To form a just opinion of the man thus unpleasantly sketched is difficult. For nearly eight years Mr. Adams was brought into close and constant relations with him, and as a result formed a very low opinion of his character and by no means a high estimate of his abilities. Even after making a liberal allowance for the prejudice naturally supervening from their rivalry there is left a residuum of condemnation abundantly sufficient to ruin a more vigorous reputation than Crawford has left behind him. Apparently Mr. Calhoun, though a fellow Southerner, thought no better of the ambitious Georgian than did Mr. Adams, to whom one day he remarked that Crawford was "a very (p. 157) singular instance of a man of such character rising to the eminence he now occupies; that there has not been in the history of the Union another man with abilities so ordinary, with services so slender, and so thoroughly corrupt, who had contrived to make himself a candidate for the Presidency." Nor was this a solitary expression of the feelings of the distinguished South Carolinian.
Mr. E. H. Mills, Senator from Massachusetts, and a dispassionate observer, speaks of Crawford with scant favor as "coarse, rough, uneducated, of a pretty strong mind, a great intriguer, and determined to make himself President." He adds: "Adams, Jackson, and Calhoun all think well of each other, and are united at least in one thing,--to wit, a most thorough dread and abhorrence of Crawford."
Yet Crawford was for many years not only never without eager expectations of his own, which narrowly missed realization and might not have missed it had not his health broken down a few months too soon, but he had a large following, strong friends, and an extensive influence. But if he really had great ability he had not the good fortune of an opportunity to show it; and he lives in history rather as a man from whom much was expected than as a man who achieved (p. 158) much. One faculty, however, not of the best, but serviceable, he had in a rare degree: he thoroughly understood all the artifices of politics; he knew how to interest and organize partisans, to obtain newspaper support, and generally to extend and direct his following after that fashion which soon afterward began to be fully developed by the younger school of our public men. He was the _avant courier_ of a bad system, of which the first crude manifestations were received with well-merited disrelish by the worthier among his contemporaries.