the difficulty by presenting a candidate for governor who was void of
offence. If it was humiliating to admit his own ineligibility, it was
no less so to meet the new condition, for Lewis' election in 1804 had
discovered the scarcity of available material, and developed the
danger of relying upon another to do his bidding. Just now Clinton
wanted a candidate with no convictions, no desires, no ambitions, and
no purposes save to please him. There were men enough of this kind,
but they could neither conceal their master's hand, nor command the
suffrages of a majority on their own account. In this crisis,
therefore, he selected, to the surprise of all and to the disgust of
some, Daniel D. Tompkins, the young and amiable justice of the Supreme
Court, who had taken the place of James Kent on the latter's promotion
to chief justice.

Thus it happened that the day which witnessed DeWitt Clinton's removal
from the New York mayoralty, welcomed into larger political life this
man of honourable parentage, who was destined to play a very
conspicuous part in affairs of state. Daniel D. Tompkins, a youth of
promise and a young man of ripening wisdom, had been for some years in
the public eye, first as a member of the constitutional convention of
1801, afterward as a successful candidate for Congress, and later as
a judge of the Supreme Court. His rise had been phenomenally rapid. He
passed from the farm to the college at seventeen, from college to the
law office at twenty-one, from the law office to the constitutional
convention at twenty-seven, and thence to Congress and the Supreme
Court at thirty. He was now to become governor at thirty-three. But
with all his promise and wisdom and rapid advancement, no one dreamed
in 1807 that he was soon to divide political honour and power with
DeWitt Clinton, five years his senior.

Tompkins was on the farm when Clinton was in Columbia College; but if
the plow lengthened his days, study shortened his nights, and five
years after Clinton graduated, Tompkins entered the same institution.
Just then it was a stern chase. Clinton had the advantage of family,
Tompkins the disadvantage of being a stranger. When the former entered
the Legislature, the latter had only opened a law office. Then, but
four years later, they met in the constitutional convention, Clinton
on the winning side and Tompkins on the right side. The purpose of
this convention, it will be recalled, had been to give each member