Andrew Jackson and his friends came to the fore in national political life at an especially crucial time in the history of the republic. The debacle that was the presidential election of 1824 provided a specific and dramatic example of the signs that to many Americans suggested that with the passing of the Founding Fathers and the dimming of the memory of the Revolution the republic would fail. The deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on that most auspicious of days, July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was interpreted by many as a portent of disaster. Seeking to reach back to recover the nation's revolutionary past in 1824, Congress had invited Lafayette to visit the republic he helped to create in hopes that he would praise what had been wrought and reassure everyone that it worked. The meteoric rise of the anti-Masonic movement, with its promise to protect liberty by rooting out conspirators against the republic, was still another indication of the high level of public anxiety. All these examples and more provided evidence of the distress that beset many Americans and their passion to remove the danger, restore confidence, and find new leaders who would return the country to what they imagined to have been a better time. General Jackson and his lieutenants were there to ride to the rescue. In 1828 Jackson was the man for the time.