Adams was, in the first place, a minority President.  Jackson’s popular vote was probably larger; his electoral vote was certainly so; and the vote in the House of Representatives was at the last moment swung to Adams only by certain unexpected and more or less accidental developments.  By thus receiving his office at the hands of a branch of Congress, in competition with a candidate who had a wider popular support, the New Englander fell heir to all the indignation that had been aroused against congressional intrigue, and especially against the selection of a President by Congressmen.

There was, in addition, the charge of a “corrupt bargain.”  It mattered not greatly whether the accusation was true or not.  The people widely accepted it as true, and the Administration had to bear the stigma.  “The coalition of Blifil and Black George, of the Puritan and the black-leg,” John Randolph called the new alliance; and while Clay sought to vindicate his honor in a duel with the author of the phrase, nothing that he or Adams could do or say was able to overcome the effect upon the public mind created by the cold fact that when the Clay men turned their support to Adams their leader was forthwith made Secretary of State.

A further source of difficulty in the situation was the temperament of Adams himself.  There was no abler, more honest, or more patriotic man in public life; yet in the presidency he was, especially at this juncture of affairs, a misfit.  He was cold and reserved when every consideration called for cordiality; he was petulant when tolerance and good humor were the qualities most needful.  He could neither arouse enthusiasm nor win friends.  He was large visioned and adept at mapping out broad policies, but he lacked the elements of leadership requisite to carry his plans into effect.  He scorned the everyday arts of politics, and by the very loftiness of his ideals he alienated support.  In short, as one writer has remarked, he was “a weigher of scruples and values in a time of transition, a representative of old-school politics on the threshold of triumphant democracy.  The people did not understand him, but they felt instinctively that he was not one of themselves; and, therefore, they cast him out.”  Nobody had ever called him “Old Hickory” or any other name indicative of popular endearment.

Clay’s appointment as Secretary of State was thoroughly typical of the independent, unyielding attitude of the new Administration.  Adams had not the slightest sympathy with the idea of rotation in public position:  such a policy, he said, would make government “a perpetual and unremitting scramble for office.”  He announced that there would be no removals except such as complaint showed to be for the good of the service, and only twelve removals took place during his entire term.  The spoilsmen argued and fumed.  The editor of an administration newspaper warmly told the President that in consequence of his policy he would himself