Clay for the secretaryship of state, — Branch of North Carolina, whom Jackson made Secretary of the Navy, and Berrien, who became Attorney General. Eaton of Tennessee, whom Jackson selected as his Secretary of War, was the principal author of the “bargain and corruption” story; and Ingham of Pennsylvania, the elect for the Treasury Department, had distinguished himself in his state by the most zealous propagation of the slander. Barry of Kentucky, chosen for the postmaster generalship, possessed the merit of having turned against Clay in 1825, on account of the “bargain and corruption,” and of having contested Kentucky in 1828 as the anti-Clay candidate for Governor.
But the most striking exhibition of animosity took place in the State Department, at the head of which had stood Clay himself so long as John Quincy Adams was President. General Jackson had selected Martin Van Buren for that office; but Van Buren, being then Governor of New York, could not at once come to Washington to enter upon his new position. Jackson was determined that the State Department should not remain in any sense under the Clay influence for so much as an hour after he became President. On March 4, just before he went to the Capitol to take the oath of office, he put into the hands of Colonel James A. Hamilton of New York, his trusted adherent, a letter running thus: “Sir, — You are appointed to take charge of the Department of State,
