Nursed and reared a statesman, Mr. Adams made a very poor politician. He could no more run his ever-cooling intellect and scholarly attainments into the curious moulds of party than he could make Q fit the place of A. Worse far, he had such a small organ for a heart, that it sent no blood to his cold fingers for hand-shaking. He had too much conscience to be popular with office-beggars, and not manners enough to go around in the country at large. He never stirred out of Washington, that he did not tread on some one’s foot. “James,” said a father to his malapropos son, “you have only two faults; one is, that you are good for nothing before breakfast, and the other is, that you are not a whit better after breakfast.” So said of the unpartisan President his political fathers, the heads of committees; and their opinion outbalanced in the scale the petty weights of general prosperity, peace at home and abroad, a careful, scrupulous economy, that kept the entire expenses of the government below thirteen millions annually, and a steady payment on the national debt of seven and a half millions a year. The friendly blunder of appointing Mr. Clay Secretary of State was a political crime; the retention of those already in office, political unrighteousness; the refusal to appoint clamorous partisans to paying places, exaggerated political depravity. History at last inscribes over the gateway of his term “Arabia Felix,” over the place where popular misconception and partisan disappointment had hastily chiselled “Arabia Petrea.” CHAPTER X. THE AGE OF HICKORY; OR, JACKSON’S EPOCH. 1829–1837. Military Men, domesticated to Civil Life, like tamed Animals.—General Jackson’s Camp Traits in the White Den at Washington.—His Prehensile Habits claw out the Eyes of several Measures.—How he foraged on his Political Enemies, and turned his Troops of Friends into the Public Pastures.—Lord Palmerston’s Remark upon Gladstone; and its American Application.—An Insurrection among the Household Cabinet Troops.—How the vigorous Hickory Club, wielded chivalrously for a Woman, quelled it.—The President moves on the Bank and captures all its Fortified Points.—Chicago starts in 1830.—Why it did not overtake and annex the United States.—South Carolina threatens Nullification, and is threatened.—Mr. Calhoun violently promised an elevated Position between two Posts. Mr. Clay’s Compromise.—Horace Greeley starts the First Daily Paper.—Its untimely End bewailed in Verse.—Black Hawk caged and shown around.—Georgia, the Cherokees and the Supreme Court.—Three Celebrities gained by the Seminole War.—Of Arkansas and its Papal Little Rock.—Prospects for the Pope when flung from the Tarpeian.—An Arkansas Paul preaching in the American Athens and Corinth.—Old Hickory and the Nuts left to be cracked.