d one Whig and one Democratic canal
commissioner, gave them majorities of seven and thirteen thousand
respectively. Of eight senators chosen, the Whigs elected five; and of
the one hundred and twenty-eight assemblymen, sixty-eight, the
minority being made up of fifty Democrats and ten Anti-Renters. The
Whig returns also included twenty-three out of thirty-four
congressmen.

[Footnote 359: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.
3, p. 762.]

[Footnote 360: John Young, 198,878; Silas Wright, 187,306; Henry
Bradley, 12,844; Ogden Edwards, 6306.--_Civil List, State of New York_
(1887), p. 166.]

It was a sweeping victory--one of the sporadic kind that occur in
moments of political unrest when certain classes are in rebellion
against some phase of existing conditions. Seward, who happened to be
in Albany over Sunday, pictured the situation in one of his racy
letters. "To-day," he says, "I have been at St. Peter's and heard one
of those excellent discourses of Dr. Potter. There was such a jumble
of wrecks of party in the church that I forgot the sermon and fell to
moralising on the vanity of political life. You know my seat. Well,
halfway down the west aisle sat Silas Wright, wrapped in a coat
tightly buttoned to the chin, looking philosophy, which it is hard to
affect and harder to attain. On the east side sat Daniel D. Barnard,
upon whom 'Anti-Rent' has piled Ossa, while Pelion only has been
rolled upon Wright. In the middle of the church was Croswell, who
seemed to say to Wright, 'You are welcome to the gallows you erected
for me.' On the opposite side sat John Young, the _saved_ among the
lost politicians. He seemed complacent and satisfied."[361]

[Footnote 361: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 34.]

The defeat of Silas Wright caused no real surprise. It seemed to be in
the air. Everything was against him save his own personal influence,
based upon his sincerity, integrity, and lofty patriotism. Seward had
predicted the result at the time of Wright's nomination in 1844, and
Wright himself had anticipated it. "I told some friends when I
consented to take this office," he wrote John Fine, his Canton friend,
in March, 1846, "that it would terminate my public life."[362] But the
story of Silas Wright's administration as governor was not all a
record of success. He was opposed to a constitutional convention as
well as to a canal appropriation, and, by wisely preventing the
former, it is li