son ninety-nine, Crawford forty-one, and Clay thirty-seven, which rendered it necessary for the House of Representatives to decide the question. Clay threw all his influence in favor of Adams, and secured his choice. As the President appointed Clay Secretary of State, Jackson and his supporters charged the Kentuckian with corrupt motives, and imputed to the President a lack of integrity. Although there is no good reason for believing those charges, they probably had much weight in defeating him for a second term, when he received only eighty-three votes out of two hundred and sixty-one. Adams favored internal improvements, the protection of home manufactures, and was principled against removing men from office merely for difference of political views. March 4, 1829, hẹ retired to Quincy, Mass., formerly called Braintree, where he had been born, July 11, 1767, nearly sixty-two years before. The next year he was sent to Congress, to the surprise of everybody, because previous Presidents had never been willing to return to Washington in any political capacity. He continued in the House of Representatives for seventeen years, showing more ability and gaining more reputation than ever before. He was generally regarded as a model legislator, no one surpassing him in application and powers of endurance, not to speak of talents and learning. While he generally sided with the Whigs, he was independent in his opinions and conduct. He won most renown by his defense of the right of petition and his unyielding opposi tion to what he denounced as the constant encroachments of the slave power. Although the House had adopted a rule that no petition bearing on slavery should be read, printed, or debated, Adams persisted in presenting such petitions, one by one, sometimes to the number of two hundred in a day, and demanding action on each separate petition. The most violent anger, menace, and abuse from the Southerners never moved him from his conscientious course, and his coolness, under the circumstances, only added to and intensified their vituperative wrath. He died at his post of an attack of paralysis, February 23, 1848, aged eighty, his last words being, "I am content." John Quincy Adams was more scholarly than his father, but not his equal in native force of intellect. He wrote fluently and copiously, but his style was verbose and inflated, wholly inferior to John Adams's simple, strong, idiomatic English. They were Unitarians; they resembled one another in appearance as well as in energy, firmness, and unwavering courage, and both had passionate tempers and hot prejudices. They were eminently representatives of New England, and despite their faults, many though not grievous, they were of sturdy stuff, and an honor to Ameri can history. CHAPTER XLI. ANDREW JACKSON, MARTIN VAN BUREN, AND WM. HENRY HARRISON, SEVENTH, EIGHTH, AND NINTH PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES. Jackson the First Unmixed Democrat - His Election Regarded in Virginia and Massachusetts with Surprise and Disgust — His Uncouth and Untaught Youth - His Chivalrous Delicacy toward Women - His Morbid Sensibility about His Wife's Reputation - His Combats with Indians Various Recounters and Duels - The Hermitage - The Seminole War - Battle of New Orleans - His Determination to Hang the Nullifiers — Honest, Single-minded, and Patriotic - Van Buren as Democrat and Free-soiler - His Contented Old Age - Harrison as an Indian Fighter - The Log Cabin Campaign. A ANDREW JACKSON. GREATER difference than that between Andrew Jackson and his presidential predecessors cannot well be conceived. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and the Adamses, had all been men of education, refinement, breeding, accustomed to good society and polite usages. Jackson was an illiterate, untrained, rustic, violent man, whose life, spent in a semi-civilized region, had been marked by savage personal combats and many disgraceful scenes. His choice as Chief Executive denotes a new era in politics, and a great change in public sentiment. It is easy to understand with what surprise, pain, and dis⚫ (468) |