[Illustration:  Andrew Jackson ]

At first the “antimasonic” movement was confined to western New York, but the moment it took a political turn it spread across northern Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and was led by some of the most distinguished men and aspiring politicians of the time[1].

[Footnote 1:  Stanwood’s Presidential Elections, Chap. 18]

%332.  The Election of Jackson.%—­When the presidential election occurred in 1828, there were thus three parties,—­the “Jackson men,” the “Administration,” and the Antimasonic.  But politics had very little to do with the result.  In the early days of the republic, the mass of men were ignorant and uneducated, and willingly submitted to be led by men of education and what was called breeding.  From Washington down to John Quincy Adams, the presidents were from the aristocratic class.  They were not men of the people.  But in course of time a great change had come over the mass of Americans.  Their prosperity, their energy in developing the country, had made them self-reliant, and impatient of all claims of superiority.  One man was now no better than another, and the cry arose all over the country for a President who was “a man of the people.”  Jackson was just such a man, and it was because he was “a man of the people” that he was elected.  Of 261 electoral votes he received 178, and Adams 83.

%333.  The North and the South Two Different Peoples.%—­Before entering on Jackson’s administration, it is necessary to call attention to the effect produced on our country by the industrial revolution discussed in Chaps. 19 and 22.  In the first place, it produced two distinct and utterly different peoples:  the one in the North and the other in the South.  In the North, where there were no great plantations, no great farms, and where the labor was free, the marvelous inventions, discoveries, and improvements mentioned were eagerly seized on and used.  There cities grew up, manufactures nourished, canals were dug, railroads were built, and industries of every sort established.  Some towns, as Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, Fall River, Cohoes, Paterson, Newark, and Pittsburg, were almost entirely given up to mills and factories.  No such towns existed in the South.  In the South men lived on plantations, raised cotton, tobacco, and rice, owned slaves, built few large towns, cared nothing for internal improvements, and established no industries of any sort.

This difference of occupation led of course to difference of interests and opinions, so that on three matters—­the extension of slavery, internal improvements, and tariff for protection—­the North and the South were opposed to each other.  In the West and the Middle States these questions were all-important, and by a union of the two sections under the leadership of Clay a new tariff was passed in 1824, and in the course of the next four years $2,300,000 were voted for internal improvements.