A Political History of the State of New York Volume I Part 22

Although Clinton's ca.n.a.l policy, upon the success of which he had staked his all, was signally vindicating itself in rapidity of construction, and the very moderate estimate of cost, his friends did not hesitate to advise him that his re-election to the governors.h.i.+p was impossible. It was a cold proposition for a man to face who had inaugurated a system of improvement which would confer prosperity and wealth upon the people, and enrich and elevate the State. For a time, like a caged tiger, he bit at the bars that seemed to limit his ambition. But his friends were right. Through his management, or want of management, the Clintonians had ceased to exist as an organisation, and his supporting Federalists, as evidenced by the election of delegates to the const.i.tutional convention in 1821, had pa.s.sed into a hopeless minority. "Governor Clinton, though governor," said Thurlow Weed, "was much in the condition of a pastor without a congregation."

It was striking proof of the absence of tact and that address which, in a popular government, is necessary for one to possess who expects to succeed in public life. Clinton had now been governor for five consecutive years. His motives had undoubtedly been pure and patriotic, and he had within his control the means of a great office to influence people in his favour; yet a cold exterior, an arrogant manner, and a disposition to rule or ruin, had cooled his friends and driven away the people until opponents took little heed of his existence.

No doubt Clinton had good reason to know that the statesmen of that time were not exactly what they professed to be. He was well aware that many of them, like John Woodworth, Ambrose Spencer, and James Tallmadge, had played fast and loose as the chances of Bucktail and Clintonian had gone up or gone down; and, although he gracefully declined to become a candidate for re-election, when convinced of the utter hopelessness of such a race, his brain was no less active in the conception of plans which should again return him to power. As early as October, 1822, he wrote Post: "The odium attached to the name of Federalist has been a millstone round the neck of true policy. It is now almost universally dropped in this district, in the district of which Oneida County is part, and in the Herkimer County meeting. I hail this as an auspicious event. Names in politics as well as science are matters of substance, and a bad name in public is as injurious to success as a bad name in private life. The inferences I draw from the signs of the times are: First, the ascendancy of our party from the collisions of parties. In proportion as they quarrel with each other they will draw closer to us. The last hate being the most violent will supersede the former antipathy. Second, the old names as well as the old lines of party will be abolished. Third, nominations by caucuses will be exploded. Fourth, Yates, Van Buren, etc., will go down like the stick of a rocket. Our friends are up and doing in Ulster."

It is impossible not to feel admiration for the indomitable courage and the inexhaustible animal spirits which no defeat could reduce to prostration. Furthermore, Clinton had written with the inspiration of a prophet. Not only were the old names and the old party lines soon to vanish, but the last legislative caucus ever to be held in the State, would be called in less than two years. Within the same period Yates was to fall like the stick of a rocket, and Van Buren to suffer his first defeat.

In the absence of a Clintonian or Federalist opponent, Solomon Southwick announced himself as an independent candidate. His was a strange story. He had many of the n.o.blest qualities and some of the wildest fancies, growing out of an extravagant imagination that seemed to control his mind. Among other things, he opened an office for the sale of lottery tickets, reserving numbers for himself which had been indicated in dreams or by fortune-tellers, with whom he was in frequent consultation. Writing of his disposition to hope for aid from the miraculous interposition of some invisible power, Hammond says: "He was in daily expectation that the next mail would bring him news that he had drawn the highest prize in the lottery; and I have known him to borrow money of a friend under a solemn pledge of his honour for its repayment in ten days, and have afterward ascertained that his sole expectation of redeeming his pledge depended on his drawing a prize when the next lottery in which he was interested should be drawn."[220]

[Footnote 220: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.

2, p. 101.]

Southwick was undoubtedly a man of genius, as his work on the Albany _Register_, the _Ploughboy_, and the _Christian Visitant_ clearly indicates; but erroneous judgment and defective impulses resulted in misfortunes which finally darkened and closed his life in adversity if not in poverty. As a young man he had been repeatedly elected clerk of the a.s.sembly, and had afterward served as sheriff, as state printer, and, finally, as postmaster. In the meantime, he became the first president of the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank, making money easily and rapidly, living extravagantly, giving generously, and acquiring great political influence. But his trial for bribery, of which mention has been made, his removal as state printer, and his defalcation as postmaster, prostrated him financially and politically. In the hope of retrieving his fortunes he embarked in real estate speculation, thus completing his ruin and making him still more visionary and fantastic.

Nevertheless, he struggled on with industry and courage for more than twenty years, occasionally coming into public or political notice as a writer of caustic letters, or as a candidate for office.

In 1822, the wild fancy possessed Southwick of becoming governor, and to preface the way for his visionary scheme he applied to a bright young journalist, the editor of the Manlius _Republican_, to canva.s.s the western and southwestern counties of the State. Thurlow Weed at this time was twenty-six years old. He had worked on a farm, he had blown a blacksmith's bellows, he had s.h.i.+pped as a cabin-boy, he had done ch.o.r.es at a tavern, he had served as a soldier, and he had learned the printer's trade. For twenty years he lived a life of poverty, yet of tireless industry, with a simplicity as amazing as his genius. The only thing of which he got nothing was schooling. His family was an old Connecticut one, which had come down in the world.

Everything went wrong with his father. He was hard-working, kind-hearted, and strictly honest, but nothing succeeded. With the hope of "bettering his condition," he moved five times in ten years, getting so desperately poor at last that a borrowed two-horse sleigh carried all his worldly goods, including a wife and five children.

Joel Weed was, perhaps, as unfortunate a man as ever brought an ill.u.s.trious son into the world. He was neither s.h.i.+ftless nor worthless, but what others did he could not do. He never took up land for himself because he had nothing to begin with. A neighbour who began with an axe and a hoe, entered fifty acres, and got rich.

If Joel Weed lived as a beggar, Thurlow thought as a king. He revelled in the mountains and streams interspersed along the routes of the family's frequent movings; his taste for adventure made the sloop's cabin a home, and his love for reading turned the blacksmith shop and printing office into a schoolroom. As he read he forgot that he was poor, forgot that he was ragged, forgot that he was hungry. In his autobiography he tells of walking bare-footed six miles through the snow to borrow a history of the French Revolution, and of reading it at night in the blaze of a pitch-pine knot. Men found him lovable. He was large and awkward; but even as a boy there was a charm of manner, a tender, sympathetic nature, a sweet, sparkling humour, and a n.o.bility of character that irresistibly drew people to him. In many respects his boyhood resembled Lincoln's, and, though he lived in some of the evil days of the last century, his youth, like Lincoln's, escaped pollution. At the age of twelve, as an apprentice in a weekly newspaper office at Onondaga Hollow, he read and filed every exchange paper, familiarising himself with discussions in Congress, and imbibing a deadly hatred of England because of Indian barbarities excited by British agents, and cruelties to American seamen impressed by British officers. With the true instinct of his fine nature, he made his friends and companions among the wisest and highest of his time, although he loved all company that was not vicious and depraved.

He knew Gerrit Smith in 1814; a few months' stay, as a journeyman printer, at Auburn, forged a lasting friends.h.i.+p with Elijah Miller, the father-in-law of William H. Seward, and with Enos T. Throop, afterward governor. His intimacy with Gorham A. Worth, a financier of decided literary tastes, and for thirty years president of the New York City Bank, began in Albany in 1816. Thus, in whatever town he worked or settled, the prominent men and those to grow into prominence became his intimates. He had women friends, too, as wisely chosen as the men, but Catherine Ostrander was the star of his life. He tells a touching little story of this Cooperstown maiden. Their engagement occurred in his seventeenth year, but her parents, objecting to the roving, unsettled youth, he proposed three years of absolute separation, and if then no change had come to her affections she should write and tell him so. In his hours of poverty, he was cheered by the thought of her, and when, at last, her letter came, he hastened to claim her as his bride. At the conclusion of the ceremony, he had money enough only to take them back to Albany.

Weed began the publication of the Manlius _Republican_ in June, 1821.

For three years previously the _Agriculturist_, published at Norwich, in Chenango County, had given him proprietors.h.i.+p, some reputation, and less money; but it had also cla.s.sified him politically. He had never been a Federalist, nor could he be called a Clintonian, although his belief in ca.n.a.l improvement led him to the support of Governor Clinton and earned for him the opposition of the Bucktails. Like his father he worked without success, and then moved on to Albany; but he left behind him a coterie of distinguished Chenango friends who were ever after to follow his leaders.h.i.+p. At Albany, he began to earn eighteen dollars a week as a journeyman printer on the _Argus_. The Bucktails forced him out and he went on to Manlius, resurrecting the _Times_, an old Federalist paper, which he called the _Republican_.

It was at this time that Southwick sought him. "He was insanely anxious to be governor," says Weed, "and all the more insane because of its impossibility. He had been editing with great industry and ability the _Ploughboy_ and the _Christian Visitant_, and beguiled himself with a confident belief that farmers and Christians, irrespective of party, would sustain him. He provided me with a horse and wagon, and gave me a list of the names of gentlemen on whom I was to call, but I soon discovered that my friend's hopes and chances were not worth even the services of a horse that was dragging me through the mud. Years afterward I learned that in politics, as almost in everything else, Mr. Southwick was blinded by his enthusiasm and credulity."[221]

[Footnote 221: _Autobiography of Thurlow Weed_, p. 86.]

But Southwick was not the only blinded one in 1822. On the 10th of January, Governor Clinton wrote Henry Post "that Yates and Van Buren are both prostrate, and the latter particularly so."[222] Later in the year, on August 21, he declared: "Yates is unpopular, and Southwick will beat him in this city and in Schenectady."[223] In the next month, September 21, he is even more outspoken. "Yates is despised and talked against openly. Savage and Skinner talk plainly against him, and he is the subject of commonplace ridicule."[224] Clinton was the last person to abandon hope of Yates' defeat; and yet Yates' election could, without exaggeration, be declared practically unanimous.[225]

Republican legislative candidates fared equally well. Clintonians and Federalists were entirely without representation in the Senate, and in the a.s.sembly their number was insufficient to make their presence appreciable.

[Footnote 222: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 507.]

[Footnote 223: _Ibid._, p. 565.]

[Footnote 224: _Ibid._, p. 565.]

[Footnote 225: Southwick received 2910 out of a total of 131,403 votes cast.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

CHAPTER XXIX

CLINTON AGAIN IN THE SADDLE

1823-1824

The election in the fall of 1822 was one of those sweeping, crus.h.i.+ng victories that precede a radical change; and the confidence with which the victors used their power hurried on the revolution prophesied in Clinton's clever letter to Post. The blow did not, indeed, come at once. The legislators, meeting in January, 1823, proceeded cautiously, agreeing in caucus upon the state officers whom the Legislature, under the amended Const.i.tution, must now elect. John Van Ness Yates, the Governor's nephew, was made secretary of state; William L. Marcy, comptroller; Simeon DeWitt, surveyor-general, and Alexander M. Muir, commissary-general. The caucus hesitated to nominate DeWitt because he was a Clintonian; but forty years of honourable, efficient, quiet service finally appealed to a Republican Legislature with all the force that it had formerly appealed to the Skinner Council. There was more of a contest over the comptrollers.h.i.+p. James Tallmadge suddenly blossomed into a rival candidate. Tallmadge, like John W. Taylor, won his spurs as a leader of the opposition to the Missouri Compromise. He had been an ardent supporter of Clinton until the latter preferred Thomas J. Oakley as attorney-general; then he swung into communion with the Bucktails. He was impulsively ambitious, sensitive to opposition, fearless in action, and such an inveterate hater that he could not always act along lines leading to his own preferment.

Under the new Const.i.tution, county judges, surrogates, and notaries public were selected from the dominant party with more jealous care than by the old Council; and if Yates failed to observe the edict of the Regency, the Senate failed to confirm his appointees. Hammond, the historian, gives an instance of its refusal to confirm the reappointment of a bank cas.h.i.+er as a notary public because of his politics. But the really absorbing question was the appointment of Supreme Court judges. Though there was no objection to Nathan Sanford for chancellor, since he would not take office until the retirement of James Kent, in August, by reason of age limitation, the spirit shown in the const.i.tutional convention, toward the old Supreme Court judges, pervaded the Senate. The Governor, who had served with Ambrose Spencer since 1808, and with Platt and Woodworth from the time of their elevation to the court, was prompted, perhaps through his kindly interest in their welfare, to nominate them for reappointment, but the Senate rejected them by an almost unanimous vote. If the Governor had now let the matter rest, he would doubtless have escaped the serious charge of insincerity. The next day, however, without giving the rejected men opportunity to secure a rehearing, he nominated John Savage, Jacob Sutherland, and Samuel R. Betts. The suddenness of these second nominations seemed to indicate a greater desire to continue cordial relations with the Senate than to help his former a.s.sociates.

Whatever the cause, though, Ambrose Spencer never forgave him; nor did he outlive Samuel Young's criticism of playing politics at the expense of his old comrades upon the bench.

With the exception of Ambrose Spencer, who was destined to be remembered for a time by friends and enemies, the old judges of the Supreme Court may now be said to drop out of state history. Spencer lived twenty-five years longer, until 1848, serving one term in Congress, one term as mayor of Albany, and finally rounding out his long life of eighty-three years as president of the national Whig convention at Baltimore in 1844; but his political and public activity, as a factor to be reckoned with, ceased at the age of fifty-eight. The close of his life was spent in happy quietude among his books, and in the midst of new-found friends in the church, with which he united some six or eight years before his death. Jonas Platt returned to Clinton County, and, for a time, practised his profession with great acceptance as an advocate; but as a master-politician he, like Spencer, was out of employment forever. At last, he, too, retired to a farm, and with composure awaited the end that came in 1834.

William W. Van Ness was destined to go earlier. Not seeking reappointment to the bench, he settled in New York, with apparently forty years of life before him, his genius in all the glow of its maturity marking him for greater political success than he had yet achieved; yet, within a year, on February 27, 1823, death found him while he sought health in a Southern State. He was only forty-seven years old at the time. Disease and not age had thrown him. Born in 1776, he had won for himself the proudest honours of the law, and written his name high up on the roll of New York statesmen.

Governor Yates had thus far travelled a difficult and dusty road. In the duty of organising the government, which, under the new Const.i.tution fell to him, and in making appointments, he received the censure and was burdened with the resentment of the mortified and disappointed. His opponents, with the hearty and poorly concealed approval of Young's friends, made it their business to create a public opinion against him. They a.s.sailed him at all points with ridicule, with satire, with vituperation, and with personal abuse. They seemed to lie in wait to find occasion for attacking him, exaggerating his weaknesses and minimising his strength. But the blunder that broke his heart, and sent him into unexpected and sudden retirement, was his opposition to a change in the law providing for the choice of presidential electors by the people. The demand for such a measure grew out of a divided sentiment between William H. Crawford, then secretary of the treasury, John Quincy Adams, secretary of state, and Henry Clay, speaker of the national House of Representatives, the leading candidates for President. There was, as yet, no real break in the Republican party. No national question had appeared upon which the nation was divided; and, although individuals in the South took exception to protective duties, the party had made no claim that the tariff system of 1816 was either inexpedient or unconst.i.tutional. The selection of a candidate for President had, however, become intensely personal, dividing the country into excited factions equivalent to a division of parties. In New York, Van Buren and the Albany Regency favoured Crawford; James Tallmadge, Henry Wheaton, Thurlow Weed and others preferred Adams; and Samuel Young, Peter B. Porter and their friends warmly supported Clay. The heated contest extended to the people, who understood that the choice of Crawford electors by the Legislature would control the election for the Georgian, while a change in the law would give Adams or Clay a chance. To insure such a change, the opponents of Crawford, calling themselves the People's party, made several nominations for the a.s.sembly, and among those elected by overwhelming majorities were Tallmadge and Wheaton.

If Tallmadge was the most conspicuous leader of the People's party, Henry Wheaton was easily second. Though seven years younger, he had already made himself prominent, not merely as a politician of general ability, but as a reporter of the United States Supreme Court, whose conscientious and intelligent work was to link his name forever with the jurisprudence of the country. During the War of 1812, Wheaton had edited the _National Advocate_, writing a series of important papers on neutral rights; and, subsequently, he had become division judge-advocate of the army, and justice of the marine court of New York City. From the const.i.tutional convention of 1821, he stepped into the a.s.sembly of 1824, where, in the debates over the choice of electors by the people, his ready eloquence made him a valuable ally for Tallmadge and a formidable opponent to Flagg. His ambition to s.h.i.+ne as a statesman, and an extraordinary power of application, equipped him with varied information, and made him an authority on many subjects. He joined Benjamin F. Butler in the revision of the statutes of the State, and was a.s.sociated with Daniel Webster in settling the limits of the bankruptcy legislation of the state and federal governments. Just now he was still a young man, only in his thirty-ninth year; but those who had seen his keen, clever articles on neutral rights, polished and penetrating in style, and who heard his skilful and fearless advocacy of the people's right to choose electors, were not surprised to learn of his appointment, in later life, as a lecturer at Harvard, or to read his great work on the _Elements of International Law_, published in 1836. As a reward for the part he took in the election of 1824, President Adams sent him to Denmark, from whence he went to Prussia--these appointments keeping him abroad for twenty years.

John Van Ness Yates urged his uncle to recommend a change in the law regulating the choice of electors; and if the Governor had possessed the political wisdom necessary in such an emergency, he would doubtless have taken the suggestion. But Yates thought it wise to follow the Regency; the Regency thought it wise to follow Van Buren; and Van Buren opposed a change, as prejudicial to Crawford's interests. The result was a bungling attempt on the part of the Governor to evade the direct expression of an opinion. Finally, however, he said that as Congress was likely soon to present an amendment to the Const.i.tution for legislative sanction, it was inadvisable "under existing circ.u.mstances" to change the law "at this time."[226] This was neither skilful nor truthful. Congress had no thought of doing anything of the kind, and, if it had, men knew that an amendment could not be secured in time to operate at the coming election. Yates' message, therefore, was p.r.o.nounced "a shabby dodge,"

a trick familiar to many statesmen in difficulties.

[Footnote 226: _Governors Speeches_, Aug. 2, 1824, p. 218.]

When the Legislature convened, in January, 1824, a bill authorising the people to choose electors naturally excited a long and bitter debate, in which Azariah C. Flagg represented the Regency. Flagg was a printer by trade, the publisher of a Republican paper at Plattsburg, and a veteran of the War of 1812. He was not prepossessing in appearance; his diminutive stature, surmounted by a big, round head gave him the appearance of Atlas with the world upon his shoulders.

His voice, too, was shrill and unattractive; but he suddenly evinced shrewdness and address in legislative tactics that greatly worried his opponents and pleased his friends. A majority of the a.s.sembly, however, afraid of their excited and indignant const.i.tuents, finally pa.s.sed the bill. When it reached the Senate, the supporters of Crawford indefinitely postponed it by a vote of seventeen to fourteen.

The defeat of this measure raised a storm of popular indignation.

People were exasperated. Newspapers, opposed to the Van Buren leaders, published in black-letter type the names of senators who voted against it, while the frequenters of public places denounced them as "traitors, villains, and rascals," with the result that most of them were consigned to retirement during the remainder of their lives. "The impression here is that Van Buren and his junto are politically dead,"

wrote DeWitt Clinton to Henry Post on the 17th of February, 1824. "The impression will produce the event."[227]

[Footnote 227: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 568.]

In the midst of this excitement, came the selection of a candidate for governor, to be elected in the following November. Yates had done the bidding of the Regency and Flagg demanded his renomination, but the men who supported a change in the mode of choosing electors declared that Yates was the original opponent of the people's wishes, and that, if renominated, he could not be re-elected. "If the Governor is to be sacrificed for his fidelity," retorted Flagg, "I am ready to suffer with him." From a sentimental standpoint, this avowal was most creditable and generous, but it had no place in the councils of politicians to whom sentiment never appeals when the shrouded figure of defeat stands at the open door. Just now, too, their fears increased as evidence acc.u.mulated that Samuel Young would certainly be offered a nomination by the People's party, and would certainly accept it, if he were not quickly nominated by the Regency Republicans. When the legislators went into caucus on the 3d of April, 1824, therefore, the friends of Van Buren were ready to throw over Yates and to accept Young, with Erastus Root for lieutenant-governor.

Three days afterward, the most influential and active friends of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay decided that a state convention--consisting of as many delegates as there were members of the a.s.sembly, to be chosen by voters opposed to William H. Crawford for President and in favour of restoring the choice of presidential electors to the people--should a.s.semble at Utica, on September 21, 1824, to nominate candidates for governor and lieutenant-governor. It had long been a dream of Clinton to have nominations made by delegates elected by the people. That dream was now to be realised, and the door to a new political era opened.

Though Clinton had announced a determination to support Andrew Jackson, he displayed no zeal in the state contest, and contented himself with writing gossipy letters to Post and in watching the rapid growth of the Erie ca.n.a.l. As early as 1819, the ca.n.a.l had been opened between Utica and Rome, and from the Hudson to Lake Champlain. The middle section, recently completed, was now actively in use between Utica and Montezuma. In little more than a year, the jubilee over the letting in of the waters of Lake Erie would deaden the strife of parties with booming of cannon and expressions of joy. Throughout all the delays and vexations of this wonderful enterprise, DeWitt Clinton had been the great inspiring force, and, although for several years the board of ca.n.a.l commissioners had been reorganised in the interest of the Bucktails, not a whisper was heard intimating any desire or intention to interfere with him. When it was known, however, that James Tallmadge had been agreed upon as the candidate of the People's party for governor, the Regency, in order to split his forces, determined upon Clinton's removal from all partic.i.p.ation in the management of the ca.n.a.l. If Tallmadge voted for such a resolution, reasoned the Van Buren leaders, it would alienate the political friends with whom he was just now acting; if he voted against it, he would alienate Tammany.

It was a bold game of politics, and a dangerous one. The people did not love Clinton, but they believed in his policy, and a blow at him, in their opinion, was a blow at the ca.n.a.l. Nothing in the whole of Van Buren's history exhibits a more foolish disregard of public sentiment, or led to a greater disaster. But the Regency, blinded by its overwhelming victory at the last election, was prepared to pay a gambler's price for power, and, in the twinkling of an eye, before the a.s.sembly knew what had happened, the Senate removed Clinton from the office of ca.n.a.l commissioner, only three votes being recorded for him.

Thurlow Weed happened to be a witness of the proceeding, and, rus.h.i.+ng to the a.s.sembly chamber, urged Tallmadge to resist its pa.s.sage through the house. "I knew how bitterly General Tallmadge hated Mr. Clinton,"

he says, "but in a few hurried and emphatic sentences implored him not to be caught in the trap thus baited for him. I urged him to state frankly, in a brief speech, how entirely he was estranged personally and politically from Mr. Clinton, but to denounce his removal during the successful progress of a system of improvement which he had inaugurated, and which would confer prosperity and wealth upon the people and enrich and elevate our State, as an act of vandalism to which he could not consent to be a party. I concluded by a.s.suring him solemnly that if he voted for that resolution he could not receive the nomination for governor."[228]

[Footnote 228: _Autobiography of Thurlow Weed_, p. 109.]

But Tallmadge remained dumb. Gamaliel H. Barstow, formerly a Clintonian, walked out of the chamber. Other old friends showed indifference. Only Henry Cunningham of Montgomery, entering the chamber while the clerk was reading the resolution, eloquently denounced it. "When the miserable party strifes shall have pa.s.sed by,"

he said, in conclusion; "when the political jugglers who now beleaguer this capital shall be overwhelmed and forgotten; when the gentle breeze shall pa.s.s over the tomb of that great man, carrying with it the just tribute of honour and praise which is now withheld, the pen of the future historian will do him justice, and erect to his memory a monument of fame as imperishable as the splendid works that owe their origin to his genius and perseverance."[229] One or two others spoke briefly in Clinton's behalf, and then the resolution pa.s.sed--ayes sixty-four, noes thirty-four. Among the ayes were Tallmadge and Wheaton.

[Footnote 229: _Autobiography of Thurlow Weed_, p. 110.]

Had Clinton been a.s.sa.s.sinated, the news could not have produced a greater shock. Scarcely had the a.s.sembly adjourned, before the citizens of Albany--rus.h.i.+ng into the vacant chamber and electing the old and venerable John Taylor, the former lieutenant-governor, for chairman--expressed their indignation in denunciatory speeches and resolutions. In New York City, a committee of twenty-five, headed by Thomas Addis Emmet, called in person upon Clinton to make known the feeling of the meeting. Everywhere throughout the State, the removal awakened a cyclone of resentment, the members who voted for it being the storm-centres. At Canandaigua, personal indignities were threatened.[230] "Several members," says Weed, "were hissed as they came out of the capitol. Tallmadge received unmistakable evidence, on his way through State Street to his lodgings, of the great error he had committed. His hotel was filled with citizens, whose rebukes were loudly heard as he pa.s.sed through the hall to his apartment, and as he nervously paced backward and forward in his parlour, 'the victim of remorse that comes too late,' he perceived both the depth and the darkness of the political pit into which he had fallen."[231]

[Footnote 230: _Ibid._, p. 114.]

[Footnote 231: _Ibid._, p. 113.]