From the first, it was recognised that Clinton's friends were without influence. They could talk and vote, but the convention was a Bucktail body, in which the election of delegates, the choice of a president, the appointment of committees, the selection of chairmen, and the transaction of business were made party questions. The vote of sixteen to ninety-four for Daniel D. Tompkins, for president, showed Bucktail delegates overwhelmingly in the majority. Of the chairmen of the ten standing committees, all were prominent Bucktail leaders, save Rufus King, who had practically ceased to act with the Federalists of his State, and James, Tallmadge, who ended his affection for DeWitt Clinton when the latter preferred Thomas J. Oakley for attorney-general. The convention's work centred about three great principles--broader suffrage, enlarged local government, and a more popular judiciary system. There was no difficulty in abolishing the Councils of Appointment and of Revision; in clothing the governor with power of veto; in fixing his term of office at two years instead of three; and in making members of the Legislature ineligible for appointment to office. But, on the questions of suffrage and the judiciary, the convention was thrown into weeks of violent debate, memorable by prophecies never fulfilled, and by criticism that the future quickly disproved. In respect to the suffrage, there were practically three different views. A few members favoured freehold qualifications; a larger number believed in universal suffrage; while others stood between the two, desiring the abolition of a freehold qualification, yet opposing universal suffrage and wishing to place some restrictions on the right to vote. Erastus Root and Samuel Young ably represented the second class; Ambrose Spencer and the Federalists were intensely loyal to a freehold qualification; and Van Buren, backed probably by a majority of the convention, presented the compromise view.