-President by one hundred and eighty-nine
votes, was inaugurated on the same day. The coalition formed in 1827 by
Jackson with Van Buren had thus fulfilled its purpose. Jackson's triumph
was complete; he had superseded Adams, defeated Clay, crushed Calhoun,
and placed Van Buren in the most auspicious position to be his successor
in the President's chair.

The infatuating influence of military success over the human mind, and
the readiness with which intelligent and well-disposed men, living under
a constitution of limited powers, while dazzled by its splendor, endure
and encourage acts of despotic power, is at once instructive and
suggestive. Violations of constitutional duty, known and voluntarily
acquiesced in by a whole people, subservient to the will of a popular
chieftain, may, and probably will, in time, change their constitution,
and destroy their liberties.

When Mr. Adams said that "Jackson rode roughshod over the Senate of the
United States," he only characterized the spirit by which he controlled
every branch and department of the government. In every movement Jackson
had displayed an arbitrary will, determined on success, regardless of
the means, and had applied without reserve the corrupting temptation of
office to members of Congress. He had rewarded subserviency by
appointments, and punished the want of it by removal; had insolently
called Calhoun to account for his official language in the cabinet of
Monroe, and dismissed three members of his own, acknowledged to have
been unexceptionable in the discharge of their official duties, because
they would not submit to regulate the social intercourse of their
families by his dictation. These and many other instances of his
overbearing character in civil affairs had become subjects of severe
public animadversion, without apparently shaking the submissive
confidence of the citizens of the United States. Their votes on his
second election indicated an unequivocal increase of popular favor; the
admirer of arbitrary power exulted; the lover of constitutional liberty
mourned. The friends of despotism in the Old World, ignorant of the real
stamina of his popularity, regarded it as unquestionable evidence of the
all-powerful influence of military achievement in the New. But the
infatuation which had been the exciting cause of General Jackson's first
election to the Presidency would soon have evaporated under the
multiplied evidences of an ill-regulated will, had it n