The campaign of 1832 marked the beginning of many things that have come to be commonplace in American politics. For the first time the politicians were under the compulsion of cultivating and conciliating, not factions and groups, but the masses of the people. The day of Democracy had dawned, with all that means of good and evil. And in this struggle for the suffrage of the masses, Clay had unwittingly intrigued the Jacksonians into the advantage. Accustomed for years to relying solely on the wealthy and the influential, the great Whig leaders signally failed to appreciate that the very elements they had rallied to their support would tend to alienate the mechanics of the cities, the farmers of the plains, the pioneers struggling with poverty on the fringe of the forest. Thurlow Weed, who was one of the few practical Whig politicians, saw it, but he was then comparatively obscure. The clever politicians of the Kitchen Cabinet instantly sensed the opportunity and grasped it. A great moneyed institution, never popular with the masses, was seeking the humiliation of the most popular of Presidents. The most fortunate of that day were responding to the call of the Bank. The first battle at the polls between the “soul-less corporation” and the “sons of toil” was on. For the first time in a presidential election the demagogue appeared with his appeals to class prejudice and class hate, and all the demagogy was not on the part of the Jacksonians. If these sought to arouse the masses against the prosperous, the prosperous, with gibes about the “mob,” were quite as busy in prejudicing the classes against the masses. And in this campaign the press played a more conspicuous and important part than ever before. The Jacksonians, who had tested the political possibilities of the press four years before, had perfected an organization throughout the country dependent on the editorial lead of the “Globe.” If the political leaders of the Whigs were even now slow to grasp the potentiality of publicity, Nicholas Biddle of the Bank was more alert, and, through his agency, the powerful “New York Courier and Enquirer,” edited by James Watson Webb, deserted the Democracy to espouse the cause of Clay and “the monster.” That money played a part in the conversion was soon established in a congressional investigation; and when the “National Intelligencer,” the Whig organ, joyously hailed the convert, Blair was able sarcastically to comment on its being “charmed with his [Webb’s] honesty and independence in complying with his bargain with the Bank--and the bold, frank and honorable way in which he unsays all that he has said in favor of the President for the price paid him by Mr. Biddle.”[479] Thus the editors in 1832 fought with a ferocity never before approached.