Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/245

Rh method as advocates of Monroe's nomination, admitted that it was not truly representative of the people. This in itself was an indication of the growing democracy of the times.

To answer this growing democracy Monroe did what no other president since Washington had done, he started out to show himself to the people. From Philadelphia he went to New York, from New York to New Haven, Hartford and Providence; to Boston, to New Hampshire and Vermont; to Niagara Falls, to Buffalo, to Detroit and then back home. He was the first president to see his country as it was, the president of an era of good feeling for which he was so largely responsible.

There was much loose thinking, but still it was thinking. In the Nashville Gazette, in January, 1822, the idea was advanced that Andrew Jackson, the new type of man—the man representing, not the old "dynasty of the Secretaries "but the people who were developing the country—should be nominated for president. It was in the election of 1824 that the people first began to show a deep interest in the choice of a president. Up to that time it may be truly said that the elections were handled for the people. Now, with the increased freedom and the broadening of the franchise, clubs were being formed, and small groups, composed of those who had formerly been considered ridiculous as political factors, now came into existence. In New York, in which property qualifications for voters were abolished by a new constitution adopted in 1821, organizations of the formerly disfranchised sprang into being within a year.

The spread of interest in human rights was evidence that the leaven of democracy was working. Moreover, the rise of the liberal movement in Europe, following