had fashioned a set of issues,
reflective of western and middle-state ideas, upon which the politics
of the country turned for more than a quarter of a century. As
befitted a "great conciliator," he had admirers in every corner of the
land. Whether his strength could be sufficiently massed to yield
electoral results remained to be discovered.

But what of Jackson? If, as one writer has said, Clay was one of the
favorites of the West, Jackson was the West itself. "While Clay was
able to voice, with statesmanlike ability, the demand for economic
legislation to promote her interests, and while he exercised an
extraordinary fascination by his personal magnetism and his eloquence,
he never became the hero of the great masses of the West; he appealed
rather to the more intelligent--to the men of business and of
property."[5] Jackson, however, was the very personification of the
contentious, self-confident, nationalistic democracy of the interior.
He could make no claim to statesmanship. He had held no important
legislative or administrative position in his State, and his brief
career in Congress was entirely without distinction. He was a man of
action, not a theorist, and his views on public questions were, even
as late as 1820, not clear cut or widely known. In a general way he
represented the school of Randolph and Monroe, rather than that of
Jefferson and Madison. He was a moderate protectionist, because he
believed that domestic manufactures would make the United States
independent of European countries in time of war. On the Bank and
internal improvements his mind was not made up, although he was
inclined to regard both as unconstitutional.

Jackson's attitude toward the leading political personalities of the
time left no room for doubt. He supported Monroe in 1816 and in 1820
and continued on friendly terms with him notwithstanding the
President's failure on certain occasions to follow his advice. Among
the new contenders for the presidency the one he disliked most was
Crawford. "As to Wm. H. Crawford," he wrote to a friend in 1821, "you
know my opinion. I would support the Devil first." Clay, also, he
disliked--partly out of recollection of the Kentuckian's censorious
attitude during the Seminole debates, partly because of the natural
rivalry between the two men for the favor of the western people. Clay
fully reciprocated by refusing to believe that "killing 2,500
Englishmen at New Orleans" qualified Jackson for the