"Hurrah for Jackson!" rent the air. Looking around for
a moment into ten thousand upturned and exultant human faces, the
President-elect removed his hat, took the manuscript of his address
from his pocket, and read it with great dignity. When he had
finished, Chief Justice Marshall administered the oath, and as the
President, bending over the sacred Book, touched it with his lips,
there arose such a shout as was never before heard in Washington,
followed by the thunder of cannons, from two light batteries near
by, echoed by the cannon at the Navy Yard and at the Arsenal. The
crowd surged toward the platform, and had it not been that a ship's
cable had been stretched across the portico steps would have captured
their beloved leader. As it was, he shook hands with hundreds,
and it was with some difficulty that he could be escorted back to
his carriage and along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.
Meanwhile Mr. Adams, who had refused to participate in the pageant,
was taking his usual constitutional horseback exercise when the
thunders of the cannon reached his ears and notified him that he
was again a private citizen.

The broad sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue were again packed as
the procession returned from the Capitol. "I never saw such a
crowd," wrote Daniel Webster to a friend. "Persons have come five
hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think
that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger." Hunters
of Kentucky and Indian fighters of Tennessee, with sturdy frontiersmen
from the Northwest, were mingled in the throng with the more cultured
dwellers on the Atlantic slope.

On their arrival at the White House, the motley crowd clamored for
refreshments and soon drained the barrels of punch, which had been
prepared, in drinking to the health of the new Chief Magistrate.
A great deal of china and glassware was broken, and the East Room
was filled with a noisy mob. At one time General Jackson, who had
retreated until he stood with his back against the wall, was
protected by a number of his friends, who formed a living barrier
about him. Such a scene had never before been witnessed at the
White House, and the aristocratic old Federalists saw, to their
disgust, men whose boots were covered with the red mud of the
unpaved streets standing on the damask satin-covered chairs to get
a sight at the President of their choice.

Late in the afternoon President Jackson sat down to dinn