And on the day that Jackson was enjoying, or trembling at, the popularity of his triumph, where was Adams? The day before the inauguration he had removed to the home of Commodore Porter on the outskirts of the city; and at the time the surging multitude was all but drowning the roar of the cannon with its cries for Jackson, the dethroned President, finding the day “warm and springlike,” had ordered his horse, and, accompanied by a single companion, had ridden into the city “through F Street to the Rockville turnpike,” and over that until he reached a road leading to the Porters’--reminded of the passing of his power by the neglect of the people.[146] Henry Clay shut himself in his house and did not leave it during the day--tormented by bitter regrets. V Almost immediately Jackson began to get the reaction on his Cabinet and his policies. The disaffections in the house of his friends, which were to cause him so much embarrassment during the first two years of his Administration, began to appear before the shouts of the crowd on the White House lawn had died away. We have it on the authority of the capital gossips of the day that when McLean, the Postmaster-General, who had betrayed Adams, heard of his new chief’s plans for wholesale dismissals of postmasters, he warned Jackson that in his proceedings against those officials who had participated in politics he would be forced to include in the proscription the supporters of Jackson as well as those who had been faithful to Adams; that Jackson, for a moment nonplussed, sat puffing at his pipe, then arose, and, after walking up and down the room several times, stopped abruptly before his obstreperous minister, with the question: “Mr. McLean, will you accept a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court?”--and that McLean instantly accepted.[147] This is vouched for by Nathan Sargent, who says that on the evening of the interview Lewis Cass told him, at a reception at the home of General Porter, that McLean, with whom he was intimate, had just described the interview to him.[148] The civic virtue of Mr. McLean has been explained on the theory that he entertained presidential aspirations and did not care to incur the displeasure of the many postmasters who were friendly to his ambition. However that may be, he secured a position of which he was not unworthy, and Jackson probably saved himself some trouble by meeting a sudden crisis in a truly Jacksonian way.