Jackson’s election in 1828 was a foregone conclusion from the moment he reappeared as a Presidential candidate; and, immediately upon the announcement that he had won an electoral vote a good deal more than double that of Adams, Washington became the Mecca of a hundred pilgrimages. By the fourth of March, 1829, the city was so crowded with worshipers of the President-elect that they overflowed the inns and boarding-houses, and many were obliged to live in camp. Half the men wore their trousers tucked into their boot-legs, and not a few carried pistols openly in their belts. The hickory emblem was in evidence everywhere: men wielded hickory canes and staffs, women wore bonnets trimmed with hickory leaves and necklaces composed of hickory nuts fancifully painted, and scores of horses were driven with bridles of hickory bark.
Like his father, Adams did not attend the inauguration of his successor; he withdrew to a hired dwelling on the heights north of the city and kept to himself till the flurry was over. Probably Jackson did not regret his absence, for the campaign had been surcharged with bitter personalities, into which the name
[Illustration: _Bladensburg Duelling-Ground_]
of Mrs. Jackson was remorselessly dragged. Mrs. Jackson had died since election day, and the General believed her death the direct result of calumny.
Madison had set the fashion, and Monroe and Adams had improved upon it, of having a formal escort to the Capitol on the way to inauguration. Jackson, however, refused to follow custom. As the only militia organization in the city was under command of a colonel who hated him, he had no military display, but walked down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue with only a body-guard composed of veterans of the War of the Revolution, then a half-century past. For any lack of enthusiasm on the part of the resident population, that of the visiting Jacksonians more than compensated. All the way the General and his little party were so surrounded by a yelling, cheering crowd that they could advance only at a snail’s pace. To watchers on Capitol Hill he was distinguishable from the mob by being the one man in the midst of it who walked bareheaded.
Jackson was the first President to take the oath of office on the east portico of the Capitol, the place now generally used. He also was the first to read his speech before being sworn. He wore two pairs of spectacles,--a pair for looking at the crowd and a pair for reading; when he was using one pair, the other was perched aloft on his forehead. At the close of the exercises, he mounted a fine white horse and rode to the White House, again having to make his way through a mass of singing and shouting admirers. At the mansion a feast had been provided, and the gates thrown open to every one. The building was soon stuffed full; and, as the people waiting outside could hardly hope to force their way in, negro servants came to the doors with buckets of punch and salvers of cakes and ices and passed these out. Much of the food and drink was wasted, and much china and glassware smashed. Women fainted, men quarreled and bruised one another’s faces. At one stage the doorways became so blocked that people coming out had to climb through the windows and drop to the ground. The rabble inside, bent on shaking the hand of the President, jammed him against a wall to the serious peril of his ribs, till he succeeded in escaping through a back entry and taking refuge in the hotel where he had lately had his lodgings.