Such was the Jackson Cabinet which accompanied him into office. There have been greater Cabinets, but many inferior to it, and few with men possessing greater ability than Van Buren or Berrien, or more social distinction than Branch. There was not a single member who did not possess at least good ability, and Jackson had, or thought he had, what he said he proposed to have, a Cabinet without a presidential aspirant. It is strange that the one man who developed into a candidate almost immediately was the one to whom he became most ardently attached. We shall now note the first troubles of the official family. CHAPTER III THE RED TERROR AND THE WHITE I Thirteen days after the inauguration, the Senate, having confirmed the Cabinet, adjourned, and the Administration could look forward to almost nine months of non-interference from the Congress. The pre-inaugural prediction that the President would adopt a policy of proscription of his political foes was almost immediately justified by events. The “spoils system,” as an important cog in the machinery of political parties, thus frankly recognized, dates from this time. Through all the intervening years the civil service reformers have indulged in the most bitter denunciation of Jackson on the untenable theory that but for him public offices would never have been used as the spoils of party. Some of the most conscientious of historians have created the impression that the adoption of a prescriptive policy was due to something inherently wrong in the President. As a matter of fact, Jackson was the victim of conditions and circumstances, and the new political weapon grew out of the exigencies of a new political era. For many years political parties had been chaotic, vapory, and indefinite; and if the politics of the young Republic had not been drifting toward personal government, it had been partaking of the nature of government by cliques and classes. The first Message of John Quincy Adams had made the definite division of the people into political parties inevitable--these parties standing for well-defined, antagonistic policies. Van Buren had early caught the drift and had cleverly organized a party standing for principles and policies, rather than for personalities. John M. Clayton, soon to become one of the outstanding figures of the Opposition to the Jackson Administration, who had seldom voted even in presidential elections because of his indifference to the mere ambitions of individuals, understood that in 1828 something more was involved, and threw himself into the contest in support of Adams. And Clay was even then looking forward to the organization of a party pledged to internal improvements and a protective tariff. The Jackson Administration marks the beginning of political parties as we have known them for almost a century.