established as the pretensions of the leaders maintained, and as was actually the fact. Personal matters and the battle of New Orleans constituted, by far, the greater bulk of electioneering staple. It was mainly a wicked personal contest, wretchedly demoralizing to the whole country. Although Congress had at the time an unusually large number of able and rising men, at no period in its history has its conduct justified deeper censure, perhaps.

At the organization of its second Representative term under Mr. Adams it became the most powerful engine of opposition to the Administration, and even where its legislation was to any extent in harmony with the views of the President, its purposes were not to aid him in his administration of public affairs, or to benefit the country either with or independently of him, but to compass his defeat at the polls in the fall of 1828.

At the session immediately preceding the election the reckless grants of public lands to the States, and appropriations for river and other "internal improvements" find their origin in the foregoing statement. Indeed, the greater part of the legislation looking in this direction during the entire term of Mr. Adams's Presidency was designed by one or another faction to place its candidate on favorable terms with the people. It was mainly for electioneering purposes. The race between the friends and enemies of the Administration, to see which could be first in obtaining some grant or making some appropriation to please the people in some locality, did not cease till the result of the election rendered this unmitigated corruption of little effect. No act of Congress exclusively favorable, or

indeed, but remotely and incidentally so, to the Administration, was passed during the two last sessions under Mr. Adams. Only from his messages and his character can it be conjectured what his Administration would have been under the circumstances which marked the fortunate lot of his predecessors. Mr. Adams's Administration was really confined to the narrow limits Constitutionally provided outside of any co-operation with the legislative branch.

In General Jackson's exceedingly cautious, if not ambiguous electioneering letter to Dr. Coleman in the spring of 1824, on "internal improvements" and a tariff, he said :

"It is time that we should become a little more Americanized; and instead of feeding the paupers and laborers of England, feed our own; or else, in a short time, by continuing our present policy, we shall all be rendered paupers ourselves.

"It is, therefore, my opinion, that a careful and judicious tariff is much wanted, to pay our national debt, and afford us the means of that defense within ourselves, on which the safety of our country and liberty depends; and last, though not least, give a proper distribution to our labor, which must prove beneficial to the happiness, independence, and wealth of the community."

It has long been well known on what this sophomoric piece of statesmanship was based. In January, 1828, by resolution of the Legislature of Indiana, the Governor of that State was asked to draw from General Jackson another expression of his sentiment on this subject, and on the 28th of February, the General replied to the Governor's letter, saying: "With these remarks, I pray you, sir, respectfully to state to the Senate of Indiana, that my opinions, at present, are précisely what they were in 1823 and 1824, when they were communicated, by letter, to Dr. Coleman,

of North Carolina, and when I voted for the present tariff and appropriations for internal improvements."

The General's position at that time, and a considerable amount of matter bearing on his elevation to the Presidency, are reserved for another volume of this work. No plainer piece of arrant political quackery, demagoguery, has ever been perpetrated upon "the people" than is contained in these two letters. A very large per cent, perhaps a very large majority, of the voters of the Eastern, Middle, and Western States believed in the sentiments of these letters, and it was then, and likely is yet, the opinion of some that these letters, Jackson's vote for the tariff of 1824, and his letter to Mr. Monroe about a liberal distribution of the public offices, elected him to the Presidency.

The only difference between Mr. Adams and General Jackson on the two great themes, the tariff and internal improvements, then before the country, in the light in which these letters placed the matter, was in the clear, undoubted, emphatic, "at-present "-andalways ring of Mr. Adams's views. The people were deceived into the belief that there was no issue between the two candidates on these main points. Mr. Adams's schemes were Utopian dreams. General Jackson, contrary to his former record, was simply more cautious and safe. With this the whole contest was merged into personal considerations, slander, and the battle of New Orleans. In the South there was one point, which, perhaps, outweighed all others. That was, the section to which the candidates belonged. If Mr. Adams's true sentiments as to slavery had not been drawn out, and made public property, a suspicion rested upon him from which he could not escape.

One ticket, contrary to the good judgment of Mr. Adams, was Northern, and the other was Southern. It was the South against the North, with Pennsylvania hoodwinked into the support of the former by the utterly groundless tariff pretensions of General Jackson; and New York, by the schemes of Martin Van Buren.

The manner of Mr. Adams's entrance into the Republican (Democratic) ranks could not be forgotten by the Southern leaders. Still if the old Federalists, of New England, mainly gathered to the Adams standard, General Jackson's letters to Mr. Monroe about his Cabinet and other appointments, all a mere exuberant pretension of the moment, an impulse without foundation, on the part of Jackson, actually laid him liable to the charge of being a Federalist. When some of Mr. Adams's supporters had nothing harder they wished. to say of General Jackson, they called him Federalist.

As has been, to some extent, shown in a previous chapter the "bargain and corruption" scandal of 1825 was revived with all its virulence, and the whole matter fought over again with every possible degree of bitterness. Mr. Clay deemed it wise in him to take up the subject again, and accordingly on the 29th of December, 1827, he published an address, and various letters and documents, defending his course in 1825, and refuting the charges, as had been done many times before. Although he previously read this whole manuscript to Mr. Adams, it was published against his wish, while he did not feel at liberty to tell Mr. Clay so. He thought enough had been said on the subject, and while their friends needed no more, their enemies could not be convinced, no matter what should be done to that end.

One thing, however, the President induced Mr. Clay to omit entirely from his publication, and that was the statement he had prepared to the effect that at the end of that Administration he would retire unalterably from public life, of which he was weary. Mr. Adams told him this announcement would be taken as an acknowledgment of defeat, and at the same time would show a spirit of discontent which might be offensive even to those who could safely be put down as his well-wishers; and that it was not the time for him to retire; that public sentiment might change in his favor, and that in a short time, as was often the case, when he would reach that degree of popular success which they both believed he deserved. Although the supporters of Mr. Adams made most villainous attacks on the character and acts of General Jackson, it is a strange fact that they were never heeded, and no matter what he was or what he had done, the tide constantly increased that bore him to the Presidency. A short-lived Adams newspaper published in Cincinnati made it a great part of its especial business to bring out the entire history of Jackson's courtship and premature marriage. The story was exaggerated in every way, and became a great public scandal, without a grain of foundation to rest upon among a just people in calm times, a subject fully set forth in another volume of this work. Jackson's ignorance was fully displayed, and all the crimes and faults of his life were brought up and magnified to suit the occasion.

One of the most assailable points in the General's indefensible career was the execution of the six Tennessee soldiers in 1814. John Binns, editor of a