hundred and
thirty-six thousand votes to one hundred and six thousand for Thompson
and thirty-three thousand for Southwick.[258] Francis Granger would
probably have received the aggregate vote of Thompson and Southwick,
or three thousand more than Van Buren. That Weed rightly understood
the situation is evidenced by his insistence that a candidate be
nominated acceptable to the Anti-Masons. "Van Buren's election," said
Thurlow Weed, in his autobiography, the tears of disappointment and
chagrin almost trickling down his cheeks when he wrote the words
nearly half a century afterward, "enabled his party to hold the State
for the twelve succeeding years."[259] But it was the last time, for
many years, that Thurlow Weed did not have his way in the party. It
was apparent that the opponents of Van Buren needed a leader who could
lead; and, although it took years of patient effort to cement into a
solid fighting mass all the heterogeneous elements that Clinton left
and Van Buren could not control, the day was destined to come when one
party flag floated over an organisation under the leadership of the
stately form of Thurlow Weed.

[Footnote 258: _Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

[Footnote 259: _Autobiography of Thurlow Weed_, p. 307.]

CHAPTER XXXIII

WILLIAM H. SEWARD AND THURLOW WEED

1830

Although the election in 1828 brought hopeless defeat to the National
Republicans, apparently it imparted increased confidence and vigour to
anti-Masonry. For a time, this movement resembled the growth of
abolitionism at a later day, people holding that a secret society,
which sought to paralyse courts, by closing the mouths of witnesses
and otherwise unnerving the arm of justice, threatened the existence
of popular government. The moral question, too, appealed strongly to
persons prominent in social, professional, and church life, who
increased the excitement by renouncing masonic ties and signifying
their conversion to the new gospel of anti-Masonry. Cadwallader D.
Colden, formerly the distinguished mayor of New York and a lawyer of
high reputation, wrote an effective letter against Free Masonry, which
was supplemented by the famous document of David Barnard, a popular
Baptist divine of Chautauqua County. Henry Dana Ward established the
_Anti-Masonic Review_ in New York City, and Frederick Whittlesey
became equally efficient and influential as editor of the Rochester
_Republican_.

But the man who led t