e to him about the campaign in a friendly way. Jackson
naturally thought that Calhoun had been his friend in the Cabinet, and
had no reason to suspect that it was Adams who defended, and Calhoun who
wished to censure him. He did not learn the truth for many years. Had he
known it sooner, there is no telling how different the political history
of the next twenty years might have been.

For henceforth Jackson was to be a great figure not in warfare but in
politics. His military career was practically ended. He kept his
commission until July, 1821, but from this time he fought no more
battles. He had not, as a soldier, given such evidence of military
genius as to set his name alongside those of the great captains of
history, but he had shown himself a strong and successful leader of men;
in his masterful, often irregular and violent way, he had done his
country good service. Were his place in history merely a soldier's, it
would be a safe one, though not the highest. But his actions in the
field soon gave him the leading part on a different stage. One day in
January, 1819, he rode up to the house of his neighbor, Major Lewis, who
had just bought a new overcoat, and asked him to get himself another;
the general wanted the one already made to wear on a long journey.
"Major," he said, "there is a combination in Washington to ruin me. I
start to Washington tomorrow."

The chief of those who, as Jackson firmly believed, were combined to
ruin him, was the man who could with best reason be compared to the hero
of New Orleans for the place he had in the affections of the Western
people and as the representative of the new American spirit, born of the
second war with Great Britain. If Jackson was the hero of the war, Henry
Clay was its orator; if it was Jackson who sent from one quarter the
news of a glorious victory, it was Clay who, with Adams and Gallatin,
had secured the peace. Leaving Ghent, Clay was lingering in Paris when
he heard the news of New Orleans. "Now," he exclaimed, "I can go to
England without mortification." But the great orator was not in sympathy
with Monroe's administration. His enemies declared he was in opposition
because he was not asked to be Secretary of State, and because he feared
that Adams, who had the place, would become President four years later.
However that may have been, it was Clay who led the attack on the
administration about the campaign in Florida. Protesting his deep
respect for "the illu