Although he is so fond of them, Statesman Adams, in taking the latter snow-white position, overlooks an aphorism that will be vital while time lasts. He forgets that “The President who makes no removals will himself be removed.”
“Strike, lest you be stricken!” murmured Queen Elizabeth, as seizing the pen she signed the warrant of block and axe for Scottish Mary, and it might be well and wise for Statesman Adams to wear in constant mind that illustrious example.
The thought is vain. Statesman Adams ignores his friends, consults his foes, and offers a base picture of the ungrateful that draws the public's honest wrath his way. Wizard Lewis is no one to miss such opportunities to upbuild the General's fortunes at the expense of the enemy; and so the General grows each day stronger, while Statesman Adams—who hopes to succeed himself—owns less and less of strength.
The currents of time flow swiftly now, and four years go by—four years wherein the old friendly far-seeing fox, Colonel Burr, in his Nassau Street burrow, teaches the General's leaders intrigue as a pedagogue teaches the alphabet to his pupils. And day after day the purblind Adams, with the purblind Clay at the elbow of his hopes and fears, sets traps against his own prospects, and does his unwitting best or worst to destroy himself. Then comes the canvass: the General against Statesman Adams, who courts a reelection.
The moment the rival forces march upon the field, the dullest marks the superiority of the General's. With that, Statesman Clay—in the war saddle for Statesman Adams, whose battle is his battle and whose defeat means his downfall—loses his head. He accuses the General of every offense except that of theft, calls him every name save that of coward. The accusations fail; the epithets fall harmless to the ground; the people know, and draw the closer about the General's standards. The latter's popularity rises as might a hurricane, and sweeps away opposition like down of thistles!
Statesman Clay becomes frantic. Possessed as by a demon, he issues instructions to assail the blooming Rachel. His hound-pack obey the call. From that moment the General's marriage is the issue. He is charged with “stealing another's wife,” and every shaft of mendacious villification is shot against the unoffending bosom of the blooming Rachel. Those are fire-swept moments of anguish for the General, who feels the pain the more, since his hands are tied against what saw-handle methods silenced the dead Dickinson one May Kentucky morning in that poplar wood.
The blooming Rachel, for her wronged part, says never a word. She goes the oftener to the little church, but that is all. And yet, while she seems so resigned and patient beneath the slandrous lash, the thong is biting always to her soul's source.
The election takes place, and now the people speak. They set the grinding heel of their anger upon those slanders; they throw down that ladder of lies by which Statesman Adams hopes to climb. Wizard Lewis, Burr-guided, foils Statesman Clay at every point; the General rides down Statesman Adams like a coach and six.
New England is tribal and narrow, with the reeking taint of old Federalism in its veins; it gives itself for Statesman Adams, unredeemed save by a single district in Maine. There, indeed, rises up one electoral vote for the General. It shows in the gray waste of Adams sentiment about it, like a green tree and a fountain against the gray wastes of Sahara. New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland follow in New England's dreary wake for Statesman Adams; while New York gives him sixteen electoral votes out of thirty-six. That offers the round circumference of his Clay-collected strength—an electoral vote of eighty-three!
For the General, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois go headlong; while New York gives him twenty electoral votes, with Tennessee his own by a popular count of twenty for one. Statesman Clay, as a retort to the slanders he fulminated, beholds his own State of Kentucky reject him, and aid in swelling those one hundred and seventy-eight electoral votes which declare for the General. The world at large, seated by its fireside and sagely thumbing those returns of one hundred and seventy-eight for the General against a meager eighty-three for Statesman Adams, finds therein a stunning rebuke to both the ambitions and the methods of Statesman Clay.