10. The Accession of Jackson (1825-1829).

Adams being seated in the presidential chair, the crystallization of parties went rapidly forward. Groups tended more and more to coalesce as parties. The personal traits of Adams doubtless contributed to hasten the process. His character, cold, unbending, uncompanionable, harsh, acted like an acid upon the party mixture of the Re-formation day, precipitating all the elements hitherto of parties. held in solution. He would placate no antagonisms, he would arrange no compromises, he sought no friends. His administration, moreover, startled and alienated conservative persons by its latitudinarianism upon constitutional questions. It was frankly liberal in its views; it showed the governing, as opposed to the popular, habit. It frightened those who, like the Southerners, had peculiar privileges to protect, and it provoked the jealousy of those whom it had so narrowly defeated, the personal admirers and followers of Jackson.

The supporters of Jackson did not for a moment accept the event of the election of 1825 as decisive. The "sovereignty of the people," — that is, of the vote cast for Jackson, should yet be vindicated. The new administration Campaign of 1828.

was hardly seven months old before the Legislature of Tennessee renewed its nomination of Jackson for the presidency. The "campaign of 1828" may be said to have begun in 1825. For three whole years a contest, characterized by unprecedented virulence, and pushed in some quarters by novel and ominous methods, stirred the country into keen partisan excitement. The President found his office stripped in part of its weight and prestige. For the first time since 1801 the presidential messages failed to suggest and shape the business of Congress: Adams fared as leader of a faction, not as head of the government. Old party discipline and

allegiance had disappeared; there was now nothing but the sharp and indecisive struggle of rival groups and coteries. And by one of these a new discipline and principle of allegiance was introduced into national politics. In New York and Pennsylvania there had already sprung into existence that machinery of local committees, nominating caucuses, primaries, and conventions with which later times have made us so familiar; and then, as now, this was a machinery whose use and reason for existence were revealed in the distribution of offices as rewards for party service. The chief masters of its uses were “Jackson men," and the success of their party in 1828 resulted in the nationalization of their methods.

Jackson carried New York, Pennsylvania, and the West and South against New Jersey and New England, Jackson's and could claim a popular majority of almost election. one hundred and forty thousand. In 1828 the electors were voted for directly in every State, except Delaware and South Carolina. Jackson could claim with sufficient plausibility that the popular will had at last been vindicated. That the people are sovereign had been the central dogma of democratic thought ever since the day of Jefferson and the triumph under him of the "Democratic-Republican" party; but it had not received at the hands of that party its full logical expansion and application. The party of Jefferson, created by opposi tion to the vigorous centralizing measures of the Federalists, held as its cardinal, distinctive tenet the principle Jeffersonian that the Constitution should be strictly, even us. Jackson- literally, construed; that its checks and balances should be made and kept effective; that the federal authorities should learn and observe moderation, abstention from meddlesome activity. But the logic of popular sovereignty operated, under other circumstances, in a quite opposite direction, as presently

ian Democ

racy.

appeared. When, in 1824 Jackson, after having received a plurality of the electoral votes, backed by what was thought to be a virtual popular majority, had nevertheless been defeated in the House of Representatives, the cry of his followers had been that there was a conspiracy to defeat the will of the people. Beyond all question the election of Adams had been perfectly constitutional. It could not be doubted that the Constitution had intended the House to exercise a real choice as between the three candidates who had received the highest number of votes when the electors had failed to give to any one a majority. The position of the Jackson men was plainly incompatible with any valid interpretation of the Constitution, most of all with a strict and literal construction of it. The plain intent of their doctrine was that the votes of popular majorities should command the action of every department of the government. It meant national popular verdicts; it meant nationalization.

The democracy of Jefferson had been very different. It had entertained very ardently the conviction that government must emanate from the people and be conducted in their interest; but the Jeffersonians had deemed it the essence of democracy to confine government to the little home areas of local administration, and to have as little governing anywhere as possible. It was not a theory of omnipotence to which they held, but a theory of method and sanction. They could not have imagined the Jacksonian dogma, that anything that the people willed was right; that there could not be too much omnipotence, if only it were the omnipotence of the mass, the might of majorities. They were analysts, not absolutists.

II.

A PERIOD OF CRITICAL CHANGE

(1829-1837).

11. References.

Bibliographies. Sumner's Andrew Jackson, passim: Foster's References to the History of Presidential Administrations, 22-26; Lalor's Cyclopædia of Political Science (Johnston's articles, "Democratic Party," Nullification," "Bank Controversies," "Whig Party," etc.); Adams's Manual of Historical Literature, 566 et seq.; Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, vii. 255-266, 294-310; viii. 469 et seq.; W. F. Allen's History Topics, 109-111; Notes to Von Holst's United States and Schouler's United States.

Historical Maps. -A. B. Hart's Formation of the Union, Map 3; this volume, Map 1 (Epoch Maps, 7, 8); MacCoun's Historical Geography of the United States, series "National Growth," 1821-1845; series "Development of the Commonwealth," 1830, 1840; Scribner's Statistical Atlas, plates 1 (topographical), 15, and series ix. ; H. E. Scudder's History of the United States, frontispiece (topographical).

General Accounts.- H. von Holst's Constitutional and Political History of the United States, ii.; James Schouler's History of the United States, iii., iv., chaps. xiii., xiv.; George Tucker's History of the United States, iv., chaps. xxvi.-xxix.; Alexander Johnston's History of American Politics, chaps. xi.-xiv.; Edward Stanwood's History of Presidential Elections, chaps. xii.-xiv.; John T. Morse's John Quincy Adams, 226-291; Theodore Roosevelt's Thomas Hart Benton, 69-183; A. C. McLaughlin's Lewis Cass, 130-169; Andrew W. Young's The American Statesman, chaps. xxviii.-liv.; Josiah Quincy's Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams, chaps. viii., ix. ; Henry A. Wise's Seven Decades of the Union, chaps. vi., vii.

Special Histories. - Carl Schurz's Henry Clay, i. 311-383, ii. 1-127; W. G. Sumner's Andrew Jackson, 119-386; Ormsby's History of the Whig Party; Patton's Democratic Party; Hammond's History of Political Parties; Holmes's Parties and their Principles; Byrdsall's History of the Loco-foco, or Equal Rights, Party; F. W.

Taussig's Tariff History of the United States; W. G. Sumner's History of American Currency; James Parton's Life of Andrew Jackson; H. Von Holst's Calhoun, 62-183; E. V. Shepard's Martin Van Buren; Mackenzie's Life and Times of Van Buren; B. T. Curtis's Life of Webster; H. C. Lodge's Daniel Webster; R. T. Ely's Labor Movement in America.

Contemporary Accounts. John Quincy Adams's Memoirs, vii.-ix. (chaps. xv.-xviii.); Thomas H. Benton's Thirty Years' View, i.; Amos Kendall's Autobiography and Life of Jackson; Martin Van Buren's Origin of Political Parties in the United States; Nathan Sargent's Public Men and Events, i., chaps. iii., iv.; Chevalier's Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States; Harriet Martineau's Society in America; Josiah Quincy's Figures of the Past; Daniel Webster's Correspondence; Private Correspondence of Henry Clay; J. A. Hamilton's Reminiscences; Ben Perley Poore's Perley's Reminiscences, i. 88-198; Alexander Johnston's Representative American Orations, i.; Garrisons' William Lloyd Garrison, i.

CHAPTER II.

PARTY SPIRIT AND POLICY UNDER JACKSON (1829-1833).

12. The New President (1829).

THE character of Jackson created everywhere its own environment, bred everywhere conditions suitable to itJackson's self and its own singular, self-willed existence. character. It was as simple and invariable in its operations as a law of nature. He was wholly a product of frontier life. Born in one of the least developed districts of North Carolina, of humble Scotch-Irish parents but just come from County Antrim he had in early manhood gone to the still more primitive settlements of that Western District of North Carolina which was presently to become the State of Tennessee. As a boy he had almost no instruction even in the elements of an edu