he will of the people. Where Jackson was mistaken was in
deducing that Adams and Clay were utterly dishonourable and unprincipled
men. He was a soldier judging politicians. But the people judged them in
the same fashion.

From that moment Jackson drew the sword and threw away the scabbard. He
and his followers fought the Adams administration step by step and hour
by hour, and every preparation was made for the triumphant return of
Jackson at the next election. If there was plenty of scurrility against
Adams and Clay in the journals of the Jacksonian party, it must be owned
that the scribblers who supported the Administration stooped lower when
they sought to attack Jackson through his wife, whom he had married
under circumstances which gave a handle to slander. The nation was
overwhelmingly with Jackson, and the Government of Quincey Adams was
almost as much hated and abused as that of old John Adams had been. The
tendency of recent American writers has been to defend the unpopular
President and to represent the campaign against him and his Secretary as
grossly unjust. The fact is that many of the charges brought against
both were quite unfounded, but that the real and just cause of the
popular anger against the Administration was its tainted origin.

The new elections came in 1828, and the rejected of Congress carried the
whole country. The shadowy figment of the "Electoral College," already
worn somewhat thin, was swept away and Jackson was chosen as by a
plebiscite. That was the first and most important step in the Jacksonian
Revolution. The founders of the Republic, while acknowledging the
sovereignty of the people, had nevertheless framed the Constitution with
the intention of excluding the people from any direct share in the
election of the Chief Magistrate. The feeble check which they had
devised was nullified. The Sovereign People, baulked in 1824, claimed
its own in 1828, and Jackson went to the White House as its direct
nominee.

His first step was to make a pretty thorough clearance of the
Departmental Offices from the highest to the lowest. This action, which
inaugurated what is called in America the "Spoils System" and has been
imitated by subsequent Presidents down to the present time, is
legitimately regarded as the least defensible part of Jackson's policy.
There can be little doubt that the ultimate effect was bad, especially
as an example; but in Jackson's case there were extenuating
circumstances.