As the weeks passed, the situation became more tense.  All the principals in the drama were at the capital—­Adams as Secretary of State, Crawford as Secretary of the Treasury, Clay as Speaker of the House, Jackson as Senator—­and the city was filled with followers who busied themselves in proposing combinations and making promises which, for the greater part, could not be traced to the candidates themselves.  O’Neil’s Tavern—­graced by the vivacious “Peggy,” who, as Mrs. John H. Eaton, was later to upset the equilibrium of the Jackson Administration—­and other favorite lodging houses were the scenes of midnight conferences, intimate conversations, and mysterious comings and goings which kept their oldest and most sophisticated frequenters on the alert. “Incedo super ignes—­I walk over fires,” confided the straitlaced Adams to his diary, and not without reason.  A group of Clay’s friends came to the New Englander’s room to urge in somewhat veiled language that their chief be promised, in return for his support, a place in the Cabinet.  A Missouri representative who held the balance of power in his delegation plainly offered to swing the State for Adams if the latter would agree to retain a brother on the federal bench and be “reasonable” in the matter of patronage.

By the last week of January it was rather generally understood that Clay’s strength would be thrown to Adams.  Up to this time the Jackson men had refused to believe that such a thing could happen.  But evidence had been piled mountain-high; adherents of both allies were openly boasting of the arrangements that had been made.  The Jacksonians were furious, and the air was filled with recriminations.  On January 28, 1825, an anonymous letter in the Columbian Observer of Philadelphia made the direct charge that the agents of Clay had offered the Kentuckian’s support to both Jackson and Adams in return for an appointment as Secretary of State, and that, while the friends of Jackson would not descend to “such mean barter and sale,” a bargain with the Adams forces had been duly closed.  Clay’s rage was ungovernable.  Through the columns of the National Intelligencer he pronounced his unknown antagonist “a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard and a liar,” called upon him to “unveil himself,” and declared that he would hold him responsible “to all the laws which govern and regulate men of honor.”

Two days later an obscure Pennsylvania Congressman by the name of George Kremer tendered his respects to “the Honorable H. Clay,” avowed his authorship of the communication in question, offered to prove the truth of his charges, and closed sententiously by affirming that as a representative of the people he would “not fear to ’cry aloud and spare not’ when their rights and privileges are at stake.”  The matter was serious, but official Washington could hardly repress a smile.  Kremer was a thoroughly honest but grossly illiterate rustic busybody who thus far had attracted the capital’s