Quincy, Massachusetts.

Jefferson died a few hours earlier than

Adams. Just as Adams breathed his last, he said with animation,

"Thomas Jefferson still lives." Yet at that moment the spirit of his fellow-patriot awaited him on the other side of the River of Death. Amid the booming of cannon and the festivities of the nation, these great men died. They had lived to a good old age. Adams was over ninety, Jefferson eighty-three years old.

The question arose early in John Quincy Adams's administration, "who shall be next president of the United States?" Up to this time either a native of Massachusetts or Virginia had filled the chair of state. And not only was the presidential office shared between these two States, but they very nearly divided the opinions and sympathies of the whole country. If you have read carefully all about the settlement of this country, you have seen what different people, of different ideas, habits, and social customs, make up these two States of Massachusetts and Virginia. You have seen Massachusetts (and by Massachusetts we mean nearly all of New England) building towns and cities on the products of its manufactures and commerce; fostering common schools and colleges; promoting equality among all classes of citizens; abolishing slave labor; advocating a strong federal government. Virginia, on the other hand, was an agricultural State. The cultivation of large plantations caused a widely scattered population, very different from the crowded towns of Massachusetts. Doing the work by the hands of slaves had tended to form there a landed aristocracy; education was not so widely diffused; in politics the tendency was towards "state rights" rather than to a strong federation. Indeed, the two States, not very much alike in the beginning, had ever since the Revolution been growing more and more apart. There was not much love lost between them. The Virginians thought the Yankees, as they contemptuously called the New Englanders, altogether too saving and stingy. They declared they cared for nothing but dollars and cents. On the other hand, the New Englanders had an innate dislike of the Virginia traffic in slaves, and thought the habits of Virginia less rigid in morals than they ought to be. In a word, the North and South, represented by Massachusetts and Virginia, after sharing the highest offices so long between them, might have shared the whole country, if another force had not come in to prevent it. For recollect, as I have been telling you, all this time the great West has been filling up, and its stirring pioneer life has produced a new race of citizens. It was time

to select a president from among these men to represent the new growing life of the nation.

Andrew Jackson was the coming man for the presidency,—the first president from among the ranks of the people. Democrat means,

as I hope you know by this time, one who believes in the right of the people to rule. Now, Jefferson had been a true Democrat in theory; so had Madison and Monroe, but they, as well as Washington and the two Adamses, had been born of wealthy and cultivated families. They belonged to a more privileged class. But Andrew Jackson was really of the people; born among them; working among them; struggling up to power from their midst. He was a democrat by birth, as well as theory. The people saw this, and this was one thing that helped to make him, what he was then, and has been ever since, the president most widely popular, and more beloved by all sections of the country, than any man since Washington. Hitherto the party of Jefferson had been called Republican. But with the coming in of Jackson, who ostensibly followed in the footsteps of Jefferson's party, it was called Democratic. Make way, then, for General Andrew Jackson, first Democratic president of the United States.

CHAPTER XVI.

RAILROADS AND BANKS.

Oliver Evans's Steam

Character of Andrew Jackson. - Traveling by Steam. - Tram-ways engine. George Stephenson. - Jackson's War with the Banks. Banks. Jackson vetoes the Bank Charter.

WE have seen something of Andrew Jackson before. At Camden, where the British officer knocked him down for resisting his tyranny; on the floor of Congress, a tall, awkward looking backwoodsman from Tennessee; at New Orleans, where his hatred of the British, no doubt, helped him beat the flower of their army there; down in the Florida and Mississippi region, putting the Indians under subjection. Wherever we have seen him, we have seen a man who does what he means to do; will brook no opposition. A man who is domineering, arrogant, merciless to his enemies, inclined to use all the power he can take into his hands; almost a

dangerous man to put in power if it had not been for one quality: he devotedly loved his country, and made her interests his own. He made mistakes, of course, but he always meant to do his duty by his country.

Andrew. Iccekson

He was sixty-two years old, a childless and lonely old man, almost heart-broken at the recent loss of his wife, when he came to Washington, March 4th, 1829, to be inaugurated. Around him, as a sort of body-guard, were a group of old soldiers, survivors of the Revolutionary War. No man ever held that war and its heroes in more sacred reverence than Andrew Jackson.

When the fiery warrior of New Orleans was made president, his opponents said, "Now we shall have our hands full of wars and broils with foreign nations. Jackson hates England so sincerely he will embrace the first opportunity to quarrel with her." Their words did not come true, however, for we were unusually peaceful all through the eight years of Jackson's government. The most noteworthy event of his administration was the beginning of land travel by steam in this country. We had had steamboats ever since Fulton's successful trip on the Hudson. Already the western lakes