CHAPTER XII.
THE PARTY CHIEFS.
Under Monroe's presidency the old Federal party had indeed maintained a local organization here and there, and filled a few seats in Congress, but it had even then become extinct as a national organization. The Republicans were in virtually undisputed possession of the government. The “era of good feeling” abounded in personal bickerings, jealousies of cliques, conflicts of ambition, and also controversies on matters of public interest, but there was no gathering of forces in opposite camps on a great scale. In the presidential canvass of 1824 all the candidates were recognized as Republicans. It was the election of John Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives that brought about the first lasting schism in the Republican ranks. In its beginning this schism appeared to bear an essentially personal character. The friends of the defeated candidates, of Jackson and Crawford, with the following of Calhoun, banded together against the friends of Adams and Clay. Their original rallying cry was that Jackson had been wronged, and that the Adams-Clay administration must be broken down in any event,
