ectionists thought they must control the country or
the Union would be worth little to them; the Southern free traders
insisted upon the mastery of the Government or else they would have a
quiet dissolution of the Confederation; while the Western men must have
freer control of the public lands and more immigrants or their sturdy
nationalism would rapidly disappear.

Having failed for the moment to rally the leaders of his disintegrating
party on the Bank issue, Jackson and his intimate advisers decided that
above all things it was necessary for the old hero to stand again for
the Presidency in the next election. Van Buren, who had been steadily
growing in the estimation of Jackson, while Calhoun had been losing
ground, was the foremost to urge a second term despite the understanding
and the public promises that Jackson was to hold office only one term.
Amos Kendall and William B. Lewis supported his view heartily, fearing
as they did that Henry Clay would otherwise be the next President. At
the dinner on Jefferson Day, April 13, 1830, for which elaborate
preparations had been made, the President chose to give expression to
more decided opinions than had been customary during his first year in
office. His toast, "The Union, it must be preserved," was akin to the
utterances of Webster in the debate with Hayne. It was plain to the
South that he would not longer support their contentions, that he would
appeal to the same nationalist sentiment which had been shown to exist
by the speeches of the great New England orator. The cause of the
Southern radicals was lost in so far as it depended on the President,
and, moreover, the arrangement whereby Calhoun was to succeed Jackson
was dissolved. South Carolina, so long a leader in public life, was
isolated.

Meanwhile the friends of Clay and the devotees of the tariff had
prepared an internal improvements measure which was drawn so that the
appropriation would apply to purposes wholly within the State of
Kentucky. The Maysville Road Bill proposed to build a national highway
from Maysville on the Ohio to Lexington, Clay's home, and it was drawn
in order to compel the President to exercise his right of veto on a
proposition in which the West was interested, and thus break down his
popularity in that region. The proposed law came to him in May. Van
Buren had been sounding public opinion in the Middle States, and with
some hesitation he advised a veto. The President was of the same m