d the result chiefly on
the candidate, whom everybody disliked, and who would persist in
leaving his bitter opponents in office. The people, he said, "always
supported his cause from a cold sense of duty, and not from any liking
of the man. We soon satisfy ourselves," he added, "that we have
discharged our duty to the cause of any man when we do not entertain for
him one personal kind feeling, nor cannot, unless we disembowel
ourselves, like a trussed turkey, of all that is human within us." There
is, indeed, no doubt that Mr. Adams helped on his own defeat, both by
his defects and by what would now be considered his virtues. The
trouble, however, lay further back. Ezekiel Webster thought that "if
there had been at the head of affairs a man of popular character like
Mr. Clay, or any man whom we were not compelled by our natures,
instinct, and fixed fate to dislike, the result would have been
different." But we can now see that all this would really have made no
difference at all. Had Mr. Adams been personally the most attractive of
men, instead of being a conscientious iceberg, the same result would
have followed, the people would have felt that Jackson's turn had come,
and the demand for the "old ticket" would have been irresistible.

Accordingly, the next election, that of 1828, was easily settled.
Jackson had 178 electoral votes; Adams but 83--more than two to one.
Adams had not an electoral vote south of the Potomac or west of the
Alleghanies, though Daniel Webster, writing to Jeremiah Mason, had
predicted that he would carry six Western and Southern States. In
Georgia no Adams ticket was even nominated, he being there unpopular for
one of his best acts--the protection of the Cherokees. On the other
hand, but one Jackson elector was chosen from New England, and he by
less than two hundred majority.

* * * * *

On the day of his inauguration the president was received in Washington
with an ardor that might have turned a more modest head. On the day when
the new administration began (March 4, 1829), Daniel Webster wrote to
his sister-in-law, with whom he had left his children that winter:
"To-day we have had the inauguration. A monstrous crowd of people is in
the city. I never saw anything like it before. Persons have come five
hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that
the country is rescued from some frightful danger." It is difficult now
to see what th