While Adams called himself a Republican in politics and often spoke of “the rule of the people,” he was regarded by Jackson’s followers as “an aristocrat.”  He was not a son of the soil.  Neither was he acquainted at first hand with the labor of farmers and mechanics.  He had been educated at Harvard and in Europe.  Like his illustrious father, John Adams, he was a stern and reserved man, little given to seeking popularity.  Moreover, he was from the East and the frontiersmen of the West regarded him as a man “born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”  Jackson’s supporters especially disliked him because they thought their hero entitled to the presidency.  Their anger was deepened when Adams appointed Clay to the office of Secretary of State; and they set up a cry that there had been a “deal” by which Clay had helped to elect Adams to get office for himself.

Though Adams conducted his administration with great dignity and in a fine spirit of public service, he was unable to overcome the opposition which he encountered on his election to office or to win popularity in the West and South.  On the contrary, by advocating government assistance in building roads and canals and public grants in aid of education, arts, and sciences, he ran counter to the current which had set in against appropriations of federal funds for internal improvements.  By signing the Tariff Bill of 1828, soon known as the “Tariff of Abominations,” he made new enemies without adding to his friends in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio where he sorely needed them.  Handicapped by the false charge that he had been a party to a “corrupt bargain” with Clay to secure his first election; attacked for his advocacy of a high protective tariff; charged with favoring an “aristocracy of office-holders” in Washington on account of his refusal to discharge government clerks by the wholesale, Adams was retired from the White House after he had served four years.

=The Triumph of Jackson in 1828.=—­Probably no candidate for the presidency ever had such passionate popular support as Andrew Jackson had in 1828.  He was truly a man of the people.  Born of poor parents in the upland region of South Carolina, schooled in poverty and adversity, without the advantages of education or the refinements of cultivated leisure, he seemed the embodiment of the spirit of the new American democracy.  Early in his youth he had gone into the frontier of Tennessee where he soon won a name as a fearless and intrepid Indian fighter.  On the march and in camp, he endeared himself to his men by sharing their hardships, sleeping on the ground with them, and eating parched corn when nothing better could be found for the privates.  From local prominence he sprang into national fame by his exploit at the battle of New Orleans.  His reputation as a military hero was enhanced by the feeling that he had been a martyr to political treachery in 1824.  The farmers of the West and South claimed him as their own.  The mechanics of the Eastern cities, newly enfranchised, also looked upon him as their friend.  Though his views on the tariff, internal improvements, and other issues before the country were either vague or unknown, he was readily elected President.