AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY SEVENTY YEARS AGO 279 



his vote for John Quincy Adams, just as a matter of 

 form, in order that no President after Washington 

 might be chosen by an absolutely unanimous vote. 



This was what we called the " era of good feeling." 

 The war had disposed of the old issues, and the new 

 ones had not yet shaped themselves. As all the can- 

 didates for the election of 1824 were called Republi- 

 cans, the issues between them seemed to be purely of 

 a personal nature. There was a genuine political 

 force at work, however, and a very strong one. This 

 was the spirit of reaction against European ideas, the 

 bumptious and boisterous democratic Americanism of 

 the young West. The backwoodsmen and Mississippi 

 traders were to be represented in the White House, in 

 spite of Virginia planters and Harvard professors. 

 There was a wish to put an end to what some people 

 called the " Virginia dynasty " of Presidents ; and it 

 was with this in view that Clay kept up, during Mon- 

 roe's administration, an opposition that was sometimes 

 factious. It was, for instance, partly because Monroe 

 had sanctioned Jackson's measures in Florida, that 

 Clay and his friends felt bound to attack them, thus 

 laying the foundations of the lifelong feud between 

 Clay and Jackson. In 1823, when the latter resigned 

 the governorship of Florida and took his seat in the 

 United States Senate, he had already been nominated 

 by the legislature of Tennessee as the candidate of 

 that state for the presidency. Some of his friends, 

 under the lead of William Lewis, had even two years 

 earlier conceived the idea of making him President. 

 At first General Jackson cast ridicule upon the idea. 

 " Do they suppose," said he, " that I am such a d d 

 fool as to think myself fit for President of the United 



