with anything like the swiftness and certainty of the present
era of cheap newspapers and rapid transit. Yet, in spite of his
genius, which concealed, and, for a time, checked the suddenness of
his fall, the rank and file of the party quickly understood what had
happened. Friends began falling away. For several months Ambrose
Spencer had openly and bitterly denounced him, and Governor Tompkins
took a decisive part in relieving his rival of the last hope of ever
again reckoning on the support of Republicans.

The feeling against Clinton was intensified by the common belief that
the election of Rufus King, as United States senator to succeed John
Smith, on March 4, 1813, paid the Federalists their price for choosing
Clinton electors. The Republicans had a majority on joint ballot, and
James W. Wilkin, a senator from the middle district, was placed in
nomination; but when the votes were counted King had sixty-four and
Wilkin sixty-one. It looked treacherous, and it suggested gross
ingratitude, since Wilkin had presided at the legislative caucus which
nominated Clinton for President; but, as we have seen, events had been
moving in different ways, events destined to produce a strange crop of
political results. In buying its charter, the Bank of America had
contracted to do many things, and the election of a United States
senator was not unlikely among its bargains. This theory seems the
more probable since Clinton, whom Rufus King had denounced as a
dangerous demagogue, would have preferred putting King into a position
of embarrassment more than into the United States Senate. Wilkin
himself so understood it, or, at least, he believed that the Bank, and
not Clinton, had contributed to his defeat, and he said so in a letter
afterward found among the Clinton papers.

Hostile Republicans were, however, now ready to believe Clinton guilty
of any act of turpitude or ingratitude; and so, on February 4, when a
legislative caucus renominated Daniel D. Tompkins for governor by
acclamation, Clinton received only sixteen votes for lieutenant-governor.
There is no evidence that Van Buren took part in Clinton's
humiliation; but it is certain he did not act with all the fairness
that might have been expected. He could well have said that Clinton
was no worse than the majority of his party who had nominated him;
that his aim, like theirs, was a vigorous prosecution of the war in
the interest of an early peace; that he had no intention of s