As election year approached, it became clear that the people would at last have an opportunity to make a direct choice between Adams and Jackson. Each candidate was formally nominated by sundry legislatures and other bodies; no one so much as suggested nomination by congressional caucus. In the early months of 1828 the campaign rapidly rose to an extraordinary level of vigor and public interest. Each party group became bitter and personal in its attacks upon the other; in our entire political history there have been not more than two or three campaigns so smirched with vituperation and abuse. The Jackson papers and stump speakers laid great stress on Adams’s aristocratic temperament, denounced his policies as President, and exploited the “corrupt bargain” charge with all possible ingenuity.
On the other hand, the Adams-Clay forces dragged forth in long array Jackson’s quarrels, duels, and rough-and-tumble encounters to prove that he was not fit to be President; they distributed handbills decorated with coffins bearing the names of the candidate’s victims; they cited scores of actions, from the execution of mutinous militiamen in the Creek War to the quarrel with Callava, to show his arbitrary disposition; and they strove in a most malicious manner to undermine his popularity by breaking down his personal reputation, and even that of his wife and of his mother. It has been said that “the reader of old newspaper files and pamphlet collections of the Adamsite persuasion, in the absence of other knowledge, would gather that Jackson was a usurper, an adulterer, a gambler, a cock-fighter, a brawler, a drunkard, and withal a murderer of the most cruel and blood-thirsty description.” Issues—tariff, internal improvements, foreign policy, slavery—receded into the background; the campaign became for all practical purposes a personal contest between the Tennessee soldier and the two statesmen whom he accused of bargain and corruption. “Hurrah for Jackson!” was the beginning and end of the creed of the masses bent on the Tenneseean’s election.
Jackson never wearied of saying that he was “no politician.” He was, none the less, one of the most forceful and successful politicians that the country has known. He was fortunate in being able to personify a cause which was grounded deeply in the feelings and opinions of the people, and also in being able to command the services of a large group of tireless and skillful national and local managers. He was willing to leave to these managers the infinite details of his campaign. But he kept in close touch with them and their subordinates, and upon occasion he did not hesitate to take personal command. In politics, as in war, he was imperious; persons not willing to support him with all their might, and without question or quibble, he preferred to see on the other side. Throughout the campaign his opponents hoped, and his friends feared, that he would commit some deed of anger that would ruin his chances of election. The temptation was strong, especially when the circumstances of his marriage were dragged into the controversy. But while he chafed inwardly, and sometimes expressed himself with more force than elegance in the presence of his friends, he maintained an outward calm and dignity. His bitterest feeling was reserved for Clay, who was known to be the chief inspirer of the National Republicans’ mud-slinging campaign. But he felt that Adams had it in his power to put a stop to the slanders that were set in circulation, had he cared to do so.
As the campaign drew to a close, circumstances pointed with increasing sureness to the triumph of the Jackson forces. Adams, foreseeing the end, found solace in harsh and sometimes picturesque entries in his diary. A group of opposition Congressmen he pronounced “skunks of party slander.” Calhoun he described as “stimulated to frenzy by success, flattery, and premature advancement; governed by no steady principle, but sagacious to seize upon every prevailing popular breeze to swell his own sails.” Clay, likewise, became petulant and gloomy. In the last two months of the canvass Jackson ordered a general onslaught upon Kentucky, and when finally it was affirmed that the State had been “carried out from under” its accustomed master, Clay knew only too well that the boast was true. To Adams’s assurances that after four years of Jackson the country would gladly turn to the Kentuckian, the latter could only reply that there would, indeed, be a reaction, but that before another President would be taken from the West he would be too old; and it was with difficulty that Adams persuaded him not to retire immediately from the Cabinet.
The results of the contest fully bore out the apprehensions of the Administration. Jackson received nearly 140,000 more popular votes than Adams and carried every State south of the Potomac and west of the Alleghanies. He carried Pennsylvania also by a vote of two to one and divided about equally with his opponent the votes of New York and Maryland. Only New England held fast for Adams. As one writer has facetiously remarked, “It took a New England conscience to hold a follower in line for the New England candidate.” The total electoral vote was 178 for Jackson and 83 for Adams. Calhoun was easily reëlected to the vice presidency. Both branches of Congress remained under the control of Jackson’s partizans.
Months before the election, congratulatory messages began to pour into the Hermitage. Some came from old friends and disinterested well-wishers, many from prospective seekers of office or of other favors. Influential people in the East, and especially at the capital, hastened to express their desire to be of service to the Jacksons in the new life to which they were about to be called. In the list one notes with interest the names of General Thomas Cadwalader of Philadelphia, salaried lobbyist for the United States Bank, and Senator Robert Y. Hayne, the future South Carolina nullifier.
Returns sufficiently complete to leave no doubt of Jackson’s election reached the Hermitage on the 9th of December. That afternoon, Lewis, Carroll, and a few other members of the “general headquarters staff” gathered at the Jackson home to review the situation and look over the bulky correspondence that had come in. “General Jackson,” reports Lewis, “showed no elation. In fact, he had for some time considered his election certain, the only question in his mind being the extent of the majority. When he finished looking over the summary by States, his only remark was that Isaac Hill, considering the odds against him, had done wonders in New Hampshire!”
When, two weeks later, the final returns were received, leading Tenneseeans decided to give a reception, banquet, and ball which would outshine any social occasion in the annals of the Southwest. Just as arrangements were completed, however, Mrs. Jackson, who had long been in failing health, suffered an attack of heart trouble; and at the very hour when the General was to have been received, amid all the trappings of civil and military splendor, with the huzzas of his neighbors, friends, and admirers, he was sitting tearless, speechless, and almost expressionless by the corpse of his life companion. Long after the beloved one had been laid to rest in the Hermitage garden amid the rosebushes she had planted, the President-elect continued as one benumbed. He never gave up the idea that his wife had been killed by worry over the attacks made upon him and upon her by the Adams newspapers—that, as he expressed it, she was “murdered by slanders that pierced her heart.” Only under continued prodding from Lewis and other friends did he recall himself to his great task and set about preparing for the arduous winter journey to Washington, composing his inaugural address, selecting his Cabinet, and laying plans for the reorganization of the federal Civil Service on lines already definitely in his mind.