eparating
himself from the Republican party, and that his renomination for
lieutenant-governor would reunite the party, making it more potent to
create and support war measures. But Van Buren himself was not beyond
danger. Tammany's mutterings and Spencer's violent denunciations
threatened to exclude others from the party, and to escape their
hostility, this rising young statesman found it convenient to drop
Clinton and shout for Tompkins. A less able and clear-headed man might
have gone wrong at this parting of the ways, just as did Obadiah
German and other friends of Clinton; but Van Buren never needed a
guide-post to point out to him the safest political road to travel.
The better to prove his party loyalty, he consented to draft the usual
grandiloquent address issued by the legislative caucus to Republican
electors, always a sophomoric appeal, but quite in accord with the
rhetoric of the time. If any doubt existed as to the orthodoxy of Van
Buren's Republicanism, this address must have dissipated it. It
sustained the general government by forcible argument, and it appealed
with fervid eloquence and deep pathos to the patriotism of the people
to continue their support of the party.

How great a part Clinton was yet to play in the history of his State
no one could foresee. Much speculation has been indulged by writers as
to the probable course of history had he been elected President, but
the mere fact that he was able to inspire so small a fraction of his
party with full faith in his leadership is decisive evidence that he
was not then the man of the hour. It is certain that his enemies
believed his political life had been brought to an ignoble close.
Clinton probably felt that he would have no difficulty in living down
the opprobrium put upon him by partisan hostility; and to prove that
he was still in the political arena, a little coterie of distinguished
friends, led by Obadiah German and Pierre Van Cortlandt, made a circle
about him. From this vantage ground he defied his enemies, attacking
Madison's conduct of the war with great severity, and protesting
against the support of Tompkins and Taylor as the mere tools of
Madison.

Clinton's usual good fortune also attended him. As we have seen, the
April elections in 1812 returned a Federalist Assembly, which selected
a Council of Appointment opposed to Clinton's removal from the
mayoralty. It displaced everybody else throughout the State.
Clintonians and Madisoni