As I am now to trace a long senatorial career, which began at a period when the Senate of the United States contained men of the very highest ability and renown, it is proper to give a brief account of the state of parties and the questions of the time, and to fix Mr. Buchanan’s position among the statesmen whom he had to meet. When he took his seat in the Senate, on the 15th of December, 1834, General Jackson was in his second term of office, which began on the 4th of March, 1833. He had received a very large majority of the electoral votes—seventy-four more than were necessary to a choice. Mr. Van Buren had become Vice-President by a majority of electoral votes less than General Jackson’s, by the number of thirty. He was, of course, in the chair of the Senate. In Congress and throughout the country, the supporters of the administration had become known as the Democratic party, the old term of “Republicans,” and the more recent one of “Jackson men,” being generally dropped.[49] The opposition had become classified and consolidated under the name of the Whig party, a term substituted for that of “National Republicans.” Their leader and candidate in the presidential election of 1832 was Mr. Clay.[50] There was a third party, known as the “Anti-Masons,” who gave the seven electoral votes of Vermont to Mr. Wirt, as their candidate for the Presidency, and to Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania as their candidate for the Vice-Presidency. Notwithstanding General Jackson’s great popularity and influence throughout the country, a large majority of the Senate were opposed to his administration and his measures. This opposition became concentrated and intensified by the President’s removal of the public deposits from the Bank of the United States, into certain selected State banks. A resolution, strongly condemning this act, had been carried in the Senate, by twenty-eight yeas against eighteen nays, on the 28th of March, 1834, nine months before Mr. Buchanan entered the Senate. This vote may therefore be regarded as a general index of the relative strength of parties in that body when Mr. Buchanan became a member of it. How this great opposition majority became so changed three years afterward, that the friends of General Jackson were able to expunge this resolution from the records of the Senate, will appear hereafter. The leading Senators of the opposition at the commencement of the session, in December, 1834, and distinctly classified as Whigs, were Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. Clayton of Delaware, Mr. Ewing of Ohio, and Mr. Frelinghuysen and Mr. Southard of New Jersey.