which Hamilton had won before him when the tide of popular favor having deserted him and left him destitute of power and influence he still stood forth an isolated figure on the canvass, attracting an admiration and exciting an interest which his successful rivals feared to contemplate. But it was not for Mr. Clinton to reäscend the political ladder until he had released his hold on the lowest step and had once more touched the ground. His opponents made haste to dislodge him from that last foothold. In January, 1815, he was removed from the mayoralty by a council of appointment in the interest of the republican party.

Fortune had gone with greatness, and he sunk into private life without even the means of respectable subsistence. The severity of this proscription, coupled with the greatness of his fall and the majesty of his character, awakened regrets and sympathies among large classes, who did not stop to consider how rashly he had tempted fortune, or how ruthlessly he had wielded the ax against those who had now precipitated him to the ground. Peace had now returned, and, with it, the aspirations for civil progress which war had for a short time suppressed. In the autumn of that year, and in the obscurity of a retreat to the country, he prepared an argument in favor of the immediate construction of the Erie and Champlain canalsdemonstrating their feasibility, the ability of the state to construct them, their certain reimbursement of the cost, their utility and indispensableness as means of natural defense, and their efficiency in opening the western portions of the state to civilization and culture, and containing a glowing but just exposition of the impulse they would give to the growth of the city of New York and to the aggrandizement of the state, as well as the advantages which that immense extension of the internal navigation of the country would confer on the whole nation, by leading to a development of its yet unproductive resources, and by cementing the bonds of the American Union. Never has there. appeared, in this or perhaps any other country, a state paper, at once so vigorous, so genial, so comprehensive, and so conclusive. It was couched in the form of a memorial from the citizens of New York to the legislature of the state, and was deferentially submitted to a public meeting for their adoption. As yet, nations and communities, by the action of the people, had only sought aggrandizement by wars and conquests. The people of this country had had some experience of this system of aggrandizement, and were heartily tired of it. But VOL. IV.

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the enterprise of material improvement was new to them, and full of benignant promise. If dangers attended it, they were unforeseen and unconceived. The stroke was electrical. The city adopted the memorial, and appealed to the citizens of the interior portions of the state. They responded with enthusiasm. Other states and territories, expecting either direct benefit, or waiting only to follow the lead of a power so respectable as New York in similar enterprises, lent their approving and encouraging voices. The policy was, from that moment, certain of success. It was hindered only by the political prejudices which hung around its advocate. His opponents called these prejudices into new activity. With short-sighted malice, they affected to consider the attractive scheme as not merely a new resort of a ruined politician, but as one original with and devised by himself-impracticable, absurd, and visionary-although, for more than a hundred years, sagacious and enlightened statesmen, connected with the affairs of the colony and of the state of New York, had, with various degrees of distinctness, indicated and commended the obnoxious policy, and the state itself had, at an early day, made demonstrations toward its adoption by improving some parts of its natural channels, and had recommended the whole enterprise, before the war, to the adoption of the federal government. Mr. Clinton, if left to designate for his adversaries their mode of opposition, could have preferred no other. It presented him as not merely the advocate, but even the inventor of the system whose prospective benefits were already triumphantly demonstrated. His personality thus stamped upon it, he must necessarily rise with it into popular favor. Mr. Clinton appeared at Albany, at the assembling of the legislature, to commend it. The governor-the organ of the republican partywas silent on the subject. The republican legislature rendered it just enough of favor to encourage and strengthen Mr. Clinton, and too little to make it their own and separate him as a necessary agent from it. It appointed him, with others, a commissioner to make the required surveys and estimates, solicit grants and donations, and report at the next session.

A vacancy in the office of governor was now to occur by the transfer of the esteemed and popular Tompkins, the chief republican character in the state, to the post of vice-president of the United States at Washington. Who could deny that Mr. Clinton's election to the office of governor would further the adoption of his great

scheme of improvements? Who could deny his claim to that position for the purpose of securing its adoption and conducting its prosecution? Who could deny even that his advancement to that position was absolutely essential to the success of the measure? When the only popular favorite was relinquishing the office and there was no other statesman indicated by any general preference for it, why should it be denied, under the exigent circumstances already mentioned, to Mr. Clinton? Spontaneous demonstrations presented him before the public as a candidate, the party machinery refused to work in the hands of his adversaries and he was elected in the summer of 1816, to the office of governor, practically by the unanimous voice of the people. It seemed, for a short time, as if all partisan organizations had been permanently broken up, and as if party spirit had been extinguished forever. Notwithstanding all these pleasing auguries, the period of his administration was filled up, like former ones, with violent and embittered political controversies, cherished and fomented by jealousies of parties connected with the federal administration at Washington. In all these controversies he was always the subject-desire to advance him at last to the presidency of the United States, irrespective of all existing combinations, constituting the motive of one party; and determination to rebuke and punish what was called his unchastened ambition, the motive of the other. He triumphed in 1819, being reëlected, though by a very small majority, over Daniel D. Tompkins, who, while yet vice-president, became the opposing candidate and brought into the canvass a popularity never before overbalanced. His adversaries availed themselves of just complaints against the constitution to move the call of a convention for its amendment, and the measure was eminently popular. Mr. Clinton, perhaps unnecessarily, and at least unfortutunately, hesitated so long as to become identified with the opposition to it. The convention made reforms which diminished the power of the executive and judiciary and conceded an enlargement of the right of suffrage, with other popular rights, while it adopted his canal policy, which had already been auspiciously begun and might now be supposed sure to be carried on to a successful conclusion. Mr. Clinton wisely declined to be a candidate, under such circumstances, for a reëlection as governor under the new constitution, and Joseph C. Yates was called to the office with a unanimity equal to that which had attended Mr. Clinton's elevation to the same place. Faction,

however, disorganized the triumphant party in 1824. At the same time, the legislature in its interest abused its triumph over Mr. Clinton by removing him without notice and without cause from the now obscure office of canal commissioner in which he was serving, as he had served from the first, only as an adviser and without any compensation. Indignation awakened by this injustice and combined with popular discontents, resulting from other causes, bore him at the end of the same year back into the office of governor by a very decided vote; but the new combination which had secured this result was committed to the support of John Quincy Adams, as its head in the federal government, while Mr. Clinton's sympathies or his views of duty or of interest determined his inclination toward, first William H. Crawford, and then Andrew Jackson as candidates for the presidency. He was thus once more in his old position, sustained by a party from whom he withheld his confidence and sympathy, and opposed by the one to which he looked for ultimate support. He was barely reelected in 1826, while the legislature was opposed to his policy and interests.

His administration of the state government, however, which con. tinued throughout a period of twelve years, with the exception of an intervening period of two years, was one of unequaled dignity and energy, devoted to just and necessary reforms and to the great enterprises of moral and social improvement. He had the good fortune to mature the system of finance which enabled the state, unconscious of expense or care, to begin and carry out his policy of internal improvement, and to break with his own hand the ground in the beginning of the enterprise on the fourth of July, 1817; and overcoming constant, unremitting and factious resistances, he had the felicity of being borne, in October, 1825, in a barge on the artificial river that he seemed, to all, to have constructed, from lake Erie to the bay of New York, while bells were rung and cannons saluted him at every stage of that imposing progress. No sooner had that great work been undertaken in 1817, than the population of the state began to swell with augmentation from other states and from abroad, prosperity became universal, old towns and cities expanded, new ones rose and multiplied. Agriculture, manufacture and commerce, the three great wheels of national industry, were quickened in their movement, and wealth flowed in upon the state from all directions. He inaugurated the construction of branches of the Erie canal, by which it was

ultimately connected with the internal lakes, with Lake Ontario and with the Susquehanna, the Allegany and the St. Lawrence rivers, and by his counsel and advice, now sought in all directions, he hastened the opening of those canals in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, which in connection with those of New York and with natural channels now constitute a system adequate to the internal commerce of an empire, and is interrupted only by mountains which defy the prowess of man.

De Witt Clinton, witnessing the enjoyment of the continually enlarging realization by the public of the benefits of his labors and in the midst of growing popular perplexities concerning the balanced probabilities of his yet rising to the highest honors of his country, or of his sinking once more and irretrievably beneath the heel of domestic faction, died at Albany, the seat of his authority and the chief theatre of his active life, on the 11th day of February, 1828. Need it be added that party spirit was hushed into profound silence, that the legislature provided for his family, bereft as they were of parent and of fortune, that a grateful people celebrated his departure from the earth with all the pomp of national sorrow, and that posterity, already advancing on the stage, hails his shade with the homage deserved by a benefactor of mankind. The course of human nature in similar cases and circumstances is always the same.

NOTE.-In 1839, and again in 1841, Governor Seward, in his annual messages to the legislature, recommended the erection of a monument, by the state, to the memory of De Witt Clinton, and at the same time paid an eloquent tribute to his character and distinguished public services. Mr. Seward's "Notes on New York,” also, contain several allusions to Mr. Clinton in the history of the canals and other great enterprises of the state. See Volume II., pp. 87, 210, 296, &c.