thing else. On the first ballot, he received
seventy-eight votes to forty for Root. The wrangle over
lieutenant-governor proved less irritating, and Edward P. Livingston,
after several ballots, secured seventy-seven votes.

These contests created unusual bitterness. Root had the offer of
support from a working men's convention; and his failure to secure the
Herkimer nomination left the working men, especially in New York City,
in no mood to support the Bucktail choice. All this greatly encouraged
the Anti-Masons. Granger and Stevens commanded the cordial support of
the National Republicans, while Throop and Livingston were personally
unpopular. Throop had the manners of DeWitt Clinton without a tithe of
his ability, and Livingston, stripped of his family's intellectual
traits, exhibited only its aristocratic pride. But there were
obstacles in the way of anti-masonic success. Among other things,
Francis Granger had become chairman of an anti-masonic convention at
Philadelphia, which Weed characterised as a mistake. "The men from New
York who urged it are stark mad," he wrote; "more than fifty thousand
electors are now balancing their votes, and half of them want an
excuse to vote against you."[264] Whether this "mistake" had the
baleful influence that Weed anticipated, could not, of course, be
determined. The returns, however, proved a serious disappointment.[265]
Granger had carried the eighth or "infected district" by the
astounding majority of over seven thousand in each of the first five
districts. In the sixth district the anti-masonic vote fell over four
thousand. It was evident that the Eastern masons, who had until now
acted with the National Republicans, preferred the rule of the Regency
to government by Anti-Masons.

[Footnote 264: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
39.]

[Footnote 265: Throop, 128,842; Granger, 120,361.--_Civil List, State
of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

The year that witnessed this disheartening defeat of the Anti-Masons,
welcomed into political life a young man of great promise, destined to
play, for the next forty years, a conspicuous part in the history of
his country. William Henry Seward was twenty-nine years old when
elected to the State Senate; but to all appearances he might have been
eight years younger. He was small, slender, boyish, punctilious in
attire, his blue eyes and finely moulded chin and mouth giving an
unconscious charm to his native composure, wh