introduction of new methods of locomotion, not only created a new constituency, but surrounded the voters with industrial, social, and political conditions utterly unlike those of the days of Washington. New issues, new questions, new points of view followed, and new leaders, sprung in every case from the honest, hard-working masses, rose to guide the people in their efforts to settle the problems of self-government-Federal, State, and municipal-forced on them by the changed state of society. Had these questions and issues been national in their character, it might have been possible for some statesman of that day to have so towered above his fellows as to have won the support of the whole country. But they were not national; they were sectional, and, hampered by them, no leader could expect to become the candidate of any section save that whose peculiar views and interests he represented. The uncontested and unanimous election of Monroe in 1820 meant nothing. It was a graceful compliment to the last representative of the statesmen of the Revolution. Precedent entitled him to another term, and he received it; but no sooner was he a second time sworn into office than the four quarters of the Union hastened to put forward men to succeed him.

Late in the autumn of 1821, while the Legislature of South Carolina was holding session, a majority of the Republican members met in caucus and nominated or, as they expressed it, recommended William Lowndes for the Presidency. Lowndes had not the smallest chance of success, yet the action of his friends so alarmed the supporters of the Secretary of War that in December, as soon as possible after Congress assembled, a delegation of Northern and Southern members waited on Calhoun and invited him to become a candidate. Meanwhile there suddenly loomed up in the far Southwest the most serious contestant of all.

Broken in health and wearied by a thousand petty annoyances, Andrew Jackson had resigned the governorship of Florida in 1821 and had gone back to Tennessee, fully determined to pass the remainder of his days in peace and quiet at the Hermitage. But he had not been long on his plantation when devoted admirers began to talk of him as a possible

1822.

JACKSON NOMINATED.

57

presidential candidate. We are told that he laughed at the idea, and declared he was too old and too broken in health to think of such a thing. But, in the opinion of his friends, he was just the man for the place and the hour. His name was familiar to every voter in the land. His services to the public had been many and great; yet he held no public office, and had not, as had Adams, Crawford, Calhoun, and Clay, drawn immense sums of money from the public treasury as the result of a life spent in office-holding. He did not belong to "the dynasty of the Secretaries," and was not an aristocrat, but a plain man of the people, who knew their needs and would respect their will. The subject of Jackson's candidacy was therefore broached to the public one day in January, 1822, in the Nashville Gazette, and found such a hearty indorsement in every part of Tennessee that nothing remained but to make the nomination, which the General Assembly did in August, 1822.* The friends of the Speaker now rallied, and in November a caucus of Kentucky legislators nominated Clay, and pledged themselves to support no other man.

No higher compliment could have been paid to Jackson, for nothing but his immense popularity enabled his managers to overcome the prejudice which long usage and party allegiance had built up in favor of a nomination by congressional caucus. Lest even this popularity might not

"The members of the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, taking into view the great importance of the selection of a suitable person to fill the presidential chair at the approaching election for the chief magistracy of the United States, and seeing that those who achieved our independence and laid the foundations of the American republic have nearly passed away, and believing that moral worth, political requirements, and decision of character should unite in the individual who may be called to preside over the people of the United States, have turned their eyes to Andrew Jackson, late major-general in the armies of the United States.

"In him they behold the soldier, the statesman, and the honest man; he deliberates, he decides, and he acts; he is calm in deliberation, cautious in decision, efficient in action. Such a man we are willing to aid in electing to the highest office in the gift of a free people. . . . Therefore,

"Resolved, As the opinion of the members composing the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, that the name of Major-General Andrew Jackson be submitted to the consideration of the people of the United States at the approaching election for the chief magistracy."

in the end triumph over the scruples of the voters, two judges of note were assigned the task of preparing for publication in the Nashville newspapers a series of articles attacking King Caucus, and justifying the propriety of legislative nomination. But precautions did not stop here. That the electoral colleges would fail to elect a President, and that the duty of providing a Chief Magistrate would fall on the House of Representatives, seemed almost certain. In such an event it was but natural to suppose that the members of the House would be more inclined to vote for a man they knew personally than for a man of whom they had merely heard, for the Secretary of War, or the Secretary of State, or the Secretary of the Treasury, or the Speaker, rather than for Andrew Jackson, who had neither place, patronage, nor power. An opportunity was therefore gladly seized to put Jackson in the company of congressmen, and in December, 1823, he took his seat as senator from the State of Tennessee.

As news of the nomination of Jackson by Tennessee spread over the Western States the people became enthusiastic. At last the Virginia dynasty was broken. At last the West was to have a candidate-no secretary, no diplomat, but a man of the people, devoted to their interests and knowing their wants. During the autumn and winter of 1822 and 1823 it was not possible for a dozen men to be assembled for any purpose without somebody making a canvass of Jackson's strength. On the steamboats as they went up and down the Mississippi, in the stage coaches, at the taverns, during military parades, wherever a court was sitting, the sense of those assembled was sure to be taken. At a meeting of citizens at Cincinnati early in January, 1823, De Witt Clinton was nominated and recommended to the people of Ohio and of the Union as a man worthy to be intrusted with the duties of the President. Almost at the same time the members of the

Ohio Legislature recommended Clay. When spring came and it was easier to go about, meetings were held to give public expression to the sentiments of the people.

One night in April a crowd gathered, pursuant to notice, at the Court-House at Louisville. The object of the meeting was to indorse the nomination of Jackson, and after a strug

1823.

JACKSON ENDORSED.

59

gle in which the friends of Clay came within seven votes of defeating this purpose, a long address was adopted. Voters were reminded that the strength of the several candidates was so equal that it was idle to expect a choice by the electoral colleges, and that an election by Congress was the greatest evil the country had to dread. To prevent this, said the addressers, we have searched among the candidates for the integrity, the patriotism, the well-tried public service which ought to distinguish each, and have found them in Jackson. The popularity of others is sectional or partisan, and their public service richly repaid by long years of office-holding; but the popularity of Jackson rests on the gratitude and confidence of the whole people. He is not an office-seeker, he is not a party man, and if elected will owe it to no congressional caucus nor to any legislative cabal, and will have no hungry office-seekers to reward.* At Nashville a popular meeting resolved that at the coming election the people ought to select the candidate; that he ought to be a citizen whose Republican principles had been tried by long experience, and whose political integrity, public virtue, and energy of character gave assurance that the Government would be administered with purity, and that Andrew Jackson was such a man. Still later in the year the citizens of Alleghany County, in Pennsylvania, met at Pittsburg and took a vote as to which of the five candidates they should indorse. Adams received sixty votes, Clay fifty, and Clinton a few more; but when Jackson's name was presented the resolution indorsing him was carried by acclamation. It was then resolved as the sense of the meeting that the decisive character, acknowledged ability, and public services of Jackson gave him the best-earned claims to the Presidency, and that his friends in every county in the State ought to come forward and say so. During the summer of 1823 the people in Tennessee pledged the candidates for Congress to vote for Jackson just as the people in Kentucky pledged theirs to vote for Clay, and in South Carolina to vote for Calhoun.

* Western Monitor, May 2, 1823. Ibid., May 16, 1823.

Richmond Enquirer, August 22, 1823.

The great South Carolinian had not, it was true, been formally nominated, but when the State Legislature assembled in November a caucus was held and the nomination made. The time had come, the resolution naming him set forth, when it was proper that each part of the Union should declare what man it deemed best fitted to be President. When the people of South Carolina recalled the public services, the distinguished talents, the superiority to local views and sectional prejudice, the zeal and energy displayed by John C. Calhoun in promoting the war with England, they were convinced that he was the man for President, and would support him at the coming election and recommended him to their fellow-citizens everywhere.

In North Carolina there were two favorites-Crawford and Calhoun and when the Legislature met, the friends of each made a trial of their strength over the election of a State printer. The Crawford men triumphed, whereupon the Calhounites brought in a resolution to instruct the senators and request the representatives in Congress to oppose a caucus, and to propose a constitutional amendment providing for the choice of presidential electors in districts. Consideration was put off till the fifth of February. It was then too late to act, for in February the caucus was called.

The Legislature of Georgia was next to act, and declared that the preference of the people of Georgia was for Crawford. If Crawford was to have the general support of the country, it could only be as the regular or caucus candidate of the party. The question of caucus or no caucus, therefore, became the political issue of the hour. If none was held, Crawford would cease to be a serious candidate. If the State Legislatures, acting in their legislative capacity, should instruct their senators and request their representatives not to attend a caucus, in all likelihood there would be none; and this Tennessee asked her sister States to do in a long preamble and set of resolutions adopted by her Legislature in November.

The General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, the preamble said, believed that the practice of nominating candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the United States at a meeting of members of Congress was unconstitu