him the appearance of Atlas with the world upon his shoulders.
His voice, too, was shrill and unattractive; but he suddenly evinced
shrewdness and address in legislative tactics that greatly worried his
opponents and pleased his friends. A majority of the Assembly,
however, afraid of their excited and indignant constituents, finally
passed the bill. When it reached the Senate, the supporters of
Crawford indefinitely postponed it by a vote of seventeen to fourteen.

The defeat of this measure raised a storm of popular indignation.
People were exasperated. Newspapers, opposed to the Van Buren leaders,
published in black-letter type the names of senators who voted against
it, while the frequenters of public places denounced them as
"traitors, villains, and rascals," with the result that most of them
were consigned to retirement during the remainder of their lives. "The
impression here is that Van Buren and his junto are politically dead,"
wrote DeWitt Clinton to Henry Post on the 17th of February, 1824. "The
impression will produce the event."[227]

[Footnote 227: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's
Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 568.]

In the midst of this excitement, came the selection of a candidate for
governor, to be elected in the following November. Yates had done the
bidding of the Regency and Flagg demanded his renomination, but the
men who supported a change in the mode of choosing electors declared
that Yates was the original opponent of the people's wishes, and that,
if renominated, he could not be re-elected. "If the Governor is to be
sacrificed for his fidelity," retorted Flagg, "I am ready to suffer
with him." From a sentimental standpoint, this avowal was most
creditable and generous, but it had no place in the councils of
politicians to whom sentiment never appeals when the shrouded figure
of defeat stands at the open door. Just now, too, their fears
increased as evidence accumulated that Samuel Young would certainly be
offered a nomination by the People's party, and would certainly accept
it, if he were not quickly nominated by the Regency Republicans. When
the legislators went into caucus on the 3d of April, 1824, therefore,
the friends of Van Buren were ready to throw over Yates and to accept
Young, with Erastus Root for lieutenant-governor.

Three days afterward, the most influential and active friends of John
Quincy Adams and Henry Clay decided that a state convention--consisting
of as m