the
sacrifice that comes to those who are tired of existing conditions and
eager for new policies and new associations. But Clinton was neither
reformer nor pioneer. He loved the old order of things, the Council of
Appointment, the Council of Revision, the Constitution of 1777 as
amended by the convention of 1801, and all the machinery that gave
power to the few and control to the boss. He had been born to power.
From his first entrance into the political arena he had exercised
it--first with the help of his uncle George, afterward with the
assistance of his brother-in-law, Ambrose Spencer; and now that he had
swung back into power again by means of his canal policy, he had no
disposition to let go any part of it by letting go the Republican
party. What Van Buren got from him he must take by votes, not by
gifts.

Clinton's flagrant violation of the caucus rule, that a minority must
yield to the majority, not only broke the Republican party into the
famous factions known as Clintonians and Bucktails; it alarmed local
leaders throughout the State; made the rank and file distrustful of
the Governor's fealty, and consolidated his enemies, giving them the
best of the argument and enabling Van Buren to build up an
organisation against which the Governor was ever after compelled to
struggle with varying fortune. Indeed, in the next month, Van Buren so
managed the selection of a Council that it gave Clinton credit for
controlling appointments without the slightest power of making them,
so that the disappointed held him responsible and the fortunate gave
him no thanks. Following this humiliation, too, came the election, by
one majority, of Henry Seymour, a bitter opponent of Clinton, to the
canal commissionership made vacant by the resignation of Joseph
Ellicott. The Governor's attention had been called to the danger of
his candidate's defeat; but with optimistic assurance he dismissed it
as impossible until Ephraim Hart, just before the election occurred,
discovered that the cunning hand of Van Buren had accomplished his
overthrow. "A majority of the canal commissioners are now politically
opposed to the Governor," declared the Albany _Argus_, "and it will
not be necessary for a person who wishes to obtain employment on the
canal as agent, contractor or otherwise, to avow himself a
Clintonian." This exultant shout meant that in future only
anti-Clintonians would make up the army of canal employees.

But a greater _coup d'eta