As one glances through the list of workers in the campaign of 1792, he is reminded that the juniors or beginners soon came to occupy higher and more influential positions than some of their elders and leaders. DeWitt Clinton, for instance, not yet in office, was soon to be in the Assembly, in the State Senate, and in the United States Senate--a greater force than any man of his time in New York, save Hamilton. James Kent had just entered the Assembly. As a student in Egbert Benson's office, his remarkable industry impressed clients and teacher, but when his voice sounded the praises of John Jay, few could have anticipated that this young man, small in stature, vivacious in speech, quick in action, with dark eyes and a swarthy complexion, was destined to become one of the most famous jurists in a century. Ambrose Spencer had not yet scored his first political honour, but his herculean frame and stately presence, with eyes and complexion darker than Kent's, are to be seen leading in every political contest for more than forty years. There were also Smith Thompson, taught in the law by Chancellor Kent and tutored in politics by George Clinton, who was to follow the former Chief Justice and end his days on the United States Supreme bench; Joseph C. Yates, founder of Union College, and Samuel L. Mitchill, scientist and politician, who has been called the Franklin of New York. Younger than these, but equally alert, was Cadwallader A. Colden, grandson of the royal lieutenant-governor of Stamp Act days. He was now only twenty-two, just beginning at the bar, but destined to be the intimate friend of Robert Fulton, a famous leader of a famous bar, and a political chieftain of a distinguished career.[63] [Footnote 63: Interested in this exciting campaign was yet a younger generation, who soon contested their right-of-way to political leadership. Erastus Root was a junior at Dartmouth; Daniel D. Tompkins had just entered Columbia; Martin Van Buren was in a country school on the farm at Kinderhook; John Treat Irving was playing on the banks of the river to be made famous by his younger brother; and William W. Van Ness, the rarest genius of them all, and his younger cousin, William P. Van Ness, were listening to the voices that would soon summon them, one in support of the brilliant Federalist leader, the other as a second to Aaron Burr in the great tragedy at Weehawken on the 11th of July, 1804.]