William H Seward Author:Edward Everett Hale Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H POLITICAL CONDITIONS Precisely how Seward turned to politics cannot now belaid. Doubtless the idea of a public life hadbeen tor some time in his ... more »mind. He himself tells us that he practiced law for a competence only ; that politics was the great and engrossing business of the country ; that he regarded the rights and responsibilities of citizenship at that time more highly than any one he ever met. The real question was not whether he should go into politics, but with what party he should act. Political feeling was then very strong, but party organizations were not so sharply denned as they had been, or as they were later. There was very little of the political machinery of our own day which does so much to render these permanent. Party politics in the state of New York fluctuated and varied and changed so as to be very confusing. The old Federalist party had practically passed away and its members had sought new connections. The name was often used for individuals.1 On theother hand, the Anti-Federal party, as it had once been called, always the stronger party in the state, now known indifferently asRepublican or Democratic, had become the only party. ITwas therefore divided into factions, one gathering about the preeminent figure of IDe Witt Clinton and bearing his name, and the other led byjVan Buren and commonly called the " BucktatfsV" Bach faction assumed the party name, and spoke of the other sometimes as "the opposition" and sometimes as "Federalists." ' 1 "The name Federalist is almost universally dropped in this district, in the district of which Oneida County is part, and in the Herkimer County meeting." Clinton to Post, Oct. 21, 1822. On the other hand, a year afterward Flagg wrote to Van Buren, Nor. 12, 1823: "A Federalist of the old school is ele...« less