omplexion, was
destined to become one of the most famous jurists in a century.
Ambrose Spencer had not yet scored his first political honour, but his
herculean frame and stately presence, with eyes and complexion darker
than Kent's, are to be seen leading in every political contest for
more than forty years.

There were also Smith Thompson, taught in the law by Chancellor Kent
and tutored in politics by George Clinton, who was to follow the
former Chief Justice and end his days on the United States Supreme
bench; Joseph C. Yates, founder of Union College, and Samuel L.
Mitchill, scientist and politician, who has been called the Franklin
of New York. Younger than these, but equally alert, was Cadwallader A.
Colden, grandson of the royal lieutenant-governor of Stamp Act days.
He was now only twenty-two, just beginning at the bar, but destined to
be the intimate friend of Robert Fulton, a famous leader of a famous
bar, and a political chieftain of a distinguished career.[63]

[Footnote 63: Interested in this exciting campaign was yet a younger
generation, who soon contested their right-of-way to political
leadership. Erastus Root was a junior at Dartmouth; Daniel D. Tompkins
had just entered Columbia; Martin Van Buren was in a country school on
the farm at Kinderhook; John Treat Irving was playing on the banks of
the river to be made famous by his younger brother; and William W. Van
Ness, the rarest genius of them all, and his younger cousin, William
P. Van Ness, were listening to the voices that would soon summon them,
one in support of the brilliant Federalist leader, the other as a
second to Aaron Burr in the great tragedy at Weehawken on the 11th of
July, 1804.]

At the election, the people gave Jay a majority of their votes; but at
the count, a majority of the state canvassers gave Clinton the
governorship. This was the first vicious party precedent established
in the Empire State. It has had many successors at the polls, in the
Legislature, and at the primaries, but none bolder and more harmful,
or ruder and more outrageously wrong. Under the law, inspectors of
election sealed the ballots, delivered them to the sheriff or his
deputy, who conveyed them to the secretary of state. In Otsego County,
Richard R. Smith's term as sheriff had expired, and the new sheriff
had not yet qualified, but Smith delivered the ballots to a person
specially deputised by him. Tioga's sheriff turned the ballots over
to his deputy, who