Tammany now had recourse to its customary devices in endeavoring to bring out its usual vote in the coming election. The general committee announced that at no period in the last twenty years had the welfare and perpetuity of the party more imperiously required a rigid adherence to ancient usages and discipline. This was meant to play on the partizan emotions of the Democrats. It was likewise a threat to punish any man of independent views who disobeyed the orders of the general committee. Such summary, veiled notifications of the general committee were seldom disregarded by those who profited or expected to profit by politics. After toasting their “squaws and papooses” on July 4 the society impressively made this toast: “May regular nominations ever prevail”--a thrust at the method of Clinton’s nomination and a warning for the future guidance of all Tammany men.
Tammany further attempted to counteract the impetus of the Clinton movement by touching at length upon its own patriotism in the past and by stirring up class hatreds. On the vital issues the Wigwam was silent; but in another long fulmination it recalled the “sins” and “treason” of Clinton against the Democratic party. “He is haughty in his manners,” it went on, “and a friend of the aristocracy--cold and distant to all who cannot boast of wealth and family distinctions and selfish in all the ends he aims at.”
The partizans of Jackson carried the city. Presidential electors were still selected by the Legislature, and it is therefore impossible to determine Jackson’s vote. A fusion between the Clintonites and the People’s party caused the defeat of most of Tammany’s Assembly candidates, but the victors were Jackson men, and Clinton himself had declared for Old Hickory. The full Jackson strength was shown in the vote for the three Tammany candidates for Congress, who were elected.
Clinton’s victory was sweeping. The near completion of the Erie Canal, for which he had labored so zealously and which Tammany had opposed so pertinaciously, made him the idol of the people, and he was again elected Governor, carrying even New York City by 1,031 majority. That eye was blind which could not see in the opening of the canal the incalculable benefits Clinton had estimated from the first. This great work secured as a virtual gift to New York City the inland commerce of the vast empire west of the mountains, no rival being able to contend for it. The trade of the canal almost immediately increased the city’s business $60,000,000 annually, and year by year the amount grew. Along its course a hundred new and thrifty villages sprang into existence, and the State’s wealth and population went upward by leaps and bounds.