The billiard table was not the only basis for charges of prodigal living brought against Adams. When he ran for reëlection, his enemies made effective use of a letter written by a member of Congress who had attended a New Year’s reception at the White House and who mentioned the “gorgeously furnished east room.” The truth was that the east room, except for three marble-topped tables and a few mirrors, did not contain fifty dollars’ worth of furniture of any sort. A Washingtonian of the period has written that there were no chandeliers, and that the great room depended for its lighting on candles held in tin candlesticks nailed to the wall, which “dripped their sperm upon the clothes of those who came under them, as I well know from experience.”
Adams sometimes aroused personal hostility by his peppery temper. He had to dine with him one evening a Southern Senator who was notorious for his dislike of everything in New England but prided himself on his knowledge of wines. The Senator had the bad manners to remark that he had “never known a Unitarian who did not believe in the sea-serpent.” This aroused the ire of Adams, who later, when his guest said that Tokay and Rhine wine were somewhat alike, turned upon him with the exclamation: “Sir, I do not believe that you ever drank a drop of Tokay in your life!” He afterward apologized, but the Senator would not accept the apology and became the implacable foe of his administration.
Jackson’s election in 1828 was a foregone conclusion from the moment he reappeared as a Presidential candidate; and, immediately upon the announcement that he had won an electoral vote a good deal more than double that of Adams, Washington became the Mecca of a hundred pilgrimages. By the fourth of March, 1829, the city was so crowded with worshipers of the President-elect that they overflowed the inns and boarding-houses, and many were obliged to live in camp. Half the men wore their trousers tucked into their boot-legs, and not a few carried pistols openly in their belts. The hickory emblem was in evidence everywhere: men wielded hickory canes and staffs, women wore bonnets trimmed with hickory leaves and necklaces composed of hickory nuts fancifully painted, and scores of horses were driven with bridles of hickory bark.
Like his father, Adams did not attend the inauguration of his successor; he withdrew to a hired dwelling on the heights north of the city and kept to himself till the flurry was over. Probably Jackson did not regret his absence, for the campaign had been surcharged with bitter personalities, into which the name
Bladensburg Duelling-Ground
of Mrs. Jackson was remorselessly dragged. Mrs. Jackson had died since election day, and the General believed her death the direct result of calumny.
Madison had set the fashion, and Monroe and Adams had improved upon it, of having a formal escort to the Capitol on the way to inauguration. Jackson, however, refused to follow custom. As the only militia organization in the city was under command of a colonel who hated him, he had no military display, but walked down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue with only a body-guard composed of veterans of the War of the Revolution, then a half-century past. For any lack of enthusiasm on the part of the resident population, that of the visiting Jacksonians more than compensated. All the way the General and his little party were so surrounded by a yelling, cheering crowd that they could advance only at a snail’s pace. To watchers on Capitol Hill he was distinguishable from the mob by being the one man in the midst of it who walked bareheaded.
Jackson was the first President to take the oath of office on the east portico of the Capitol, the place now generally used. He also was the first to read his speech before being sworn. He wore two pairs of spectacles,—a pair for looking at the crowd and a pair for reading; when he was using one pair, the other was perched aloft on his forehead. At the close of the exercises, he mounted a fine white horse and rode to the White House, again having to make his way through a mass of singing and shouting admirers. At the mansion a feast had been provided, and the gates thrown open to every one. The building was soon stuffed full; and, as the people waiting outside could hardly hope to force their way in, negro servants came to the doors with buckets of punch and salvers of cakes and ices and passed these out. Much of the food and drink was wasted, and much china and glassware smashed. Women fainted, men quarreled and bruised one another’s faces. At one stage the doorways became so blocked that people coming out had to climb through the windows and drop to the ground. The rabble inside, bent on shaking the hand of the President, jammed him against a wall to the serious peril of his ribs, till he succeeded in escaping through a back entry and taking refuge in the hotel where he had lately had his lodgings.
The boisterous incidents of his first day in office were only an earnest of the stormy administration which lay before Jackson. Realizing how much he was indebted to New York for his election, and that Martin Van Buren had a powerful following there, he appointed Van Buren his Secretary of State. This proved a pretty lucky investment in human nature; for in the Peggy Eaton controversy, which broke out soon after Jackson began his term, Van Buren was a valuable ally. General John H. Eaton, a lifelong friend whom Jackson had appointed Secretary of War, had been boarding for several years with a local tavern-keeper named O’Neal. The publican’s daughter, Peggy, had grown up a pretty, but pert and forward girl, who flirted with her father’s patrons and married one of them, Purser Timberlake of the navy. Timberlake was addicted to drink, and during one of his cruises he ended a spree by suicide, leaving his wife and children destitute; and Eaton, whose name gossip had already linked with the widow’s, came to the front with an offer of marriage, which was accepted.