all the resistless energy of a man still in his forties. He
was of distinguished ancestry. His great-great-grandfather, Sir John
Scott, baronet, of Ancrum, Scotland, had been a stalwart Whig before
the revolution of 1688, and his grandfather, John Scott, coming to New
York in 1702, had commanded Fort Hunter, a stronghold on the Mohawk.
Both were remarkable men. Tory blood was foreign to their veins. Young
John, breathing the air of independence, scorned to let his life and
property depend upon the pleasure of British lords and a British
ministry, or to be excluded from the right of trial by a jury of his
neighbours, or of taxation by his own representatives. In 1775 he went
to the Continental Congress; in 1776, to the Provincial Congress of
New York; and later he participated in the battle of Long Island as a
brigadier-general. After the adoption of the State Constitution he
became secretary of state, and from 1780 to 1783 served in the
Continental Congress. He lived long enough to see his country free,
although his strenuous life ended at fifty-four.

George Clinton possessed more popular manners than either Schuyler or
Scott. Indeed, it has been given to few men in New York to inspire
more passionate personal attachment than George Clinton. A patriot
never lived who was more bitter in his hostility to English misrule,
or more uncompromising in his opposition to toryism. He was a typical
Irishman--intolerant, often domineering, sometimes petulant, and
occasionally too quick to take offence, but he was magnetic and
generous, easily putting himself in touch with those about him, and
ready, without hesitation, to help the poorest and carry the weakest.
This was the kind of man the people wanted for governor.

Clinton came of a good family. His great-grandfather, a too devoted
adherent of Charles I., found it healthful to wander about Europe, and
finally to settle in the north of Ireland, out of reach of Cromwell's
soldiers, and out of sight of his ancestral patrimony. By the time
Charles II. came to the throne, the estate was lost, and this friend
of the Stuarts lived on in the quiet of his secluded home, and after
him, his son; but the grandson, stirred by the blood of a Puritan
mother, exchanged the North Sea shore for the banks of the Hudson,
where his son breathed the air that made him a leading spirit in the
war for American independence. Clinton's youth is one record of
precocity. Before the war began he passed th