Chapter 43

SILAS WRIGHT AND MILLARD FILLMORE

1844

The New York delegation, returning from the Baltimore convention, found the Democratic party rent in twain over the gubernatorial situation. So long as Van Buren seemed likely to be the candidate for President, opposition to Governor Bouck's renomination was smothered by the desire of the Radicals to unite with the Conservatives, and thus make sure of the State's electoral vote. This was the Van Buren plan. After the latter's defeat, however, the Radicals demanded the nomination of Silas Wright of Canton. Van Buren and Wright had taken no part in the canal controversy; but they belonged to the Radicals, and, with Wright, and with no one else, could the latter hope to defeat the "Agricultural Governor." Their importunity greatly distressed the Canton statesman, who desired to remain in the United States Senate, to which he had been recently re-elected for a third term, and to whom, from every point of view, the governorship was distasteful.[333] Besides taking him from the Senate, it meant contention with two bitterly jealous and hostile factions, one of which would be displeased with impartiality, the other ready to plunge the party into a fierce feud on the slightest show of partiality. Therefore, he firmly declined to be a candidate.

[Footnote 333: "Next to the Presidency no place was so much desired, in the times we are now reviewing, as that of senator of the United States. The body was illustrious through the fame of its members, who generally exhibited the very flower and highest outcome of American political life; dignified, powerful, respected, it was the pride of the nation, and one of its main bulwarks. The height of ordinary ambition was satisfied by attainment to that place; and men once securely seated there would have been content to hold it on and on, asking no more. One cannot doubt the sincerity of the expressions in which Mr. Wright announced his distress at being thrown from that delightful eminence into the whirlpools and quicksands at Albany."--Morgan Dix, _Memoirs of John Dix_, Vol. 1, pp. 194, 195.]

But the Albany _Atlas_, representing the Radicals, insisted upon Wright's making the sacrifice; and, to give Bouck an easy avenue of escape, Edwin Croswell, representing the Conservatives, advised that the Governor would withdraw if he should consent to stand. But he again refused. Still the _Atlas_ continued to insist. By the middle of July things looked very black. In Albany, the atmosphere became thick with political passion. Finally, Van Buren interfered. He was profoundly affected with the idea that political treachery had compassed his defeat, and he knew the nomination of Polk was personally offensive to Silas Wright; but, faithful to his promise to support the action of the Baltimore convention, he requested his friend to lead the state ticket, since the result in New York would probably decide, as it did decide, the fate of the Democratic party in the nation. Still the Senator refused. His decision, more critical than he seemed to be aware, compelled his Radical friends to invent new compromises, until the refusal was modified into a conditional consent. In other words, he would accept the nomination provided he was not placed in the position of opposing "any Republican who is, or who may become a candidate."

This action of the Radicals kept the Conservatives busy bailing a sinking boat. They believed the candidacy of Bouck would shut out Wright under the terms of his letter, and, although the Governor's supporters were daily detached by the action of county conventions, and the Governor himself wished to withdraw to avoid the humiliation of a defeat by ballot, the Conservatives continued their opposition. For once it could be truthfully said of a candidate that he was "in the hands of his friends." Even the "judicious" delegate, whom the Governor directed to withdraw his name, declined executing the commission until a ballot had nominated Wright, giving him ninety-five votes to thirty for Bouck. "Wright's nomination is the fatality," wrote Seward. "Election or defeat exhausts him."[334] Seward had the gift of prophecy.

[Footnote 334: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 723.

"Wright was a strong man the day before his nomination for governor. He fell far, and if left alone will be not, what he might have been, George I. to William of Orange, lineal heir to Jackson, through Van Buren. The wiseacres in New York speak of him with compliment, 'this distinguished statesman;' yet they bring all their small artillery to bear upon him, and give notice that he is demolished. The praise they bestow is very ill concealed, but less injurious to us than their warfare, conducted in their mode."--Letter of W.H. Seward to Thurlow Weed, _Ibid._, Vol. 1, p. 725.]

The bitterness of the contest was further revealed in the refusal of Daniel S. Dickinson, a doughty Conservative, to accept a renomination for lieutenant-governor, notwithstanding Silas Wright had especially asked it. There were many surmises, everybody was excited, and the door to harmony seemed closed forever; but it opened again when the name of Addison Gardiner of Rochester came up. Gardiner had been guided by high ideals. He was kind and tolerant; the voice of personal anger was never heard from his lips; and Conservative and Radical held him in high respect. At Manlius, in 1821, Gardiner had become the closest friend of Thurlow Weed, an intimacy that was severed only by death. He was a young lawyer then, anxious to seek his fortune in the West, and on his way to Indianapolis happened to stop at Rochester. The place proved too attractive to give up, and, through his influence, Weed also made it his residence. "How curious it seems," he once wrote his distinguished journalistic friend, "that circumstances which we regard at the time as scarcely worthy of notice often change the entire current of our lives." A few years later, through Weed's influence, Gardiner became a judge of the Supreme Court, laying the foundation for a public life of honourable and almost unceasing activity.

Though the Whigs needed their ablest and most popular men to meet Wright and Gardiner, preceding events guided the action of their state convention, which met at Syracuse, on the 11th of September, 1844. Horace Greeley had picked out Millard Fillmore for the Vice Presidency on the ticket with Henry Clay, and his New York friends, proud of his work in Congress, as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, presented his name with the hope that other States, profiting by the tariff which he had framed, might join them in recognising his valuable public service. But the convention had not taken kindly to him, probably for the same reason that Greeley desired his promotion; for, upon the slavery question, Fillmore had been more pronounced and aggressive than Seward, sympathising and acting in Congress with Giddings of Ohio and John P. Hale of New Hampshire, a part very difficult to perform in those days without losing caste as a Whig.

Fillmore's defeat on May 1, however, made him the candidate for governor on September 11. Weed pronounced for him very early, and the party leaders fell into line with a unanimity that must have been as balm to Fillmore's sores. "I wish to say to you," wrote George W. Patterson to Weed, "that you are right, as usual, on the question of governor. After Frelinghuysen was named for Vice President, it struck me that Fillmore above all others was the man. You may rest assured that he will help Mr. Clay to a large number of good men's votes. Mr. Clay's slaves and his old duel would have hurt him with some men who will now vote the ticket. Fillmore is a favourite everywhere; and among the Methodists where 'old Father Fillmore' is almost worshipped, they will go him with a rush."[335] Yet the Buffalo statesman, not a little disgruntled over his treatment at Baltimore, disclaimed any desire for the nomination. To add to his chagrin, he was told that Weed and Seward urged his selection for his destruction, and whether he believed the tale or not, it increased his fear and apprehension. But people did not take his assumed indifference seriously, and he was unanimously nominated for governor, with Samuel J. Wilkin, of Orange, for lieutenant-governor. Wilkin had been a leader of the Adams party in the Assembly of 1824 and 1825. He was then a young lawyer of much promise, able and clear-headed, and, although never a showy debater, he possessed useful business talent, and an integrity that gave him high place among the men who guided his party. "I like Wilkin for lieutenant-governor," wrote Seward, although he had been partial to the selection of John A. King.

[Footnote 335: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p. 121.]

Without doubt, each party had put forward, for governor, its most available man. Fillmore was well known and at the height of his popularity. During the protracted and exciting tariff struggle of 1842, he had sustained himself as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee with marked ability. It added to his popularity, too, that he had seemed indifferent to the nomination. In some respects Fillmore and Silas Wright were not unlike. They were distinguished for their suavity of manners. Both were impressive and interesting characters, wise in council, and able in debate, with a large knowledge of their State and country; and, although belonging to opposite parties and in different wings of the capitol at Washington, their service in Congress had brought to the debates a genius which compelled attention, and a purity of life that raised in the public estimation the whole level of congressional proceedings. Neither was an orator; they were clear, forcible, and logical; but their speeches were not quoted as models of eloquence. In spite of an unpleasant voice and a slow, measured utterance, there was a charm about Wright's speaking; for, like Fillmore, he had earnestness and warmth. With all their power, however, they lacked the enthusiasm and the boldness that captivate the crowd and inspire majorities. Yet they had led majorities. In no sphere of Wright's activities, was he more strenuous than in the contest for the independent treasury plan which he recommended to Van Buren, and which, largely through his efforts as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was finally forced into law on the 4th of July, 1840. Fillmore, in putting some of the hated taxes of 1828 into the tariff act of 1842, was no less strenuous, grappling facts with infinite labour, until, at last, he overcame a current of public opinion that seemed far too powerful for resistance.

Of the two men, Silas Wright was undoubtedly the stronger character. He was five years older than Fillmore, and his legislative experience had been four or five years longer. His great intellectual power peculiarly fitted him for the United States Senate. He had chosen finance as his specialty, and in its discussion had made a mark. He could give high and grave counsel in great emergencies. His inexhaustible patience, his active attention and industry, his genius in overcoming impediments of every kind, made him the peer of the ablest senator. He was not without ambitions for himself; but they were always subordinate in him to the love of party and friends. It will never be known how far he influenced Van Buren's reply to Hammit. He bitterly opposed the annexation of Texas, and his conferences with the ex-President must have encouraged the latter's adherence to his former position. Van Buren's defeat, however, in no wise changed Wright's attitude toward him. It is doubtful if the latter could have been nominated President at Baltimore had he allowed the use of his name, but it was greatly to his credit, showing the sincerity of his friendship for Van Buren, that he spurned the suggestion and promptly declined a unanimous nomination for Vice President. Such action places him in a very small group of American statesmen who have deliberately turned their backs upon high office rather than be untrue to friends.

Silas Wright was strictly a party man. He came near subjecting every measure and every movement in his career to the test of party loyalty. He started out in that way, and he kept it up until the end. In 1823 he sincerely favoured the choice of presidential electors by the people, but, for the party's sake, he aided in defeating the measure. Two years later, he preferred that the State be unrepresented in the United States Senate rather than permit the election of Ambrose Spencer, then the nominee of a Clintonian majority, and he used all his skill to defeat a joint session of the two houses. For the sake of party he now accepted the gubernatorial nomination. Desire to remain in the Senate, opposition to the annexation of Texas, dislike of participating in factional feuds, refusal to stand in the way of Bouck's nomination, the dictates of his better judgment, all gave way to party necessity. He anticipated defeat for a second term should he now be elected to a first, but it had no influence. The party needed him, and, whatever the result to himself, he met it without complaint. This was the man upon whom the Democrats relied to carry New York and to elect Polk.

There were other parties in the field. The Native Americans, organised early in 1844, watched the situation with peculiar emotions. This party had suddenly sprung up in opposition to the ease with which foreigners secured suffrage and office; and, although it shrewdly avoided nominations for governor and President, it demoralised both parties by the strange and tortuous manoeuvres that had ended in the election of a mayor of New York in the preceding spring. It operated, for the most part, in that city, but its sympathisers covered the whole State. Then, there was the anti-rent party, confined to Delaware and three or four adjoining counties, where long leases and trifling provisions of forfeiture had exasperated tenants into acts of violence. Like the Native Americans, these Anti-Renters avoided state and national nominations, and traded their votes to secure the election of legislative nominees.

But the organisation which threatened calamity was the abolition or liberty party. It had nominated James G. Birney of Michigan for President and Alvan Stewart for governor, and, though no one expected the election of either, the organisation was not unlikely to hold the balance of power in the State. Stewart was a born Abolitionist and a lawyer of decided ability. In the section of the State bounded by Oneida and Otsego counties, where he shone conspicuously as a leader for a quarter of a century, his forensic achievements are still remembered. Stanton says he had no superior in central New York. "His quaint humour was equal to his profound learning. He was skilled in a peculiar and indescribable kind of argumentation, wit, and sarcasm, that made him remarkably successful out of court as well as in court. Before anti-slavery conventions in several States he argued grave and intricate constitutional questions with consummate ability."[336]

[Footnote 336: H.B. Stanton, _Random Recollections_, p. 135.]

It was evident that the Anti-Renters and Native Americans would draw, perhaps, equally from Whigs and Democrats; but the ranks of Abolitionists could be recruited only from the anti-slavery Whigs. Behind Stewart stood Gerrit Smith, William Jay, Beriah Green, and other zealous, able, benevolent, pure-minded men--some of them wealthy. Their shibboleth was hostility to a slave-holder, or one who would vote for a slave-holder. This barred Henry Clay and his electors.

At the outset the Whigs plainly had the advantage. Spring elections had resulted auspiciously, and the popularity of Clay seemed unfailing. He had avowed opposition to the annexation of Texas, and, although his letter was not based upon hostility to slavery and the slave trade, it was positive, highly patriotic, and in a measure satisfactory to the anti-slavery Whigs. "We are at the flood," Seward wrote Weed; "our opponents at the ebb."[337] The nomination of Wright had greatly strengthened the Democratic ticket, but the nomination of Polk, backed by the Texas resolution, weighted the party as with a ball and chain. Edwin Croswell had characterised Van Buren's letter to Hammit as "a statesmanlike production," declaring that "every American reader, not entirely under the dominion of prejudice, will admit the force of his conclusions."[338] This was the view generally held by the party throughout the State; yet, within a month, every American reader who wished to remain loyal to the Democratic party was compelled to change his mind. In making this change, the "slippery-elm editor," as Croswell came to be known because of the nearness of his office to the old elm tree corner in Albany, led the way and the party followed. It was a rough road for many who knew they were consigning to one grave all hope of ending the slavery agitation, while they were resurrecting from another, bitter and dangerous controversies that had been laid to rest by the Missouri Compromise. Yet only one poor little protest, and that intended for private circulation, was heard in opposition, the signers, among them William Cullen Bryant, declaring their intention to vote for Polk, but to repudiate any candidate for Congress who agreed with Polk. Bryant's purpose was palpable and undoubted; but it soon afterward became part of his courage not to muffle plain truth from any spurious notions of party loyalty, and part of his glory not to fail to tell what people could not fail to see.

[Footnote 337: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 699.]

[Footnote 338: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol. 3, p. 441, _note_.]

As the campaign advanced, the Whig side of it resembled the contest of 1840. The log cabin did not reappear, and the drum and cannon were less noisy, but ash poles, cut from huge trees and spliced one to another, carried high the banner of the statesman from Ashland. Campaign songs, with choruses for "Harry of the West," emulated those of "Old Tip," and parades by day and torch-light processions by night, increased the enthusiasm. The Whigs, deeply and personally attached to Henry Clay, made mass-meetings as common and nearly as large as those held four years before. Seward speaks of fifteen thousand men gathered at midday in Utica to hear Erastus Root, and of a thousand unable to enter the hall at night while he addressed a thousand more within. Fillmore expressed the fear that Whigs would mistake these great meetings for the election, and omit the necessary arrangements to get the vote out. "I am tired of mass-meetings," wrote Seward. "But they will go on."[339]

[Footnote 339: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 723.]

Seward and Weed were not happy during this campaign. The friends of Clay, incensed at his defeat in 1840, had pronounced them the chief conspirators. Murmurs had been muffled until after Tyler's betrayal of the party and Seward's retirement, but when these sources of possible favours ran dry, the voice of noisy detraction reached Albany and Auburn. It was not an ordinary scold, confined to a few conservatives; but the censure of strong language, filled with vindictiveness, charged Weed with revolutionary theories, tending to unsettle the rights of property, and Seward with abolition notions and a desire to win the Irish Catholic vote for selfish purposes. In February, 1844, it was not very politely hinted to Seward that he go abroad during the campaign; and by June, Weed talked despondingly, proposing to leave the _Journal_. Seward had the spirit of the Greeks. "If you resign," he said, "there will be no hope left for ten thousand men who hold on because of their confidence in you and me."[340] In another month Weed had become the proprietor as well as the editor of the _Evening Journal_.

[Footnote 340: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 719.

"I think you cannot leave the _Journal_ without giving up the whole army to dissension and overthrow. I agree that if, by remaining, you save it, you only draw down double denunciation upon yourself and me. Nor do I see the way through and beyond that. But there will be some way through. I grant, then, that, for yourself and me, it is wise and profitable that you leave. I must be left without the possibility of restoration, without a defender, without an organ. Nothing else will satisfy those who think they are shaded. Then, and not until then, shall I have passed through the not unreasonable punishment for too much success. But the party--the country? They cannot bear your withdrawal. I think I am not mistaken in this. Let us adhere, then. Stand fast. It is neither wise nor reasonable that we should bear the censure of defeat, when we have been deprived of not merely command, but of a voice in council."--W.H. Seward to Thurlow Weed, _Ibid._, Vol. 1, p. 720.]

As the campaign grew older, however, Clay's friends gladly availed themselves of Seward's influence with anti-slavery Whigs and naturalised citizens. "It is wonderful what an impulse the nomination of Polk has given to the abolition sentiment," wrote Seward. "It has already expelled other issues from the public mind. Our Whig central committee, who, a year ago, voted me out of the party for being an Abolitionist, has made abolition the war-cry in their call for a mass-meeting."[341] Even the sleuth-hounds of No-popery were glad to invite Seward to address the naturalised voters, whose hostility to the Whigs, in 1844, resembled their dislike of the Federalists in 1800. "It is a sorry consolation for this ominous aspect of things," he wrote Weed, "that you and I are personally exempt from the hostility of this class toward our political associates."[342]

[Footnote 341: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 718.]

[Footnote 342: _Ibid._, p. 723.]

Yet no man toiled more sedulously in this campaign than Seward. "Harrison had his admirers, Clay his lovers," is the old way of putting it. To elect him, Whigs were ready to make any sacrifice, to endure any hardship, and to yield every prejudice. Fillmore was ubiquitous, delivering tariff and anti-Texas speeches that filled all mouths with praise and all hearts with principle, as Seward expressed it. An evident desire existed on the part of many in both parties, to avoid a discussion of the annexation of Texas, and its consequent extension of slavery, lest too much or too little be said; but leaders like Seward and Fillmore were too wise to believe that they could fool the people by concealing the real issue. "Texas and slavery are at war with the interests, the principles, the sympathies of all," boldly declared the unmuzzled Auburn statesman. "The integrity of the Union depends on the result. To increase the slave-holding power is to subvert the Constitution; to give a fearful preponderance which may, and probably will, be speedily followed by demands to which the Democratic free-labour States cannot yield, and the denial of which will be made the ground of secession, nullification and disunion."[343] This was another of Seward's famous prophecies. At the time it seemed extravagant, even to the strongest anti-slavery Whigs, but the future verified it.

[Footnote 343: _Ibid._, p. 727.]

The Whigs, however, did not, as in 1840, have a monopoly of the enthusiasm. The public only half apprehended, or refused to apprehend at all, the danger in the Texas scheme; and, after the first chill of their immersion, the Democrats rallied with confidence to the support of their ticket. Abundant evidence of their strength had manifested itself at each state election since 1841, and, although no trailing cloud of glory now testified to a thrifty and skilful management, as in 1836, the two factions, in spite of recent efforts to baffle and defeat each other, pulled themselves together with amazing quickness. Indeed, if we may rely upon Whig letters of the time, the Democrats exhibited the more zeal and spirit throughout the campaign. They had their banners, their songs, and their processions. In place of ash, they raised hickory poles, and instead of defending Polk, they attacked Clay. Other candidates attracted little attention. Clay was the commanding, central figure, and over him the battle raged. There were two reasons for this. One was the fear of a silent free-soil vote, which the Bryant circular had alarmed in his favour. The other was a desire to strengthen the liberty party, and to weaken the Whigs by holding up Clay as a slave-holder. The cornerstone of that party was hostility to the slave-holder; and if a candidate, however much he opposed slavery, owned a single slave, it excluded him from its suffrage. This was the weak point in Clay's armour, and the one of most peril to the Whigs. To meet it, the latter argued, with some show of success, that the conflict is not with one slave-holder, or with many, but with slavery; and since the admission of Texas meant the extension of that institution, a vote for Clay, who once advocated emancipation in Kentucky and is now strongly opposed to Texas, is a vote in behalf of freedom.

In September, Whig enthusiasm underwent a marked decline. Clay's July letter to his Alabama correspondent, as historic now as it was superfluous and provoking then, had been published, in which he expressed a wish to see Texas added to the Union "upon just and fair terms," and hazarded the opinion that "the subject of slavery ought not to affect the question one way or the other."[344] This letter was the prototype of the famous alliteration, "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," in the Blaine campaign of 1884. Immediately Clay's most active anti-slavery supporters were in revolt. "We had the Abolitionists in a good way," wrote Washington Hunt from Lockport; "but Mr. Clay seems determined that they shall not be allowed to vote for him. I believe his letter will lose us more than two hundred votes in this county."[345] The effects of the dreadful blow are as briefly summed up by Seward: "I met _that letter_ at Geneva, and thence here, and now everybody droops, despairs. It jeopards, perhaps loses, the State."[346] A few weeks later, in company with several friends, Seward, as was his custom, made an estimate of majorities, going over the work several times and taking accurate account of the drift of public sentiment. An addition of the columns showed the Democrats several thousands ahead. Singularly enough, Fillmore, whose accustomed despondency exhibited itself even in 1840, now became confident of success. This can be accounted for, perhaps, on the theory that to a candidate the eve of an election is "dim with the self-deceiving twilight of sophistry." He believed in his own safety even if Clay failed. Although the deep, burning issue of slavery had not yet roused popular forces into dangerous excitement, Fillmore had followed the lead of Giddings and Hale, sympathising deeply with the restless flame that eventually guided the policy of the North with such admirable effect. On the other hand, Wright approved his party's doctrine of non-interference with slavery. He had uniformly voted to table petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, declaring that any interference with the system, in that district, or in the territories, endangered the rights of their citizens, and would be a violation of faith toward those who had settled and held slaves there. He voted for the admission of Arkansas and Florida as slave States; and his opposition to Texas was based wholly upon reasons other than the extension of slavery. The Abolitionists understood this, and Fillmore confidently relied upon their aid, although they might vote for Birney instead of Clay.

[Footnote 344: Private letter, Henry Clay to Stephen Miller, Tuscaloosa, Ala., July 1, 1844.]

[Footnote 345: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p. 123.]

[Footnote 346: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 724.]

That Seward rightly divined public sentiment was shown by the result. Polk carried the State by a plurality of little more than five thousand, and Wright by ten thousand, while Stewart polled over fifteen thousand votes.[347] These last figures told the story. Four years before, Birney had received less than seven thousand votes in the whole country; now, in New York, the Abolitionists, exceeding their own anticipations, held the balance of power.[348] Had their votes been cast for Clay and Fillmore both would have carried New York, and Clay would have become the Chief Executive. "Until Mr. Clay wrote his letter to Alabama," said Thurlow Weed, dispassionately, two years afterward, "his election as President was certain."[349]

[Footnote 347: Silas Wright, 241,090; Millard Fillmore, 231,057; Alvan Stewart, 15,136.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

[Footnote 348: In 1840 Gerrit Smith received 2662; in 1842 Alvan Stewart polled 7263.--_Ibid._, p. 166.]

[Footnote 349: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 1, p. 572.]

Clay's defeat was received by his devoted followers as the knell of their hopes. For years they had been engaged labourously in rolling uphill the stone of Sisyphus, making active friendships and seeking a fair trial. That opportunity had come at last. It had been an affair of life or death; the contest was protracted, intense, dramatic; the issue for a time had hung in poignant doubt; but the dismal result let the stone roll down again to the bottom of the hill. No wonder stout men cried, and that thousands declared the loss of all further interest in politics. To add to their despair and resentment, the party of Birney and Stewart exulted over its victory not less than the party of Polk and Silas Wright.