considered
the most trifling details of management. His health improved. He told
his old friend, Washington Irving, that he found it was as good for
men as for beasts to be turned out to grass occasionally. Though not
without domestic afflictions, he was very happy in his home. One of
his sons graduated second at West Point, and two of his daughters were
happily married. He was, perhaps, a too indulgent father; but his
children loved him most tenderly, and were guided by his opinion. It
is pleasing to read in the letters of his sons to him such passages as
this:

"You tell me that you wish me to receive your opinions, not
as commands, but as advice. Yet I must consider them as
commands, doubly binding; for they proceed from, one so
vastly my superior in all respects, and to whom I am under
such great obligations, that the mere intimation of an
opinion will be sufficient to govern my conduct."

The President, meanwhile, was paying such homage to the farmer of
Ashland as no President of the United States had ever paid to a
private individual. General Jackson's principal object--the object
nearest his heart--appears to have been to wound and injure Henry
Clay. His appointments, his measures, and his vetoes seem to have been
chiefly inspired by resentment against him. Ingham of Pennsylvania,
who had taken the lead in that State in giving currency to the
"bargain" calumny, was appointed Secretary of the Treasury. Eaton, who
had aided in the original concoction of that foul slander, was
appointed Secretary of War. Branch, who received the appointment of
Secretary of the Navy, was one of the few Senators who had voted and
spoken against the confirmation of Henry Clay to the office of
Secretary of State in 1825; and Berrien, Attorney-General, was
another. Barry, appointed Postmaster-General, was the Kentuckian who
had done most to inflict upon Mr. Clay the mortification of seeing his
own Kentucky siding against him. John Randolph, Clay's recent
antagonist in a duel, and the most unfit man in the world for a
diplomatic mission, was sent Minister to Russia. Pope, an old Kentucky
Federalist, Clay's opponent and competitor for half a lifetime,
received the appointment of Governor of the Territory of Arkansas.
General Harrison, who had generously defended Clay against the charge
of bargain and corruption, was recalled from a foreign mission on the
fourth day after General Jackson's accession to power