Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/237

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CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.
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est development those qualities sometimes found in the successful man of war, which render him peculiarly unfit for responsible position and the delicate tasks of statesmanship in time of peace.

But his candidacy, although a complete abandonment of the good old tradition and made possible only by the battle of New Orleans, was “worked up” with consummate skill by one of his friends in Tennessee, Major Lewis, who thus earned a place in the very front rank of political managers. Some letters deprecating the spirit of partisan proscription in filling public offices, which General Jackson had written to Monroe years before, were brought before the public to propitiate the remnants of the Federal party. He was made to write another letter, to Dr. L. H. Coleman, pronouncing in a vague way in favor of a protective tariff. In order to keep a man of ability and character, but unfriendly to him, out of the Senate of the United States, and also to give the General an opportunity to renew friendly relations with public men with whom he had quarreled, Jackson himself was elected a senator from Tennessee, and took his seat in December, 1823. The Tennessee legislature had expressed its preference for him as a candidate for the presidency in 1822. A convention of Federalists at Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, a state in which the Federalists still maintained an organization, likewise nominated him in February, 1824, and a month later a Democratic convention at the same place followed their