le whose hearts sank within them as they saw
the old order pass away recked aught of what was to come during the next
four years. Possibly the old man, whom everybody called "the General,"
and who many feared could not live out his term, or the solemn-visaged
Vice-President, who had been filling half the cabinet positions with his
own partisans, saw dimly what was to follow these joyous opening days of
a new regime, for he knew how unstable was the base upon which the new
structure rested.

The people who composed this new regime, the men who voted for Andrew
Jackson and who shouted at and derided sturdy John Quincy Adams as he
retired from the Presidency that 4th of March, were the rank and file of
the United States. But the nucleus of the party of Jackson was the West.
In the region which extends from Georgia to the Sabine, save in New
Orleans alone, no name equaled that of the man who had driven the
Indians like chaff before the wind at the battle of Horseshoe Bend, and
who a year later had defeated the regiments of Great Britain near New
Orleans. "The General" was known and admired all over the great valley
of the Mississippi as the friend of the people, while John Quincy Adams
had resisted the demands of the frontier and had actually sent a
regiment of the United States Army into Georgia to defeat the purposes
of a popular governor, who was driving the hated Indians from coveted
cotton lands. Jackson met, therefore, with little or no opposition in
this region, and the Southwestern politicians who had fought for Adams
and Clay in the campaign of 1828 had signed their political
death-warrants.

In the older West, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio, Henry Clay
had been the natural leader; and until about 1820, when he had
championed the cause of the National Bank as against local interests and
local banks, he had been the most popular man west of the Alleghanies.
From the beginning of the Adams Administration he had lost steadily till
in 1828 he tasted for the first time the gall of political defeat. In
these older Western communities it was still a reproach to a public man
to ally himself with New England and the United States Bank, though he
might favor the protective tariff, and he must support internal
improvements. In addition to supporting John Quincy Adams after 1825,
Clay led a "fast and extravagant" life in Washington, which only added
to his unpopularity in the West. In 1831 it was with much difficulty