he could be induced to serve more than one term." 1 In September, the Tammany General Committee and the Albany "Argus" came out for Jackson,2 as it had been determined, in the programme, that they should do. A law was passed for casting the vote of New York in 1828 by districts. The days of voting throughout the country ranged from October 31st to November 19th.3 The votes were cast by the Legislature in Delaware and South Carolina; by districts in Maine, New York, Maryland, Tennessee; elsewhere, by general ticket. Jackson got 178 votes to 83 for Adams. The popular vote was 648,273 for Jackson; 508,064 for Adams. Jackson got only one vote in New England, namely, in a district of Maine, where the vote was, Jackson, 4,223; Adams, 4,028.5 New York gave Jackson 20; Adams, 16. New Jersey and Delaware voted for Adams. Maryland gave him 6, and Jackson 5. Adams got not a single vote south of the Potomac or west of the Alleghanies. In Georgia no Adams ticket was nominated. Tennessee gave Jackson 44,293 votes, and Adams 2,240. Parton has a story of an attempt, in a Tennessee village, to tar and feather two men who dared to vote for Adams. Pennsylvania gave Jackson 101,652 votes; Adams, 50,848. For Vice

President, Richard Rush got all the Adams votes ; Calhoun got all the Jackson votes except. 7 of Georgia, which were given to William Smith, of South Carolina.

General Jackson was therefore triumphantly elected President of the United States, in the name of reform, and as the standard-bearer of the people, rising in their might to overthrow an extravagant, corrupt, aristocratic, federalist administration, which had encroached on the liberties of the people, and had aimed to corrupt elections by an-abuse of federal patronage. Many people believed this picture of Adams's administration to be true. Andrew Jackson no doubt believed it. Many people believe it yet. Perhaps no administration, except that of the elder Adams, is under such odium. There is not, however, in our history any administration which, upon a severe and impartial scrutiny, appears more worthy of respectful and honorable memory.1 Its chief fault was that it was too good for the wicked world in which it found itself. In 1836 Adams said, in the House, that he had never removed one person from office for political causes, and that he thought that was one of the principal reasons why he was not reëlected.2 The "Annual Register' "3 aptly quoted, in regard to Adams, a remark of Burke on Lord Chatham: "For a wise man he seemed to me, at that time, to be governed too much by general maxims. In consequence of 1 See Morse's J. Q. Adams. 2 50 Niles, 194.

3 3 Ann. Reg. 34.

having put so much the larger part of his opposers into power, his own principles could not have any effect or influence in the conduct of affairs. When he had executed his plan he had not an inch of ground to stand upon. When he had accomplished his scheme of administration, he was no longer a minister."

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CHAPTER VI

THE RELIEF SYSTEM OF KENTUCKY

BEFORE entering upon the history of Jackson's administration it is necessary to notice a piece of local history, to which frequent subsequent reference must be made, on account of influences exerted on national politics. A great abuse of paper money and banking took place in the Mississippi Valley between 1818 and 1828. It was an outcome of the application of political forces to the relations of debtor and creditor. It necessarily followed that political measures were brought into collision with constitutional provisions, and with judicial institutions as the interpreters and administrators of the same, in such points as the public credit, the security of contracts, the sanctity of vested rights, the independence of the judiciary, and its power to pass on the constitutionality of laws. (A struggle also arose between squatterism and law in respect to land titles, which involved the same fundamental interests and issues of civil liberty and civilization. Currency, banks, land titles, stay laws, judge-breaking, disunion, and the authority of the federal judiciary, were the matters at stake, and all were combined and reacting on

each other.) Kentucky was the scene of the strongest and longest conflict between the constitutional guarantees of vested rights and the legislative measures for relieving persons from contract obligations, when the hopes under which those obligations were undertaken had been disappointed by actual experience. It was from Kentucky, also, that the influences arose which were brought to bear on national politics.

It is worth while to see what historical antecedents had educated the people of Kentucky up to the extravagant opinions and conduct of 1820-30)

The sources of the trouble lie far back in the colonial history of Virginia and North Carolina, where false and evil traditions were started which, when carried to Kentucky and Tennessee, produced more gross and extravagant consequences. There had been excessive speculation in all the colonies, and all had imitated more or less the action of Massachusetts, in 1640, when a crisis produced ruin to indebted speculators, and when it was ordered that goods taken on execution should be transferred to the creditor at a valuation put on them by three neighbors as appraisers.1 There was some justification for such a law when there was no market, so that goods offered at auction were harshly sacrificed. Appraisement laws, however, in a community where all were indebted, and where each in turn became appraiser for his neighbors, were a gross abuse of the forms of law.

1 Felt, 23.