The party battles of the Jackson period

The tourist traveling from Philadelphia to Washington in the Thirties anticipated few pleasures and no comforts from the trip that had to be made by coach from Baltimore, over r...

With the election of 1828 a new era dawned in American politics. Up to this time the election of Presidents and the determination of policies had been a matter of manipulation a...

Thirteen days after the inauguration, the Senate, having confirmed the Cabinet, adjourned, and the Administration could look forward to almost nine months of non-interference fr...

The definite break between Calhoun and Jackson was one of the most dramatic and far-reaching in its political effects of any similar quarrel in American history. It furnished Cl...

At the time the politicians were discussing the open rupture with Calhoun, two horsemen might have been seen riding slowly through Georgetown, and out on the Tenallytown road, e...

From the beginning the virile, militant, driving factors behind Jackson’s policies were found outside his official family. The “Kitchen Cabinet,” so called in derision, was more...

Henry Clay sat in the little library at Ashland reading a letter from Webster. “You must be aware of the strong desire manifested in many parts of the country that you should co...

During the early days of the Jackson régime, a remarkable and little remembered figure passed furtively in and out of the closet of the President, playing a quiet, but none the...

The campaign of 1832 marked the beginning of many things that have come to be commonplace in American politics. For the first time the politicians were under the compulsion of c...

Callers at the Hermitage about the first of October were surprised to find Jackson’s thoughts remote from the election. Instead of a jubilant politician, they found an old man f...

Congress adjourned two days before the second inauguration of Jackson, which lacked the spectacular features of the first. His brief inaugural address revealed absolute confiden...

From the moment Congress convened, it was evident that the session was to witness the most bitter party battle ever waged. This was inevitable because of the realignments of the...

Philip Hone, seated in the little Senate Chamber, and still entranced with Clay’s theatrical appeal to Van Buren, was awakened from his reverie by observing Webster beckoning hi...

The most important battle of the short session of 1834-35 was waged over Jackson’s determination to compel France to observe her obligations under the treaty signed in Paris and...

From the adjournment of Congress in March, 1835, until it convened in December, the political leaders concerned themselves with presidential politics, and the struggle for posit...

Jackson returned to the White House after the election in a serious physical condition. The exertions of the hot summer, the long and wearisome journey, the keen disappointment...