Five hundred and thirty-seven vessels, aggregating over one hundred and eighty thousand tons, had been tied up in New York alone; and the public revenues collected at its custom house had dropped from four and a half millions to nothing.

There never was a time when the Federalists, as a national party, were willing to join hands with England to the disadvantage of their country.

But their antipathy to Jacobins and to Jefferson, and the latter's partiality for France, drove them into sympathy with Great Britain's struggle against Napoleon, until the people suspected them of too great fondness for English…

The most tragic stories of Indian atrocities begin with the payment of bounties by the British for the scalps of women and children, and for the capture of men and boys who would make soldiers.

Often guided by Tories, the fierce Mohawks sought out the solitary farmhouse, scalped the helpless, and, with a few prisoners, started back on their lonely return journey to Canada, hundreds of miles through the forest, simply to receive…

When DeWitt Clinton, therefore, charged the Federalists with loving the English more than their own country, John Taylor won the Senate by recalling Indian atrocities set on foot by British officers, and often carried out with the…

Moreover, the repeal of the embargo had materially weakened the Federalists and correspondingly strengthened the Republicans, since the commerce of New York quickly revived, giving employment to the idle and bread to the hungry.

The conviction deepened, also, that a Republican administration was sincerely impartial in sentiment between the two belligerents, and that the present foreign policy, ineffective as it might be, fitted the emergency better than a bolder…

But to carry out his ambitious scheme--of mounting to the Presidency in 1812--Clinton needed to be in Albany to watch his enemies; and, although he cared little for the lieutenant-governorship, the possession of it would furnish an excuse…

Now, however, these accomplished political gladiators proposed to give battle at the polls, and if their influence throughout the State had been as potent as it proved within the wards of New York City, the day of DeWitt Clinton's destiny…

There's a barrel of porter at Tammany Hall, And the Bucktails are swigging it all the night long; In the time of my boyhood 'twas pleasant to call For a seat and cigar 'mid the jovial throng.

To receive this brother with laws that might send him back to death, was to despise the national sentiment of Irishmen; and the men, Clinton declared, who had been indisposed or unable to take account of the force of a national sentiment…

Lewis and the Livingstons opposed him, Tammany detested him, Tompkins was jealous of him, Spencer deserted him; but he had shown he knew how to wait; and when waiting was over, he showed he knew how to act.

During the early years of the last century, efforts to incorporate banks in New York were characterised by such an utter disregard of moral methods, that the period was long remembered as a black spot in the history of the State.

It seems incredible in our day that such corruption could go on in broad daylight without a challenge.

At the present time a legislator could not carry a district in New York if it were known that his vote had been secured by such ill-gotten gains.

Even Erastus Root, then just entering his first term in Congress, saw nothing in the transaction to shock society's sense of propriety or to break the loftiest code of morality.

He was a sincere lover of his country; a statesman of high purpose, and of the most commanding talents.

On principle, Republican members of the Legislature opposed banks, and that principle was overcome by profits; in other words, members must be bought, or the charter would fail.

As a statesman, Purdy seems to have been without any guiding principle, or any principle at all.

The applicants proposed to pay the school fund four hundred thousand dollars, the literature fund one hundred thousand, and the State one hundred thousand, provided no other bank be chartered for twenty years.

In addition to this extravagant bonus, its managers agreed to loan the State one million dollars at five per cent. for the construction of canals, and one million to farmers at six per cent. for the improvement of their real estate.

It was because of this craftiness, this unscrupulous use of every weapon of political warfare, that the bank hired him.

He had waked up, at last, to the scandalous barter in bank charters.

The absence of violent democratic innovations was the Constitution's remarkable feature.