There have been seventy-nine mayors of New York since Thomas Willett, in 1665, first took charge of its affairs under the iron rule of Peter Stuyvesant, but only one in the long list, averaging a tenure of three years each, served longer than DeWitt Clinton. Richard Varick, the military secretary of Schuyler and Washington, and the distinguished associate of Samuel Jones in revising the laws of the State, held the mayoralty from 1789 to 1801, continuing through the controlling life of the Federalist party and the closing years of a century full of heroic incident in the history of the city. But DeWitt Clinton, holding office from 1803 to 1815--save the two years given Marinus Willett and Jacob Radcliff--saw the city's higher life keep pace with its growth and aided in the forces that widened its achievement and made it a financial centre. It must have cost this master-spirit of his age a deep sigh to give up a position in which his work had been so wise and helpful. His situation, indeed, seemed painfully gloomy; his office was gone, his salary was spent, and his estate was bankrupt. It is doubtful if a party leader ever came to a more distressing period in his career; yet he preserved his dignity and laughed at the storm that howled so fiercely about him. "Genuine greatness," he said, in a memorial address delivered about this time, "never appears in a more resplendent light, or in a more sublime attitude, than in that buoyancy of character which rises superior to danger and difficulty." In the meantime, Governor Tompkins was riding on the crest of the political waves. On February 14, 1816, a legislative caucus unanimously instructed the members of Congress from New York to support him for President; a week later it nominated him for governor. Tompkins had no desire to make a fourth race for governor, but the unexpected nomination of Rufus King left him no alternative. William W. Van Ness had been determined upon as the Federalist candidate, until the fraudulent capture of the Council of Appointment by the Republicans made it inadvisable for the popular young Judge to leave the bench; and to save the party from disruption Rufus King consented to head the Federalist ticket. His great strength quickly put Republicans on the defensive; and the only man whom the party dared to oppose to him was the favourite champion of the war. Tompkins' re-election by over six thousand majority[183] once more attested his widespread popularity. [Footnote 183: Daniel D. Tompkins, 45,412; Rufus King, 38,647.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]