The returns of the electoral vote in 1828 revealed the sources of Jackson’s power.  In New England, he received but one ballot, from Maine; he had a majority of the electors in New York and all of them in Pennsylvania; and he carried every state south of Maryland and beyond the Appalachians.  Adams did not get a single electoral vote in the South and West.  The prophecy of the Hartford convention had been fulfilled.

[Illustration:  ANDREW JACKSON]

When Jackson took the oath of office on March 4, 1829, the government of the United States entered into a new era.  Until this time the inauguration of a President—­even that of Jefferson, the apostle of simplicity—­had brought no rude shock to the course of affairs at the capital.  Hitherto the installation of a President meant that an old-fashioned gentleman, accompanied by a few servants, had driven to the White House in his own coach, taken the oath with quiet dignity, appointed a few new men to the higher posts, continued in office the long list of regular civil employees, and begun his administration with respectable decorum.  Jackson changed all this.  When he was inaugurated, men and women journeyed hundreds of miles to witness the ceremony.  Great throngs pressed into the White House, “upset the bowls of punch, broke the glasses, and stood with their muddy boots on the satin-covered chairs to see the people’s President.”  If Jefferson’s inauguration was, as he called it, the “great revolution,” Jackson’s inauguration was a cataclysm.

THE NEW DEMOCRACY AT WASHINGTON

=The Spoils System.=—­The staid and respectable society of Washington was disturbed by this influx of farmers and frontiersmen.  To speak of politics became “bad form” among fashionable women.  The clerks and civil servants of the government who had enjoyed long and secure tenure of office became alarmed at the clamor of new men for their positions.  Doubtless the major portion of them had opposed the election of Jackson and looked with feelings akin to contempt upon him and his followers.  With a hunter’s instinct, Jackson scented his prey.  Determined to have none but his friends in office, he made a clean sweep, expelling old employees to make room for men “fresh from the people.”  This was a new custom.  Other Presidents had discharged a few officers for engaging in opposition politics.  They had been careful in making appointments not to choose inveterate enemies; but they discharged relatively few men on account of their political views and partisan activities.

By wholesale removals and the frank selection of officers on party grounds—­a practice already well intrenched in New York—­Jackson established the “spoils system” at Washington.  The famous slogan, “to the victor belong the spoils of victory,” became the avowed principle of the national government.  Statesmen like Calhoun denounced it; poets like James Russell Lowell ridiculed