USA > New York > New York : the planting and the growth of the Empire state, Vol. II > Part 13
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By his death, Martin Van Buren became for the time the foremost figure in New York poli- tics. That adroit manager, with the Albany regency, had enlisted early in favor of General Jackson for president, and on that movement was elected governor in 1828, while a member of
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the United States senate ; the State in the same year casting twenty of its electoral votes for Andrew Jackson, and sixteen for John Quincy Adams, for president. Mr. Van Buren acted as governor only from January 1 to March 12, 1829, when he resigned to become secretary of / state in the cabinet of President Jackson, with whom he thereafter closely identified himself.
When Mr. Van Buren went to Washington, Enos T. Throop, as lieutenant governor, suc- ceeded to the executive chair, and he was in 1830 elected governor, over Francis Granger, the candidate of the anti-masons. Albany en- tered upon that long exercise of political con- trol which for years directed both parties in New York, and in no small degree affected the affairs of the nation. Edwin Croswell, editor of the " Argus," was the permanent member of the Albany regency, and was adroit as a man- ager and strong and audacious as a writer. Thurlow Weed, editor of the "Evening Jour- nal," was destined to a more prolonged career, as he had surely a more subtle power over men ; and in short paragraphs, condensing an argu- ment or hurling an epithet or fastening a dam- aging accusation, he had no equal among his contemporaries. From 1826 to 1833, Azariah C. Flagg was secretary of state, followed by A. Dix until 1839; William L. Marcy was comp-
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troller from 1823 to 1829, succeeded by Silas Wright until 1834 ; Greene C. Bronson was at- torney general from 1829 until 1836. All these the State honors among its most noted sons. In the senate, William H. Maynard, Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, Nathaniel S. Benton, Henry A. Foster, Albert H. Tracy sat in the years of Governor Throop's administration, and, to be- come more famous than any of them, William H. Seward entered that body in 1831. John C. Spencer was in the assembly, and in 1829 Mil- lard Fillmore entered ; and that body contained other members who, without subsequently at- taining to like eminence with him, at that time exercised equal or greater influence. The qua- drennium dating from the death of Clinton was marked in Albany by an array of men of abil- ity, and of continued influence on public affairs, rarely equaled and perhaps never surpassed.
Mr. Van Buren was destined to be the occa- sion of conflict in national politics. He had contributed to break up the cabinet, from which he resigned in 1831, and was nominated soon after as minister to England, and sailed for his post in September. When the senate came to act on his confirmation, Henry Clay, the leader of the opposition to Jackson's administration, arraigned him for instructing Minister McLean to say to the British ministry that General
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Jackson was more favorable to its party than was Mr. Adams; the friends of Mr. Calhoun looked upon him as the instigator of mischief between the president and that gentleman ; and to ambitious senators he was offensive because he was already regarded as the official candidate for the succession to President Jackson. He was therefore rejected, and was thus clothed with increased importance in the dominant party.
In the canvass for president in 1832, the principle of protection to American industry was brought into the foreground. In New York, woolen manufactures and wool-growing had become important interests. In 1827 a State convention at Utica drew together many able men, who declared that congress ought to pass laws to protect home manufactures and to encourage wool-growing, and they sent dele- gates to a national convention at Harrisburg to advance the same views. The legislature, Jan- uary 5, 1828, unanimously called on the sena- tors and representatives to try to secure "a sufficient protection to the growers of wool, hemp and flax, and the manufacturers of iron, woolens and every other article." It was sup- posed therefore that on such grounds Henry Clay, the champion of the American system, would command strong support in New York.
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Mr. Van Buren had the credit of inducing Gen- eral Jackson to modify his opinion that a presi- dent should hold that office but one term, and to consent to a renomination. Mr. Van Buren himself was nominated for vice-president, and he took active control of the canvass in the State, securing the support of the bankers in New York city opposed to the maintenance there of a branch of the United States Bank, and thus the Jackson party carried New York. Governor Throop gave way to William L. Marcy in the executive chair. The democratic party had become a compact organization. The opposition was a coalition of diverse elements, of admirers of the memory of Clinton and of the brilliant qualities of Clay, of masons and of anti-masons opposed to Van Buren and the Al- bany regency. Discipline and shrewd manage- ment held the democrats in power, reflecting Governor Marcy in 1834 and 1836, and giving to Mr. Van Buren such prestige at home that the democratic national convention at Balti- more in the latter year gave him the nomina- tion for president with absolute unanimity. The personal strength of General Jackson con- tributed not a little to this result, but the im- portance of New York as a State commanded consideration, now that for the only time the dominant party was without internal feuds and
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intense personal rivalries. The popular major- ity for Van Buren electors was nearly ten per cent. of the total vote cast.
In that generation the delegation from New York, in both houses of Congress, was eminent in character and influence. Nathan Sanford served two terms in the senate, and between them was chancellor of New York. Charles E. Dudley, who succeeded Van Buren as senator, is better known as the founder of the Dudley Observatory at Albany. William L. Marcy and Silas Wright were not surpassed by any of their colleagues as legislators. Nathaniel P. Tallmadge passed from state politics to the na- tional senate, and was among the foremost of the conservatives in the whig party. Henry A. Foster, in both houses of congress, exhibited the ability and force which even in a higher degree he illustrated afterwards on the supreme bench of the State. Daniel S. Dickinson, a leader in his own commonwealth among the conservative democrats, in the senate attained such standing, under the administration of President Polk, as to array it with his wing of the party in New York politics. In 1848 his name was suggested for the presidency. In 1861 he threw all his influence for the war for the Union, and identi- fied himself with the republican party. Among the representatives at the same time were many
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able jurists, efficient legislators, and recognized leaders of opinion in their respective parties. Foremost as a debater, and pronounced by Henry Clay the most eloquent speaker he ever heard, was Henry R. Storrs, who served twelve years as representative from the Oneida dis- trict, but subsequently was in the forefront of the legal profession in New York city. Con- spicuous in their respective parties were also Peter B. Porter, John C. Spencer, Albert H. Tracy, and Churchill C. Cambreleng. Michael Hoffman took to Washington his radical views and his local reputation. Samuel Beardsley was welcomed for his learning in the law and his weight of personal character. Millard Fill- more established the relations which gave him the vice-presidency and the succession to the presidency ; while Francis Granger, of the same school of politics, was called from his seat as a representative to become postmaster general in the cabinet of President Harrison.
The political revolution which swept the commonwealth as well as the nation in 1840 was due to local as well as general causes. The financial distress which marked the year 1837 was felt with intense severity in New York, and the banks of the State, compelled to sus- pend specie payments, became, as well as the United States Bank, factors in partisan divis-
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ions. Charters were still granted as matter of favor by the legislature, and were the occasion of conflict in each locality. The suspension of the law forfeiting these charters for a failure to pay specie, necessary as it was, afforded ground for censure, and for assault on the friends of the banks. At the same time, Mr. Van Buren's plan for a sub-treasury arrayed the bank influ- ence against him and his party.
Another influence began to work at this period. The people of New York were in- stinctively opposed to the extension and ag- grandizement of slavery, but political and com- mercial interests held them in check. When Missouri asked for admission as a State as long ago as 1819, James Tallmadge, Jr., a representa- tive from the Dutchess district, moved to strike out the permission to maintain slavery, and the legislature unanimously called on senators and representatives to sustain his position. The Missouri compromise postponed the discussion, which, however, earnest thinkers were in vari- ous ways pressing, and which ambitious North- ern men and enterprising merchants were seek- ing to avert. So it happened that in 1834, during the controversy to petition congress against slavery, mobs broke up abolition meet- ings in New York city, and assailed eminent citizens like Arthur and Lewis Tappan because
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they opposed slavery. October 21, 1835, an anti-slavery convention was held in Utica, ac- cording to previous notice. A citizens' meet- ing sent a committee to the six hundred dele- gates who assembled, to " warn them to abandon their pernicious movements," and under this , instigation the mob broke up the convention and drove the delegates from the town. A like spirit was shown elsewhere, and Southern lead- ers demanded that agitation about slavery should be put down. Mr. Van Buren agreed with them at this time, and in his first message declared positively against interference by con- gress with slavery in the District of Columbia.
The close relations between Canada and New York produced intense excitement in 1837, and threatened international complications. Owing to discontent in both Upper and Lower Canada, William L. Mackenzie and Joseph J. Papineau were able to organize an insurrection of consid- erable proportions, and they appealed for sym- pathy, and to some extent commanded it, on our northern borders. In December, Navy Island, on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, was seized by a party of Americans accompanied by Mackenzie and led by Rensselaer van Rens- selaer of the patroon's family. They held the island with seven hundred men, twenty cannon, and abundant provisions, and kept up communi-
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cation with the American shore by a steamboat called the Caroline. On the night of December 29, the Caroline lay at Schlosser's Landing, on the American side, with its crew sleeping quietly, when royalists from Canada under Colonel McNab cut it from its moorings, set it on fire, and let it loose to drift down the cat- aract, while the occupants were killed, wound- ed, or drowned. Four years later Alexander McLeod, who had boasted of complicity in the firing of the vessel and the murder of its crew, was put on trial in Utica for the crime. The British government assumed the responsibility of the destruction of the Caroline as an act of war, and demanded the release of the prisoner, which was denied by the United States, and he was tried under the authority of New York and discharged as innocent, on proof that his boast was only drunken swagger.
The United States government met the dis- position to retaliate at once for the invasion of our soil, by proclamations. and by sending. to preserve our neutrality. General Scott to the Niagara River, General Macomb to Sackets Harbor, and other officers to other points. Congress deemed it necessary in 1838 to ap- propriate 8625.000 for the protection of our northern frontiers. Secret "Hunter lodges" were organized in many villages along the Ni-
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agara, Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence for attack upon Canada. Arms were stolen from the State arsenal in Watertown, and in Feb- ruary, 1838, a considerable body of men gath- ered at Clayton, but Van Rensselaer and Mac- kenzie disagreed and their forces vanished. Rumors of assault from Canada led to the post- ing of militia at Cape Vincent and Clayton to protect our soil. May 29, at night, the British steamer Sir Robert Peel, while taking on wood off Wellesley Island, was entered by a band dis- guised as Indians, and the passengers and crew were driven off; the vessel was set on fire, with cries, "Remember the Caroline !" and money and clothing were carried away. Wil- liam Johnston, declaring himself " commander- in-chief of the naval forces and flotilla " in the patriot service of Canada, assumed responsi- bility for the act. but a proclamation by Gov- ernor Marcy offering a reward failed to secure his arrest, while others who were put on trial were acquitted.
In November, the Quixotic plans of inva- sion culminated. A steamer and two schooners freighted at Oswego carried a large number of men, with arms concealed, down the St. Law- rence, and Sunday night. November 11, reached Prescott. The men were under command of General John W. Birge, of Cazenovia, Madison
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county, with Von Schoultz, a Polish exile, sec- ond in rank. An order to attack was not obeyed. At Ogdensburg, on the opposite side of the river, the sympathizers with the patriots seized the steamer United States, and armed and manned it, and made a demonstration to aid the invaders. A landing was effected at Windmill Point by one hundred and eighty patriots, where under Von Schoultz they pre- pared for defense, in the absence of the recog- nized leaders. They were attacked on Tuesday, and vigorously returned the fire and held their ground, at a cost of eighteen patriots killed and wounded and eighty-two on the British side. On Wednesday the dead were buried under a flag of truce. On Friday, the British appeared with reinforcements of men and artillery, while the provisions and ammunition of the patriots were exhausted. Flags sent by the patriots proposing terms were fired upon, and after some delay they surrendered unconditionally.
The rising in Canada for which the demon- stration had been a signal had failed. The instigators of the enterprise had not shared in its dangers. Sympathy on the American shore was abundant, and all the efforts of the authorities were required to check overt acts ; while in the board of supervisors of St. Law- rence county a motion was made to adjourn to
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enable the members "to rescue that Spartan band of patriotic friends, and preserve their lives from the hands of their enemies, the tyrants and advocates of the British Crown." The prisoners included boys of fifteen and seventeen, and were mostly from the northern counties of New York, with several foreigners, and only four Canadians. They were tried ; Von Schoultz, the leader, pleaded guilty and was hanged, as were seven privates or subordi- nates ; others sentenced to be hanged were transported to Van Diemens Land, but after- wards pardoned, and some of the youngest were sent to the penitentiary. Some were re- leased without trial, a few were acquitted, and pardons were after various periods accorded to such as survived. The attempt at organized operations by the patriots ended by the dis- grace and disaster of Windmill Point ; but, June 6, 1840, proof was given that Canadian refugees were still plotting mischief, for two of them put explosives on the British steamer Great Britain while it was lying at Oswego. An explosion took place, but no lives were lost, and the vessel was saved.
The conduct of the United States govern- ment in the whole matter was sharply criti- cised, and there was much open and more secret sympathy with the Canadian "patriots," and
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some speculative schemes were devised contin- gent on their success. For years the northern counties expressed at the polls their condem- nation of the administration and its party.
When the election occurred in 1837, the whigs carried the legislature and many of the counties, and in 1838 elected William H. Sew- ard governor over William L. Marcy. They were both able scholars and shrewd politicians, and both deserve to rank as statesmen. Ideas, sentiment, principle, controlled Mr. Seward. Mr. Marcy was more a practical statesman, whose standard is indicated by his declaration in the United States senate, that " to the victor belong the spoils" of office. Mr. Marcy had served on the bench of the supreme court be- fore his three terms as governor, and he was afterward secretary of war under President Polk, and secretary of state under President Pierce. Mr. Seward, beginning his public ca- reer as State senator in 1831, was to serve as governor for four years, to enter the United States senate in 1849, to become the eloquent and accepted advocate of constitutional opposi- tion to slavery, and, although disappointed in his ambition for the presidency, was as secre- tary of state under Mr. Lincoln to give to the republic services not second in value and dignity to those of any other occupant of that position,
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and surpassed, if at all, by only two or three of our presidents. As governor of New York he exhibited the qualities of courage, of devotion to reform, of high principle. He met the anti- rent difficulties of 1839 with promptness and vigor ; he recommended modifications in the judicial system which were afterward embodied in the fundamental law ; and in declining to re- turn fugitive slaves demanded by the governor of Virginia, he asserted the rights of man and the limits of the comity of States. His views on the division of the school fund were not sus- tained, and he was sometimes criticised for favoring generous expenditures, not only for internal improvements, but for other purposes.
New York went wild with the rest of the country in the political Saturnalia of 1840, and gave its electoral votes to Harrison, against its recent favorite Van Buren, and reelected Mr. Seward governor. In 1842, William C. Bouck, democrat, was chosen governor, in part because of the disfavor felt for Mr. Seward's proposition for dividing the school moneys between Protes- tants and Catholics, but chiefly owing to the divisions among the whigs caused by the policy of Jolin Tyler, who had succeeded to the presi- dency.
The project for the annexation of Texas af- fected parties in New York quite as seriously
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as anywhere else in the country. The whigs were generally opposed to it, and many demo- crats took pronounced ground against it. For the canvass of 1844 it was necessary to appease them, and to that end Silas Wright was nomi- nated for governor, while the whigs designated for that office Millard Fillmore. Mr. Wright was simple in his habits, sturdy in his morals, rigid in his views of public expenditures, and of solid rather than brilliant intellect. Entering the State senate in 1824, he had opposed the policy of De Witt Clinton ; he served as a rep- resentative in congress from 1827 (resigning to become comptroller in 1820) ; and as United States senator from 1833 to 1844, he had sup- ported a protective tariff, the Jackson bank policy, and had been positive for the right of petition and the inviolability of the mails against slavery, and pronounced in opposition to the an- nexation of Texas. His influence was enlisted then to hold the democratic party together, - a service for which the administration which he thus brought into power, after offering him the post of secretary of the treasury, which he de- clined, treated him first with discourtesy and then with hostility.
Mr. Fillmore began his career in the assem- bly in 1829. In congress he had in three terms earned a high position, and as chairman of the
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committee of ways and means had taken active part in framing the tariff of 18-12. He was conservative in temperament and views ; and in order to balance his tendencies, Alvan Stewart, an active abolitionist, was put on the ticket with him as lieutenant governor. The electoral vote of New York was confidently reckoned upon in 1844 for Henry Clay, in part because the democratic national convention had set aside Martin Van Buren as a candidate, al- though he received the votes of more than a majority of the delegates, but not two-thirds ; and because of the general opposition to the annexation of Texas. But the influence of Mr. Wright held many democrats to the support of James K. Polk, in spite of these considera- tions ; while Mr. Clay's Alabama letter served as a justification for some, who had been his supporters, to join the " liberty party," which avowed hostility to slavery, and gave to its can- didate, James G. Birney, in New York, 15,812 votes, while Polk's majority over Clay was only 5,106. Mr. Wright's majority for governor was 10,030. This disparity was the occasion for criticisms and for dissension.
After Mr. Wright declined the portfolio of the treasury in Mr. Polk's cabinet, he asked that it should be conferred on his friend Azariah C. Flagg. Mr. Polk did not grant this request,
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but took instead William L. Marcy for secretary of war, who was hostile to the newly elected governor ; and other federal appointments in New York were bestowed on the faction soon known as " hunkers," while Governor Wright's friends, the " barnburners," were passed over. The feud grew in bitterness, and led to the de- feat of Governor Wright in a canvass for re- election in 1846, when John Young was chosen to the executive chair. Mr. Wright died Au- gust 27, 1847, and his memory has been ever since a rallying cry against the influences then dominant in the democratic party.
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CHAPTER XXXIV.
LITERARY ACTIVITY.
THE literature of the first half century of the commonwealth which became New York was in French and Dutch. The narratives of Car- tier and Champlain, followed by the historical relations of Wassenaer and De Laet, intro- duced the domain to the Old World. They re- tain the flavor of adventure and romance, and of a region and experiences novel and exciting. Holland was, during the seventeenth century, not second in intellectual activity to any other portion of Europe, and its province, New Neth- erland, showed forth the qualities of the mother land. The controversies between the Dutch West India Company and the people called out discussions that have been preserved. The appeals to Holland and the answers to them were frequent, and they are documents that have not lost their interest by the lapse of time. The remonstrance against Stuyvesant. the re- quest to the government to cancel the charter of the company and to assume its authority,
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and the counter-arguments in behalf of the com- pany and the governor, throw light on the con- dition of the colony, and besides indicate the stage to which the demand for popular rights and the hostility to commercial monopolies had advanced. While the struggles of the other col- onies are read in the vernacular, and documents in London and here at home, the archives of New York are included in the records, not of Holland only, but of Canada and France as well. The correspondence of the governors of Canada with Louis XIV. furnishes some of the most graphic and most enduring chronicles of incident and development south of the St. Lawrence. The narratives of the French mis- sionaries constitute a rare and delightful treas- ury of personal labors and sufferings among the Iroquois, with sketches of the country as it came from the hand of nature, and of the red men when in their earliest intercourse with the whites. Charlevoix, La Potherie, Lafitau, Jogues, Bruyas, are authors whose names should be preserved for the merit of their productions as well as for their services on our soil ; and the whole series of "Jesuit Relations " must be regarded as illustrating the trials and the sacrifices out of which our commonwealth has been developed.
In the Dutch period the clergymen were men
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of affairs, and Domine Megapolensis was, with Van der Donck and De Vries, skillful and influ- ential with his pen. Poets there were too, as critics tell us ; but while they give their names, their fame must be entrusted to their care. In the earliest English period, Daniel Denton (1670) published a description of New York, designed to invite immigrants ; and in the next year, Arnoldus Montanus essayed a like task, and doubtless for the same purpose. The soil of New York was not fruitful in theological controversy, but Daniel Leeds' "News of a Trumpet in a Wilderness" (1697), aimed at the Quakers, with whom he had quarreled in Pennsylvania, was one of the earliest tracts which at intervals broke the smooth current of religious thought.
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