Such, in brief, was the scene of the most dramatic and significant political battles that were staged in America between the foundation of the Republic and the Administration of Woodrow Wilson. Such was the day-by-day life of the men, now steel engravings, who played the leading rôles. And by bearing in mind the sordidness and pettiness of the environment, and of the men and women with whom they daily and nightly gossiped and dined and danced, it may be less of a shock to discover, in the unfolding of the story of these eight crowded years, that even the greatest were men of moral weaknesses and limitations. CHAPTER II THE RISING OF THE MASSES I With the election of 1828 a new era dawned in American politics. Up to this time the election of Presidents and the determination of policies had been a matter of manipulation among the congressional politicians. The possessors of property and the aristocrats of intellect had been the only classes with whom the politicians had concerned themselves. The Virginia Dynasty and the Secretarial Succession died on the day that the rising of the masses raised to the Presidency a man who had never served in the Cabinet, distinguished himself in the Congress, or appealed to the “aristocracy of intellect and culture.” To the politicians, office-holders, and society leaders in Washington, the election of Andrew Jackson was something more than a shock--it was an affront. In the campaign he had been opposed by two thirds of the newspapers, four fifths of the preachers, practically all the manufacturers, and seven eighths of the banking capital. Respectability sternly set itself against the presumptuous ambitions of what it conceived to be a rough, illiterate representative of the “mob.” Four years before, the stage had been set for a bitter battle. The election of Adams, through the support of Clay, followed by the appointment of the latter to the first place in the Cabinet, had carried the suspicion of a bargain, and this suspicion had crystallized into a firm conviction with a large portion of the people. Throughout the Adams Administration, its enemies--and they were legion--harped constantly upon the “bargain,” angering the crabbed Adams, and stinging Clay to furious denunciation, and this but served to intensify the bitterness of their foes.