| The Tariff of 1828 not a complete party measure. |
While thus it cannot be said that the "Jackson men" voted against this bill and the Administration men for it, still there was something which looked like an approach toward this relation. Certainly the Southern wing of the Jacksonians, or of the Democratic party, as the Jacksonians now called themselves in distinction from the National Republicans, opposed the measure with something like unanimity. Many of Jackson's Northern supporters, however, voted for the bill, and it may be said that the Democratic party of the North was then in favor of moderate protection to all the interests of the country.
The party divisions of 1828 were still largely dominated by considerations of personal partisanship, and the organization of the two parties, which had now emerged from the all-comprehending Republican party, upon the basis of different political creeds, still lacked much of completion.
| The presidential campaign of 1828 still dominated by personal considerations. |
The campaign of 1828 was not fought upon the issues of any well established differences in political and economic policies. Jackson and his followers simply appealed to the mass of the people, especially to the lower classes, "to turn the rascals out," on the ground that the "Old Hero," the friend of the people, had been cheated, by a corrupt bargain between the two chiefs of the Administration, out of his rights in 1824, and that the whole pack of officials serving under them had been corrupted by the venality of their superiors. The people must take possession of their Government and send the wicked aristocracy of office holders to the right about, was the chief demand of the Democracy of 1828, and it was with the empty phrases, with which they rang the changes upon this demand, that they won the battle.
| Election of Jackson. |
Jackson and Calhoun were elected by an electoral vote of more than two to one. Every Commonwealth west of the Alleghanies, and every one south of Mason and Dixon's line, except Delaware and Maryland, gave its electoral vote entire to Jackson and Calhoun; and in addition thereto Pennsylvania gave them its entire vote, New York gave them twenty of its thirty-six votes, Maine one of its nine, and Maryland five of its eleven.