feelings of the classes
whose support was necessary to the success of his plans. In the
present juncture he worked on two main lines: first, to arouse
Jackson's own State to a feverish enthusiasm for the candidacy of its
"favorite son," and, second, to start apparently spontaneous Jackson
movements in various sections of the country, in such a manner that
their cumulative effect would be to create an impression of a
nation-wide and irresistible demand for the victor of New Orleans as a
candidate.

Tennessee was easily stirred. That the General merited the highest
honor within the gift of the people required no argument among his
fellow citizens. The first open steps were taken in January, 1822,
when the _Gazette_ and other Nashville papers sounded the clarion
call. The response was overwhelming; and when Jackson himself, in
reply to a letter from Grundy, diplomatically declared that he would
"neither seek nor shun" the presidency, his candidacy was regarded as
an established fact. On the 20th of July, the Legislature of the State
placed him formally in nomination. Meanwhile Lewis had gone to North
Carolina to work up sentiment there, and by the close of the year
assurances of support were coming in satisfactorily. From being
skeptical or at best indifferent, Jackson himself had come to share
the enthusiasm of his assiduous friends.

The Jackson managers banked from the first upon two main assets: one
was the exceptional popularity of their candidate, especially in the
South and West; the other was a political situation so muddled that at
the coming election it might be made to yield almost any result. For
upwards of a generation the presidency and vice presidency had been at
the disposal of a working alliance of Virginia and New York,
buttressed by such support as was needed from other controllable
States. Virginia regularly got the presidency, New York (except at the
time of the Clinton defection of 1812) the vice presidency. After the
second election of Monroe, in 1820, however, there were multiplying
signs that this affiliation of interests had reached the end of its
tether. In the first place, the Virginia dynasty had run out; at all
events Virginia had no candidate to offer and was preparing to turn
its support to a Georgian of Virginian birth, William H. Crawford. In
the second place, party lines had totally disappeared, and the
unifying and stabilizing influences of party names and affiliations
could not be co