s to Lewis, but the latter's weakness as an executive,
foreshadowed a defeat which each day made plainer, and when the votes,
counted on the last day of April, gave Tompkins 4085 majority, the
result was as gratifying to Clinton as it was disastrous to
Lewis.[153] It was not a sweeping victory, such as Lewis had won over
Burr three years before, for the former's weakness was less offensive
than the latter's wickedness, but it launched the successful candidate
on his long period of authority, which was not to be ended until he
was broken in health, if not in character.

[Footnote 153: Daniel D. Tompkins, 35,074; Morgan Lewis,
30,989.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

Daniel D. Tompkins had the good fortune to begin his administration at
a time when England and the United States were about to quarrel over
the former's insistence on impressing American seamen into its
service, thus giving the people something to think about save offices,
and dividing them again sharply into two parties. Indeed, while the
election was pending in April, three deserters from the _Melampus_, a
British sloop-of-war, by enlisting on the _Chesapeake_, a United
States frigate of thirty-eight guns, became the innocent cause of
subjecting the United States to gross insult. The American government,
smarting under England's impressment of its seamen, refused to
surrender these deserters, inquiries showing that they were coloured
men of American birth, two of whom had been pressed into the British
service from an American vessel in the Bay of Biscay. When the
_Chesapeake_ sailed, therefore, the _Leopard_, an English man-of-war
mounting fifty guns, followed her to the high seas and demanded a
return of the deserters. Receiving a prompt refusal, the Englishman
raked the decks of the _Chesapeake_ for the space of twelve minutes,
killing three men and wounding eighteen, among them the commander. The
_Chesapeake_ was not yet ready for action. Her crew was undrilled in
the use of ordnance, her decks littered, appliances for reloading were
wanting, and at the supreme moment neither priming nor match could be
found. Under these distressing circumstances, the boarding officer of
the _Leopard_ took the deserters and sailed for Halifax. The sight of
the dismantled _Chesapeake_, with its dead and dying, aroused the
people irrespective of party into demanding reparation or war. "This
country," wrote Jefferson, "has never been in such a state of
e