The civil service system of the Government under those administrations was an ideal system, but the Jackson leaders openly inspired the followers of their favorite to earnest political action by the declaration that “to the victors belong the spoils.” That slogan was first heard in the Jackson-Adams campaign of 1828, and when Jackson succeeded, for the first time Washington was overrun with a countless host of greedy spoilsmen, clamoring for the dismissal of every man who had not supported Jackson. Jackson himself was thoroughly committed to the policy of political proscription, and from that day until the present time it has been generally accepted that a change of politics in the national administrations means a general change of the now enormous army of Federal officers, excepting as it is feebly restrained by all parties professing devotion to a civil service system with none honestly maintaining it. When it is remembered that Jackson was defeated by Adams in 1824, although having more popular and electoral votes than Adams, it is not surprising that the friends of Jackson became intensely embittered, and they opened the campaign of 1828 immediately after the inauguration of Adams in 1825. In the Southwest, where Jackson lived and had his chief strength outside of Pennsylvania, the cockpit, the race-course and the gaming-table were favorite amusements, and the people were strongly prejudiced against what they regarded as the aristocratic power that had been maintained by the Virginia Presidents and continued by Adams. They had a candidate who enthused his followers to the uttermost, and the quiet citizens of Washington, long used to the delectable and cultivated official circles which had prevailed from Washington to the second Adams, were shocked at the mob of Democratic place-hunters who crowded into the Capitol when Jackson became President, and had access to the White House regardless of conventionality, where Jackson is reported to have smoked his corn-cob pipe during his greeting of visitors. With Jackson came the spoils system that has done so much to demoralize the politics of the Republic. Jackson held a very strong position before the nation, not only because of his triumph over the British at New Orleans, but because of the high civil positions which he had filled with reasonable credit, but without displaying any high standard of statesmanship. He aided in framing the Tennessee Constitution in 1796, and was elected as the first Representative in Congress by the people after the admission of the State, then entitled to only one member.