From being
skeptical or at best indifferent, Jackson himself had come to share
the enthusiasm of his assiduous friends.
The Jackson managers banked from the first upon two main assets: one
was the exceptional popularity of their candidate, especially in the
South and West; the other was a political situation so muddled that at
the coming election it might be made to yield almost any result. For
upwards of a generation the presidency and vice presidency had been at
the disposal of a working alliance of Virginia and New York,
buttressed by such support as was needed from other controllable
States. Virginia regularly got the presidency, New York (except at the
time of the Clinton defection of 1812) the vice presidency. After the
second election of Monroe, in 1820, however, there were multiplying
signs that this affiliation of interests had reached the end of its
tether. In the first place, the Virginia dynasty had run out; at all
events Virginia had no candidate to offer and was preparing to turn
its support to a Georgian of Virginian birth, William H.
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