He was willing to leave to these managers the infinite details of his
campaign. But he kept in close touch with them and their subordinates,
and upon occasion he did not hesitate to take personal command. In
politics, as in war, he was imperious; persons not willing to support
him with all their might, and without question or quibble, he
preferred to see on the other side. Throughout the campaign his
opponents hoped, and his friends feared, that he would commit some
deed of anger that would ruin his chances of election. The temptation
was strong, especially when the circumstances of his marriage were
dragged into the controversy. But while he chafed inwardly, and
sometimes expressed himself with more force than elegance in the
presence of his friends, he maintained an outward calm and dignity.
His bitterest feeling was reserved for Clay, who was known to be the
chief inspirer of the National Republicans' mud-slinging campaign. But
he felt that Adams had it in his power to put a stop to the slanders
that were set in circulation, had he cared to do so.

As the campaign drew to a close, circumstances pointed with increasing
sureness to the triumph of the Jackson forces. Adams, foreseeing the
end, found solace in harsh and sometimes picturesque entries in his
diary. A group of opposition Congressmen he pronounced "skunks of
party slander." Calhoun he described as "stimulated to frenzy by
success, flattery, and premature advancement; governed by no steady
principle, but sagacious to seize upon every prevailing popular breeze
to swell his own sails." Clay, likewise, became petulant and gloomy.
In the last two months of the canvass Jackson ordered a general
onslaught upon Kentucky, and when finally it was affirmed that the
State had been "carried out from under" its accustomed master, Clay
knew only too well that the boast was true. To Adams's assurances that
after four years of Jackson the country would gladly turn to the