.136 -0.097 -0.052

0.001

0.61 0.57 0.52 0.83 0.54 0.82 0.55 0.83 -0.15 -0.69

-

0.00094 0.00007 0.00017

2.69 2.31 2.77 2.37 0.675 -0.85 0.61 -4.53 0.1 0.53 0.19 0.49 0.61 -0.38 0.59 -0.3

0.33 0.37 0.33 0.37

0.029

0.05 -0.09 -0.08

Significance

Deviants removed

0.00000

0.001 0.04 0.05 0.0085

1

0.19 0.005

0.05 -0.81 0.005 0.009

0.017 0.00000

4

0.012 0.00000 0.0093 0.00000

4 4

0.56 0.004

2

0.56 0.69 0.69 0.75

Dependent variables: a Vote for Clinton for governor, 1824 b Antiregular assembly vote, 1824 c Regular assembly vote, 1823 s Proportion of single women, 15 to 45 years of age in the population Independent variables: A Vote for Clinton for governor, 1820 D Distance from the centre of the town to the Erie or Champlain Canal 1 Acres of improved land per capita P Per capita taxable property M Ratio of people engaged in manufacturing per 1,000 voters S Proportion of single women, 15 to 45 years of age in the population E23 Index of education, 1823. (The index measuring the support of education was constructed by taking the number of months that school was taught in a town and dividing it by ten. The result was multiplied by the amount of public money received, and that in turn was multiplied by the number of children taught, divided by the number of children aged five through fifteen years. Finally, the resulting figure was again divided by the 1825 population of the town to give a per capita commitment to education) E24 Index of education, 1824

303 Tables Table 11 (continued) Row I: As with other variables, some towns with changed boundaries have been aggregated to create matching districts Row 2: The towns of Berne and Knox have been aggregated Row 5: The deviant removed is Knox, which gave 79.5 percent of its vote for the antiregulars Row 6: Per capita taxable property ranged from $88.88 to $253.71 Rows 10 and II: The ratio of those engaged in manufacturing per 1,000 voters ranged from 95.94 for Vienna to 452.08 for Whitestown Rows 13, 15, and 17: The four deviants removed were the towns of Floyd, Rome, Steuben, and Sangerfield Row IS: The two deviants removed are Utica and the town of Western Rows 20 and 21: These argue that in the state as a whole, there was little relationship between the strength of local support for education and support for the antiregulars Rows 22 and 23: Only by removing five towns - Bridgewater, Floyd, Lee, Vernon, and Western - can these regressions be made to yield levels of significance comparable to the 1823 figures in rows 18 and 19, evidence that there was a positive relationship between local support for education and support of the antiregulars, but it was hardly consistent

304

Appendix B

Table 12 Regressions for 1824 Elections: Cayuga, Orange, and New York Counties

Row no. County 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Cayuga Cayuga Cayuga Cayuga Cayuga Cayuga Cayuga Cayuga Cayuga Cayuga Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange New York New York New York New York

No. of x towns/ Ind. wards var.

y a Dep. Intervar. cept

b Slope

18 18 17 17 17 17 17 17 8 8 12 12 12 12 10 11 9 10 10 9 9 9 10 10 10 10

a b a b a b a b a b h b u a e24 h h a b h a b w b a w

6.54 6.51 -0.0126 -0.001 0.09 0.09 2.24 2.19 0.006 0.006 -5.59 -3.997 4.409 -4.6 0.0049 -0.0229 0.00116 0.00118 0.00079 0.0024 0.00195 0.0017 0.499 1.1065 1.163 0.395

S S N N l I E24 E24 P P E24 E24 E24 E24 N N M M M P P P T T T B

0.003 0.005 1.04 0.91 0.1 0.12 0.25 0.26 0.15 0.16 1.132 0.928 0.0163 0.988 -0.077 1.356 0.0976 0.0789 0.21 -0.013 0.05 0.123 0.287 0.025 -0.016 0.311

R Correlation 0.816 0.804 -0.67 -0.52 0.63 0.63 0.61 0.61 0.89

0.9 -0.879 -0.812 0.7973 -0.79 0.926 -0.634 0.764 0.7092 0.627 0.753 0.741 0.657 0.708 0.695 0.725 0.967

Dependent Variables: Vote for Clinton for governor, 1824 Antiregular assembly vote, 1824 Amiregular congressional candidate Proportion of single women, 15 to 45 years of age in the population Vote for regular senate candidate w Vote for winning assembly candidates, New York City e24 Index of education, 1824 (see table B. 1 1 for computation) Independent Variables: A Vote for Clinton for governor, 1820 B Antiregular assembly vote, 1824 I Acres of improved land per capita P Per capita taxable property N Birth rate M Ratio of people engaged in manufacturing per 1,000 voters S Proportion of single women, 15 to 45 years of age in the population T Voter turnout E24 Index of education, 1824 (see table B.I 1 for computation)

a b h s u

Significance 0.0000 0.0001 0.004 0.03 0.004 0.007 0.009 0.009 0.0026 0.0024 0.0002 0.0014 0.0019 0.0023 0.0001 0.0362 0.0165 0.0216 0.0523 0.019 0.022 0.0547 0.022 0.026 0.018 0.0000

Deviants removed

1 1 1 1 1 1

2 I

305

Tables

Table 12 (continued) Rows 3 and 4: The outlier excluded is the town of Mentz, a constituency with many unemployed salt makers (see Horatio Gates Spafford, A Gazetteer of the State of New- York [Albany: Packard & Van Benthuysen, 1824], 314 Rows 5 through 8: Auburn is excluded, first as a more "urban" town, and second as a village with independent pay schools. It actually registered the lowest index of education (0.0471), less than onequarter of Scipio's 0.2074, the highest Rows 8 and 9: The towns were aggregated into eight cases because of boundary changes (see Spafford, Gazetteer, 89, 130) Row 15: Goshen and Monroe eliminated as outliers Row 16: Corwall eliminated as an outlier

306

Appendix B

Table 13 Conventions of 1824 and 1826, and Assembly of 1825: Birthplaces, Higher Education, Occupations

/ 1824 1825 1825 1826 1826

Utica convention 41.1 Antiregulars 48.6 Regulars 44.1 Utica convention 56.6 Herkimer convention 43.0

2

3

4

5

6

58.9 51.4 55.9 43.4 57.0

107

15.7 16.7

19

19.8 19.8 27.4 22.6 50.0 11.4 15.3 15.7 26.1 35.1

70 34 99 93

14

3

6.7

24.3 27

7

6.1

7

9

8

10

9.9

9.9

13.1 18.2

16.7 11.4 14.4 15.7

9.0 17.4

17.4 16.7

11.4 17.1 12.2

Columns: 1 Percentage known to be born in New York State 2 Percentage known to be born elsewhere 3 Number of cases for which places of birth are known 4 Percentage of whole group who attended a college or a medical school associated with a college 5 Number of individuals in column 4 6 Percentage of whole group who appear to have been farmers only 7 Percentage of whole group who practiced law 8 Percentage of whole group who were "mechanics" 9 Percentage of whole group who were mechants or kept store 10 Percentage of whole group who actively engaged in more than one enterprise

Table 14 Assembly of 1825 and Conventions of 1826: Service to Financial Institutions, Militia Service, and Service in Local Offices

1825 1825 1826 1826

Antiregulars Regulars Utica convention Herkimer convention

/

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

25.0

0.16 0.16 0.33 0.33

1.10 0.46 0.56 1.00

11.9

0.27 0.11 0.31 0.30

38.1 38.6 30.6 31.3

60.7 72.7 63.1 59.1

66.7 68.2 54.1 62.2

6..5 7. 1 6..9 4..2

25.0 33.3 30.4

9.1 10.8 13.0

Columns: 1 Percentage of group who served as bank officers 2 Average years of service for the whole group as bank officers before the end of year of sitting 3 Average years of service as bank officers after the end of year of sitting 4 Percentage of group who served as officers of insurance companies before the end of year of sitting 5 Average years of service as insurance company officers 6 Percentage of the group who attained the rank of colonel or higher before the end of the year of sitting 7 Percentage of the group commissioned as militia officers before the end of the year of sitting 8 Percentage of the group who served as locally elected officials at some point in their careers 9 Average length of service in years of those who served as locally elected officials

307

Tables

Table 15 Political Participation after 1 January 1830

Date I Body I Party 23/A/A-R 23/A/Reg. 24/A/A-R 24/A/Reg. 25/A/A-R 25/A/Reg. 24/U/Conv. 26/U/Conv. 26/H/Conv. Averages Standard Dev.

Anti-Mason

National Rep.

No.

No.

3

9 5 6 10 1 10 8 5

% 11.5

8.8

14.7

6.4 11.9

2.3 8.3 7.2 4.3 8.4 3.7

2

6 5 4 10 4 2 4 2

% 7.7 5.9 14.7 4.3 11.9

9.1 1.7 3.6 1.7 6.7 4.3

Democrat

No. % 8 30.8 47 46.1

3 47 16 25 29 16 61

8.8 50 19 56.8 23.9 14.4

53

33.6 17.1

Whig

No. %

5

25 11 13 26 6 36 52 15

19.2 24.5 32.4 13.8

31 13.6 29.8 46.8

13

24.9 10.7

Dropped out

No.

6

28 11 18 15 6 28 17 24

% 23.1 27.5 32.4 19.1 17.9 13.6 23.1 15.3 20.9 21.4

5.6

Rows: The row variables state the constellation and group in abbreviated form. For example, "23/A/A-R" designates the "opposition" group, or antiregulars, in the 1823 assembly; and "26/U/Conv." designates the membership of the Clintonian convention meeting at Utica in 1826. Places in the legislatures and conventions are treated as individuals; an individual may have been a member of more than one of these bodies. The bodies contained 731 places. However, the places for men who died in 1832 or before and who left no record of political activity after the beginning of 1830 have been removed from the count of those who dropped out. Columns: The columns for the Whig and Democratic parties state the group in which the individual eventually wound up. With very few exceptions, New York partisans stayed with one of these parties. On the other hand, more men appear in both the column for the Anti-Masons and the column for the National Republicans.

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Notes

ABBREVIATIONS

ACFP Azariah Cutting Flagg Papers, New York Public Library AJ47 Journal of the Assembly of the State of New-York, at Their FortySeventh Session, Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Albany, the Sixth Day of January, 1824 (Albany: Printers to the State, 1824), with variations CL Edgar A. Werner, Civil List and Constitutional History of the Colony and State of New York (Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1886) CP-WHM Clinton Papers, Washington's Headquarters Museum, Newburgh, New York cu Columbia University DAB Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958) DWCD De Witt Clinton Diary, New-York Historical Society DWCP-CU De Witt Clinton Papers, Columbia University HPP Henry Post, Jr, Papers, New York State Library JWTP John W. Taylor Papers, New-York Historical Society 148 Laws of the State of New- York, Passed at the Forty-Eighth Session of the Legislature Begun and Held at the City of Albany, the Fourth Day of January, 1825 (Albany: Printers to the State, 1825), with variations LA42 Longworth 's American Almanac, New- York Register and City Directory for the Forty-Second Year of American Independence

310 Notes to page 3

LC MCA MHS MVBP NYHS NYLD NYPL NYSA NYSL PBP PGCP RHC RKP 5/46

vp W-BU WLC W-PML

(New York: David and Thomas Longworth, 1817), with variations Library of Congress Minutes of the Council Appointment, New York State Archives Massachusetts Historical Society Martin Van Buren Papers, Library of Congress New-York Historical Society New York Legislative Documents (printed for the legislature by the Printers to the State), New York State Library New York Public Library New York State Archives New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections Peter B. Porter Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society Perry G. Childs Papers, New York Public Library Regional History Collection, Cornell University Rufus King Papers, New-York Historical Society Journal of the Senate of the State of New-York, at Their FortySixth Session, Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Albany, the First Day of January, 1823 (Albany: Printers to the State, 1823), with variations Verplanck Papers, New-York Historical Society Wheaton Papers, Brown University William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan Wheaton Papers, Pierpont Morgan Library CHAPTER ONE

1 Although the term Canal Board came into use before 1826, Canal Commission is used here to distinguish the body of commissioners struck by the 1816 canal law from the Canal Board created in 1826. The latter formally combined both the Canal Commissioners and the commissioners of the Canal Fund (CL, 180-3). 2 History of the City of New York: Its Origin, Rise and Progress, 2 vols. (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co, 1877-80), 2:688. 3 DWCD, 1822-25. The success of his effort has deceived more recent historians. See Robert V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 30; and compare Ronald E. Shaw, Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal, 1792-1854 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966 and 1990), 165, with Clinton's letter to Cadwallader D. Golden, dated "Albany," 2 January 1823, DWCP-CU, 20:280-3. 4 James's Albany Daily Advertiser obituary as quoted in R.W.B. Lewis, The

311

5

6 7

8

9

10

11

Notes to pages 3-5

Jameses: A Family Narrative (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991), 26. A number of twentieth-century historians have offered brief comment on the People's Party: Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 11-12; Dixon Ryan Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York, 1801-1840; Robert V. Remini, ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 272-4, 288-308; Alvin Kass, Politics in New York State, 1800-1830 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1965), 20, 36-9, 51-2, 64-70; and Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), "5-17. [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 19 April [1823], HPP. Jabez D. Hammond early contributed to this perception of Clinton's character. See his History of the Political Parties in the State of New-York, from the Ratification of the Federal Constitution to December, 1840, 2 vols. (Albany: C. Van Benthuysen, 1842), 2:269-74. As J.G.A. Pocock has pointed out, "there is no reason in principle why more than one set of linguistic terms, rules, and presumptions may not be contending for paradigm status at the same time" ("Between Gog and Magog: The Republican Thesis and the Ideologia Americana," Journal of the History of Ideas 48 [1987]: 344-5). The point has been further developed in Daniel T. Rodgers, "Republicanism: The Career of a Concept," Journal of American History 79, no. I (1992): 35-7. Robert Remini correctly observed that the New York term had not been in use before 1824, and he dismissed the claim to have coined it which Thurlow Weed may have made in a conversation with Morgan Dix ("The Albany Regency," New York History 39, no. 4 [1958]: 342.) John Niven construes Weed's comment to mean that he - Weed - used "Regency" when he edited the Manlius Onondaga Republican (Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics [New York: Oxford University Press, 1983], 109, 625). No issues of that newspaper of 1821 and 1822 remain, and other newspapers did not employ "Regency" during these two years, a time when editors stated the source of the political squibs that they often copied. Cf. Harriet A. Weed, ed., The Autobiography of Thurlow Weed (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883), 87-92; and Morgan Dix, ed., Memoirs of John Adams Dix, 2 vols. (New York: Harper, 1883), 1:138. For a version of Clinton's role in this revolution, see Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), passim. John Seelye explores this vein in Clinton's promotion of the Erie Canal in his Beautiful Machine: Rivers and the Republican Plan, 1755-1825 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 213-374.

312 Notes to pages 5-6 12 On Freemasonry, the occult, and money-digging, see Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 235-6; John L. Brooke, The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), passim; Alan Taylor, "The Early Republic's Supernatural Economy: Treasure Seeking in the American Northeast, 1780-1830, "American Quarterly 38, no. I (1986); and Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 79-82. 13 Thomas Paine, "Common Sense,"in Thomas Paine: Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 3. 14 Among the printed sources for the following sketch are Thomas Bender, New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), chap. 2; Dorothie Bobbe, De Witt Clinton (New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1933); Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Hammond, Political Parties; Craig Hanyan, "De Witt Clinton and Partisanship: The Development of Clintonianism from 1811 to 1820," New-York Historical Society Quarterly 56, no. 2 (1972); and De Witt Clinton: Years of Molding, 1769-1807 (New York: Garland, 1988); Craig Hanyan with Mary Hanyan, "De Witt Clinton and the People's Men: Leadership and Purpose in an Early American Reform Movement, 1822-1826," Mid-America 73, no. 2 (1991); Ray W. Irwin, Daniel D. Tompkins: Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1968); Richard P. McCormick, The Presidential Game: The Origins of American Presidential Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), chap. 4; Kenneth R. Nodyne, "The Role of De Witt Clinton and the Municipal Government in the Development of Cultural Organizations in New York City, 1803 to 1817" (unpublished PH D diss., New York University, 1969); and Steven E. Siry, De Witt Clinton and the American Political Economy: Sectionalism, Politics, and Republican Ideology, 1787-1828 (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), and "The Sectional Politics of'Practical Republicanism': De Witt Clinton's Presidential Bid, 1810-1812," Journal of the Early Republic 5, no. 4 (1985). 15 Clinton's second wife was Catherine Jones Clinton, daughter of Dr Thomas Jones and a granddaughter of Philip Livingston, who had signed the Declaration of Independence. 16 De Witt Clinton, An Oration on Benevolence, Delivered before the Society of Black Friars, in the City of New-York, at their Anniversary Festival (New York, 1795), 16-18. 17 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 8 March 1800, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson ... Edited by Paul Leicester Ford, 10 vols. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1892-99), 8:433-4.

313 Notes to pages 7-11 18 The term "Virginia Game" is taken from the title of the chapter in Richard P. McCormick's Presidential Game: The Origins of American Presidential Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). 19 Staughton Lynd, "The Compromise of 1787," Political Science Quarterly 81, no. 2 (1966); Andrew R.L. Cayton and Peter S. Onuf, The Midwest and the Nation: Rethinking the History of an American Region (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 1-25. 20 Norman K. Risjord, Chesapeake Politics, 1781-1800 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 240-4. 21 John P. Kaminski, George Clinton: Yeoman Politician of the New Republic (Madison, Wis.: Madison House, 1993), 51-2; Drew R. McCoy, The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 232-3. 22 J.C.A. Stagg, Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783-1830 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 81-3. 23 For a discussion of the creation of the Bank of America see Irwin, Tompkins, 114-25. 24 New-York Evening Post, 5 February 1814; De Witt Clinton and the Late War [Albany? 1819?], esp. 12-13; and Stephen Watts, The Republic Rebom: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790-1820 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). 25 New-York Columbian, 15 April 1815. 26 New-York Evening Post, 20 April 1815. 27 For Clintonian antipartyism, see Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1850 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 219-23; and Hanyan, "De Witt Clinton and Partisanship." The antiparty strain continued important during the nineteenth century, often meshing with evangelical and reforming fervour. See Ronald P. Formisano, "Political Character, Antipartyism and the Second American Party System," American Quarterly 21 (1969), The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1862 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 327-8, and The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 17905-18405 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 341-2; and Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 294-6, 332. 28 As quoted in George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism: 1815-1828 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 107. Cf. Glover Moore, The Missouri Controversy, 1818-1819 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966), 35. 29 Charles Z. Lincoln, ed., Messages from the Governors, n vols. (Albany: J.B. Lyon Company, 1909), 2:1022-3. 30 Cole, Van Buren, 58-62; Moore, Missouri Controversy, 179-85.

314

Notes to pages 11-15

31 Shaw Livermore, The Twilight of Federalism: The Disintegration of the Federalist Party, 1815-1830 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 74-9. For the names of the fifty-five men in this group, see New-York American, 17 April 1820, Geneva Gazette, 24 April 1820, and An Address of the Independent Federal Electors, of the State of New-York, on the Subject of the Election of a Governor and Lt. Governor, of the State, 3d ed. (Albany: Packard & Van Benthuysen, 1820). Their average age at this time was 38.5 years, with a mode of 31. 32 See row HM in appendix B, table 3, and the discussion of the index of relatedness in note 70 below. 33 For the politics of interest, see Charles S. Sydnor, American Revolutionaries in the Making: Political Practices in Washington's Virginia (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 45 and passim; and Alan Taylor, "'The Art of Hook & Snivey': Political Culture in Upstate New York during the 17905," Journal of American History 79, no. 4 (1993). 34 Hammond, Political Parties, 1:532. 35 New York National Advocate, 9 March 1820; Solomon Nadler, "The Green Bag: James Monroe and the Fall of De Witt Clinton," New-York Historical Society Quarterly 59, no. 3 (1975). 36 Lincoln, Messages, 2:1043-4. 37 Ibid., 2:1056. 38 Nathaniel H. Carter and William L. Stone, comps., Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1821, Assembled for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution of the State of New-York (Albany: E. and E. Hosford, 1821), 14-15, 661. The most comprehensive study of the 1821 convention remains John Anthony Casias, "The New York State Constitutional Convention of 1821 and Its Aftermath" (unpublished PH D diss., Columbia University, 1967). men over 39 According over Accordingtotothe theelectoral electoralcensus census authorized authorized inin1821, 1821,100,839 100,839 men twenty-one years of age held freeholds worth $250 over and above debts; 9,026 were $50 freeholders; 93,197 were $5 renters; and 57,039 might be described as "otherwise rated." See x/45, appendix. For the parallel changes in Connecticut and Massachusetts, see Richard J. Purcell, Connecticut in Transition: 1775-1818 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1963), 251-2; and Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Democracy, Liberty, and Property: The Stale Constitutional Conventions of the i82O's (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 11. 40 Charles A. Clinton to De Witt Clinton, Jr, 27 February 1828, Clinton Papers, Manuscript Division, NYSL; and DWCD, 18 March 1822 to 10 March 1827. 41 Sellers, Market Revolution; Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York: Noonday Press, 1990). Michael Kammen provides a useful discussion of syzygy in American life, in his

315 Notes to pages 15-17 People of Paradox: An Inquiry concerning the Origins of American Civilization (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), esp. 97-116. 42 Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics, rev. ed., (Homewood, 111.: Dorsey Press, 1978), chap. 11. 43 Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). 44 Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan and The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties. In his "Invention of the Ethnocultural Interpretation," American Historical Review 99, no. 2 (1994), Formisano points out that critics of the ethnocultural factor have overdrawn its importance in the mix of factors which he, Benson, and others have pointed to. 45 Major Wilson, Space, Time, and Freedom: The Quest for Nationality and the Irrepressible Conflict, 1815-1861 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974). 46 Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) and "The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North during the Second Party System," Journal of American History 77, no. 4 (1991). 47 Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and .Befe/(New York: Vintage Books, 1960). 48 John Ashworth, "Agrarians"and "Aristocrats": Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987). 49 Lawrence Frederick Kohl, The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 50 Harry L. Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in Cumberland County, North Carolina (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981). 51 Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 45, 54, 66, 68; Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 271-86. 52 James L. Huston, "The American Revolutionaries, the Political Economy of Aristocracy, and the American Concept of the Distribution of Wealth, 1765-1900," American Historical Review 98, no. 4 (1993): 1097. 53 Norma Basch, "Marriage, Morals, and Politics in the Election of 1828," Journal of American History 80, no. 3 (1993). 54 Howe, "Evangelical Movement and Political Culture"; Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 214-20; and Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 121-8. See also Carroll Smith-

316 Notes to pages 17-19

55

56 57

58

59

60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67

Rosenberg, "The Cross and the Pedestal: Women, Anti-Ritualism, and the Emergence of the American Bourgeoisie," in her Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford, 1985), 129-64, for the latitude - the "unpredictableness" - that was briefly allowed women during this period. Surveying New York's early-nineteenth-century development, L. Ray Gunn has argued that ideas of revolutionary republicanism "merged with traditional structures to produce a political system that was fundamentally incapable of the rational formulation and administration of policy for a broad public" (The Decline of Authority: Public Economic Policy and Political Development in New York State, 1800-1860 [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988], 247). John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962). More than twenty years ago, Michael Wallace contributed a valuable article which dissected the regular Republican development of the concept of party from 1815 through 1828; about five-eighths of his references to contemporary sources, however, came from 1823 and 1824, suggesting that the partisans who followed the lead of Martin Van Buren and the Albany Regency endured a significant moulding experience as the People's men emerged and then launched their assault ("Changing Concepts of Party in the United States: New York, 1815-1828," American Historical Review 74, no. 2 [1968]). The experience discomfited Martin Van Buren: in the spring of 1823 he would gladly have escaped to a seat on the United States Supreme Court (Niven, Martin Van Buren, 133-7, and Cole, Martin Van Buren, 113, 119). A useful introduction to these instruments can be found in Lee F. Anderson, Meredith W. Watts, Jr, and Allen R. Willcox, Legislative Roll-Call Analysis (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1966), esp. chaps. 3 and 4Throughout this period the constitutional size of the New York State senate was 32 men. There were 115 men in the 1815 assembly. After this, the assembly ranged from 126 to 128 members (CL, 325-8, 373-82). New-York Evening Post, 16 February 1816. Albany Argus, 28 March 1817. Utica Columbian Gazette, 15 February 1820. Albany Argus, 13 July 1821. Cf. Albany Argus, 19 September 1824; Cooperstown Watch-Tower, 17 September 1824; New York National Union, 23 October 1824; and New-York Statesman, 25 September 1824. Utica Sentinel & Gazette, 22 September 1826. Albany Argus, 6 October 1826. Utica Sentinel & Gazette, I August 1828.

317 Notes to pages 19-20 68 Albany Argus, 29 September 1828. 69 Albany National Observer, 22 August 1828. 70 This index was computed for each group by the following steps: (i) the total number of category i and category 2 relationships was divided by the total number of individuals in both categories; (2) the result was then multiplied by the figure produced by dividing the number of individuals in both categories by the group population, with the result multiplied by 100; (3) the result of this step was then multiplied by the figure produced by dividing the number of individuals in category I by the number of individuals in both categories. The indexes appear to reflect the social composition of the bodies in question, in spite of the chronological position of these bodies in the period. For example, the indexes for the assemblies of 1815 and 1828 are 173 and 141; the indexes for the assemblies of 1821, 1822, and 1823 are 124, 116, and no, respectively. 71 One important set of returns did not come from newspapers. The town-level figures from 1815 through 1828 may be found in the Board of Elections in Delhi. 72 Spafford's work was published in Albany in 1824. AJ26, appendix c, digests social and economic data from the state's census of 1825. AJ26, appendix G, presents the enrolment, term, attendance, and financial data from the towns which were presented annually in the other journals of the period. We have used these figures to construct annual indexes of education, discussed below. 73 Readers unfamiliar with this procedure may wish to consult Charles M. Dollar, Historian's Guide to Statistics: Quantitative Analysis and Historical Research (Huntington, NY: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1971), chap. 3. 74 In exploring the voting pattern of New York City, we have profited from a rich literature that has probed the social and economic tensions on Manhattan: Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Paul A. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763-1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); and Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). 75 Jackson Turner Main, Political Parties before the Constitution (Chapel Hill; University of North Carolina Press, 1973), esp. chaps. 12 and 13. 76 Hendrik Hartog, tracing the transformation of the Corporation of the City of New York from a body empowered by its public property to a legal creature of the Government of the State of New York, has pointed out that "formal dependence is not the same as powerlessness." New York, like other American cities, has shown "continuing success in harnessing state power to

3' 8 Notes to pages 20-4 serve local interests." See his Public Property and Private Power: The Corporation of the City of New York in American Law, 1730-18jo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 263. C H A P T E R TWO

1 With 116,134 votes cast, 74,732 favoured the new constitution and 41,402 opposed it. See Jabez D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New-York, from the Ratification of the Federal Constitution to December, 1840, 2 vols. (Albany: Van Benthuysen, 1842), 2:94; and Martin Van Buren to John A. King, 4 February 1822, in Charles R. King, ed., The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, 6 vols. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1894-1900), 458. 2 D[e] W[itt] Qlinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 18 December 1821, and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 5 April 1822, HPP. 3 Cf. Hammond, Political Parties, 2:97-8; Jabez D. Hammond to Martin Van Buren, 9 February 1822, MVBP; DWCD, 29 December and 4 March 1821; and Stephen Van Rensselaer to Solomon Van Rensselaer, 19 February 1822, Van Rensselaer-Rankin Papers, NYSL. 4 DWCD, 15 April 1822; C. Hartley Grattan, The Three Jameses: A Family of Minds; Henry James, Jr., William James, Henry James (New York: New York University Press, 1962) 6; Andrew W. Young, History of Chatitauqua County (Buffalo, 1875), 595; DAB, s.v. "Haines, Charles Glidden"; Alice P. Kenney, The Gansevoorts of Albany: Dutch Patricians in the Upper Hudson Valley (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1969), 153-4; and Albany Daily Advertiser, 23 April 1822. 5 DWCD, i January 1823; Hugh Hastings, comp., Military Minutes of the Council of Appointment of the State of New York, 1783-1821, 4 vols. (Albany: James B. Lyon, 1901), 3:1963, 2328, 2352. 6 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 5 January 1823, HPP. 7 This median was determined from a sample of 296 ages of sitting assemblymen from 1815 through 1822. Only fifty-two, or 17.6 percent of the ages were thirty-four years old or younger. 8 Albany Argus, 22 March 1822; Josiah Hedden to Perry G. Childs, 21 January 1822, Charles Porter to Perry G. Childs, 24 February 1822, and Nathan Williams to Perry G. Childs, 26 February 1822, PGCP; Donald Fraser to Peter B. Porter, 2 March 1822, PBP, 04; and Ithaca Republican Chronicle, 27 March 1822. In addition to Greene C. Bronson, Harvey Watson of Schoharie County defected to the Bucktails. 9 Michael Ulshoeffer to Rufus King, 3 March 1822, RKP; Rudolph Bunner to Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, I April 1822, vp; Ray W. Irwin, Daniel D. Tompkins, Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1968), 279-94; Simeon Ford to

319 Notes to pages 24-7

10

11 12 13

14 15

16 17

18 19

20

21

John C. Spencer, 10 March 1822, Misc. Ms. 14926, NYSL; L.B. Langworthy to John W. Taylor, 14 April 1822, JWTP; Albany Argus, 19 March 1822, and New-York American, 15 April 1822. Edward Livingston to Jesse Hoyt, 21 January 1822, quoted in William L. Mackenzie, The Life and Times of Martin Van Buren: The Correspondence of His Friends, Family and Pupils; Together with Brief Notices, Sketches and Anecdotes (Boston, 1846), 186; [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 5 April 1822, HPP; and Ambrose Spencer to Martin Van Buren, 23 February 1822, MVBP. Stephen Van Rensselaer to Theodore Sedgwick, 4 April 1822, Sedgwick Papers, MHS. Albert H. Tracy to Oliver Forward, 8 April 1822, Misc. Oliver Forward Mss., Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. Albany Argus, 5 April 1822; Batavia Spirit of the Times, 5 April 1822; Goshen Independent Republican, i April 1822; Ithaca Republican Chronicle, 27 March and 17 April 1822; and Norwich Journal, 20 March 1822. Heman J. Redfield to John C. Spencer, n April 1822, Misc. Ms. 14925, NYSL. Adeline Van Rensselaer to Solomon Van Rensselaer, 27 December 1821, Van Rensselaer-Rankin Papers, NYSL. For accounts of Van Buren's experiences in this affair, see John Niven, Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 111-16; and Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 82-5. Letter of 25 December 1821, in Catharine V.R. Bonney, comp., A Legacy of Historical Gleanings, 2 vols. (Albany, 1875), 1:369. De Witt Clinton to Solomon Van Rensselaer, 17 January 1821, Henry Post, Jr, to Solomon Van Rensselaer, 22 January 1821, and [De Witt Clinton] to Solomon Van Rensselaer, 10 December 1821, Van Rensselaer-Rankin Papers, NYSL. De Witt Clinton to Ferris Pell and De Witt Clinton to David Thomas, 5 January 1822, DWCP-CU, 20:96-7. Solomon Van Rensselaer to Stephen Van Rensselaer, 26 December 1821, in Bonney, Legacy, 1:369-70; John A. King to Rufus King, I February 1822, RKP; and Moses I. Cantine to Martin Van Buren, 6 January 1822, MVBP. Thomas R. Ross to Return J. Meigs, 31 December 1821, Daniel D. Tompkins to Jonathan Thompson, 4 January 1822, Martin Van Buren to Benjamin F. Knower, Charles E. Dudley, Roger Skinner, William A. Duer, and Moses I. Cantine, 5 January 1822, and Daniel D. Tompkins, Rufus King, and Martin Van Buren to Return J. Meigs, 4 January 1822, all in Bonney, Legacy, 1:371-6, 388. De Witt Clinton to Solomon Van Rensselaer, 5 January 1822, and Charles A. Clinton to Solomon Van Rensselaer, 6 January 1822, in Bonney, Legacy,

320 Notes to pages 27-9 374) 3775 Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 7795 to 1848, 12 vols. (New York: AMS Press, 1970), 5:479-82. 22 Solomon Van Rensselaer to [William] Bay, 7 January 1822, and Return J. Meigs, Jr, to Solomon Southwick, 7 January 1822, in Bonney, Legacy, i:378-923 Martin Van Buren to Charles E. Dudley, 10 January 1822, in Bonney, Legacy, 1:382-4. 24 Albany Argus, 22 January 1822; Albany Register, 23 January 1822. 25 De Witt Clinton to Jabez D. Hammond, 12 January 1822, Misc. Ms. 3561, NYSL; DWCD, 22-5 January 1822; Albany Argus, i February 1822; and Bonney, Legacy, 1:394-6. 26 Myron Holley to Orville L. Holley, 23 January 1822, Myron Holley Papers, NYSL. 27 William L. Marcy to John Bailey, 31 January 1822, Washburn Papers, MHS; Martin Van Buren to Charles E. Dudley, 10 January 1822, Add. MVBP; Bonney, Legacy, 1:382-4; Samuel A. Talcott to Christopher Van Deventer, 26 January 1822, Christopher Van Deventer Papers, WLC; Reuben Hyde Walworth to Azariah Cutting Flagg, 27 January 1822, ACFP; Martin Van Buren to John A. King, 4 February 1822, in King, Correspondence, 6:458; and the note by John A. King on the reverse of the last manuscript, RKP. 28 Hammond, Political Parlies, 2:91-2. 29 MCA, 4 February to 17 April 1822. 30 For Daniel Cruger of Steuben County, a representative case, see Daniel Cruger to Perry G. Childs, 28 January 1822, PGCP. For Peter Robinson of Broome County, another example, see Briant Stoddard and Joseph Patterson to Perry G. Childs, 2 February 1822, Chester Patterson to Samuel Smith et al., 2 February 1822, Samuel Smith to Perry G. Childs, 4 February 1822, and statement of John Wasson, 21 February 1822, PGCP. 31 For the case of Ella Smith of Le Roy, see William Howard and Daniel Alcord to Perry G. Childs, 6 February 1822, PGCP. For Samuel Woodworth of Bridgewater in Oneida County, another example, see John Ruger to Samuel A. Talcott, 3 February 1822, John Ruger to Henry Clark, 22 February 1822, and John Ruger to Perry G. Childs, 27 February 1822, PGCP. 32 David Maldwyn Ellis, Landlords and Farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk Region, 1790-1850 (New York: Octagon Books, 1967), 122-6. 33 Isaac Pierson to Jeromus Johnson, 2 February 1822, PGCP. 34 Ichabod Pratt to Perry G. Childs, 5 March 1822, Robert R. Hunter to Roger Skinner, 26 January 1822, and Peter Sharpe to Perry G. Childs, 25 January 1822, PGCP. 35 John Duffy, A History of Public Health in New York City, 1625-1866, 2 vols. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968-74), 222-7, 34, 35~6; New-

321

Notes to pages 29-31

York Evening Post, 17-19 July 1821; A.E.M. Purdy, ed., Minutes of the Medical Society of the County of New York, 1806-1878 (New York, 1879), 222-7, 234, 235-6; John Watts to Anna Rutherford Watts, 17 March 1820, Watts Papers, cu; and John C. Dalton, History of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New-York; Medical Department of the College (New York, 1888), 44-51. 36 James Campbell to Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, 25 January 1822, and Wright Post to Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, I, 16 February 1822, VP; "Minutes of the Regents of the University of the State of New York," 11 February 1822, NYSA. 37 De Witt Clinton to William Bayard, 22 March 1822, Misc. De Witt Clinton Papers, NYHS. 38 Bayley remained in office through April 1823, and thus served during the yellow fever epidemic of 1822 (CL, 217). 39 Insurance companies, since the successful quo warranto proceedings in People v. Utica Insurance Co. (1818), could not function as banks - though they might lend bonds and de facto postnotes. See Donald M. Roper, "Martin Van Buren as Tocqueville's Lawyer: The Jurisprudence of Politics," Journal of the Early Republic 2, no. 2 (1982): 183-7; and Fritz Redlich, Molding of American Banking: Men and Ideas, 2 parts (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968), 2:61. 40 Redlich, Molding, 2:60-1; [Jacob Barker] to Rufus King, 22 March 1822, RKP; Albany Gazette and Daily Advertiser, 26 June and 19 August 1822; Benjamin E Butler to Jacob Barker, 5 September 1822, Jacob Barker Papers, NYHS; and 145, chap. 63. In the assembly, the Clintonians supported the statute reviving the Dutchess County Insurance Company by a vote of thirty-nine to six with eight absent. The Bucktails voted thirty-five nays to thirty-three ayes with four absent. See -4/45, 598-9, for the vote, and for the party identification of the members cf. CL with the Pittsburgh Republican, 2 June 1821, Oswego Palladium, 18 May 1821, and Rochester Telegraph, 15 May 1821. 41 De Witt Clinton to Nathaniel G. Ingraham, 21 February 1822, De Witt Family Papers, Syracuse University; MCA, 21 February 1822. 42 DWCD, 11-16 February 1822; Dorothy Gregg, "John Stevens, General Entrepreneur, 1749-1838," in William Miller, ed., Men in Business, Essays on the Historical Role of the Entrepreneur (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 14743 144, chap. 146, sees. I, 10; Arthur James Weise, The Swartwout Chronicles, 1338-1899, and the Ketelhuyn Chronicles, 1451-1899 (New York, 1899), 392-7; William Hooker, Hooker's New Pocket Plan of the City of New York (New York; W. Hooker, 1824) and Plan of the City of New York [New York: W. Hooker, 1825]; LA4?, 10; and 4/45, 132, 183, 277, 560-1. 44 LA47, 69; Albany Argus, 9 June 1820; and "Memorial of Robert

322

Notes to pages 31 -5

Cheesbrough [sic], and Others, in Senate, February 6, 1822," NYLD.

45 New York National Advocate for the Country, 22 February 1822. 46 New-York American, 27 February 1822; Albany Argus, i March 1822; A/45, 560-1, 747, 1049-50; and 5/45, 356. 47 DWCD, 4 February to 17 April 1822, passim; Myron Holley to Orville L. Holley, 23 January 1822, Myron Holley Papers, NYSL; and New-York American, 22 March 1822. 48 For the votes on the insurance companies and the laws governing them, see AJ45, 246-7, 258-60, 264-5, 293-6, 314-15, 466, 526-7, 540-3, 563-4, 568-9, 571-7, 584-5, 587-9, 598-603, 1059-60; and £45, chaps. 23, 50, 51, J55, 2 I 5> 24°- The roll calls dealing with the bank questions can be found in AJ45, 521-2, 523-4, 559-60, 561-2, 567, 586-7, 597-8, 602-3, 610-11, 612-13, 691-2, 821-2, 1007-9. 49 /U45, 390-91,402. 50 Ibid., 877, 879; Canandaigua Ontario Repository, 16 April 1822. 51 E.G. Genet, "Petition of E.G. Gengt. To the honorable the Legislature of the State of New-York, in Senate and Assembly convened - In Assembly, 18 March 1822. No. 143," i, 4, in NYLD; DWCD, 29 January, 2, 15 February, 15, 16, 18, 19, 28 March, and 2, 4, 5, 8, I j , 12, 13 April 1822; AJ45, 334; Henry James Genet, "Release of De Witt Clinton as Security," I August 1822, and Maria Louise Genet, "Release of De Witt Clinton as Security," i November 1823, Misc. Genet Mss., NYHS; 14$, chap. 266; and Martin Van Buren to E.G. Genet, 8 March 1822, Edmond C. Genet Papers, LC. 52 Edmund Charles GenSt, Address on the Means of Opening New Sources of Wealth for the Northern States. Delivered on the igth October, 1821 before the Agricultural Society of the County of Rensselaer, and the Public Attending Their Proceedings (Troy, 1821), 8; and Gen£t, "Petition," 1-3. 53 x/45, 334, 814, 908; 5745, 97, 259; "An Act to Tax Bank Stock. In Senate, March 28, 1822. No. 159" and "An Act to Equalize Taxation. In Assembly, March 18, 1822. No. 144," NYLD; New-York Evening Post, 19 March 1816; Utica Columbian Gazette, 27 March 1821; Newburgh Political Index, 23 March 1819; and CL, 130, 167, 326, 368-70. Viele was thirty-three at this time. See Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887), s.v. "Viele, John Ludovickus." For Clinton's comment on Viele's understanding, see D[e] Wfitt] C[linton] to Henry Post, Jr, 12 September 1824, HPP. 54 AJ45, 947-51, 993-6, 1010-11. 55 Albany Argus, 5 April 1822; x/45, 1010-11. 56 DWCD, 4 April 1822; [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 5 April 1822, HPP; Albany Gazette and Daily Advertiser, 29 March and I, 12 April 1822; Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 5, 26 March 1822; and 5/45, 271 et seq.

323 Notes to pages 35-9 57 William Bayard, "Memorial of the New York Chamber of Commerce. In Senate, April 10, 1822," and Matthew Clarkson et al., "Memorial of the Several Banks and Insurance Companies of the City of New-York. In Senate, April 10, 1822," NYLD. 58 New-York Evening Post, 9 April 1822; Correspondence of George and Elisha Tibbits, Tibbits Papers, passim, NYSL. 59 DWCD, 8-12 April 1822. 60 SJ45, 17, 25, 48-51, 94, 181. 61 For Dudley's role in financial institutions, see Albany Argus, 11 June 1813, 6 June 1817, i t June 1819, 6 January 1826, i January 1827, and 9 January 1828; Albany Daily Advertiser, 7 January 1823; and New-York Evening Post, 4 January 1821 and 22 November 1822. 62 s/45, 320. 63 New-York American, 15 April 1822. 64 5/45, 334, 345, 349. 65 Letter of 21 April 1822, RKP. 66 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 9 April 1822, HPP. 67 DWCD, i January to 17 April 1822. 68 Hammond, Political Parties, 2:93; Codman Hislop, Eliphalet Nott (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1971), 195, 197-8; and AJ42, 896-905. 69 Art. 7, sec. 11, of the constitution of 1821, in Nathaniel H. Carter and William L. Stone, comps., Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention 0/1821 Assembled for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution of the State of New-York (Albany: E. and E. Hosford, 1821), 666; and AJ45, 846-7. 70 Hislop, Nott, 153-65; Samuel M. Hopkins to Eliphalet Nott, [23 February 1822], and Eliphalet Nott to Gulian C. Verplanck, n.d., photostats, Eliphalet Nott Papers, Union College; and 145, chap. 163, sec. i. 71 Hislop, Nott, 193-4, 197-8; Eliphalet Nott's offer of terms for the $36,000 loan, i May 1821, with William James's acceptance, Draft Bond of Union College to William James and Eliphalet Nott, 12 October 1822, Assignment of New York State Bank Stock to William James by Henry Yates, Jr, Treasurer, Union College, 13 May 1823, William James Papers, Union College; and In Chancery, before the Chancellor. Archibald Mclntyre, John B. Yates, Henry Yates, James Mclntyre, and John Ely, Jr. vs. The Trustees of Union College in the Town of Schenectady, in the State of New York, and Eliphalet Nott, a Trustee of Said College (Albany? 1834?), schedules B and c. 72 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 16 December 1822 and 8 January 1823, HPP; John Samuel Ezell, Fortune's Merry Wheel: The Lottery in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 128-9.

324 Notes to pages 39-43 73 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 5 September 1822, HPR 74 William Duane to Henry Post, Jr, 15 September 1822, and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 25 April 1823, HPP; Kim Tousley Phillips, "William Duane, Revolutionary Editor" (unpublished PH D diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1968), 517. The sum involved - at most, $3,000 - paled beside the $4.5 million which William James and his associates in land dealings then thought to offer for the Holland Land Company's properties. See copy of William James and Associates to Paul Busti, 12 September 1822, Tibbits Papers, NYSL. 75 145, chap. 36, sec. 4; 5/45, 18, 42; AJ4$, 356, 407, 510-11, 974-83; and Nott's offer of terms, I May 1821, William James Papers, Union College. 76 The Whole of the Documentary Evidence, Relative to the Controversy between the Regents of the University, and the Trustees of Union College: Together with the Opinion of the Late Chief Justice and Other Counsel (Schenectady, 1823). See 15 for "Regency." Among other statements, this pamphlet includes the Union College committee's response to the regents' queries. This response was first printed in AJ46, 1000-17. See 1001 for "Regency." 77 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 16 March [1823] and 25 April 1823, HPP.

78 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 16 December 1822, and [De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr], 7 October 1822, HPP. 79 Ithaca Republican Chronicle, 19 June 1822; Albany Register, 27 July 1822. 80 Albany Register, 7, 27 July and 10, 27 August 1822; Samuel W. Jones, Diary, 29 July 1822, Schenectady Historical Society. 81 De Witt Clinton to Samuel Wilkeson, 7 September 1822, De Witt Clinton Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Public Library; [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 29 August and 21 September 1822, HPP. 82 DWCD, 6, 9, 23 September 1822; Utica Columbian Gazette, 15 October 1822. 83 DWCD, i August to 3 September 1822; Albany Daily Advertiser, 7 October 1822; Schenectady Cabinet, 9 October 1822; Archiblald Mclntyre to Duncan McMartin, 18 December 1822, Mclntyre typescripts, RHC; and Albany Argus, 6 December 1822. 84 Albany Register, 30 March 1804 and 30 January 1817; Utica Columbian Gazette, 21 April 1807, 14 March 1809, 6 April 1813, and 2 November 1819; New-York Evening Post, I I November 1812 and 15 November 1820; Onondaga Register, 15 November 1820; Schenectady Cabinet, 20 November 1822; Albany Daily Advertiser, 30 December 1824; Utica Oneida Observer, 13 November 1827; Utica Sentinel & Gazette, 11 November 1828; Laws, Thirty-Fifth Session, chap. 64; The Utica Directory for iSi/(Utica, 1817), 16; Utica Western Recorder, 18 July 1826; and Geneva Gazette, 30 October 1822.

325 Notes to pages 43-5 85 CL, 371-2, 376-8; Pomeroy Jones, Annals and Recollections ofOneida County (Rome, 1851), 389; and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 4, 21 October 1822, HPP. 86 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 21, 30 August, 10 October, 25 November, 30 December 1822, 5 January 1823 and [De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr], 27 December 1822 and 8 January 1823, HPP. 87 Young's Fourth District following nominated a slate that included Colonel Archibald Mclntyre of Johnstown. In spite of the fact that the colonel had been a Bucktail assembly candidate for Montgomery County in 1820 and, as a member of the assembly that sat in 1812, had endorsed Tompkins's prorogation of the legislature, some voters would confuse him with the excomptroller, drawing a goodly number of Clintonian votes. In fact, Mclntyre "the namesake" ran ahead of the rest of the Young ticket. Clinton concluded that the Fourth District ticket was "intended to bear against Yates," presumably by deceiving Clintonians and bringing them into the Young faction. He therefore determined that "we shall get up a ticket & carry it." The candidates on that ticket polled 43.9 percent of the district's senatorial votes. See [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 21, 27 September [1822], HPP; Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 11 September 1822; Albany Register, 31 March 1812; Albany Argus, 7 April 1820; Archibald Mclntyre to James Mclntyre, 12 May 1820, Mclntyre Papers, RHC; Norwich Journal, 25 December 1822. 88 Albany Argus, 29 October and 10 December 1822; De Witt Clinton to Cadwallader D. Colden, 2 January 1823, De Witt Clinton Papers, DWCP-CU, 20:280-3. Comparing Clinton's 1820 vote in forty-eight counties with Huntington's 1822 vote in those same constituencies, R = 0.6622, the slope is 0.7763, and the intercept is -0.0462. 89 Ithaca Republican Chronicle, 28 November and 19 December 1821; De Witt Clinton to Charles A. Clinton, 24 November 1821, CP-WHN; and Albany New-York Statesman, 18 December 1821. 90 The New-York Historical Society preserves the fourth number of the new journal, The New-York Statesman & Advertiser for the Country, 15 January 1822. For De Witt Clinton's New York City visit, see DWCD, 19 October to December 1821. 91 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 16 March [1823], HPP; and DWCD, January 1823 to December 1824. 92 William Jay stepped in to ease the way for Clinton in negotiation with his sister, the owner of the house. See Maria Jay Banyer to John Jay, 2 March 1818, John Jay Papers, cu; De Witt Clinton to Harmanus Bleecker, 19 December 1822, and Clinton to William Jay, 6 January 1823, DWCP-CU; and cf. Klinck's Albany Directory for the Year 1822: Containing an Alphabetical List of Residents within the City, and a Variety of Other Interesting Matter (Albany, 1822), 23, and T.V. Cuyler's Albany Directory for the Year

326 Notes to pages 45-8

93

94 95 96 97 98 99

100 101 102

103 104

1824, Containing an Alphabetical List of Residents within the City and a Variety of Other Interesting Matter (Albany, 1824), 25. Notes on all but one of these trips are to be found in DWCD between the entries for 17 and 18 March 1822. The exception is Clinton's trip to New York City beginning on 25 April and ending with his return on 5 May 1822. DWCD, 25 April and 5 May 1822; LA47, 466. Reade was then spelled Reed. New York National Advocate for the Country, 7 May 1822; New-York American, 29 April 1822. New York National Advocate for the Country, 3 May 1822. DWCD, 23 May to 16 June 1822. DWCD, 23 May to 3 June 1822. Evidence of the concern of the medical profession about its role in legal proceedings can be seen in the contribution that Dr Theodric Romeyn Beck of the Fairfield Medical College was to present in August 1823. This was his two-volume Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, published in Albany. For comment on the nature of the rivalry in the medical profession, see Daniel H. Calhoun, Professional Lives in America: Structure and Aspiration, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), chap. 2; for the threat that Thomsonian medicine posed to the medical profession during this period, see John Duffy, The Healers: A History of American Medicine (Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 109-12, and Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 27-30. Catherine L. Albanese explored the ideological implications of the Thomsonian movement in "Body Politic and Body Perfect: Religion, Politics, and Thomsonian Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America," a paper presented to the Organization of American Historians in 1991. DWCD, 7-12 June 1822; Albany Argus, 2 June 1820. DWCD, 12, 13 June 1822; George S. Conover, ed., History of Ontario County, New York (Syracuse, 1893), 169, 205, 220. The Albany Argus printed it on 4 January 1822, and it is reprinted in Charles Z. Lincoln, Messages from the Governors, 11 vols. (Albany: James B. Lyon, 1909), 2: 1087-110. All the New York State newspapers of the period carried the complete text of the governor's annual message. Albany Argus, 8 January 1822. Robert Troup, A Vindication of the Claim of Elkanah Watson, Esq. to the Merit of Projecting the Lake Canal Policy, as Created by the Canal Act of March, 1792. And also a Vindication of the Claim of the Late General Schuyler, to the Merit of Drawing that Act, and Procuring Its Passage through the Legislature (Geneva, 1821); Elkanah Watson, Journal, vol. 8, April 1822, Elkanah Watson Papers, NYSL; Wendell E. Tripp, "Robert Troup: A Quest for Security in a Turbulent New Nation, 1775-1832" (PH D diss., Columbia University, 1973), 310, 314.

327 Notes to pages 48-52 105 The Canal Policy of the State of New-York: Delineated in a Letter to Robert Troup, Esquire. By Tacitus (Albany, 1821), iv, viii. 106 Robert Troup, A Letter to the Honorable Brockholst Livingston, Esq. One of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States on the Lake Canal Policy of the State of New-York, With a Supplement, and Additional Documents (Albany, 1822), passim. 107 DWCD, 30 May and 15, 16 June 1822. 108 DWCD, 7-11 June 1822; David Thomas to De Witt Clinton, 12 December 1822, DWCP-CU, 10:65. 109 David Thomas to De Witt Clinton, 12 December 1822, DWCP-CU, 10:65. 110 "One of Engineer Thomas' Reports," The Holland Land Company and Canal Construction in Western New York: The Buffalo-Black Rock Harbor Papers; Journals and Documents: Buffalo Historical Society Publications 14(1910): 367-8. in James Geddes to De Witt Clinton, 28 April to 3 May 1822, DWCP-CU, 10:18, 28,43, 61. 112 Memorial to the Honorable the Legislature of the State of New York [by] the Citizens of the Village of Buffalo (Buffalo, 1821). 113 Thomas's book was published in Auburn in 1819. The Hibernicus letters ran from 24 June to 13 December 1820. Clinton's book was Letters on the Natural History and Internal Resources of the State of New-York (New York, 1822). 114 Sheldon Thompson to Peter B. Porter, 12 March 1822, PBP, 03; Chrisfield Johnson, Centennial History of Erie County, New York (Buffalo, 1876), 293; and DWCD, 31 December 1821 through 12 February 1822. 115 DWCD, 16, 18, 21 January 1822; William A. Bird to Augustus Porter, 18 February 1822, Augustus Porter Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society; and James Geddes to Peter B. Porter, 12 [February] 1822, PBP, D2.

116 DWCD, i March 1822; Sheldon Thompson to Peter B. Porter, 12 March 1822, PBP, 03; David E. Evans to Joseph Ellicott, 20 March 1822, quoted in Holland Land Company and Canal Construction in Western New York (Buffalo, 1910), 173. 117 James Geddes to Peter B. Porter, 2 [February] 1822, and Sheldon Thompson to Peter B. Porter, 12 March 1822, PBP, 02 and 03; Gideon Granger to De Witt Clinton, 4 April 1822, DWCP-CU, 10:40; and Michael Ulshoeffer to Martin Van Buren, 19 March 1822, MVBP. 118 Augustus Porter to De Witt Clinton, 23 March 1822, DWCP-CU, 10:38. 119 Buffalo Patriot, 21 May 1822; 145, chap. 251, sees, i, 2. 120 Peter B. Porter to the canal commissioners, 18 April 1822, quoted in "Buffalo and Black Rock Harbor Papers," The Holland Land Company and Canal Construction in Western New York, 357; De Witt Clinton to James Geddes, 30 March 1822, DWCP-CU, 20:121; and AJ, 496.

328 Notes to pages 53-4 121 DWCD, 16-19 June 1823. 122 De Witt Clinton to Charles Alexander Clinton, 1,19 February 1823, CPWHN; De Witt Clinton to Myron Holley, 15 April 1823, DWCP-CU, 20:313; CL, 430; Myron Holley to Luther Holly, n November 1821, and Myron Holley to Orville Luther Holley, 6 March 1820, 16 January 1822, and 16 January 1823, Myron Holley Papers, NYSL; De Witt Clinton to Stephen Van Rensselaer, 18 February 1823, De Witt Clinton Papers, NYsL; and Batavia Spirit of the Times, 28 February 1823, copy in the De Witt Clinton collection of newspapers, NYSL. 123 DWCD, 19 June 1823. 124 [De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr], 5 June 1823, and D[e] W[itt] C[linton] to Henry Post, Jr, 26 June 1823, HPP; Albany Argus, 10 December 1824. 125 His "Reading Diary" is bound in DWCD after 23 July 1822 (and is hereinafter cited as RDi-i822]. For the dating of this "Reading Diary," see 31, 35,41,48,65,67. 126 For examples, see "List of Books Purchased at the Sale of Governor Clinton's Library" in "Albany Library Memorandum Book, 1827," Harmanus Bleecker Library; Frances Wright D'Arusmont, Views of Society and Manners in America; in a Series of Letters from that Country to a Friend in England, During the Years 1818, 1819, and 1820. By an Englishwoman (New York, 1821); James Edward Smith, ed., A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus, 2 vols. (London, 1821); Thomas Nuttall, A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory, during the Year 1819. With Occasional Observations on the Manners of the Aborigines. Illustrated by a Map and other Engravings (Philadelphia, 1821); Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, 4 vols. (New Haven, 1821-22); Louis Simond, Switzerland; or a Journal of a Tour and Residence in that Country in the Years 1817, 1818, and 1819; Followed by an Historical Sketch of the Manners and Customs of Ancient and Modern Helvetia, 2 vols. (Boston, 1822); Robert Ker Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylon etc. ... 1817-1820, 2 vols. (London, 1821-22); and RDI-I822, 15, 28, 33, 42-6, 52, 54, 56, 66, 73, 75, 80, 90. 127 These notes from Simond's Switzerland and Long and James's Expedition appeared in a second "Reading Diary" (hereinafter RD2-I822), which is bound in DWCD with Clinton's travel notes found between 17 and 18 March 1822. For the month of the publication date of the second volume of Long and James's Expedition, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1822-23), see North American Review 16 (1823): 227. 128 De Witt Clinton to Samuel Latham Mitchill, 20 January 1818, and to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 19 January 1818, DWCP-CU, 19:89-90, 92-4.

329 Notes to pages 54-7 129 RDI-I822, 9; A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America Extending above Four Thousand Miles, between New France and New Mexico; with a Description of the Great Lakes, Cataracts, Rivers, Plants, and Animals. Also, the Manners, Customs, and Languages of the Several Native Indians; and the Advantages of Commerce with Those Different Nations (London, 1698), 30. 130 Cf. RDI-I822,19, 68; and Guillaume Antoine Olivier, Atlas to Illustrate the Travels in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt & Persia (London, 1801), 81; Richard Henry Bonneycastle, Spanish America; or a Descriptive Historical, and Geographical Account of the Dominions of Spain in the Western Hemisphere, Continental & Insular, 2 vols. (London, 1818), 1:294; and RD2-I822, [2].

131 RDi-i822, 19, 58, 67, 72, 74; and RD2-I822, 3, 5, 7, 8. 132 RDI-I822, 17, 29, 31, 62. In addition to Bonnycastle, these were as follows: William Walton, Present State of the Spanish Colonies; Including a Particular Report of Hispanola, or the Spanish Port of Santo Domingo; with a General Survey of the Settlements on the South Continent of America, 2 vols. (London, 1810); Henry Bolingbroke, A Voyage to the Demerary, Containing a Statistical Account of the Settlements There (Philadelphia, 1813); Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, The General History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America, Commonly Call'd, the West Indies, from the First Discovery Thereof with the Best Accounts the People Could Give of Their Antiquities Collected from the Original Relations Sent to the Kings of Spain, 6 vols. (London, 1740); and Alexander von Humbolt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent during the Years 1799-1804 (Philadelphia, 1815). 133 William Davis Robinson, Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution; Including a Narrative of the Expedition of General Xavier Mina ... With Some Observations on the Practicability of Opening a Commerce between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (Philadelphia, 1820), chap. 13; De Witt Clinton to Joseph Foos, 26 November 1822, DWCP-CU, 20:253-6. 134 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 28 July and 11 July [sic for August] 1823, HPP. 135 i Cor. 12 and Rom. 13:1-7. For the importance of this theme to Clinton's contemporaries, see Ralph Ketcham, Presidents above Party: The First American Presidency, Ij8 !54; Edward Pessen, "The Wealthiest New Yorkers of the Jacksonian Era: A New List," New-York Historical Society Quarterly 54, no. 2 (1970): 155-6, 159; New-York Evening Post, 23 April 1824, 10 February 1825, 2 July 1826, and 17 October 1829; and £47, chap. 75. Modestly wealthy, Crolius was assessed for $1,000 personalty along with a house and lot valued at $4,000 in 1824, but he owned four other Sixth Ward properties ranging in value from $900 to $3,300; see Record of Assessment, New York City Municipal Archives. William A. Thompson, Moses Cunningham, Jacobus Dyckman, and William A. Davis tended to be active in the wards of their residence. See £448, 140, 481; New-York American, 22 October 1822 and 4 October 1823; David M. Matteson, Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784-1831, 21 vols. (New York: City of New York, 1917), 11:98, 12:762; New-York Evening Post, 15 August 1818, 6 June 1821, I April and i October 1822, and 2 January 1824; and Shannon, Manual 1868, 652. In 1821 the Fourth Ward had the mean ratio of $250 freeholders to $5 rentpayers, and it was probably still true, as it had been in 1815, that "the economic strata within that ward ... suggest the city-wide pattern" (Edmund Philip Willis, "Social Origins of Political Leadership in New York City from the Revolution to 1815" [unpublished PH D diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1967], 125). For other comments on the representativeness of the Fourth Ward, see Rock, Artisans, 115-16, 154-5. F°r the residences of

355 Notes to pages 131-2

67

68

69

70

John L. Broome, John D. Brown, and John Rathbone, Jr, see LA48, 96, 367; LA49, 95, 357; and Minutes of the Common Council, 12:362. Bolton, Westchester, 2:516; Otto Sackersdorff, Maps of Farms Commonly Called the Blue Book. Drawn from the Original on File in the Street Commissioner's Office in the City of New York, together with Lines of Streets and Avenues, Laid Out by John Randel, Jr., 1819-1820 (New York, 1887), plates 6, 24, 25; Pessen, "Wealthiest New Yorkers," 158, 160, 171; 135, chap. 169, 147, chaps. 136, 148; New-York Evening Post, 30 April 1824; and Schenectady Cabinet, 28 December 1824. John C. Cooley, Rathbone Genealogy (Syracuse, 1898), 354-5; Lanier, Century of Banking, 128; 135, chap. 192, 1,37, chap. 115; 147, chap. 154; and New-York Evening Post, 6 July 1822, 27 January and 29 November 1823, 28 January and 30 April 1824, 2 February and 30 November 1825, i February and 27 July 1826, 29 November 1827, 2 February and i December 1828. In 1815, "John Rathbone" had been assessed on $17,000 realty and $5,000 personalty in the Second Ward. That figure fell to $3,500 realty in 1824, with an additional $2,000 realty in the Eighth Ward; see Records of Assessment, New York City Municipal Archives. When, in April 1824, De Witt Clinton was removed from the Canal Commission, Rathbone acted as secretary of the New York City protest meeting that formed in City Hall Park. In the autumn, he became the People's candidate for Congress. His shift was consistent with his interest in Ohio lands and his willingness to invest in Ohio canal development. Nathaniel H. Carter and William L. Stone, Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1821, Assembled for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution of the State of New-York (Albany: E. and E. Hosford, 1821), 688; New-York Evening Post, 7 November 1804, 4 November 1806, 4 April 1809, 15 April 1818, 15 April 1819, I I April 1820, and 23 June 1821; New-York Columbian, 26 April 1816 and 12 April 1817; New-York Statesh 4 November 1822; Minutes of the Common Council, 2:40 and 3:57, 625;; New-York Evening Post, 13 November 1820; and AJ44, table following 23-

71 New-York Evening Post, 9 December 1822; MCA, 13 February 1821; James J. Walsh, History of Medicine in New York: Three Centuries of Medical Progress, 5 vols. (New York: National Americana Society, 1919), 1:155; Herman LeRoy Fairchild, A History of the Academy of Sciences, Formerly the Lyceum of Natural History (New York, 1887), 21-2, 24; John Duffy, A History of Public Health in New York City, 1625-1866, 2 vols. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968-74), 1:115; and New-York American, 6, 7, 17, 21 August, 9 September, and 19 October 1822. 72 De Witt Clinton to Solomon Van Rensselaer, 30 October 1823, Van Rensselaer-Rankin Papers, NYSL; De Witt Clinton to Charles A. Clinton, 3, 6 November, 1823, CP-WHM.

356 Notes to pages 132-6 73 New-York American, 12 May 1820, and New-York Evening Post, 13 November 1823. See appendix B, rows i and 2 in table 4. 74 Cf. Census for 1820 (Washington, 1821), 13*, and AJ49, appendix c, table L. 75 Robert Greenhalgh Albion, The Rise of New York Port [1815-1860] (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), 287-311; 145, chap. 250, Sec. 7; William P. Van Ness and John Wood worth, Laws of the State of New-York, Revised and Passed at the Thirty-Sixth Session of the Legislature, 2 vols. (Albany: H.C. Southwick, 1813), chap. 41, sec. 7; Isaac Goldberg, Major Noah, American Jewish Pioneer (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1936), 161-2; [Jacob Barker], Incidents in the Life of Jacob Barker of New Orleans, Louisiana (Washington, 1865), 152, 155-7; LA48, 165; New York National Advocate, 28 October 1823; and Record of Assessment, Fourth Ward, 1824, New York City Municipal Archives. 76 DWCD, 6 May to 7 June and 14 October to 29 November 1823; [De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr], 11, 13 September 1823, and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 14 September 1823, HPP. 77 LA49, 485; New-York American, 31 October 1823; DWCD, 29 October 1823. 78 New-York American, 29 September to n October 1826. 79 Fritz Redlich, The Molding of American Banking: Men and Ideas, 2 parts (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation), 2:61; Albion, New York Port, 295-6. 80 Over the next two years, 1824 and 1825, efforts to check the issuance of insurance company notes made little headway in spite of court decisions. See 5/47, 113; 2 Cowen 678-712 (1824); and 5/48, 613-14. 81 New York National Advocate, 7 November 1823; New-York Evening Post, 7, 13 November 1823. 82 New-York American, 31 October 1823; LA48, 10, 252, 337-8; Lanier, Century of Banking, 114; D.T. Valentine, Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York 1864 (New York, 1864), 530; New York National Advocate, 3, 29 October and 3 November 1823; and William Hooker, New Pocket Plan of the City of New York (New York: W. Hooker, 1824). 83 New-York American, 31 October 1823. 84 New-York Statesman, i November 1823; Lanier, Century of Banking, in, 113-14, 140; Pessen, "Wealthiest New Yorkers," 155-61; and Arthur James Weise, The Swartwout Chronicles, 1338-1899, and the Ketelhuyn Chronicles, 1451-1899 (New York, 1899), 609. 85 New-York American, 3 November 1823; New-York Statesman, 3 November 1823. 86 New York National Advocate, 3 November 1823. 87 DWCD, 3, 17, 19 November 1823. 88 DWCD, 15 November 1823. 89 Poughkeepsie Journal, 12 November 1823.

357 Notes to pages 136-8 90 Milton W. Hamilton, The Country Printer, New York State, 1785-1830 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 147; and Jabez D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New-York, 2 vols. (Albany: Van Benthuysen, 1842), 2:115. 91 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 29 October 1823. 92 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 3 September 1823. The first number of "Samuel Adams" appeared in the issue of 20 August 1823. 93 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 10 September 1823; Glover Moore, The Missouri Controversy, 1819-1821 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966), 35; and James Tallmadge, Jr, to Christopher Van Deventer, 27 July 1823, Misc. James Tallmadge, Jr, Papers, NYPL. 94 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 24 September 1823. See also the issue of 17 September 1823. 95 For Tallmadge's background and career, cf. New-York Evening Post, 4 September 1807 and 17 March 1809; DAB, s.v. "Tallmadge, Benjamin,"and "Tallmadge, James, Jr"; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, s.v. "Bailey, Theodoras," "German, Obadiah," "Tallmadge, Benjamin," and "Tallmadge, James, Jr"; John D. Gindele, "The Public Career of James Tallmadge," Dutchess County Historical Society Year Book 45 (1960): 40; Hastings, Military Minutes, 1:505 and 3:1950, 1974, 2386; Beard, Geraldine, "Family Chart of the Descendants of Charles Clinton, 1690-1773" (manuscript, New-York Historical Society, 1954); and CL, 442. 96 Albany Argus, 4 June 1819; New-York Columbian, 30, 31 March 1819; CL, 174 and 442; and Dexter, Biographical Sketches, 5:450-3. 97 Hammond, Political Parties, 1:217, 2:184; Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, 12 vols. (New York: AMS Press, 1970), 6:298. 98 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 9 May 1821. 99 James H. Smith, History of Duchess County (Syracuse, 1882), 120, 381, 433; Gindele, "Tallmadge," 41-3; Edmund Platt, The Eagle's History of Poughkeepsie from the Earliest Settlements, 1683 to 1905 (Poughkeepsie, 1905), 89, 104; New-York Evening Post, 6 August 1821 and 8 August 1823; Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 20 August 1823; Hudson Gazette, 25 July 1826; and 137, chap. 216. 100 Poughkeepsie Journal, 3 September 1823. 101 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 27 August and i October 1823. 102 DWCD, 19 November 1823; Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 22 October 1823; and Poughkeepsie Journal, 15, 22 October 1823. 103 Albany Argus, 6 May 1831; Poughkeepsie Republican Telegraph, 19, 26 October 1825; Pittsburgh Republican, 22 March 1817; Bolton, Westchester, vol. 2, chart facing 541; New-York Evening Post, 25 July 1810 and 8 August 1823; and Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 14 September and 26 October 1825.

358

Notes to pages 139-42

104 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 15, 22, 29 October 1823. 105 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 22 October 1823; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, s.v. "Schenck, Abraham Henry"; Frank Hasbrouck, ed., The History of Dutchess County, New York (Poughkeepsie, 1909), 338, 706; and Spafford, Gazetteer, 172, 310-11. 106 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, i, 22 October 1823; Poughkeepsie Journal, 8 October 1823. 107 Poughkeepsie Journal, 15, 29 October 1823. 108 Poughkeepsie Journal, 5 October and 5 November 1823. 109 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 29 October 1823. no The additional two were John Klapp and Gilbert Thome, in Poughkeepsie Journal, 19 November 1823. See appendix B, table 4, rows 3 through 6. 112 Spafford, Gazetteer, 370; Digest of Accounts of Manufacturing Establishments, 1822, 8-13; AJ45, appendix; and Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), chap. i. For the strength of Oneida agriculture, see David M. Ellis, Landlords and Farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk Region, 1790-1850 (New York: Octagon, 1967), passim. 113 Utica Oneida Observer quoted in the Albany Argus, 16 September 1823; and Goshen Independent Republican, 22 September 1823. 114 Utica Columbian Gazette, 7, 14, 21, 28 October 1823. 115 Utica Columbian Gazette, 28 October 1823. 116 Albany Register, 30 March 1804 and 4 April 1820; Utica Columbian Gazette, 21 March 1809 and 5 April 1814; Albany Argus, 27 April 1819, 2 February and 21 March 1820; Onondaga Register, 15 November 1820; Albany Evening Journal, 30 March 1855; and Moses M. Bagg, Pioneers of Utica: Being Sketches of Its Inhabitants and Its Institutions, with the Civil History of the Place, from the Earliest Settlement to the Year 1825, the Era of the Opening of the Erie Canal (Utica, 1877), 44. 117 Utica Whitestown Gazette, 2 April 1800; Utica Columbian Gazette, 10 May 1808, 9 May 1809, 15 May 1810, 12 May 1812, 17 May 1814, 20 April 1819, 9 May 1820, and 27 March 1821; Albany Argus, 19 May 1818, Lansingburgh Gazette, 16 February 1813; Daniel E. Wager, ed., Our County and Its People: A Descriptive Work on Oneida County, New York (Boston, 1896), 494, 503; and Pomeroy Jones, Annals and Recollections of Oneida County (Rome, NY, 1851), 649. 118 For the returns, see the Utica Columbian Gazette, 18 November 1823. 119 Utica Columbian Gazette, 20 May 1820. See appendix B, table 4, row 7. 120 See appendix B, table 4, rows 8 and 9. 121 Spafford, Gazetteer, 571, and under individual towns; and Assembly Journal, Forty-Fifth Session, Appendix, 30. The mean per capita taxable prop-

359 Notes to pages 142-4

122

123

124

125

126

127 128

erty for the county stood at $105.80, and the mean manufacturers-tovoters ratio for the towns of the county was 232.33 per thousand. Per capita taxable property ranged from $60.89 m Lee to $208.00 in Utica, and the ratio of mechanics to voters ranged from 95.94 per thousand in Vienna to 452.08 in Whitestown. See appendix B, table 4, rows 10 through 12. A Narrative of the Revival of Religion in the County of Oneida, Particularly in the Bounds of the Presbytery of Oneida in the Year 1826 (Utica, 1826), 6, 18-20, 22, 31, 56, 64-5, 68. The full title of Perkins's pamphlet is A "Bunker Hill" Contest, A.D. 1826, between the "Holy Alliance"for the Establishment of Hierarchy, and Ecclesiasital [sic] Domination over the Human Mind, on the One Side; and the Asserters of Free Inquiry, Bible Religion, Christian Freedom and Civil Liberty on the Other. The Rev. Charles Finney, "Home Missionary," and High Priest of the Expeditions of the Alliance in the Interior of New-York; Headquarters in the County of Oneida (Utica, 1826). For an exploration of this vein of working-class religiosity, see Bruce Laurie, Working People of Philadelphia, 1800-1850 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980), chap. 4. Valuable also is Sean Wilentz's comment on "Republican Religion" in chap. 2 of his Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). Ellis, Landlords and Farmers, 36-9, 227-8, 233; George R. Howell and Jonathan Tenney, eds., History of the County of Albany, N. Y.from 1609 to j«86(New York, 1886), 74. Howell and Tenney, County of Albany, 801-2, 805, 808-12, 833-35, 911-12; Spafford, Gazetteer, 64, 253-54, 315-16, 749; and Census for 1820, 9*. For Stillwell's economic status and business role, see First Ward assessment roll, Albany, NYSA microfilm 74-40-18; Joel Munsell, Annals of Albany, 10 vols. (Albany, 1850-1859), 7:225, 9:244, 9:238; MCA, 24 March 1815, 21 March 1816, 10 March 1817, and 2 July 1819; Albany Argus, 28 September 1816, 3 October 1817, 10 February 1818, 28 September 1821, and 17 October 1823; 146, chap, m; £47, chap. 173; and Albany Daily Advertiser, 13 June 1825. Sources for his political career are Albany Register, 19 April 1808; Proceedings of the Republican Meeting of the Citizens of Albany and Colonie, at Jared Skinners Long Room, March 13, 1810 (Albany, 1810), 19; Kingston Plebeian, 24 November 1812; and Albany Argus, 26 January, 16 February, and 16 April 1813, 18 March and 15 April 1814, 14 April 1815, 2 March 1816, 14 March 1817, 28 April 1818, 23 March 1819, 10 March 1820, 16 March 1821, and 3 September 1822. Albany Argus, 17 October 1823. Klinck's Albany Directory, for the Year 1822 (Albany, 1822), 10; Albany

360 Notes to pages 144-8

129

130 131

132 133 134 135 136

137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144

Daily Advertiser, 15 October 1823. For the voting record of these towns in recent elections, see New-York Statesman, 6 June 1820, New-York American, I May 1820, Albany Argus, 29 May 1821 and 13 November 1822. For Zina W. Lay, see Albany Gazette, 3 November 1823; Sylvester D. Willard, Annals of the Medical Society of the County of Albany, 1806-1851 (Albany, 1864), 328; "Rensselaerville Town Records, 1795-1851," Rensselaerville, NYSA microfilm 76-33.1; "Westerlo Town Minutes, 1815-1840," NYSA, series 637, box 9; and Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 24 December 1827 and 28 April 1828. Albany Gazette, 3 November 1823; Munsell, Annals of Albany, 10:267; and Howell and Tenney, County of Albany, 80, 328, 332, 675, 686. Albany Gazette, 17 October. Chester's address was not useful pre-election advice, and the remainder was not printed in the Gazette until 7 November. Albany Gazette, 17 October and 4 November 1823. Albany Argus, 28 October 1823. Albany Argus, 2 June 1820 and 14 November 1823. See appendix B, table 4, row 13. DWCD, 16 November 1823. For the importance of this understanding of the possibilities of regional integration to growth, see Diane Lindstrom, Economic Development in the Philadelphia Region, 1810-1850 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). CL, 327; Albany Argus, 24 October and 9 December 1823. The three New York City men who were on both tickets were not counted among the thirty-four. See Albany Argus, 21 November 1823. Closely tied, as defined by the relationships in appendix A, categories I and 2. See appendix B, table i. See appendix B, table 5, columns i through 6. See appendix B, table 6. DWCD, 19 November 1823. Satisfactory assembly returns for the wards and towns of twenty-six counties are available for both 1822 and 1823. In these constituencies lived 63.86 percent of the state's electorate - 166,104 voters. This includes New York City and New York County, where the 1823 turnout was 33.64 percent above the level of 1822. But New York City turnout was not representative. In the remaining counties, the number of men who voted for assemblymen fell from 83,650 to 63,356, a 24.26 percent decline. Even with increases in Clinton, Cortland, Onondaga, and Dutchess counties, as well as New York County, the mean per county turnout was 16.68 percent less than it had been in 1822.

361 Notes to pages 150-3 CHAPTER SIX 1 Albany Argus, 3 February 1824. 2 William Steele to De Witt Clinton, 10 June 1818, and De Witt Clinton to William Steele, 24 June 1818, DWCP-CU, 8:40, 19:162-5; De Witt Clinton to Ethan Allen Brown, n May 1822, and Ethan Allen Brown to De Witt Clinton, 15 September 1822, DWCP-CU, 20:181-3, 10:56; De Witt Clinton to Micajah T. Williams, 8 November 1823, DWCP-CU, 20:447-53; and De Witt Clinton to Ethan Allen Brown, 22 November 1823, quoted in Harry R. Stevens, The Early Jackson Party in Ohio (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1957), 50. 3 De Witt Clinton to Stephen Van Rensselaer, 5 January 1823, Gratz Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 4 Caleb Atwater to De Witt Clinton, 2 February 1823, and Elijah Hayward to Henry Post, Jr, 6 March 1823, HPP. 5 Ithaca Journal, 24 December 1823. 6 De Witt Clinton to Micajah T. Williams, 8 November 1823, DWCP-CU, 20:447-53; DWCD, 7, 10, n, 15, 17 November 1823. For Williams's career, see Harry N. Scheiber, "Entrepreneurship and Western Development: The Case of Micajah T. Williams," Business History Review 37, no. 4 (1963). 7 New-York Statesman, 18 November 1823. 8 Isaiah and John Townsend to M. Myers and Co., 7 January 1824, Isaiah and John Townsend Letterbooks, NYPL. 9 Although he had turned lands over to William James, Archibald Mclntyre, and David S. Jones to pay this judgment - and $14,000 assigned by the Manhattan Company - by early 1827, the interest owing to the Bank of America would have amounted to more than $3,000; see George Newbold to David S. Jones, 14 February 1827, Jabez D. Hammond to George Newbold, 5, 9 April 1827, John Anthon to George Newbold, 16 May 1832, and receipts by Philip Hone, Thomas S. Smith, Stephen Whiting, and William Bayard to George Newbold, 25 September 1832, Misc. George Newbold Papers, NYHS. 10 Philip Shriver Klein, Pennsylvania Politics, 1817-1832: A Game without Rules (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1940), 60-1, 146, 155. 11 Stephen Simpson to Henry Post, Jr, i April 1823, and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 7 April 1823, HPP; Kim T. Phillips, "The Pennsylvania Origins of the Jackson Movement," Political Science Quarterly 91, no. 3 (1976). 12 Philadelphia Columbian Observer, 13 June and u August 1823. Jackson did not resign from the United States Senate until 14 October 1825. 13 [Stephen Simpson] to Henry Post, Jr, 6 September 1823, HPP.

362 Notes to pages 153-7 14 De Witt Clinton to Charles G. Raines, 9 December 1823, DWCP-CU, 20:490-1. 15 Albany Argus, 9 December 1823. 16 Rufus King to Henry Wheaton, 28 December 1823, W-PML. 17 See, for example, the issues of 9, n, 17 December 1823, and 9 January 1824. The quotation is from the last issue cited. 18 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 20 December 1823, HPP. 19 For Webster see New-York Statesman, 22 January 1824. 20 New-York Statesman, 30 January 1824. See also the issue of 28 January. 21 See, for example, the Brooklyn Star, i, 28 January 1824; Canandaigua Ontario Repository, 7, 28 January 1824; Geneva Palladium, 7 January 1824; and Ithaca Journal, 7 January and 18 February 1824; Batavia Republican Advocate, 13, 20 February 1824; and Delhi Delaware Gazette, 10 March 1824. 22 New York National Advocate, 17 January 1824. 23 New-York Statesman, 9, 11, 13, 22, 24, 31 December 1823, and 2, 17, 21, 29 January 1824. The New-York American of 26 September 1823 spoke of "Mr. Crawford's Regents at Albany." 24 [De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr], 10 June 1823, HPP; and DWCD, 31 October 1823. 25 John W. Francis to David Hosack, 26 August [1823], John W. Francis Papers, box 7, NYPL. Dr. John T. Harrison had replaced Joseph Bayley on 24 April 1823 (CL, 217). 26 DWCD, 9, 10 August 1823. 27 New-York American, 28 April 1823; Daniel H. Calhoun, Professional Lives in America: Structure and Aspiration, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 55-6; Catalog of the Alumni, Officers and Fellows of the College of Physicians and Surgeons (New York, 1859), 22-3; and Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York from Its Organization in 1807, up to and Including 1831 (Albany, 1831), 203. 28 Calhoun, Professional Lives, 28-31; James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-88), 5:655; and Transactions of the State Medical Society, 4, 109, 129, 145, 167, 186. 29 A.E.M. Purdy, ed., Minutes of the Medical Society of the County of New York. 1806-1878 (New York, 1879), 258; Richard Harrison Shryock, Medicine in America: Historical Essays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), 65, 57-72, 218; and Christine Chapman Robbins, David Hosack: Citizen of New York (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1964), 138-43. 30 Purdy, Minutes, 259, 268-70, 276. 31 Ibid., 263-7, 271-2, 275. 32 Transactions of the State Medical Society, 244, 250, 256-76.

363 Notes to pages 157-60 33 Alexander Coventry, Memoirs of an Emigrant: The Journal of Alexander Coventry, M.D., in Scotland, The United States and Canada, during the Period, 1783-1831 (Albany: Albany Institute of History and Art and the New York State Library, 1978), 2010-11. 34 David Hosack, Inaugural Address Delivered before the Medical Society of the County of New York, on the I2th Day of July, 1824 (New York, 1824), 18-19. 35 Ibid., 10 14. 36 A System of Medical Ethics, Published by Order of the State Medical Society of New-York (New York, 1823); Transactions of the State Medical Society, 230-43. 37 De Witt Clinton, An Introductory Discourse Delivered before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New-York, on the Fourth of May, 1814 (New York, 1815), 16. 38 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 24 December [1823], HPP; George Featherstonhaugh, Diary, 16 September 1823, Albany Institute of History and Art. 39 [Nathaniel H. Carter] to Henry Post, Jr, 28 December 1823, HPP. 40 DAB, s.v. "Dudley, Charles Edward"; George R. Howell and Jonathan Tenney, History of the County of Albany, New York from 1609 to 1886 (New York, 1886), 662. Morris S. Miller of the High-Minded Federalists was married to Blandina's sister Maria. 41 Minutes of the Common Council of Albany, i January 1824, NYSL. 42 The second candidate was John N. Quackenboss (Howell and Tenney, Albany, 88-9, 612-13). 43 Minutes of the Common Council of Albany, January through 8 March 1824, NYSL. Clinton and Spencer had attempted to run Lansing for governor in 1804, making it clear that he would be a puppet. See Thomas Tillotson to John Lansing, Jr, 25 and 27 April 1807, Morgan Lewis to John Lansing, Jr, 29 April 1807, Statement of John Lansing, Jr, 21 February 1804, and John Tayler to John Lansing, Jr, 18 February 1804, Misc. John Lansing, Jr, Papers, NYHS; and Albany Register, 17 February 1804. 44 Minutes of the Common Council of Albany, 29 January 1821, 27 January and 8, 15 March 1824, NYSL. For the two reports, see 165-6 in the volume of minutes covering the period from 14 July 1823 to 23 January 1826. 45 Albany Argus, 17 February 1824. 46 Albany Daily Advertiser, 10 January 1824; Albany National Democrat, 10 January and 7, n February 1824; and New-York Statesman, 17 January 1824. 47 Albany National Democrat, 15 March 1824. 48 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 18 January 1824, HPP. 49 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 20 December 1823, HPP. 50 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 20 December 1823. HPP.

364 Notes to pages 160-3 51 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 22, 24, 26 December [1823] and 7, 24 January, HPP; and DWCD, 23 January 1824. 52 William L. Marcy to Martin Van Buren, 11 January 1824, MVBP. 53 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 24 December [1823], HPP. 54 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 26 December [1823], HPP. 55 Edward P. Livingston to William Wilson, 10 February 1824, William Wilson Papers, WLC. 56 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, n.d and 26 December [1823], HPP; Stephen Van Rensselaer to Solomon Van Rensselaer, 17 December 1823, in Catharine V.R. Bonney, comp., A Legacy of Historical Gleanings, 2 vols. (Albany, 1875), 1:409. 57 Charles Z. Lincoln, ed., Messages from the Governors, 11 vols. (Albany, 1909), 3:30-1. In 1808 the state gave thirteen electoral votes to James Madison and six to George Clinton. 58 Geneva Gazette, 24 April 1820; Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, 6 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1885-1912), 6:164-5; CL, 379; Albany Evening Journal, 19 July 1834; J-B. Wilkinson, The Annals of Binghamton and the County Connected with It from the Earliest Settlement (Binghamton, 1872), 195-6; DAB, s.v. "Flagg, Azariah Cutting"; and Milton W. Hamilton, The Country Printer, New York State, 1785-1830 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 104-5, 272- With the ages of HI members of the forty-seventh assembly known, the average age was 43.5 years and the median was 43. 59 Rufus King to Henry Wheaton, 28, 30 December 1823, W-PML. 60 Albany Argus, 9 January 1824; Ajtf, 7. 61 Albany Argus, 9 January 1824. 62 The People's men voted against the motion to commit, by twenty-nine to four with one absent. The remainder of the assembly supported it by seventy-two to eighteen with three absent (AJ^J, 17-18). 63 William L. Marcy to Martin Van Buren, 11 January, and Jacob Sutherland to Martin Van Buren, 24 January 1824, MVBP. See also Benjamin Franklin Butler to Jesse Hoyt, 29 January 1824, and Lorenzo Hoyt to Jesse Hoyt, n January 1824, in William L. Mackenzie, Life and Times of Martin Van Buren (Boston, 1846), 168, 194. 64 Am, 17-18 and table following 1204; Albany Daily Advertiser as quoted in the New-York American, 16, 19 January 1824; Jabez D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New-York, from the Ratification of the Federal Constitution to December, 1840, 2 vols. (Albany: Van Benthuysen, 1842), 2:143-6; United States Census, 1820, Cayuga County. The AJ47 table cited here indicates the fifty men who wanted Adams, the thirtytwo who supported Clay, the forty-three who backed Crawford, and the one man who voted for Jackson electors.

365 Notes to pages 164-6 65 Albany Argus, 20 January 1824; -4/47, 86. For Crary's campaign and politics, see Onondaga Register, 12 November 1823; Plattsburgh Republican, 15 November 1823; Salem Northern Post, 24 April 1817; and Washington County Post, 12 November 1823. 66 The People's men in the assembly were shaken by Wheaton's failure to cope with Flagg's handling of the committee. There were ten assembly divisions on the electoral bill. Whether measured by the relative index of cohesion (0.7742), the absolute index of cohesion (0.7059), or the Rice index of cohesion (0.5484), the People's men were now at their lowest level of unity. In fact, of those ten votes, this was the only one in which the cohesion of the People's men was, by any of the three measures, lower than that of the remainder of the house. For the votes, see .4747, 17-18, 86, 160-1, 165, 166-8, 297-8, 996-7. For a discussion of the indexes, see Lee E Anderson, Meredith W. Watts, Jr, and Allen R. Wilcox, Legislative Roll-Call Analysis (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 32-6. 67 This was Joseph Blunt's description of Wheaton. See Blunt to John Quincy Adams, 12 November 1824, Adams Papers, reel 466, MHS. 68 New York National Advocate, 31 December 1823 and 19, 21 January 1824. 69 New York National Advocate, 23 January 1824. 70 New York National Advocate, 29 January 1824. 71 New-York American, 3 February 1824. See also the Albany Argus, 3 February 1824, and the New York National Advocate, 9 February 1824. 72 Albany Argus, 30 January 1824; "No. 4. In Assembly, January 7, 1824. [Brought in by Mr Wheaton] An Act To provide for the choice of Electors of President and Vice-President of the United States, by the people of this state," NYLD; and AJ47, 291, 294. 73 Albany Argus, 30 January and 3 February 1824; "No. 34. In Assembly, January 22, 1824. [Brought in by Mr Flagg] An Act, Prescribing the time and manner, of choosing electors of president and vice-president of the United States," NYLD; Hammond, Political Parties, 2:145-6; and AJ4J, 294. 74 Albany Argus, 3 February 1824. 75 Matthew Livingston Davis to John Michael O'Connor, 16 February 1824, John Michael O'Connor Papers, WLC; Albany Argus, 3 February 1824; AJ47, 297-8 and table opposite 1204. 76 Edwin Crosswell to Jesse Hoyt, 31 January 1824, in Mackenzie, Van Buren, 195-6; Henry Wheaton to Samuel L. Gouverneur, 3 February 1824, Samuel L. Gouverneur Letters in box of Joseph L. Gidney Papers, 1785-1857, NYPL; and Henry Wheaton to Levi Wheaton, 12 February 1824, W-BU. 77 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 9 January 1824, HPP.

366 Notes to pages 166-9 78 De Witt Clinton to Francis Granger, 6, 14, 25 January 1824, Gideon and Francis Granger Papers, LC; and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 24 January [1824], HPP79 Canandaigua Ontario Repository, 25 February 1824. 80 Albany National Democrat, 27 December 1823 and 27 August 1824; Albany Gazette, 30 December 1823; Brooklyn Star, 22 January 1824; Joel Munsell, Annals of Albany (Albany, 1850-1859), 9:214; Albany Argus, i, 29 February 1820, 24 April and 15 June 1821; [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 24 December [1823], HPP. 81 Albany National Democrat, 14 January 1824. 82 Brooklyn Star, 28 January 1824; New-York Patriot, 31 January 1824; Geneva Palladium, 4 February 1824; and Albany National Democrat, 2, ii, 21 February 1824. 83 Two of their meetings took place on Long Island, one in Brooklyn on 5 February and the other in Southampton a week later. The others met at Ithaca and in New York City's Tammany Hall in late January, at Owego in Tioga County and Waterloo in Seneca County at the beginning of February, at Johnstown in Montgomery County on 12 February, and in Kingsbury in Washington County on i March. See Brooklyn Star, 5, 26 February 1824; Albany National Democrat, 4, 21, 25 February and 10 March 1824; Utica Sentinel & Gazette, 21 September 1824; Cooperstown Watchtower, 27 September 1824; Ithaca Journal, 4, H, 18 February 1824; and New-York Statesman, 30 January 1824. 84 Albany National Democrat, 21 February 1824. 85 Jasper Lynch to John Michael O'Connor, 14 February 1824, John Michael O'Connor Papers, WLC. 86 De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr, 7 January [1824], HPP. 87 [De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr], 14 January 1824, and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 22 January [1824], HPP; 5.747, 254. 88 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 23 January 1824, HPP. 89 James S. Chase, Emergence of the Presidential Nominating Convention, 1789-1832 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), 73. 90 De Witt Clinton to Charles G. Haines, 9 December 1823, and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 14 January 1824, HPP. 91 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 19 January 1824 and 22 January [1824], HPP; DWCD, 26, 27 January 1824. 92 Charles G. Haines to Solomon Van Rensselaer, 15 January 1824, Van Rensselaer-Rankin Papers, NYSL; [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 27 January 1824, HPP. 93 Charles G. Haines to Henry Post, Jr, 27 February 1824, HPP; New-York Statesman, 9 March 1824. 94 DWCD, 19 January 1824; [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 19 January 1824, HPP. 95 147, chap. 54; DWCD, 19-24, 26-7, 30 January, 1-4, 14, 26 February, 9,15-

367 Notes to pages 169-71 17, 24, 31 March, and 2, 4, 5, 9 April 1824; and Cuyler Reynolds, ed., Genealogical and Family History of Southern New York and the Hudson River Valley, 3 vols. (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1914), 1:237. 96 s/47, 240-1; Catskill Recorder, 12 March 1823; New-York Evening Post, 27 December 1826; and Geneva Palladium, 30 August 1826. 97 David M. Matteson, ed., Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784-1831, 21 vols. (New York: City of New York, 1917), esp. 1-4 passim; CL, 114, 316, 324-5, 361-2, 367-9. 98 DWCD, 2 January 1809; Matteson, ed., Minutes of the Common Council, 7:176, 216. 99 Matteson, ed., Minutes of the Common Council, 14:235-6. 100 Ibid., 14:347. 101 CL, 438; AJ47, 1329. 102 AJ47, 1329-30; Hugh Hastings, comp., Military Minutes of the Council of Appointment, 4 vols. (Albany: James B. Lyon, 1901-2), 3:1975; Amos B. Carpenter, A Genealogical History of the Rehoboth Branch of the Carpenter Family in America (Amherst, Mass., 1898), 782; CL, 127, 379; Tioga Town Minutes, 1800-1833, NYSA; New-York Evening Post, 5 March 1804 and 15 May 1809; Cazenovia Pilot, I April 1812; Ithaca Republican Chronicle, 13 June 1821 and 9, 23 October 1822; MCA, 27 March 1819, NYSA; DWCD, 3, 6 September and 2 October 1821; Albany Argus, 8 October 1822; and Ithaca American Journal, 30 October 1822. 103 Biographical Directory of the American Congress (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1961), s.v. "Russell, John"; Albany Register, 13 March 1804; Cooperstown Otsego Herald, 14 April 1806, 18 April 1812, 30 October 1813, 8, 22 March 1814, 8 February 1816, 20 February 1817, and ii April 1818; New-York Evening Post, n November 1812; Cooperstown Watchtower, 29 March 1819; Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 6 December 1824; AJ4J, 970; and Albany Argus, 29 June 1830. 104 Palmyra Wayne Sentinel, 8 October 1845; Orsamus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham 's Purchase and Morris' Reserve (Rochester, 1851), 176-7; CL, 316, 325-6, 461; Canandaigua Western Repository, 30 September 1806; Canandaigua Ontario Repository, 2 January 1810, 29 December 1812, 17 December 1819, 9 January and 20 February 1821; Canandaigua Ontario Messenger, j April 1812, 25 November 1812, and 15 March 1814; Geneva Gazette, 9 February 1820; Geneva Palladium, 21 February 1821; Albany Register, 16 February 1810 and 21 March 1820; Albany Argus 14 March 1815 and 13 March 1821; New-York Columbian, 17 April 1819; Stephen Bates to De Witt Clinton, 25 December 1824, DWCP-CU, 12:60; and Bank of Ontario, Minute Book, 1813-55, 26 November 1813, Niagara-on-the-Lake Historical Society, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. 105 Gideon Granger to De Witt Clinton, 4 April 1822, DWCP-CU, 10:40.

368 Notes to pages 171-2 106 DWCD, 27 January 1824; [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 27 January 1824, HPP. 107 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 24 January 1823] and 17 February 1824, HPP; Albany National Democrat, 28 January 1824. 108 AJ47, 83, 87, 138, 145, 150, 162. 109 On the three votes in which the Crawfordites were higher than the Adams and Clay men in their level of support, the difference was at least 9 percent. In the case of the Bank of Rochester, the Crawfordites were 10 percent lower than the Clay men, who gave that bank very solid support. Cf. AJ47, 183, 230, 234, 237-8, 282-3, 283-4; and table opposite 1204. For Clinton's reflections on Clay's supporters, see [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 9 January 1824, HPP. no AW, 25. 111 The mean Rice index of cohesion for the People's men on these fifteen votes was 0.6673, and f°r the remainder of the assembly the figure was 0.4141. On fourteen out of fifteen of the roll calls the cohesion level of the People's men was greater than that of the rest of the lower house. Cf. AJ47, 366-7, 370, 374-5, 528-9, 654-5, 683-4, 797-8, 871-2, 967, 970,986-7, 997-8, 1051, and Albany Argus, 21 November 1823. The People's men averaged 61.1 percent support for bank bills. If one carves up the legislature by the presidential preferences that men later displayed, the Clayites gave slightly more support (62 percent), and the Adams men somewhat less (58.6 percent). The Crawfordites (at 53.6 percent) were well below the required level for incorporation. 112 [De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr], 13 March 1824, HPP. 113 There were sixteen votes on the progress of insurance companies: see AJ47, 466, 476-7, 497-8, 608-9, 702-3, 739, 783, 813-14, 816-17, 821-2, 869-870, 968, 1050, 1097-8. In the first eleven votes of this series the People's men averaged only 65.25 percent in favour of insurance company bills, while the Crawfordites averaged 81 percent, well above the two-thirds level required for incorporation. Then the regulars in the senate sent down a bill to amend the charter of the newly created Bank of Rochester. This was defeated in great measure because one-third of the Clay men left the assembly rather than vote for it (AJ4J, 823, 909-10). After this, in the last five roll calls above, Clayite support for insurance companies rose from an average of 73 percent to 83.1 percent, and the level of the People's assemblymen shot up to 82.3 percent. A brief alliance had been achieved. 114 Oswego Palladium, 25 May 1821; 5/47, 35-6. 115 There were only three roll-call votes on incorporation of insurance companies in this first session of the 1824 assembly. The Broadway Insurance Company was defeated, but the Jefferson and the Protection Fire insurance companies were successful. In the roll calls on these three insurance companies, the seventeen men who voted to postpone the electoral bill sup-

369 Notes to pages 172-8

116

117

118 119 120 121 122 123

124 125

126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133

ported incorporation at an average level of 68.9 percent and the remaining fourteen members of that body at the level of 46.4 percent (5747, 35-6, 62-3, 254, 181, 357). For the charters of new companies, see £47, chaps. 61, 75, 133, 134, 135, 136, 153, 154, 166, 172, 173, and 186. 5/47, 125, 140-1, 180, 241-2, 254. The last roll call cited is the March 10 vote postponing the electoral bill until the autumn sitting. The seven votes were clustered by yeas, nays and absences. The formula used for the analysis that includes absences can be found in Anderson et al., Legislative Roll-Call Analysis, 62-3. Cf. s/47, 254, 334-5, 339-40, 347-9, 384-5, and table opposite 1204. For the position of the People's men on the Dutchess County Bank, cf. -047, 366-7, 375, 871; and Albany Argus, 21 November 1824. s/47, 252, 254; Hammond, Political Parties, 2:151-3. For Cramer's speeches of 8 and 10 March, see New-York American, 13, 19 March 1824. -4/47, 1320, 1322, 1330-1, 1338; 5/47, 241-2. AJ4J, 887, 996; Albany Daily Advertiser, 5 April 1824. Hammond, Political Parties, 2:544; Albany Gazette, 16 January 1824. For other parts of the series, see the issues of 20, 23, 27, 30 January 1824. Hammond, Political Parties, 2:155. Hammond, Political Parties, 2:155-7; Albany Daily Advertiser, 2 April 1824; New-York Statesman, 23 October 1824; James McCrea to John W. Taylor, 3 April 1824, and James B. Mower to John W. Taylor, 6 May 1826, JWTP; Henry Wheaton to [Rufus King], 31 March 1824, Adams Papers, reel 464, MHS, and Albany Argus, 6 April 1824. The quotation is from Wheaton's letter to King. At the time Martin Van Buren seems to have agreed with Flagg and Wright. See his letter to Charles E. Dudley of 26 March 1824 in the Additional Papers, MVBP. Hammond, Political Parties, 2:156; Albany Argus, 6 April 1824; and Geneva Palladium, 29 September 1824. The People's man who attended the caucus was Hugh Halsey. Some evidence of People's hostility to Root can be seen in the essays by "Schoharie" in the Albany Daily Advertiser, 6, 8, 9, 10 April 1824. AJ47, 1031-2. Albany Daily Advertiser, 13 April 1824; Albany Gazette, 16 April 1824. Albany Gazette, 16 April 1824. Albany Gazette, 23 April 1824. AJ4J, 1095-6. Henry Wheaton to Rufus King, 12 April 1824, RKP. [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 24 June 1824, HPP. Samuel Young responded rather quickly. In his Discourse Delivered at Schenectady, July 25, A.D. 1826, before the New York Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa (Ballston Spa, 1826), he criticized road-building programs as

370 Notes to pages 178-82

134 135 136 137 138 139 140

likely to bring an unnecessary tax burden and encourage inefficient government management. Albany Argus, 16 March 1824. Albany Argus, 16 March 1824; [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 9 January 1824, HPP. Henry Wheaton to Levi Wheaton, 5 March 1824, W-BU. De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr, 17 April 1824, and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 21 April 1824, HPP. [De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr], 13 March 1824, HPP. De Witt Clinton to George P. Macculloch, 18 March 1824, DWCP-CU, 11:22-3. New-York Statesman, 31 March and I, 9 April 1824; Albany Daily Advertiser, 16 April 1824. Charles A. King witnessed the New York City meeting and reported to Rufus King that "indeed tho' many attended, very few seemed to be in Earnest" (letter of 9 April 1824, RKP). CHAPTER SEVEN

1 The phrase is Clinton's (New-York Evening Post, 28 April 1824. 2 Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 64; Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), chaps, i, 2; Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), chap. 3; and Rolla Milton Tryon, Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1917), chap. 7. 3 Darrett B. Rutman, "Assessing the Little Communities of Early America," William and Mary Quarterly 43, no. 2 (1986): 178. For a discussion of these pressures and the agrarian response to them, see Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), parts 3, 4; James A. Henretta, "Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-Industrial America," William and Mary Quarterly 35, no. i (1978); Alan Kulikoff, "Transition to Capitalism in Rural America," William and Mary Quarterly 46, no. i (1989); and Michael Merrill, "Cash Is Good to Eat: Self-Sufficiency and Exchange in the Rural Economy of the United States," Radical History Review 3 (1977). 4 Jay Fliegelman, in Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), chap. 7; Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, !985), 197-9; and Gary Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1984).

3?i

Notes to pages 182-6

5 See, for example, New-York Statesman, 12 March 1824; Geneva Palladium, 24 March 1824; Ithaca Journal, 31 March and 7 April 1824; Owego Gazette, 16 March 1824; and Onondaga Register, IJ March 1824. 6 Saratoga Sentinel, 16 March 1824. 7 Quoted in Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), 183. 8 For this plan, see John Adams Dix to Henry Wheaton, 15 April 1824, wPML. 9 Albany Argus, quoted in Troy Sentinel, 18 May 1824; Poughkeepsie Republican Telegraph, 2 June 1824. 10 Utica Columbian Gazette, 29 June 1824. 11 Albany Daily Advertiser, 2 February 1824. This message took over a month to reach different parts of the state. See, for example, Canandaigua Ontario Repository and Ithaca Journal, 25 February 1824; Brooklyn Star, 18 March 1824; and New York National Union, 20 March 1824. 12 Albany National Democrat, 28 February 1824. Here Tallmadge, to use Charles Sellers's parlance, sought the backing of "Old Clintonians." See his Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 109-12. 13 Albany Gazette, 23 April 1824. Tallmadge spoke on 9 April, and there had already been widespread report of Holley's admission that he had misused money; see Albany Daily Advertiser, I April 1824; New-York Statesman, 3 April 1824; Lansingburgh Gazette, 6 April 1824; and Canadiagua Ontario Repository, 7 April 1824. 14 SJ47, 408-9; AJ47, 1136. 15 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 15 April 1824, HPP. 16 De Witt Clinton to William L. Stone, 18 April 1824, Misc. De Witt Clinton Papers, NYHS; 4/47, 29, 652, 1133-5; "No. 127. In Assembly, March 4, 1824. [Brought in by Mr Flagg] An Act, To provide for the appointment of canal commissioners, principal engineers and collectors of the toll on the canals," NYLD; SJ47, 405, 408-9; and R.W.B. Lewis, The Jameses: A Family Narrative (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991), 11-12. For the political role and longevity of Dr William Kirkpatrick, the superintendent, see CL, 228; Dwight H. Bruce, Onondaga's Centennial: Gleanings of a Century, 2 vols. (Boston, 1896), 2:143-4 and 442; Joshua V.H. Clark, Onondaga; Or Reminiscences of Earlier and Later Times, 2 vols. (Syracuse, 1849), 2:39-44; Geneva Palladium, 22 September 1824; and the Kirkpatrick Family Papers, Onondaga County Historical Association, passim. 17 John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., "The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren," The Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1918 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920), 2:143. 18 Henry Wheaton to Rufus King, 12 April 1824, in Charles R. King, ed. The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, 6 vols. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1894-1900), 6:564-5.

372

Notes to pages 186-91

19 SJ47, table following 442 and 451; John Bowman to Nathaniel Rochester, 8 March 1824, and James Lynch to Nathaniel Rochester, 23 September 1824, Nathaniel Rochester Papers, Rochester Public Library; Rufus King to Charles King, 7, 9 April, and Charles King to Rufus King, 12 April 1824, RKP.

20 Albany Argus, 13 April 1824. 21 Eighteen of the twenty-six Clay men present supported removal, as did thirty-two of thirty-five Crawfordites. Thirty-six Adams men remained in the assembly chamber and twenty-two of them voted against removal. 22 Albany Daily Advertiser, 16 April 1824. 23 New-York Statesman and Albany Daily Advertiser, 19 April 1824; DWCD, 16, 17 April 1824. 24 Charles King to Rufus King, 19 April 1824, RKP. 25 Cuyler Reynolds, Hudson-Mohawk Genealogical and Family Memoirs, 4 vols. (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1911), 1:507-8; New-York Evening Post, 27 April 1818; 141, chap. 256,142, chaps. 109, 115; 145, chap. 51; 146, chap. 85; New York National Advocate, 22 February 1819; and DWCD, i August 1818. 26 DAB, s.v. "Few, William." 27 CL, 378; [Moses Yale Beach], Wealth and Wealthy Citizens of New York City (New York, 1842), 6; John C. Cooley, Rathbone Genealogy: A Complete History of the Rathbone Family (Syracuse, 1898), 354-5; New York Morning Chronicle, 5 September 1805; New-York Evening Post, i February 1821, 6 February 1822, 23 April, 28 October, and 29 November 1823, 28 January and 30 April 1824; New-York American, 28 October 1823; 147, chap. 154; David Cole, ed., History of Rockland County, New York, with Biographical Sketches of Its Prominent Men (New York, 1884), 106; and Albany Argus, 28 June 1825. 28 New-York Statesman, 20 April 1824. 29 New-York Statesman, 3 April 1824. 30 For representative reportage, see the Albany Gazette as quoted in the Geneva Palladium, 21 April 1824; Ithaca Journal, 14 April 1824; Newburgh Political Index, 23 March 1824; Saratoga Sentinel, 30 March 1824; and Utica Columbian Gazette, 13 April 1824. Shortly before the meeting to protest Clinton's removal, the New-York Evening Post revived interest in the Johnson case by printing more background material on the crime; see the issue of 17 April 1824. 31 Albany Daily Advertiser, 27 April 1824. Friendly New York City newspapers quickly picked up Clinton's response, which reached most quarters of the state's press by mid-May. The proceedings of the New York City meeting and Clinton's words were published in a pamphlet that included the resolutions of meetings in smaller centres; see Public Proceedings on the

373 Notes to pages 191-4

32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43

Removal of the Hon. De Witt Clinton, from the Office of Canal Commissioner (New York, 1824). Auburn Cayuga Republican, 28 April 1824. Issue of 12 May 1824. Albany Daily Advertiser, 4 May 1824. See, for example, New-York Statesman, 23 August 1824; Jacob Barker to William Coleman, 4 September 1824, in the New York National Union, n September 1824; resolutions of the Saratoga County meeting of n September in the Albany Daily Advertiser, 14 September 1824; resolutions of the Ithaca County meeting of 11 September in the Ithaca Journal, 15 September 1824; Proceedings of a Meeting of the Citizens of Albany Held at the Capitol on the Evening of 28th September (n.p., 1824), passim; Elisha Camp, "Senatorial Nomination," Elisha Camp Papers, RHC; Daniel Cady to Gerrit Smith, 6 October 1824, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University; and resolutions of the Albany Young Men's meeting, Albany Gazette, 12 October 1824. John A. King to Rufus King, 22 April 1824, and Charles King to Rufus King, 8 May 1824, RKP. [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 29 April 1824, HPP; and DWCD, i, 2 May 1824. De Witt Clinton to Charles A. Clinton, 4 May 1824, CP-WHM. Albany National Democrat, 30 April 1824; DWCD, 16, 22 April 1824. Albany Daily Advertiser, 30 April, i, 3, 4, 5 May 1824. Henry Wysham Lanier, A Century of Banking in New York, 1822-1922 (New York: Gilliss Press, 1922), 136; Joseph A. Scoville, The Old Merchants of New York City by Walter Barret, Clerk, 5 vols. (New York, 1885), 1:181, 309; Lyman Horace Weeks, Prominent Families of New York (New York, 1897), 244; William Todd et al. to James Monroe, 22 May 1823, Letters of Application and Recommendation, Administration of James Monroe, NAMP-439, National Archives; New-York Evening Post, 9 December 1817,16 December 1819, 27 April 1825, 22 July 1826; Albany Argus, 30 October 1821 and 2 January 1824; "Minutes of the Meetings of the Tammany Society or Columbian Order from March 4th 1799 to February ist, 1808," 10 June 1805, and "Minutes of the Proceedings of the Grand Council of Tammany Society or Columbian Order," 2:17, May 1822 to 11 February 1828, passim, NYPL. In 1823, Todd's house and lot at 61 John Street in the Second Ward had been assessed at $5,500 and his personalty at $5,000 (Record of Assessment, New York City Municipal Archives). New-York Patriot, 6 May 1824. Albany Daily Advertiser, 6-10, 12, 14, 15 April 1824; James McCrea to John W. Taylor, 3 April 1824, and John Tayler to John W. Taylor, 19 April 1824, JWTP; Charles King to Rufus King, 12 April 1824, RKP; John Adams

374 Notes to pages 194-7 Dix to Henry Wheaton, 15 April 1824, W-PML; and Ambrose Spencer to Jacob Brown, 24 April 1824, Jacob Brown Papers, WLC. 44 Samuel H. Jenks to Jacob Barker, 28 March 1826, Jacob Barker Papers, NYHS; New York National Union, 11 September 1824. 45 Mordecai M. Noah, A Statement of the Facts Relative to the Conduct of Henry Eckford. Esq. as Connected with the National Advocate (New York, 1824), 8; New-York American, 3 September 1824. 46 Noah, Statement, 10, H. There was, of course, another understanding of Eckford's motives. Tobias Watkins told John Quincy Adams that "Eckford was determined to hold the reins of the Advocate that he might be able to make his own bargain with any candidate disposed to bid for the ... influence of the Caucus party in New York" (Watkins to Adams, 6 September 1824, Adams Papers, reel 466, MHS). 47 See, for example, the issues of 31 January, 14 February, and 6 March 1824. 48 Isaac Ogden, who had begun as an assemblyman in 1812 and had served through four senate sessions before 1823. This fifty-one-year-old Madisonian Bucktail from Walton on the west branch of the Delaware had built fulling mills and sawmills, and had launched into the making of cloth. For his background, see CL, 371-2, 325-7; New-York Evening Post, 12 November 1812; Geneva Gazette, 10 February 1819; Delhi Delaware Gazette, 9 March 1820 and 13 September 1821; William B. Ogden, comp., The Ogden Family in America (Philadelphia, 1907), 212; History of Walton, Delaware County, New York, from an Old Copy of "The Walton Chronicle" (n.p., n.d.), 8-10; and Arthur W. North, The Founders and the Founding of Walton, New York ([Walton:] Walton Reporter Co., 1954), 43. 49 Harriet A. Weed, ed., Autobiography ofThurlow Weed (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883), 107; Joseph Blunt to John W. Taylor, 8 August 1824, JWTP. 50 New York National Union, 8, 15 May 1824. 51 New York National Union, i, 8 May 1824. 52 New York National Union, 22, 29 May and 5 June 1824. 53 New-York Evening Post, 10 June 1824; DWCD, 9 June 1824. 54 Cf. New-York Evening Post, 4 June 1824, and Charles Z. Lincoln, Messages from the Governors, n vols. (Albany: James B. Lyon, 1909), 2:38-40. The proclamation did not appear in the Albany Argus until 8 June. 55 Peter E. Elmendorf to Blandina Bruyn, i August 1824, Misc. Ms. 2408, Senate House Museum, Kingston. • 56 DWCD, 30 July to 7 August 1824; Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 23; and New-York American, 6 August 1824. 57 Although it omits some lengthy People's speeches, the Albany Argus, 3-17 August 1824, offers a valuable record of the special session. See also 5/47, 413-24, and -4/47, 1144-63. The New-York Statesman was quick to con-

375 Notes to pages 197-202

58 59 60

61

62 63 64

65 66

67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77

demn Cramer as one who "acted, as usual, a most crooked, double, and hypocritical part." See the issue of 9 August 1824. AJ47, 1156, 1204; Joseph Blunt to John W. Taylor, 10 August 1824, JWTP. New-York American, 26 September 1823. James Tallmadge, Speech of James Tallmadge, Esq. on the Subject of Giving the Choice of Presidential Electors to the People: In the House of Assembly, on the ^th of August, 1824 (Albany, 1824), 20. Tallmadge's speech appeared in the Albany Daily Advertiser on 18 and 19 August. By 8 September it had reached the Delhi Delaware Gazette. For Wheaton's major speech, see New-York American, 20 August, and Albany Daily Advertiser, 24-7 August 1824. Albany Daily Advertiser, 10 August 1824. Pell's speech reached western and southern New York. See New-York Statesman, 11 August 1824; Auburn Cayuga Republican, 25 August 1824; and Brooklyn Star, 2 September 1824. Rochester Telegraph, 15 June 1824. New-York Statesman, 6 August 1824. Albany Daily Advertiser, 7 June 1824, copied in the Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 16 June 1824. The comment on the Masonic Bank is from the Observer of 28 July 1824. New-York Evening Post, j June 1824. J.C.A. Stagg, Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783-1830 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 103-4; Joshua Secor to John Townsend, 9 August 1824, Townsend Papers, NYPL. De Witt Clinton to William Tracy, 10 August 1824, DWCP-CU, 21:215. Joseph Blunt to John W. Taylor, 8 August 1824, JWTP. [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 12 August [1824], HPP; De Witt Clinton to William Tracy, DWCP-CU, 21:215. Cf. Albany Daily Advertiser, 12 June 1824; Utica Columbian Gazette, 15 February 1820. John Townsend was married to a daughter of Spencer. The other two were Philip S. Parker, a nephew of Spencer, and Elisha Jenkins, who in 1801 had become comptroller through Spencer's influence. Alfred Conklingto John W. Taylor, 15 September 1824, JWTP. DWCD, 10, 18 July 1824. DWCD, 21, 22 July 1824; John H. Eaton to De Witt Clinton, 25 June 1824, DWCP-CU, 12:24. John H. Eaton to De Witt Clinton and De Witt Clinton to James B. Mower, 23 July 1824, DWCP-CU, 12:30 and 21:200. [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 27, 28 July 1824, HPP; De Witt Clinton to James B. Mower, 28 July 1824, DWCP-CU, 21:204. De Witt Clinton to Charles A. Clinton, 13 August 1824, CP-WHM.

376 Notes to pages 202-6 78 Frederick Fox, Samuel Jackson, Alexander Sheldon, and Henry F. Yates (Albany Daily Advertiser, 24 June 1824). 79 Charles T. Bering and Daniel G. Gillet (Brooklyn Star, 24 June 1824). 80 Schenectady Mohawk Sentinel, 24 June 1824. 81 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 2 July 1824, HPP; Samuel W. Jones Diary, 14 June 1824, Samuel W. Jones Papers, Schenectady History Society. 82 Simeon Cummings, Israel Murdock, David Scott, and Samuel Skinner (Batavia Republican Advocate, 9 July and 17 September 1824). 83 Buffalo Patriot, 20 July 1824. 84 New-York Statesman, 9 July 1824; Albany National Democrat, 3 August 1824. These delegates were Nathan Howard, William McManus, William Palmer, and Dr John Willard. 85 Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 4 August 1824. 86 Delhi Delaware Gazette, 4 August 1824; Goshen Independent Republican, 9 September 1824. 87 The others were John Morss, John Fream, Edmund Smith, George Zabriskie, Richard S. Williams, Samuel L. Gouverneur, Ellis Potter, and Henry Mead. 88 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 23 July 1824, HPP. 89 New York National Union, 24 July 1824. 90 The proceedings of the meeting can be found in the New-York Statesman, 13 August 1824. For George Warner's career, see Scoville, Merchants, 4:222-5; Alfred E Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York: The Origins, 1763 1797 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967), 404, 406, 580; LI$, chap. 26; L33, chap. 87; 143, chap. 241; Thomas Earle and Charles T. Congdon, eds., Annals of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York from 1785-1880 (New York, 1882), 414; Mrs Jonathan Odell, et al., comps. Origin and History of the Orphan Asylum Society in the City of New York, 1806-1896 (New York, n.d.), 722-3; New-York Evening Post, 26 March 1810, 21 March 1811, 2 April 1817, 29 April, and 2 June 1824; New-York Columbian, 18 May 1816; Henry Otis Dwight, The Centennial History of the American Bible Society (New York, 1916), 29, 553; and Edmund P. Willis, "Social Origins of Political Leadership in New York City from the Revolution to 1815" (unpublished PH D diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1967), 355. Warner, a Republican, had been elected to the assembly five times, beginning in 1798; see CL, 364, 366, 373-4. 91 New-York Statesman, 13 August 1824. 92 De Witt Clinton to Charles A. Clinton, 17 August 1824, CP-WHM. 93 Delhi Delaware Gazette, 21 July 1824; David C. Golden to John Townsend, 2 August 1824, Townsend Papers, NYPL.

377 Notes to pages 207-15 94 Robert H. Wiebe emphasizes the salience of the revolutionary elite's culture of honour in his Opening of American Society from the Adoption of the Constitution to the Eve of Disunion (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), 98-104. Robert P. Hay's "The American Revolution Twice Recalled: Lafayette's Visit and the Election of 1824," Indiana Magazine of History 69, no. i (1973), discusses Lafayette's visit in terms of a broad if unfocused nostalgia for "American first principles." 95 Auguste Lavasseur, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825; or Journal of a Voyage to the United States (Philadelphia, 1829), 1:13. 96 New-York Evening Post, 17 August 1824. 97 Lavasseur, Lafayette in America, 1:98. 98 Ibid., 1:99, 119. 99 Ibid., 1:14-16. 100 New-York Evening Post, 17 August 1824. 101 Ibid., 18 August 1824; Lavasseur, Lafayette in America, 1:98. 102 De Witt Clinton to Henry Post, Jr, and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, both dated 9 September 1824, HPP. 103 North River Steam Boat Company in Account with I. and J. Townsend, Townsend Papers, NYPL; 143, chap. 84; Albany Daily Advertiser, 18 June 1824; and New-York American, 10 July 1824. 104 Charles Rhind to John Townsend, 21, 22, 30 August and i, 3, 4, 6, 9, 13, 14 September 1824, Charles Taylor Cooper to John Townsend, 10 (two letters), 11,12 (two letters), and 15 September 1824, Townsend Papers, NYSL. 105 Albany Daily Advertiser, 20 September 1824. 106 Lavasseur, Lafayette in America, 1:112-13. 107 Ibid., 1:113-14; Albany Daily Advertiser, 20 September 1824. 108 Lavasseur, Lafayette in America, 1:116-17; De Witt Clinton, "Address to Lafayette on Behalf of the Literary & Philosophical Society," De Witt Clinton Papers, NYSL. 109 Lavasseur, Lafayette in America, 1:117-19; Albany Daily Advertiser, 20 August 1824; and Delhi Delaware Gazette, 11 August 1824. CHAPTER EIGHT

1 To the Republican Electors of Jefferson County, RHC. 2 These were William Robinson, William Donnison Ford, and George Andrus (Albany Argus, 24 September 1824). Ford's wife was a cousin of Alfred S. Pell and a niece of Jasper Ward, who was an active plunger and president of the Chatham Fire Insurance Company. Andrus served as a nonresident director of the Farmers Fire Insurance and Loan Company of New York City.

378 Notes to pages 215-17 3 Albany Daily Advertiser, 30, 31 July and 4, 16 August 1824. 4 CL, 356-8, 360, 323-5; New-York Evening Post, 13 November 1820. 5 Richard A. Harrison, Princetonians, 1776-1783: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 272-5; First Ward Assessment Roll, Albany, 1823, microfilm 74-40-18, NYSL. For Merchant's earlier political activity see, for example, Albany Register, 23 April 1802, 18 March 1803, 28 February and 11 May 1804, 2 April 1807, 19 April 1808, 16 March 1810, 5 April 1811, 27 March 1812; and Albany Argus, 26 January 1813, 15 April 1814, 21 April 1815, 12 March 1816, 27 January 1818, and 29 February 1820. 6 Sylvester D. Willard, Annals of the Medical Society of the County of Albany, 1806-1851 (Albany, 1864), 328; Albany New-York Statesman, 29 May 1821; Albany Daily Advertiser, 19 September 1822; and Albany Argus, 24 October 1823. 7 [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 3 October 1824, HPP. 8 Albany Argus, 20 August 1824; New-York Statesman, 23 August 1824; and [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 22 August 1824, HPP. 9 Notice of Raines's election as grand secretary appeared in the Poughkeepsie Journal, 25 June 1823. The Masonic fraternity, with two contending grand lodges, was not united. See Proceedings of the (Country) Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons in the State of New York. 1823-1827 (New York, 1880), 11-12. 10 Charles G. Haines to Thurlow Weed, 3 August 1824, Thurlow Weed Papers, University of Rochester. See also [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 8 September 1824, HPP; and Charles G. Haines to Gerrit Smith, 26 August 1824, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University. 11 See appendix B, table 7. 12 The seven who had opposed Clinton were Amzi L. Ball, James Finch, Jr, and Samuel S. Seward of Orange County; John Blakeley, Benjamin Huntington, and Bela Kaple of Otsego County; and Nicholas Townley of Tompkins County. For a variety of reasons, including lack of previous political activity, Clinton could have judged the following men as uncertain to support his nomination: John H. Beach and Roswell Enos of Cayuga County, Kinner Newcomb of Clinton, John Armstrong, Jr, and Arthur Smith of Dutchess, Major Curtis of Greene, George Brayton and David Pierson of Oneida, William Taylor of Onondaga, Chester Loomis of Ontario, Selah Reeves of Orange, Peter S. Van Orden of Rockland, Jacob Gebhard and Ralph Manning of Schoharie, Allyn Boardman and Andrew Glover of Seneca, Samuel Stillwell and Moody Ames of Warren, John Tibbetts of Wayne, and George F White of Westchester. 13 See appendix B, table 8. 14 Orsamus Turner, Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase in Western New York (Buffalo, 1850), 481; Albany Evening Journal, 10 May 1831; Canan-

379 Notes to pages 217-19

15

16

17 18

19 20

21

22 23

daigua Ontario Messenger, 19 March and 23 April 1811, and 24 March 1812; and Canandaigua Ontario Repository, 29 February and 21 November 1820, and 12 June 1821. The Dutchess delegation included John Armstrong, Jr, thirty; Arthur Smith, fifty-five; William Taber, sixty-three; and Eleazer M. Swift, thirtyfour. The four men from Washington County were Jesse S. Leigh, thirtynine; John McLean, sixty-four; Charles Rogers, twenty-four; and Samuel Stevens, twenty-six. Assembled at Argyle on September 14, their meeting had been preceded by town meetings which demanded the vindication of republican principle. For example, the Fort Ann meeting of August 24 denied that the seventeen senators who voted against the electoral bill "were entitled to the name republicans, as republicans never fear to trust the people with the use of power" (Salem Washington County Post, i, 8 September and 6 October 1824). Auburn Free Press, 8 September 1824. In particular, see Republican Meeting: At a Numerous and Respectable Meeting of the Towns in the County of St. Lawrence, at the House of Medad Moody, in the Town of Canton, on the I Oth day of September, 1824, broadside, NYHS; Salem Washington County Post, 8 September 1824; Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 20 September 1824; and Utica Columbian Gazette, 21 September 1824. Ithaca Republican Chronicle, 20 October 1824. Catskill Recorder, 3 September 1824. For other references to demagogues, see Albany National Democrat, 7 September 1824; Ithaca Journal, 15 September 1824; Rochester Telegraph, 21 September 1824; and Utica Columbian Gazette, 19 October 1824. Auburn Free Press, i September 1824. Cf. Ithaca Journal, 20 October 1824; Mount Pleasant Westchester Herald, j September 1824; Rochester Telegraph, 21 September 1824; Salem Washington County Post, 8 September 1824; Utica Columbian Gazette, 19 October 1824; and Waterloo Seneca Farmer, 13, 20 October 1824. Quoted in the Waterloo Seneca Farmer, 21 September 1824. Auburn Free Press, 8 September 1824. Antiregulars argued that "state" in the relevant clause of the constitution meant the people of the state. See, for example, "A Marylander," in Niles Weekly Register, 18 September 1824, 39-40; and the resolutions of the Genesee County meeting published in the Batavia Republican Advocate, 17 September 1824. For representative condemnations of the entire 1824 legislature, see Albany National Democrat, 7 September 1824; Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 27 September 1824; Ithaca Journal, 27 October 1824; Onondaga Republican, I September 1824; Palmyra Wayne Sentinel, I September 1824; Salem Washington County Post, i, 8 September 1824; Schenectady Cabinet, 19 October 1824; and Utica Columbian Gazette, 21 September and 5, 19 October 1824.

380 Notes to pages 219-22 24 Catskill Republican, 3 September 1824. 25 Catskill Republican, 21 September 1824. 26 Ithaca Journal, 27 October 1824. The New York National Union had urged this argument earlier in the campaign for the nomination. See the issue of ii September 1824. 27 Batavia Republican Advocate, 17 September 1824. 28 Republican Meeting ... the County of St. Lawrence ... on the loth day of September, 1824; Ithaca Journal, 15 September 1824. 29 The address appeared in the Auburn Cayuga Republican on I September; it was printed in the New York National Union on 4 September, in the NewYork Statesman on 6 September, and in the Brooklyn Star on 9 September 1824. 30 Niles' Weekly Register, 4 September 1824, 1-2. The first number, quoted here, appeared in the New-York American on 10 September and in the New-York Statesman and the Schenectady Cabinet on 14 September 1824. To the west, the first essay appeared while the Utica convention was meeting. The Auburn Cayuga Republican, Canandaigua Ontario Repository, and Palmyra Wayne Sentinel printed all or part of it on 22 September 1824. 31 Niles' Weekly Register, 18 September 1824, 35. 32 Ibid., 36. 33 New York National Union, 18 September 1824. 34 Albany Daily Advertiser, 14 September 1824; and Ithaca Journal, 15 September 1824. 35 DWCD, 28-31 August 1824. 36 Charles G. Haines to Thurlow Weed, 4 September 1824, Thurlow Weed Papers, University of Rochester. 37 Harriet A. Weed, ed., Autobiography of Thurlow Weed (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883), 119. 38 New-York American, 10 September 1824, and New York National Union, ii September 1824. 39 D[e] W[itt] C[linton] to Henry Post, Jr, 12 September [1824], HPP; John W. Taylor to John Rogers, Jr, Thaddeus Scribner, and John L. Viele, 13 September, John L. Viele to John W. Taylor, 15 September, Alfred Conkling to John W. Taylor, 15 September, and John W. Taylor to John L. Viele, 16 September 1824, JWTP. John W. Taylor may have learned of the Ogden letter very shortly after it was presented to the National Union. On 9 September, Clinton saw Viele, his go-between with Taylor, and the next day reported to Henry Post that "JWT feels perfectly right" ([De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 10 September [1824], HPP). 40 [Bloodgood], A Few Words on the Crisis [in] New York, 3, 8. The pamphlet, now quite rare, gave neither place nor date of publication. A copy of it may be found in the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. For the identification of Bloodgood as the author and for comment on the

381 Notes to pages 222-8

41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52

53 54

55 56

effectiveness and circulation of the pamphlet, see Jabez D. Hammond, History of Political Parties in the State of New-York, from the Ratification of the Federal Constitution to December, 1840, 2 vols. (Albany: Van Benthuysen, 1842), 2:544. [Bloodgood] Few Words, 4, 5, 6. Ibid., 7-8. Alexander Coventry, Memoirs of an Emigrant: The Journal of Alexander Coventry, M.D., in Scotland, the United States, and Canada during the period 1783-1831 (Albany: Albany Institute of History and Art and the New York State Library, 1978), 2036-7. See appendix B, table 9, columns 2 through 6. Cf. appendix B, tables I and 3. See appendix B, table 9, column 7. See appendix B, table 9, columns 8, 9, and table 6. Insurance companies, since the successful quo warranto proceedings in People v. Utica Insurance Co. (1818), could not function as banks - although they might lend bonds and de facto postnotes; see Donald M. Roper, "Martin Van Buren as Toqueville's Lawyer: The Jurisprudence of Politics," Journal of the Early Republic 2, no. 2 (1982): 183-7; and Fritz Redlich, Molding of American Banking: Men and Ideas, 2 parts (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968), 2:61. See appendix B, table 10, columns 2 through 4. See appendix B, table 19, columns 5 and 6. Albany Argus, 26 September 1824. Canadaigua Ontario Repository, 12 May 1824; Albany Argus, 26 September 1824; Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 27 September 1824; and New-York Statesman, 26 October 1824. Hermon Camp of Tompkins County contested the seat of Henry I. Brinckerhoff. Brinckerhoff had been chosen in absentia by one meeting, but he declined - perhaps swayed by his family ties to regulars Conrad Bevier, Josiah Bevier, and James C. De Witt. A second meeting named Camp to fill his place, but Brinckerhoff, urged by local Young supporters, changed his mind and decided to attend the convention. The committee decided in Camp's favour (Ithaca Journal, 15 September 1824, and Katherine Bevier, The Bevier Family [New York: T.A. Wright, 1916], no). Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 27 September 1824, and Albany Argus, 8 October 1824. [Charles G. Haines], Two Speeches Delivered in the New-York State Convention, September, 1824, with the Proceedings of the Convention (New York, 1824), 7-8, 12. Albany Argus, 8 October 1824, and Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 27 September 1824. Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 27 September 1824; Utica Columbian

382 Notes to pages 228-31

57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73

Gazette, 28 September 1824; and Gerrit Smith's Land Book of 1824, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University. Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 27 September 1824; John Tayler, Notes on the Utica convention, Tayler-Cooper Papers, NYPL. It was also printed in the High-Minded New-York American, i October 1824, from which the following quotations have been taken. Daniel Scott Smith has argued that "the operative kinship mentality of eighteenth-century Yankees was not diffuse and general; rather it was intense and focussed nearly exclusively on children. This peculiar, intense, but truncated orientation toward kin before 1800 paved the way for the shift toward individualism during the nineteenth century ... [providing] a modern understanding of ties that reached beyond the nuclear family" ("'All in Some Degree Related to Each Other': A Demographic and Comparative Resolution of the Anomaly of New England Kinship," American Historical Review 94, no. i [1989]: 73). Wheaton's speech defined Young as a partisan model for the many "unconnected" New Englanders making their way in New York State. Coventry, Memoirs, 38. [Haines], Two Speeches, 22-3. Ibid., 28-30. Ibid., 16, 32; Coventry, Memoirs, 2037. Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 27 September 1824. Cf. Albany Argus, 24, 28 September 1824; New-York Statesman, 25 September 1824; Cooperstown Watch-Tower, 27 September 1824; and New York National Union, 23 October 1824. Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 27 September 1824. Quoted in Cooperstown Freeman's Journal, 8 October 1824. Albany Daily Advertiser, 26 September 1824, New-York American, 27 September 1824, and Albany Argus, 28 September 1824, were the first newspapers to publish the address of the seceders, which, like many of the pieces cited below, was widely copied in the regular press. Wheaton could not commit the men who followed him to Young, but the New-York Patriot, over which Wheaton's influence remained strong, quickly endorsed the regular candidate; see the issue of 25 September 1824. Albany Argus, 12 October 1824; and Utica Oneida Observer, 5, 12 October 1824. Albany Argus, 1,5, 15, 22 October 1824. Goshen Independent Republican, quoted in Albany Argus, 15 October 1824. Cortland Courier, quoted in the Goshen Independent Republican, 25 October 1824. New York National Advocate, 29 September 1824. For Noah's restoration as editor, see the issues of 20 and 22 September 1824. The Albany Argus

383 Notes to pages 231-3

74 75 76

77 78 79 80 81 82

83

84 85 86

87

88 89 90

also firmly linked the capacity to "disorganize" with personal ambition; see the issues of 10 and 29 September 1824. Utica Oneida Observer, 26 October 1824. Buffalo Patriot, 26 October 1824. See the resolutions of the Ulster County regular convention of 4 October 1824, and those of the meeting of the Republican young men of the city of Schenectady, 7 October, quoted in the Albany Argus, 12 October 1824; "Plebeian," in the issue of 15 October 1824; and the Hamilton Recorder, 29 September 1824. Albany Argus, I October 1824. Address of the Clinton County convention, Plattsburgh Republican, 25 September 1824. Utica Oneida Observer, 5 October 1824. Albany Argus, 29 October 1824. Batavia Spirit of the Times, 29 October 1824. "Say I,"from the Auburn Cayuga Patriot, quoted in the Rochester Monroe Republican, 19 October 1824; Plattsburgh Republican, 30 October 1824; Poughkeepsie Republican Telegraph, 13 October 1824 (see also the accompanying "Address" of the Dutchess County regular convention); Buffalo Patriot, 26 October 1824; and Albany Argus, i, 15, 26, 29 October 1824. Hamilton Recorder, 29 September 1824. See also "To the Republican Citizens of the County of Madison," Morrisville Madison Observer, 27 October 1824. "One of the People" and "Patrick Henry," Rochester Monroe Republican, 19 October 1824. Albany Argus, 26 October 1824. Utica Oneida Observer, 26 October 1824. See also the New-York National Advocate, quoted in the Poughkeepsie Republican Telegraph, 13 October 1824. Issue of 26 October 1824. The emphasis is from the original. Occasionally, the perception of Clinton and his following as violent aristocrats became explicit. Regulars reminded the public that Clinton had fought a duel with John Swartwout, and they charged Clintonian Republicans with rowdy disruption of meetings. See "Mr. Clinton a Duelist," Plattsburgh Republican, 30 October 1824; "The Poor Men's Meeting," Poughkeepsie Republican Telegraph, 27 October 1824; "Ghost of Bennett," Saratoga Sentinel, 27 October 1824; and "Faction Defeated," Utica Oneida Observer, 26 October 1824. Saratoga Sentinel, I November 1824. Plattsburgh Republican, 9 October 1824. Cf. Nathaniel H. Carter and William L. Stone, Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1821, Assembled for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution of the State of New-York, 282; Utica Onieda

384 Notes to pages 233-4

91

92

93 94 95

96

97

98

Observer, 19 October 1824; and Plattsburgh Republican, 23 October 1824. The Morrisville newspaper is quoted in the Albany Argus, 15 October 1824. Troy Northern Budget, quoted in the Albany Argus, 19 October 1824; Troy Sentinel, 12, 19 October 1824; and Utica Oneida Observer, 26 October 1824. The Watertown Freeman of 26 October 1824 also contained a short piece by "M," suggesting the experience of poorer men at the polls: "Young men and men not freeholders to the amount of $250. To the polls, and vote for Samuel Young. He was your champion in the convention of 1821 which formed the new constitution - owing to his exertions, aided and supported by the republican members of that convention you are now permitted to carry to the ballot boxes a Governor and Senator vote and the voice of the proud aristocrat 'I shall challenge that vote,' is no more to be heard." Plattsburgh Republican, 30 October 1824. "Young Men," Albany Argus, 19 October 1824. See, for example, "Old Party Distinctions" and "Great Meeting at the Capitol," Albany Argus, 8, 29 October 1824; "State Election," by "An Old Republican," New York National Advocate, 15, 23, 30 October 1824; "Jonathan" in the Saratoga Sentinel, 20 October 1824; and the resolutions and address of the Oneida County young men's meeting of 23 October, Utica Oneida Observer, 26 October 1824. For examples of this much repeated charge, see the following: Albany Argus, 5, 12, 15, 26 October 1824; Buffalo Patriot, 26 October 1824; Goshen Independent Republican, 18 October 1824; Hamilton Recorder, 13 October 1824; Morrisville Madison Observer, 27 October 1824; Oswego Palladium, 23 October 1824; Plattsburgh Republican, 30 October 1824; Poughkeepsie Republican Telegraph, 20 October 1824; Rochester Monroe Republican, 26 October 1824; Saratoga Sentinel, 27 October 1824; Utica Oneida Observer, 12, 26 October 1824; Cooperstown Watch-Tower, 25 October 1824; and Watertown Freeman, 12 October 1824. Examples: Albany Argus, 12, 15, 19, 26, 29 October 1824; Auburn Cayuga Republican, quoted in the Rochester Monroe Republican, 5, 19 October 1824; Goshen Independent Republican, 18, 25 October and I November 1824; New York National Advocate, 25 October 1824; Oswego Palladium, 23 October 1824; Plattsburgh Republican, 30 October 1824; and Watertown Freeman, 19 October 1824. Goshen Independent Republican, i November 1824; New York National Advocate, 23 October 1824; Oswego Palladium, 23 October 1824; and Saratoga Sentinel, 27 October 1824. The Regency distributed the charge in handbills during the last week of October; see Rochester Telegraph, 16 October 1824. The quotation is to be found under "Mr. Clinton Is a Duelist," in the Plattsburgh Republican, 30 October 1824.

385 Notes to pages 234-7 99 Timothy H. Breen, "Narrative of Commercial Life: Consumption, Ideology, and Community on the Eve of the American Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly 50, no. 3 (1993), esp. 498-9. 100 Root's "Address... to the People of the State of New-York" appeared in the Buffalo Patriot, 26 October 1824; Cooperstown Watch-Tower, 25 October 1824; Goshen Independent Republican, 25 October 1824; and Utica Oneida Observer, 26 October 1824, but many regular editors chose to distribute it as a pamphlet extra. See New-York American, quoted in the Hudson Columbia Republican, 26 October 1824, for the form in which the address first appeared, and see the Albany Argus, 29 October 1824, for its later pamphlet publication. 101 New-York Statesman, 20 October 1824. 102 Utica Columbian Gazette, 26 October 1824. See also "Great Conversion," Troy Sentinel, 29 October 1824. 103 Albany Argus, 12 October 1824. After the Clark letter appeared in the Argus, both the regular and antiregular press published it, in most cases about twelve days before the voting began. 104 Albany Daily Advertiser, 25 October 1824; Morrisville Madison Observer, 27 October 1824; and Hamilton Recorder, 19 November 1823 and 17 November 1824. 105 Young did manage to have this letter printed in the Saratoga Sentinel, I November 1824. 106 Porter to Thomas McBurney, 16 September, in the Bath Advocate, quoted in the Buffalo Patriot, 5 October 1824. 107 Buffalo Emporium, 16 October 1824. 108 Auburn Free Press, 13, 27 October 1824; Batavia Republican Advocate, 22 October 1824; Canandaigua Ontario Freeman, 13 October 1824; Geneva Palladium, quoted in Rochester Telegraph, 26 October 1824; New-York Statesman, 12, 13, 14, 16, 20 October 1824; Onondaga Register, 27 October 1824; Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 20, 27 October 1824; Rochester Telegraph, 12, 19, 26 October 1824; Schenectady Cabinet, 26 October 1824; Utica Columbian Gazette, 26 October 1824; Waterloo Seneca Farmer, quoted in Onondaga Register, 13 October 1824, and in Troy Sentinel, 2 November 1824. See also "John Cramer," in Albany Daily Advertiser, 9 October 1824. 109 New York National Union, 30 October 1824. 110 Palmyra Wayne Sentinel, 6 October 1824; and Utica Columbian Gazette, 5 October 1824. 111 Quoted in New York National Union, 9 October 1824. 112 Rochester Telegraph, 28 September 1824. 113 Onondaga Register, 20 October 1824. 114 Batavia Republican Advocate, quoted in the New-York Statesman, 20

386 Notes to pages 237-40

115 116 117 118 119 120

121 122

123 124

125 126 127 128

129 130

October 1824; and Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 6 October 1824. New-York Statesman, 12 October 1824. New York National Union, 2 October 1824. Batavia Republican Advocate, 15 October 1824. Albany Gazette, 12 October 1824, Auburn Free Press, 27 October 1824. Albany Argus, 19 October 1824. Buffalo Emporium, 23 October 1824. Similar reports and commentaries, some taken from the Buffalo Journal of 26 October, appeared in the Albany Daily Advertiser, 2 November 1824, Batavia Republican Advocate, 29 October 1824, Canandaigua Ontario Repository, 26 October 1824, New-York Statesman, 30 October 1824, Onondaga Register, i November 1824, Rochester Telegraph, 2 November 1824, and Schenectady Cabinet, 2 November 1824. New-York Statesman, 29 October 1824. Ithaca Journal, 3 November 1824; Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, i November 1824; Sackets Harbor Freeman's Advocate, 29 October 1824; Utica Oneida Observer, 2 November 1824; and Utica Sentinel Extra, 30 October 1824, Oneida County Historical Society. New-York Statesman, quoted in the Canadaigua Ontario Repository, 26 October 1824. For representative references to Root's personal habits, see Albany Daily Advertiser, 27 October and I November 1824; Auburn Free Press, 27 October 1824; Delhi Delaware Gazette, 13 October 1824; Hudson Columbia Republican, 12, 26 October 1824; New-York Spectator, quoted in the Canadaigua Ontario Repository, 26 October 1824; New-York Statesman, 7, 19 October 1824; Onondaga Register, quoted in the Canandaigua Ontario Freeman, 13 October 1824; Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 6, 13 October 1824; Rochester Telegraph, 26 October 1824; and Sackets Harbor Freeman's Advocate, 29 October 1824. Hudson Columbian Republican, 5 October 1824. Most newspapers used the much more nearly correct figure of 260,000 voters. Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 20 October 1824. Albany Daily Advertiser, 16 October 1824. Quoted in the Palmyra Wayne Sentinel, 20 October 1824. For other representative comment on the High-Minded and other ex-Federalist regulars, see "Federalists" in the Albany Daily Advertiser, 18 October 1824; "A Republican Elector,"in the Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 13 October 1824; "The Caucus Candidate," in the Troy Sentinel, 5 October 1824; and "Philo Junius," in the Sackets Harbor Freeman's Advocate, 29 October 1824. Palmyra Wayne Sentinel - Extra, 22 October 1824. Auburn Free Press, 6 October 1824.

387 Notes to pages 241-6 131 [Haines] Two Speeches, 36; Buffalo Emporium, 30 October 1824. Some New York City Republicans quickly expanded on Gebhard's proposal to back the popular election of the mayor as well as the ward justices. See "Tenth Ward," New-York Statesman, 5 October 1824. For the most part, the Clintonians simply endorsed the popular election of justices. 132 Albany Daily Advertiser, II, 18 October 1824; Albany Gazette, quoted in the Rochester Telegraph, 19 October 1824; and Salem Washington County Post, 27 October 1824. 133 New-York Statesman, 5 October 1824. 134 New-York Statesman, 8, 12 October 1824. 135 Rochester Telegraph, 26 October 1824. Barker's letter, taken from the Brooklyn Long-Island Star, appeared elsewhere upstate. See Albany Daily Advertiser, 28 September 1824; Auburn Free Press, 24 September 1824; Buffalo Emporium, 2 October 1824; and Canadaigua Ontario Freeman, 13 October 1824. 136 New-York Statesman, 25 October 1824. 137 Cf. New-York Statesman, I November 1824; A Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention of the State of New-York; Held at the Capitol, in the City of Albany, on the 28th Day of August, 1821 (New York, 1821), 208. 138 Resolutions of the "Republican young men" of Cherry Valley, CherryValley Gazette, 26 October 1824. 139 Troy Sentinel, 8 October 1824. This also appeared in the Auburn Free Press, 13 October 1824, and the Cherry-Valley Gazette, 26 October 1824. 140 "Creed of a Juntocrat," which first appeared in the Palmyra Wayne Sentinel, 29 September 1824. 141 Albany Gazette, quoted in the New-York Statesman, 25 October 1824, and in the Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, \ November 1824. 142 Albany Daily Advertiser, 16 October 1824. See also, "Address to the Young Men of the County of Columbia," Hudson Columbia Republican, 26 October 1824. 143 Troy Sentinel, 5 October 1824. 144 Rochester Telegraph, 27 October 1824. 145 Hudson Columbia Republican, 26 October 1824. 146 New-York Statesman, 13 October 1824. CHAPTER NINE

I The 1820 turnout for governor equalled 92.5 percent of the men entitled to vote according the 1822 electoral census, but the franchise restrictions under the 1777 constitution were, in some areas, taken lightly; (cf. Albany Argus, 2 June 1820 and 10 December 1824; New-York Statesman, 15 December 1824; and NYLD, 1822, 2, no. 150. Statistical analysis strongly sug-

388 Notes to pages 246-8

2 3

4

5 6

7

8

9

gests a restoration of confidence in Clinton in response to his message in spite of the doubling of the electorate with the participation of many new and young voters. See appendix B, table 11, row i. [De Witt Clinton] to Henry Post, Jr, 6 November [1824], HPP. The number does not include Stephen Van Rensselaer who was supported by both parties; cf. Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1961 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1961), 103-4; Albany Daily Advertiser, 18, 26 October 1824; Buffalo Emporium, 2 October 1824; Fredonia New-York Censor, 25 September 1822; Jamestown Journal, 18 October 1826; New-York Evening Post, 11 November 1824; and New-York Statesman, 22, 30 October 1824. As did the Sackets Harbor Freeman's Advocate, which in its issue of 29 October offered its Clintonian candidates under the heading "People's Ticket, Republican Nomination." Throughout the campaign, the two Albany antiregular newspapers offered different labels for the antiregular tickets. The Albany Gazette and the Albany Daily Advertiser used the term "Democratic Republican." Solomon Southwick's Albany National Democrat, which encouraged self-nomination, headed its listings of candidates with "Nominations by the People"; see the issue of 26 October 1824. Albany Argus, 19, 22 October and 10 December 1824; New-York Statesman, 30 October 1824. On the critical question of state printing, Warner Foils of Herkimer County swung over to the regulars and William H. Adams of Wayne County joined the antiregulars (-4/48, 391-2). The 1824 political identities of the assembly candidates were confirmed from the extant files of thirty-five New York State newspapers. The 1824 senate districts were as follows: First District: Kings, Queens, Richmond, Suffolk, New York. Second District: Dutchess, Putnam, Rockland, Orange, Sullivan, Ulster Westchester. Third District: Albany, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Schenectady, Schoharie. Fourth District: Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Hamilton, Montgomery, St. Lawrence, Saratoga, Warren, Washington. Fifth District: Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, Madison, Oneida, Oswego. Sixth District: Broome, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Otsego, Tioga, Tompkins. Seventh District: Cayuga, Onondaga, Ontario, Seneca, Yates. Eighth District: Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauque, Erie, Genessee, Livingston, Monroe, Niagara, Steuben (CL, 318-19). Except for Delaware County, where the Board of Elections has figures for the 1815-28 period, newspapers have provided the votes from which these percentages have been computed. Albany Daily Advertiser, 30 September and I October 1824; Albany Argus, I October 1824; Auburn Free Press and Salem Washington County Post, 6 October 1824; and Troy Sentinel, quoted in the Cherry-Valley Gazette, 12 October 1824. See appendix B, table 11, row 2.

389 Notes to pages 248-50 10 Albany Argus, 12 November 1824; Statements of John Lansing, Jr, Misc. John Lansing, Jr, Papers, NYHS, 21, 23 February 1804; and Albany Register, 17 February 1804. 11 Albany Argus, 12 April 1814, 14 March 1817, 19 March 1819, 29 February and 10 March 1820, 3 February and 6 September 1822, 17 October 1823; Albany Register, 4 April 1800; George A. Hardin and Frank H. Willard, History of Herkimer County, New York (Syracuse, 1893), 138; Nathaniel S. Benton, History of Herkimer County (Albany, 1856), 340-2, 484; and J. Munsell, comp., Collections of the History of Albany from Its Discovery to the Present Time with Notices of Its Public Institutions, and Biographical Sketches of Citizens Deceased, 4 vols. (Albany, 1865-71), 4:109. 12 Biographical Directory of the American Congress, s.v. "McCarty, Richard"; Catskill Recorder, 24 March 1807 through 15 October \%2^,passim; 131, chap. 84; and -046, "Report of the Commissioners to Investigate the Bank of Hudson," passim. 13 George Baker Anderson, Landmarks of Rensselaer County (Syracuse, 1897), 228, 238, 240, 370, 478; George R. Howell and Jonathan Tenney, History of the County of Albany, New York from 1609 to i&86(New York,

14

15

16

17

18

19

1886), 944; Arthur James Wiese, Troy's One Hundred Years, 1789-1889 (Troy, 1891), 40, 323. Jonathan Pearson, Genealogies of the First Settlers of Albany (Albany, 1872), 76; Albany Gazette, 17 September 1824; Munsell, Collections, 144; A General Catalogue of the Officers, Graduates and Students of Union College from 1795 to 1854 (Schenectady, 1854), 12; MCA, 8 April 1813 and 16 February 1815; Florence Van Rensselaer, comp., The Livingston Family in America and Its Scottish Origins (New York, 1949), 111; and Albany Daily Advertiser, 27 April 1824. Albany Argus, 7 June 1839; Howell and Tenney, Albany County, 76, 847, 852; Daughters of the American Revolution, "Pilgrimages to the Graves of 129 Revolutionary Soldiers," s.v. "Batterman, Christopher," typescript, LC. Howell and Tenney, County of Albany, 556, 804; Cooperstown Otsego Herald, 23 April 1801; Albany Argus, 14 January 1820 and 4 April 1838; and Pittsburgh Republican, 31 March 1821. See appendix B, Table 11, rows 3 through 6. For the 1825 figures for improved land and town population see AJ4$, Appendix C. Figures for per capita wealth have been computed from the 1825 population and the taxable wealth reported in Horatio Gates Spafford, A Gazetteer of the State of New-York (Albany: Packard & Van Benthuysen, 1824). See appendix B, table 11, rows 7 through 9. Twenty-two Oneida County towns voted in the 1824 election, but the votes of Steuben "were rejected on account of error in the returns" (Utica Columbian Gazette, 16 November 1824). Utica Oneida Observer, 28 September 1824; Mary E. Perkins, Old Houses

390 Notes to pages 250-1

20

21 22

23

24

25

of the Antient Town of Norwich 1660-1800 (Norwich, Conn., 1895), 56, 531; Reuben Hyde Walworth, Hyde Genealogy, 2 vols. (Albany, 1864), 1:152; Spafford, Gazetteer, 76; A Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military and Naval, in the Service of the United States (Washington, 1816 through 1831), passim; James H. Smith, History ofChenango and Madison Counties (Syracuse, 1880), 262; Norwich Journal, I April 1819, 9 February and 18 October 1820, and 20 November 1822; Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 2 January 1822; Utica Columbian Gazette, 23 September and 30 December 1823; Utica Oneida Observer, 25 December 1827; and MCA, 21 March 1821 and 20 September 1823. Benjamin's other sons, perhaps purposefully, covered bases among the antiregulars. His eldest, Bela, a Clintonian and a canal collector at Rome, backed manufacturing more explicitly than his father. Benjamin, Jr, Bela's younger brother, ran against his father for the office of justice of the peace in Annsville in 1827; the son won. The father joined the Anti-Masonic movement; Benjamin, Jr, later played the part of a leading Oneida County Democrat. Henry C. Rogers, History of the Town of Paris, and the Valley ofSauquoit (Utica, 1881), 198-9, 218-19; Spafford, Gazetteer, 402-3. New York State Census for Oneida County, 1814 and 1835, Utica Public Library; "Assessment Roll for Steuben, 1831," Fuller Family Papers, Oneida County Historical Society; Verona Cemetery Records, Rome Historical Society; Albany Register, 30 March 1804; Utica Columbian Gazette, 24 March 1807, 5 April 1808, 14 April 1812, 12 May 1818, and 19 November 1822; Albany Argus, 15 May 1815; and MCA, 15 February 1805, 16 June 1808, i April 1811, 15 April 1815, 24 April 1818, and 21 March 1821. Alexander Coventry, Memoirs of an Emigrant: The Journal of Alexander Coventry, M.D., in Scotland, the United States, and Canada during the Period, 1785-1831 (Albany: Albany Institute of History and Art and the New York State Library, 1978), 1597, 1776; Utica Oneida Observer, 14 October 1829; Albany Evening Journal, 15 October 1830, 9 June and 12 September 1834, 31 October 1838, 23 July 1840, and 8 September 1842. Daniel E. Wager, Men, Events, Lawyers, Politics and Politicians of Early Rome: An Address Delivered before the Oneida County Historical Society, at Utica, N. Y, January 28, 1878 (Utica, 1879), 24; Daniel E. Wager, ed., Our County and Its People: A Descriptive Work on Oneida County, New York (Boston, 1896), 81-7, 241. Utica Columbian Gazette, 12 and 19 October 1824; Utica Oneida Observer, 19 October 1824; Albany Argus, 26 October 1824; Glover Moore, The Missouri Controversy, 1819-1821 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966), 101, 112, 157, 213-14; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, s.v. "Storrs, Henry Randolph."

391 Notes to pages 251-2 26 Biographical Directory of the American Congress, s.v. "Kirkland, Joseph"; Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with the Annals of the College History, 6 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1885-1912), 4:681-2; Cooperstown Otsego Herald, 7 April 1796, 25 March 1797, 12 April 1798, 10 April 1800, 19 March 1801, 15 April 1802; Albany Register, 17 May 1803 and 3 March 1820; Geneva Expositor, 8 April 1807; Albany Gazette, 16 February 1809; New-York Evening Post, 4 November 1812, 22 March 1814, and 19 March 1816; Utica Columbian Gazette, 6 May 1817 and 29 March 1820; Albany Argus, 18 May 1820 and 27 March 1821; Coventry, Memoir, 1732, 1881; and the following broadsides in RHC: "Federal Republican Nominations," i April 1808; "To the Independent Electors of the Western District," 26 January 1809; and "Alarming," 30 March 1810. The ticket order given is that presented boldface in the Utica Columbian Gazette, 26 October 1824 and subsequent issues. 27 "Assessment Roll of the Real and Personal Estate in the Town of Utica in the County of Oneida" for 1820 and 1830, and "Oneida County Wills," 5:8 (typescript) Oneida County Historical Society; Benjamin E Thompson, History of Long Island from Its Settlement to the Present Time, 3 vols. (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1918), 3:368; Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Notices of Graduates of Yale College Including Those Graduated in Classes Later than 1815, Who Are Not Commemorated in the Annual Obituary Records (New Haven, 1913), 93; and Walworth, Hyde Genealogy, 2:1076-9. 28 Utica Columbian Gazette, 30 December 1823; Utica Oneida Observer, 26 June 1827; The Utica Directory for 1817 (Utica, 1817), 17; 132, chap. 31, and Thirty-Third Session, chap. 99; Moses M. Bagg, The Pioneers of Utica, Being Sketches of Its Inhabitants and Its Institutions, with the Civil History of the Place, from the Earliest Settlement to the Year 182$, the Era of the Opening of the Erie Canal (Utica, 1877), 345; and Rogers, Town of Paris, 95. 29 Utica Sentinel & Gazette, 8 August 1828, 7 April 1829, 5 and 18 June 1832, 7 August and 30 October 1832, and 25 March 1834; Albany Evening Journal, 9 June 1834; Albany Argus, n September and 15 October 1835; AJ42, 851; Utica Gazette, 2 January 1821; Leonard L. Richards, "Gentlemen of Property and Standing": Anti-Abolition Mods in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 89; and Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 113-14. The file of the Western Recorder is in the Utica Public Library. 30 "Vernon Assessment Rolls," circa 1824, film 75-45-1, NYSA; United States Census for Oneida County, 1820, 1830, and 1840; MCA, 24 April 1818, 6

392 Notes to pages 252-4

31

32

33 34

35 36 37

March 1819, 5 February and 30 May 1820; Utica Oneida Observer, 4 October 1825; Ontario Repository, 27 April 1812; Utica Columbian Gazette, 25 December 1827; Utica Sentinel & Gazette, 23 May 1826, 5 October 1829, 12 October 1830, and 30 October 1832; Albany Evening Journal, 9 June and 30 August 1834, 13 September 1838, and 6 March 1847; and £.33, chap. 16. Wager, Oneida County, 155, 415-16; United States Census for Oneida County, 1820; New York State Census for Oneida County, 1814 and 1835, Utica Public Library; C. Stoddard, A Genealogy of the Family ofStoddard, of Boston (Boston, 1849), 7, 10, and passim; Hugh Hastings, comp., Military Minutes of the Council of Appointment 4 vols. (Albany: James B. Lyon, 1901-2), 1:661, 806, 2:1074, 1131, and 3:1880, 1988; MCA, 23 March 1808, 5 June 1811, 2 April 1813, 15 April 1815, 24 April 1818, and 13 June 1818; Albany Register, 2 April 1807 and 4 April 1820; New-York Evening Post, 19 June 1812; Utica Columbian Gazette, 21 March 1809, 12 May 1818, and 9 May 1820; Albany Argus, 27 March 1821; and Onondaga Register, 11 July 1821. For the Oneida County votes in the election of 1824, see the Utica Columbian Gazette, November. Stoddard's family network was not confined to his brothers: his sister Joanna was married to Eli Parker of nearby Vienna, and another sister, Sarah, had married Andrew Williams of Cherry Valley. Utica Columbian Gazette, 19 November 1822; Utica Sentinel & Gazette, 8 July 1828; and Albany Argus, 30 August 1830, 16 August 1834, 6 December 1836, 16 November 1838, and 20 October 1842. Charles Z. Lincoln, ed., Messages from the Governors, n vols. (Albany: James B. Lyon, 1909), 2:709-10; and Lansingburgh Gazette, 7 April 1812. Millard F. Roberts, A Narrative History of Remsen, New York, Including Parts of the Adjoining Townships of Steuben and Trenton, 1789-1898 (Syracuse, 1914), 21-2, 73, 171-2, 284; £33, chap. 125; List of Stockholders in the Utica Turnpike Company, I May 1826, Comptroller's Records, group 6, box 10, NYSA; New York State Census for Oneida County, 1814 and 1835, Utica Public Library; United States Census for Oneida County, 1820 and 1850; Broadside "Alarming," 30 March 1810, RHC; Utica Columbian Gazette, 25 December 1827; and Utica Sentinel & Gazette, 20 October 1826, 9 October 1828, and 19 November 1833. See appendix B, table n, rows 10 and 11. See appendix B, table n, rows 12 through 17. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class, 83-6. Many unmarried women found employment in teaching, but as in the state, the voting pattern in Oneida County displayed no consistent relationship between support for education and support for the regulars or their opponents. See appendix B, table 11, rows 18 through 23. The data from which the indexes of education are cal-

393 Notes to pages 254-5

38 39 40

41 42

43

44

45

culated can be found in AJ47, appendix A, AJ48, appendix A, and AJ49, Appendix c. See Appendix B, table 12, rows I and 2. See appendix B, table 12, rows 3 through 8. The significance levels of the correlations for manufacturing with the votes for Clinton and for the assembly candidates are both above 0.3, and that for single females and mechanics is 0.84. The relationship between the antiregular votes and the level of taxable property was much stronger. See appendix B, table 12, rows 9 and 10. Spafford, Gazetteer, 89, 130, 313-14. Spafford, Gazetteer, 35, 483. For some of the literature in which this judgment is based, see Nancy E Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere "in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class; Joan M. Jensen, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750-1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); Stephen Watts, The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790-1820 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); and Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), part 3. Spafford, Gazetteer, 481; Eliot G. Storke, History ofCayuga County, New York (Syracuse, 1879), 193; Henry Hall, The History of Auburn, (Auburn, 1896), 515; Joel H. Monroe, Historical Records of a Hundred and Twenty Years, Auburn, N. Y. (Geneva, 1913), 34, 133; Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Presbyterian Education Society, Presented at the Annual Meeting, May 13, 1824 (New York, 1824); and Ralph David Phillips, comp., "Abstracts of Wills of Rensselaer County, New York" (1938), vol. 3, s.v. "Lansing, Cornelius," typescript, Brooklyn Historical Society. Auburn Free Press, I September and 6 October 1824; Auburn Cayuga Republican, i April 1819, 2 May 1821, and 10 September 1823; Albany Argus, 26 March, 7, 14 April 1819, 28 January, 17 March, and 9 May 1820, 2 May 1821, 7 March and 8 September 1823, and 22 October 1824; Plattsburgh Republican, 23 November 1822 and 29 November 1823; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, s.v. "Brinckerhoff, Henry Roeliff" [sic]; Charles K. Gardiner, Dictionary of All Officers ... in the Army in the United States ... and Volunteers and Militia of the United States (New York, 1853), 84; Richard Brinckerhoff, The Family ofJoris Dirckson ErinckerhoffftiewYork, 1887), 48, 51, 59-61; Storke Cayuga, 386-7. Storke, Cayuga, 296; Charles Henry Preston, Descendants of Roger Preston of Ipswich and Salem Village (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1931), 240; AJ4J, table following 1204; Albany Argus, 22 October 1824, 6 September 1825, 29 August and 30 October 1826, 25 August 1831, n September 1834,

394 Notes to pages 255-6

46

47

48

49

50 51

3 November 1835, 17 September 1836, 22 September 1837, n September 1838, 31 August 1840, 7 September 1842, 11 October 1843, 5 September 1844, 4 April 1846, and 17 July 1854. Albany Argus, 14 April 1819, 17 March 1820, 19 June 1821, 31 October 1823, 31 October 1825, 7 October 1830, 8 August 1831, 27 April 1832, 25 March 1837, and 4 April 1840; United States Census for Cayuga County, 1810, 1820, 1850; Records, Union Hill Cemetery, County Historian's Office, Auburn; Cazenovia Pilot, 24 February 1819; Albany New-York Statesman, 19 June 1821; Onondaga Register, 29 October 1823; Auburn Free Press, 19 October 1825, 25 October 1826, 31 October 1827, and 21 May 1828; Albany Evening Journal, 30 August 1834, 28 September 1843, and 27 September 1848. Howard Williston Carter, Carter: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Thomas Carter (Norfolk, Conn.: 1909), 39-40; Storke, Cayuga, 416; United States Census for Cayuga County, 1820; Albany Argus, 14 April 1819, 22 October 1824, and 13 October 1828; Auburn Free Press, 2 July 1828; and Albany Evening Journal, 10 September 1831, 8 June 1832, I April 1843. Cf. Carter, Descendants of Thomas Carter, 39-40, 62-3, 118, 121; Storke, Cayuga, 398 and opposite 466; Albert Welles, History of the Buell Family in England... and in America (New York, 1881), passim; Amos H. Powers, The Powers Family (Chicago, 1884), 60; Ashbel Woodward, "Memoir of Captain John Fillmore, with a Genealogy of the Fillmore Family," New England Genealogical and Antiquarian Register II (1857): 142-3; NewYork American, 17 April 1820; Buffalo Emporium, 23 October 1824; Auburn Cayuga Patriot, 6 July, 3 August, and 7 September 1825; Ithaca American Journal, 6 and 27 August 1828; and Albany Evening Journal, 10, 12 September 1834 and 14 June 1836. Women, particularly in a Quaker environment, could exercise indirect but real power in the nuclear family through links established outside that nucleus; see, for example, Jane Jensen, Loosening the Bonds, 26-7. Storke, Cayuga, 197, 364, 371; Auburn Free Press, 17 November 1824 and 21 May, 4 June, and 2 July 1828; Ithaca Republican Chronicle, 14 September 1825; Auburn Cayuga Patriot, 23 August 1826; Albany Evening Journal, 12 April and 12 September 1830, 10 September 1831, 8 October 1832, 27 September 1838, 28 September 1854, 19 January 1855, and 4 October 1855; and Albany Argus, i December 1832 and 20 June 1853. Auburn Free Press, 6 October 1824. Albany Register, 11 March 1827; Auburn Cayuga Republican, 19 April 1820 and 18 April 1821; New-York Evening Post, 20 April 1822; Auburn Free Press, 11 September 1825 and 27 October 1827; Albany Argus, 4 December 1830; Utica Sentinel & Gazette, 3, 31 July 1832; Palmyra Wayne Sentinel, 12 August 1831; Temple R. Hollcroft, "Aurora's Two Masonic

395 Notes to pages 256-8 Buildings and Their Builders," Transactions. The American Lodge of Research. Free and Accepted Masons J, no. I (1957): 25; Storke, Cayuga, 412; and Biographical Review of Leading Citizens of Cayuga County, 2 vols. (Boston, 1894), 1:121-2. 52 Auburn Advocate of the People, 5 February 1817 and n March 1818; Albany Evening Journal, 14 September 1838 and 25 October 1841; Cuyler Reynolds, Genealogical and Family History of Southern New York and the Hudson River Valley, 3 vols. (New York, 1914), 3:1181-3; [James] Appleton Morgan, A History of the Family of Morgan (Westfield, Ct., n.d.), 125-6; and Jacob Lafayette Halsey and Edmund Drake Halsey, Thomas Halsey of Hertfordshire, England and Southampton, Long Island (Morristown, NJ, 1895), 244 and passim. 53 Douglas Richardson, The Eno and Enos Family in America (Bethany, Okla., 1985), 135-7; Auburn Cayuga Republican, 13 November 1822; Auburn Free Press, 23 August 1826; and United States Census for Cayuga, 1820. 54 For the voting pattern of the county, see Auburn Cayuga Republican, 3 May 1820, 13 November 1822, and 19 November 1823; and Auburn Free Press, 17 November 1824 and 23 November 1825. 55 Thomas F. De Voe, Genealogy of the De Veaux Family (New York, 1885), 176-91; Brooklyn Long-Island Star, 21 April 1819; Auburn Cayuga Republican, 21 April 1819, 12 January 1820, and 11 February 1824; Auburn Free Press, 10, 19 October 1825, 25 October 1826, and 31 October and 14 November 1827; and Albany Evening Journal, 10 September 1831. 56 Biographical Directory of the American Congress, s.v. "Hulburt, John Whitefield"; Storke, Cayuga, 22; Rochester Telegraph, 9 July 1822; Onondaga Register, 29 October 1823; Albany Gazette, 18 August 1824 and 14 August 1826; Auburn Free Press, 7 July 1824, 18 May, 15 June, 6 July, and 5 October 1825, and 8 August 1828; and Utica Sentinel & Gazette, 25 October 1831. 57 Auburn Gazette, 15 July and 7 October 1818; Auburn Advocate of the People, II March 1818; and Auburn Cayuga Republican, 7 March 1821. 58 For an exploration of the gender-oriented differences between the parties of the second party system, see Norma Basch, "Marriage, Morals, and Politics in the Election of 1828," Journal of American History 80, no. 3 (1993). 59 New-York Statesman, 26 October 1824; Newburgh Political Index, 16 November 1824. 60 New-York Statesman, 12 October 1824; Newburgh Gazette, 25 September and 9 October 1824. 61 Mount Pleasant Westchester Herald and Newburgh Political Index, 19 October 1824. 62 Newburgh Gazette, 30 October 1824.

396 Notes to pages 258-9 63 United States Census for Rockland and Ulster counties, 1820 and 1840; Poughkeepsie Journal, 10 October 1820 and 4 December 1839; Albany Argus, 5 May 1831 and 23 November 1846; Theodore Langdon Van Norden, The Van Norden Family (South Salem, NY: Horse and Hound, 1923), 27; A Census of Pensioners for Revolutionary or Military Services (Washington, 1841), 106; United States Census for Rockland County, 1820 and 1840; and Hastings, Military Minutes, 3:2325 64 New-York Columbian, 12 November 1812; Lansingburgh Gazette, 7 April 1812; Mount Pleasant Westchester Herald, 31 March and 3, 10 April 1821, and 21 October 1823; Goshen Independent Republican, 16 September 1822; Albany Argus, 21 February and 18 April 1823; and Poughkeepsie Dutchess Observer, 20 October 1824. 65 Newburgh Political Index, 19 October 1824; Newburgh Gazette, 30 October 1824. 66 In 1825, 2.45 percent of New York's and 4.55 percent of Orange's population was African-American. Many of these people were slaves. In spite of the "emancipation" acts of 1799 and 1817, many remained slaves. The 1799 law specified that Blacks born after 4 July 1799 would be held as bond servants - females until they reached the age of twenty-five and males when they became twenty-eight. The 1817 law freed every slave born before 4 July 1799 after 4 July 1827. 67 Newburgh Gazette, 30 October 1824. See also Biographical Directory of the American Congress, s.v. "Case, Walter"; and Moore, Missouri Controversy, 101, 213-14. 68 Biographical Directory of the American Congress, s.v. "Craig, Hector"; Russel Headley, The History of Orange County (Middletown, NY, 1898), 134, 139; LJ7, chap. 101; z/j