The blow to Van Buren was a severe one. "An obscure painter of the Flemish school," wrote Clinton to his friend and confidant, Henry Post, "has made a very ludicrous and grotesque representation of Jonah immediately after he was ejected from the whale's belly. He is represented as having a very bewildered and dismal physiognomy, not knowing from whence he came nor to what place bound. Just so looks Van Buren, the leader of the opposition party."[189] Yet Van Buren seems to have taken his defeat with more serenity and dignity than might have been expected. Statesmen of far nobler character have allowed themselves to indulge in futile demonstrations of disappointment and anger, but Van Buren displayed a remarkable evenness of temper. He advocated with ability and sincerity the bill to construct the canal, which passed the Legislature on April 15, the last day of the session. Indeed, of the eighteen senators who favoured the project, five were bitter anti-Clintonians whose support was largely due to Van Buren. [Footnote 189: DeWitt Clinton's Letters to Henry Post, in _Harper's Magazine_, Vol. 50, p. 412.] In this vote, the noes, in both Assembly and Senate, came from Clinton's opponents, including the Tammany delegation and their friends. From the outset Tammany, by solemn resolutions, had denounced the canal project as impractical and chimerical, declaring it fit only for a ditch in which to bury Clinton. At Albany its representatives greeted the measure for its construction with a burst of mockery; and, by placing one obstacle after another in its way, nearly defeated it in the Senate. It was during this contest that the friends of Clinton called his opponents "Bucktails"--the name growing out of a custom, which obtained on certain festival occasions, when leading members of Tammany wore the tail of a deer on their hats.