d increased the facilities for trade that a great deal of wild
speculation followed. The officers of the branch bank in Baltimore were
dishonest and loaned more than $2,000,000 beyond its securities. The
President stopped the extravagant loans, exposed the rogues, and greatly
aided in bringing back the country to a sound financial basis, although
the Bank of the United States narrowly escaped bankruptcy--a calamity
that would have caused distress beyond estimate.

Amid the stirring political times our commerce suffered from the pirates
who infested the West Indies. Their depredations became so annoying that
in 1819 Commodore Perry, of Lake Erie fame, was sent out with a small
squadron to rid the seas of the pests. Before he could accomplish
anything, he was stricken with yellow fever and died. Other squadrons
were dispatched to southern waters, and in 1822 more than twenty
piratical vessels were destroyed in the neighborhood of Cuba. Commodore
Porter followed up the work so effectively that the intolerable nuisance
was permanently abated.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1824.

There were plenty of presidential candidates in 1824. Everybody now was
a Republican, and the choice, therefore, lay between the men of that
political faith. The vote was as follows: Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee,
99; John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, 84; Henry Clay, of Kentucky,
37; William H. Crawford, of Georgia, 41. For Vice-President: John C.
Calhoun, of South Carolina, 182; Nathan Sandford, of New York, 30;
Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina, 24; Andrew Jackson, 13; Martin Van
Buren, of New York, 9; Henry Clay, 2.

This vote showed that no candidate was elected, and the election,
therefore, was thrown into the House of Representatives. Although
Jackson was far in the lead on the popular and electoral vote, the
friends of Clay united with the supporters of Adams, who became
President, with Calhoun Vice-President. The peculiar character of this
election led to its being called the "scrub race for the presidency."

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

John Quincy Adams, the sixth President, was born at Braintree,
Massachusetts, July 11, 1767, and was the son of the second President.
He was given every educational advantage in his youth, and when eleven
years old accompanied his father to France and was placed in a school in
Paris. Two years later he entered the University of Leyden, afterward
made a tour through the principal countries of Europe, and, ret