Martin Van Buren. Edward Morse Shepard
control of the Assembly; and there were already a Republican governor and Senate. An extra session was summoned in September, 1814, through which exceedingly vigorous measures were carried against Federalist opposition. Van Buren now definitely led. Appropriations were made from the state treasury for the pay of militia in the national service. The State undertook to enlist twelve thousand men for two years, a corps of sea fencibles consisting of twenty companies, and two regiments of colored men; slaves enlisting with the consent of their masters to be freed. Van Buren's "classification act" Benton afterwards declared to be the "most energetic war measure ever adopted in this country." By it the whole military population was divided into 12,000 classes, each class to furnish one able-bodied man, making the force of 12,000 to be raised. If no one volunteered from a class, then any member of the class was authorized to procure a soldier by a bounty, the amount of which should be paid by the members of the class according to their ability, to be determined by assessors. If no soldier from the class were thus procured, then a soldier was to be peremptorily drafted from each class. Van Buren was proud enough of this act to file the draft of it in his own handwriting with the clerk of the Senate, indorsed by himself: "The original Classification Bill, to be preserved as a memento of the patriotism, intelligence, and firmness of the legislature of 1814–15. M. V. B. Albany, Feb. 15, 1815."
Cheered, after many disasters, by the victory at Plattsburg and the creditable battle of Lundy's Lane, the Senate, in Van Buren's words, congratulated Governor Tompkins upon "the brilliant achievements of our army and navy during the present campaign, which have pierced the gloom that for a time obscured our political horizon." The end of the war left in high favor the Republicans who had supported it. The people were good-humoredly willing to forget its many inefficiencies, to recall complacently its few glories, and to find little fault with a treaty which, if it established no disputed right, at least brought peace without surrender and without dishonor. Jackson's fine victory at New Orleans after the treaty was signed, though it came too late to strengthen John Quincy Adams's dauntless front in the peace conference, was quickly seized by the people as the summing up of American and British prowess. The Republicans now had a hero in the West, as well as a philosopher at Monticello. Van Buren drafted the resolution giving the thanks of New York "to Major-General Jackson, his gallant officers and troops, for their wonderful and heroic victory."
In the method then well established the Republicans celebrated their political success in 1814. Among the removals, Abraham Van Vechten lost the post of attorney-general, which on February 17, 1815, was conferred upon Van Buren for his brilliant and successful leadership in the Senate. He remained, however, a senator of the State. At thirty-two, therefore, he was, next to the governor, the leader of the Tompkins Republicans, now so completely dominant; he held two political offices of dignity and importance; and he was conducting besides an active law practice.
De Witt Clinton, after his defeat for the presidency, suffered other disasters. It was in January, 1813, that he and Van Buren broke their political relations; and the Republicans very largely fell off from him. The reasons for this do not clearly appear; but were probably Clinton's continuance of hostility to the national administration, which seemed unpatriotic to the Republicans, and some of the mysterious matters of patronage in which Clinton had been long and highly proscriptive. In 1815 the latter was removed from the mayoralty of New York by the influence of Governor Tompkins in the council. He had been both mayor and senator for several years prior to 1812. He was mayor and lieutenant-governor when he was a candidate for the presidency.
In 1816 the Republicans in the Assembly, then closely divided between them and the Federalists (who seemed to be favored by the apportionment), sought one of those immoral advantages whose wrong in times of high party feeling seems invisible to men otherwise honorable. In the town of Pennington a Federalist, Henry Fellows, had been fairly elected to the Assembly by a majority of 30; but 49 of his ballots were returned as reading "Hen. Fellows;" and his Republican competitor, Peter Allen, got the certificate of appointment. The Republicans, acting, it seems, in open conference with Van Buren, insisted not only upon organizing the house, which was perhaps right, but upon what was wrong and far more important. They elected the council of appointment before Fellows was seated, as he afterwards was by an almost unanimous vote. The "Peter Allen legislature" is said to have become a term of reproach. But, as with electoral abuses in later days, the Federalists were not as much aided as they ought to have been by this sharp practice of their rivals; the people perhaps thought that, as they were in the minority everywhere but in the Assembly, they ought not to have been permitted, by a capture of the council, to remove the Republicans in office.
At any rate the election in April, 1816, while the "Peter Allen legislature" was still in office, went heavily in favor of the Republicans, Van Buren receiving his second election to the Senate. On March 4, 1816, he was chosen by the legislature a regent of the University of the State of New York, an office which he held until 1829. The University was then, as now, almost a myth, being supposed to be the associated colleges and academies of the State. But the regents have had a varying charge of educational matters.
In 1817 the agitation, so superbly and with such foresight conducted by De Witt Clinton, resulted in the passage of the law under which the construction of the Erie Canal began. Van Buren's enmity to Clinton did not cause him to oppose the measure, of which Hammond says he was an "early friend." With a few others he left his party ranks to vote with Clinton's friends; and this necessary accession from the "Bucktails" is said by the same fair historian to have been produced by Van Buren's "efficient and able efforts." In his speech favoring it he declared that his vote for the law would be "the most important vote he ever gave in his life;" that "the project, if executed, would raise the State to the highest possible pitch of fame and grandeur," an expression not discredited by the splendid and fruitful result of the enterprise. Clinton, after hearing the speech, forgot for a moment their political collisions, and personally thanked Van Buren.
In April, 1817, Clinton was elected governor by a practically unanimous vote. His resolute courage and the prestige of the canal policy compelled this tribute from the Republicans, in spite of his sacrilegious presidential aspiration in 1812, and his dismissal from the mayoralty of New York in 1815. Governor Tompkins, now vice-president, was Clinton's only peer in New York politics. The popular tide was too strong for the efforts of Tompkins, Van Buren, and their associates. In the eagerness to defeat Clinton, it was even suggested that Tompkins should serve both as governor and vice-president; should be at once ruler at Albany and vice-ruler at Washington. Van Buren did not, however, go with the hot-heads of the legislature in opposing a bill for an election to fill the vacancy left by the resignation, which it was at last thought necessary for Tompkins to make, of the governorship. No one dared run against Clinton; and he triumphantly returned to political power. Under this administration of his, the party feud took definite form. Clinton's Republican adversaries were dubbed "Bucktails" from the ornaments worn on ceremonial occasions by the Tammany men who had long been Clinton's enemies. The Bucktails and their successors were the "regular" Republicans, or the Democrats as they were later called; and they kept their regularity until, long afterwards, the younger and greater Bucktail leader, when venerable and laden with honors, became the titular head of the Barnburner defection. The merits of the feud between Bucktails and Clintonians it is now difficult to find. Each accused the other of coquetting with the Federalists; and the accusation was nearly always true of one or the other of them. Politics was a highly developed and extremely interesting game, whose players, though really able and patriotic men, were apparently careless of the undignified parts they were playing. Nor are Clintonians and Bucktails alone in political history. Cabinets of the greatest nations have, in more modern times, broken on grounds as sheerly personal as those which divided Clinton and Van Buren in 1818. British and French ministries, as recent memoirs and even recent events have shown, have fallen to pieces in feuds of as little essential dignity as belonged to those of New York seventy years ago.
In 1819 the Bucktails suffered the fate of war; and Van Buren, their efficient head, was removed from the attorney-general's office. Thurlow Weed, then a country editor, grotesquely wrote at the time that "rotation in office is the most striking and brilliant feature of excellence in our benign form of government; and that by this doctrine, bottomed, as it is, upon the Magna Charta of our liberties, Van Buren's removal was not only sanctioned, but was absolutely required." The latter still remained state senator, and soon waged a short and decisive