CHAPTER XII.

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1828.

THE friends of the administration were not alarmed. Mr. Clay himself was not. Mr. Adams, if less confident than his sanguine Secretary of State, expected a reelection. Mr. Webster, then on the most cordial terms with Henry Clay, and a pillar of the administration, felt sure of success as late as the spring of 1827. Mr. Webster, like most of the educated inhabitants of Boston, knew nothing of the people of the United States, and was generally wrong in his political prophecies.

To his friend, Jeremiah Mason, who was battling in New Hampshire with editor Isaac Hill, Mr. Webster, in April, 1827, expressed a deliberate confidence that the people would sustain the administration. "A survey of the whole ground," he wrote, "leads me to believe confidently in Mr. Adams' reelection. I set down New England, New Jersey, the greater part of Maryland, and, perhaps, all Delaware, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, and Louisiana for him. We must then get votes enough in New York to choose him, and I think can not fail of this. It is possible we may lose four votes in Kentucky, but I do not expect it. At the same time it is not impossible that Pennsylvania may go for Mr. Adams."

So much for prophecy. But the acutest politicians are at fault when they predict the result of a popular election two years, two weeks, two days distant. Mr. Van Buren himself, we are assured by Dr. Hammond, was confident of a reëlection in 1840.

The campaign of 1828 opened with a stunning flourish of trumpets. Louisiana, like New York, was a doubtful and troublesome State. Its scattering vote of 1824 it was highly desirable to concentrate in 1828; and it was resolved that