Note 63 — Chapter VI · GEORGE CLINTON DEFEATS JOHN JAY 1792-1795

Interested in this exciting campaign was yet a younger generation, who soon contested their right-of-way to political leadership. Erastus Root was a junior at Dartmouth; Daniel D. Tompkins had just entered Columbia; Martin Van Buren was in a country school on the farm at Kinderhook; John Treat Irving was playing on the banks of the river to be made famous by his younger brother; and William W. Van Ness, the rarest genius of them all, and his younger cousin, William P. Van Ness, were listening to the voices that would soon summon them, one in support of the brilliant Federalist leader, the other as a second to Aaron Burr in the great tragedy at Weehawken on the 11th of July, 1804.