ary till April," he writes, "I
uniformly reached the office before daylight, and seldom failed to
find Mr. Buel at his case, setting type by a tallow candle and smoking
a long pipe." Buel made so much money that the party managers invited
him to let others, equally deserving, have a turn at the state
printing. So he went into the Assembly, distinguishing himself as an
able, practical legislator. But he gradually drew away from the
Democrats, as their financial policy became more pronounced; and upon
the organisation of the Whig party gave it his support. Had he chosen
he might have been its candidate for governor in 1834; and it is
difficult to understand why he should have accepted, in 1836, with
little expectation of an election, what he declined two years before
when success seemed probable.

Gamaliel H. Barstow had been a Clintonian and an anti-Clintonian, a
follower and a pursuer of Van Buren, an Adams man and an
Anti-Mason--everything, in fact, except a Federalist. But, under
whatever standard he fought, and in whatever body he sat, he was a
recognised leader, full of spirit, fire, and force. In 1824, he had
stood with James Tallmadge and Henry Wheaton at the head of the Adams
party; in 1831, he had accompanied John C. Spencer and William H.
Seward to the national anti-masonic convention at Baltimore; and, in
the long, exciting debate upon the bill giving the people power to
choose presidential electors, he exhibited the consummate shrewdness
and sagacity of an experienced legislator. There was nothing sinister
or vindictive about him; but he had an unsparing tongue, and he
delighted to indulge it. This is what he did in 1836. Having turned
his back upon the Democratic party, the campaign to him became an
occasion for contrasting the past and "its blighting Regency
majorities" with the future of a new party, which, no doubt, seemed to
him and to others purer and brighter, since the longer it was excluded
from power the less opportunity it had for making mistakes.

But 1836 was a year of great prosperity. The undue depression of 1835
was now succeeded by commercial activity and an era of expansion and
inflation. Visionary schemes were everywhere present. Real estate
values doubled, farms were platted into village lots, wild lands were
turned into farms, and a new impulse was given to legitimate and
illegitimate enterprises. Stocks rose, labour went up, farm products
sold at higher prices, and the whole country re