place in Washington society,
and there were ugly stories about the conduct of Mrs. Timberlake with
Senator Eaton before the death of Timberlake, who killed himself at sea.
Washington society believed these stories. President Jackson refused to
believe them, and became Mrs. Eaton's champion. His zeal in her cause
knew no bounds, and he wished his secretaries and their wives to help
him. But the Cabinet ladies would not visit or receive Mrs. Eaton, and
their husbands refused to interfere. Calhoun, the Vice-President, also
declined to take up Mrs. Eaton's cause. Mr. Van Buren, a widower, showed
the lady marked attention.

For once in his life, Andrew Jackson was defeated. Creeks and Spaniards
and Redcoats he could conquer, but the ladies of Washington never
surrendered, and Peggy Eaton, though her affairs became a national
question, never got into Washington society. Jackson, however, did not
forget who had been his friends in a little matter any more than if it
had been the greatest affair of state.

It was already a question whether Calhoun or Van Buren should lead the
Jackson party at the end of the one term which Jackson had declared to
be the limit of his stay in the White House. Calhoun's friends in the
Cabinet, and General Duff Green, of "The Telegraph," were active in his
interest. Van Buren, however, was constantly growing in favor with the
President. When at last Jackson discovered that Calhoun, as a member of
Monroe's Cabinet, had wished to censure him for his conduct in Florida,
he and the Vice-President broke forever. Meantime, a great public
question had arisen on which the two men stood out as representatives of
two opposite theories of the Union. The estrangement begun over Peggy
Eaton widened into a breach between a State and the United States,
between the nullifier of the laws and the defender of the Union.

For the pendulum had swung, and it was no longer the Federalist
merchants of New England, but the planters of the South, and
particularly of South Carolina, who were discontent with the policy of
the government. New England had turned to manufactures some of the
energy she had formerly given to commerce and seafaring, and was now in
favor of a protective tariff. Webster, her foremost man at Washington,
had voted against the tariff of 1816, but had changed his mind and
supported a higher tariff in 1824, and a still higher in 1828. The
planters of the South had not found it easy to develop manufacture