A more remarkable illustration of Van Buren's conciliatory policy occurred in the confirmation of James McKnown as recorder of Albany. McKnown was a bitter Clintonian. It was he who, at the Albany meeting, so eloquently protested against the removal of Clinton as a canal commissioner, denouncing it as "the offspring of that malignant and insatiable spirit of political proscription which has already so deeply stained the annals of the State," and the perpetrators as "utterly unworthy of public confidence."[248] But the Senate confirmed him without a dissenting vote. Later, when a vacancy occurred in the judgeship of the eighth circuit by the resignation of William B. Rochester, it seemed for a time as if the coalition must break. The Regency wanted Herman J. Redfield, one of the seventeen senators whose opposition to the electoral bill had caused his defeat; but the eighth district was Clinton's stronghold, and if he nominated Redfield, the Governor argued, it would deprive him of strength and prestige, and seriously weaken the cause of Jackson. The Regency, accustomed to remain faithful to the men who incurred popular odium for being faithful to them, found it difficult, either to reconcile the conditions with their wishes, or to compromise upon any one else. Nevertheless, on the last day of the session, through the active and judicious agency of Benjamin Knower, John Birdsall of Chautauqua County, a friend of Clinton, was nominated and confirmed. [Footnote 248: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol. 2, p. 164.]