Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/391

Rh still going on. That Jackson would be a candidate for reëlection had been taken for granted since the first year of his administration. He had no competitor. The formality of a nomination was therefore in his case deemed unnecessary. The Convention was called merely to designate a candidate for the vice-presidency. That candidate, too, had been selected by Jackson, — Van Buren, endeared to him by the enmity of his own enemies. The national convention had only to ratify the decree. Eaton, Jackson's first Secretary of War, was inclined, as a member of the Convention, to vote against Van Buren. But he received a warning not to do so, “unless he was prepared to quarrel with the general.”

The National Republicans hoped that the veto would disgust the many supporters of the bank among the Democrats, and thus demoralize and scatter Jackson's following. It had the opposite effect. The bank Democrats found that there was a man at the bead of their party whose resolution no opposition could stagger, and who had a will much stronger than theirs; to that will they bowed. The Secretary of the Treasury, who had made a report in favor of the bank, did not resign. The Democratic politicians, who had been at the same time friends of the bank and friends of Jackson, soon discovered that the cry against the great monopoly was the popular cry and would win. Many of them had to “turn very sharp corners,” but they turned them with alacrity. Members of