Jackson began his administration with characteristic vigor. It was he
who first put into practice the principle, "To the victors belong the
spoils." There was about him no academic courtesy, and he proceeded at
once to displace many Federal officeholders and to replace them with his
own adherents. The Senate tried for a time to stem the tide, but was
forced to give it up. There was no withstanding that fierce and dominant
personality. Jackson was more nearly a dictator than any President had
ever been before him, or than any will ever be again. His great
popularity seemed rather to increase than to diminish, and in 1832, he
received no less than 219 electoral votes.

[Illustration: JACKSON]

Let us do him justice. Prejudiced and ignorant and
wrong-headed as he was, he was a pure patriot, laboring for his
country's good. Nothing proves this more strongly than his attitude on
the nullification question, in other words, the right of a state to
refuse to obey a law of the United States, and to withdraw from the
Union, should it so desire. This is not the place to go into the
constitutional argument on this question. It is, of course, all but
certain that the original thirteen states had no idea, when they
ratified the Constitution, that they were entering an alliance from
which they would forever be powerless to withdraw; and the right of
withdrawal had been asserted in New England more than once. South
Carolina was the hot-bed of nullification sentiment, arising partly from
the growing anti-slavery feeling at the North, and partly because of the
enactment of a tariff law which was felt to be unjust, and on October
25, 1832, the South Carolina legislature passed an ordinance asserting
that, since the state had entered the Union of its free will, it could
withdraw from it at any time and resume the sovereign and independent
position which it had held at the close of the Revolution, and that it
would do so should there be any attempt to enforce the tariff laws
within the state.

Jackson's attitude on this question was already well known. At a banquet
celebrating Jefferson's birthday, two years before, at which Calhoun and
others had given toasts and made addresses in favor of nullification,
Jackson had startled his audience by rising, glass in hand,
and giving the toast, "Our Federal Union--it must be preserved!" That
toast had fallen like a bombshell among the ranks of the nullifiers, and
had electrified the whole Nation