ame a statesman."[320]

[Footnote 319: "For four days the debate on a bill for the enlargement
of the canals shed darkness rather than light over the subject, and
the chamber grew murky. One morning a tallish man, past middle age,
with iron-gray locks drooping on his shoulders, and wearing a mixed
suit of plain clothes, took the floor. I noticed that pens,
newspapers, and all else were laid down, and every eye fixed on the
speaker. I supposed he was some quaint old joker from the backwoods,
who was going to afford the House a little fun. The first sentences
arrested my attention. A beam of light shot through the darkness, and
I began to get glimpses of the question at issue. Soon a broad belt of
sunshine spread over the chamber. 'Who is he?' I asked a member.
'Michael Hoffman,' was the reply. He spoke for an hour, and though his
manner was quiet and his diction simple, he was so methodical and
lucid in his argument that, where all had appeared confused before,
everything now seemed clear."--H.B. Stanton, _Random Recollections_,
p. 173.]

[Footnote 320: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 1, p.
34.]

The Albany Regency, as a harmonious, directing body, had, by this
time, practically gone out of existence. Talcott was dead, Marcy and
Silas Wright were in Washington, Benjamin F. Butler, having resigned
from the Cabinet as attorney-general, in 1838, had resumed the
practice of his profession in New York City, and Van Buren, waiting
for another term of the Presidency, rested at Lindenwald. The
remaining members of the original Regency, active as ever in political
affairs, were now destined to head the two factions--Edwin Croswell,
still editor of the Albany _Argus_, leading the Conservatives, with
Daniel S. Dickinson, William C. Bouck, Samuel Beardsley, Henry A.
Foster, and Horatio Seymour. Azariah C. Flagg, with Samuel Young,
George P. Barker, and Michael Hoffman, directed the Radicals. All were
able men. Bouck carried fewer guns than Young; Beardsley had weight
and character, without much aptitude; Foster overflowed with knowledge
and was really an able man, but his domineering nature and violent
temper reduced his influence. Seymour, now only thirty-two years old,
had not yet entered upon his illustrious and valuable public career;
nor had Daniel S. Dickinson, although of acknowledged ability,
exhibited those traits which were to distinguish him in party
quarrels. He did not belong in the class with Marc