USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. II 1822-1864 > Part 12
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The last stage in the development of the State Fair organization was now approaching. The reports of the State Fair attendance in the decade following its re- moval to Syracuse were satisfactory. But the financial returns were insufficient to meet the largely increased outlay of the parent society. By 1899 the financial embarrssment of the society had become acute, and it had no resort but to appeal to the State for aid. The signal was a radical modification of the status of the exposition, whereby it passed from the hands of the State Agricultural Society to the control of the State itself.
In this transformation Governor Theodore Roosevelt and Lieutenant-Governor Timothy L. Woodruff played a decisive part. They both were official guests at the Fair in 1899, and on the last evening of the Fair week they attended a conference of citizens of Syracuse, representatives of the State Agricultural Society, and members of the Legislature, at which the future of the
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Fair was earnestly discussed. At this meeting Mr. Woodruff filled a double official role, owing to his election in the preceding May to the presidency of the State society in anticipation of the change of State Fair control which was even then expected. Antecedent to this incident was the passage of a bill by the Legisla- ture, appropriating $35,000 for the benefit of the State Agricultural Society, on the condition that the Society transfer to the State "all the right, title, and interest to all its lands" in Syracuse. When this measure was enacted with the approval of Governor Roosevelt, the Fair still remained under the management of the State society ; for it was stipulated in the act that the use and occupation of the Syracuse property should be left to the society so long as it should "hold or maintain a State Fair" annually. The society agreed to the pro- posed terms.
As it turned out, the State Fair of 1899 was the last conducted under the auspices of the society. At the Syracuse meeting which assembled after the close of the Fair a strong sentiment was developed in favor of State control. As a result, in his regular message to the Legis- lature in the following January, Governor Roosevelt, after referring to the action taken by the Legislature in the preceding session, recommended that "the State take under its control the management of the State Fair." In furtherance of the Governor's desire, Lieu- tenant-Governor Woodruff, presiding at a meeting of the executive committee of the State Agricultural Society later in the month, earnestly enjoined that body to acquiesce in the program of State ownership, and he
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fortified his argument with figures showing that, in the absence of State patronage, the exposition was doomed to disaster. At the conclusion of his address the meeting adopted a resolution declaring it to be the sense of the executive board that "it is for the best interests of the agriculture and horticulture of the State that from this time the State Fair and its affairs shall pass under State management and that legislation shall be adopted to that end." The necessary legislation was soon enacted, and a State commission was created with the Lieutenant-Governor and the State Commissioner of Agriculture as ex-officio members, to assume super- vision of the Fair.
Since that time the evolution of the State Fair has been progressive. It has been encouraged with liberal appropriations by the Legislature. Under the later administration of Governor Hughes a more elaborate policy of structural and expositional expansion for the Fair was inaugurated. Its weekly attendance has passed far beyond the 200,000 mark, and in many respects it compares favorably with the most imposing and successful State Fairs of the great west. Its growing importance as a center of public interest may be partly judged from the fact that among its distinguished guests it has numbered in later years Theodore Roose- velt, William H. Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.
JAMES S. WADSWORTH
James S. Wadsworth, soldier; born at Geneseo, N. Y., October 30, 1807; studied law but never practiced, devoting all his time to the cultivation and care of his large estate; delegate to the peace conference at Washington in 1861; volunteered his services at the outbreak of the civil war and fought bravely, attaining the rank of major general; killed at Chancellorsville, Va., May 8, 1862.
CHAPTER XII
VAN BUREN AND SLAVERY
A YEAR of extraordinary political agitation and intrigue began in a notably placid manner. The Fifty-eighth Legislature met at Albany on January 6, 1835, with an overwhelming Democratic majority in each house. The Assembly elected as its Speaker Charles Humphrey, a Democrat of Tomp- kins county, by a vote of 91 to only 31 for Mark H. Sibley, of Ontario, the Whig candidate. Governor Marcy sent in a message marked with his usual lucidity of expression and constructive statesmanship, and note- worthy for the number of its recommendations which were favorably and promptly acted upon by the Leg- islature.
The Governor elaborately reviewed the national controversy over the United States Bank, took obvi- ously much satisfaction in reporting that it had not been found necessary for the State to issue any por- tion of the loan to the State banks that had been at his instance provided for, and gave his "most positive assurance" that none of it would be issued. He rec- ommended increased pay for the judiciary, and in con- sequence the Legislature enacted a measure granting such increase to the Chancellor and Justices of the Supreme Court and Circuit Courts, and also provid-
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ing for an additional master in chancery in each county excepting New York.
The common school system commanded much at- tention, and he urged measures for assuring a better supply of competent teachers, improved methods of instruction, and more efficient use of the school funds for those purposes. "The efforts of the Legislature," said Mr. Marcy, "should not be intermitted until the system shall be so improved as to secure to the chil- dren of all classes and conditions of our population such an education as will qualify them to fulfill, in a proper manner, the duties appertaining to whatever may be their respective pursuits and conditions of life." In response to his appeal school district libraries were created and some increase of the school funds was made from the general fund of the State.
The depletion of the State treasury and the neces- sity of replenishing it engaged the Governor's atten- tion, and in consequence of his representations and recommendations the Legislature passed an act author- izing the Comptroller to borrow whatever money might be needed, without limit. This was to be done by the issuing of State stock to run not more than seven years and to be paid out of the revenues of the State from salt duties, auction sales, canal tolls, direct taxes, or any other sources.
The canal systems of the State were reported to be making great progress and to be prospering. The Governor recommended that the entire bed of the Erie canal be enlarged by widening and deepening, and that similar changes be made also in the locks, the
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enlargement and doubling of which he had formerly urged; and that another large loan be made to the Chenango canal enterprise. Both of these recommenda- tions were favorably acted upon.
Progress was reported in the surveys for the Erie Railroad and in the preparations for constructing that great work, and the Governor suggested the desira- bility of legislation on the matter; in response the Legislature on May 8 made some amendments to the act of 1832 incorporating that railroad. The railroad company had applied to the State for a loan of two million dollars, not in cash but in the credit of the State. This application came before the Legislature in March and occasioned a vigorous debate. It was pointed out that during the last electoral campaign Democratic leaders had freely promised that such aid would be extended to the enterprise, and by virtue of such assurances were able to carry the middle and southern counties of the State. But the majority of the Legislature refused to fulfill those promises and rejected the application. There was reason to believe that this was done largely because one of the fore- most promoters of the railroad was James G. King (son of Rufus King), who was a prominent member of the Whig party.
The Governor reported that the United States gov- ernment had undertaken the work of improving the Hudson River for navigation, and that it would there- fore be unnecessary for the State of New York to do anything in that direction. The Legislature enacted a measure authorizing the Federal government to take,
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occupy, and acquire any real estate adjacent to the river which it might need in the prosceution of that work of improvement.
Much space was given in the message to the ques- tion of prison administration and reform. It was highly desirable, the Governor said, to make the labor of the convicts pay for the entire cost of maintaining the prisons, and in fact this was being done. Thus, in the last year, he reported, Auburn prisoners had earned $47,723.27, while the total expense of maintain- ing the prison had been only $42,228.94; so that there had actually been a profit to the State of $5,494.33. The showing at Sing Sing had been still more favor- able, with earnings of $76,990.84 and expenses of $55,- 593.85; a favorable balance of $21,396.99. To pro- mote the industries of the prisoners various mechani- cal trades had been introduced among them, against which mechanics all over the State were vigorously protesting. After some discussion of the question of competition between prison labor and free labor the Governor recommended that the Legislature take some action which would satisfy the demands of the pro- testing mechanics and at the same time maintain the system of prison labor. In the preceding year a com- mission had been appointed to investigate and study the matter, and its report led the Legislature of 1835 to enact that no mechanical trade should thereafter be taught the convicts excepting the making of articles of which the chief American supply was imported from foreign countries. The recommendation of a separate prison for women was renewed, and the Legislature
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met it by providing for a women's prison at each of the State prisons.
The State banking system and the currency were discussed, and the Governor recommended legislation forbidding the issuance of banknotes of a less denomina- tion than five dollars, which the Legislature promptly enacted. The purpose of this, he explained, was not to contract the currency, which would be a perni- cious thing, but to bring gold and silver more into cir- culation. Legislation was also recommended for pro- tecting the purity of elections, especially for prevent- ing the corrupt use of money in them, a need which was becoming painfully apparent and urgent. The death of Simeon DeWitt, for many years Surveyor-General of the State, was announced, and the Legislature elected William Campbell to be his successor.
Samuel Young, who had reëntered public life as a Senator from the Fourth district, and who was at this time an ardent and zealous supporter of the Jackson administration, was the author of a resolution calling upon the United States Senators from New York to use their best efforts to have expunged from the jour- nal of the Senate the famous resolution of March 28, 1834, declaring that in removing the public deposits from the United States Bank the President had acted in derogation of the Constitution and laws.
The Legislature adjourned on May 11 without day.
Meantime political activity waxed apace. The Pres- idential election, at which it was intended that Van Buren should be chosen, was not to take place for more than a year and a half. But early in 1835 the cam-
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paign was actively begun. A Democratic State con- vention was held, at which forty-two delegates were chosen to the Democratic national convention which was to meet in Baltimore May 20. At the latter all the States were represented excepting South Carolina, Alabama, and Illinois, though Tennessee sent only one delegate and Mississippi and Missouri only two each. The outcome was that Van Buren was unanimously nominated for the Presidency, nearly eighteen months in advance of the election. This achievement en- hanced the prestige of Van Buren and the Democratic party in New York to a noteworthy degree. After nearly half a century New York was for the first time in a fair way of seeing one of its citizens made Presi- dent of the United States. This circumstance contrib- uted powerfully to the Democratic State campaign of 1835, which resulted in the election of another over- whelmingly Democratic Legislature.
New York was by this time feeling strongly the dis- turbing effects of the anti-slavery agitation, and Van Buren was made to feel that an issue was thus raised which would have to be very seriously reckoned with in his political future. Benjamin Lundy and William Lloyd Garrison had been the chief organizers of the new movement, but Arthur and Lewis Tappan and Gerrit Smith, of New York, were rising into national prominence as among its most powerful promoters. Garrison had in 1828 been fined and sent to jail for an alleged libel, whereupon Arthur Tappan had paid the fine for him and procured his release. Garrison then returned to Boston and on January 1, 1830, be-
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gan the publication of the famous Liberator. This so incensed the pro-slavery leaders of the south that the Governor of Georgia actually made requisition upon Governor Marcy for the surrender of Arthur Tappan to the authorities of that State for trial as an aider and abettor of Garrison, although Mr. Tappan had never been in Georgia in his life! The fantastic demand was of course refused. Marcy had at least some sense of humor.
Violence soon began, incited by emissaries from southern States whose leaders, finding that they could not by legal processes stop the anti-slavery agitation, determined to resort to extreme measures. In October, 1833, many respectable and eminent citizens of New York City undertook to meet at Clinton Hall for the organization of an anti-slavery society, but were forci- bly prevented from so doing by a mob that comprised other equally respectable and eminent citizens, as well as a contingent of roughs. On the Fourth of July, 1834, an anti-slavery meeting in a chapel in that city was forcibly broken up, and a few days later the resi- dence of Lewis Tappan was mobbed and looted. In many places the churches, schools, and homes of negroes were raided, plundered, and destroyed.
Such work was proceeding at a great rate in 1835, and in October of that year reached a crisis which reacted against the perpetrators and brought to the support of the anti-slavery agitators, or Abolitionists as they were commonly called, a man who was destined to be the strongest and most efficient of all their leaders. At that time a number of Abolitionists from all parts
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of the State met at Utica for the purpose of forming a State Anti-Slavery Society. Thereupon a mob of the "solid men" of that city, led by Samuel Beardsley, then a Representative in Congress and afterward Chief- Justice of the Supreme Court of the State, violently attacked them, broke up their meeting, and warned them, under threats of worse treatment, to leave town. Among the witnesses of the outrage was Gerrit Smith, one of the largest landowners in the State and a man of singularly handsome presence, great intellectual force, and irresistible personal charm. He had thith- erto not favored the Abolition movement but had been active in the Colonization Society, of which Henry Clay was president and the object of which was to convey American negroes back to Africa and establish them there in colonies under American instruction and protection. But the Utica outrage converted him in an hour and made him thereafter the most ardent, zeal- ous, and effective of the Abolitionist leaders. When the Utica meeting was broken up he immediately in- vited its members to reassemble within the shelter of his own home at Peterborough in Madison county, and there to complete their work; and his militant spirit boded little good for any who should try to med- dle with a meeting there. The !invitation was ac- cepted, and thus the New York State Anti-Slavery Society was organized.
All this was of intense and vital political interest to Van Buren. He was probably at heart not at all en- amored of slavery. Had it been to his advantage to do so he would doubtless have arrayed himself against it.
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But he was a candidate for the Presidency, and in order to be elected it was absolutely necessary that he should secure the support and votes of the slave States of the south. In most of those States he was regarded with a large degree of suspicion, as indeed any northern candi- date would have been. It was therefore necessary that he should not only dissociate himself from the Abolition- ists, who had become nationally conspicuous in New York, but should also positively antagonize them and identify himself with slavery. He therefore had the Albany Regency organize at least one mass-meeting of the Democracy in every county of the State, at which there were adopted resolutions dictated by himself, de- nouncing the "hellish Abolitionists" as fanatics and traitors. He directed the holding of a great meeting at Albany, requiring Marcy to be its chairman, at which similarly strong anti-Abolitionist resolutions were passed, and these he personally sent to the Gov- ernor of Georgia for transmission throughout the south, with the assurance that he personally agreed with them and approved them in the strongest manner. These tactics made him "solid" with the south and secured him unanimous nomination and the vote of the south for his election.
The month of October, 1835, saw the rise in New York City of a new Democratic faction and a new political party, both of which made for a time much noise in the State and left permanent names in its his- tory. A Representative in Congress was to be elected from that city to fill a vacancy, and a general meeting of Tammany Hall was held to select a candidate. The
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leaders of the party had in advance agreed on Gideon Lee as a candidate, but it was known that a consider- able faction was opposed to him because he was "too much of a gentleman." So strong was the opposition, indeed, that the leaders resorted to "snap judgment" to make the nomination without putting it fairly to a vote of the organization. In the midst of tumult and disorder which made the gathering more like a riot than a convention, they declared the nomination made and agreed to and the meeting adjourned, and then turned off the gas so as to leave the hall in darkness. The malcontents, however, were not to be defeated by such tactics. Procuring a supply of candles, each man produced a box of friction matches, then known as "loco focos," and lighted one, thus giving the place ample illumination. Before the candles were burned out resolutions of a most radical kind were adopted, denouncing banks, railroads, and all such "monopo- lies," and nominating Charles G. Ferris for Congress against Mr. Lee. They then marched through the streets, carrying the lighted candles. From the inci- dent this faction became known as the Loco Focos. In the ensuing election the Loco Focos were defeated, Gideon Lee being elected to Congress; but they main- tained their activity and won local control of the party. Their name came to be rather frequently applied to the Democratic party throughout the State and indeed the nation-although it must be said the "Loco Foco" des- ignation for the Democracy in general was more cur- rent among its opponents than its followers, and histor- ically belongs to the category of more or less derisory
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political epithets coined from time to time, such as, to cite recent examples, "Mugwump" and "Standpat."
At about the same time with the "loco foco" incident the Native American Association was formed and held a convention in New York. It drew its membership from all other parties and was based upon the single principle of excluding all persons of foreign birth from public office. It put up candidates for the State As- sembly; and for Congress, against Gideon Lee and Charles G. Ferris, it nominated ex-President James Monroe, who had become a resident of New York. Upon this Philip Hone, whom we have already quoted, wrote in his Diary: "The split among the Tammany folks is so wide, and their animosity against each other so bitter, that Monroe may very easily be elected if the Whigs can be interested sufficiently in the event to induce them to go to the polls." But the Whigs let the election go by default, or voted for Gideon Lee.
The Whigs were less hasty than the Democrats in starting their Presidential campaign, and less united upon a candidate. They were in fact divided among four leading candidates, to-wit: Judge White, of Ten- nessee; General W. H. Harrison, of Ohio; Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts; and Henry Clay, of Ken- tucky. The Harrison men were first in the field with a public demonstration. Shortly after the November election of 1835 they held a mass-meeting in New York City and recommended Harrison's nomination. Three weeks later a similar meeting in the interest of Webster was held, in response to a call signed by eleven hundred citizens. Any more positive action was deferred until
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the next year. There being among the New York Whigs nobody who was considered available for the Presidency, the party in this State conceded national leadership to other States in which there were candidates.
Partly because of the financial disturbances occa- sioned by the Bank conflict, and partly from other causes, the cost of living in 1835 rose to an exorbitant point. In the fall of that year butter sold at wholesale in New York City for more than two dollars a pound, and hay at thirty dollars a ton. The prices of nearly all other commodities were similarly inflated. In that city the distress was aggravated by the most extensive and disastrous fire that had ever occurred in the United States. On the night of December 16 the heart of the business section of the city, to the number of nearly seven hundred buildings, including the Merchants' Ex- change and other costly edifices, was destroyed, the loss being more than $15,000,000. The burned area, lying south of Wall Street and east of Broad Street, was more than a quarter of a mile square. The glare of the con- flagration was said to have been seen plainly at New Haven and Philadelphia, being so bright in the latter place that the local firemen were called out under the supposition that the fire was somewhere in the outskirts.
The Fifty-ninth Legislature assembled at Albany on January 5, 1836, with the same organization of both houses as its predecessor. The Governor's message was unusually long because of its extended discussion of the Abolition movement and other topics. Much attention was paid in it to educational affairs, both as to the com-
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mon schools and the colleges. Reference was made for the first time to the newly organized University of the City of New York, which was described as being in plan in many respects similar to the most extensive uni- versities on the continent of Europe, and which the Governor reasonably hoped would in due time fulfill the expectations of its founders.
Canals and other public works were discussed in de- tail, and the Legislature was reminded of their great cost. That was no reason, the Governor argued, for their discontinuance. Indeed, discontinuance was to be most strongly deprecated. But it would manifestly be wrong and would seriously impair the credit of the State to incur heavy indebtedness for the future to dis- charge without providing for its amortization.
Extended reference was made to the extraordinary mania for speculation, particularly in real estate, which seemed to possess the people, particularly of New York City and its suburbs. Vacant lands in and about that and other cities had risen in many instances several hun- dred per cent. in price, and large areas had been sold and bought at prices that suggested the competition of speculation rather than any real demand resulting from the increase of population and general prosperity. Most of the lands had been bought not for improvement and occupancy, but to be put upon the market and sold again. A single auctioneer in New York had sold real estate during the year to the amount of more than twenty million dollars, of which more than half was on bids made by or for the owners. This speculation was not confined to city and suburban lots, but ex-
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