e men personally than any other citizen in the State. He had been
four times elected clerk of the Assembly, he had served as sheriff of
his county, and he was now sole editor and proprietor of the Albany
_Register_, the leading and most influential Republican paper. To
ability as a writer he also added eloquence of speech. Southwick could
not be called a great orator, but he had grace, wit, imagination, and
a beauty of style that appealed to the hearts and sympathies of his
hearers. In the conduct of his business affairs, nobody could be more
careful, more methodical, more precise. Indeed, we may take it for
granted, without any biographical information on the subject, that in
1811 Solomon Southwick was on the road to the highest honours in the
gift of his State.

But his connection with the Bank of America covered him with suspicion
from which he never entirely recovered. It must have occurred to him,
when accepting the bank's retainer, that his opposition to the
Merchants' Bank would be recalled to the injury of his consistency. In
1805, he had boldly declared in the _Register_ that any Republican who
voted for a Federalist bank was justly censurable; in 1812, he so far
changed his mind as to hold that any one "who supports or opposes a
bank upon the grounds of Federalism or Republicanism, is either
deceiver or deceived, and will not be listened to by any man of sense
or experience." A little later in the contest, when partisan fury and
public corruption were the opposing forces, several sub-agents of the
bank were indicted for bribery, among them a former clergyman who was
sent to the penitentiary. Then it was whispered that David Thomas,
following the example of Purdy in 1805, had scattered his
purchase-money everywhere, sowing with the sack and not with the hand.
Finally, Casper M. Rouse, a senator from Chenango, accused Thomas of
offering him ten shares of stock, with a profit of one thousand
dollars, adding that Thomas had told him to call upon Southwick in
Albany. Southwick had evidently fallen into bad company, and, although
Rouse disclaimed having seen the Albany journalist, a week or two
later Alexander Sheldon, speaker of the Assembly, made a charge
against Southwick similar to Rouse's accusation against Thomas. Both
men were indicted, but the jury preferred accepting the denial of the
defendants, since it appeared that Rouse and Sheldon, instead of
treating the accused as bribers and men unworthy of confide