The elements that were left to support the Administration were the
followers of Adams and Clay. These eventually drew together under the
name of National Republicans. Their strength, however, was limited,
for Adams could make no appeal to the masses, even in New England;
while Clay, by contributing to Jackson's defeat, had forfeited much of
the popularity that would otherwise have been his.
If the story of Adams's Administration could be told in detail, it
would be one long record of rancorous warfare between the President
and the Jacksonian opposition in Congress. Adams, on the one hand,
held inflexibly to his course, advocating policies and recommending
measures which he knew had not the remotest chance of adoption; and,
on the other hand, the opposition--which in the last two years of the
Administration controlled the Senate as well as the House of
Representatives--balked at no act that would humiliate the President
and make capital for its western idol. At the outset the Jacksonians
tried to hold up the confirmation of Clay.
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