Jackson went into the campaign with an advantage drawn from his successful conduct of two foreign negotiations. His administration had secured from England an agreement by which the trade with the West Indies, closed to Americans ever since the Revolution, was opened again, and from France a promise to pay large claims for spoliations on American commerce which had been presented many times before. He was also undoubtedly supported by the great majority of the people in the stand he took against the nullifiers. What the people would decide about the tariff was doubtful; but as between a system, even though it were called the American system, and an old hero, the Democrats were not afraid of the people's choice. The great fight was over the Bank, and on that question Jackson was supported by the prejudices of the poor, who thought of the Bank merely as a rich men's institution, by the fears of the ignorant, who believed the Bank to be a mysterious and monstrous affair, and by the instinct of liberty in many others, who, though they did not believe the charges against Biddle, did feel that there was danger in so powerful a financial agency so closely connected with the government. Moreover, the opposition was divided. A party bitterly opposed to Free Masonry had sprung into existence, and Jackson was a Mason. But the Anti-Masons, instead of supporting Clay, nominated a third candidate. South Carolina threw her votes away on a fourth. Jackson got 219 electoral votes to 49 for Clay, 11 for Floyd, the nullification candidate, and seven for Wirt, the Anti-Mason candidate. His popular vote was more than twice Clay's, and he actually carried the New England States of Maine and New Hampshire. If, during his first term, he exercised his great office like a general, he entered upon the second with even a firmer belief that he ought to have his way in all things. The people had given an answer to Clay and Biddle and Calhoun and Marshall; to the corrupters of the government and the enemies of the President; to the nullifiers of the law and the slanderers of Peggy Eaton. He understood his overwhelming victory as the people's warrant to go on with all he had begun.