country was a magnet which drew upon the Middle and Atlantic States for their best citizens during a period of twenty years.

While the Jackson leadership “captured” both the conservatives of Virginia and the Carolinas and the radicals of the Gulf region, the cause of democracy made great gains in the Middle States. Half of Maryland favored Jackson, and strangely enough the conservative half. Pennsylvania, the head and front of popular government since the days of Benjamin Franklin, gave every evidence of joining the standard of Jackson early in the contest. New York had held a constitutional convention in 1821 and opened the way for universal suffrage and the popular election of most state and county officers. So radical had been the sweep of reform that Chancellor Kent and other conservatives spent their energies in protest and prophecy of dire results to come. But it was probably the work of Van Buren, a conservative “boss” of New York, and of Samuel D. Ingham, a wealthy manufacturer of Pennsylvania and an ally of Calhoun, that made sure the votes of these great States; for men of the old Federalist party and extreme protectionists of both New York and Pennsylvania ranged themselves behind Jackson and his Western democracy.

If we turn now to the chances of Clay and Adams, we must look to a part of Maryland, to Delaware and New Jersey evenly divided, it seems, between the “forward and the backward-looking” men, and to New England. Connecticut abandoned her State Church in 1818 and extended the electoral franchise to all who enrolled in the militia. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine were border States and distinctly Western in their ideals, though they were in no way inclined to desert the New England leader. Massachusetts, the great State of the East, held firmly to her conservative moorings. In the constitutional convention of 1820 the liberals had failed at every point. Webster and Story had defeated the proposition for abolishing the property qualification for membership in the State Senate; and the more radical plan for overthrowing the established Congregational Church, the bulwark of steady habits in Massachusetts, was similarly voted down. Webster, like Randolph, of Virginia, and Rhett, of South Carolina, urged that property should rule in every well-ordered community, and what Webster, Randolph, and Rhett urged, their respective States adopted. Even more reactionary was little Rhode Island, where privilege and inequality were as firmly intrenched as anywhere else in the country. The suffrage was limited to freeholders and representation was denied the majority of the people. The control of governor, legislature, and courts was in the hands of the minority. In 1821, 1822, and 1824 leaders of the majority endeavored to secure reforms, but without success.

From Augusta, Maine, to Baltimore stretched the long strip of country which could be relied on to vote for John Quincy Adams and to sustain conservative ideals in government. Western New York was also inclined to Adams, and Clay was confident that he could carry Ohio and Kentucky, the conservative communities of the West, for his ally. In the main the men who supported the Administration were those who feared the rough ways of plain men, the ideals of equality and popular initiative so dear to the American heart.

The managers of Jackson's campaign were members of the United States Senate. Calhoun sat in the Vice-President's chair; Van Buren was the leader of the Middle States group of the opposition; John Randolph was there and ever ready to turn his wonderful gifts of ridicule and sarcasm against the Puritan who sat in the “Mansion” and “wasted the money of the people”; Nathaniel Macon, one of the most popular of all the Senators, opposed the second Adams as earnestly as he had fought the first; George Poindexter, of Mississippi, was one of the most powerful politicians of the cotton kingdom, and he showed a never-failing hostility to “Clay and his President”; but Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri, was the most effective, perhaps, of all these men who were bent on the overthrow of Adams and Clay.

They kept the “bargain and sale” charge alive till the very day of the election. Benton urged on every possible occasion the adoption of constitutional amendments forbidding the President to appoint members of Congress to office, restricting the presidential term to four years without possibility of reëlection, and limiting the powers and jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. He also kept the Western squatters on the public lands closely attached to him by promising that if he ever came to power their rights to the farms they had taken without leave should be confirmed by law. Nor did he forget to denounce Adams for “wantonly giving away Texas” in the negotiations with Spain in 1819. Every movement of the Government was combated at every point and defeated if possible. Van Buren, Calhoun, and Benton were an able trio, and they resorted for four years to every possible device to discredit the President and his Secretary of State and at the same time to secure the election of Andrew Jackson.

Duff Green, of Missouri, was brought to Washington to establish and edit The Telegraph, the organ of the opposition which began operations in 1826. It gave currency to the campaign literature and educated the people in the cause of the West. Adams was an aristocrat; he lived sumptuously every day at the public expense; he did not associate with the people; and he aped the courts of Europe, where he had spent so much of his life. The people of the South and West reached the point where they could believe anything against John Quincy Adams. No other President of the United States has ever been so shamefully treated, save one, and that one was Martin Van Buren, the man who was leading the onslaughts of 1828.

Adams and Clay were helpless; it was difficult for them to secure popular allies or get a fair hearing. Richard Rush, the son of the Jeffersonian radical of 1800, was made candidate for the Vice-Presidency in the hope of winning Pennsylvania; Clay did his utmost to stem the tide in the West; Daniel Webster was, of course, on the side of Adams; William Wirt and James Barbour stood up bravely in Virginia for a doomed cause. But these earnest and patriotic men could not rally the normal strength of the conservatives, for the Southern planters had accepted Jackson and the Middle States conservatives were demoralized by the Van Buren and Ingham activity.

The rough backwoods General had proved a politician too astute for the oldest heads. He had been able to enlist the services of Northern men who did not believe in democracy, and he had the loyal support of Southern leaders who were just then breaking down the power of democracy in all the older States of their section. He was not less fortunate in the expression of his opinions on public questions. On the tariff, the burning question of the time, he had no views; on internal improvements he had even less to say. Even on the subject of the free distribution of the public lands he was silent, though most Westerners took his hostility to the Indians to mean that he would do what was desired. Jackson was “all things to all men” in 1828, and this discreet attitude seems to have been effective, though it was to bring trouble when he became President.

When the vote was counted, it was found that the people had been aroused as they had not been before since 1800. The cry, “Shall the people rule?” was answered by Pennsylvania by a vote for Jackson of 100,000 as against 50,000 for Adams. Virginia gave Jackson as many votes in 1828 as had been cast for all parties in 1824. And the total vote of the country for Jackson was 647,276 as against 508,064 for Adams. The