upholsterer, was its founder. It gradually became a political society, and took sides with Mr. Jefferson.

The Federalists hardly existed as a party, in New York, for several years after the death of old Governor Clinton, the few Federalists joining with one or the other of the Democratic factions. Although the powerful Tammany Society was unfavorable to the aspirations of De Witt Clinton, the Clintonian organization. only went down with his death. The Tammanyites wore the tail of a deer in their hats, and thus acquired the name of the Bucktail party. Martin Van Buren became their leader. When the proud, indomitable master-spirit was gone, the Clintonians finally disappeared under the name of People's Party. The Bucktails, dropping republican from their name, took that of Democrat, mainly, to themselves.

In 1827, the political parties were, to a great extent, broken up, and at the New York State elections the great issues actually became Mason and Anti-Mason, as was largely the case over the Nation. It was claimed that the Masons had seized William Morgan, of Virginia, at Batavia, New York, and carried him to old Fort Niagara, whence he soon disappeared, and was never heard from again. Morgan was a printer and a Mason, and had undertaken to publish a book exposing the mysteries of the secret brotherhood. The mysterious disappearance or murder of Morgan did not prevent the publishing of his "exposition," and the entire dissolution of the "order," for a time, in New York. No social excitement had ever risen to such height in that State, and, indeed, throughout the entire country the interest and influence of the case were little less apparent.

Bucktails, Federalists, and Clintonians united in the support of General Jackson; some of them went to the aid of Henry Clay and J. Q. Adams, and, in 1828, Martin Van Buren was elected Governor of New York. The parties had in this new cast of affairs taken the names of Jackson or National Republican (Democratic) and Whig. In 1834, a part of the Jackson organization was known as the "Equal Rights Party," and to them the Whigs first applied the epithet "Locofoco." The term soon extended to the whole Democratic party. But that party, no matter how named or divided, carried things much its own way in New York, until 1838, when the Whigs, as all its opponents were then called, elected William H. Seward as Governor over the noted Democratic politician, W. L. Marcy; and re-elected him in 1840, as they did General Harrison for President of the United States.

Mr. Clinton certainly possessed executive ability, and conducted the affairs of the Governor's office with dignity, as well as stubbornness. He followed the practice of the Federal Presidents in opening the Legislature with a speech instead of a message, and was not greatly censurable for dismissing men from his employ and patronage for mere difference of opinion. His popularity was mainly confined to his State, even members of his party put little stress upon him when he went to reside in Washington.

It was claimed that he participated in the fraud by which his election was secured in 1792, and yet, with all his political narrowness his general probity can not be doubted. The majority of the people of his State never did lose a whit of their respect and confidence

for him, as was demonstrated by his majority of four thousand over Stephen Van Rensselaer, in his last race for Governor in 1801.

Of him, Mr. Jefferson said in a letter to Dr. Rush in 1811: "Our old Revolutionary friend, Clinton, for example, who was a hero, but never a man of mind, is wonderfully jealous on this point," on admitting the weakening of his mind.

But so tenacious was this old man of his power and his sense of the greatness of his own State over which he presided, that he only tolerated the idea of ratifying the National Constitution, under the foolish recommendation and belief that another convention of all the States should be called to remedy what he deemed its defects.

His tenacity and stubbornness were immense, and generally his qualities were those only of a partisan leader of the coarser sort. He had few or none of the traits of a statesman, and was simply a politician of the most unyielding type of his day. Nor was his patriotism of the highest, most exalted, national kind. He could grasp little beyond his own interests and those of his own State. Hamilton was justly accused of directing Washington in cutting short the Government patronage in the Clinton faction in New York. But Washington knew Clinton as well as any man, and saw the blindness in which he would sacrifice the general good to that of New York.

While he pretended to republicanism of the extreme democratic kind, his case was not without the usual marks of inconsistency, no State being so unrepublican as his, and no autocrat could have held more tenaciously than did he to all its authoritative forms.

His influence, but for the prodigious efforts of Alexander Hamilton, would have kept New York from adopting the Federal Constitution. The consequences of such an event it would, perhaps, be difficult to estimate at this day.

His influence generally in politics was not beneficial to his country, not even to his State. Beyond his Revolutionary services, the good there was in his career had nothing of a National character in it.

Yet he strongly desired to be President of the Union, which he had believed wrong, and which he had labored to thwart. He preferred himself to Mr. Madison, and felt that those by whom he expected preferment should see the matter as he did.

But even as presiding officer of the Senate he had not filled his friends with pride; and when the vain, stubborn, upright old man lay down and died, his party leaders felt that a burden had Providentially been lifted from their shoulders.

CHAPTER XXV.

MR. JEFFERSON AND ABIGAIL ADAMS-MOST EXTRAORDINARY CORRESPONDENCE EVER HELD BETWEEN

A WOMAN AND A PRESIDENT OF

THE UNITED STATES.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

"QUINCY, 20 May, 1804.

"SIR,-Had you been no other than the private inhabitant of Monticello, I should, ere this time, have addressed you with that sympathy which a recent event has awakened in my bosom; but reasons of various kinds withheld my pen, until the powerful feelings of my heart burst through the restraint, and called upon me to shed the tear of sorrow over the departed remains of your beloved and deserving daughter. An event which I most sincerely mourn.

"The attachment which I formed for her, when you committed her to my care upon her arrival in a foreign land, under circumstances peculiarly interesting, has remained with me to this hour; and the account of her death, which I read in a late paper, recalled to my recollection the tender scene of her separation from me, when with the strongest sensibility, she clung around my neck and wet my bosom with her tears, saying, 'Oh! now I have learned to love you, why will they take me from you?'

"It has been some time since I conceived that any event in this life could call forth feelings of mutual sympathy. But I know how closely entwined around a parent's heart are those cords which bind the parental to the filial bosom; and when snapped asunder, how agonizing the pangs. I have tasted of the bitter cup and bow with reverence and submission before the great Dispenser of it, without whose permission and overruling Providence not a sparrow falls to the ground. That you may derive comfort and consolation in this day of your sorrow and affliction from that only source calculated to heal the wounded heart, a