authority to use his name
"if the Vice President, when he arrives here, should wish to decline."
On the 7th of February, John A. King wrote his father: "Hopes are
still entertained that the Vice President's decision may yet yield to
the wishes of many of his oldest friends. Those, however, who know him
best have no such hopes. Judge Yates has said that he never refused an
offer of any sort in his life."[201] And so it proved in this
instance. Tompkins was immovable. Like a race horse trained to
running, he only needed to be let into the ring and given a free rein.
When the bell sounded he was off on his fifth race for governor.

[Footnote 201: Charles R. King, _Life and Correspondence of Rufus
King_, Vol. 6, p. 267.]

If Tompkins was handicapped with a shortage and a canal record,
Clinton was harassed for want of a party. To conceal the meagreness of
his strength in a legislative caucus, Clinton was renominated with
John Taylor at a meeting of the citizens of Albany. He had a following
and a large one, but it was without cohesion or discipline. Men felt
at liberty to withdraw without explanation and without notice. Within
eight months after his election as a Clintonian senator, Benjamin
Mooers of Plattsburg accepted the nomination for lieutenant-governor
on the ticket with Governor Tompkins, apparently without loss of
political prestige, or the respect of neighbours. The administration
at Washington recognised the Bucktails as the regular Republican
party, and showered offices among them, until Clinton later made it a
matter of public complaint and official investigation. Other
disintegrating influences were also at work. The "high minded"
Federalists, in a published document signed by forty or fifty leading
men, declared the Federal party dissolved and annihilated, and
pronounced the Clinton party simply a personal one. To belong to it
independence must be surrendered, and to obtain office in it, one must
laud its head and bow the knee, a system of sycophancy, they said,
disgusting all "high minded" men. But DeWitt Clinton's strength was
not in parties nor in political management. He belonged to the great
men of his time, having no superior in New York, and, in some
respects, no equal in the country. He possessed a broader horizon, a
larger intellect, a greater moral courage, than most of his
contemporaries. It is probably true that, like a mountain, he appeared
best at a distance, but having confidence in his abilit