Late in the afternoon President Jackson sat down to dinner with Vice-President Calhoun and a party of his personal friends, the central dish on the table being a sirloin from a prize ox, sent to him by John Merkle, a butcher of Franklin Market, New York. Before retiring that night, the President wrote to the donor: "Permit me, sir, to assure you of the gratification which I felt in being enabled to place on my table so fine a specimen of your market, and to offer you my sincere thanks for so acceptable a token of your regard for my character." This was the commencement of a series of presents which poured in on General Jackson during the eight years of his administration.
The Democratic journalists of the country were also well represented at the inauguration, attracted by this semi-official declaration in the _Telegraph_: "We know not what line of policy General Jackson will adopt. We take it for granted, however, that he will reward his friends and punish his enemies."
The leader of this editorial phalanx was Amos Kendall, a native of Dunstable, Massachusetts, who had by pluck and industry acquired an education and migrated westward in search of fame and fortune. Accident made him an inmate of Henry Clay's house and the tutor of his children; but many months had not elapsed before the two became political foes, and Kendall, who had become the conductor of a Democratic newspaper, triumphed, bringing to Washington the official vote of Kentucky for Andrew Jackson. He found at the National metropolis other Democratic editors, who, like himself, had labored to bring about the political revolution, and they used to meet daily in the house of a preacher-politician, Rev. Obadiah B. Brown, who had strongly advocated Jackson's election. Mr. Brown, who was a stout, robust man, with a great fund of anecdotes, was a clerk in the Post Office department during the week, while on Sundays he performed his ministerial duties in the Baptist Church.
Organizing under the lead of Amos Kendall, whose lieutenants were the brilliant but vindictive Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire; the scholarly Nathaniel Greene, of Massachusetts; the conservative Gideon Welles, of Connecticut; the jovial Major Mordecai M. Noah, of New York, and the energetic Dabney S. Carr, of Maryland, the allied editors claimed their rewards. They were not to be appeased by sops of Government advertising, or by the appointment of publisher of the laws of the United States in the respective States, but they demanded some of the most lucrative public offices in their share of the spoils. No sooner did General Jackson reach Washington then they made a systematic attack upon him, introducing and praising one another, and reciprocally magnifying their faithful services during the canvass so successfully ended. The result was that soon after the inauguration nearly fifty of those editors who had advocated his election were appointed to official Federal positions as rewards for political services rendered.