is regarded as a potential man with a new administration cannot escape. The Whigs had denounced the Democrats as the “spoils party.” Their victory was to inaugurate an era of reform. But no sooner was that victory won than it turned out that the victors had taken the infection. “We have nothing new here in politics,” wrote Horace Greeley, who in the campaign had distinguished himself as the editor of the “Log Cabin” newspaper in New York, “but large and numerous swarms of office-hunting locusts sweeping on to Washington daily. All the rotten land speculators, broken bank directors, swindling cashiers, etc., are in full cry for office, office; and even so humble a man as I am is run down for letters, letters. ‘None of your half-way things. Write strong!’ Curse their nauseous impudence!”
This picture exaggerated nothing. Clay was overwhelmed with applications for his “influence.” Some of them glaringly illustrated the understanding of the word “reform” which prevailed among a powerful class of Whig politicians. General Porter, late Secretary of War under John Quincy Adams, wrote to Clay that he had been requested by Thurlow Weed to secure Clay's support for the appointment of Mr. Edward Curtis as Collector of Customs in New York, Curtis being represented as “not personally popular,” but as “possessing an extraordinary share of tact or stratagem,” and as being able, “by his skill in planning and combining, and his untiring industry in executing, to
