President Adams enjoined neutrality upon his friends but some of them, acting with Democrats who were opposed to the election of General Jackson, had published and circulated, as an offset to General Eaton's book, a thick pamphlet entitled, "Reminiscences; or, an Extract from the Catalogue of General Jackson's Youthful Indiscretions, between the Age of Twenty-three and Sixty," which contained an account of Jackson's fights, brawls, affrays, and duels, numbered from one to fourteen. Broadsides, bordered with wood-cuts of coffins, and known as "coffin hand-bills," narrated the summary and unjust execution as deserters of a number of militiamen in the Florida campaign whose legal term of service had expired. Another handbill gave the account of General Jackson's marriage to Mrs. Robards before she had been legally divorced from her husband.
General Jackson's friends also had printed and circulated large editions of campaign songs, the favorite being "The Hunters of Kentucky," which commenced:
"You've heard, I s'pose of New Orleans,
'Tis famed for youth and beauty,
There're girls of every hue, it seems,
From snowy white to sooty,
Now Packenham had made his brags,
If he that day was lucky,
He'd have those girls and cotton-bags
In spite of old Kentucky.
But Jackson, he was wide awake,
And was not scared at trifles,
For well he knew Kentucky's boys,
With their death-dealing rifles.
He led them down to cypress swamp,
The ground was low and mucky,
There stood John Bull in martial pomp,
And here stood old Kentucky.
"Oh! Kentucky, the hunters of Kentucky!"
After a political campaign of unprecedented bitterness, General Jackson was elected, receiving one hundred and seventy-eight electoral votes against eighty-three cast for John Quincy Adams, and so a new chapter was commenced in the social as well as the political chronicles of the National Capital. Those who had known the Presidential successors of Washington as educated and cultivated gentlemen, well versed in the courtesies of private life and of ceremonious statesmanship, saw them succeeded by a military chieftain, whose life had been "a battle and a march," thickly studded with personal difficulties and duels; who had given repeated evidences of his disregard of the laws when they stood in the way of his imperious will; and who, when a United States Senator, had displayed no ability as a legislator. His election was notoriously the work of Martin Van Buren, inspired by Aaron Burr, and with his inauguration was initiated a sordidly selfish political system entirely at variance with the broad views of Washington and of Hamilton.
It was assumed that every citizen had his price; that neither virtue nor genius was proof against clever although selfish corruption; that political honestly was a farce; and that the only way of governing those knaves who elbowed their way up through the masses was to rule them by cunning more acute than their own and knavery more subtle and calculating than theirs.
Before leaving his rural home in Tennessee, General Jackson had been afflicted by the sudden death of his wife. "Aunt Rachel," as Mrs. Jackson was called by her husband's personal friends, had accompanied him to Washington when he was there as a Senator from Tennessee. She was a short, stout, unattractive, and uneducated woman, though greatly endeared to General Jackson. While he had been in the army she had carefully managed his plantation, his slaves, and his money matters, and her devotion to him knew no bounds. Her happiness was centered in his, and it was her chief desire to smoke her corn-cob pipe in peace at his side. When told that he had been elected President of the United States, she replied, "Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake I am glad of it, but for myself I am not." A few weeks later she was arrayed for the grave in a white satin costume which she had provided herself with to wear at the White House. After her funeral her sorrow-stricken husband came to Washington with a stern determination to punish those who had maligned her during the preceding campaign. Having been told that President Adams had sanctioned the publication of the slanders, he did not call at the White House, in accordance with the usage, but paid daily visits to old friends in the War Department. Mr. Adams, stung by this neglect, determined not to play the part of the conquered leader of the inauguration, and quietly removed to the house of Commodore Porter, in the suburbs, on the morning of the 3d of March.
The weather on the 4th of March, 1829, was serene and mild, and at an early hour Pennsylvania Avenue, then unpaved, with a double row of poplar trees along its centre, was filled with crowds of people, many of whom had journeyed immense distances on foot. The officials at Washington, who were friends of Mr. Adams, had agreed not to participate in the inaugural ceremonies, and the only uniformed company of light infantry, commanded by Colonel Seaton, of the National Intelligencer, had declined to offer its services as an escort. A number of old Revolutionary officers, however, had hastily organized themselves, and waited on General Jackson to solicit the honor of forming his escort to the Capitol, an offer which was cordially accepted. The General rode in an open carriage which had been placed at his disposal, and was surrounded by these gallant veterans. The assembled thousands cheered lustily as their favorite passed along, every face radiant with defiant joy, and every voice shouting "Hurrah for Jackson!"
After the installation of John C. Calhoun as Vice-President in the Senate Chamber, the assembled dignitaries moved in procession through the rotunda to the east front of the Capitol. As the tall figure of the President-elect came out upon the portico and ascended the platform, uplifted hats and handkerchiefs waved a welcome, and shouts of "Hurrah for Jackson!" rent the air. Looking around for a moment into ten thousand upturned and exultant human faces, the President-elect removed his hat, took the manuscript of his address from his pocket, and read it with great dignity. When he had finished, Chief Justice Marshall administered the oath, and as the President, bending over the sacred Book, touched it with his lips, there arose such a shout as was never before heard in Washington, followed by the thunder of cannons, from two light batteries near by, echoed by the cannon at the Navy Yard and at the Arsenal. The crowd surged toward the platform, and had it not been that a ship's cable had been stretched across the portico steps would have captured their beloved leader. As it was, he shook hands with hundreds, and it was with some difficulty that he could be escorted back to his carriage and along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. Meanwhile Mr. Adams, who had refused to participate in the pageant, was taking his usual constitutional horseback exercise when the thunders of the cannon reached his ears and notified him that he was again a private citizen.
The broad sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue were again packed as the procession returned from the Capitol. "I never saw such a crowd," wrote Daniel Webster to a friend. "Persons have come five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger." Hunters of Kentucky and Indian fighters of Tennessee, with sturdy frontiersmen from the Northwest, were mingled in the throng with the more cultured dwellers on the Atlantic slope.