6 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS political relations with Clinton and resumed the entente cordlale with Madison s administration. In 1814) he carried through the legislature an effective war-measure known as "the classification bill," pro viding for the levy of 12,000 men, to be placed at the disposal of the government for two years. He drew up the resolution of thanks voted by the legis lature to Gen. Jackson for the victory of New Orleans. In 1815, while still a member of the state senate, he was appointed attorney-general of the state, superseding the venerable Abraham Van Vechten. In this same year De Witt Clinton, fall ing a prey to factional rivalries in his own party, was removed by the Albany council from the mayoralty of New York city an act of petty proscription in which Van Buren sympathized, according to the "spoils system" then in vogue. In 1816 he was re-elected to the state senate for a further term of four years, and, removing to Albany, formed a partnership with his life-long friend, Benjamin F. Butler. In the same year he was appointed a regent of the University of New York. In the legislative discussions of 1816 he advocated the surveys preliminary to Clinton s scheme for uniting the waters of the great lakes with the Hudson. The election of Gov. Tompkins as vice-president of the United States had left the "Bucktails" of the Republican party without their natural leader.
