The American Vice Presidency (12 page)

Elbridge Gerry was another northern enabler of the Virginia domination of the presidency, providing the regional ticket balance as Madison joined Washington and Jefferson in occupying the presidency for nearly eighteen of its first twenty-two years. But not even Gerry’s staunch championing of Madison’s War of 1812 earned him permanent approbation. Rather, he is best identified in the history books as the creator of “gerrymandering,” as the term took its place in the American political lexicon.

DANIEL D. TOMPKINS

OF NEW YORK

I
n 1816, the Virginia dynasty continued with the presidential election of James Monroe, Madison’s secretary of state, the only break in its rule having been the 1796 election of John Adams of Massachusetts, succeeding Washington’s two terms. And in that brief four-year hiatus, another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, had served as vice president before achieving the presidency himself in 1800.

Along with the continuing dominance of the Jeffersonian Party, the practice of regional balance on the national ticket also continued, with a New Yorker becoming vice president for the third time. In 1808 and 1812 Madison had survived the diminishing Federalists’ lament of “too many Virginians,” but it was heard again in 1816, when another New Yorker, Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, and a Georgian, William H. Crawford, challenged Monroe, who was Madison’s thinly veiled choice to succeed him.

The Virginia dynasty at first was thought in some quarters to be in jeopardy, because eight years earlier Monroe himself briefly had bucked it by seeking the presidential nomination in competition with Madison. He left some ill will in the Virginia party caucus in the futile effort to hook up with George Clinton of New York against the dynasty. With Madison in his corner this time, Monroe managed to prevail in the Virginia caucus, but the prospects of another Virginia–New York alliance seemed dimmed by the presidential ambitions of Governor Tompkins.

The
Albany Argus
unhesitatingly put forward the name of the Empire State’s governor, editorializing, “If private worth—if public service—if fervent patriotism and practical talents are to be regarded in selecting a President, then Governor Tompkins stands forth to the nation with unrivalled pretensions.”
¹
Tompkins, however, was not as well known among congressional caucusers from other states as either Monroe or Crawford, a veteran senator and former cabinet member. Nor was Tompkins a Revolutionary War veteran or a founding father, like all the previous presidents and vice presidents, having been born in 1774, two years before the publication of the Declaration of Independence.

He was one of eleven children of a tenant farmer eventually involved in local and state politics. Educated at Columbia, where he had finished first in his class in 1792, the genial young Daniel, known as the “Farmer’s Boy,” married into the family of a politically minded member of the Tammany Society and became an active “Bucktail” Republican, challenging the Clinton domination of the state party. In 1804 he was elected to Congress, but prior to its convening he resigned to accept an appointment to the state supreme court.

In 1807 at only thirty-three, Daniel Tompkins won the governorship with the backing of New York mayor DeWitt Clinton, unseating Morgan Lewis, the establishment candidate. Soon he distanced himself from Clinton and aligned more with the foreign policies of Jefferson, supporting his secretary of state, Madison, in the presidential run in 1808. Tompkins was reelected governor in 1810 and became a staunch backer of the War of 1812, throwing himself enthusiastically into helping the recruitment of New York militia and armaments. In the process he contributed considerable sums of his own money and endorsed local bank loans that put him personally in debt, with major consequences long afterward.

As the wartime governor of New York, Tompkins became the chief disbursing officer of military expenses for both the state and the United States, authorized to spend a million dollars in behalf of New York and three million for the federal government. Much of it was done at his own responsibility at a time when the credit of the United States was in dire straits. The commingling of funds would eventually lead to a huge burden on him and questions of his handling of all the money.

In 1814, Madison offered Tompkins a cabinet post, but he turned it down on the grounds that he could be more helpful to the administration
as governor of New York. He later explained one of the real reasons for doing so: “[It] was the inadequacy of my circumstances to remove to Washington & support so large and expensive family as mine is, on the salary of that office.”
²

Financial matters seemed always to be occupying Tompkins, busy mobilizing resources for the late war while lacking discipline in handling his private funds. When the war ended, he continued to concern himself with military fortifications and other preparedness out of a belief that the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, with the British, would bring only a hiatus. In a debate in the legislature over the construction of a great canal linking Lake Erie and New York waterways to the east, Tompkins opposed it on grounds that military works had to take precedence. “England will never forgive us for our victories on the land, and on the ocean and the lakes,” he declared, “and take my word for it we shall have another war with her within two years.”
³

His early coolness to the canal system, embraced by DeWitt Clinton to his everlasting credit in the state, later was regarded by some as Tompkins’s greatest mistake as governor and central to his quarrels with Clinton. Nevertheless, Tompkins’s popularity remained very high in the New York legislature, which in 1816 nominated him for president. But in a Republican congressional caucus in Washington, Monroe prevailed over Crawford and was nominated. Then, restoring the Virginia–New York alliance, the caucus chose Tompkins for the vice presidential nomination.
⁴

The New Yorker agreed to take the second spot, to the surprise of some colleagues who regarded the governorship of the increasingly important Empire State as much more influential. But at the same time, Tompkins acceded to local party leaders to seek simultaneously another term as governor, and he won handily. The Federalists, increasingly in eclipse, didn’t bother to run a full presidential ticket, and Monroe and Tompkins were elected easily.
⁵
The rising leader of the New York Republicans, Martin Van Buren, was said to have wanted Tompkins to serve as both governor and vice president to block the gubernatorial ambitions of DeWitt Clinton, but Tompkins declined.
⁶
The very notion of such dual service was a commentary on the continuing low regard of the second national office and on its demands on the time and energies of its occupants.

In his first months as vice president, Tompkins conscientiously presided over the Senate, but his heart was never in Washington. He spent much
of the summer and fall of his first year in office back home on Staten Island. Although Tompkins was only forty-three years old at the time, he was unwell. In early September 1817, he wrote a letter to his friend Smith Thompson in a despondent vein: “You will be less surprised at my delay in attending to the contents of your letters, when I inform you that the injuries I received by the fall from my horse at Fort Greene during the War have increased upon me for several years till finally, for the last six weeks, they have confined me to my house and a few rods around it and sometimes to my bed. I am thereby deprived of the power of visiting the City or riding or walking abroad or attending to my extensive outdoor concerns.” Accordingly, he wrote, “I shall probably resign the office of Vice President at the next session, if not sooner, as there is very little hope of my ever being able to perform its duties thereafter.”
⁷

Beyond his physical state, Tompkins was plagued now by various financial obligations over real estate dealings on Staten Island and Manhattan, forcing him to absent himself from presiding over the Senate and return to New York for the remainder of the session. New York historian Jabez Hammond wrote later of Tompkins: “He was irregular and unmethodical in business; not systematical in keeping his accounts; employed too many agents; mingled his own private funds with those of the public; was naturally careless about money, and sometimes profuse in his expenses.” Even so, Hammond noted, “No candid man charged him with intentional dishonesty in his pecuniary transactions.”
⁸

As the wartime governor of New York, Tompkins’s handling of public money had produced an official allegation that he had spent $120,000 of unaccounted-for funds. A very public, and to Tompkins painful, feud ensued that left him distraught. Fortunately during this period, demands on Tompkins in Washington were light. Seldom was he called upon to break a tie vote in the Senate. Van Buren visited him and wrote, “I found him, in comparison with what he had been, exceedingly helpless … his resolution [not] strong enough to enable him to bear up against the injustice and the calumny of which he was now made the victim.” Tompkins’s son-in-law Gilbert Thompson told Van Buren that the man was drinking too much, attributing the malaise to the financial pressures on him.
⁹

Even so, while continuing as vice president Tompkins was nominated in New York for another term as governor but lost a close race against DeWitt
Clinton. He won some solace when the state legislature authorized a final settlement to his advantage in the money dispute. Returning to Washington after the gubernatorial election, Tompkins was called upon to preside over the critical Senate debate on the Missouri Compromise. Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, and Maine as free, maintaining a balance of eleven states in each category.

As the presider for the debate, Tompkins’s conduct was widely criticized as disorderly. He eventually returned to New York, and the Missouri Compromise eventually went forward without him. His absence angered many anti-slavery northern senators, who felt, in the event of a tie vote on the compromise, he might have been able to break it in favor of their side. Although no tie ensued, the Federalist Rufus King for one criticized Tompkins for having “fled the field on the day of battle.”
¹⁰
For all his bad feelings about being rejected by the voters of New York and his obvious dissatisfaction with serving in the Senate, Tompkins nevertheless clung to the vice presidency. His defeat in New York seemed to matter little in the Era of Good Feelings, of the Monroe presidency, nor did his deep financial difficulties deny his renomination, in such low significance was the office held.

The Monroe-Tompkins team was easily reelected in 1820, as the Federalist Party continued to disintegrate. A Republican caucus call to nominate the party’s ticket drew so few participants that no nominations were made, and the state electors simply voted for the incumbents. Senator William Plumer of New Hampshire declined to vote for Tompkins because, he said, the vice president was absent from the Senate “nearly three fourths of the time,” adding, “He has not that weight of character which his office requires—the fact is he is grossly intemperate.”
¹¹

Tompkins began his second vice presidential term by skipping his and Monroe’s inaugurations in Washington and taking his oath of office in New York. Though he wanted the vice presidency as a badge, his continued interest in New York politics kept his focus and his presence there. In 1821 a third state constitutional convention was held in Albany, and Tompkins was elected its president, which one delegate described as the result of “the madness of party” and Tompkins as “degenerated into a degraded sot.”
¹²
For seventy-five days from August into November, he remained there, debating with the Clinton faction over such issues as voter qualifications, the appointment of judges, and the pace of racial emancipation in the state.

Upon adjournment of the convention, the vice president retreated to his home on Staten Island in an effort to regain his failing health. In January 1822 he returned to Washington to preside over the Senate but soon absented himself again. A Washington observer wrote to Andrew Jackson, “The Vice President left this city yesterday. I don’t think he was perfectly sober during his stay here. He was several times so drunk in the chair that he could with difficulty put the question. I understand he will never return here.”
¹³

Tompkins now was only forty-eight years old. Hounded by creditors who had obtained state supreme court judgments against him of more than forty-two thousand dollars, he desperately attempted to realize some money from his home and land on Staten Island. He was forced to move to a cheap boardinghouse in lower Manhattan while he continued to struggle with the federal government’s claims against him and with his counterclaims. To make matters even worse, an appropriations bill now came before the Senate calling for withholding the salaries of government officials who had outstanding accounts owed the U.S. Treasury. Had he been presiding, he would have heard his friend Van Buren making a plea in behalf of “gallant and heroic men, who had sustained the honor of their country in the hour of danger,” and whether they “should be kept out of their just dues.”
¹⁴