k with
the Bank charter, and Jackson promptly answered with a veto, and so the
two parties went to the country.

Jackson went into the campaign with an advantage drawn from his
successful conduct of two foreign negotiations. His administration had
secured from England an agreement by which the trade with the West
Indies, closed to Americans ever since the Revolution, was opened again,
and from France a promise to pay large claims for spoliations on
American commerce which had been presented many times before. He was
also undoubtedly supported by the great majority of the people in the
stand he took against the nullifiers. What the people would decide about
the tariff was doubtful; but as between a system, even though it were
called the American system, and an old hero, the Democrats were not
afraid of the people's choice. The great fight was over the Bank, and on
that question Jackson was supported by the prejudices of the poor, who
thought of the Bank merely as a rich men's institution, by the fears of
the ignorant, who believed the Bank to be a mysterious and monstrous
affair, and by the instinct of liberty in many others, who, though they
did not believe the charges against Biddle, did feel that there was
danger in so powerful a financial agency so closely connected with the
government.

Moreover, the opposition was divided. A party bitterly opposed to Free
Masonry had sprung into existence, and Jackson was a Mason. But the
Anti-Masons, instead of supporting Clay, nominated a third candidate.
South Carolina threw her votes away on a fourth.

Jackson got 219 electoral votes to 49 for Clay, 11 for Floyd, the
nullification candidate, and seven for Wirt, the Anti-Mason candidate.
His popular vote was more than twice Clay's, and he actually carried the
New England States of Maine and New Hampshire. If, during his first
term, he exercised his great office like a general, he entered upon the
second with even a firmer belief that he ought to have his way in all
things. The people had given an answer to Clay and Biddle and Calhoun
and Marshall; to the corrupters of the government and the enemies of the
President; to the nullifiers of the law and the slanderers of Peggy
Eaton. He understood his overwhelming victory as the people's warrant to
go on with all he had begun.

But neither the nullifiers nor the Bank were willing to give up. In
November, 1832, a South Carolina convention passed an ordinance, to go
into effect Fe