General had won every electoral vote of the South and the West; and both Pennsylvania and New York had sustained him. New England was solid for her candidate, and New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland returned Adams majorities. The lines were drawn, as had been foreseen, just as in the contest between Jefferson and John Adams twenty-eight years before; and in general the attitudes of the social classes were the same.

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The second alliance of South and West had been effected, and “the people” had come to power a second time, only the West was now the dominant element. How would the West and “the people” use their power?

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

J. S. Bassett's Life of Andrew Jackson (1911) is the best work on that subject, though James Parton's Life of Jackson (ed. of 1887) is still the best for a documentary account. The biographies of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams in the American Statesmen series are the best for these men. Of more importance for a view of social and political conditions of the South and the East are: the Debates of the constitutional conventions of Massachusetts (1820), New York (1821), Virginia (1829), and North Carolina (1835), and The Memoir of John Quincy Adams, in twelve large volumes, which covers minutely the period of 1825 to 1848. This work appeared in 1874-76. It is a remarkable record of a remarkable man. J. B. McMaster's History of the United States (1900-13) is a life of the people which no library can afford to be without, and J. Schouler's History of the United States under the Constitution (revised ed. 1894-99) is equally good, giving a fuller account of the political and constitutional development of the country. A. B. Hart's The American Nation (1904-08) is a fuller coöperative work by the leading scholars of the United States. The volumes which bear upon the period in hand will be cited in succeeding chapters. Special studies of importance are: C. H. Ambler's Sectionalism in Virginia (1910); D. F. Houston's Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina (1896); W. A. Schaper's Sectionalism in South Carolina (1900); and H. M. Wagstaff's States Rights and Political Parties in North Carolina (1906).

CHAPTER IIToC

THE WEST

Tens of thousands of eager people witnessed the inauguration of Andrew Jackson on March 4, 1829; they crowded the streets, stood upon the house-tops, and peered out from every open window; they jostled the attendants at the White House and overturned the bowls and jars which contained the ices and wines intended for the entertainment of the new President and his friends. “The people have come to power,” said a chastened admirer of Henry Clay as she watched sadly the wreckage of the dainties which dainty hands had prepared, and as she looked with dismay upon the wearers of rough and dirty boots striding over costly carpets where hitherto only gentlemen and ladies had trod. It was a happy occasion to the unthinking but honest democrats[2] who gloried in the success of their “hero,” but a sad warning to the more refined who had been accustomed to see things done in due form and stateliness.

But neither the uninformed masses who looked on with delight that bright day nor the cultured people whose hearts sank within them as they saw the old order pass away recked aught of what was to come during the next four years. Possibly the old man, whom everybody called “the General,” and who many feared could not live out his term, or the solemn-visaged Vice-President, who had been filling half the cabinet positions with his own partisans, saw dimly what was to follow these joyous opening days of a new régime, for he knew how unstable was the base upon which the new structure rested.

The people who composed this new régime, the men who voted for Andrew Jackson and who shouted at and derided sturdy John Quincy Adams as he retired from the Presidency that 4th of March, were the rank and file of the United States. But the nucleus of the party of Jackson was the West. In the region which extends from Georgia to the Sabine, save in New Orleans alone, no name equaled that of the man who had driven the Indians like chaff before the wind at the battle of Horseshoe Bend, and who a year later had defeated the regiments of Great Britain near New Orleans. “The General” was known and admired all over the great valley of the Mississippi as the friend of the people, while John Quincy Adams had resisted the demands of the frontier and had actually sent a regiment of the United States Army into Georgia to defeat the purposes of a popular governor, who was driving the hated Indians from coveted cotton lands. Jackson met, therefore, with little or no opposition in this region, and the Southwestern politicians who had fought for Adams and Clay in the campaign of 1828 had signed their political death-warrants.

In the older West, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio, Henry Clay had been the natural leader; and until about 1820, when he had championed the cause of the National Bank as against local interests and local banks, he had been the most popular man west of the Alleghanies. From the beginning of the Adams Administration he had lost steadily till in 1828 he tasted for the first time the gall of political defeat. In these older Western communities it was still a reproach to a public man to ally himself with New England and the United States Bank, though he might favor the protective tariff, and he must support internal improvements. In addition to supporting John Quincy Adams after 1825, Clay led a “fast and extravagant” life in Washington, which only added to his unpopularity in the West. In 1831 it was with much difficulty, and after a close contest with Richard M. Johnson, that he was returned to the United States Senate. General Jackson had completely won the leadership of the Clay territory and the affections of the plain farmers.

In the Northwest there were other large areas of fertile lands in the possession of the hated Indians, and there, as in the Southwest, the most popular leader was he who believed and taught that the quickest way to build up the country was to take immediate possession of these lands. In Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois the small farmers and the pioneers were almost as enthusiastic followers of Jackson as were their economic kinsmen of the Gulf region.

With these backwoods States thus devoted to the man to whom Chief Justice Marshall had sorrowfully administered the oath of office, it was easy for the leaders of the new régime to make strong appeal to the mountain counties of the Middle States and South, whose political idol had been Thomas Jefferson and whose people were only a generation removed from the pioneer stage of development. With the exception of some of the New