t now be told,
was not an intellectual person, but his ferocious and, in the literal
sense, shocking character is refreshing to the student of this period.
He had been in his day the typical product of the West--a far wilder West
than that from which Lincoln later came. Originally a lawyer, he had won
martial fame in fights with Indians and in the celebrated victory over
the British forces at New Orleans. He was a sincere Puritan; and he had
a courtly dignity of manner; but he was of arbitrary and passionate
temper, and he was a sanguinary duellist. His most savage duels, it
should be added, concerned the honour of a lady whom he married
chivalrously, and loved devotedly to the end. The case that can be made
for his many arbitrary acts shows them in some instances to have been
justifiable, and shows him in general to have been honest.

When in 1824 Jackson had expected to become President, and, owing to
proceedings which do not now matter, John Quincy Adams, son of a former
President, and himself a remarkable man, was made President instead of
him, Jackson resolved to overthrow the ruling class of Virginian country
gentlemen and Boston city magnates which seemed to him to control
Government, and to call into life a real democracy. To this end he
created a new party, against which of course an opposition party arose.

Neither of the new parties was in any sense either aristocratic or
democratic. "The Democracy," or Democratic party, has continued in
existence ever since, and through most of Lincoln's life ruled America.
In trying to fix the character of a party in a foreign country we cannot
hope to be exact in our portraiture. At the first start, however, this
party was engaged in combating certain tendencies to Government
interference in business. It was more especially hostile to a National
Bank, which Jackson himself regarded as a most dangerous form of alliance
between the administration and the richest class. Of the growth of what
may be called the money power in American politics he had an intense,
indeed prophetic, dread. Martin Van Buren, his friend and successor,
whatever else he may have been, was a sound economist of what is now
called the old school, and on a financial issue he did what few men in
his office have done, he deliberately sacrificed his popularity to his
principles. Beyond this the party was and has continued prone, in a
manner which we had better not too clearly define, to insist upo