Van Buren an open way to the hero's heart.

Accordingly, Van Buren insisted upon a conciliatory course. He sent
Benjamin Knower, the state treasurer and now a member of the Regency,
to inform Clinton that, if the Van Buren leaders could control their
party, he should have no opposition at next year's gubernatorial
election. Clinton and Bucktail, like oil and water, had refused to
combine until this third ingredient, that Van Buren knew so well how
to add, completed the mixture. Whether the coalition would have
brought Clinton the reward of success or the penalty of failure must
forever remain a secret, for the Governor did not live long enough to
solve the question. But in the game of politics he had never been a
match for Van Buren. He was a statesman without being a politician.

Just now, however, Clinton and Van Buren, like lovers who had
quarrelled and made up, could not be too responsive to each other's
wishes. To confirm the latter's good intentions, the Regency senators
promptly approved Clinton's nomination of Samuel Jones for chancellor
in place of Nathan Sanford, who was now chosen United States senator
to succeed Rufus King. It was bitter experience. The appointment
rudely ignored the rule, uniformly and wisely adhered to since the
formation of a state government, to promote the chief justice.

Besides, Jones had been a pronounced Federalist for a quarter of a
century. Moreover, he was a relative of the Governor's wife, and to
some men, even in that day, nepotism was an offence. But he was an
eminent lawyer, the son of the distinguished first comptroller, and to
make their consideration of the Governor's wishes more evident, the
senators confirmed the nomination without sending it to a committee.

A more remarkable illustration of Van Buren's conciliatory policy
occurred in the confirmation of James McKnown as recorder of Albany.
McKnown was a bitter Clintonian. It was he who, at the Albany meeting,
so eloquently protested against the removal of Clinton as a canal
commissioner, denouncing it as "the offspring of that malignant and
insatiable spirit of political proscription which has already so
deeply stained the annals of the State," and the perpetrators as
"utterly unworthy of public confidence."[248] But the Senate confirmed
him without a dissenting vote. Later, when a vacancy occurred in the
judgeship of the eighth circuit by the resignation of William B.
Rochester, it seemed for a time as if the coal