The distinguishing act of Jackson’s first term was his veto of the bill to re-charter the United States Bank--the boldest defiance that a President ever cast to the money power of the country. “When President Jackson attacked the Bank,” De Tocqueville notes, “the country was excited and parties were formed. The well-informed classes rallied round the bank, the Common People round the President.” It is a commonplace of history that, in such cases, the “Common People” are more often right than those who claim superior information. Jackson’s veto is regarded by most observers as a remarkable popular victory over a great capitalistic monopoly. In none of the six Presidential campaigns between the time of Jackson and that of Lincoln was the question of popular sovereignty _versus_ class pretensions brought into the contest as an issue, although events were gradually shaping themselves for the great struggle in which the period ended. Yet, in 1840, the Democratic personality of General William Henry Harrison, the Whig candidate, contributed not a little to his success. The veteran soldier, statesman, and frontiersman had spent most of his life in a log house beside the Ohio River, at North Bend, Indiana. A log cabin was chosen by his political followers as the symbol of his plain and unpretentious way of life, and a barrel of cider as an emblem of his simple but generous hospitality. During the “log cabin and hard cider” campaign all over the country, in cities, villages, and hamlets, log cabins were erected as rallying places for Harrison’s partisans, who met there to toast their champion in abundant glasses of cider. [Illustration: THOMAS JEFFERSON. The “People’s” President, 1800.] CHAPTER XII. THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1800. In 1800 Adams was a candidate for re-election, and fully expected to be successful. But the Democratic-Republican party, as the opposition was now called, defeated him, and elected to the Presidency its great leader, Thomas Jefferson. At a glance, it will be seen that the Republican of 1800 was the father of the Democratic party, the canonized Thomas Jefferson. The people, even thus early in the history of our nation, had begun to give evidence of that discontent at the aristocratic tendencies that even “The Father of his Country,” George Washington, and his successor, John Adams, displayed.