o death, with no authority, two Englishmen,
Ambrister and Arbuthnot. These irregularities did not harm him in the
judgment of his admirers; they seemed in the line of his character and
helped more than they hurt him. In the winter of 1823-24 he was again
chosen a Senator from Tennessee. Thenceforth he was in the field as a
candidate for the Presidency, with two things to aid him--his own
immense popularity and a friend. This friend was one William B. Lewis, a
man in whom all the skilful arts of the modern wire-puller seemed to be
born full-grown.

There was at that time (1824) no real division in parties. The
Federalists had been effectually put down, and every man who aspired to
office claimed to be Democratic-Republican. Nominations were irregularly
made, sometimes by a Congressional caucus, sometimes by State
legislatures. Tennessee, and afterward Pennsylvania, nominated Jackson.
When it came to the vote, he proved to be by all odds the popular
candidate. Professor W. G. Sumner, counting up the votes of the people,
finds 155,800 votes for Jackson, 105,300 for Adams, 44,200 for Crawford,
46,000 for Clay. Even with this strong popular vote before it, the House
of Representatives, balloting by States, elected on the first trial John
Quincy Adams. Seldom in our history has the cup of power come so near to
the lips of a candidate and been dashed away again. Yet nothing is surer
in a republic than a certain swing of the pendulum afterward, in favor
of any candidate to whom a special injustice has been done, and in the
case of a popular favorite like Jackson, this might have been foreseen
to be irresistible. His election four years later was almost a foregone
conclusion, but, as if to make it wholly sure, there came up the rumor
of a "corrupt bargain" between the successful candidate and Mr. Clay,
whose forces had indeed joined with those of Mr. Adams to make a
majority. For General Jackson there could be nothing more fortunate. The
mere ghost of a corrupt bargain is worth many thousand votes to the
lucky man who conjures up the ghost.

When it came the turn of the Adams party to be defeated, in 1828, they
attributed this result partly to the depravity of the human heart,
partly to the tricks of Jackson, and partly to the unfortunate
temperament of Mr. Adams. The day after a candidate is beaten everybody
knows why it was, and says it was just what anyone might have foreseen.
Ezekiel Webster, writing from New Hampshire, lai