omnipotence, and for many years assailed Jackson as a military dictator who was undermining the representative institutions of his country.  The American people, however, appraised these fulminations at their true value.  While continuing for twelve years to elect to the Presidency Jackson or his nominee, they finally dispossessed the Whigs from the control of Congress; and they were right.  The American people have much more to fear from Congressional usurpation than they have from executive usurpation.  Both Jackson and Lincoln somewhat strained their powers, but for good purposes, and in essentially a moderate and candid spirit; but when Congress attempts to dominate the executive, its objects are generally bad and its methods furtive and dangerous.  Our legislatures were and still are the strongholds of special and local interests, and anything which undermines executive authority in this country seriously threatens our national integrity and balance.  It is to the credit of the American people that they have instinctively recognized this fact, and have estimated at their true value the tirades which men no better than Henry Clay level against men no worse than Andrew Jackson.

The reason for the failure of the Whigs was that their opponents embodied more completely the living forces of contemporary American life.  Jackson and his followers prevailed because they were simple, energetic, efficient, and strong.  Their consistency of feeling and their mutual loyalty enabled them to form a much more effective partisan organization than that of the Whigs.  It is one of those interesting paradoxes, not uncommon in American history, that the party which represented official organization and leadership was loosely organized and unwisely led, while the party which distrusted official organization and surrounded official leadership with rigid restraints was most efficiently organized and was for many years absolutely dominated by a single man.  At bottom, of course, the difference between the two parties was a difference in vitality.  All the contemporary conditions worked in favor of the strong narrow man with prodigious force of will like Andrew Jackson, and against men like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster who had more intelligence, but were deficient in force of character and singleness of purpose.  The former had behind him the impulse of a great popular movement which was sweeping irresistibly towards wholly unexpected results; and the latter, while ostensibly trying to stem the tide, were in reality carried noisily along on its flood.

Daniel Webster and Henry Clay were in fact faced by an alternative similar to that which sterilized the lives of almost all their contemporaries who represented an intellectual interest.  They were men of national ideas but of something less than national feeling.  Their interests, temperament, and manner of life prevented them from instinctively sympathizing with the most vital social and political movement of their day.