New England was, in the main, enemy country.  None the less, the President was received there with unstinted goodwill.  Edward Everett said that only two other men had ever been welcomed in Boston as Jackson was.  They were Washington and La Fayette.  The President’s determined stand against nullification was fresh in mind, and the people, regardless of party, were not slow to express their appreciation.  Their cordiality was fully reciprocated.  “He is amazingly tickled with the Yankees,” reports a fellow traveler more noted for veracity than for elegance of speech, “and the more he sees on ’em, the better he likes ’em.  ‘No nullification here,’ says he.  ‘No,’ says I, ’General; Mr. Calhoun would stand no more chance down east than a stumped-tail bull in fly time.’”

To the infinite disgust of John Quincy Adams, Harvard University conferred upon the distinguished visitor the honorary degree of doctor of laws.  In the course of the ceremony one of the seniors delivered, in Latin, a salutatory concluding with the words:  “Harvard welcomes Jackson the President.  She embraces Jackson the Patriot.”  “A splendid compliment, sir, a splendid compliment,” declared the honored guest after Woodbury had translated the phrases for his benefit; “but why talk about so live a thing as patriotism in a dead language?” At the close of the exercises the students filed past the President and were introduced to him, each greeting him, “to the infinite edification and amusement of the grizzly old warrior,” by his new title Doctor Jackson.  The wits of the opposition lost no opportunity to poke fun at the President’s accession to the brotherhood of scholars.  As he was closing a speech some days later an auditor called out, “You must give them a little Latin, Doctor.”  In nowise abashed, the President solemnly doffed his hat again, stepped to the front of the platform, and resumed:  “E pluribus unum, my friends, sine qua non!”

Life at the White House, as one writer has remarked, lost under Jackson something of the good form of the Virginia regime, but it lost nothing of the air of domesticity.  Throughout the two Administrations the mistress of the mansion was Mrs. Andrew Jackson Donelson, wife of the President’s secretary and in every respect a very capable woman.  Of formality there was little or none.  Major Lewis was a member of the presidential household, and other intimates—­Van Buren, Kendall, Blair, Hill—­dropped in at anytime, “before breakfast, or in the evening, as inclination prompted.”  The President was always accessible to callers, whether or not their business was important.  Yet he found much time, especially in the evenings, for the enjoyment of his long reed pipe with red clay bowl, in the intimacy of the White House living room, with perhaps a Cabinet officer to read dispatches or other state papers to him in a corner, while the ladies sewed and chatted and half a dozen children played about the room.