In Albany, Clinton was vigorously pushing forward the Erie Canal project; the Tammany men were as aggressively combatting it.[2] While Clinton was thus absorbed in this great public enterprise the Wigwam was enriching its leaders in manifold ways. An instance of this was the noted Barker episode. Jacob Barker was a Sachem, a leader of great influence in the political organization, and such a power in financial and business circles that at one time he defied the United States Bank. He and Matthew L. Davis were Burr’s firmest friends to the hour of Burr’s death. Early in 1818 a bill prohibiting private banking, prepared at the instance of the incorporated banks, which sought a monopoly, passed the Senate; though as a special favor to Barker the Senate exempted from its provisions the latter’s Exchange Bank for three years. But Barker desired an indefinite lease. To create a show of public sentiment he had the hall packed with his friends and creatures on April 14, when resolutions were passed stating that the proposed bill would destroy all competition with the incorporated banks, “benefit the rich, oppress the poor, extend the power of existing aristocracies, and terminate the banking transactions of an individual whose loans have been highly advantageous to many laborious and industrious mechanics and neighboring farmers.” The Legislature granted the privileges Barker asked. A few years later (1826) the sequel to this legislative favoritism appeared in the form of one of the most sensational trials witnessed in early New York. The year 1818 saw Tammany Hall in the unusual position of advocating a protective tariff. The War of 1812 having injured domestic manufacturing, the demand for such a measure was general. Party asperity had softened, and Republicans, or Democrats--as they were coming to be known--and Federalists alike favored it. The society made the best of this popular wave. It issued an address, advising moderate protective duties on foreign goods. But New York then, and until after the Civil War, was a great shipbuilding center; and the shipbuilders and owners and the importing merchants soon influenced Tammany to revert to the stanch advocacy of free trade.