Both were loyal admirers of the President into whose council they were called, and they remained on terms of intimacy with him as long as he lived. Both were honest, fearless, powerful, independent statesmen. After Monroe's retirement, one became President, the other Vice-President. Both remained in public service to the very close of life, Calhoun dying while senator, and Adams while a representative. Both are credited by their biographers with that sagacity which points out in advance the dangers covered up by a political measure. Calhoun, says Von Holst, " reads the future as if the book of fate were lying wide open before him." Adams, says Morse, "discerned in passing events the title-page to a great tragic volume,'" and "few men at that day read the future so clearly."

Unlike the two ministers already named, Crawford was what has been termed " a selfmade man." He was continued in charge of the Treasury Department, to which, after his return from the embassy to France and after a brief service as Secretary of War, he had been called by Madison. In the congressional caucus which nominated Monroe, Crawford was the chief opposing candidate; and a shrewd observer, who was a member of that body, has recorded his opinion that when Congress first

assembled a majority of Republican members were for Crawford. But the nomination was postponed from time to time, and at length, through the influence of Madison or other causes, sixty-five votes were cast for Monroe and fifty-four for his opponent.1 Crawford, however, continued to be regarded as in the line of succession to the presidency, and received a part of the electoral vote in 1824.

William Wirt was the choice of the President for the office of attorney-general. His biographer, John P. Kennedy, in the vivid portrait with which he begins the memoir, dwells on the Teutonic aspect of Wirt, not unlike to Goethe's. Born in Maryland, he was of German origin, his father having migrated to this country from Switzerland many years before the Revolution, and his mother being a German. Previously a prominent advocate in the courts of Virginia, he won a national reputation by the part he took in the prosecution of Aaron Burr. Having a limited education and a very moderate library to begin with, he had risen by his talents to a conspicuous rank as a lawyer and as a writer. He had recently completed his memoir of Patrick Henry. He came into office as the personal friend of Monroe,

1 Many other details in respect to the nomination are given in Hammond's Political History.

after it was decided that Richard Rush should go to England, and he was attracted to the attorney-generalship not so much on account of the political preferment, as because of the professional standing which it gave him. Unlike Adams, Calhoun, and Crawford, he did not aspire to the presidency. To William Pope's suggestions he replied, "I am already higher than I had any reason to expect, and I should be light-headed indeed, because I have been placed on this knoll, where I feel safe, to aspire at the mountain's pinnacle in order to be blown to atoms. Therefore let this matter rest." And so it rested. Wirt remained in office twelve years, and although he did not confine his professional labors to the service of the government, he exalted the station which he held by an assiduous discharge of all its duties with ability, learning, and success.

Among those who were thought of for the cabinet, Henry Clay, one of Monroe's supporters for the presidency, was conspicuous. He declined the offer of an appointment as Secretary of War, but his "friends did not conceal their disappointment that he was not invited to take the office of secretary of state; nor did he disguise his dissatisfaction at the appointment of Mr. Adams;" so writes Josiah Quincy. There are many subsequent indications of Clay's hos

William Wirt,

tility to the administration. for example, in counselling with the President in regard to certain allowances claimed for Clay's diplomatic services, where the usage of the government was not clearly established, remarks as follows: "I am aware of the delicacy which connects itself with this question considered personally as it relates to you; but it is a delicacy with a double aspect: if you reject the claim, Mr. Clay and his friends may impute it to hostility to him, on account of the political part which he has occasionally taken against you; and, on the other hand, if you admit the claim and it shall be thought unjust, it may, and by some most probably will, be imputed to a dread of his further opposition and a wish to bribe him to silence. The best way will be to consider the question abstractedly without any manner of reference to the character of the claimant, and this I shall endeavor to do." It is one of the curious incidents of political life, that at the close of Monroe's administration the vote of Clay's friends made Adams President, and Adams made Clay his Secretary of State.

Jackson had formed a personal attachment to Monroe in 1815, and welcomed his accession to the presidency partly on this account, partly because he disliked Crawford. Several letters

exchanged by Jackson and the President elect have long been familiar to the public. They indicate that he, as well as Clay and Shelby, declined the office of secretary of war. They also show that Jackson felt quite at liberty to make confidential suggestions in respect to candidates for the cabinet. For the War Department he urgently recommended Colonel W. H. Drayton, late of the army; Shelby he opposed. The selection of Adams he regarded as the best that could be made for the Department of State. The letters of Monroe to Jackson at this juncture show the principles on which the former meant to select his chief advisers, and also the attitude which he proposed to hold in respect to the Federalists. In the formation of an administration, he thought that the heads of departments (there being four) should be taken from the four great sections of the Union, the east, the middle, the south, and the west, unless great emergencies and transcendent talents should justify a departure from this plan; and he intimated pointedly that in selecting candidates he should act for the country, and not "for the aggrandizement of any one." The Federalists he regarded as thoroughly routed, the great body of them having become Republicans. To preserve the Republican party and prevent the revival of the Federal, was to be