have been to him wisdom.' We shall probably never know whether there was a `corrupt bargain.'
Most likely not. But most Americans thought so. And the phrase made a superb slogan."'
In spring 1825 the Tennessee legislature nominated Jackson as their president for the race of
1828, and another new tradition in America began: the endless election campaign. The charge of
a corrupt bargain went far to undermine the legitimacy of the Adams presidency. Jackson
announced that, having hitherto regarded Adams as a man of probity, `From that moment I
withdrew all intercourse with him.’ A huge political fissure opened between the administration
and the Jacksonites. From that point opposition in Congress became systematic. The modern
American two-party system began to emerge. All over what was already an enormous country,
and one which was expanding fast, branches of a Jacksonian popular party began to form from
- Scores of newspapers lined up behind the new organization, including important new ones
like Duff Green's United States Telegraph. As the political system polarized, more and more
political figures swung behind Jackson. In New York, the master of the Tammany machine,
Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), Benton and Calhoun, Sam Houston of the West, the Virginia
grandee John Randolph of Roanoke (1773-1833), George McDuffie (1790-1851) of South
Carolina, Edward Livingstone (1764-1836), the boss of Louisiana-all these men, and others,
assembled what was to become one of the great and enduring popular instruments of American
politics, the Democratic Party.
The Telegraph, chief organ of the new party, was head of a network of fifty others, in all the
states, which reproduced its most scurrilous articles. Those who believe present-day American
politics are becoming a dirty game cannot have read the history of the 1828 election. Americans
have always taken a prurient interest in what goes on in the White House, particularly if public
money is involved. Even the mild Monroe, incensed by an inquiry about spending on interior
decoration by Congressman John Cocke of Tennessee, a Jacksonian chairman of one of its
committees,desired the person who brought him the message to tell Cocke he was a scoundrel and that was the only answer he would give him.’ Adams, blameless in this respect anyway, was subjected to still more minute investigations. A White House inventory revealed that it contained a billiard table and a chess-set, paid for (as it happened) out of Adams' own pocket. Congressman Samuel Carson of North Carolina demanded to know by what rightthe public
money should be applied to the purchase of Gambling Tables and Gambling Furniture?' That
question, parroted in the Telegraph and its satellites, sounded dreadful in New England and the
Bible Belt. The Telegraph, anxious to portray Adams as a raffish fellow, instead of the grim old
stick he actually was, dragged up an ancient story from his St Petersburg days which had him
presenting to Tsar Alexander I an innocent young American girl-he had beenthe pimp of the coalition,' it claimed. Oddly enough, the one shocking aspect of Adams' tenure of the White House-or so it might seem to us-his daily swims stark naked in the Potomac, attended by his black servant Antoine in a canoe, went unreported. It was by no means a tame river and on June 13, 1825 Adams was nearly drowned when the canoe capsized, losing his coat and waistcoat and having to scramble back to the White House in his pants, shoeless. But a Philadelphia paper complained that, in the humid summer weather, he wore only a black silk ribbon round his neck instead of a proper cravat, and that he went to church barefoot. Adams did not have a happy time in the White House. He dreaded being buttonholed in the street. He seems to have spent several hours every day receiving members of the public, who arrived without appointment or invitation, many with tales of woe. He recorded:The succession of visitors from my breakfasting to my dining hour,