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312 whatever policy it might follow. The division was simply between Jackson men on one side, and Adams and Clay men on the other.

The two prominent questions of the time, that of the tariff and that of internal improvements, were not then in issue between them. There were strenuous advocates of a high tariff and of internal improvements on both sides. Jackson himself had in his Coleman letter spoken the language of a protectionist, and he had voted for several internal improvement bills while he was in the Senate. In several states he had been voted for as a firm friend of those two policies. Even during the whole of Adams's administration, while a furious opposition was carried on against it, there continued to be much diversity of opinion among its assailants on these subjects. In fact the tariff of 1828, the “tariff of abominations,” was passed by Congress, and the strict construction principles maintained by Madison and Monroe concerning internal improvements suffered one defeat after another, while both Houses were controlled by majorities hostile to Adams and Clay. The question of the National Bank was not touched in the campaign of 1824, nor while Adams was President; nor was there, at the time the opposition started, any other defined principle or public interest conspicuously at issue between him and his opponents; for the inaugural address, and the messages in which Adams took such advanced positions in the direction of paternal government, did not precede,