y and
integrity, people easily overlooked his rough, unpopular manners. The
shrewd, sagacious Yankee farmers who were filling up the great western
counties of Ontario and Genesee believed in him. The Bucktails did not
know, until the eastern and western districts responded with five
thousand eight hundred and four majority for Clinton, as against four
thousand three hundred and seventy-seven for Tompkins in the middle
and southern districts, what a capital cry Clinton had in the canal
issue; what a powerful appeal to selfish interests he could put into
voice; and what a loud reply selfish interests would make to the
appeal. It was not, in fact, a race between parties at all; it was not
a question of shortage or settlement. It is likely the shortage
affected the result somewhat; but the majority of over fourteen
hundred meant approval of Clinton and his canal policy rather than
distrust of Tompkins and his unsettled accounts. The question in 1820
was, shall the canal be built? and, although the Bucktails had ceased
their hostility, the people most interested in the canal's
construction wanted Clinton to complete what he had so gloriously and
successfully begun.

The campaign was fought out with bitterness and desperation until the
polls closed. No national or state issue divided the parties. In fact,
there were no issues. It was simply a question whether Clinton and his
friends, or Tompkins and the Bucktails should control the state
government. The arguments, therefore, were purely personal. Clinton's
friends relied upon his canal policy, his honesty, and his
integrity--the Bucktails insisted that Clinton was no longer a
Republican; that the canal would be constructed as well without him
as with him, and that his defeat would wipe out factional strife and
give New York greater prominence in the councils of the party. "For
the last ten days," wrote Van Buren to Rufus King, on April 13, "I
have scarcely had time to take my regular meals and am at this moment
pressed by at least half a dozen unfinished concerns growing out of
this intolerable political struggle in which we are involved."[202]
Nevertheless, he had no doubt of Tompkins' election. "I entertain the
strongest convictions that we shall succeed,"[203] he wrote later in
the month. On the other hand, Clinton was no less certain. In his
letters to Henry Post he is always confident; but at no time more so
than now. "The canal proceeds wondrously well," he says. "The