Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

The election of Jackson to the Presidency in 1828 was not in any sense a revolution as to the general policy of the Government, but it was a decided revolution in the political methods of our national administrations. Madison, Monroe, and Adams were not confronted by the spoils system. They never entertained the question of removing men from office to reward political friends or to punish political enemies.

The civil service system of the Government under those administrations was an ideal system, but the Jackson leaders openly inspired the followers of their favorite to earnest political action by the declaration that “to the victors belong the spoils.” That slogan was first heard in the Jackson-Adams campaign of 1828, and when Jackson succeeded, for the first time Washington was overrun with a countless host of greedy spoilsmen, clamoring for the dismissal of every man who had not supported Jackson.

Jackson himself was thoroughly committed to the policy of political proscription, and from that day until the present time it has been generally accepted that a change of politics in the national administrations means a general change of the now enormous army of Federal officers, excepting as it is feebly restrained by all parties professing devotion to a civil service system with none honestly maintaining it.

When it is remembered that Jackson was defeated by Adams in 1824, although having more popular and electoral votes than Adams, it is not surprising that the friends of Jackson became intensely embittered, and they opened the campaign of 1828 immediately after the inauguration of Adams in 1825. In the Southwest, where Jackson lived and had his chief strength outside of Pennsylvania, the cockpit, the race-course and the gaming-table were favorite amusements, and the people were strongly prejudiced against what they regarded as the aristocratic power that had been maintained by the Virginia Presidents and continued by Adams. They had a candidate who enthused his followers to the uttermost, and the quiet citizens of Washington, long used to the delectable and cultivated official circles which had prevailed from Washington to the second Adams, were shocked at the mob of Democratic place-hunters who crowded into the Capitol when Jackson became President, and had access to the White House regardless of conventionality, where Jackson is reported to have smoked his corn-cob pipe during his greeting of visitors. With Jackson came the spoils system that has done so much to demoralize the politics of the Republic.

Jackson held a very strong position before the nation, not only because of his triumph over the British at New Orleans, but because of the high civil positions which he had filled with reasonable credit, but without displaying any high standard of statesmanship. He aided in framing the Tennessee Constitution in 1796, and was elected as the first Representative in Congress by the people after the admission of the State, then entitled to only one member.

He had been an ardent supporter of Jefferson in his first contest with the elder Adams, and in 1797 he was elected to the United States Senate, but he resigned a year later to become a Judge of the Supreme Court of the State, where he served until 1804, and was again elected Senator in 1823. He had filled all those important civil positions before he had attained any military distinction. He had served in the last year of the war of the revolution as a boy, and the only thing notable that is preserved of his military record of that day is the tradition that after he had been captured by the British he was wounded by an English officer because he refused to clean the officer’s boots.

It is not likely that he ever would have been a prominent candidate for President but for the fact that he defeated the English in the battle of New Orleans on the 8th of January, 1815. Had there been steamships, cables, and telegraphs at that time Jackson could never have commanded the hero worship that twice elected him President and made him practically political dictator.

The treaty of peace between England and the United States was signed at Ghent on December 24, 1814, but it required nearly a month for the Government to receive information that the treaty had been signed and that the war was ended. On January 8, 1815, more than a fortnight after England and the United States were actually at peace by their own treaty, the battle of New Orleans was fought between Jackson and Packenham, and a victory achieved over the English that then electrified the country as thoroughly as did Dewey’s victory at Manila. That victory, and that victory alone, made Jackson President, and with his rugged and indomitable will, for nearly a generation he stamped his impress upon the policy of the Government with greater emphasis than any other living man since Washington.

The Presidential contest of 1828 formally began soon after the inauguration of Adams, when the Legislature of Tennessee presented Jackson as a candidate, and the criticisms of the Adams administration revived much of the political asperities and resentments of the violent discussions between the old Federalist and Republican parties in the days of Jefferson and the elder Adams. One of the reasons strongly urged against the re-election of Adams was that his administration had become recklessly extravagant, as the expenditures of the Government under him had reached the enormous sum of nearly $14,000,000 a year.

Adams was attacked also because of his liberal views on the questions of protection and public improvements, although Jackson had sustained nearly or quite the same views by his votes in Congress. Adams had no trained political leaders; his Cabinet was divided even on the question of supporting himself, and the ideal statesmanship that Adams worshipped was not calculated to school and equip great politicians. Chiefly through the efforts of Martin Van Buren the supporters of Crawford were brought into the support of Jackson, a feat that was probably not difficult from the fact that Clay, the Secretary of State under Adams, was not friendly with Crawford.