Van Buren had shown, from his first entrance into public life, a remarkable faculty for winning men to his own way of thinking.

He had served his State and his country with a fidelity that must forever class his name with the bravest officers of the War of 1812.

His speeches, enlivened with gleams of humour, rays of fancy, and flashes of eloquence, expressed the thoughts of an honourable, upright statesman who was justly esteemed of the first order of intellect.

He apparently took keen pleasure in holding up to ridicule and in satirising, what he was pleased to call his ponderous pedantries, his solemn affectation of profundity and wisdom, his narrow-mindedness, and his intolerable and transparent…

He was not merely all-powerful in the administration, he was the administration.

He delighted in the consciousness that he was looked up to by men; that his success was fixed as a star in the firmament; and that the greatest work of his life lay before him.

He had made his enemies his footstool; and he now assumed to be the recognised head of the party whose destinies were in his keeping and whose fortunes were swayed by his will.

On the contrary, Clinton seems to have acted on the honest conviction that he knew better than any other man how New York ought to be governed, and the result of his effort inclines one to the opinion that he was right in the belief.

At all events, it is not surprising that a man of his energy and capacity for onward movement should refuse to regulate his policy to the satisfaction of the men that had recently crushed him to earth, and who, he knew, would crush him…

He struggled against him, intrigued against him, and finally hated and lampooned him, but the superiority of Van Buren's talents as a managing politician was destined to make him pre-eminent in the State and in the nation.

Van Buren studied the game like a chess-player, taking knights and pawns with the ease of a skilful mover.

In the performance of his official duties he mastered whatever he undertook and relied upon the people for his support; and so long as he stood for internal improvements and needed reform in the public service, he did not rely in vain.

Force, clearness and ability characterised his state papers.

For years he had been a student of municipal and county affairs; and, in suggesting new legislation, he exhibited rare judgment and absolute impartiality.

Once separated there can be no middle course; a neutrality party in politics, if not an absurdity, at least is evidence of indecision.

Clinton committed the second great error of his life when he consented to bolt the caucus nominee of his party.

Instead of managing, he temporised; instead of meeting his adversaries with a will, he did nothing, while they worked systematically and in silence.

Even then he need not have entered the caucus; but, once having voluntarily entered it, it was his plain duty to support its nominee.

As a question of principle or expediency Clinton's conduct, therefore, admits of no defence.

Though the day was coming when a majority of the Clintonians and Federalists would make the backbone of the Whig party in the Empire State, a new party could not be built up by such methods as Clinton now introduced.

New parties, like poets, are born, not made, and a love for principle, not a desire for spoils, must precede their birth.

What Van Buren got from him he must take by votes, not by gifts.

Though scarcely thirty-four years of age, he had established himself as a leading lawyer of the Commonwealth, whose strong, vigorous English in support of the war had found its way into Parliament as an unanswerable argument to Lord…

Skilful in expression, adroit in attack, calm and resourceful in argument, with the sarcasm of the younger Pitt, he had presented American rights and British outrages in a clearer light than others, arousing his countrymen very much as the…

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