Clinton closed his distinguished career at Washington
on the 20th of April, 1812. If he left behind him a memory of long
service which had been lived to his own advantage, it was by no means
lived to the disadvantage of his country or his State. He did much for
both. Perhaps he was better fitted for an instrument of revolution
than a governor of peace, but the influence which he exercised upon
his time was prodigious. In the two great events of his life--the
revolt of the Colonies and the adoption of a Federal Constitution--he
undoubtedly swayed the minds of his countrymen to a degree unequalled
among those contemporaries who favoured independence and state
supremacy. He lacked the genius of Hamilton, the scholarly, refined
integrity of Jay, and the statesmanship of both; but he was by odds
the strongest, ablest, and most astute man of his party in the State.
Jay and Hamilton looked into the future, Clinton saw only the present.
The former possessed a love for humanity and a longing for progress
which encouraged them to work out a national existence, broad enough
and strong enough to satisfy the ambition of a great nation a century
after its birth; Clinton was satisfied to conserve what he had,
unmoved by the great possibilities even then indistinctly outlined to
the eye of the statesman whose vision was fixed intently upon an
undivided America. But Clinton wisely conserved what was given to his
keeping. As he grew older he grew more tolerant and humane,
substituting imprisonment for the death penalty, and recommending a
complete revision of the criminal laws. His administration, too, saw
the earliest attempts made in a systematic way toward the spread of
education among the multitudes, his message to the Legislature of 1795
urging a generous appropriation to common schools. This was the first
suggestion of state aid. Colleges and seminaries had been remembered,
but schools for the common people waited until Clinton had been
governor for eighteen years.

CHAPTER XVIII

CLINTON AND THE PRESIDENCY

1812

For many years DeWitt Clinton had had aspirations to become a
candidate for President. He entered the United States Senate in 1802
with such an ambition; he became mayor of New York in 1803 with this
end in view; he sought the lieutenant-governorship in 1811 for no
other purpose; and, although he had never taken a managing step in
that direction, looking cautiously into the future, he saw his way and
only w