Excerpt from A Political History of the State of New York, Vol. 2: 1833-1861 But, despite the backing of President Jackson, and the influence of other powerful friends, there was no crying de mand outside of New York for Van Buren's election to the Presidency. He had done nothing to stir the hearts of his countrymen with pride, or to create a pronounced, deter mined public sentiment in his behalf. On the contrary, his weaknesses were as well understood without New York as within it. David Crockett, in his life of Van Buren, speaks of him as secret, Sly, selfish, cold, calculating, distrustful, treacherous, and as opposite to Jackson as dung is to a diamond. Crockett's book, written for campaign effect, was as scurrilous as it was interesting, but it proved that the country fully understood the character of Van Buren, and that, unlike Jackson, he had no great, redeeming, iron-willed quality that fascinates the multitude. Tennessee, the home State of Jackson, opposed him with bitterness; Virginia de elared that it favoured principles, not men, and that in sup porting Van Buren it had gone as far astray as it would go; Calhoun spoke of the Van Buren party as a powerful fac tion, held together by the hopes of plunder, and marching under a banner whereon is written 'to the victors belong the spoils.' Everywhere there seemed to be unkindness, unrest, or indifference. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.