On January 1, 1862, Lucius Robinson, an able lawyer of Elmira, assumed the duties of the office. Mr. Robinson was a Democrat, but at the breaking out of the war he was strongly for the Union cause, and it was on the Union ticket that he was elected Comptroller, and he was re-elected on the same ticket in 1863. At the close of the war, he resumed his place in the Democratic party, from which he had never been fully estranged. He ran as a Democrat against Thomas Hillhouse, in 1865, and was beaten. He had been District Attorney of Greene county from 1837 to 1839, and Member of Assembly from Chemung county in 1860 and 1861. He was re-elected Comptroller in November, 1863, and again in November, 1875. He was a member of the Constitutional Commission of 1872, Governor of this State for the years 1877, 1878 and 1879, and defeated for re-election in November, 1879, by Alonzo B. Cornell. He was Comptroller during the dark days of our Civil War. At no period, however, of its history was the work of the office more carefully managed. For the six years from 1860 to 1866, the canal and general fund debts were reduced $8,000,000. In the four years of the war, the State expenditures for arms, bounties, clothing, equipments and various military purposes were upwards of $20,000,000. To meet these large and abnormal expenses, required of the Comptroller resourceful ability. When specie was at a high premium in 1863 and 1864, Mr. Robinson earnestly recommended the payment of the State's bonded debt, both principal and interest, in specie. The Legislature, however, disregarded the recommendation. There was precedent in the office for such a course. Comptroller Flagg, upon the suspension of specie payment in 1837, made good the difference between the depreciated currency and coin. Comptroller Allen followed the lead of Mr. Robinson, and urged the payment of these debts in coin. This was not done, however, until 1870, when the State went into the open market and bought coin to pay the interest on its bonds, and continued this policy until the resumption of specie payment in 1879. This course, however, was not pursued with reference to the bounty debt. In 1865, against the advice and almost protest of the Comptroller, the Legislature assumed the bounty debt of the various counties of the State, and for that purpose it became necessary for the State to issue its bonds to the amount of $27,644,000. The act authorizing the creation of the debt provided for a sinking fund, and the managing of this fund and the issuing of the bonds was given to the Comptroller. This debt was extinguished year by year until it disappeared from the Comptroller's books in 1877. It was during Mr. Robinson's term, in 1863, that $66,000 were appropriated to purchase the lands adjoining the then Capitol, and bounded by State, Hawk and Congress streets. This was probably the first money expended on "That lofty pile where senates dictate laws." [Illustration: Tho Hillhouse (signature)