The Forgotten Clinton

Abstract

The Forgotten Clinton Carol Sheriff (bio) Evan Cornog. The Birth of Empire: DeWitt Clinton and the American Experience, 1769–1828. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 224 pp. Figures, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.95. While preparing to write this review, I conducted an unscientific poll of U.S. survey instructors. The responses to my query—“What do you say about DeWitt Clinton in your classes?”—ranged from “Who?” to, at the effusive extreme, “Not much.” Evan Cornog, in The Birth of Empire: DeWitt Clinton and the American Experience, 1769–1828, has rescued from historical obscurity one of the Early Republic’s most influential public figures. 1 In his quick-paced, engaging biography, Cornog convincingly returns Clinton—a New York politician, philanthropist, social reformer, and natural historian—to the center stage that he occupied in his own era. Clinton would have basked in the attention. In one of the book’s more striking examples of Clinton’s unrelenting arrogance, Cornog describes how in 1823—as Crawford, Calhoun, Adams, Clay, and Jackson began their battle for the Presidency—Clinton imagined that Thomas Jefferson favored him for the job and saw the New Yorker as “the greatest man in America” (p. 147). Clinton’s haughtiness won him few friends; by 1810, Clinton “could scarcely enter a public room in New York or Albany without seeing someone he had offended” (pp. 97–98). As a result of his caustic remarks, Clinton received more than one invitation to the dueling green. Yet he felt much more at home in the parlors of benevolent societies, literary clubs, scientific associations, and museums, where he waged his battles with his sharp intellect and social pretensions. Clinton was born into a well-placed family. Although his Protestant grandparents emigrated from Ireland only 40 years before Clinton’s birth, the Clintons soon established themselves as one of New York’s “ruling” families, alongside the Livingstons and Schuylers. Clinton’s father served as a major-general during the Revolution, which brought him status if not fortune, and his uncle, George Clinton, was New York’s first elected governor and then vice president under both Jefferson and Madison. While DeWitt Clinton demanded deference based on his lineage, he prided himself even more on [End Page 534] his republican virtue. And his hard work, even as a young man, paid off. At seventeen, he delivered the valedictory address at Columbia’s first graduation, which was attended by some of the nation’s most revered men (as New York was still the nation’s capital.) Before his twentieth birthday, after spending several years studying law, Clinton parleyed his uncle’s influence into powerful positions in New York’s growing bureaucracy. By the time he turned 35, he had served in the New York assembly, sat briefly in the U.S. Senate, been appointed mayor of New York City, and assumed control of New York’s Republican Party. He spent most of his later life in the governor’s mansion. Yet he was haunted until his death by his failure to win the presidency, especially since that office had been held by men, such as James Madison, whom Clinton judged less capable and worthy than he. Throughout his life, Clinton’s political and financial fortunes were uneven, but he nonetheless contributed to revolutionary changes in the young nation’s politics, economy, and society. During his two years in the Senate, from 1802–1803, Clinton introduced legislation that resulted in the Twelfth Amendment and pushed successfully for immigration reform that shortened the waiting period for citizenship from fourteen years to five. As New York’s mayor from 1803–1815, he helped create the spoils system and invent the nominating convention. By challenging a fellow Republican, Madison, for the presidency in 1812, Clinton helped highlight regional tensions within his party. To rejuvenate his career after narrowly losing that election, Clinton devoted most of his energy to championing the Erie Canal—the accomplishment for which he is most often remembered today. By convincing the New York legislature to fund the 363-mile canal linking the Atlantic Coast to the Great Lakes (and the Northeast to the Midwest), Clinton helped make New York into the Empire State. New...