s to
the credit of the American people that they have instinctively
recognized this fact, and have estimated at their true value the tirades
which men no better than Henry Clay level against men no worse than
Andrew Jackson.

The reason for the failure of the Whigs was that their opponents
embodied more completely the living forces of contemporary American
life. Jackson and his followers prevailed because they were simple,
energetic, efficient, and strong. Their consistency of feeling and their
mutual loyalty enabled them to form a much more effective partisan
organization than that of the Whigs. It is one of those interesting
paradoxes, not uncommon in American history, that the party which
represented official organization and leadership was loosely organized
and unwisely led, while the party which distrusted official organization
and surrounded official leadership with rigid restraints was most
efficiently organized and was for many years absolutely dominated by a
single man. At bottom, of course, the difference between the two parties
was a difference in vitality. All the contemporary conditions worked in
favor of the strong narrow man with prodigious force of will like Andrew
Jackson, and against men like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster who had more
intelligence, but were deficient in force of character and singleness
of purpose. The former had behind him the impulse of a great popular
movement which was sweeping irresistibly towards wholly unexpected
results; and the latter, while ostensibly trying to stem the tide, were
in reality carried noisily along on its flood.

Daniel Webster and Henry Clay were in fact faced by an alternative
similar to that which sterilized the lives of almost all their
contemporaries who represented an intellectual interest. They were men
of national ideas but of something less than national feeling. Their
interests, temperament, and manner of life prevented them from
instinctively sympathizing with the most vital social and political
movement of their day. If they wanted popularity, they had to purchase
it by compromises, whereas Andrew Jackson obtained a much larger popular
following by acting strictly in accordance with the dictates of his
temperament and ideas. He was effective and succeeded because his
personality was representative of the American national democracy,
whereas they failed, on the whole, because the constituency they
represented concealed limited sympathies and specia