7), p. 166.]

In the heated temper of the triumphant party, the new Council of
Appointment, chosen soon after the Legislature convened in January,
1811, began removing officials with a fierceness that in our day would
have brought shame and ruin upon any administration. It was a Clinton
Council, and only Clintonians took office. Jacob Radcliff again turned
over the New York mayoralty to DeWitt Clinton; Abraham Van Vechten
gave up the attorney-generalship to Matthias B. Hildreth; Daniel Hale
surrendered the secretaryship of state to Elisha Jenkins; Theodore
V.W. Graham bowed his adieus to the recordership of Albany as John Van
Ness Yates came in; and James O. Hoffman, Cadwallader D. Colden, and
John W. Mulligan, as recorder, district attorney, and surrogate of New
York, respectively, hastened to make way for their successors. As soon
as an order could reach him, Thomas J. Oakley, surrogate of Dutchess
County, vacated the office that the treachery of his father-in-law had
brought him. It was another clean sweep throughout the entire State.
Even Garrett T. Lansing, because he once belonged to the Lewisites,
found the petty office of master in chancery catalogued among the
"spoils."

CHAPTER XVI

DeWITT CLINTON AND TAMMANY

1789-1811

The death of Lieutenant-Governor Broome, in the summer of 1810,
created a vacancy which the Legislature provided should be filled at
the following election in April. John Broome had been distinguished
since the olden days when the cardinal policy of New York was the
union of the Colonies in a general congress. He had belonged to the
Committee of Fifty-one with John Jay, to the Committee of One Hundred
with James Duane, and to the Committee of Observation with Philip
Livingston. After the Revolution, he became president of the Board of
Aldermen, treasurer of the Chamber of Commerce, and, in 1789, had
stood for Congress against James Lawrence, the trusted adjutant-general
of Washington. Although Broome's overwhelming defeat for Congress in
no wise reflected upon his character as a patriot and representative
citizen, it kept him in the background until the Federalists had
frittered away their power in New York City. Then he came to the front
again, first as state senator, and afterward, in 1804, as
lieutenant-governor; but he never reached the coveted governorship. In
that day, as in this, the office of lieutenant-governor was not
necessarily a stepping stone to higher preferment.