to.

CHAPTER XXV

TOMPKINS' LAST CONTEST

1820

The coming of 1820 was welcomed by the Van Buren forces. It was the
year for the selection of another governor, and the Bucktails, very
weary of Clinton, were anxious for a change. For all practical
purposes Bucktails and Clintonians had now become two opposing
parties, Van Buren's removal as attorney-general, by the Council of
1819, ending all semblance of friendship and political affiliation.
This Council was known as "Clinton's Council;" and, profiting by the
lesson learned in 1817, Clinton had made a clean sweep of the men he
believed to have acted against him. He gave Van Buren's place to
Thomas J. Oakley, and Peter A. Jay, eldest son of John Jay, who had
rendered valuable assistance in promoting the construction of the
canal, he made recorder of New York City, an office which Richard
Riker had held since 1815. These appointments naturally subjected the
Governor to the criticism of removing Republicans to make places for
Federalists. But the new officers were Clinton's friends, while Riker,
at least, had been an open enemy since Jonas Platt's appointment to
the Supreme bench in 1814. Jay's appointment was also a thrust at the
so-called "high-minded" Federalists, composed of the sons of Alexander
Hamilton, Rufus King, and other well known men of the party.

Clinton's intimates had long known his desire to get rid of Van Buren.
In his letters to Henry Post, the Kinderhook statesman is termed "an
arch scoundrel," "the prince of villains," and "a confirmed
knave;"[196] yet Clinton put off the moment of his removal from week
to week, very much as Tompkins hesitated to remove Clinton from the
mayoralty; that is, not so much to save the feelings of Van Buren as
to avert the hostility of James Tallmadge and John C. Spencer, both of
whom sought the office. Tallmadge had recently returned from Congress
full of honours because of his brilliant part in the great debate on
the Missouri Compromise, and he now confidently expected the
appointment. The moment, therefore, the Council, at its meeting in
July, 1819, named Oakley, Tallmadge ranged himself squarely among
Clinton's enemies. Van Buren had expected dismissal, and he seems to
have taken it with the outward serenity and dignity that characterised
the departure of Clinton from the mayoralty in 1815; but in
confidential communications to Rufus King, he spoke of Clinton and his
friends as "very profligate men," "p