It was in this compaign, too, that the masses awakened to the fact that they had interests involved, and possessed power. Previous to this the aristocracy, the business and financial interests, and the intellectuals, alone, determined the governmental personnel. Men went into training for the Presidency, and, as in a lodge, passed, as a matter of course, from the Cabinet to the Vice-Presidency, and thence to the chief magistracy. An office-holding class, feeling itself secure in a life tenure, had grown up. As we have seen, the election of Jackson was due to the rising of the masses. Thousands who had never before participated in politics played influential parts in the campaign. The victory, they considered theirs. Thus they had flocked to Washington as never before to an inauguration, rejoicing in the induction of “their” President into office, and all too many pressing claims to recognition and entertaining hopes of entering upon their reward. Before the inauguration, the grim old warrior, awaiting the opportunity, at Gadsby’s, to take the oath of office, had been fairly mobbed by ardent partisans of his cause, demanding the expulsion of the enemy and the appointment of his supporters to office. The Jackson press had been particularly insistent upon this point. Duff Green, of the “National Telegraph,” had early announced that he naturally assumed that the office-holders who had actively campaigned for Adams would make way for the victors. This same feeling had spread into every community in the country. Isaac Hill, writing in the “New Hampshire Patriot” immediately after the election, had sounded the onslaught for the Democracy of New England.[177] And soon after reaching Washington, and sensing the atmosphere at Gadsby’s, the New England editor had written joyously to a friend: “You may say to all our anxious Adamsites that THE BARNACLES WILL BE SCRAPED CLEAN OFF THE SHIP OF STATE. Most of them have grown so large and stick so tight that the scraping process will doubtless be fatal to them.”