Whether or not this message was delivered history does not say, but the whole Nation arose in wrath behind its President, state after state denounced nullification and disunion, and the South Carolina ordinance was finally repealed. So the storm passed for the moment. It left Jackson more of a popular hero than ever; it was as though he had won another battle of New Orleans. One cannot but wonder what would have happened had he been acting as President, instead of Buchanan, in those trying years after 1856. He retired from the presidency broken in health and fortune, for however well he took care of the interests of his friends, he was always careless about his own. The last eight years of his life were spent at his Tennessee estate, The Hermitage. The end came in 1845, but his name has remained as a kind of watchword among the common people--a synonym for rugged honesty, and bluff sincerity. His career is, all in all, by far the most remarkable of any man who ever held the high office of President--with one possible exception, that of Abraham Lincoln. * * * * * Jackson was one of the most perfect political manipulators and machine-builders this country ever saw, and he had so perfected his machine at the close of his second term that he was able to name as his successor and the heir of his policies, Martin Van Buren, of New York, a man who had been one of Jackson's most valued lieutenants from the first, an astute politician, but not remarkable in any way, nor able to impress himself upon the country. He announced at his inauguration that it was his intention, to tread in the footsteps of his "illustrious predecessor," but none for a moment imagined that he was big enough to fill Jackson's shoes. Indeed, Jackson, was by far the most important figure at the inauguration. Van Buren's term as President witnessed nothing more momentous than the great panic of 1837, which he faced with a calmness and clear-sightedness surprising even to his friends, but which nevertheless assisted a collection of malcontents, under the leadership of Henry Clay, calling themselves National Republicans or Whigs, to defeat him for re-election. There was really no valid reason why he should have been re-elected; he had little claim, upon the country, but was for the most part, merely a clever politician, the first to attain the presidency. His life had been marked by an orderly advance from local to state, and then to national offices--an advance obtained not because he stood for any great principle, but because he knew how to make friends and build his political fences.