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450 C. H. Levertnore well adapted for the mysteries of political management. Although an unswerving partisan, he was cool and cautious in temperament. Sagacious judgment enhanced the value of his considerable execu- tive abilities, and his contemporaries were surprised that a man, whose training had been purely practical, should infuse so much literary taste and skill into the acrimony and vulgarity of petty politics. Under the Croswell dynasty, which endured until 1855, the Argus touched the zenith of authority and influence. Mr. Edwin Croswell was admitted to the inmost circles of the Regency, and not even Mr. Van Buren himself was more cunning in the distribution of either commands or loaves and fishes. While Jack- son and Van Buren sat on the throne, the Argus was one of a trio of party organs which represented the three chief centres of Demo- cratic intrigue. Croswell in the Argus made known the will of the Albany Regency. Francis P. Blair in the Washington Globe spoke for the Kitchen Cabinet, and Father Thomas Ritchie, " old Mo- mentous Crisis" Ritchie, displayed in the Richmond Enquirer the flag of the venerable Richmond Junta, the successors of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. No triplet of party organs, before or since, exerted such unquestioned power. These papers, as Hudson says, " made cabinet officers and custom-house weighers, presidents and tide-waiters, editors and envoys. They regulated state legislatures and dictated state policies. They were the father confessors to the democracy of the country." For the second or Whig Albany Regency Thurlow Weed's Al- bany Evening Journal was the accredited organ. The Evening Journal was never however the prompter of the Whig newspaper chorus as the Argus had been for their Democratic contemporaries. Neither did the machine of Seward and Weed ever obey the word of command so readily as Van Buren's. The Whig leaders di- rected a more intelligent, and consequently a less pliant party. The Journal enjoyed the advantage of the unique and powerful personality of its editor, Thurlow Weed, who was under no man's thumb and who wielded a far greater individual influence than Croswell of the Argus could ever claim. Thurlow Weed and Edwin Croswell were together from 1830 to 1848 the foremost journalist-politicians in the state of New York. Side by side upon that Albany hill they patrolled the picket lines of their opposing hosts or sounded the reveille for the retainers of Seward or Van Buren. Weed's post was at once more honorable and more onerous. Croswell was at best only Van Buren's chief of staff, but no man could tell where Weed's power ended and Seward's began. Governor Seward's ornate eloquence and unerr-