Metropolitan Hotel in New York City. It was the hotel of Tallma dge's son-in-law, Philip Van Rensselaer, who had married the General's daughter and only surviving child. In a speech before The American Institute on October 20, 1853, William H. Seward said: How sudden his death! Only three weeks ago, . . . the evening despatch, . . . bore the painful intelligence that the lofty genius had departed from the earth, and that the majetsic form which had been animated by it, had disappeared forever from among living men. The first ballot which I cast for the chief magistracy of my native and most beloved state, bore the name of James Tallmadge, as the alternate of De Witt Clinton . . . I have found as little occasion to hesitate or waver in adhering to the counsels and example of the illustrious compeer [Tallmadge], who, after surviving him [Clinton] so many years, has now been removed, in ripened age, to the companionship of the just. A vote for Clinton and Tallmadge in 1824, what censures did it not bring then? Who will impeach that ballot now? If the counsels of James Tallmadge had completely prevailed, then not only would American forests, mines, soil, invention, and industry, have rendered our country, now and for ever, independent of all other nations, except for what climate forbids; but then, also, no menial hand would ever have guided a plough, and no footstep of a slave would ever have been tracked on the soil of all that vast part of our national domain that stretches away from the banks of the Mississippi to the far western ocean.23
In a sermon given in his native county of Dutchess, Tallmadge was eulogized as "his country's true and beneficent friend, as the ever active and efficient promoter of America's best and leading interests." He was "distinguished as a patriot and philanthropist, eminently characterized by public spirit and private virtue, and conspicuous for his refined and elegant manners."30 NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 'Journal of the Proceedings of a Convention of Literary and Scientific Gentlemen Held in the Common Council Chamber of the City of New York, October, 1830 (New York, 1831), p. 11. 2Theodore Francis Jones, ed., New York University 1832: 1932 (New York, 1933), pp. 27-8. 3/ bid., p. 40. 4 /bid., p. 46. 5James Tallmadge, New York, to Rev. J. M. Matthews, Albany, Feb. 16, 1838, Tallmadge Papers. 6History of the Controversy in the University of the City of New York, by the Professors of the Faculty of Science and Letters (New York, 1838), p. 34. 7Tallmadge to Mathews, Feb. 16, 1838, Tallmadge Papers. 8History of the Controversy in the University of New York, by the Professors, p. 45. 3/bid., p. 38. 10/bid., p. 8. "Jones, New York University, p. 61. nidem. 90
