Such was the Jackson Cabinet which accompanied him into office. There have been greater Cabinets, but many inferior to it, and few with men possessing greater ability than Van Buren or Berrien, or more social distinction than Branch. There was not a single member who did not possess at least good ability, and Jackson had, or thought he had, what he said he proposed to have, a Cabinet without a presidential aspirant. It is strange that the one man who developed into a candidate almost immediately was the one to whom he became most ardently attached.

We shall now note the first troubles of the official family.

CHAPTER III
THE RED TERROR AND THE WHITE

I

Thirteen days after the inauguration, the Senate, having confirmed the Cabinet, adjourned, and the Administration could look forward to almost nine months of non-interference from the Congress. The pre-inaugural prediction that the President would adopt a policy of proscription of his political foes was almost immediately justified by events. The “spoils system,” as an important cog in the machinery of political parties, thus frankly recognized, dates from this time. Through all the intervening years the civil service reformers have indulged in the most bitter denunciation of Jackson on the untenable theory that but for him public offices would never have been used as the spoils of party. Some of the most conscientious of historians have created the impression that the adoption of a prescriptive policy was due to something inherently wrong in the President. As a matter of fact, Jackson was the victim of conditions and circumstances, and the new political weapon grew out of the exigencies of a new political era.

For many years political parties had been chaotic, vapory, and indefinite; and if the politics of the young Republic had not been drifting toward personal government, it had been partaking of the nature of government by cliques and classes. The first Message of John Quincy Adams had made the definite division of the people into political parties inevitable—these parties standing for well-defined, antagonistic policies. Van Buren had early caught the drift and had cleverly organized a party standing for principles and policies, rather than for personalities. John M. Clayton, soon to become one of the outstanding figures of the Opposition to the Jackson Administration, who had seldom voted even in presidential elections because of his indifference to the mere ambitions of individuals, understood that in 1828 something more was involved, and threw himself into the contest in support of Adams. And Clay was even then looking forward to the organization of a party pledged to internal improvements and a protective tariff.

The Jackson Administration marks the beginning of political parties as we have known them for almost a century.

It was in this compaign, too, that the masses awakened to the fact that they had interests involved, and possessed power. Previous to this the aristocracy, the business and financial interests, and the intellectuals, alone, determined the governmental personnel. Men went into training for the Presidency, and, as in a lodge, passed, as a matter of course, from the Cabinet to the Vice-Presidency, and thence to the chief magistracy. An office-holding class, feeling itself secure in a life tenure, had grown up.

As we have seen, the election of Jackson was due to the rising of the masses. Thousands who had never before participated in politics played influential parts in the campaign. The victory, they considered theirs. Thus they had flocked to Washington as never before to an inauguration, rejoicing in the induction of “their” President into office, and all too many pressing claims to recognition and entertaining hopes of entering upon their reward. Before the inauguration, the grim old warrior, awaiting the opportunity, at Gadsby’s, to take the oath of office, had been fairly mobbed by ardent partisans of his cause, demanding the expulsion of the enemy and the appointment of his supporters to office. The Jackson press had been particularly insistent upon this point. Duff Green, of the “National Telegraph,” had early announced that he naturally assumed that the office-holders who had actively campaigned for Adams would make way for the victors. This same feeling had spread into every community in the country. Isaac Hill, writing in the “New Hampshire Patriot” immediately after the election, had sounded the onslaught for the Democracy of New England.[177] And soon after reaching Washington, and sensing the atmosphere at Gadsby’s, the New England editor had written joyously to a friend: “You may say to all our anxious Adamsites that The Barnacles will be scraped clean off the Ship of State. Most of them have grown so large and stick so tight that the scraping process will doubtless be fatal to them.”

Before Jackson’s entry into the White House, the scenes in and about Gadsby’s were scarcely less than scandalous. A great perspiring mob swarmed in the streets in front, crowded the tap-room, jostled its way in the halls, and, notwithstanding the efforts of Major Lewis, it demanded and secured admission to the President’s private apartment. All admitted themselves responsible for Jackson’s election. Amos Kendall, encountering a pompous stranger on the Avenue, was invited to look upon the man who had “delivered Pennsylvania.”[178] James A. Hamilton, who was close to Jackson in the early days of the Administration, was importuned by an Indianian, who had taken the electoral vote of the State to the Capitol, to intercede on his behalf for the Register’s office at Crawfordsville, or the Marshalship. This typical office-seeker had “calculated to remain a few weeks ... hoping that some of these violent Adams men may receive their walking papers.” He carried letters of recommendation from all the Democratic members of the State Legislature “for any office I can ask.” But, in view of the brisk competition, would not Hamilton kindly recall that he had received letters from the Hoosier bearing on the campaign, and personally testify to the important part he had played?[179] Others depended upon the length of their petitions, and two applicants from Pennsylvania, for the same office, had signers so numerous that the number had to be estimated by the length of the sheets.[180]