No combination of statesmen are wise enough to prevent the occasional recurrence of "hard times." Nearly everyone has a cure for the blight, and the intervals between them are irregular, but they still descend upon us, when most unexpected and when it seems we are least prepared to bear them. No one needs a long memory to recall one or two afflictions of that nature.
THE FIRST "HARD TIMES."
The first financial stringency visited the country in 1819. The establishment in 1817 of the Bank of the United States had so improved credit and increased the facilities for trade that a great deal of wild speculation followed. The officers of the branch bank in Baltimore were dishonest and loaned more than $2,000,000 beyond its securities. The President stopped the extravagant loans, exposed the rogues, and greatly aided in bringing back the country to a sound financial basis, although the Bank of the United States narrowly escaped bankruptcy—a calamity that would have caused distress beyond estimate.
Amid the stirring political times our commerce suffered from the pirates who infested the West Indies. Their depredations became so annoying that in 1819 Commodore Perry, of Lake Erie fame, was sent out with a small squadron to rid the seas of the pests. Before he could accomplish anything, he was stricken with yellow fever and died. Other squadrons were dispatched to southern waters, and in 1822 more than twenty piratical vessels were destroyed in the neighborhood of Cuba. Commodore Porter followed up the work so effectively that the intolerable nuisance was permanently abated.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1824.
There were plenty of presidential candidates in 1824. Everybody now was a Republican, and the choice, therefore, lay between the men of that political faith. The vote was as follows: Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, 99; John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, 84; Henry Clay, of Kentucky, 37; William H. Crawford, of Georgia, 41. For Vice-President: John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, 182; Nathan Sandford, of New York, 30; Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina, 24; Andrew Jackson, 13; Martin Van Buren, of New York, 9; Henry Clay, 2.
This vote showed that no candidate was elected, and the election, therefore, was thrown into the House of Representatives. Although Jackson was far in the lead on the popular and electoral vote, the friends of Clay united with the supporters of Adams, who became President, with Calhoun Vice-President. The peculiar character of this election led to its being called the "scrub race for the presidency."
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
John Quincy Adams, the sixth President, was born at Braintree, Massachusetts, July 11, 1767, and was the son of the second President. He was given every educational advantage in his youth, and when eleven years old accompanied his father to France and was placed in a school in Paris. Two years later he entered the University of Leyden, afterward made a tour through the principal countries of Europe, and, returning home, entered the junior class at Harvard, from which he graduated in 1788. Washington appreciated his ability, and made him minister to The Hague and afterward to Portugal. When his father became President he transferred him to Berlin. The Federalists elected him to the United States Senate in 1803, and in 1809 he was appointed minister to Russia. He negotiated important commercial treaties with Prussia, Sweden, and Great Britain, and, it will be remembered, he was leading commissioner in the treaty of Ghent, which brought the War of 1812 to a close. He was a man of remarkable attainments, but he possessed little magnetism or attractiveness of manner, and by his indifference failed to draw warm friends and supporters around him. Adams was re-elected to Congress repeatedly after serving out his term as President. He was seized with apoplexy while on the point of rising from his desk in the House of Representatives, and died February 23, 1848.