Clinton's flagrant violation of the caucus rule, that a minority must yield to the majority, not only broke the Republican party into the famous factions known as Clintonians and Bucktails; it alarmed local leaders throughout the State; made the rank and file distrustful of the Governor's fealty, and consolidated his enemies, giving them the best of the argument and enabling Van Buren to build up an organisation against which the Governor was ever after compelled to struggle with varying fortune. Indeed, in the next month, Van Buren so managed the selection of a Council that it gave Clinton credit for controlling appointments without the slightest power of making them, so that the disappointed held him responsible and the fortunate gave him no thanks. Following this humiliation, too, came the election, by one majority, of Henry Seymour, a bitter opponent of Clinton, to the canal commissionership made vacant by the resignation of Joseph Ellicott. The Governor's attention had been called to the danger of his candidate's defeat; but with optimistic assurance he dismissed it as impossible until Ephraim Hart, just before the election occurred, discovered that the cunning hand of Van Buren had accomplished his overthrow. "A majority of the canal commissioners are now politically opposed to the Governor," declared the Albany _Argus_, "and it will not be necessary for a person who wishes to obtain employment on the canal as agent, contractor or otherwise, to avow himself a Clintonian." This exultant shout meant that in future only anti-Clintonians would make up the army of canal employees.