Adams eighty-four, and Clay thirty-seven.  No one having a majority, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives.  Clay, who never liked nor trusted Jackson, threw his influence in favor of Adams, and Adams was elected by the vote of thirteen States.  Jackson and his friends always maintained that he was cheated out of the election,—­that Adams and Clay made a bargain between themselves,—­which seemed to be confirmed by the fact that Clay was made Secretary of State in Adams’s cabinet; although this was a natural enough sequence of Clay’s throwing his political strength to make Adams president.  Jackson returned, wrathful and disappointed, to his farm, but amid boisterous demonstrations of respect wherever he went.  If he had not cared much about the presidency before, he was now determined to achieve it, and to crush his opponents, whom he promptly regarded as enemies.

John Quincy Adams entered upon office in 1825, free from “personal obligations” and “partisan entanglements,” but with an unfriendly Congress.  This, however, was not of much consequence, since no great subjects were before Congress for discussion.  It was a period of great tranquillity, fitted for the development of the peaceful arts, and of internal improvements in the land, rather than of genius in the presidential chair.  Not one public event of great importance occurred, although many commercial treaties were signed, and some internal improvements were made.  Mr. Adams lived in friendly relations with his cabinet, composed of able men, and he was generally respected for the simplicity of his life, and the conscientious discharge of his routine duties.  He was industrious and painstaking, rising early in the morning and retiring early in the evening.  He was not popular, being cold and austere in manner, but he had a lofty self-respect, disdaining to conciliate foes or reward friends,—­a New England Puritan of the severest type, sternly incorruptible, learned without genius, eloquent without rhetoric, experienced without wisdom, religious without orthodoxy, and liberal-minded with strong prejudices.

Perhaps the most marked thing in the political history of that administration was the strife for the next presidency, and the beginning of that angry and bitter conflict between politicians which had no cessation until the Civil War.  The sessions of Congress were occupied in the manufacture of political capital; for a cloud had arisen in the political heavens, portending storms and animosities, and the discussion of important subjects of national scope, such as had not agitated the country before,—­pertaining to finances, to tariffs, to constitutional limitations, to retrenchments, and innovations.  There arose new political parties, or rather a great movement, extending to every town and hamlet, to give a new impetus to the Democratic sway.  The leaders in this movement were the great antagonists of Clay and Webster,—­a new class of politicians, like Benton, Amos Kendall, Martin