iety.

But the people who shouted at the inauguration and who had voted "the
ticket" the preceding November did not know the feelings of their
leaders. They thought that this country was a democracy and that a
majority of the electorate was entitled to rule. Their ideals were those
of the Declaration of Independence, which were not very popular in New
England, and which were just then being repudiated in the planter
sections of the South. They lived the lives of simple farmers and daily
practiced the doctrine of social equality, and hence they could not
understand why others should not do the same, or why there should be
anything difficult or complex in the work of the incoming President.

In all the Western States almost every office was filled by popular
election. Legislatures met annually and unpopular men or measures could
be promptly recalled, to employ a modern term. Even the judges of the
courts were subject to frequent election and were quite attentive to
popular opinion; while United States Senators must canvass for votes in
ardent campaigns which strongly resembled the primary contests of the
South and West to-day. But this democracy of the larger section of the
country which supported Jackson was counterbalanced by the prestige and
experience of its allies of the South, where, by reason of the
three-fifths rule of representation for the slaves, which gave the
master of slaves a privileged position, and of long political habit, a
few planters exercised power out of all proportion to their numbers.

Still the history of the country after 1812 indicated that the Western
voters and not the Eastern leaders would control the Government while
Jackson was President. These voters were nationalists and their position
made them look to the Federal Government for better roads and improved
markets; they were expansionists who not only coveted the lands of the
Indians, but wanted also to seize the territory of their neighbors. They
were already taking possession of Texas, and Thomas H. Benton and Lewis
Cass, of Michigan, their most popular leaders after Jackson, were
already the exponents of an early imperialism which would never rest
until the shores of the Pacific became the western frontier of the
United States. In every State that bordered on the Mississippi this
sentiment was ardent, and many good men were ready to make war upon
Mexico for Texas or upon England for Oregon, whose boundaries no one
knew and whose titl