for a livelihood.  Four of them had been slaveholders.  Jefferson was a philosopher, learned in natural science, a master of foreign languages, a gentleman of dignity and grace of manner, notwithstanding his studied simplicity.  Madison, it was said, was armed “with all the culture of his century.”  Monroe was a graduate of William and Mary, a gentleman of the old school.  Jefferson and his three successors called themselves Republicans and professed a genuine faith in the people but they were not “of the people” themselves; they were not sons of the soil or the workshop.  They were all men of “the grand old order of society” who gave finish and style even to popular government.

Monroe was the last of the Presidents belonging to the heroic epoch of the Revolution.  He had served in the war for independence, in the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, and in official capacity after the adoption of the Constitution.  In short, he was of the age that had wrought American independence and set the government afloat.  With his passing, leadership went to a new generation; but his successor, John Quincy Adams, formed a bridge between the old and the new in that he combined a high degree of culture with democratic sympathies.  Washington had died in 1799, preceded but a few months by Patrick Henry and followed in four years by Samuel Adams.  Hamilton had been killed in a duel with Burr in 1804.  Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were yet alive in 1824 but they were soon to pass from the scene, reconciled at last, full of years and honors.  Madison was in dignified retirement, destined to live long enough to protest against the doctrine of nullification proclaimed by South Carolina before death carried him away at the ripe old age of eighty-five.

=The Election of John Quincy Adams (1824).=—­The campaign of 1824 marked the end of the “era of good feeling” inaugurated by the collapse of the Federalist party after the election of 1816.  There were four leading candidates, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and W.H.  Crawford.  The result of the election was a division of the electoral votes into four parts and no one received a majority.  Under the Constitution, therefore, the selection of President passed to the House of Representatives.  Clay, who stood at the bottom of the poll, threw his weight to Adams and assured his triumph, much to the chagrin of Jackson’s friends.  They thought, with a certain justification, that inasmuch as the hero of New Orleans had received the largest electoral vote, the House was morally bound to accept the popular judgment and make him President.  Jackson shook hands cordially with Adams on the day of the inauguration, but never forgave him for being elected.