On reaching Albany, in November, 1812, Van Buren saw the electoral situation at a glance; and naturally, almost insensibly, he became Clinton's representative. He slipped into leadership as easily as Bonaparte stepped into the history of Europe, when he seized the fatal weakness in the well defended city of Toulon. Van Buren had approved embargo, non-intercourse, and the war itself. The discontent growing out of Jefferson's severe treatment of the difficulties caused by the Orders in Council and the Berlin and Milan Decrees, seems never to have shaken his confidence in Republican statesmanship, or aroused the slightest animosity against the congressional caucus nominee for President. But he accepted Clinton as the regular and practically the unanimous nominee of the Republican members of a preceding Legislature. Although Madison's nomination had come in the way then accepted, he had a stronger sense of allegiance to the expressed will of his party in the State. His adversaries, of whom he was soon to have many, charged him with treachery to the President and to the party. There came a time when it was asserted, and, apparently, with some show of truth, that he had neither the courage nor the heart to keep the side of his convictions boldly and finally; that he was always thinking of personal interests, and trying to take the position which promised the greatest advantage and the greatest security. We shall have occasion, in the course of these pages, to study the basis of such criticism. But, in the present crisis, had he not been thoroughly sincere and single-hearted, he could easily have thrown in his fortunes with the winning side; for at that time he must have had little faith in the chances of Clinton's election. Vermont had been given up, Pennsylvania was scarcely in doubt, and the South showed unmistakable signs of voting solidly for Madison.[174] [Footnote 174: "DeWitt Clinton was classed by most persons as a reckless political gambler, but Martin Van Buren, when he intrigued, preferred to intrigue upon the strongest side. Yet one feeling was natural to every New York politician, whether a Clinton or a Livingston, Burrite, Federalist, or Republican,--all equally disliked Virginia; and this innate jealousy gave to the career of Martin Van Buren for forty years a bias which perplexed his contemporaries, and stood in singular contradiction to the soft and supple nature he seemed in all else to show."--Henry Adams, _History of the United States_, Vol. 6, pp. 409, 410.]