,
and after a close contest with Richard M. Johnson, that he was returned
to the United States Senate. General Jackson had completely won the
leadership of the Clay territory and the affections of the plain
farmers.

In the Northwest there were other large areas of fertile lands in the
possession of the hated Indians, and there, as in the Southwest, the
most popular leader was he who believed and taught that the quickest way
to build up the country was to take immediate possession of these lands.
In Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois the small farmers and the pioneers
were almost as enthusiastic followers of Jackson as were their economic
kinsmen of the Gulf region.

With these backwoods States thus devoted to the man to whom Chief
Justice Marshall had sorrowfully administered the oath of office, it was
easy for the leaders of the new regime to make strong appeal to the
mountain counties of the Middle States and South, whose political idol
had been Thomas Jefferson and whose people were only a generation
removed from the pioneer stage of development. With the exception of
some of the New England _emigres_ of western New York, the peasant
proprietors of all the up-country counties of the Middle States gave
Jackson their allegiance; while south of Maryland, except in a few
counties of western Virginia, almost every man in the hill country was a
stanch defender of the first Western President. Thus in the West and in
the interior of the States which bordered upon the Alleghany Mountains,
Jackson had a great compact following which for years to come was to
give him the advantage over all his opponents.

The radical and enthusiastic wing of the new party was the Southwest,
closely followed by the Northwest; the older West and the up-country of
the Middle States and South composed the "solid" element; while the
low-country men, the planters of Virginia and the Carolinas, regarded
askance the democratic leader whom they had reluctantly helped to the
Presidency. Of real organization and party discipline there was little,
and the beliefs and principles of the various groups of the party were
sometimes antagonistic. On one thing only were most of these men united:
on the necessity of keeping New England out of the control of the
Government. Surely any one who knew the actual conditions of 1829, the
ambitions and the smouldering animosities of the Jackson lieutenants,
must have faced the future with more than ordinary doubt and anx