In all Aaron asks or works for, the loyal Bucktails are at once his voice and his arm. In requital he shows them how to perpetuate their control of the town. He tells them to break down a property qualification, and extend the voting franchise to every man, whether he be landholder or no.
“Let’s make Jack as good as his master,” says Aaron. “It will please Jack, and hurt his master’s pride—both good things in their way.”
It is a rare strategy, one not only calculated to strengthen Tammany, but drive the knife to the aristocratic hearts of the Clintons, the Livingstons and the Schuylers.
“Better be ruled by a man without an estate, than by an estate without a man!” cries Aaron, and his Bucktails take up the shout.
The proposal becomes a law. With that one stroke of policy, Aaron destroys caste, humbles the pride of his enemies, and gives State and town, bound hand and foot, into the secure fingers of his faithful Bucktails.
Time flows on, and Aaron is triumphant. King Caucus is stricken down; Jefferson, with his Virginians are beaten, and Jackson is named by a convention.
In the four-cornered war that ensues, Jackson runs before the other three, but fails of the constitutional majority in the electoral college. In the House, a deal between Adams and Clay defeats Jackson, and Adams goes to the White House.
Aaron is unmoved.
“I am threescore years and ten,” says he—“the allotted space of man. Now I know that I am to live surely four years more; for I shall yet see Jackson President.”
Adams fears Aaron, as long ago his father feared him. He strives to win his Bucktails from him with a shower of appointments.