ls"--the name growing out of a custom,
which obtained on certain festival occasions, when leading members of
Tammany wore the tail of a deer on their hats.

Refusing to accept DeWitt Clinton, Tammany made Peter B. Porter its
candidate for governor. There is ample evidence that Porter never
concealed the chagrin or disappointment of defeat; but, though the
distinguished General must have known that his name was printed upon
the Tammany ticket and sent into every county in the State, he did not
co-operate with Tammany in its effort to elect him. Other defections
existed in the party. Peter R. Livingston seemed to concentrate in
himself all the prejudices of his family against the Clintons. Moses
I. Cantine of Catskill, a brother-in-law of Van Buren, though perhaps
incapable of personal bitterness, opposed Clinton with such zeal that
he refused to vote either for a gubernatorial candidate, or for the
construction of a canal. Samuel Young, who seemed to nourish a
deep-seated dislike of Clinton, never tired of disparaging the
ex-Mayor. He apparently took keen pleasure in holding up to ridicule
and in satirising, what he was pleased to call his ponderous
pedantries, his solemn affectation of profundity and wisdom, his
narrow-mindedness, and his intolerable and transparent egotism. But
the canal sentiment was all one way. With the help of the Federalists,
who declined to make an opposing nomination, Clinton swept the State
like a cyclone, receiving nearly forty-four thousand votes out of a
total of forty-five thousand.[190] Porter had less than fifteen
hundred. Clinton's inauguration as governor occurred on the first day
of July, 1817, and three days later he began the construction of the
Erie canal.

[Footnote 190: DeWitt Clinton, 43,310; Peter B. Porter, 1479.--_Civil
List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

CHAPTER XXIII

BUCKTAIL AND CLINTONIAN

1817-1819

DeWitt Clinton had now reached the highest point in his political
career. He was not merely all-powerful in the administration, he was
the administration. He delighted in the consciousness that he was
looked up to by men; that his success was fixed as a star in the
firmament; and that the greatest work of his life lay before him. He
was still in the prime of his days, only forty-eight years old, with a
marvellous capacity for work. It is said that he found a positive
delight in doing what seemed to others a wearisome and exhaustive tax
upon physical en