Again, the younger in the silver age of our ’s advancement to fame, in his inaugural address, (1825) thus candidly declares the majesty of the youthful , in its increasing greatness, “The year of jubilee since the first formation of our has just elapsed; that of the declaration of Independence is at hand. The consummation of both was effected by this constitution. Since that period, a population of four millions has multiplied to twelve. A territory, bounded by the , has been extended from sea to sea. New states have been admitted to the , in numbers nearly equal to those of the first confederation. Treaties of peace, amity and commerce, have been concluded with the principal dominions of the earth. The people of other nations, the inhabitants of regions acquired, not by conquest, but by compact, have been united with us in the participation of our rights and duties, of our burdens and blessings. The forest has fallen by the axe of our woodsmen; the soil has been made to teem by the tillage of our farmers: our commerce has whitened every ocean. The dominion of man over physical nature has been extended by the invention of our artists. Liberty and law have walked hand in hand. All the purposes of human association have been accomplished as effectively as under any other government on the globe, and at a cost little exceeding, in a whole generation, the expenditures of other nations in a single year.[”]

In continuation of such noble sentiments, Gen. [Andrew] Jackson, upon his ascension to the great chair of the chief magistracy: said, “As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of person and property, liberty of conscience, and of the press, it will be worth defending; and so long as it is worth defending, a patriotic militia will cover it with an impenetrable aegis.”

General Jackson’s administration may be denominated the acme of American glory, liberty and prosperity, for the national debt, which in 1815, on account of the late war, was $125,000,000, and lessened gradually, was paid up in his golden day; and preparations were made to distribute the surplus revenue among the several states: and that august patriot, to use his own words in his farewell address, retired leaving “a great people prosperous and happy, in the full enjoyment of liberty and peace, honored and respected by every nation of the world.”

At the age, then, of sixty years our blooming began to decline under the withering touch of ! Disappointed ambition; thirst for power, pride, corruption, party spirit, faction, patronage; perquisites, fame, tangling alliances; priest-craft and spiritual wickedness in high places, struck hands, and revelled in midnight splendor. Trouble, vexation, perplexity and contention, mingled with hope, fear and murmuring, rumbled through the and agitated the whole as would an earthquake at the centre of the earth the world, heaving the sea beyond its bounds, and shaking the everlasting hills: So, in hopes of better times, while jealousy, hypocritical pretensions, and pompous ambition, were luxuriating on the ill- [p. 7]