in poverty and adversity,
without the advantages of education or the refinements of cultivated
leisure, he seemed the embodiment of the spirit of the new American
democracy. Early in his youth he had gone into the frontier of Tennessee
where he soon won a name as a fearless and intrepid Indian fighter. On
the march and in camp, he endeared himself to his men by sharing their
hardships, sleeping on the ground with them, and eating parched corn
when nothing better could be found for the privates. From local
prominence he sprang into national fame by his exploit at the battle of
New Orleans. His reputation as a military hero was enhanced by the
feeling that he had been a martyr to political treachery in 1824. The
farmers of the West and South claimed him as their own. The mechanics of
the Eastern cities, newly enfranchised, also looked upon him as their
friend. Though his views on the tariff, internal improvements, and other
issues before the country were either vague or unknown, he was readily
elected President.

The returns of the electoral vote in 1828 revealed the sources of
Jackson's power. In New England, he received but one ballot, from
Maine; he had a majority of the electors in New York and all of them in
Pennsylvania; and he carried every state south of Maryland and beyond
the Appalachians. Adams did not get a single electoral vote in the South
and West. The prophecy of the Hartford convention had been fulfilled.

[Illustration: ANDREW JACKSON]

When Jackson took the oath of office on March 4, 1829, the government of
the United States entered into a new era. Until this time the
inauguration of a President--even that of Jefferson, the apostle of
simplicity--had brought no rude shock to the course of affairs at the
capital. Hitherto the installation of a President meant that an
old-fashioned gentleman, accompanied by a few servants, had driven to
the White House in his own coach, taken the oath with quiet dignity,
appointed a few new men to the higher posts, continued in office the
long list of regular civil employees, and begun his administration with
respectable decorum. Jackson changed all this. When he was inaugurated,
men and women journeyed hundreds of miles to witness the ceremony. Great
throngs pressed into the White House, "upset the bowls of punch, broke
the glasses, and stood with their muddy boots on the satin-covered
chairs to see the people's President." If Jefferson's inauguration was,
as he call