The Birth Of Empire - Review

Washington Monthly, April, 1999 by Kevin A. Swope

THE BIRTH OF EMPIRE by Evan Cornog Oxford University, $29.95

DEWITT CLINTON IS BEST remembered today for his tireless championing of the Erie Canal, undoubtedly the greatest feat of American engineering in the 19th century. It is a worthy memorial, but one that came near the end of a 40-year political career in New York that saw him nearly elected president in 1812. Evan Cornog, a historian and onetime press secretary for former New York Mayor Ed Koch, has written a brief but illuminating new biography of the man who at various times served as New York's mayor, governor, and U.S. senator.

DeWitt Clinton was clearly destined for great things from an early age. He was born in 1769 to a prominent (if not wealthy) New York family. He was the nephew of George Clinton, New York's long-serving governor, who became DeWitt's patron. Young DeWitt was enrolled as the first student in the newly reconstituted Columbia College. Clinton's upbringing instilled in him an attractive intellectual vigor and inquisitiveness, as well as an often-remarked-upon haughtiness and sense of entitlement.

Clinton's pretensions to mold America into a "New Rome" (the title of Cornog's book refers to this vision) earned him ridicule even in his own time, but his remarkable sense of self-confidence enabled him to recover from political reverses again and again. Clinton in many ways resembles his contemporary John Quincy Adams, who was likewise launched into a career of public service at an early age under the tutelage of a close relative. Like Adams, he was well-respected, but not particularly well-liked. Clinton rapidly ascended the political ladder, holding a variety of elected offices before attaining the then-appointive office of mayor of New York in 1803.

As mayor, Clinton's most lasting contributions were to the educational and cultural life of the city. While he saw great cities as the font of civilization and progress, Clinton also recognized them as "at all times the nurseries and hotbeds of crime" His solution was education, especially for the poorest segments of society, who were thought to be irreligious and therefore not served by the denominational schools.

Although his dream of universal public education was not realized until long after he had passed from the scene, his exertions in the area are impressive. Particularly striking is the inclusiveness of his vision--he supported schools for girls, free blacks, deaf and dumb children, even refugees from the Napoleonic Wars. He also sought to promote higher culture as president of the American Academy of the Arts and as a founder of the Literary and Philosophical Society and the New York Historical Society, although only the last has survived, if somewhat precariously, into the present day. Clinton himself dabbled in what was then known as "natural philosophy" as well as archaeology, and in some ways Clinton represents the last of the 18th century political leaders who, like Thomas Jefferson, drew their inspiration from the Enlightenment and the Old World. Clinton was indeed a Jeffersonian in politics, even if his belief in activist government did not quite square with Jefferson's oft-quoted ideal that the government that governs best governs least. His support of Jefferson, and his later alliance with Andrew Jackson, had as much to do with factional politics in New York as ideological affinity. In any case, his Republicanism helped to blunt charges of elitism and monarchism of the sort hurled against John Adams that might otherwise have found a ripe target in the sometimes pompous Clinton.

Although the Federalist faction in New York boasted such luminaries as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, Clinton's bitterest political battles were not with Federalists but with the followers of fellow Republican Aaron Burr. Burr's supporters had miscalculated in their attempt to elevate him to the presidency over Jefferson in 1800, handing Clinton an opportunity to vanquish his rival. Bare-knuckled New York politics did not begin with Al D'Amato and Chuck Schumer--in 1802 Clinton's enemies accused him of membership in the "Columbian Illuminati," apparently a homegrown subsidiary of the more familiar Bavarian kind.

The Burrites further depicted him as an atheistic disciple of Tom Paine, who condoned incest and forced himself on the wives of those indebted to his family. Burr's political career ended, of course, when he fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Clinton had fought a similar duel with a Burr supporter two years earlier, but he proved a better shot than Hamilton, twice wounding his opponent before calling a halt to the proceedings.

Having secured his position in New York, Clinton set his sights on national office. In 1812, at the age of 43, he challenged the incumbent president, James Madison, a fellow Republican. It was a risky proposition--the country had just gone to war--but the administration's incompetence in managing the army and navy played in Clinton's favor. Clinton's attempt to forge a northern coalition of Federalists and anti-war Republicans nearly succeeded; had Pennsylvania gone the other way, the nation would not have had to wait another 180 years for a President Clinton. The seeming ease with which he made common cause with the Federalists undermined his position at home, and soon the Bucktail faction (under the leadership of Martin Van Buren) stripped Clinton of his offices one by one.