Meanwhile, as soon as Clay could recover from the shock of defeat, he began the organization and solidification of a bitter and stubborn opposition to the Administration. As early as the first of January it was evident that “the aim of the defeated party is to get a majority in the Senate and thereby to control the President.”[151] During the first few weeks of the new Administration the iron sank deep into the souls of the dispossessed office-holders and their friends. It was manifest that there was something more than a new master in the White House--that a régime had passed, a dynasty had fallen. Previous Presidents had entered office with the good wishes of most of their political opponents, but it was clear from the beginning that the dispossessed had steeled themselves against conciliation, were planning to find fault on general principles, and to exert themselves to the utmost to wreck the Administration. The Cabinet was greeted with derision and the Whig drawing-rooms made merry over the “millennium of the minnows.” All the members of the new official family were ridiculed with the exception of Van Buren and even he, while conceded to be a “profound politician,” was “not supposed to be an able statesman.”[152] The vitriolic and vindictive Adams, nursing his wrath to keep it warm, poured forth on the pages of his diary vituperative denunciations of the Cabinet, together with the gossip of the malicious. Ten days of the new régime, and he had rendered the verdict that “the only principles yet discernible in the conduct of the President” were “to feed the cormorant appetite for place, and to reward the prostitution of canvassing defamers.”[153] While Adams indulged in these unfriendly reflections merely to feed his personal vanity, and to record his superiority, Clay, equally bitter, was not content to shut his reflection up between the covers of a book. To him defeat had been especially bitter. He hated Jackson with vindictive malice because the latter really credited the “bargain” story, and had sanctioned its circulation. His overpowering passion was to reach the Presidency. He had entered the official household of Adams as the head of the Cabinet when the “Secretarial Succession” seemed definitely established, and had looked forward to succeeding his chief at the end of his second Administration. The fact that there had been no second Administration had been due, in part, to the prevalent opinion that Clay had entered into a bargain for power, and he faced retirement from public life feeling that his great opportunity had failed him and that his reputation had been stained. He was the type of man whose bitterness must find relief in action. From the moment he recovered from the shock of the election, he dedicated himself to the pursuit of Jackson.