in the practical matter of voting. He thought at
the time that the success of this speech, brilliant as it appeared,
was not unlikely to result in his political ruin. Jackson would
befriend and reward his thorough-going partisans at any cost to his
own conscience or the public welfare; but the exceptional aid,
tendered not from a sense of personal fealty to himself, but simply
from the motive of aiding the right cause happening in the especial
instance to have been espoused by him, never won from him any token of
regard. In November, 1837, Mr. Adams, speaking of his personal
relations with the President, said:--

"Though I had served him more than any other living man ever did,
and though I supported his Administration at the hazard of my own
political destruction, and effected for him at a moment when his
own friends were deserting him what no other member of Congress
ever accomplished for him--an unanimous vote of the House of (p. 240)
Representatives to support him in his quarrel with France; though
I supported him in other very critical periods of his Administration,
my return from him was insult, indignity, and slander."

Antipathy had at last become the definitive condition of these two
men--antipathy both political and personal. At one time a singular
effort to reconcile them--probably though not certainly undertaken
with the knowledge of Jackson--was made by Richard M. Johnson. This
occurred shortly before the inauguration of the war conducted by the
President against the Bank of the United States; and judging by the
rest of Jackson's behavior at this period, there was probably at least
as much of calculation in his motives, if in fact he was cognizant of
Johnson's approaches, as there was of any real desire to reestablish
the bygone relation of honorable friendship. To the advances thus made
Mr. Adams replied a little coldly, not quite repellently, that Jackson,
having been responsible for the suspension of personal intercourse,
must now be undisguisedly the active party in renewing it. At the same
time he professed himself "willing to receive in a spirit of
conciliation any advance which in that spirit General Jackson might
make." But nothing came of this intrinsically hopeless attempt. On
the contrary the two drew rapidly and more widely apart, and (p. 241)
entertained concerning each other opinions which grew steadily more
unfavorable, and upon Adams's part mor