er with
Vice-President Calhoun and a party of his personal friends, the
central dish on the table being a sirloin from a prize ox, sent to
him by John Merkle, a butcher of Franklin Market, New York. Before
retiring that night, the President wrote to the donor: "Permit
me, sir, to assure you of the gratification which I felt in being
enabled to place on my table so fine a specimen of your market,
and to offer you my sincere thanks for so acceptable a token of
your regard for my character." This was the commencement of a
series of presents which poured in on General Jackson during the
eight years of his administration.

The Democratic journalists of the country were also well represented
at the inauguration, attracted by this semi-official declaration
in the _Telegraph_: "We know not what line of policy General
Jackson will adopt. We take it for granted, however, that he will
reward his friends and punish his enemies."

The leader of this editorial phalanx was Amos Kendall, a native of
Dunstable, Massachusetts, who had by pluck and industry acquired
an education and migrated westward in search of fame and fortune.
Accident made him an inmate of Henry Clay's house and the tutor of
his children; but many months had not elapsed before the two became
political foes, and Kendall, who had become the conductor of a
Democratic newspaper, triumphed, bringing to Washington the official
vote of Kentucky for Andrew Jackson. He found at the National
metropolis other Democratic editors, who, like himself, had labored
to bring about the political revolution, and they used to meet
daily in the house of a preacher-politician, Rev. Obadiah B. Brown,
who had strongly advocated Jackson's election. Mr. Brown, who was
a stout, robust man, with a great fund of anecdotes, was a clerk
in the Post Office department during the week, while on Sundays he
performed his ministerial duties in the Baptist Church.

Organizing under the lead of Amos Kendall, whose lieutenants were
the brilliant but vindictive Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire; the
scholarly Nathaniel Greene, of Massachusetts; the conservative
Gideon Welles, of Connecticut; the jovial Major Mordecai M. Noah,
of New York, and the energetic Dabney S. Carr, of Maryland, the
allied editors claimed their rewards. They were not to be appeased
by sops of Government advertising, or by the appointment of publisher
of the laws of the United States in the respective States, but they
demanded s