large majority.

Under the Constitution, the House of Representatives had now to choose a
President from the three leading candidates. Clay was Speaker, and had
great influence over the House, but his own name had to be dropped.
Beaten himself, he had the power to make any one of his three rivals
President of the United States.

It was a trying situation for him and for the three citizens whose fate
he seemed to hold in his hands. Crawford was so ill that Clay could not
seriously consider him. Adams had never liked Clay, though they
generally agreed about public questions, and the ardent Kentuckian
could never have found the cold manners of the New England statesman
attractive. But from the first he preferred Adams to Jackson, thinking a
mere "military chieftain" unfit for the office. On the 9th of February,
Adams was elected. That evening he and Jackson met at a presidential
reception. Of the two, the defeated Westerner bore himself far more
graciously than the successful candidate from New England.

Up to this time, no unseemly conduct could be charged against any one of
the four rivals. But the human nature of these men could not bear to the
end the strain of such a rivalry. For many years the jealousy and hatred
and suspicion it gave birth to were to blacken American politics.
Jackson was guilty of a grave injustice to Clay and Adams; and they, by
a political blunder, delivered themselves into his hands. Jackson and
his friends charged them with "bargain and corruption." Adams, by
appointing Clay Secretary of State, and Clay, by accepting the office,
gave their enemies the only evidence they ever had to offer of the truth
of the charge. Every other semblance of a proof was shown to be
worthless, and the characters of the two men have convinced all candid
historians that the charge was false. But there was no way to prove that
the charge was false. Jackson believed it, and from this time he made
war on Clay and Adams. He believed he had a wrong to right, a
combination of scoundrelly enemies to overthrow, a corrupted government
to purify and save. The election had shown him to be the most popular of
all the candidates, and his friends, of whom Benton was now the
foremost, contended that the House ought to have chosen him in obedience
to the people's will. Until he should be elected, he and his followers
seemed to feel that the people were hoodwinked by the politicians.

Hitherto, since his second entrance into pub