rits. He began to drink too freely even for those days of
deep drink. His eye lost its lustre; deep lines furrowed the round,
sunny face; the unruffled temper became irritable; and, within three
months after the close of his second term as Vice President, before he
had entered his fifty-second year, he was dead.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE ALBANY REGENCY

1820-1822

When the Legislature assembled to appoint presidential electors in
November, 1820, Bucktail fear of Clinton was at an end for the
present. Before, his name had been one to conjure with; thenceforth it
was to have no terrors. He had, indeed, been re-elected governor, but
the small majority, scarcely exceeding one per cent. of the total
vote, showed that he was now merely an independent, and a very
independent member, of the Republican party. To the close of his
career he was certain to be a commanding figure, around whom all party
dissenters would quickly and easily rally; but it was now an
individual figure, almost an eccentric figure, whose work as a
political factor seemed to be closed.

Yet Clinton was not ready to go into a second retirement. On the
theory, as he wrote Henry Post, that "the meekness of Quakerism will
do in religion, but not in politics,"[207] he looked about him for
something to arouse public attention and to excite public indignation,
and, for the want of a better subject, he charged the Monroe
administration with interference in the recent state election. Post
advised caution; but Clinton, stung by the defeat of his friends and
by his own narrow escape, had become possessed with the suspicion that
federal officials had used the patronage of the government against
him. So, in his speech to the Legislature in November, he protested
against the outrage. "If the officers under the appointment of the
federal government," he declared, "shall see fit as an organised and
disciplined corps to interfere in state elections, I trust there will
be found a becoming disposition in the people to resist these alarming
attempts upon the purity and independence of their local
governments."[208] Clinton had no evidence upon which to support this
charge. It was, at best, only a suspicion based upon his own methods;
but the Senate demanded proof, and failing to get specifications, it
declared it "highly improper that the Chief Magistrate of the State
should incriminate the administration of the general government,
without ample testimony in his posses