Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/60

34 it in your power to preclude him, in case of disappointment, from pretending that the nomination was made without his knowledge or consent. Under this view, I commit myself to your Excellency without reserve and inform you that my aim rises to the important office of Chief Justice of the United States. But how shall I proceed? Shall I enumerate reasons in justification of my high pretensions? I have not yet employed my pen in my own praise. When I make those high pretensions and offer them to so good a judge, can I say that they are altogether without foundation? Your Excellency must relieve me from this dilemma. You will think and act properly on the occasion, without my saying anything on either side of the question.

Friends of John Rutledge of South Carolina were insistent that his seniority and distinction in professional studies and his services to his country entitled him to the position. The name of Robert R. Livingston, the distinguished Chancellor of New York, was warmly urged, and his judicial career, as well as his service in bringing about the ratification of the Constitution in New York, warranted his appointment; but Livingston's aspirations fell afoul of the complicated situation in New York politics—that which John Adams in his old age used to term "the Devil's own incomprehensibles." For six months, a bitter fight had been waging between the faction headed by the Livingstons and Governor George Clinton (an Anti-Federalist) and the ultra-Federalists headed by Alexander Hamilton and General Philip Schuyler, over the choice of United States Senators; the two houses of the Legislature had split over the method of election and over the choice of Rufus King, who was favored by Hamilton; as a result, New York had been left unrepresented in the first session of the First Senate; this situation and Hamilton's antagonism rendered