The removal of Hawley, McIntyre, and Van Rensselaer produced a greater sensation throughout the State than any previous dismissals, except that of DeWitt Clinton from the mayoralty in 1815. Gideon Hawley had held the office of school superintendent for nine years, organising the State into school districts, distributing the school fund equitably, and perfecting the work, so that the entire system could be easily handled by a superintendent. In 1818, he reported five thousand schools thus organised, with upward of two hundred thousand pupils in attendance for a period of four to six months each year. He did this work on a salary of three hundred dollars--only to receive, at last, in place of thanks so richly deserved, the unmerited rebuke of a summary dismissal. The removal of Archibald McIntyre made a sensation almost as great. For fifteen years, McIntyre had been such an acceptable comptroller that the waves of factional and party strife had broken at his feet, leaving him master of the State's finances. The Lewisites retained him in 1807; the Federalists kept him in 1809; the Republicans continued him in 1811; the Federalists again spared him in 1813; while the frequent changes that followed Clinton's downfall left him undisturbed. He took no part in political contests. It was his duty to see that the State's money was paid according to law, and he so conducted the office; but the Bucktails deeply resented his treatment of the Vice President, and a swift removal was the penalty. In some degree McIntyre may have been responsible for the defeat of Tompkins. The perfervid strength of his convictions as to the injustice of the Vice President's claim betrayed him into an intemperance of language that suggests over-zeal in a public official. In refusing, too, to balance the Vice President's accounts, as the Legislature clearly intended, and as he might have done regardless of the Vice President's additional claim, he seems to have assumed an unnecessary responsibility, and to have learned what many men have experienced in public life, that nothing is so dangerous as being too faithful. But McIntyre may have had no reason to regret his removal. He was immediately returned to the Legislature as a senator, and the next year appointed agent for the state lotteries, a business that enabled him in a few years to retire with an independent fortune.