A History of the American People

America, despite the fact that the Canal, triumphantly completed on November 2, 1825, helped
Clinton to regain the governorship-and massacre the Bucktails in turn. American political history
has since thrown up repeated exemplars of what might be called the Van Buren Syndrome-men
who could combine true zeal for the public interest with fanatical devotion to the party principle.
Most of 1827 the assiduous Van Buren spent building up the new Jacksonian Democratic
Party, traveling along rotten roads in jolting carriages to win support from difficult men like
Benton of Missouri, a great power in the West, the splendid but bibulous orator Randolph, who
was often exhilarated with toastwater,' down to Georgia to conciliate old, sick Crawford, up through the Carolinas and Virginia and back to Washington. Thus, for the first time, the DemocraticSolid South' was brought into existence. In February 1828 Clinton died of a heart-
attack, clearing the way for Van Buren to become governor of New York State. He spent seven
weeks in July and August, electioneering in the sticky heat of grim new villages upstate, taking
basic provisions with him in his carriages, for none were to be had en route, complaining of
insects, humidity, and sudden storms which turned the tracks into marshes. He brought with him
cartloads of posters, Jackson badges (another innovation), Bucktails to wear in hats, and Hickory
sticks. He was the first American politician to assemble a team of writers, not just to compose
speeches but to draft articles for scores of local newspapers. Artists and writers who supported
the Jackson campaign included James Fenimore Cooper, the sculptor Horatio Greenough,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the historian George Bancroft, William Cullen Bryant, then the leading
American poet, and another well-known poet William Leggett. Apart from Ralph Waldo
Emerson, most of America's writers and intellectuals seem to have backed Jackson-the first time
they ganged up together to endorse a candidate. As Harriet Martineau put it, Jackson had the
support of the underprivileged, the humanitarians, the careerists, and the men of genius. Adams confided bitterly in his diary:Van Buren is now the great electioneering manager for General
Jackson [and] has improved as much in the art of electioneering upon Burr, as the state of New
York has grown in relative strength and importance in the Union.' Adams was safe in New
England but he could see-already-that the South plus New York made a formidable combination.
This was the first popular election. In twenty-two of the twenty-four states (Delaware and Rhode
Island still had their legislatures choose college electors), the voters themselves picked the
president. Except in Virginia they were equivalent to the adult male white population. A total of
1,155,340 voted, and Adams did well to get 508,064 of them, carrying New England, New
Jersey, and Delaware, and a majority of the college in Maryland. Even in New York he got
sixteen out of thirty-six college votes because Van Buren, despite all his efforts, carried the state
by a plurality of only 5,000. That gave Adams eighty-three electoral votes in all. But Jackson got
all the rest and a popular vote of 647,276. So Jackson went to Washington with a clear popular
mandate, ending the old indirect, oligarchical system for ever.
The manner of the takeover was as significant as the result. In those days voting for president
started in September and ended in November, but the new incumbent did not take office till
March. Washington was then a slow, idle, Southern city. Designed by Pierre L'Enfant and laid
out by the surveyor Andrew Ellicott (1764-1820), it was in a state of constant constructional
turmoil but contrived to be sleepy at the same time. Its chief boast was its 91,665 feet of brick
pavement, though it also had, at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 13th Street, the
Rotondo, with its `Transparent Panoramic View of West Point and Adjacent Scenery.' Banquets
for the legislators, which were frequent, began at 5.30 P.M. and progressed relentlessly through
soup, fish, turkey, beef, mutton, ham, pheasant, ice cream, jelly, and fruit, taken with sherry, a
great many table wines, madeira, and champagne. There was, besides, much drinking of sherry