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Rh had found many friends to welcome him with great warmth. He had heard the President spoken of with high respect and confidence. Daniel Webster, too, sent him cheering reports as to “an entire and not uneasy acquiescence in the events of last winter,” which he had found on his summer excursions. Clay almost persuaded himself that the storm had blown over. But then he was startled again by some stirring manifestation of the bitterness which the last presidential election had left behind it. One day he met a general of the regular army, with his aid-de-camp, in the President's ante-room. The aid-de-camp being introduced to him, Clay politely offered his hand, which the young man, drawing back, refused to take. It turned out that he was a connection of General Jackson. Clay was so shocked by this rude demonstration that he wrote the General a complaining letter about it.

Something far more serious happened in October. The legislature of Tennessee met, and proceeded forthwith to nominate General Jackson as a candidate for President to be elected in 1828. On October 13, more than three years before the period of the election, General Jackson addressed a letter to the legislature, accepting the nomination, and at the same time resigning his seat in the Senate. In this letter he laid down his “platform.” He gave the world to understand that there was much corruption at Washington, and that, unless a certain remedy were applied, corruption would “become