DeWitt Clinton's Legacy
DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828) was one of the most important American politicians of the early 19th century. He was at various times governor of New York, mayor of New York City, U.S. senator and presidential candidate. He was the driving force behind getting the Erie Canal built, the achievement for which he is best remembered by history. But his career was multifaceted — his interests ranged from laying out Manhattan’s street grid to delving into the natural science and history of North America.
That career included much that’s worth contemplating, and even emulating, in the context of early 21st century politics. While DeWitt Clinton is not exactly an unfamiliar name today — it’s emblazoned for instance on a Bronx high school and a Manhattan park, among other locales — his importance and relevance are underappreciated, even at a time when the founding fathers and other early politicians (such as Andrew Jackson) are more in vogue than they have been for some time.
Early American politicians often get enlisted in today’s ideological causes — Thomas Jefferson as hero to liberals and libertarians, Alexander Hamilton or John Adams as paragons for conservatives (notably, with Hamilton, conservatives not of a strongly decentralist bent). Often, the fit between the historical figure and the current-day cause is less than perfect, but there is some affinity. Clinton fits only awkwardly into our current-day polarized politics — and therein is a key part of his relevance.
Clinton was born to a family of increasing political prominence. His father James Clinton was a Revolutionary War general, as was his uncle George Clinton, who became governor of New York and then vice president of the United States. DeWitt cut his teeth politically as his uncle’s secretary and as an anti-Federalist pamphleteer worried the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government.
Before long, Clinton was in New York’s state legislature and state constitutional convention. During a brief stint in the U.S. Senate, he was a key figure in reforming the electoral process so that presidential and vice presidential candidates would be running mates rather than rivals. He was a hands-on mayor of New York who showed up at the scene of riots and fires to make sure things got under control.
Clinton began his career as what was then called a Republican (member of the Democratic-Republican Party, which later became known simply as Democrats). However, in the 1812 election, Clinton ran as the candidate of the rival Federalist Party, losing a fairly close election to James Madison. Clinton broke with his party largely over his opposition to fighting a war with Great Britain, though the rift also reflected a longstanding rivalry between the Republican factions in Virginia and New York.
The idea of a canal linking the Great Lakes to the Hudson River had been floating around when Clinton became a member of the Erie Canal Commission in 1810. But the vast scope of such a project — digging through hundreds of miles of wilderness — was daunting; “little short of madness,” President Jefferson had once said. Governeur Morris, canal advocate and first commission head, worried that “our minds are not yet enlarged to the size of so great an object.”
In the aftermath of the War of 1812, Clinton became the most prominent campaigner for the canal idea, and he rode his signature issue into the governorship in 1817. While opponents mocked the project as “Clinton’s ditch,” and notwithstanding President Madison’s veto of federal funding, Clinton turned the canal into a reality as a New York state project, financed by canal bonds. It was built in eight years, ahead of its decade-long schedule, and quickly paid for itself through user fees.
The canal had a far-reaching impact on U.S. economic development. It ensured New York City’s commercial and financial eminence (goods would now be shipped down the Hudson, and Wall Street thrived on brokering canal bonds) but the nation as a whole stood to benefit. Transportation costs were slashed and the Midwest and beyond became far more accessible. Arguably the canal helped the U.S. survive the 19th century, keeping the East-West bond secure unlike the North-South one.
Clinton’s political fortunes dropped in 1822, while the canal was still being built, when a state constitutional convention shortened his gubernatorial term and he didn’t win nomination to another term. But Clinton’s political opponents overreached by dumping him from the canal commission. His rival, future president Martin Van Buren, rightly worried that “There is such a thing in politics as killing a man too dead.” A wave of popular indignation brought Clinton back to the governorship in 1825.
On Oct. 26, 1825, Clinton set off from Buffalo with a flotilla of vessels, conducting canal opening ceremonies and celebrations all the way to lower Manhattan and then Sandy Hook, N.J., where the triumphant governor poured water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic. Governor of New York would be his final position; he contemplated a presidential run in 1828 but died that year on Feb. 11 at age 59.
Clinton was a wide-ranging intellect who wrote on Native American history and rattlesnake biology, among other topics, while not engaged in political machinations. He often boasted of his intellectual prowess, however, and this and other sharp edges to his personality may have impeded more than aided his political career. His ambitions were so high that anything short of becoming both president and maker of some major scientific discovery leaves his objectives seeming less than entirely fulfilled.
Still, he sets a powerful example as a politician who was intelligent, hard-working, competent, honest (he left no wealthy estate behind) and diverse in his interests rather than a political monomaniac. His shifting parties in the 1812 election got him some criticism as an opportunist but reflected his considered opinion that his party was in the wrong.
Ideologically, Clinton is hard to peg — something of a centrist between the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian poles of more versus less government, national cohesion versus state prerogatives. In the Erie Canal, Clinton showed government could achieve something the private sector could not, and also that state government could do something the federal government was unable or unwilling to do.
Similar to his switching parties, Clinton’s downplaying of ideology brought criticism: what were his principles? But having some ideological flexibility itself reflects a valuable principle: that the world is too complicated and changing to be fully grasped by any ideology, either in the 19th century or today.
Author’s note: I have a personal connection to this subject. My wife is a great-great-great-great granddaughter of DeWitt Clinton, and our son DeWitt was born early this year.