JOHN.
AMENT
A 1,010,810
ATESMEN *
Edited by
QUINCY
ADAMS
MORSE
American
Statusyon
377
285
1885
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN
& Co.
JOHN T. MORSE, FR,

ARTES
1817
VERITAS
LIBRARY
SCIENTIA
HIHIRIN
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
TUEBOR
SI-QUERIS-PENINSULAM-AMŒENAM –
CIRCUMSPICE
THE GIFT OF
Caroline Pattengill
L
Sara E. Pattengill
New Year's Day,
1887
From
"J.M.P.
E
377
1785

American Statesmen
EDITED BY
JOHN T. MORSE, JR.
American Statesmen
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
BY
JOHN T. MORSE, JR.
NINTH EDITION

BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
NEW YORK: 11 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1885
Copyright, 1882,
BY JOHN T. MORSE, JR.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Stereotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.
Replace
1-23-9? And fut
18
Miss Caroline Pattingeil
1-21.47
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Youth and DIPLOMACY.
1
CHAPTER II.
102
SECRETARY OF STATE AND PRESIDENT
CHAPTER III,
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
·
226
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
CHAPTER I.
YOUTH AND DIPLOMACY.
ON July 11, 1767, in the North Parish of
Braintree, since set off as the town of Quincy,
in Massachusetts, was born John Quincy Adams.
Two streams of as good blood as flowed in the
colony mingled in the veins of the infant. If
heredity counts for anything he began life with
an excellent chance of becoming famous - non
sine dîs animosus infans. He was called after
his great-grandfather on the mother's side,
John Quincy, a man of local note who had
borne in his day a distinguished part in pro-
vincial affairs. Such a naming was a simple
and natural occurrence enough, but Mr. Adams
afterward moralized upon it in his character-
istic way:
“The incident which gave rise to this circumstance
is not without its moral to my heart. He was dying
when I was baptized; and his daughter, my grand-
mother, present at my birth, requested that I might
receive his name. The fact, recorded by my father
1
2
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
at the time, has connected with that portion of my
name a charm of mingled sensibility and devotion.
It was filial tenderness that gave the name.
It was
the name of one passing from earth to immortality.
These have been among the strongest links of my
attachment to the name of Quincy, and have been to
me through life a perpetual admonition to do nothing
unworthy of it."
Fate, which had made such good preparation
for him before his birth, was not less kind in
arranging the circumstances of his early train-
ing and development. His father was deeply
engaged in the patriot cause, and the first
matters borne in upon his opening intelligence
concerned the public discontent and resistance
to tyranny. He was but seven years old when
he clambered with his mother to the top of one
of the high hills in the neighborhood of his
home to listen to the sounds of conflict upon
Bunker's Hill, and to watch the flaming ruin
of Charlestown. Profound was the impression
made upon him by the spectacle, and it was
intensified by many an hour spent afterward
pon the same spot during the siege and bom-
bardment of Boston. Then John Adams went
as a delegate to the Continental Congress at
Philadelphia, and his wife and children were
left for twelve months, as John Quincy Adams
says, — it is to be hoped with a little exaggera
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
3
tion of the barbarity of British troops toward
women and babes, "liable every hour of the
day and of the night to be butchered in cold
blood, or taken and carried into Boston as hos-
tages, by any foraging or marauding detach-
ment." Later, when the British had evacu-
ated Boston, the boy, barely nine years old,
became "post-rider" between the city and the
farm, a distance of eleven miles each way, in
order to bring all the latest news to his mother.
Not much regular schooling was to be got
amid such surroundings of times and events,
but the lad had a natural aptitude or affinity for
knowledge which stood him in better stead than
could any dame of a village school. The follow-
ing letter to his father is worth preserving:-
BRAINTREE, June the 2d, 1777.
DEAR SIR, -I love to receive letters very well,
much better than I love to write them. I make but
a poor figure at composition, my head is much too
fickle, my thoughts are running after birds' eggs, play
and trifles till I get vexed with myself. I have but
just entered the 3d volume of Smollett, tho' I had
designed to have got it half through by this time.
have determined this week to be more diligent, as
Mr. Thaxter will be absent at Court and I Cannot
pursue my other Studies. I have Set myself a Stent
and determine to read the 3d volume Half out. If
I can but keep my resolution I will write again at the
4
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
end of the week and give a better account of myself,
I wish, Sir, you would give me some instructions
with regard to my time, and advise me how to pro-
portion my Studies and my Play, in writing, and I
will keep them by me and endeavor to follow them.
I am, dear Sir, with a present determination of grow-
ing better. Yours.
P. S. Sir, if you will be so good as to favor me
with a Blank book, I will transcribe the most re-
markable occurrences I mett with in my reading,
which will serve to fix them upon my mind.
Not long after the writing of this model
epistle, the simple village life was interrupted
by an unexpected change. John Adams was
sent on a diplomatic journey to Paris, and on
February 13, 1778, embarked in the frigate
Boston. John Quincy Adams, then eleven
years old, accompanied his father and thus made
his first acquaintance with the foreign lands
where so many of his coming years were to be
passed. This initial visit, however, was brief;
and he was hardly well established at school
when events caused his father to start for home.
Unfortunately this return trip was a needless
loss of time, since within three months of their
setting foot upon American shores the two
travellers were again on their stormy way back
across the Atlantic in a leaky ship, which had to
land them at the nearest port in Spain. One
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
5
more quotation must be given from a letter writ
ten just after the first arrival in France:-
PASSY, September the 27th, 1778.
HONORED MAMMA, - My Pappa enjoins it upon
me to keep a Journal, or a Diary of the Events that
happen to me, and of objects that I see, and of
Characters that I converse with from day to day; and
altho' I am Convinced of the utility, importance and
necessity of this Exercise, yet I have not patience
and perseverance enough to do it so Constantly as I
ought. My Pappa, who takes a great deal of pains
to put me in the right way, has also advised me to
Preserve Copies of all my letters, and has given me
a Convenient Blank Book for this end; and altho' I
shall have the mortification a few years hence to read
a great deal of my Childish nonsense, yet I shall
have the Pleasure and advantage of Remarking the
several steps by which I shall have advanced in taste,
judgment and knowledge. A Journal Book and a let-
ter Book of a Lad of Eleven years old Can not be
expected to Contain much of Science, Literature, arts,
wisdom, or wit, yet it may serve to perpetuate many
observations that I may make, and may hereafter
help me to recollect both persons and things that
would other ways escape my memory.
He continues with resolutions "to be more
thoughtful and industrious for the future," and
reflects with pleasure upon the prospect that
his scheme “will be a sure means of improve-
ment to myself, and enable me to be more
6
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
entertaining to you." What gratification must
this letter from one who was quite justified in
signing himself her "dutiful and affectionate
son" have brought to the Puritan bosom of the
good mother at home! If the plan for the diary
was not pursued during the first short flitting
abroad, it can hardly be laid at the door of the
"lad of eleven years" as a serious fault. He
did in fact begin it when setting out on the
aforementioned second trip to Europe, calling it
A JOURNAL BY J. Q. A.,
From America to Spain.
Vol. I.
Begun Friday, 12 of November, 1779.
66
The spark of life in the great undertaking
flickered in a somewhat feeble and irregular
way for many years thereafter, but apparently
gained strength by degrees until in 1795, as
Mr. C. F. Adams tells us, what may be
denominated the diary proper begins," a very
vigorous work in more senses than one. Con-
tinued with astonishing persistency and faith-
fulness until within a few days of the writer's
death, the latest entry is of the 4th of January,
1848. Mr. Adams achieved many successes
during his life as the result of conscious effort,
but the greatest success of all he achieved al-
together unconsciously. He left a portrait of
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
7
himself more full, correct, vivid, and picturesque
than has ever been bequeathed to posterity by
any other personage of the past ages. Any
mistakes which may be made in estimating his
mental or moral attributes must be charged to
the dullness or prejudice of the judge, who
could certainly not ask for better or more
abundant evidence. Few of us know our most
intimate friends better than any of us may
know Mr. Adams, if we will but take the
trouble. Even the brief extracts already given
from his correspondence show us the boy; it
only concerns us to get them into the proper
light for seeing them accurately. If a lad of
seven, nine, or eleven years of age should write
such solemn little effusions amid the surround-
ings and influences of the present day, he would
probably be set down justly enough as either
an offensive young prig or a prematurely de-
veloped hypocrite. But the precocious Adams
had only a little of the prig and nothing of
the hypocrite in his nature. Being the out-
come of many generations of simple, devout,
intelligent Puritan ancestors, living in a com-
munity which loved virtue and sought knowl-
edge, all inherited and all present influences
combined to make him, as it may be put in a
single word, sensible. He had inevitably a
mental boyhood and youth, but morally he was
8
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
never either a child or a lad; all his leading
traits of character were as strongly marked
when he was seven as when he was seventy,
and at an age when most young people simply
win love or cause annoyance, he was preferring
wisdom to mischief, and actually in his earliest.
years was attracting a certain respect.
These few but bold and striking touches
which paint the boy are changed for an infin-
itely more elaborate and complex presentation
from the time when the Diary begins. Even
as abridged in the printing, this immense work
ranks among the half-dozen longest diaries to
be found in any library, and it is unquestion-
ably by far the most valuable. Henceforth we
are to travel along its broad route to the end;
we shall see in it both the great and the small
among public men halting onward in a way
very different from that in which they march
along the stately pages of the historian, and we
shall find many side-lights, by no means color-
less, thrown upon the persons and events of the
procession. The persistence, fulness, and faith-
fulness with which it was kept throughout so
busy a life, are marvellous, but are also highly
characteristic of the most persevering and in-
dustrious of men. That it has been preserved
is cause not only for thankfulness but for some
surprise also. For if its contents had been
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
known, it is certain that all the public men of
nearly two generations who figure in it would
have combined into one vast and irresistible
conspiracy to obtain and destroy it. There
was always a superfluity of gall in the diarist's
ink. Sooner or later every man of any note in
the United States was mentioned in his pages,
and there is scarcely one of them, who, if he
could have read what was said of him, would not
have preferred the ignominy of omission. As
one turns the leaves he feels as though he were
walking through a graveyard of slaughtered
reputations wherein not many headstones show
a few words of measured commendation. It is
only the greatness and goodness of Mr. Adams
himself which relieve the universal atmosphere
of sadness far more depressing than the mel-
ancholy which pervades the novels of George
Eliot. The reader who wishes to retain any
comfortable degree of belief in his fellow-men
will turn to the wall all the portraits in the
gallery except only the inimitable one of the
writer himself. For it would be altogether too
discouraging to think that so wide an experi
ence of men as Mr. Adams enjoyed through his
long varied and active life, must lead to such an
unpleasant array of human faces as those which
are scattered along these twelve big octavos.
Fortunately at present we have to do with only
10
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
one of these likenesses, and that one we are able
to admire while knowing also that it is beyond
question accurate. One after another every
trait of Mr. Adams comes out; we shall see
that he was a man of a very high and noble
character veined with some very notable and
disagreeable blemishes; his aspirations were
honorable, even the lowest of them being more
than simply respectable; he had an avowed
ambition but it was of that pure kind which
led him to render true and distinguished serv
ices to his countrymen; he was not only a
zealous patriot but a profound believer in the
sound and practicable tenets of the liberal
political creed of the United States; he had
one of the most honest and independent natures
that was ever given to man; personal integrity
of course goes without saying, but he had the
rarer gift of an elevated and rigid political hon-
esty such as has been unfrequently seen in any
age or any nation; in times of severe trial this
quality was even cruelly tested, but we shall
never see it fail; he was as courageous as if he
had been a fanatic; indeed, for a long part of
his life to maintain a single-handed fight in
support of a despised or unpopular opinion
seemed his natural function and almost exclu-
sive calling; he was thoroughly conscientious
and never knowingly did wrong, nor even
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
11
sought to persuade himself that wrong was
right; well read in literature and of wide and
varied information in nearly all matters of
knowledge, he was more especially remarkable
for his acquirements in the domain of politics,
where indeed they were vast and ever growing;
he had a clear and generally a cool head, and
was nearly always able to do full justice to
himself and to his cause; he had an indom-
itable will, unconquerable persistence, and in-
finite laboriousness. Such were the qualities
which made him a great statesman; but un-
fortunately we must behold a hardly less strik-
ing reverse to the picture, in the faults and
shortcomings which made him so unpopular in
his lifetime that posterity is only just beginning
to forget the prejudices of his contemporaries
and to render concerning him the judgment
which he deserves. Never did a man of pure
life and just purposes have fewer friends or
more enemies than John Quincy Adams. His
nature, said to have been very affectionate in
his family relations, was in its aspect outside of
that small circle singularly cold and repellent.
If he could ever have gathered even a small
personal following his character and abilities
would have insured him a brilliant and pro-
longed success; but, for a man of his calibre
and influence, we shall see him as one of the
12
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
most lonely and desolate of the great men of
history; instinct led the public men of his
time to range themselves against him rather
than with him, and we shall find them fighting
beside him only when irresistibly compelled to
do so by policy or strong convictions. As he
had little sympathy with those with whom he
was brought in contact, so he was very unchar-
itable in his judgment of them; and thus hav-
ing really a low opinion of so many of them
he could indulge his vindictive rancor without
stint; his invective, always powerful, will some-
times startle us by its venom, and we shall be
pained to see him apt to make enemies for a
good cause by making them for himself.
This has been, perhaps, too long a lingering
upon the threshold. But Mr. Adams's career
in public life stretched over so long a period
that to write a full historical memoir of him
within the limited space of this volume is im-
possible. All that can be attempted is to pre-
sent a sketch of the man with a few of his more
prominent surroundings against a very meagre
and insufficient background of the history of
the times. So it may be permissible to begin
with a general outline of his figure, to be filled
in, shaded, and colored as we proceed. At best
our task is much more difficult of satisfactory
achievement than an historical biography of
the customary elaborate order.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
13
During his second visit to Europe, our mature
youngster if the word may be used of Mr.
Adams even in his earliest years began to
see a good deal of the world and to mingle in
very distinguished society. For a brief period
he got a little schooling, first at Paris, next at
Amsterdam, and then at Leyden; altogether
the amount was insignificant, since he was
not quite fourteen years old when he actually
found himself engaged in a diplomatic career.
Francis Dana, afterward Chief Justice of Mas-
sachusetts, was then accredited as an envoy to
Russia from the United States, and he took Mr.
Adams with him as his private secretary. Not
much came of the mission, but it was a valuable
experience for a lad of his years. Upon his re-
turn he spent six months in travel and then he
rejoined his father in Paris, where that gentle-
man was engaged with Franklin and Jefferson
in negotiating the final treaty of peace between
the revolted colonies and the mother country.
The boy "was at once enlisted in the service as
an additional secretary, and gave his help to
the preparation of the papers necessary to the
completion of that instrument which dispersed
all possible doubt of the Independence of his
Country."
On April 26, 1785, arrived the packet ship
Le Courier de L'Orient, bringing a letter from
14
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Mr. Gerry containing news of the appointment
of John Adams as Minister to St. James's. This
unforeseen occurrence made it necessary for the
younger Adams to determine his own career,
which apparently he was left to do for himself.
He was indeed a singular young man, not un-
worthy of such confidence! The glimpses which
we get of him during this stay abroad, show him
as the associate upon terms of equality with
grown men of marked ability and exercising
important functions. He preferred diplomacy
to dissipation, statesmen to mistresses, and in
the midst of all the temptations of the gayest
capital in the world, the chariness with which
he sprinkled his wild oats amid the alluring
gardens chiefly devoted to the culture of those
cereals, might well have brought a blush to the
cheeks of some among his elders, at least if the
tongue of slander wags not with gross untruth
concerning the colleagues of John Adams. But
he was not in Europe to amuse himself, though
at an age when amusement is natural and a
tinge of sinfulness is so often pardoned; he was
there with the definite and persistent purpose
of steady improvement and acquisition. At his
age most young men play the cards which a
kind fortune puts into their hands, with the
reckless intent only of immediate gain, but
from the earliest moment when he began the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
15
game of life Adams coolly and wisely husbanded
every card which came into his hand, with a
steady view to probable future contingencies,
and with the resolve to win in the long run.
So now the resolution which he took in the
present question illustrated the clearness of
his mind and the strength of his character.
To go with his father to England would be to
enjoy a life precisely fitted to his natural and
acquired tastes, to mingle with the men who
were making history, to be cognizant of the
weightiest of public affairs, to profit by all that
the grandest city in the world had to show.
It was easy to be not only allured by the pros-
pect but also to be deceived by its apparent
advantages. Adams, however, had the sense
and courage to turn his back on it, and to go
home to the meagre shores and small society of
New England, there to become a boy again, to
enter Harvard College, and come under all its at
that time rigid and petty regulations. It almost
seems a mistake, but it was not. Already he
was too ripe and too wise to blunder. He him-
self gives us his characteristic and sufficient
reasons:
"Were I now to go with my father probably my
immediate satisfaction might be greater than it will
be in returning to America. After having been
travelling for these seven years almost and all over
16
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Europe, and having been in the world and among
company for three; to return to spend one or two
years in the pale of a college, subjected to all the
rules which I have so long been freed from; and
afterwards not expect (however good an opinion I
may have of myself) to bring myself into notice
under three or four years more, if ever! It is really
a prospect somewhat discouraging for a youth of my
ambition, (for I have ambition though I hope its ob-
ject is laudable). But still
'Oh! how wretched
'Is that poor man, that hangs on Princes' favors,'
or on those of any body else. I am determined that
so long as I shall be able to get my own living in an
honorable manner, I will depend upon no one. My
father has been so much taken up all his lifetime
with the interests of the public, that his own fortune
has suffered by it: so that his children will have to
provide for themselves, which I shall never be able
to do if I loiter away my precious time in Europe
and shun going home until I am forced to it. With
an ordinary share of common sense, which I hope I
enjoy, at least in America I can live independent and
free; and rather than live otherwise I would wish to
die before the time when I shall be left at my own
discretion. I have before me a striking example of
the distressing and humiliating situation a person is
reduced to by adopting a different line of conduct,
and I am determined not to fall into the same error."
It is needless to comment upon such spirit.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
17
and sense, or upon such just appreciation of
what was feasible, wise, and right. for him, as
a New Englander whose surroundings and pros-
pects were widely different from those of the
society about him. He must have been strongly
imbued by nature with the instincts of his birth-
place to have formed, after a seven years' ab-
sence at his impressible age, so correct a judg-
ment of the necessities and possibilities of his
own
career in relationship to the people and
ideas of his own country.
Home accordingly he came, and by assiduity
prepared himself in a very short time to enter
the junior class at Harvard College, whence
he was graduated in high standing in 1787.
From there he went to Newburyport, then a
thriving and active seaport enriched by the
noble trade of privateering in addition to more
regular maritime business, and entered as a
law student the office of Theophilus Parsons,
afterwards the Chief Justice of Massachusetts.
On July 15, 1790, being twenty-three years old,
he was admitted to practise. Immediately
afterward he established himself in Boston,
where for a time he felt strangely solitary.
Clients of course did not besiege his doors in
the first year, and he appears to have waited
rather stubbornly than cheerfully for more act-
ive days. These came in good time, and during
2
18
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
the second, third, and fourth years, his business
grew apace to encouraging dimensions.
He was, however, doing other work than
that of the law, and much more important in
its bearing upon his future career. He could
not keep his thoughts, nor indeed his hands,
from public affairs. When, in 1791, Thomas
Paine produced the "Rights of Man," Thomas
Jefferson acting as midwife to usher the bant-
ling before the people of the United States,
Adams's indignation was fired, and he pub-
lished anonymously a series of refuting pa-
pers over the signature of Publicola. These
attracted much attention, not only at home
but also abroad, and were by many attributed
to John Adams. Two years later, during the
excitement aroused by the reception and sub-
sequent outrageous behavior here of the French
minister, Genet, Mr. Adams again published
in the Boston “Centinel" some papers over the
signature of Marcellus, discussing with much
ability the then new and perplexing question of
the neutrality which should be observed by this
country in European wars. These were fol-
lowed by more, over the signature of Colum-
bus, and afterward by still more in the name of
Barnevelt, all strongly reprobating the course
of the crazy-headed foreigner. The writer was
not permitted to remain long unknown. It is
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
19
not certain, but it is highly probable, that to
these articles was due the nomination which
Mr. Adams received shortly afterward from
President Washington, as Minister Resident at
the Hague. This nomination was sent in to the
Senate, May 29, 1794, and was unanimously
confirmed on the following day. It may be
imagined that the change from the moderate
practice of his Boston law office to a European
court, of which he so well knew the charms,
was not distasteful to him. There are pas-
sages in his Diary which indicate that he had
been chafing with irrepressible impatience "in
that state of useless and disgraceful insignifi-
cancy," to which, as it seemed to him, he was rel-
egated, so that at the age of twenty-five, when
many of the characters who were born for the
benefit of their fellow creatures, have rendered.
themselves conspicuous among their contempo-
raries, . . . I still find myself as obscure, as un-
known to the world, as the most indolent or the
most stupid of human beings." Entertaining
such a restless ambition, he of course accepted
the proffered office, though not without some
expression of unexplained doubt. October 31,
1794, found him at the Hague, after a voyage
of considerable peril in a leaky ship, commanded
by a blundering captain. He was a young dip-
lomat, indeed; it was on his twenty-seventh
birthday that he received his commission.
20
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
The minister made his advent upon a tu
multuous scene. All Europe was getting under
arms in the long and desperate struggle with
France. Scarcely had he presented his cre-
dentials to the Stadtholder ere that dignitary
was obliged to flee before the conquering stand-
ards of the French. Pichegru marched into
the capital city of the Low Countries, hung out
the tri-color and established the "Batavian
Republic" as the ally of France. The diplo-
matic representatives of most of the European
powers forthwith left, and Mr. Adams was
strongly moved to do the same, though for
reasons different from those which actuated
his compeers. He was not, like them, placed
in an unpleasant position by the new condition
of affairs, but on the contrary he was very cor-
dially treated by the French and their Dutch
partisans, and was obliged to fall back upon his
native prudence to resist their compromising
overtures and dangerous friendship. Without
giving offence he yet kept clear of entangle-
ments, and showed a degree of wisdom and
skill which many older and more experienced
Americans failed to evince, either abroad or
at home, during these exciting years. But he
appeared to be left without occupation in the
altered condition of affairs, and therefore was
considering the propriety of returning, when ad
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
21
vices from home induced him to stay. Wash-
ington especially wrote that he must not think
of retiring, and prophesied that he would soon
be "found at the head of the diplomatic corps,
be the government administered by whomsoever
the people may choose." He remained, there-
fore, at the Hague, a shrewd and close observer
of the exciting events occurring around him.
industriously pursuing an extensive course of
study and reading, making useful acquaint-
ances, acquiring familiarity with foreign lan-
guages, with the usages of diplomacy, and the
habits of distinguished society. He had little
public business to transact, it is true; but at
least his time was well spent for his own im-
provement.
An episode in his life at the Hague was his
visit to England, where he was directed to ex-
change ratifications of the treaty lately nego-
tiated by Mr. Jay. But a series of vexatious
delays, apparently maliciously contrived, de-
tained him so long that upon his arrival he
found this specific task already accomplished
by Mr. Deas. He was probably not disap-
pointed that his name thus escaped connection
with engagements so odious to a large part of
the nation. He had, however, some further
business of an informal character to transact
with Lord Grenville, and in endeavoring to
22
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
conduct it found himself rather awkwardly
placed. He was not minister to the Court of
St. James, having been only vaguely authorized
to discuss certain arrangements in a tentative
way, without the power to enter into any de-
finitive agreement. But the English Cabinet
strongly disliking Mr. Deas, who in the ab-
sence of Mr. Pinckney represented for the
time the United States, and much preferring
to negotiate with Mr. Adams, sought by many
indirect and artful subterfuges to thrust upon
him the character of a regularly accredited
minister. He had much ado to avoid, without
offence, the assumption of functions to which
he had no title, but which were with designing
courtesy forced upon him. His cool and mod-
erate temper, however, carried him successfully
through the whole business, alike in its social
and its diplomatic aspect.
Another negotiation, of a private nature also,
he brought to a successful issue during these few
months in London. He made the acquaintance
of Miss Louisa Catherine Johnson, daughter
of Joshua Johnson, then American Consul at
London, and niece of that Governor Johnson of
Maryland who had signed the Declaration of
Independence and was afterwards placed on
the bench of the Supreme Court.of the United
States. To this lady he became engaged; and
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
23
returning not long afterward he was married
to her on July 26, 1797. It was a thoroughly
happy and, for him, a life-long union.
President Washington, toward the close of
his second term, transferred Mr. Adams to the
Court of Portugal. But before his departure
thither his destination was changed. Some de-
gree of embarrassment was felt about this time
concerning his further continuance in public
office, by reason of his father's accession to the
Presidency. He wrote to his mother a manly
and spirited letter, rebuking her for carelessly
dropping an expression indicative of a fear that
he might look for some favor at his father's
hands. He could neither solicit nor expect any-
thing, he justly said, and he was pained that
his mother should not know him better than to
entertain any apprehension of his feeling other-
wise. It was a perplexing position in which
the two were placed. It would be a great hard-
ship to cut short the son's career because of the
success of the father, yet the reproach of nepo-
tism could not be lightly encountered, even with
the backing of clear consciences. Washington
came kindly to the aid of his doubting suc-
cessor, and in a letter highly complimentary to
Mr. John Quincy Adams strongly urged that
well-merited promotion ought not to be kept
from him, foretelling for him a distinguished
24
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
future in the diplomatic service. These repre-
sentations prevailed; and the President's only
action as concerned his son consisted in chang-
ing his destination from Portugal to Prussia,
both missions being at that time of the same
grade, though that to Prussia was then estab-
lished for the first time by the making and con-
firming of this nomination.
To Berlin, accordingly, Mr. Adams proceeded
in November, 1797, and had the somewhat cruel
experience of being "questioned at the gates
by a dapper lieutenant, who did not know, until
one of his private soldiers explained to him, who
the United States of America were." Overcom-
ing this unusual obstacle to a ministerial ad-
vent, and succeeding, after many months, in get-
ting through all the introductory formalities, he
found not much more to be done at Berlin than
there had been at the Hague. But such useful
work as was open to him he accomplished in the
shape of a treaty of amity and commerce be-
tween Prussia and the United States. This
having been duly ratified by both the powers,
his further stay seemed so useless that he wrote
home suggesting his readiness to return; and
while awaiting a reply he travelled through some
portions of Europe which he had not before
seen. His recall was one of the last acts of his
father's administration, made, says Mr. Seward,
C
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
25
"that Mr. Jefferson might have no embarrass-
ment in that direction," but quite as probably
dictated by a vindictive desire to show how wide
was the gulf of animosity which had opened be-
tween the family of the disappointed ex-Presi-
dent and his triumphant rival.
Mr. Adams, immediately upon his arrival at
home, prepared to return to the practice of his
profession. It was not altogether an agreeable
transition from an embassy at the courts of Eu-
rope to a law office in Boston, with the neces-
sity of furbishing up long disused knowledge,
and a second time pațiently awaiting the influx
of clients. But he faced it with his stubborn
temper and practical sense.
The slender prom-
ise which he was able to discern in the political
outlook could not fail to disappoint him, since
his native predilections were unquestionably and
strongly in favor of a public career. During
his absence party animosities had been develop-
ing rapidly. The first great party victory since
the organization of the government had just
been won, after a very bitter struggle, by the Re-
publicans or Democrats, as they were then in-
differently called, whose exuberant delight found
its full counterpart in the angry despondency
of the Federalists. That irascible old gentle-
man, the elder Adams, having experienced a
very Waterloo defeat in the contest for the Pres-
&
26
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
idency, had ridden away from the capital, actu-
ally in a wild rage, on the night of the 3d of
March, 1801, to avoid the humiliating pageant
of Mr. Jefferson's inauguration. Yet far more
fierce than this natural party warfare was the
internal dissension which rent the Federal party
in twain. Those cracks upon the surface and
subterraneous rumblings, which the experienced
observer could for some time have noted, had
opened with terrible uproar into a gaping
chasm, when John Adams, still in the Presi-
dency, suddenly announced his determination to
send a mission to France at a crisis when nearly
all his party were looking for war. Perhaps
this step was, as his admirers claim, an act
of pure and disinterested statesmanship. Cer-
tainly its result was fortunate for the country
at large. But for John Adams it was ruinous.
At the moment when he made the bold move,
he doubtless expected to be followed by his
party. Extreme was his disappointment and
boundless his wrath, when he found that he had
at his back only a fraction, not improbably less
than half, of that party. He learned with in-
finite chagrin that he had only a divided empire
with a private individual; that it was not safe
for him, the President of the United States, to
originate any important measure without first
consulting a lawyer quietly engaged in the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
27
practice of his profession in New York; that,
in short, at least a moiety, in which were to be
found the most intelligent members, of the great
Federal party, when in search of guidance,
turned their faces toward Alexander Hamil-
ton rather than toward John Adams. These
Hamiltonians by no means relished the French
mission, so that from this time forth a schism of
intense bitterness kept the Federal party asun-
der, and John Adams hated Alexander Hamil-
ton with a vigor not surpassed in the annals of
human antipathies. His rage was not assuaged
by the conduct of this dreaded foe in the presi-
dential campaign; and the defeated candidate
always preferred to charge his failure to Ham-
ilton's machinations rather than to the real will
of the people. This, however, was unfair; it
was perfectly obvious that a majority of the
nation had embraced Jeffersonian tenets, and
that Federalism was moribund.
To this condition of affairs John Quincy
Adams returned. Fortunately he had been com‐
pelled to bear no part in the embroilments of
the past, and his sagacity must have led him,
while listening with filial sympathy to the inter-
pretations placed upon events by his incensed
parent, yet to make liberal allowance for the dis-
torting effects of the old gentleman's rage. Still
it was in the main only natural for him to re-
28
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
gard himself as a Federalist of the Adams fac-
tion. His proclivities had always been with that
party. In Massachusetts the educated and well-
to-do classes were almost unanimously of that
way of thinking. The select coterie of gentle-
men in the State, who in those times bore an ac-
tive and influential part in politics, were nearly
all Hamiltonians, but the adherents of President
Adams were numerically strong. Nor was the
younger Adams himself long left without his
private grievance against Mr. Jefferson, who
promptly used the authority vested in him by a
new statute to remove Mr. Adams from the po
sition of commissioner in bankruptcy, to which,
at the time of his resuming business, he had beer
appointed by the judge of the district court.
Long afterward Jefferson sought to escape the
odium of this apparently malicious and, for
those days, unusual action, by a very Jefferson-
ian explanation, tolerably satisfactory to those
persons who believed it.
On April 5, 1802, Mr. Adams was chosen
by the Federalists of Boston to represent them
in the State Senate. The office was at that
time still sought by men of the best ability and
position, and though it was hardly a step up-
ward on the political ladder for one who had
represented the nation in foreign parts for eight
years, yet Mr. Adams was well content to ac
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
29
•
cept it. At least it reopened the door of po-
litical life, and moreover one of his steadfast
maxims was never to refuse any function which
the people sought to impose upon him. It is
worth noting, for its bearing upon controver-
sies soon to be encountered in this narrative,
that forty-eight hours had not elapsed after Mr.
Adams had taken his seat before he ventured
upon a display of independence which caused
much irritation to his Federalist associates. He
had the hardihood to propose that the Federalist
majority in the legislature should permit the
Republican minority to enjoy a proportional
representation in the council. "It was the first
act of my legislative life," he wrote many years
afterward, "and it marked the principle by
which my whole public life has been governed
from that day to this. My proposal was unsuc-
cessful, and perhaps it forfeited whatever con-
fidence might have been otherwise bestowed
upon me as a party follower." Indeed, all his
life long Mr. Adams was never submissive to
the party whip, but voted upon every question
precisely according to his opinion of its merits,
without the slightest regard to the political
company in which for the time being he might
find himself. A compeer of his in the United
States Senate once said of him, that he regarded
every public measure which came up as he
30
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
would a proposition in Euclid, abstracted from
any party considerations. These frequent dere-
lictions of his were at first forgiven with a
magnanimity really very creditable, so long as
it lasted, especially to the Hamiltonians in the
Federal party; and so liberal was this forbear-
ance that when in February, 1803, the legis-
lature had to elect a Senator to the United
States Senate, he was chosen upon the fourth
ballot by 86 votes out of 171. This was the
more gratifying to him and the more handsome
on the part of the anti-Adams men in the party,
because the place was eagerly sought by Tim…
othy Pickering, an old man who had strong
claims growing out of an almost life-long and
very efficient service in their ranks, and who
was moreover a most staunch adherent of Gen-
eral Hamilton.
So in October, 1803, we find Mr. Adams on
his way to Washington, the raw and unattract
ive village which then constituted the national
capital, wherein there was not, as the pious
New Englander instantly noted, a church of
any denomination; but those who were relig
iously disposed were obliged to attend services
"usually performed on Sundays at the Treasury
Office and at the Capitol." With what antici
pations Mr. Adams's mind was filled during his
journey to this embryotic city his Diary does
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
31
not tell; but if they were in any degree cheer-
ful or sanguine they were destined to cruel
disappointment. He was now probably to ap-
preciate for the first time the fierce vigor of
the hostility which his father had excited. In
Massachusetts social connections and friendships
probably mitigated the open display of rancor
to which in Washington full sway was given.
It was not only the Republican majority who
showed feelings which in them were at least fair
if they were strong, but the Federal minority
were maliciously pleased to find in the son of
the ill-starred John Adams a victim on whom
to vent that spleen and abuse which were so
provokingly ineffective against the solid work-
ing majority of their opponents in Congress.
The Republicans trampled upon the Federalists,
and the Federalists trampled on John Quincy
Adams. He spoke seldom, and certainly did
not weary the Senators, yet whenever he rose
to his feet he was sure of a cold, too often
almost an insulting, reception. By no chance
or possibility could anything which he said or
suggested please his prejudiced auditors. The
worst augury for any measure was his support;
any motion which he made was sure to be voted
down, though not unfrequently substantially
the same matter being afterward moved by
somebody else would be readily carried. That
32
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
cordiality, assistance, and sense of fellowship
which Senators from the same State customarily
expect and obtain from each other could not be
enjoyed by him. For shortly after his arrival
in Washington, Mr. Pickering had been chosen
to fill a vacancy in the other Massachusetts
senatorslip, and appeared upon the scene as a
most unwelcome colleague. For a time, indeed,
an outward semblance of political comradeship
was maintained between them, but it would
have been folly for an Adams to put faith in a
Pickering, and perhaps vice versa. This position
of his, as the unpopular member of an un-
popular minority, could not be misunderstood,
and many allusions to it occur in his Diary.
One day he notes a motion rejected; another
day, that he has "nothing to do but to make
fruitless opposition;" he constantly recites that
he has voted with a small minority, and at
least once he himself composed the whole of
that minority; soon after his arrival he says
that an amendment proposed by him "will
certainly not pass; and, indeed, I have already
seen enough to ascertain that no amendments
of my proposing will obtain in the Senate as
now filled"; again, "I presented my three
resolutions, which raised a storm as violent as
I expected"; and on the same day he writes
"I have no doubt of incurring much censure
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
33
and obloquy for this measure;" a day or two
later he speaks of certain persons "who hate
me rather more than they love any principle;
when he expressed an opinion in favor of ratify-
ing a treaty with the Creeks, he remarks quite
philosophically, that he believes it "surprised
almost every member of the Senate, and dis-
satisfied almost all;" when he wanted a com-
mittee raised he did not move it himself, but
suggested the idea to another Senator, for "I
knew that if I moved it a spirit of jealousy
would immediately be raised against doing any-
thing." Writing once of some resolutions which
he intended to propose, he says that they are
"another feather against a whirlwind. A des-
perate and fearful cause in which I have em-
barked, but I must pursue it or feel myself
either a coward or a traitor." Another time we
find a committee, of which he was a member,
making its report when he had not even been
notified of its meeting.
It would be idle to suppose that any man
could be sufficiently callous not to feel keenly
such treatment. Mr. Adams was far from callous
and he felt it deeply. But he was not crushed
or discouraged by it, as weaker spirits would
have been, nor betrayed into any acts of foolish
anger which must have recoiled upon himself.
In him warm feelings were found in singular
3
34
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
combination with a cool head. An unyielding
temper and an obstinate courage, an invincible
confidence in his own judgment, and a stern
conscientiousness carried him through these
earlier years of severe trial as they had after-
wards to carry him through many more.
"The
qualities of mind most peculiarly called for,'
he reflects in the Diary, "are firmness, per-
severance, patience, coolness, and forbearance.
The prospect is not promising; yet the part
to act may be as honorably performed as if
success could attend it." He understood the
situation perfectly and met it with a better
skill than that of the veteran politician. By a
long and tedious but sure process he forced his
way to steadily increasing influence, and by the
close of his fourth year we find him taking a
part in the business of the Senate which may
be fairly called prominent and important. He
was conquering success.
But if Mr. Adams's unpopularity was partly
due to the fact that he was the son of his fa-
ther, it was also largely attributable not only
to his unconciliatory manners but to more sub-
stantial habits of mind and character. It is
probably impossible for any public man, really
independent in his political action, to lead a
very comfortable life amid the struggles of party.
Under the disadvantages involved in this habit.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
35
Mr. Adams labored to a remarkable degree.
Since parties were first organized in this Re-
public no American statesman has ever ap-
proached him in persistent freedom of thought,
speech, and action. He was regarded as a
Federalist, but his Federalism was subject to
many modifications; the members of that party
never were sure of his adherence, and felt
bound to him by no very strong ties of polit-
ical fellowship. Towards the close of his sen-
atorial term he recorded, in reminiscence, that
he had more often voted with the administra-
tion than with the opposition.
The first matter of importance concerning
which he was obliged to act, was the acquisi-
tion of Louisiana and its admission as a state
of the Union. The Federalists were bitterly op-
posed to this measure, regarding it as an undue
strengthening of the South and of the slavery
influence, to the destruction of the fair balance
of power between the two great sections of the
country. It was not then the moral aspect of
the slavery element which stirred the northern
temper, but only the antagonism of interests
between the commercial cities of the North and
the agricultural communities of the South. In
the discussions and votes which took place in
this business Mr. Adams was in favor of the
purchase, but denied with much emphasis the
36
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
constitutionality of the process by which the
purchased territory was brought into the fel
lowship of States. This imperfect allegiance
to the party gave more offence than satisfac-
tion, and he found himself soundly berated in
leading Federalist newspapers in New Eng-
land, and angrily threatened with expulsion
from the party. But in the famous impeach-
ment of Judge Chase, which aroused very
strong feelings, Mr. Adams was fortunately
able to vote for acquittal. He regarded this
measure, as well as the impeachment of Judge
Pickering at the preceding session as parts of
an elaborate scheme on the part of the Presi-
dent for degrading the national judiciary and
rendering it subservient to the legislative
branch of the government. So many, how-
ever, even of Mr. Jefferson's staunch adherents
revolted against his requisitions on this occa-
sion, and he himself so far lost heart before
the final vote was taken, that several Repub-
licans voted with the Federalists, and Mr. Ad-
ams could hardly claim much credit with his
party for standing by them in this emergency.
It takes a long while for such a man to se-
cure respect, and great ability for him ever to
achieve influence. In time, however, Mr. Ad-
ams saw gratifying indications that he was ac
quiring both, and in February, 1806, we find
him writing: -
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
37
"This is the third session I have sat in Congress.
I came in as a member of a very small minority, and
during the two former sessions almost uniformly
avoided to take a lead; any other course would have
been dishonest or ridiculous. On the very few and
unimportant objects which I did undertake, I met.
at first with universal opposition. The last session
my influence rose a little, at the present it has hith-
erto been apparently rising."
He was so far a cool and clear-headed judge,
even in his own case, that this encouraging es-
timate may be accepted as correct upon his
sole authority without other evidence. But the
fair prospect was overcast almost in its dawn-
ing, and a period of supreme trial and of ap-
parently irretrievable ruin was at hand.
Topics were coming forward for discussion.
concerning which no American could be indif-
ferent, and no man of Mr. Adams's spirit could
be silent. The policy of Great Britain towards
this country, and the manner in which it was
to be met, stirred profound feelings and opened
such fierce dissensions as it is now difficult to
appreciate. For a brief time Mr. Adams was
to be a prominent actor before the people. It
is fortunately needless to repeat, as it must
ever be painful to remember, the familiar and
too humiliating tale of the part which France
and England were permitted for so many years
38
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
to play in our national politics, when our par-
ties were not divided upon American questions,
but wholly by their sympathies with one or
other of these contending European powers.
Under Washington the English party had, with
infinite difficulty, been able to prevent their ad-
versaries from fairly enlisting the United States
as active partisans of France, in spite of the
fact that most insulting treatment was received
from that country. Under John Adams the
same so-called British faction had been baulked
in their hope of precipitating a war with the
French. Now in Mr. Jefferson's second admin-
istration, the French party having won the as-
cendant, the new phase of the same long strug-
gle presented the question, whether or not we
should be drawn into a war with Great Britain.
Grave as must have been the disasters of such a
war in 1806, grave as they were when the war
actually came six years later, yet it is impossi-
ble to recall the provocations which were in-
flicted upon us without almost regretting that
prudence was not cast to the winds and any
woes encountered in preference to unresisting
submission to such insolent outrages. Our
gorge rises at the narration three quarters of a
century after the acts were done.
Mr. Adams took his position early and boldly
In February, 1806, he introduced into the Sen
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
39
ate certain resolutions strongly condemnatory of
the right, claimed and vigorously exercised by
the British, of seizing neutral vessels employed
in conducting with the enemies of Great Brit-
ain any trade which had been customarily pro-
hibited by that enemy in time of peace. This
doctrine was designed to shut out American
merchants from certain privileges in trading
with French colonies, which had been accorded
only since France had become involved in war
with Great Britain. The principle was utterly
illegal and extremely injurious. Mr. Adams,
in his first resolution, stigmatized it "as an un-
provoked aggression upon the property of the
citizens of these United States, a violation of
their neutral rights, and an encroachment upon.
their national independence." By his second
resolution, the President was requested to de-
mand and insist upon the restoration of prop-
erty seized under this pretext, and upon indem-
nification for property already confiscated. By a
rare good fortune, Mr. Adams had the pleasure
of seeing his propositions carried, only slightly
modified by the omission of the words "to in-
sist." But they were carried, of course, by Re-
publican votes, and they by no means advanced
their mover in the favor of the Federalist party.
Strange as it may seem, that party, of which
many of the foremost supporters were engaged
40
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
in the very commerce which Great Britain
aimed to suppress and destroy, seemed not to
be so much incensed against her as against
their own government. The theory of the
party was, substantially, that England had been
driven into these measures by the friendly tone
of our government towards France, and by her
own stringent and overruling necessities. The
cure was not to be sought in resistance, not
even in indignation and remonstrance addressed
to that power, but rather in cementing an alli-
ance with her, and even, if need should be, in
taking active part in her holy cause. The feel-
ing seemed to be that we merited the chastise-
ment because we had not allied ourselves with
the chastiser. These singular notions of the
Federalists, however, were by no means the no-
tions of Mr. John Quincy Adams, as we shall
soon see.
On April 18, 1806, the Non-importation Act
received the approval of the President. It was
the first measure indicative of resentment or re-
taliation which was taken by our government.
When it was upon its passage it encountered
the vigorous resistance of the Federalists, but
received the support of Mr. Adams. On May
16, 1806, the British government made another
long stride in the course of lawless oppression
of neutrals, which phrase, as commerce then
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
41
A
was, signified little else than Americans.
proclamation was issued declaring the whole
coast of the European continent, from Brest tɔ
the mouth of the Elbe, to be under blockade.
In fact, of course, the coast was not blockaded,
and the proclamation was a falsehood, an un-
justifiable effort to make words do the work of
war-ships. The doctrine which it was thus en-
deavored to establish had never been admitted
into international law, has ever since been re-
pudiated by universal consent of all nations,
and is intrinsically preposterous. The British,
however, designed to make it effective, and set
to work in earnest to confiscate all vessels and
cargoes captured on their way from any neutral
nation to any port within the proscribed dis-
trict. On November 21, next following, Napo-
leon retaliated by the Berlin decree, so called,
declaring the entire British Isles to be under
blockade, and forbidding any vessel which had
been in any English port after publication of
his decree to enter any port in the dominions
under his control. In January, 1807, England
made the next move by an order, likewise in
contravention of international law, forbidding
to neutrals all commerce between ports of the
enemies of Great Britain. On November 11,
1807, the famous British Order in Council was
issued, declaring neutral vessels and cargoes
42
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
bound to any port or colony of any country
with which England was then at war, and
which was closed to English ships, to be liable
to capture and confiscation. A few days later,
November 25, 1807, another Order established
a rate of duties to be paid in England upon all
neutral merchandise which should be permitted
to be carried in neutral bottoms to countries
at war with that power. December 17, 1807,
Napoleon retorted by the Milan decree, which
declared denationalized and subject to capture
and condemnation every vessel, to whatsoever
nation belonging, which should have submitted
to search by an English ship, or should be on a
voyage to England, or should have paid any tax
to the English government. All these regula-
tions, though purporting to be aimed at neutrals
generally, in fact bore almost exclusively upon
the United States, who alone were undertak-
ing to conduct any neutral commerce worthy of
mention. As Mr. Adams afterwards remarked,
the effect of these illegal proclamations and un-
justifiable novel doctrines "placed the com-
merce and shipping of the United States, with
regard to all Europe and European colonies
(Sweden alone excepted), in nearly the same
state as it would have been, if, on that same
11th of November, England and France had
both declared war against the United States.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
43
The merchants of this country might as well
have burned their ships as have submitted to
these decrees.
All this while the impressment of American
seamen by British ships of war was being vigor-
ously prosecuted. This is one of those outrages
so long ago laid away among the mouldering
tombs in the historical grave-yard that few per-
sons now appreciate its enormity, or the extent
to which it was carried. Those who will be at
the pains to ascertain the truth in the matter
will feel that the bloodiest, most costly, and
most disastrous war would have been better
than tame endurance of treatment so brutal
and unjustifiable that it finds no parallel even
in the long and dark list of wrongs which Great
Britain has been wont to inflict upon all the
weaker or the uncivilized peoples with whom
she has been brought or has gratuitously forced
herself into unwelcome contact. It was not an
occasional act of high-handed arrogance that
was done; there were not only a few unfortu-
nate victims, of whom a large proportion might
be of unascertained nationality. It was an or-
ganized system worked upon a very large scale.
Every American seaman felt it necessary to
have a certificate of citizenship, accompanied
by a description of his features and of all the
marks upon his person, as Mr. Adams said,
44
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
"like the advertisement for a runaway negro
slave." Nor was even this protection by any
means sure to be always efficient. The num-
ber of undoubted American citizens who were
seized rose in a few years actually to many
thousands. They were often taken without so
much as a false pretence to right; but with the
acknowledgment that they were Americans,
they were seized upon the plea of a necessity
for their services in the British ship. Some
American vessels were left so denuded of sea-
men that they were lost at sea for want of hands
to man them; the destruction of lives as well as
property, unquestionably thus caused, was im-
mense. When after the lapse of a long time
and of infinite negotiation the American citi-
zenship of some individual was clearly shown,
still the chances of his return were small; some
false and ignoble subterfuge was resorted to;
he was not to be found; the name did not occur
on the rolls of the navy; he had died, or been
discharged, or had deserted, or had been shot.
The more illegal the act committed by any
British officer the more sure he was of reward,
till it seemed that the impressment of American
citizens was an even surer road to promotion
than valor in an engagement with the enemy.
Such were the substantial wrongs inflicted by
Great Britain; nor were any pains taken to
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
45
cloak their character; on the contrary, they
were done with more than British insolence
and offensiveness, and were accompanied with
insults which alone constituted sufficient prov-
ocation to war. To all this, for a long time,
nothing but empty and utterly futile protests
were opposed by this country. The affair of
the Chesapeake, indeed, threatened for a brief
moment to bring things to a crisis. That ves-
sel, an American frigate, commanded by Com-
modore Barron, sailed on June 22, 1807, from
Hampton Roads. The Leopard, a British fifty-
gun ship, followed her, and before she was out
of sight of land, hailed her and demanded the
delivery of four men, of whom three at least
were surely native Americans. Barron refused
the demand, though his ship was wholly unpre-
pared for action. Thereupon the Englishman
opened his broadsides, killed three men and
wounded sixteen, boarded the Chesapeake and
took off the four sailors. They were carried to
Halifax and tried by court-martial for deser-
tion : one of them was hanged; one died in con-
finement, and five years elapsed before the other
two were returned to the Chesapeake in Boston
harbor. This wound was sufficiently deep to
arouse a real spirit of resentment and revenge,
and England went so far as to dispatch Mr.
Rose to this country upon a pretended mission
46
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
of peace, though the fraudulent character of his
errand was sufficiently indicated by the fact
that within a few hours after his departure the
first of the above named Orders in Council was
issued but had not been communicated to him.
As Mr. Adams indignantly said, "the same pen-
ful of ink which signed his instructions might
have been used also to sign these illegal orders."
Admiral Berkeley, the commander of the Leop-
ard, received the punishment which he might
justly have expected if precedent was to count
for anything in the naval service of Great
Britain, he was promoted.
It is hardly worth while to endeavor to
measure the comparative wrongfulness of the
conduct of England and of France. The be-
havior of each was utterly unjustifiable; though
England by committing the first extreme breach
of international law gave to France the excuse
of retaliation. There was, however, vast dif-
ference in the practical effect of the British and
French decrees. The former wrought serious
injury, falling little short of total destruction,
to American shipping and commerce; the lat-
ter were only in a much less degree hurtful.
The immense naval power of England, and the
channels in which our trade naturally flowed,
combined to make her destructive capacity as
towards us very great. It was the outrages in
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
47
flicted by her which brought the merchants of
the United States face to face with ruin; they
suffered not very greatly at the hands of Na-
poleon. Neither could the villainous process
of impressment be conducted by Frenchmen.
France gave us cause for war, but England
seemed resolved to drive us into it.
As British aggressions grew steadily and rap-
idly more intolerable, Mr. Adams found himself
straining farther and farther away from those
Federalist moorings at which, it must be con-
fessed, he had long swung very precariously.
The constituency which he represented was in-
deed in a quandary so embarrassing as hardly to
be capable of maintaining any consistent policy.
The New England of that day was a trading
community, of which the industry and capital
were almost exclusively centred in ship-owning
and commerce. The merchants, almost to a
man, had long been the most Anglican of Fed-
eralists in their political sympathies. Now they
found themselves suffering utterly ruinous treat-
ment at the hands of those whom they had
loved overmuch. They were being ruthlessly
destroyed by their friends, to whom they had
been, so to speak, almost disloyally loyal. They
saw their business annihilated, their property
seized, and yet could not give utterance to re-
sentment, or counsel resistance, without such a
48
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
humiliating devouring of all their own princi
ples and sentiments as they could by no possi-
bility bring themselves to endure. There was
but one road open to them, and that was the
ignoble one of casting themselves wholly into
the arms of England, of rewarding her blows
with caresses, of submitting to be fairly scourged
into a servile alliance with her. It is not sur-
prising that the independent temper of Mr.
Adams revolted at the position which his party
seemed not reluctant to assume at this juncture.
Yet not very much better seemed for a time
the policy of the administration. Jefferson was
far from being a man for troubled seasons,
which called for high spirit and executive en-
ergy. His flotillas of gunboats and like idle
and silly fantasies only excited Mr. Adams's
disgust. In fact, there was upon all sides a
strong dread of a war with England, not always
openly expressed, but now perfectly visible, aris-
ing with some from regard for that country, in
others prompted by fear of her power. Alone
among public men Mr. Adams, while earnestly
hoping to escape war, was not willing to seek
that escape by unlimited weakness and un-
bounded submission to lawless injury.
On November 17, 1807, Mr. Adams, whe
never in his life allowed fear to become a mo-
tive, wrote, with obvious contempt and indig
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
49
nation: "I observe among the members great
embarrassment, alarm, anxiety, and confusion
of mind, but no preparation for any measure
of vigor, and an obvious strong disposition to
yield all that Great Britain may require, to pre-
serve peace, under a thin external show of dig-
nity and bravery." This tame and vacillating
spirit roused his ire, and as it was chiefly mani-
fested by his own party it alienated him from
them farther than ever. Yet his wrath was so
far held in reasonable check by his discretion
that he would still have liked to avoid the peril-
ous conclusion of arms, and though his impulse
was to fight, yet he could not but recognize that
the sensible course was to be content, for the
time at least, with a manifestation of resent-
ment, and the most vigorous acts short of war
which the government could be induced to un-
dertake. On this sentiment were based his in-
troduction of the aforementioned resolutions, his
willingness to support the administration, and
his vote for the Non-importation Act in spite of
a dislike for it as a very imperfectly satisfactory
measure. But it was not alone his naturally in-
dependent temper which led him thus to feel so
differently from other members of his party. In
Europe he had had opportunities of forming a
judgment more accurate than was possible for
most Americans concerning the sentiments and
4
50
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
policy of England towards this country. Not
only had he been present at the negotiations
resulting in the treaty of peace, but he had also
afterwards been for several months engaged in
the personal discussion of commercial questions.
with the British minister of foreign affairs.
From all that he had thus seen and heard he
had reached the conviction, unquestionably cor-
rect, that the British were not only resolved to
adopt a selfish course towards the United States,
which might have been expected, but that they
were consistently pursuing the further distinct
design of crippling and destroying American
commerce, to the utmost degree which their own
extensive trade and great naval authority and
power rendered possible. So long as he held
this firm belief, it was inevitable that he should
be at issue with the Federalists in all matters
concerning our policy towards Great Britain.
The ill-will naturally engendered in him by
this conviction was increased to profound in-
dignation when illiberal measures were suc-
ceeded by insults, by substantial wrongs in di-
rect contravention of law, and by acts properly
to be described as of real hostility. For Mr.
Adams was by nature not only independent, but
resentful and combative. When, soon after the
attack of the Leopard upon the Chesapeake, he
heard the transaction "openly justified at noon
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
51
•
day," by a prominent Federalist,¹ "in a public
insurance office upon the exchange at Boston,”
his temper rose. "This," he afterward wrote,
"this was the cause
which alienated me
from that day and forever from the councils of
the Federal party." When the news of that
outrage reached Boston, Mr. Adams was there,
and desired that the leading Federalists in
the city should at once "take the lead in pro-
moting a strong and clear expression of the
sentiments of the people, and in an open and
free-hearted manner, setting aside all party feel-
ings, declare their determination at that crisis.
to support the government of their country."
But unfortunately these gentlemen were by no
means prepared for any such action, and fool-
ishly left it for the friends of the administration
to give the first utterance to a feeling which it
is hard to excuse any American for not enter-
taining beneath such provocation. It was the
Jeffersonians, accordingly, who convened "an
informal meeting of the citizens of Boston and
the neighboring towns," at which Mr. Adams
was present, and by which he was put upon
a committee to draw and report resolutions.
These resolutions pledged a cheerful coöpera-
tion "in any measures, however serious," which
the government might deem necessary, and a
1 Mr. John Lowell.
52
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
support of the same with "lives and fortunes."
The Federalists, learning too late that their
backwardness at this crisis was a blunder,
caused a town meeting to be called at Fanueil
Hall a few days later. This also Mr. Adams
attended, and again was put on the committee
to draft resolutions, which were only a little less
strong than those of the earlier assemblage.
But though many of the Federalists thus tard-
ily and reluctantly fell in with the popular sen-
timent, they were for the most part heartily in-
censed against Mr. Adams. They threatened
him that he should "have his head taken off
for apostasy," and gave him to understand that
he "should no longer be considered as having
any communion with the party." If he had not
already quite left them, they now turned him
out from their community. But such abusive
treatment was ill adapted to influence a man
of his temper. Martyrdom, which in time he
came to relish, had not now any terrors for
him; and he would have lost as many heads as
ever grew on Hydra, ere he would have yielded
on a point of principle.
His spirit was soon to be demonstrated.
Congress was convened in extra session on
October 26, 1807. The administration brought
forward the bill establishing an embargo. The
measure may now be pronounced a blunder,
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
53
and its proposal created a howl of rage and
anguish from the commercial states, who saw
in it only their utter ruin. Already a strong
sectional feeling had been developed between
the planters of the South and the merchants of
the North and East, and the latter now united
in the cry that their quarter was to be ruined
by the ignorant policy of this Virginian Pres-
ident. Terrible then was their wrath, when they
actually saw a Massachusetts Senator boldly give
his vote for what they deemed the most odious
and wicked bill which had ever been present-
ed in the halls of Congress. Nay, more, they
learned with horror that Mr. Adams had even
been a member of the committee which reported
the bill, and that he had joined in the report.
Henceforth the Federal party was to be like a
hive of enraged hornets about the devoted ren-
egade. No abuse which they could heap upon
him seemed nearly adequate to the occasion.
They despised him; they loathed him; they said
and believed that he was false, selfish, designing,
a traitor, an apostate, that he had run away
from a failing cause, that he had sold himself.
The language of contumely was exhausted in
vain efforts to describe his baseness. Not even
yet has the echo of the hard names which he
was called quite died away in the land; and
there are still families in New England with
54
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
whom his dishonest tergiversation remains a
traditional belief.
Never was any man more unjustly aspersed.
It is impossible to view all the evidence dis-
passionately without not only acquitting Mr.
Adams but greatly admiring his courage, his
constancy, his independence. Whether the em-
bargo was a wise and efficient or a futile and
useless measure, has little to do with the ques-
tion of his conduct. The emergency called for
strong action. The Federalists suggested only a
temporizing submission, or that we should avert
the terrible wrath of England by crawling be-
neath her lashes into political and commercial
servitude. Mr. Jefferson thought the embargo
would do, that it would aid him in his negotia-
tions with England sufficiently to enable him to
bring her to terms; he had before thought the
same of the Non-importation Act. Mr. Adams
felt, properly enough, concerning both these
schemes, that they were insufficient and in
many respects objectionable; but that to give
the administration hearty support in the most
vigorous measures which it was willing to un-
dertake, was better than to aid an opposition
utterly nerveless and servile and altogether
devoid of so much as the desire for efficient
action. It was no time to stay with the party
of weakness; it was right to strengthen rather
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
55
than to hamper a man so pacific and spiritless as
Mr. Jefferson; to show a readiness to forward
even his imperfect expedients; to display a
united and indignant, if not quite a hostile
front to Great Britain, rather than to exhibit a
tame and friendly feeling towards her. It was
for these reasons, which had already controlled
his action concerning the non-importation bill,
that Mr. Adams joined in reporting the em-
bargo bill and voted for it. He never pre-
tended that he himself had any especial fancy
for either of these measures, or that he regarded
them as the best that could be devised under
the circumstances. On the contrary, he hoped
that the passage of the embargo would allow of
the repeal of its predecessor. That he expected
some good from it, and that it did some little
good cannot be denied. It did save a great deal
of American property, both shipping and mer-
chandise, from seizure and condemnation; and
if it cut off the income it at least saved much
of the principal of our merchants. If only the
bill had been promptly repealed so soon as this
protective purpose had been achieved, without
awaiting further and altogether impossible ben-
efits to accrue from it as an offensive measure,
might perhaps have left a better memory be
hind it. Unfortunately no one can deny that it
was continued much too long. Mr. Adams saw
56
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
He
this error and dreaded the consequences. After
he had left Congress and had gone back to pri-
vate life, he exerted all the influence which he
had with the Republican members of Congress
to secure its repeal and the substitution of the
Non-intercourse Act, an exchange which was in
time accomplished, though much too tardily.
Nay, much more than this, Mr. Adams stands
forth almost alone as the advocate of threaten-
ing if not of actually belligerent measures.
expressed his belief that "our internal re-
sources [were] competent to the establishment
and maintenance of a naval force, public and
private, if not fully adequate to the protection
and defence of our commerce, at least sufficient
to induce a retreat from hostilities, and to deter
from a renewal of them by either of the war-
ring parties;" and he insisted that "a system to
that effect might be formed, ultimately far more
economical, and certainly more energetic,” than
the embargo. But his "resolution met no en-
couragement." He found that it was the em
bargo or nothing, and he thought the embargo
was a little better than nothing, as probably it
was.
All the arguments which Mr. Adams ad-
vanced were far from satisfying his constituents
in those days of wild political excitement, and
hey quickly found the means of intimating their
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
57
unappeasable displeasure in a way certainly not
open to misapprehension. Mr. Adams's term
of service in the Senate was to expire on March
3, 1809. On June 2 and 3, 1808, anticipating by
many months the customary time for filling the
coming vacancy, the legislature of Massachusetts
proceeded to choose James Lloyd, junior, his
successor. The votes were, in the Senate 21 for
Mr. Lloyd, 17 for Mr. Adams; in the House
248 for Mr. Lloyd, and 213 for Mr. Adams. A
more insulting method of administering a re-
buke could not have been devised. At the same
time, in further expression of disapprobation,
resolutions strongly condemnatory of the em-
bargo were passed. Mr. Adams was not the man
to stay where he was not wanted, and on June 8
he sent in his letter of resignation. On the next
day Mr. Lloyd was chosen to serve for the bal-
ance of his term.
Thus John Quincy Adams changed sides.
The son of John Adams lost the senatorship
for persistently supporting the administration
of Thomas Jefferson. It was indeed a singular
spectacle! In 1803 he had been sent to the
Senate of the United States by Federalists as
a Federalist; in 1808 he had abjured them and
they had repudiated him; in 1809, as we are
soon to see, he received a foreign appointment
from the Republican President Madison, and
58
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
was confirmed by a Republican Senate. Many
of Mr. Adams's acts, many of his traits, have
been harshly criticised, but for no act that he
ever did or ever was charged with doing has
he been so harshly assailed as for this journey
from one camp to the other. The gentlemen
of wealth, position, and influence in Eastern
Massachusetts, almost to a man, turned against
him with virulence; many of their descend-
ants still cherish the ancestral prejudice; and
it may yet be a long while before the last mut-
terings of this deep-rooted antipathy die away.
But that they will die away in time cannot be
doubted. Praise will succeed to blame. Truth
must prevail in a case where such abundant
evidence is accessible; and the truth is that Mr.
Adams's conduct was not ignoble, mean, and
traitorous, but honorable, courageous, and dis-
interested. Those who singled him out for
assault, though deaf to his arguments, might
even then have reflected that within a few
years a large proportion of the whole nation
had changed in their opinions as he had now at
last changed in his, so that the party which
under Washington hardly had an existence and
under John Adams was not, until the last
moment, seriously feared, now showed an enor-
mous majority throughout the whole country
Even in Massachusetts, the intrenched camp
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
59
of the Federalists, one half of the population
were now Republicans. But that change of
political sentiment which in the individual voter
is often admired as evidence of independent
thought, is stigmatized in those more prominent
in politics as tergiversation and apostasy.
It may be admitted that there are sound
reasons for holding party leaders to a more
rigid allegiance to party policy than is expected
of the rank and file; yet certainly at those
periods when substantially new measures and
new doctrines come to the front, the old party
names lose whatever sacredness may at other
times be in them, and the political fellowships
of the past may properly be reformed. Novel
problems cannot always find old comrades still
united in opinions. Precisely such was the case
with John Quincy Adams and the Federalists.
The earlier Federalist creed related to one set
of issues, the later Federalist creed to quite
another set; the earlier creed was sound and
deserving of support; the later creed was not
So. It is easy to see, as one looks backward
upon history, that every great and successful
party has its mission, that it wins its success
through the substantial righteousness of that
mission, and that it owes its downfall to as-
suming an erroneous attitude towards some
subsequent matter which becomes in turn of
60
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
predominating importance. Sometimes, though
rarely, a party remains on the right side through
two or even more successive issues of profound
consequence to the nation. The Federalist mis-
sion was to establish the Constitution of the
United States as a vigorous, efficient, and prac-
tical system of government, to prove its sound-
ness, safety, and efficacy, and to defend it from
the undermining assaults of those who dis-
trusted it and would have reduced it to imbe-
cility. Supplementary and cognate to this was
the further task of giving the young nation and
the new system a chance to get fairly started in
life before being subjected to the strain of war
and European entanglements. To this end it
was necessary to hold in check the Jeffersonian
or French party, who sought to embroil us in
a foreign quarrel. These two functions of the
Federalist party were quite in accord; they in
volved the organizing and domestic instinct
against the disorganizing and meddlesome; the
strengthening against the enfeebling process;
practical thinking against fanciful theories. For-
tunately the able men had been generally of the
sound persuasion, and by powerful exertions had
carried the day and accomplished their allotted
tasks so thoroughly that all subsequent genera-
tions of Americans have been reaping the ben
efit of their labors. But by the time that John
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
61
Adams had concluded his administration the
great Federalist work had been sufficiently done.
Those who still believe that there is an over-
ruling Providence in the affairs of men and na-
tions, may well point to the history of this
period in support of their theory. Republican-
ism was not able to triumph till Federalism had
fulfilled all its proper duty and was on the point
of going wrong.
During this earlier period John Quincy Adams
had been a Federalist by conviction as well as
by education. Nor was there any obvious reason
for him to change his political faith with the
change of party success, brought about as that
was before its necessity was apparent but by
the sure and inscrutable wisdom so marvellously
inclosed in the great popular instinct. It was
not patent, when Mr. Jefferson succeeded Mr.
Adams, that Federalism was soon to become
an unsound political creed - unsound, not be-
cause it had been defeated, but because it had
done its work, and in the new emergency was
destined to blunder. During Mr. Jefferson's
first administration no questions of novel im-
port arose. But they were not far distant, and
soon were presented by the British aggres-
sions. A grave crisis was created by this sys-
tem of organized destruction of property and
wholesale stealing of citizens, now suddenly
62
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
practised with such terrible energy. What was
to be done? What had the two great parties
to advise concerning the policy of the country
in this hour of peril? Unfortunately for the
Federalists old predilections were allowed now
to govern their present action. Excusably An-
glican in the by-gone days of Genet's mission,
they now remained still Anglican, when to be
Anglican was to be emphatically un-American.
As one reads the history of 1807 and 1808 it is
impossible not to feel almost a sense of personal
gratitude to John Quincy Adams that he dared
to step out from his meek-spirited party and
do all that circumstances rendered possible to
promote resistance to insults and wrongs intol-
erable. In truth, he was always a man of high
temper, and eminently a patriotic citizen of the
United States. Unlike too many even of the
best among his countrymen in those early years
of the Republic, he had no foreign sympathies
whatsoever; he was neither French nor English,
but wholly, exclusively, and warmly American.
He had no second love; the United States
filled his public heart and monopolized his po-
litical affections. When he was abroad he es-
tablished neither affiliations nor antipathies,
and when he was at home he drifted with no
party whose course was governed by foreign
magnets. It needs only that this characteristic
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
63
should be fully understood in order that his
conduct in 1808 should be not alone vindicated
but greatly admired.
At that time it was said, and it has been since
repeated, that he was allured by the loaves and
fishes which the Republicans could distribute,
while the Federalists could cast to him only
meagre and uncertain crusts. Circumstances
gave to the accusation such a superficial plau-
sibility that it was believed by many honest
men under the influence of political preju-
dice. But such a charge, alleged concerning
a single act in a long public career, is to be
scanned with suspicion. Disproof by demon-
stration is impossible; but it is fair to seek for
the character of the act in a study of the char-
acter of the actor, as illustrated by the rest of
his career.
Thus seeking we shall see that, if
any traits can be surely predicated of any man,
independence, courage, and honesty may be
predicated of Mr. Adams. His long public life
had many periods of trial, yet this is the sole
occasion when it is so much as possible seri-
ously to question the purity of his motives-
for the story of his intrigue with Mr. Clay to
secure the Presidency was never really be-
lieved by any one except General Jackson, and
the beliefs of General Jackson are of little con-
sequence. From the earliest to the latest day
54
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
of his public life, he was never a party man.
He is entitled to the justification to be derived
from this life-long habit, when, in 1807-8, he
voted against the wishes of those who had
hoped to hold him in the bonds of partisan
alliance. In point of fact, so far from these
acts being a yielding to selfish and calculating
temptation, they called for great courage and
strength of mind; instead of being tergiversa-
tion, they were a triumph in a severe ordeal. Mr.
Adams was not so dull as to underrate, nor so
void of good feeling as to be careless of, the storm
of obloquy which he had to encounter, not only
in such shape as is customary in like instances
of a change of sides in politics, but, in his pres-
ent case, of a peculiarly painful kind. He was
to seem unfaithful, not only to a party, but to
the bitter feud of a father whom he dearly loved
and greatly respected; he was to be reviled by
the neighbors and friends who constituted his
natural social circle in Boston; he was to alien-
ate himself from the rich, the cultivated, the
influential gentlemen of his neighborhood, his
comrades, who would almost universally con-
demn his conduct. He was to lose his position
as Senator, and probably to destroy all hopes of
further political success so far as it depended
upon the good-will of the people of his own
State. In this he was at least giving up a cer
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
65
tainty in exchange for what even his enemies
must admit to have been only an expectation.
But in fact it is now evident that there was
not upon his part even an expectation. At the
first signs of the views which he was likely to
hold, that contemptible but influential Republi-
can, Giles, of Virginia, also one or two others
of the same party, sought to approach him with
insinuating suggestions. But Mr. Adams met
these advances in a manner frigid and repellent
even beyond his wont, and far from seeking to
conciliate these emissaries, and to make a bar-
gain, or even establish a tacit understanding for
his own benefit, he held them far aloof, and sim-
ply stated that he wished and expected nothing
from the Administration. His mind was made
up, his opinion was formed; no bribe was needed
to secure his vote. Not thus do men sell them-
selves in politics. The Republicans were fairly
notified that he was going to do just as he
chose; and Mr. Jefferson, the arch-enemy of
all Adamses, had no occasion to forego his feud
to win this recruit from that family.
Mr. Adams's Diary shows unmistakably that
he was acting rigidly upon principle, that he
believed himself to be injuring or even destroy-
ing his political prospects, and that in so do-
ing he taxed his moral courage severely. The
whole tone of the Diary, apart from those few
5
66
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
distinct statements which hostile critics might
view with distrust, is despondent, often bitter,
but defiant and stubborn. If in later life he
ever anticipated the possible publication of these
private pages, yet he could hardly have done
so at this early day. Among certain general
reflections at the close of the year 1808, he
writes: "On most of the great national ques-
tions now under discussion, my sense of duty
leads me to support the Administration, and I
find myself, of course, in opposition to the Fed-
eralists in general. But I have no communica-
tion with the President, other than that in the
regular order of business in the Senate. In this
state of things my situation calls in a peculiar
manner for prudence; my political prospects
are declining, and, as my term of service draws
near its close, I am constantly approaching to
the certainty of being restored to the situation
of a private citizen. For this event, however,
I hope to have my mind sufficiently prepared."
In July, 1808, the Republicans of the Con-
gressional District wished to send him to the
House of Representatives, but to the gentle-
man who waited upon him with this proposal
he returned a decided negative. Other consid-
erations apart, he would not interfere with the
reëlection of his friend, Mr. Quincy.
Certain remarks, written when his senatorial
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
67
term was far advanced, when he had lost the
confidence of the Federalists without obtaining
that of the Republicans, may be of interest at
this point. He wrote, October 30, 1807: "I
employed the whole evening in looking over
the Journal of the Senate, since I have been
one of its members. Of the very little business
which I have commenced during the four ses-
sions, at least three fourths has failed, with cir-
cumstances of peculiar mortification. The very
few instances in which I have succeeded, have
been always after an opposition of great obsti-
nacy, often ludicrously contrasting with the
insignificance of the object in pursuit. More
than one instance has occurred where the same
thing which I have assiduously labored in vain
to effect has been afterwards accomplished by
others, without the least resistance; more than
once, where the pleasure of disappointing me
has seemed to be the prominent principle of
decision. Of the preparatory business, matured
in committees, I have had a share, gradually in-
creasing through the four sessions, but always
as a subordinate member. The merely labori-
ous duties have been readily assigned to me, and
as readily undertaken and discharged. My suc-
cess has been more frequent in opposition than
in carrying any proposition of my own, and I
hope I have been instrumental in arresting many
68
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
unadvised purposes and projects. Though as
to the general policy of the country I have
been uniformly in a small, and constantly de-
creasing minority; my opinions and votes have
been much oftener in unison with the Adminis-
tration than with their opponents; I have met
with at least as much opposition from my party
friends as from their adversaries, I believe
more. I know not that I have made any per-
sonal enemies now in Senate, nor can I flat-
ter myself with having acquired any personal
friends. There have been hitherto two, Mr.
Tracey and Mr. Plumer, upon whom I could
rely, but it has pleased Providence to remove
one by death, and the changes of political party
have removed the other." This is a striking
paragraph, certainly not written by a man in a
very cheerful or sanguine frame of mind, not
by one who congratulates himself on having
skilfully taken the initial steps in a brilliant
political career; but, it is fair to say, by one
who has at least tried to do his duty, and who
has not knowingly permitted himself to be
warped either by passion, prejudice, party alli-
ances, or selfish considerations.
As early as November, 1805, Mr. Adams,
being still what may be described as an in-
dependent Federalist, was approached by Dr.
Rush with tentative suggestions concerning a
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
69
foreign mission. Mr. Madison, then Secretary
of State, and even President Jefferson, were
apparently not disinclined to give him such em-
ployment, provided he would be willing to ac-
cept it at their hands. Mr. Adams simply re-
plied, that he would not refuse a nomination
merely because it came from Mr. Jefferson,
though there was no office in the President's
gift for which he had any wish. Perhaps be-
cause of the unconciliatory coolness of this re-
sponse, or perhaps for some better reason, the
nomination did not follow at that time. No
sooner, however, had Mr. Madison fairly taken
the oath of office as President than he be-
thought him of Mr. Adams, now no longer a
Federalist, but, concerning the present issues,
of the Republican persuasion. On March 6,
1809, Mr. Adams was notified by the President
personally of the intention to nominate him as
Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia. It was a
new mission, the first minister ever nominated
to Russia having been only a short time before
rejected by the Senate. But the Emperor had
often expressed his wish to exchange ministers,
and Mr. Madison was anxious to comply with
the courteous request. Mr. Adams's name was
accordingly at once sent to the Senate. But
on the following day, March 7, that body re-
solved that "it is inexpedient at this time to
70
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
appoint a minister from the United States to
the Court of Russia." The vote was seven-
teen to fifteen, and among the seventeen was
Mr. Adams's old colleague, Timothy Picker-
ing, who probably never in his life cast a vote
which gave him so much pleasure. Mr. Mad-
ison, however, did not readily desist from his
purpose, and a few months later, June 26, he
sent a message to the Senate, stating that the
considerations previously leading him to nom-
inate a minister to Russia had since been
strengthened, and again naming Mr. Adams
for the post. This time the nomination was
confirmed with readiness, by a vote of nineteen
to seven, Mr. Pickering, of course, being one
of the still hostile minority.
At noon on August 5, 1809, records Mr.
Adams, "I left my house at the corner of Boyl-
ston and Nassau streets, in Boston," again to
make the tedious and uncomfortable voyage
across the Atlantic. A miserable and a dan-
gerous time he had of it ere, on October 23, he
reached St. Petersburg. Concerning the four
years and a half which he is now to spend in
Russia very little need be said. His active du-
ties were of the simplest character, amounting
to little more than rendering occasional assist-
ance to American shipmasters suffering beneath
he severities so often illegally inflicted by the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
71
contesting powers of Europe. But apart from
the slender practical service to be done, the
period must have been interesting and agree-
able for him personally, for he was received and
treated throughout his stay by the Emperor
and his courtiers with distinguished kindness.
The Emperor, who often met him walking,
used to stop and chat with him, while Count
Romanzoff, the minister of foreign affairs, was
cordial beyond the ordinary civility of diplo-
macy. The Diary records a series of court pre-
sentations, balls, fêtes, dinners, diplomatic and
other, launches, displays of fireworks, birthday
festivities, parades, baptisms, plays, state fu-
nerals, illuminations, and Te Deums for victo-
ries; in short, every species of social gayety and
public pageant. At all these Mr. Adams was
always a bidden and apparently a welcome
guest. It must be admitted, even by his de-
tractors, that he was an admirable representa-
tive of the United States abroad. Having al-
ready seen much of the distinguished society of
European courts, but retaining a republican
implicity, which was wholly genuine and a
natural part of his character and therefore
was never affected or offensive in its manifesta-
tions, he really represented the best element in
the politics and society of the United States.
Winning respect for himself he won it also for
72
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
the country which he represented. Thus he
was able to render an indirect but essential
service in cementing the kindly feeling which
the Russian Empire entertained for the Amer-
ican Republic. Russia could then do us little
good and almost no harm, yet the friendship
of a great European power had a certain moral
value in those days of our national infancy.
That friendship, so cordially offered, Mr. Ad-
ams was fortunately well fitted to conciliate,
showing in his foreign callings a tact which did
not mark him in other public relations. He was
perhaps less liked by his travelling fellow coun-
trymen than by the Russians. The paltry am-
bition of a certain class of Americans for intro-
duction to high society disgusted him greatly,
and he was not found an efficient ally by these
would-be comrades of the Russian aristocracy.
"The ambition of young Americans to crowd
themselves upon European courts and into the
company of nobility is a very ridiculous and
not a very proud feature of their character," he
wrote; "there is nothing, in my estimate of
things, meaner than courting society where, if
admitted, it is only to be despised." He him-
self happily combined extensive acquirements,
excellent ability, diplomatic and courtly experi-
ence, and natural independence of character
without ill-bred self-assertion, and never failed.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
73
to create a good impression in the many circles
into which his foreign career introduced him.
The ambassadors and ministers from Euro-
pean powers at St. Petersburg were constantly
wrangling about precedence and like petty mat
ters of court etiquette. "In all these contro-
versies," writes Mr. Adams, "I have endeavored
to consider it as an affair in which I, as an
American minister, had no concern; and that
my only principle is to dispute upon precedence
with nobody." A good-natured contempt for
European follies may be read between the lines
of this remark; wherein it may be said that
the Monroe doctrine is applied to court eti-
quette.
He always made it a point to live within the
meagre income which the United States allowed
him, but seems to have suffered no diminution
of consideration for this reason. One morning,
walking on the Fontanka, he met the Emperor,
who said: "Mons. Adams, il y a cent ans que
je ne vous ai vu;" and then continuing the con-
versation, "asked me whether I intended to
take a house in the country this summer. I said,
No. . . . 'And why so?' said he. I was hes-
itating upon an answer when he relieved me
from embarrassment oy saying, 'Peutêtre sont-
ce des considerations de finance?' As he said it
with perfect good humor and with a smile, I
74
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
replied in the same manner: 'Mais Sire, elles
y sont pour une bonne part.
: "9 1
The volume of the journal which records this
residence in St. Petersburg is very interesting
as a picture of Russian life and manners in
high society. Few travellers write anything
nearly so vivid, so thorough, or so trustworthy
as these entries. Moreover, during the whole
period of his stay the great wars of Napoleon
were constantly increasing the astonishment of
mankind, and created intense excitement at the
Court of Russia. These feelings waxed stronger
as it grew daily more likely that the Emperor
would have to take his turn also as a party de-
fendant in the great conflict. Then at last
came the fact of war, the invasion of Russia,
the burning of Moscow, the disastrous retreat
of the invaders ending in ignominious flight,
the advance of the allies, finally the capture of
Paris. All this while Mr. Adams at St. Peters-
burg witnessed first the alarm and then the ex-
ultation of the court and the people as the
rumors now of defeat, anon of victory, were
brought by the couriers at tantalizing intervals;
and he saw the rejoicings and illuminations.
which rendered the Russian capital so brilliant
and glorious during the last portion of his res
1 An interesting sketch of his household and its expenses
is to be found in ii. Diary, 193.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
75
idence. It was an experience well worth hav-
ing, and which is pleasantly depicted in the
Diary.
In September, 1812, Count Romanzoff sug-
gested to Mr. Adams the readiness of the Em-
peror to act as mediator in bringing about peace
between the United States and England. The
suggestion was promptly acted upon, but with
no directly fortunate results. The American
government acceded at once to the proposi-
tion, and at the risk of an impolitic display
of readiness dispatched Messrs. Gallatin and
Bayard to act as Commissioners jointly with Mr.
Adams in the negotiations. These gentlemen,
however, arrived in St. Petersburg only to find
themselves in a very awkward position. Their
official character might not properly be con-
sidered as attaching unless England should ac-
cept the offer of mediation. But England had
refused, in the first instance, to do this, and she
now again reiterated her refusal without regard
for the manifestation of willingness on the
part of the United States. Further, Mr. Gal-
latin's nomination was rejected by the Senate
after his departure, on the ground that his re-
tention of the post of Secretary of the Treas-
ury was incompatible, under the Constitution,
with this diplomatic function. So the United
States appeared in a very annoying attitude,
76
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
her Commissioners were uncomfortable and
somewhat humiliated; Russia felt a certain
measure of vexation at the brusque and positive
rejection of her friendly proposition on the part
of Great Britain; and that country alone came
out of the affair with any self-satisfaction.
But by the time when all hopes of peace
through the friendly offices of Russia were at
an end, that stage of the conflict had been
reached at which both parties were quite ready
to desist. The United States, though triumph-
ing in some brilliant naval victories, had been
having a sorry experience on land, where, as
the Russian minister remarked, "England did
as she pleased." A large portion of the people
were extremely dissatisfied, and it was impos-
sible to ignore that the outlook did not promise
better fortunes in the future than had been en-
countered in the past. On the other hand,
England had nothing substantial to expect from
a continuance of the struggle, except heavy ad-
ditional expenditure which it was not then the
fashion to compel the worsted party to recoup.
She accordingly intimated her readiness to send
Commissioners to Göttingen, for which place.
Ghent was afterwards substituted, to meet
American Commissioners and settle terms of
pacification. The United States renewed the
powers of Messrs. Adams, Bayard, and Galla-
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
77
tin, a new Secretary of the Treasury having in
the mean time been appointed, and added Jon-
athan Russell, then Minister to Sweden, and
Henry Clay. England deputed Lord Gambier,
an admiral, Dr. Adams, a publicist, and Mr.
Goulbourn, a member of Parliament and Under
Secretary of State. These eight gentlemen ac-
cordingly met in Ghent on August 7, 1814.
It was upwards of four months before an
agreement was reached. During this period
Mr. Adams kept his Diary with much more
even than his wonted faithfulness, and it un-
doubtedly presents the most vivid picture in
existence of the labors of treaty-making diplo-
matists. The eight were certainly an odd as-
semblage of peacemakers. The ill-blood and
wranglings between the opposing Commissions
were bad enough, yet hardly equalled the in-
testine dissensions between the American Com-
missioners themselves. That the spirit of peace
should ever have emanated from such an uni-
versal embroilment, is almost sufficiently sur-
prising to be regarded as a miracle. At the
very beginning, or even before fairly beginning,
the British party roused the jealous ire of the
Americans by proposing that they all should
meet, for exchanging their full powers, at the
lodgings of the Englishmen. The Americans
took fire at this "offensive pretension to supe-
78
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
riority" which was "the usage from Ambassa-
dors to Ministers of an inferior order." Mr.
Adams cited Martens, and Mr. Bayard read
a case from Ward's "Law of Nations.” Mr.
Adams suggested sending a pointed reply, agree-
ing to meet the British Commissioners "at any
place other than their own lodgings; " but Mr.
Gallatin, whose valuable function was destined
to be the keeping of the peace among his frac-
tious colleagues, as well as betwixt them and the
Englishmen, substituted the milder phrase, “at
any place which may be mutually agreed upon."
The first meeting accordingly took place at the
Hôtel des Pays Bas, where it was arranged that
the subsequent conferences should be held al-
ternately at the quarters of the two Commis-
sions. Then followed expressions, conventional
and proper but wholly untrue, of mutual sen-
timents of esteem and good-will.
No sooner did the gentlemen begin to get
seriously at the work before them, than the
most discouraging prospects were developed.
The British first presented their demands, as
follows: 1. That the United States should con-
clude a peace with the Indian allies of Great
Britain, and that a species of neutral belt of
Indian territory should be established between
the dominions of the United States and Great
Britain, so that these dominions should be no
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
79
where conterminous, upon which belt or bar-
rier neither power should be permitted to en-
croach even by purchase, and the boundaries of
which should be settled in this treaty. 2. That
the United States should keep no naval force
upon the Great Lakes, and should neither main-
tain their existing forts nor build new ones upon
their northern frontier; it was even required
that the boundary line should run along the
southern shore of the lakes; while no corre-
sponding restriction was imposed upon Great
Britain, because she was stated to have no pro-
jects of conquest as against her neighbor. 3.
That a piece of the province of Maine should
be ceded, in order to give the English a road
from Halifax to Quebec. 4. That the stipula-
tion of the treaty of 1783, conferring on Eng-
lish subjects the right of navigating the Mis-
sissippi, should be now formally renewed.
The Americans were astounded it seemed
to them hardly worth while to have come so
far to listen to such propositions. Concerning
the proposed Indian pacification they had not
even any powers, the United States being al-
ready busied in negotiating a treaty with the
tribes as independent powers. The establish-
ment of the neutral Indian belt was manifestly
contrary to the established policy and obvious
destiny of the nation. Neither was the answer
30
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
agreeable, which was returned by Dr. Adams
to the inquiry as to what was to be done with.
those citizens of the United States who had
already settled in those parts of Michigan, Il-
linois, and Ohio, included within the territory
which it was now proposed to make inalienably
Indian. He said that these people, amounting
perhaps to one hundred thousand, "must shift
for themselves." The one-sided disarmament
upon the lakes and along the frontier was, by
the understanding of all nations, such an humil-
iation as is inflicted only on a crushed adversary.
No return was offered for the road between Hal-
ifax and Quebec ; nor for the right of navigating
the Mississippi. The treaty of peace of 1783,
made in ignorance of the topography of the
unexplored northern country, had established
an impossible boundary line running from the
Lake of the Woods westward along the forty-
ninth parallel to the Mississippi; and as appurte-
nant to the British territory, thus supposed to
touch the river, a right of navigation upon it
was given. It had since been discovered that
a line on that parallel would never touch the
Mississippi. The same treaty had also secured
for the United States certain rights concerning
the Northeastern fisheries. The English now
insisted upon a re-affirmance of the privilege
given to them, without a re-affirmance of the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
81
privilege given to the United States; ignoring
the fact that the recent acquisition of Loui-
siana, making the Mississippi wholly Ameri
can, materially altered the propriety of a Brit
ish right of navigation upon it.
Apart from the intolerable character of these
demands, the personal bearing of the English
Commissioners did not tend to mitigate the
chagrin of the Americans. The formal civil-
ities had counted with the American Commis-
sioners for more than they were worth, and had
induced them, in preparing a long dispatch to
the home government, to insert "a paragraph
complimentary to the personal deportment" of
the British. But before they sent off the doc-
ument they revised it and struck out these
pleasant phrases. Not many days after the
first conference Mr. Adams notes that the tone
of the English Commissioners was even more
peremptory, and their language more over-
bearing, than at the former conferences." A
little farther on he remarks that "the Brit-
ish note is overbearing and insulting in its
tone, like the two former ones." Again he
says:
66
"The tone of all the British notes is arrogant,
overbearing, and offensive. The tone of ours is
neither so bold nor so spirited as I think it should
be. It is too much on the defensive, and too exces-
6
82
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
sive in the caution to say nothing irritating. I have
seldom been able to prevail upon my colleagues to
insert anything in the style of retort upon the harsh
and reproachful matter which we receive."
Many little passages-at-arms in the confer-
ences are recited which amply bear out these
remarks as regards both parties. Perhaps,
however, it should be admitted that the Amer-
icans made up for the self-restraint which they
practised in conference, by the disagreements
and bickerings in which they indulged when
consulting among themselves. Mr. Gallatin's
serene temper and cool head were hardly taxed
to keep the peace among his excited colleagues.
Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay were especially prone
to suspicions and to outbursts of anger. Mr.
Adams often and candidly admits as much of
himself, apparently not without good reason.
At first the onerous task of drafting the nu-
merous documents which the Commission had
to present devolved upon him, a labor for
which he was well fitted in all respects save,
perhaps, a tendency to prolixity. He did not,
however, succeed in satisfying his comrades,
and the criticisms to which they subjected his
composition galled his self-esteem severely, so
much so that ere long he altogether relin-
quished this function, which was thereafter
performed chiefly by Mr. Gallatin. As early
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
83
""
as August 21, Mr. Adams says, not without
evident bitterness, that though they all were
agreed on the general view of the subject, yet
in his "exposition of it, one objects to the form,
another to the substance, of almost every par-
agraph. Mr. Gallatin would strike out every-
thing possibly offensive to the Englishmen ;
Mr. Clay would draw his pen through every
figurative expression; Mr. Russell, not content
with agreeing to all the objections of both the
others, would further amend the construction
of every sentence; and finally Mr. Bayard
would insist upon writing all over again in his
own language. All this nettled Mr. Adams ex-
ceedingly. On September 24 he again writes.
that it was agreed to adopt an article which he
had drawn, "though with objections to almost
every word" which he had used. "This," he
says, "is a severity with which I alone am
treated in our discussions by all my colleagues.
Almost everything written by any of the rest
is rejected, or agreed to with very little criti-
cism, verbal or substantial. But every line
that I write passes a gauntlet of objections by
every one of my colleagues, which finally is
sues, for the most part, in the rejection of it
all." He reflects, with a somewhat forced air
of self-discipline, that this must indicate some
faultiness in his composition which he must try
84
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
to correct; but in fact it is sufficiently evident
that he was seldom persuaded that his papers
were improved. Amid all this we see in the
Diary many exhibitions of vexation. One day
he acknowledges, “I cannot always restrain the
irritability of my temper;" another day he in-
formed his colleagues, "with too much warmth,
that they might be assured I was as determined.
as they were;" again he reflects, "I, too, must
not forget to keep a constant guard upon my
temper, for the time is evidently approaching
when it will be wanted." Mr. Gallatin alone
seems not to have exasperated him; Mr. Clay
and he were constantly in discussion, and often
pretty hotly. Instead of coming nearer to-
gether, as time went on, these two fell farther
apart. What Mr. Clay thought of Mr. Adams
may probably be inferred from what we know
that Mr. Adams thought of Mr. Clay. "Mr.
Clay is losing his temper, and growing peevish
and fractious," he writes, on October 31; and
constantly he repeats the like complaint. The
truth is, that the precise New Englander and
the impetuous Westerner were kept asunder
not only by local interests but by habits and
modes of thought utterly dissimilar. Some
amusing glimpses of their private life illustrate
this difference. Mr. Adams worked hard and
diligently, allowing himself little leisure for
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
85
pleasure; but Mr. Clay, without actually neg-
lecting his duties, yet managed to find ample
time for enjoyment. More than once Mr. Ad-
ams notes that, as he rose about five o'clock in
the morning to light his own fire and begin
the labors of the day by candle-light, he heard
the parties breaking up and leaving Mr. Clay's
rooms across the entry, where they had been
playing cards all night long. In these little
touches one sees the distinctive characters of
the men well portrayed.
The very extravagance of the British de-
mands at least saved the Americans from per-
plexity. Mr. Clay, indeed, cherished an "in-
conceivable idea" that the Englishmen would
"finish by receding from the ground they had
taken;" but meantime there could be no differ-
ence of opinion concerning the impossibility of
meeting them upon that ground. Mr. Adams,
never lacking in courage, actually wished to
argue with them that it would be for the in-
terests of Great Britain not less than of the
United States if Canada should be ceded to
the latter power. Unfortunately his colleagues
would not support him in this audacious policy,
the humor of which is delicious. It would have
been infinitely droll to see how the British Com-
missioners would have hailed such a proposition,
by way of appropriate termination of a conflict
86
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
in which the forces of their nation had cap-
tured and ransacked the capital city of the
Americans!
On August 21 the Englishmen invited the
Americans to dinner on the following Saturday.
“The chance is," wrote Mr. Adams, "that be-
fore that time the whole negotiation will be at
an end." The banquet, however, did come off,
and a few more succeeded it; feasts not marked
by any great geniality or warmth, except per-
haps occasionally warmth of discussion. So sure
were the Americans that they were about to
break off the negotiations that Mr. Adams be-
gan to consider by what route he should return
to St. Petersburg; and they declined to renew
the tenure of their quarters for more than a few
days longer. Like alarms were of frequent oc-
currence, even almost to the very day of agree-
ment. On September 15, at a dinner given by
the American Commissioners, Lord Gambier
asked Mr. Adams whether he would return im-
mediately to St. Petersburg. "Yes," replied
Mr. Adams, "that is, if you send us away."
His lordship "replied with assurances how
deeply he lamented it, and with a hope that we
should one day be friends again." On the same
occasion Mr. Goulburn said that probably the
last note of the Americans would "terminate
the business," and that they "must fight it out.'
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
87
Fighting it out was a much less painful prospect
for Great Britain just at that juncture than for
the United States, as the Americans realized
with profound anxiety. "We so fondly cling
to the vain hope of peace, that every new proof
of its impossibility operates upon us as a dis-
appointment," wrote Mr. Adams. No amount
of pride could altogether conceal the fact that
the American Commissioners represented the
worsted party, and though they never openly
said so even among themselves, yet indirectly
they were obliged to recognize the truth. On
November 10 we find Mr. Adams proposing to
make concessions not permitted by their instruc
tions, because, as he said:
“I felt so sure that [the home government] would
now gladly take the state before the war as the gen-
eral basis of the peace, that I was prepared to take
on me the responsibility of trespassing upon their
instructions thus far. Not only so, but I would at
this moment cheerfully give my life for a peace on
this basis. If peace was possible, it would be on no
other. I had indeed no hope that the proposal would
be accepted."
Mr. Clay thought that the British would
laugh at this: "They would say, Ay, ay! pretty
fellows you, to think of getting out of the war
as well as you got into it.” This was not con-
soling for the representatives of that side which
88
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
had declared war for the purpose of curing
grievances and vindicating alleged rights. But
that Mr. Adams correctly read the wishes of
the government was proved within a very few
days by the receipt of express authority from
home "to conclude the peace on the basis of the
status ante bellum." Three days afterwards, on
November 27, three and a half months after
the vexatious haggling had been begun, we en-
counter in the Diary the first real gleam of hope
of a successful termination: "All the difficul-
ties to the conclusion of a peace appear to be
now so nearly removed, that my colleagues all
consider it as certain. I myself think it prob-
able."
There were, however, some three weeks more
of negotiation to be gone through before the
consummation was actually achieved, and the
ill blood seemed to increase as the end was ap-
proached. The differences between the Amer-
ican Commissioners waxed especially serious
concerning the fisheries and the navigation of
the Mississippi. Mr. Adams insisted that if the
treaty of peace had been so far abrogated by
the war as to render necessary a re-affirmance
of the British right of navigating the Missis-
sippi, then a re-affirmance of the American
rights in the Northeastern fisheries was equally
necessary. This the English Commissioners de
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
89
nied. Mr. Adams said it was only an exchange
of privileges presumably equivalent. Mr. Clay,
however, was firmly resolved to prevent all stip-
ulations admitting such a right of navigation,
and the better to do so he was quite willing to
let the fisheries go. The navigation privilege
he considered "much too important to be con-
ceded for the mere liberty of drying fish upon
a desert," as he was pleased to describe a right
for which the United States has often been
ready to go to war and may yet some time do
So. "Mr. Clay lost his temper," writes Mr.
Adams a day or two later, "as he generally
does whenever this right of the British to nav-
igate the Mississippi is discussed. He was ut-
terly averse to admitting it as an equivalent for
a stipulation securing the contested part of the
fisheries. He said the more he heard of this
[the right of fishing], the more convinced he
was that it was of little or no value. He should
be glad to get it if he could, but he was sure
the British would not ultimately grant it. That
the navigation of the Mississippi, on the other
hand, was an object of immense importance,
and he could see no sort of reason for granting
it as an equivalent for the fisheries." Thus
spoke the representative of the West. The New
Englander the son of the man whose exertions
had been chiefly instrumental in originally ob-
-
90
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
taining the grant of the Northeastern fishery
privileges, — naturally went to the other ex-
treme. He thought "the British right of nav-
igating the Mississippi to be as nothing, consid-
ered as a grant from us. It was secured to them
by the peace of 1783, they had enjoyed it at the
commencement of the war, it had never been
injurious in the slightest degree to our own
people, and it appeared to [him] that the Brit-
ish claim to it was just and equitable." Further
he "believed the right to this navigation to be
a very useless thing to the British.
But
their national pride and honor were interested
in it; the government could not make a peace
which would abandon it." The fisheries, how-
ever, Mr. Adams regarded as one of the most
inestimable and inalienable of American rights.
It is evident that the United States could ill
have spared either Mr. Adams or Mr. Clay from
the negotiation, and the joinder of the two,
however fraught with discomfort to themselves,
well served substantial American interests.
On
Mr. Adams thought the British perfidious,
and suspected them of not entertaining any
honest intention of concluding a peace.
December 12, after an exceedingly quarrelsome
conference, he records his belief that the British
have "insidiously kept open " two points, "for
the sake of finally breaking off the negotiations
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
91
and making all their other concessions proofs of
their extreme moderation, to put upon us the
blame of the rupture."
On December 11 we find Mr. Clay ready
"for a war three years longer," and anxious
"to begin to play at brag" with the English-
men. His colleagues, more complaisant or hav-
ing less confidence in their own skill in that
game, found it difficult to placate him; he
"stalked to and fro across the chamber, repeat-
ing five or six times, 'I will never sign a treaty
upon the status ante bellum with the Indian
article. So help me God!"" The next day there
was an angry controversy with the English-
men. The British troops had taken and held
Moose Island in Passamaquoddy Bay, the right-
ful ownership of which was in dispute. The title
was to be settled by arbitrators. But the ques-
tion, whether the British should restore posses-
sion of the island pending the arbitration,
aroused bitter discussion. "Mr. Goulburn and
Dr. Adams (the Englishman) immediately took
fire, and Goulburn lost all control of his temper.
He has always in such cases," says the Diary,
"a sort of convulsive agitation about him, and
the tone in which he speaks is more insulting
than the language which he uses." Mr. Bayard
referred to the case of the Falkland Islands.
'Why' (in a transport of rage), said Goul-
666
92
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
burn, 'in that case we sent a fleet and troops
and drove the fellows off; and that is what we
ought to have done in this case. Mr. J. Q.
Adams, whose extensive and accurate informa-
tion more than once annoyed his adversaries,
stated that, as he remembered it, "the Spaniards
in that case had driven the British off," and
Lord Gambier helped his blundering colleague
out of the difficulty by suggesting a new sub-
ject, much as the defeated heroes of the Iliad
used to find happy refuge from death in a
god-sent cloud of dust. It is amusing to read
that in the midst of such scenes as these the
show of courtesy was still maintained; and
on December 13 the Americans "all dined with
the British Plenipotentiaries," though "the
party was more than usually dull, stiff, and re-
served." It was certainly forcing the spirit of
good fellowship. The next day Mr. Clay noti-
fied his colleagues that they were going "to
inake a damned bad treaty, and he did not know
whether he would sign it or not;" and Mr.
Adams also said that he saw that the rest had
made up their minds "at last to yield the fish-
ery point," in which case he also could not sign
the treaty. On the following day, however, the
Americans were surprised by receiving a note
from the British Commissioners, wherein they
made the substantial concession of omitting
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
93
from the treaty all reference to the fisheries and
the navigation of the Mississippi. But Mr.
Clay, on reading the note, "manifested some
chagrin," and "still talked of breaking off the
negotiation," even asking Mr. Adams to join
him in so doing, which request, however, Mr.
Adams very reasonably refused. Mr. Clay had
also been anxious to stand out for a distinct
abandonment of the alleged right of impress-
ment; but upon this point he found none of his
colleagues ready to back him, and he was com-
pelled perforce to yield. Agreement was there-
fore now substantially reached; a few minor
matters were settled, and on December 24, 1814,
the treaty was signed by all the eight nego-
tiators.
It was an astonishing as well as a happy
result. Never, probably, in the history of di-
plomacy has concord been produced from such
discordant elements as had been brought to-
gether in Ghent. Dissension seemed to have
become the mother of amity; and antipathies
were mere preliminaries to a good understand-
ing; in diplomacy as in marriage it had worked
well to begin with a little aversion. But, in
truth, this consummation was largely due to
what had been going on in the English Cab-
inet. At the outset Lord Castlereagh had been
very unwilling to conclude peace, and his dis-
94
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
position had found expression in the original
intolerable terms prepared by the British Com-
missioners. But Lord Liverpool had been
equally solicitous on the other side, and was
said even to have tendered his resignation to
the Prince Regent, if an accommodation should.
not be effected. His endeavors were fortunately
aided by events in Europe. Pending the nego-
tiations Lord Castlereagh went on a diplomatic
errand to Vienna, and there fell into such threat-
ening discussions with the Emperor of Russia
and the King of Prussia, that he thought it
prudent to have done with the American war,
and wrote home pacific advices. Hence, at last,
came such concessions as satisfied the Amer-
icans.
The treaty established "a firm and universal
peace between his Britannic Majesty and the
United States." Each party was to restore all
captured territory, except that the islands of
which the title was in dispute were to remain
in the occupation of the party holding them at
the time of ratification until that title should be
settled by commissioners; provision was made
also for the determination of all the open ques-
tions of boundary by sundry boards of commis-
sioners; each party was to make peace with
the Indian allies of the other. Such were, in
substance, the only points touched upon by this
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
95
document. Of the many subjects mooted be-
tween the negotiators scarcely any had sur-
vived the fierce contests which had been waged
concerning them. The whole matter of the
navigation of the Mississippi, access to that
river, and a road through American territory,
had been dropped by the British; while the
Americans had been well content to say noth-
ing of the Northeastern fisheries, which they re-
garded as still their own. The disarmament
on the lakes and along the Canadian border,
and the neutralization of a strip of Indian
territory, were yielded by the English. The
Americans were content to have nothing said
about impressment; nor was any one of the
many illegal rights exercised by England for-
mally abandoned. The Americans satisfied
themselves with the reflection that circum-
stances had rendered these points now only mat-
ters of abstract principle, since the pacification
of Europe had removed all opportunities and
temptations for England to persist in her pre-
vious objectionable courses. For the future it
was hardly to be feared that she would again
undertake to pursue a policy against which
it was evident that the United States were will-
ing to conduct a serious war.
There was, how-
ever, no provision for indemnification.
Upon a fair consideration, it must be ad-
96
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
mitted that, though the treaty was silent upon
all the points which the United States had
made war for the purpose of enforcing, yet the
country had every reason to be gratified with
the result of the negotiation. The five Com-
missioners had done themselves ample credit.
They had succeeded in agreeing with each
other; they had avoided any fracture of a ne-
gotiation which, up to the very end, seemed
almost daily on the verge of being broken off
in anger; they had managed really to lose noth-
ing, in spite of the fact that their side had had
decidedly the worst of the struggle. They had
negotiated much more successfully than the
armies of their countrymen had fought. The
Marquis of Wellesley said, in the House of
Lords, that "in his opinion the American
Commissioners had shown a most astonishing
superiority over the British during the whole
of the correspondence." One cannot help wish-
ing that the battle of New Orleans had taken
place a little earlier, or that the negotiation
had fallen a little later, so that news of that
brilliant event could have reached the ears of
the insolent Englishmen at Ghent, who had
for three months been enjoying the malicious
pleasure of lending to the Americans English
newspapers containing accounts of American
misfortunes. But that fortunate battle was not
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
97
fought until a few days after the eight Commis-
sioners had signed their compact. It is an in-
teresting illustration of the slowness of commu-
nication which our forefathers had to endure,
that the treaty crossed the Atlantic in a sail-
ing ship in time to travel through much of the
country simultaneously with the report of this
farewell victory. Two such good pieces of
news coming together set the people wild with
delight. Even on the dry pages of Niles's
Weekly Register occurs the triumphant para-
graph: "Who would not be an American?
Long live the Republic! All hail! last asylum
of oppressed humanity! Peace is signed in the
arms of victory!" It was natural that most
of the ecstasy should be manifested concerning
the military triumph, and that the mass of the
people should find more pleasure in glorifying
General Jackson than in exalting the Commis-
sioners. The value of their work, however, was
well proved by the voice of Great Britain. In
the London Times of December 30 appeared
a most angry tirade against the treaty, with
bitter sneers at those who called the peace an
“honorable” one. England, it was said, “had
attempted to force her principles on America,
and had failed." Foreign powers would say
that the English "had retired from the combat
with the stripes yet bleeding on their backs,
7
98
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
-with the recent defeats at Plattsburgh and
on Lake Champlain unavenged." The most
gloomy prognostications of further wars with
America when her naval power should have
waxed much greater were indulged. The loss
of prestige in Europe, "the probable loss of our
trans-Atlantic provinces," were among the re-
sults to be anticipated from this treaty into
which the English Commissioners had been be-
guiled by the Americans. These latter were re-
viled with an abuse which was really the high-
est compliment. The family name of Mr.
Adams gained no small access of distinction in
England from this business.
After the conclusion of the treaty Mr. Adams
went to Paris, and remained there until the mid-
dle of May, 1815, thus having the good fortune
to witness the return of Napoleon and a great
part of the events of the famous "hundred days.*
On May 26 he arrived in London, where there
awaited him, in the hands of the Barings, his
commission as Envoy Extraordinary and Minis-
ter Plenipotentiary to Great Britain. His first
duty was, in connection with Mr. Clay and Mr.
Gallatin, to negotiate a treaty of commerce, in
which business he again met the same three
British Commissioners by whom the negotia-
tions at Ghent had been conducted, of whose
abilities the government appeared to entertain
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
99
a better opinion than the Marquis of Welles-
ley had expressed. This negotiation had been
brought so far towards conclusion by his col-
leagues before his own arrival that Mr. Adams.
had little to do in assisting them to complete it.
This little having been done, they departed and
left him as Minister at the Court of St. James's.
Thus he fulfilled Washington's prophecy, by
reaching the highest rank in the American dip-
lomatic service.
Of his stay in Great Britain little need be
said. He had few duties of importance to per-
form. The fisheries, the right of impressment,
and the taking away and selling of slaves by
British naval officers during the late war,
formed the subjects of many interviews be-
tween him and Lord Castlereagh, without, how-
ever, any definite results being reached. But
he succeeded in obtaining, towards the close of
his stay, some slight remission of the severe re-
strictions placed by England upon our trade
with her West Indian colonies. His relations
with a cabinet, in which the principles of
Castlereagh and Canning predominated, could
hardly be cordial, yet he seems to have been
treated with perfect civility. Indeed, he was
not a man whom it was easy even for an Eng-
lishman to insult. He remarks of Castlereagh,
after one of his first interviews with that noble-
100
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
man : "His deportment is sufficiently grace-
ful, and his person is handsome.
His manner
was cold, but not absolutely repulsive." Be-
fore he left he had the pleasure of having Mr.
Canning specially seek acquaintance with him.
He met, of course, many distinguished and
many agreeable persons during his residence,
and partook of many festivities, especially of
numerous civic banquets at which toasts were
formally given in the dullest English fashion
and he was obliged to display his capacity for
"table-cloth oratory," as he called it, more
than was agreeable to him. He was greatly
bored by these solemn and pompous feedings.
Partly in order to escape them he took a house
at Ealing, and lived there during the greater
part of his stay in England. "One of the
strongest reasons for my remaining out of
town," he writes, "is to escape the frequency
of invitations at late hours, which consume so
much precious time, and with the perpetually
mortifying consciousness of inability to return
the civility in the same manner." The repub-
lican simplicity, not to say poverty, forced upon
American representatives abroad, was a very
different matter in the censorious and un-
friendly society of London from what it had
been at the kindly disposed Court of St. Peters-
burg. The relationship between the mother
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
101
country and the quondam colonies, especially
at that juncture, was such as to render social
life intolerably trying to an under-paid Ameri-
can minister.
Mr. Adams remained in England until June
15, 1817, when he sailed from Cowes, closing
forever his long and honorable diplomatic ca-
reer, and bidding his last farewell to Europe.
He returned home to take the post of Secretary
of State in the cabinet of James Monroe, then
lately inaugurated as President of the United
States.
CHAPTER II.
SECRETARY OF STATE AND PRESIDENT.
FROM the capitals of Russia and Great Brit
in to the capital of the United States was
a striking change. Washington, in its early
struggle for existence, was so unattractive a
spot, that foreigners must have been at a loss
to discover the principle which had governed
the selection. It combined all the ugliness with
all the discomfort of an unprosperous frontier
settlement on an ill-chosen site. What must
European diplomats have thought of a capital
city where snakes two feet long invaded gen-
tlemen's drawing-rooms, and a carriage, bring-
ing home the guests from a ball, could be upset
by the impenetrable depth of quagmire at the
very door of a foreign minister's residence. A
description of the city given by Mr. Mills, a
Representative from Massachusetts, in 1815, is
pathetic in its unutterable horror :
"It is impossible," he writes, "for me to describe
to you my feelings on entering this miserable desert,
this scene of desolation and horror.
My antici-
pations were almost infinitely short of the reality, and
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
103
I can truly say that the first appearance of this seat
of the national government has produced in me noth-
ing but absolute loathing and disgust."
If the place wore such a dreadful aspect to
the simple denizen of a New England country
town, what must it have seemed to those who
were familiar with London and Paris? To
them the social life must have been scarcely
less dreary than the rest of the surroundings.
Accordingly, with this change of scene, the
Diary, so long a record of festivities some-
times dull and formal, but generally collecting
interesting and distinguished persons, ceases
almost wholly to refer to topics of society.
Yet, of course, even the foul streets could not
prevent people from occasionally meeting to-
gether. There were simple tea-drinkings, stu-
pid weekly dinners at the President's, infre-
quent receptions by Mrs. Monroe, card-parties
and conversation-parties, which at the British
minister's were very "elegant," and at the
French minister's were more gay. Mons. de
Neuville, at his dinners, used to puzzle and
astound the plain-living Yankees by serving
dishes of "turkeys without bones, and pud-
dings in the form of fowls, fresh cod disguised
like a salad, and celery like oysters;" further,
he scandalized some and demoralized others by
having dancing on Saturday evenings, which
104
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
the New England ladies had been “educated to
consider as holy time." Mr. and Mrs. Adams
used to give weekly parties on Tuesday even-
ings, and apparently many persons stood not a
little in awe of these entertainments and of
the givers of them, by reason of their superior
familiarity with the manners and customs of
the best society of Europe. Mrs. Adams was,
"on the whole, a very pleasant and agreeable
woman; but the Secretary [had] no talent to
entertain a mixed company, either by conver-
sation or manners;" thus writes this same Mr.
Mills, whose sentiments towards Mr. Adains
were those of respect rather than. of personal
liking. The favorite dissipation then consisted
in card-playing, and the stakes were too often
out of all just proportion to the assets of the
gamesters. At one time Mr. Clay was reputed
to have lost $8,000, an amount so considerable
for him as to weigh upon his mind to the man-
ifest detriment of his public functions. But
sometimes the gentlemen resident in the capital
met for purposes less innocent than Saturday
evening cotillons, or even than extravagant bet-
ting at the card-table, and stirred the dullness
of society by a duel. Mr. Adams tells of one
affair of this sort, fought between ex-Senator
Mason, of Virginia, and his cousin, wherein the
weapons used were muskets, and the distance
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
105
was only six paces. Mason was killed; his
cousin was wounded, and only by a lucky ac-
cident escaped with his life. Mr. Adams had
little time and less taste for either the amuse-
ments or the dangers thus offered to him; he
preferred to go to bed in good season, to get up
often long before daybreak, and to labor assid-
uously the livelong day. His favorite exercise
was swimming in the Potomac, where he ac-
complished feats which would have been ex-
traordinary for a young and athletic man.
The most important, perplexing, and time-
consuming duties then called for by the condi-
tion of public affairs, happened to fall within
Mr Adams's department. Monroe's adminis-
tration has been christened the "era of good
feeling;" and, so
and, so far as political divisions
among the people at large were concerned, this
description is correct enough. There were no
great questions of public policy dividing the
nation. There could hardly be said to be two
political parties. With the close of the war
the malcontent Federalists had lost the only
substantial principle upon which they had been
able vigorously to oppose the Administration,
and as a natural consequence the party rapidly
shrank to insignificant proportions, and became
of hardly more importance than were the Jac-
obites in England after their last hopes had
106
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
been quenched by the failure of the Rebellion
of '45. The Federalist faith, like Jacobitism,
lingered in a few neighborhoods, and was main-
tained by a few old families, who managed to
associate it with a sense of their own pride and
lignity; but as an effective opposition or in-
Auential party organization, it was effete, and
no successor was rising out of its ruins. In a
broad way, therefore, there was political har-
mony to a very remarkable degree.
But among individuals there was by no
means a prevailing good feeling. Not held to-
gether by the pressure exerted by the antago-
nism of a strong hostile force, the prominent
men of the Cabinet and in Congress vere
busily employed in promoting their own indi-
vidual interests. Having no great issues with
which to identify themselves, and upon which
they could openly and honorably contend for
the approval of the nation, their only means
for securing their respective private ends lay
in secretly overreaching and supplanting each
other. Infinite skill was exerted by each to
inveigle his rival into an unpopular position or
a compromising light. By a series of prece-
dents Mr. Adams, as Secretary of State, ap-
peared most prominent as a candidate for the
succession to the Presidency. But Mr. Craw-
ford, in the Treasury Department, had been
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
107
very near obtaining the nomination instead of
Monroe, and he was firmly resolved to secure
it so soon as Mr. Monroe's eight years should
have elapsed. He, therefore, finding much
leisure left upon his hands by the not very
exacting business of his office, devoted his in-
genuity to devising schemes for injuring the
prestige of Mr. Adams. Mr. Clay also had
been greatly disappointed that he had not been
summoned to be Secretary of State, and so
made heir apparent. His personal enmity was
naturally towards Mr. Monroe, his political
enmity necessarily also included Mr. Adams,
whose appointment he had privately sought to
prevent. He therefore at once set himself as-
siduously to oppose and thwart the Administra-
tion, and to make it unsuccessful and unpopu-
lar. That Clay was in the main and upon all
weighty questions an honest statesman and a
real patriot must be admitted, but just at this
period no national crisis called his nobler qual-
ities into action, and his course was largely in-
fluenced by selfish considerations. It was not
long before Mr. Calhoun also entered the lists,
though in a manner less discreditable to him-
self, personally, than were the resources of
Crawford and Clay. The daily narrations and
comments of Mr. Adams display and explain
in a manner highly instructive, if not altogether
108
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
agreeable, the ambitions and the manœuvres,
the hollow alliances and unworthy intrigues,
not only of these three, but also of many other
estimable gentlemen then in political life. The
difference between those days and our own
seems not so great as the laudatores temporis
acti are wont to proclaim it. The elaborate
machinery which has since been constructed
was then unknown; rivals relied chiefly upon
their own astuteness and the aid of a few per-
sonal friends and adherents for carrying on con-
tests and attaining ends which are now sought.
by vastly more complex methods. What the
stage-coach of that period was to the railroads
of to-day, or what the hand-loom was to our
great cotton mills, such also was the political
intriguing of cabinet ministers, senators, and
representatives, to our present party ma-
chinery. But the temper was no better, honor
was no keener, the sense of public duty was
little more disinterested then than now. One
finds no serious traces of vulgar financial dis-
honesty recorded in these pages, in which Mr.
Adams has handed down the political life of
the second and third decades of our century
with a photographic accuracy. But one does
not see a much higher level of faithfulness to
ideal standards in political life than now exists.
As has been said, it so happened that in Mr
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
109
¡
Monroe's administration the heaviest burden of
labor and responsibility rested upon Mr. Adams;
the most important and most perplexing ques-
tions fell within his department. Domestic
breaches had been healed, but foreign breaches
gaped with threatening jaws. War with Spain
seemed imminent. Her South American col-
onies were then waging their contest for inde-
pendence, and naturally looked to the late suc-
cessful rebels of the northern continent for acts
of neighborly sympathy and good fellowship.
Their efforts to obtain official recognition and
the exchange of ministers with the United
States were eager and persistent. Privateers
fitted out at Baltimore gave the State Depart-
ment scarcely less cause for anxiety than the
shipbuilders of Liverpool gave to the English
Cabinet in 1863-64. These perplexities, as is
well known, caused the passage of the first
Neutrality Act," which first formulated and
has since served to establish the principle of
international obligation in such matters, and
has been the basis of all subsequent legislation
upon the subject not only in this country but
also in Great Britain.
66
The European powers, impelled by a natural
distaste for rebellion by colonists, and also be-
lieving that Spain would in time prevail over
the insurgents, turned a deaf ear to South Amer-
110
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
ican agents. But in the United States it was
different. Here it was anticipated that the re-
volted communities were destined to win; Mr.
Adams records this as his own opinion; besides
which there was also a natural sympathy felt
by our people in such a conflict in their own
quarter of the globe. Nevertheless, in many
anxious cabinet discussions, the President and
the Secretary of State established the policy of
reserve and caution. Rebels against an estab-
lished government are like plaintiffs in litiga-
tion; the burden of proof is upon them, and
the neutral nations who are a sort of quasi-
jurors must not commit themselves to a deci-
sion prematurely. The grave and inevitable
difficulties besetting the Administration in this
matter were seriously enhanced by the conduct
of Mr. Clay. Seeking nothing so eagerly as an
opportunity to harass the government, he could
have found none more to his taste than this
question of South American recognition. His
enthusiastic and rhetorical temperament re-
joiced in such a topic for his luxuriant oratory,
and he lauded freedom and abused the Admin-
istration with a force of expression far from
gratifying to the responsible heads of govern-
ment in their troublesome task.
Apart from these matters the United States
had direct disputes of a threatening character
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
111
pending with Spain concerning the boundaries
of Louisiana. Naturally enough boundary lines
in the half explored wilderness of this vast con-
tinent were not then marked with that indis-
putable accuracy which many generations and
much bloodshed had achieved in Europe; and
of all uncertain boundaries that of Louisiana
was the most so. Area enough to make two or
three States, more or less, might or might not
be included therein. Such doubts had proved
a ready source of quarrel, which could hardly
be assuaged by General Jackson marching
about in unquestionable Spanish territory, seiz-
ing towns and hanging people after his lawless,
ignorant, energetic fashion. Mr. Adams's chief
labor, therefore, was by no means of a promis-
ing character, being nothing less difficult than
to conclude a treaty between enraged Spain and
! the rapacious United States, where there was so
much wrong and so much right on both sides,
and such a wide obscure realm of doubt between
the two that an amicable agreement might well
seem not only beyond expectation but beyond
hope.
Many and various also were the incidental
obstacles in Mr. Adams's way. Not the least
lay in the ability of Don Onis, the Spanish
Minister, an ambassador well selected for his
important task and whom the American thus
described:
112
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
"Cold, calculating, wily, always commanding his
own temper, proud because he is a Spaniard, but sup-
ple and cunning, accommodating the tone of his pre-
tensions precisely to the degree of endurance of his
opponent, bold and overbearing to the utmost extent
to which it is tolerated, careless of what he asserts
or how grossly it is proved to be unfounded, his
morality appears to be that of the Jesuits as exposed
by Pascal. He is laborious, vigilant, and ever at-
tentive to his duties; a man of business and of the
world."
Fortunately this so dangerous negotiator was
hardly less anxious than Mr. Adams to conclude
a treaty. Yet he, too, had his grave difficulties
to encounter. Spanish arrogance bad not de-
clined with the decline of Spanish strength,
and the concessions demanded from that ancient
monarchy by the upstart republic seemed at
once exasperating and humiliating. The career
of Jackson in Florida, while it exposed the
weakness of Spain, also sorely wounded her
pride. Nor could the grandees, three thousand
miles away, form so accurate an opinion of the
true condition and prospects of affairs as could
Don Onis upon this side of the water. One day,
begging Mr. Adams to meet him upon a ques-
tion of boundary, "he insisted much upon the
infinite pains he had taken to prevail upon his
government to come to terms of accommoda
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
113
tion," and pathetically declared that "the
King's Council was composed of such ignorant
and stupid nigauds, grandees of Spain, and
priests," that Mr. Adams "could have no con-
ception of their obstinacy and imbecility.”
Other difficulties in Mr. Adams's way were
such as ought not to have been encountered.
The only substantial concession which he was
willing to make was in accepting the Sabine in-
stead of the Rio del Norte as the southwestern
boundary of Louisiana. But no sooner did
rumors of this possible yielding get abroad
than he was notified that Mr. Clay "would
take ground against" any treaty embodying it.
From Mr. Crawford a more dangerous and in-
sidious policy was to be feared. Presumably he
would be well pleased either to see Mr. Adams
fail altogether in the negotiation, or to see him
conclude a treaty which would be in some es-
sential feature odious to the people.
"That all his conduct," wrote Mr. Adams, "is
governed by his views to the Presidency, as the ulti-
mate successor to Mr. Monroe, and that his hopes
depend upon a result unfavorable to the success or
at least to the popularity of the Administration, is
perfectly clear. . . . His talent is intrigue. And as
it is in the foreign affairs that the success or failure
of the Administration will be most conspicuous, and
as their success would promote the reputation and in-
8
114
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
fluence, and their failure would lead to the disgrace
of the Secretary of State, Crawford's personal views
centre in the ill-success of the Administration in its
foreign relations; and, perhaps unconscious of his
own motives, he will always be impelled to throw
obstacles in its way, and to bring upon the Depart-
ment of State especially any feeling of public dissat-
isfaction that he can, and although himself a
member of the Administration, he perceives every
day more clearly that his only prospect of success
hereafter depends upon the failure of the Administra-
tion by measures of which he must take care to
make known his disapprobation."
President Monroe was profoundly anxious for
the consummation of the treaty, and though for
a time he was in perfect accord with Mr. Adams,
yet as the Spanish minister gradually drew
nearer and nearer to a full compliance with the
American demands, Monroe began to fear that
the Secretary would carry his unyielding habit
too far, and by insistance upon extreme points
which might well enough be given up, would
allow the country to drift into war.
Fortunately, as it turned out, Mr. Adams was
not afraid to take the whole responsibility of
success or failure upon his own shoulders, show-
ing indeed a high and admirable courage and
constancy amid such grave perplexities, in which
it seemed that all his future political fortunes
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
115
were involved. He caused the proffered media-
tion of Great Britain to be rejected. He availed
himself of no aid save only the services of
Mons. de Neuville, the French minister, who
took a warm interest in the negotiation, ex-
postulated and argued constantly with Don
Onis and sometimes with Mr. Adams, served as
a channel of communication and carried mes-
sages, propositions, and denials, which could
better come filtered through a neutral go-be-
tween than pass direct from principal to prin-
cipal. In fact, Mr. Adams needed no other kind
of aid except just this which was so readily
furnished by the civil and obliging Frenchman.
As if he had been a mathematician solving a
problem in dynamics, he seemed to have meas-
ured the precise line to which the severe pres-
sure of Spanish difficulties would compel Don
Onis to advance. This line he drew sharply,
and taking his stand upon it in the beginning
he made no important alterations in it to the
end. Day by day the Spaniard would reluc-
tantly approach toward him at one point or an-
other, solemnly protesting that he could not
make another move, by argument and entreaty
urging, almost imploring Mr. Adams in turn to
advance and meet him. But Mr. Adams stood
rigidly still, sometimes not a little vexed by the
other's lingering manoeuvres, and actually once

116
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
saying to the courtly Spaniard that he "was
so wearied out with the discussion that it had
become nauseous;" and, again, that he "really
could discuss no longer, and had given it up in
despair." Yet all the while he was never wholly
free from anxiety concerning the accuracy of
his calculations as to how soon the Don might
on his side also come to a final stand. Many a
tedious and alarming pause there was, but after
each halt progress was in time renewed. At
last the consummation was reached, and except
in the aforementioned matter of the Sabine
boundary no concession even in details had been
made by Mr. Adams. The United States was
to receive Florida, and in return only agreed to
settle the disputed claims of certain of her cit
izens against Spain to an amount not to exceed
five million dollars; while the claims of Spanish
subjects against the United States were wholly
expunged. The western boundary was so es-
tablished as to secure for this country the much-
coveted outlet to the shores of the "South Sea,"
as the Pacific Ocean was called, south of the
Columbia River; the line also was run along the
southern banks of the Red and Arkansas rivers,
leaving all the islands to the United States and
precluding Spain from the right of navigation.
Mr. Adams had achieved a great triumph.
On February 22, 1819, the two negotiators
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
117
signed and sealed the counterparts of the treaty.
Mr. Adams notes that it is "perhaps the most
important day of my life," and justly called it
"a great epoch in our history." Yet on the next
day the Washington City Gazette came out
with a strong condemnation of the Sabine con-
cession, and expressed the hope that the Senate
would not agree to it. "This paragraph," said
Mr. Adams, 66
comes directly or indirectly from
Mr. Clay." But the paragraph did no harm,
for on the following day the treaty was con-
firmed by an unanimous vote of the Senate.
It was not long, however, before the pleasure
justly derivable from the completion of this
great labor was cruelly dashed. It appeared
that certain enormous grants of land, made by
the Spanish king to three of his nobles, and
which were supposed to be annulled by the
treaty, so that the territory covered by them
would become the public property of the United
States, bore date earlier than had been under-
stood, and for this reason would, by the terms
of the treaty, be left in full force. This was a
serious matter, and such steps as were still pos-
sible to set it right were promptly taken. Mr.
Adams appealed to Don Onis to state in writing
that he himself had understood that these grants
were to be annulled, and that such had been the
intention of the treaty. The Spaniard replied
118
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
in a shape imperfectly satisfactory. He shuf
fled, evaded, and laid himself open to suspicion
of unfair dealing, though the charge could not
be regarded as fully proved against him. Mr.
Adams, while blaming himself for carelessness
in not having more closely examined original
documents, yet felt "scarce a doubt" that
Onis "did intend by artifice to cover the grants
while we were under the undoubting impres-
sion they were annulled;" and he said to M. de
Neuville, concerning this dark transaction, that
"it was not the ingenious device of a public -
minister, but une fourberie de Scapin.'
Be-
fore long the rumor got abroad in the public
prints in the natural shape of a "malignant
distortion," and Mr. Adams was compelled to
see with chagrin his supposed brilliant success
threatening to turn actually to his grave dis-
credit by reason of this unfortunate oversight.
•
What might have been the result had the
treaty been ratified by Spain can only be sur-
mised. But it so befell happily enough for
the United States and for Mr. Adams, as it aft-
erwards turned out that the Spanish govern-
ment refused to ratify. The news was, how-
ever, that they would forthwith dispatch a new
minister to explain this refusal and to renew
negotiations.
For his own private part Mr. Adams strove
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
119
to endure this buffet of unkindly fortune with
that unflinching and stubborn temper, slightly
dashed with bitterness, which stood him in good
stead in many a political trial during his hard-
fighting career. But in his official capacity he
had also to consider and advise what it be-
hooved the Administration to do under the cir-
cumstances. The feeling was widespread that
the United States ought to possess Florida, and
that Spain had paltered with us long enough.
More than once in cabinet meetings during the
negotiation the Secretary of State, who was al-
ways prone to strong measures, had expressed
a wish for an act of Congress authorizing the
Executive to take forcible possession of Florida
and of Galveston in the event of Spain refusing
to satisfy the reasonable demands made upon
ber. Now, stimulated by indignant feeling, his
prepossession in favor of vigorous action was
greatly strengthened, and his counsel was that
the United States should prepare at once to
take and hold the disputed territory, and indeed
Lome undisputed Spanish territory also. But
Mr. Monroe and the rest of the Cabinet pre-
ferred a milder course; and France and Great
Britain ventured to express to this country a
hope that no violent action would be precipi-
tately taken. So the matter lay by for a while,
awaiting the coming of the promised envoy
from Spain.
120
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
At this time the great question of the admis
sion of Missouri into the Union of States be-
gan to agitate Congress and the nation. Mr.
Adams, deeply absorbed in the perplexing af-
fairs of his department, into which this domestic
problem did not enter, was at first careless of it.
His ideas concerning the matter, he wrote, were
"a chaos; " but it was a
"chaos "into which
his interest in public questions soon compelled
him to bring order. In so doing he for the first
time fairly exposes his intense repulsion for
slavery, his full appreciation of the irrepres-
sible character of the conflict between the slave
and the free populations, and the sure tendency
of that conflict to a dissolution of the Union.
Few men at that day read the future so clearly.
While dissolution was generally regarded as a
threat not really intended to be carried out, and
compromises were supposed to be amply suffi-
cient to control the successive emergencies, the
underlying moral force of the anti-slavery move-
ment acting against the encroaching necessities
of the slave-holding communities constituted an
element and involved possibilities which Mr.
Adams, from his position of observation outside
the immediate controversy, noted with foresee-
ing accuracy. He discerned in passing events
the "title-page to a great tragic volume;" and
he predicted that the more or less distant but
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
121
་
sure end must be an attempt to dissolve the
Union. His own position was distinctly defined
from the outset, and his strong feelings were
vigorously expressed. He beheld with profound
regret the superiority of the slave-holding party
in ability; he remarked sadly how greatly they
excelled in debating power their lukewarm op-
ponents; he was filled with indignation against
the Northern men of Southern principles. "Sla-
very,” he wrote, "is the great and foul stain
upon the North American Union, and it is a
contemplation worthy of the most exalted soul
whether its total abolition is or is not practica-
ble." "A life devoted to " the emancipation
problem "would be nobly spent or sacrificed."
He talks with much acerbity of expression about
the "slave-drivers," and the "flagrant image of
human inconsistency" presented by men who
had "the Declaration of Independence on their
lips and the merciless scourge of slavery in their
hands." "Never," he says, "since human sen-
timents and human conduct were influenced by
human speech was there a theme for eloquence
like the free side of this question. . . . Oh, if
but one man could arise with a genius capable
of comprehending, and an utterance capable of
communicating those eternal truths that belong
to this question, to lay bare in all its nakedness.
that outrage upon the goodness of God, human
122
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
slavery; now is the time and this is the occa-
sion, upon which such a man would perform the
duties of an angel upon earth." Before the
Abolitionists had begun to preach their great
crusade this was strong and ardent language for
a statesman's pen. Nor were these exceptional
passages; there is much more of the same sort
at least equally forcible. Mr. Adams notes an
interesting remark made to him by Calhoun at
this time. The great Southern chief, less pre-
scient than Mr. Adams, declared that he did
not think that the slavery question "would pro-
duce a dissolution of the Union; but if it should,
the South would be from necessity compelled to
form an alliance offensive and defensive with
Great Britain.”
Concerning a suggestion that civil war might
be preferable to the extension of slavery beyond
the Mississippi, Adams said: "This is a ques-
tion between the rights of human nature and
the Constitution of the United States," a
form of stating the case which leaves no doubt
concerning his ideas of the intrinsic right and
wrong in the matter. His own notion was that
slavery could not be got rid of within the
Union, but that the only method would be dis-
solution, after which he trusted that the course
of events would in time surely lead to reorgan-
ization upon the basis of universal freedom for
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
123
all. He was not a disunionist in any sense, yet
it is evident that his strong tendency and in-
clination were to regard emancipation as a
weight in the scales heavier than union, if it
should ever come to the point of an option be-
tween the two.
Strangely enough the notion of a forcible re-
tention of the slave States within the Union
does not seem to have been at this time a sub-
stantial element of consideration. Mr. Adams
acknowledged that there was no way at once of
preserving the Union and escaping from the
present emergency save through the door of
compromise. He maintained strenuously the
power of Congress to prohibit slavery in the
Territories, and denied that either Congress or
a state government could establish slavery as a
new institution in any State in which it was not
already existing and recognized by law.
This agitation of the slavery question made
itself felt in a way personally interesting to Mr.
Adams, by the influence it was exerting upon
men's feelings concerning the still pending and
dubious treaty with Spain. The South became
anxious to lay hands upon the Floridas and upon
as far-reaching an area as possible in the direc-
tion of Mexico, in order to carve it up into
more slave States; the North, on the other hand,
no longer cared very eagerly for an extension of
124
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
the Union upon its southern side. Sectional in-
terests were getting to be more considered than
national. Mr. Adams could not but recognize
that in the great race for the Presidency, in
which he could hardly help being a competitor,
the chief advantage which he seemed to have
won when the Senate unanimously ratified the
Spanish treaty, had almost wholly vanished
since that treaty had been repudiated by Spain
and was now no longer desired by a large pro-
portion of his own countrymen.
Matters stood thus when the new Spanish
envoy, Vivês, arrived. Other elements, which
there is not space to enumerate here, besides
those referred to, now entering newly into the
state of affairs, further reduced the improba-
bility of agreement almost to hopelessness. Mr.
Adams, despairing of any other solution than
a forcible seizure of Florida, to which he had
long been far from averse, now visibly relaxed
his efforts to meet the Spanish negotiator. Per-
haps no other course could have been more
effectual in securing success than this obvious
indifference to it. In the prevalent condition
of public feeling and of his own sentiments Mr.
Adams easily assumed towards General Vivês a
decisive bluntness, not altogether consonant to
the habits of diplomacy, and manifested an un
changeable stubbornness which left no room for
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
125
discussion. His position was simply that Spain
might make such a treaty as the United States
demanded, or might take the consequences of
her refusal. His dogged will wore out the
Spaniard's pride, and after a fruitless delay the
King and Cortes ratified the treaty in its orig-
inal shape, with the important addition of an
explicit annulment of the land grants. It was
again sent in to the Senate, and in spite of the
"continued, systematic, and laborious effort" of
“Mr. Clay and his partisans to make it unpop-
ular,” it was ratified by a handsome majority,
there being against it "only four votes — Brown
of Louisiana, who married a sister of Clay's
wife; Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, against
his own better judgment, from mere political
subserviency to Clay; Williams of Tennessee
from party impulses connected with hatred of
General Jackson; and Trimble of Ohio, from
some maggot of the brain." Two years had
elapsed since the former ratification, and no
little patience had been required to await so
long the final achievement of a success so ar-
dently longed for, once apparently gained, and
anon so cruelly thwarted. But the triumph was
rather enhanced than diminished by all this dif-
ficulty and delay. A long and checkered his-
tory, wherein appeared infinite labor, many a
severe trial of temper and hard test of moral
126
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
courage, bitter disappointment, ignoble artifices
of opponents, ungenerous opposition growing
out of unworthy personal motives at home, was
now at last closed by a chapter which appeared
only the more gratifying by contrast with what
had gone before. Mr. Adams recorded, with
less of exultation than might have been pardon-
able, the utter discomfiture of "all the calcula-
tors of my downfall by the Spanish negotiation,"
and reflected cheerfully that he had been left
with "credit rather augmented than impaired
by the result," credit not in excess of his de-
serts. Many years afterwards, in changed cir
cumstances, an outcry was raised against the
agreement which was arrived at concerning the
southwestern boundary of Louisiana. Most
unjustly it was declared that Mr. Adams had
sacrificed a portion of the territory of the United
States. But political motives were too plainly
to be discerned in these tardy criticisms; and
though General Jackson saw fit, for personal
reasons, to animadvert severely upon the clause
establishing this boundary line, yet there was
abundant evidence to show not only that he,
like almost everybody else, had been greatly
pleased with it at the time, but even that he
had then upon consultation expressed a deliber-
ate and special approval.
The same day, February 22, 1821, closed
JOIN QUINCY ADAMS.
127
says Mr. Adams, "two of the most memorable
transactions of my life." That he should speak
thus of the exchange of ratifications of the
Spanish treaty is natural; but the other so
"memorable transaction " may not appear of
equal magnitude. It was the sending in to Con-
gress of his report upon weights and measures.
This was one of those vast labors, involving
tenfold more toil than all the negotiations with
Onis and Vivês, but bringing no proportionate
fame, however well it might be performed. The
subject was one which had "occupied for the
last sixty years many of the ablest men in
Europe, and to which all the power and all the
philosophical and mathematical learning and in-
genuity of France and of Great Britain" had
during that period been incessantly directed.
It was fairly enough described as a "fearful and
oppressive task." Upon its dry and uncongen-
ial difficulties Mr. Adams had been employed
with his wonted industry for upwards of four
years; he now spoke of the result modestly as
66
a hurried and imperfect work." But others,
who have had to deal with the subject, have
found this report a solid and magnificent mon-
ument of research and reflection, which has not
even yet been superseded by later treatises. Mr.
Adams was honest in labor as in everything,
and was never careless at points where inac-
128
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
curacy or lack of thoroughness might be ex-
pected to escape detection. Hence his success
in a task upon which it is difficult to imagine
other statesmen of that day - Clay, Webster,
or Calhoun, for example-so much as making
an effort. The topic is not one concerning
which readers would tolerate much lingering.
Suffice it then to say that the document illus-
trated the ability and the character of the man,
and so with this brief mention to dismiss in a
paragraph an achievement which, had it been
accomplished in any more showy department,
would alone have rendered Mr. Adams famous.
It is highly gratifying now to look back upon
the high spirit and independent temper uni-
formly displayed by Mr. Adams abroad and at
home in all dealings with foreign powers. Never
in any instance did he display the least tinge
of that rodomontade and boastful extravagance
which have given an underbred air to so many
of our diplomats, and which inevitably cause the
basis for such self-laudation to appear of dubious
sufficiency. But he had the happy gift of a na-
tive pride which enabled him to support in the
most effective manner the dignity of the people
for whom he spoke. For example, in treaties be-
tween the United States and European powers
the latter were for a time wont to name them-
selves first throughout the instruments, contrary
1
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
129
to the custom of alternation practised in trea-
ties between themselves. With some difficulty,
partly interposed, it must be confessed, by his
own American coadjutors, Mr. Adams succeeded
in putting a stop to this usage. It was a matter
of insignificant detail, in one point of view; but
in diplomacy insignificant details often sym-
bolize important facts, and there is no question
that this habit had been construed as a tacit
but intentional arrogance of superiority on the
part of the Europeans.
For a long period after the birth of the
country there was a strong tendency, not yet
so eradicated as to be altogether undiscovera-
ble, on the part of American statesmen to keep
one eye turned covertly askance upon the trans-
Atlantic courts, and to consider, not without a
certain anxious deference, what appearance the
new United States might be presenting to the
critical eyes of foreign countries and diplomats.
Mr. Adams was never guilty of such indirect
admissions of an inferiority which apparently
he never felt. In the matter of the acquisition
of Florida, Crawford suggested that England
and France regarded the people of the United
States as ambitious and encroaching; where-
fore he advised a moderate policy in order to
remove this impression. Mr. Adams on the
other side declared that he was not in favor
130
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
66
of our giving ourselves any concern whatever
about the opinions of any foreign power.
" If
the world do not hold us for Romans," he said,
66
they will take us for Jews, and of the two
vices I would rather be charged with that
which has greatness mingled in its composi-
tion." His views were broad and grand. He
was quite ready to have the world become
“ familiarized with the idea of considering our
proper dominion to be the continent of North
America." This extension he declared to be a
'law of nature." To suppose that Spain and
England could, through the long lapse of time,
retain their possessions on this side of the At-
lantic, seemed to him a "physical, moral, and
political absurdity."
The doctrine which has been christened with
the name of President Monroe, seems likely to
win for him the permanent glory of having
originated the wise policy which that familiar
phrase now signifies. It might, however, be
shown that by right of true paternity the bant-
ling should have borne a different patronymic.
Not only is the "Monroe Doctrine," as that
phrase is customarily construed in our day,
much more comprehensive than the simple the-
ory first expressed by Monroe and now included
in the modern doctrine as a part in the whole,
but a principle more fully identical with the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
131
imperial one of to-day had been conceived and
shaped by Mr. Adams before the delivery of
Monroe's famous message. As has just been
remarked, he looked forward to the possession
of the whole North American continent by the
United States as a sure destiny, and for his own
part, whenever opportunity offered, he was
never backward to promote this glorious ulti-
mate consummation. He was in favor of the
acquisition of Louisiana, whatever fault he
might find with the scheme of Mr. Jefferson
for making it a State; he was ready in 1815
to ask the British plenipotentiaries to cede
Canada simply as a matter of common sense
and mutual convenience, and as the comforta-
ble result of a war in which the United States
had been worsted; he never labored harder
than in negotiating for the Floridas, and in
pushing our western boundaries to the Pacific;
in April, 1823, he wrote to the American min-
ister at Madrid the significant remark: "It is
scarcely possible to resist the conviction that
the annexation of Cuba to our Federal Republic
will be indispensable to the continuance and
integrity of the Union." Encroachments never
seemed distasteful to him, and he was always
forward to stretch a point in order to advo-
cate or defend a seizure of disputed North
American territory, as in the cases of Amelia
132
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Island, Pensacola, and Galveston. When dis
cussion arose with Russia concerning her posses-
sions on the north west coast of this continent,
Mr. Adams audaciously told the Russian min-
ister, Baron Tuyl, July 17, 1823, "that we
should contest the rights of Russia to any terri-
torial establishment on this continent, and that
we should assume distinctly the principle that
the American continents are no longer subjects
for any new European colonial establishments."
"This," says Mr. Charles Francis Adams in a
foot-note to the passage in the Diary, "is the
first hint of the policy so well known afterwards
as the Monroe Doctrine." Nearly five months
later, referring to the same matter in his mes-
sage to Congress, December 2, 1823, President
Monroe said: "The occasion has been judged
proper for asserting, as a principle in which the
rights and interests of the United States are in-
volved, that the American continents, by the
free and independent condition which they have
assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be
considered as subjects for future colonization by
any European powers.
""
""
It will be observed that both Mr. Adams and
President Monroe used the phrase "continents,
including thereby South as well as North
America. A momentous question was immi
nent, which fortunately never called for a deter
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
133
mination by action, but which in this latter
part of 1823 threatened to do so at any moment.
Cautious and moderate as the United States
had been, under Mr. Adams's guidance, in recog-
nizing the freedom and autonomy of the South
American states, yet in time the recognition.
was made of one after another, and the emanci-
pation of South America had come, while Mr.
Adams was yet Secretary, to be regarded as an
established fact. But now, in 1823-24, came
mutterings from across the Atlantic indicating
a strong probability that the members of the
Holy Alliance would interfere in behalf of mo-
narchical and anti-revolutionary principles, and
would assist in the re-subjugation of the suc-
cessful insurgents. That each one of the pow-
ers who should contribute to this huge crusade
would expect and receive territorial reward,
could not be doubted. Mr. Adams, in unison.
with most of his countrymen, contemplated with
profound distrust and repulsion the possibility
of such an European inroad. Stimulated by
the prospect of so unwelcome neighbors, he
prepared some dispatches, "drawn to corre-
spond exactly" with the sentiments of Mr.
Monroe's message, in which he appears to have
taken a very high and defiant position. These
documents, coming before the Cabinet for con-
sideration, caused some flutter among his asso-
134
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
ciates. In the possible event of the Holy Alli
ance actually intermeddling in South American
affairs, it was said, the principles enunciated by
the Secretary of State would involve this coun-
try in war with a very formidable confedera-
tion. Mr. Adams acknowledged this, but cour-
ageously declared that in such a crisis he felt
quite ready to take even this spirited stand.
His audacious spirit went far in advance of the
cautious temper of the Monroe Administration;
possibly it went too far in advance of the dic-
tates of a wise prudence, though fortunately
the course of events never brought this ques-
tion to trial; and it is at least gratifying to
contemplate such a manifestation of daring tem-

per.
But though so bold and independent, Mr.
Adams was not habitually reckless nor prone
to excite animosity by needless arrogance in ac-
tion or extravagance in principle. In any less
perilous extremity than was presented by this
menaced intrusion of combined Europe he fol-
lowed rigidly the wise rule of non-interference.
For many years before this stage was reached,
he had been holding in difficult check the
enthusiasts who, under the lead of Mr. Clay,
would have embroiled us with Spain and Por-
tugal. Once he was made the recipient of a
very amusing proposition from the Portuguese
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
135
minister, that the United States and Portugal,
as “the two great powers of the western
hemisphere," should concert together a grand
American system. The drollery of this notion
was of a kind that Mr. Adams could appreci-
ate, though to most manifestations of humor he
was utterly impervious. But after giving vent
to some contemptuous merriment he adds, with
a just and serious pride: "As to an American
system, we have it; we constitute the whole of
it; there is no community of interests or of
principles between North and South America."
This sound doctrine was put forth in 1820;
and it was only modified in the manner that
we have seen during a brief period in 1823, in
face of the alarming vision not only of Spain
and Portugal restored to authority, but of Rus-
sia in possession of California and more, France
in possession of Mexico, and perhaps Great
Britain becoming mistress of Cuba.
So far as European affairs were concerned,
Mr. Adams always and consistently refused to
become entangled in them, even in the slight
est and most indirect manner. When the cause
of Greek liberty aroused the usual throng of
noisy advocates for active interference, he con-
tented himself with expressions of cordial sym-
pathy, accompanied by perfectly distinct and
explicit statements that under no circumstances
136
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
1
could any aid in the way of money or auxiliary
forces be expected from this country. Neutrals
we were and would remain in any and all
European quarrels. When Stratford Canning
urged, with the uttermost measure of persis-
tence of which even he was capable, that for
the suppression of the slave trade some such ar-
rangement might be made as that of mixed tri-
bunals for the trial of slave-trading vessels, and
alleged that divers European powers were unit-
ing for this purpose, Mr. Adams suggested, as
an insuperable obstacle, "the general extra-Eu-
ropean policy of the United States a pol-
icy which they had always pursued as best
suited to their own interests, and best adapted
to harmonize with those of Europe. This pol-
icy had also been that of Europe, which had
never considered the United States as belong-
ing to her system. . . . It was best for both
parties that they should continue to do so." In
any European combinations, said Mr. Adams,
in which the United States should become a
member, she must soon become an important
power, and must always be, in many respects,
an uncongenial one. It was best that she
should keep wholly out of European politics,
even of such leagues as one for the suppres-
sion of the slave trade. He added, that he did
not wish his language to be construed as im
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
137
""
porting "an unsocial and sulky spirit on the
part of the United States; for no such tem-
per existed; it had simply been the policy of
Europe to consider this country as standing
aloof from all European federations, and in this
treatment "we had acquiesced, because it fell
in with our own policy."
In a word, Mr. Adams, by his language and
actions, established and developed precisely that
doctrine which has since been adopted by this
country under the doubly incorrect name of the
""
Monroe Doctrine," a name doubly incor-
rect, because even the real "Monroe Doctrine'
was not an original idea of Mr. Monroe, and
because the doctrine which now goes by that
name is not identical with the doctrine which
Monroe did once declare. Mr. Adams's princi-
ple was simply that the United States would
take no part whatsoever in foreign politics, not
even in those of South America, save in the ex-
treme event, eliminated from among things pos-
sible in this generation, of such an interference
as was contemplated by the Holy Alliance; and
that, on the other hand, she would permit no
European power to gain any new foothold upon
this continent. Time and experience have not
enabled us to improve upon the principles
which Mr. Adams worked out for us.
Mr. Adams had some pretty stormy times
138
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
with Mr. Stratford Canning-the same gentle-
man who in his later life is familiar to the read-
ers of Kinglake's History of the Crimean War
as Lord Stratford de Redclyffe, or Eltchi. That
minister's overbearing and dictatorial deport-
ment was afterwards not out of place when he
was representing the protecting power of Great
Britain in the court of the "sick man." But
when he began to display his arrogance in the
face of Mr. Adams he found that he was beard-
ing one who was at least his equal in pride and
temper. The naïve surprise which he man
ifested on making this discovery is very amus-
ing, and the accounts of the interviews between
the two are among the most pleasing episodes in
the history of our foreign relations. Nor are
they less interesting as a sort of confidential
peep at the asperities of diplomacy. It appears
that besides the composed and formal dignity of
phrase which alone the public knows in published
state papers and official correspondence, there is
also an official language of wrath and retort not
at all artificial or stilted, but quite homelike
and human in its sound.
One subject much discussed between Mr.
Adams and Mr. Canning related to the Eng-
lish propositions for joint efforts to suppress
the slave trade. Great Britain had engaged
with much vigor and certainly with an admir
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
139
Her scheme was
able humanity in this cause.
that each power should keep armed cruisers on
the coast of Africa, that the war-ships of either
nation might search the merchant vessels of the
other, and that mixed courts of joint commis-
sioners should try all cases of capture. This
plan had been urged upon the several Euro-
pean nations, but with imperfect success. Por-
tugal, Spain, and the Netherlands had assented
to it; Russia, France, Austria, and Prussia
had rejected it. Mr. Adams's notion was that
the ministry were, in their secret hearts, rather
lukewarm in the business, but that they were
so pressed by "the party of the saints in Par-
liament" that they were obliged to make a
parade of zeal. Whether this suspicion was
correct or not, it is certain that Mr. Stratford
Canning was very persistent in the presenta-
tion of his demands, and could not be persuaded
to take No for an answer. Had it been pos-
sible to give any more favorable reply no one
in the United States in that day would have
been better pleased than Mr. Adams to do so.
But the obstacles were insuperable. Besides
the undesirability of departing from the "
tra-European policy," the mixed courts would
have been unconstitutional, and could not have
been established even by act of Congress.
while the claims advanced by Great Britain tc
ex-
140
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
search our ships for English-born seamen in
time of war, utterly precluded the possibility
of admitting any rights of search whatsoever
upon her part even in time of peace for any
purpose or in any shape. In vain did the Eng-
lishman reiterate his appeal. Mr. Adams as
often explained that the insistence of England
upon her outrageous claim had rendered the
United States so sensitive upon the entire sub-
ject of search that no description of right of
that kind could ever be tolerated.
"All con-
cession of principle," he said, "tended to en-
courage encroachment, and if naval officers
were once habituated to search the vessels of
other nations in time of peace for one thing,
they would be still more encouraged to practise
it for another thing in time of war." The only
way
for Great Britain to achieve her purpose
would be "to bind herself by an article, as
strong and explicit as language can make it,
never again in time of war to take a man from
an American vessel." This of course was an
inadmissible proposition, and so Mr. Stratford.
Canning's incessant urgency produced no sub-
stantial results. This discussion, however, was
generally harmonious. Once only, in its earlier
stages, Mr. Adams notes a remark of Mr. Can
ning, repeated for the second time, and not alto-
gether gratifying. He said, writes Mr. Adams,
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
141
"that he should always receive any observa-
tions that I may make to him with a just defer-
ence to my advance of
years over him. This
is one of those equivocal compliments which,
according to Sterne, a Frenchman always re-
turns with a bow."
It was when they got upon the matter of the
American settlement at the mouth of the Co-
lumbia River, that the two struck fire. Posses-
sion of this disputed spot had been taken by
the Americans, but was broken up by the Brit-
ish during the war of 1812. After the declara-
tion of peace upon the status ante bellum, a
British government vessel had been dispatched
upon the special errand of making formal re-
turn of the port to the Americans. In January,
1821, certain remarks made in debate in the
House of Representatives, followed soon after-
ward by publication in the National Intelli-
gencer of a paper signed by Senator Eaton, led
Mr. Canning to think that the Government en-
tertained the design of establishing a substan-
tial settlement at the mouth of the river.
January 26 he called upon Mr. Adams and
inquired the intentions of the Administration
in regard to this. Mr. Adams replied that an
increase of the present settlement was not im-
probable. Thereupon Mr. Canning, dropping
the air of "easy familiarity" which had previ-
On
142
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
ously marked the intercourse between the two,
and "assuming a tone more peremptory" than
Mr. Adams "was disposed to endure," ex-
pressed his great surprise. Mr. Adams "with
a corresponding change of tone" expressed
equal surprise, "both at the form and sub-
stance of his address." Mr. Canning said that
"he conceived such a settlement would be a
direct violation of the article of the Convention
of 20th October, 1818." Mr. Adams took down.
a volume, read the article, and said, "Now, sir,
if you have any charge to make against the
American Government for a violation of this
article, you will please to make the communica-
tion in writing." Mr. Canning retorted, with
great vehemence :-
'And do you suppose, sir, that I am to be dictated
to as to the manner in which I may think proper to
communicate with the American Government?' I
answered, 'No, sir. We know very well what are the
privileges of foreign ministers, and mean to respect.
them. But you will give us leave to determine what
communications we will receive, and how we will re-
ceive them; and you may be assured we are as little
disposed to submit to dictation as to exercise it.' He
then, in a louder and more passionate tone of voice,
said: And am I to understand that I am to be re-
fused henceforth any conference with you upon the
subject of my mission?' 'Not at all, sir,' said I
6
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
143
my request is, that if you have anything further to
say to me upon this subject, you would say it in writ-
ing. And my motive is to avoid what, both from the
nature of the subject and from the manner in which
you have thought proper to open it, I foresee will
tend only to mutual irritation, and not to an amicable
arrangement.' With some abatement of tone, but in
the same peremptory manner, he said, 'Am I to un-
derstand that you refuse any further conference with
me on this subject?' I said, 'No. But you will un-
derstand that I am not pleased either with the grounds
upon which you have sought this conference, nor with
the questions which you have seen fit to put to me.''
Mr. Adams then proceeded to expose the
impropriety of a foreign minister demanding
from the Administration an explanation of
words uttered in debate in Congress, and also
said that he supposed that the British had no
claim to the territory in question. Mr. Can-
ning rejoined, and referred to the sending out
of the American ship of war Ontario, in 1817,
without any notice to the British minister¹ at
Washington, -
"speaking in a very emphatic manner and as if
there had been an intended secret expedition
which had been detected only by the vigilance and
penetration of the British minister. I answered,
'Why, Mr. Bagot did say something to me about it;
1 Then Mr. Bagot.
144
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
•
but I certainly did not think him serious, and we had
a good-humored laughing conversation on the occa-
sion.' Canning, with great vehemence: 'You may
rely upon it, sir, that it was no laughing matter to
him; for I have seen his report to his government
and know what his feelings concerning it were.' I
replied,This is the first intimation I have ever re-
ceived that Mr. Bagot took the slightest offence at
what then passed between us, and you will give
me leave to say that when he left this country
Here I was going to add that the last words he said
to me were words of thanks for the invariable urban-
ity and liberality of my conduct and the personal kind-
ness which he had uniformly received from me. But
I could not finish the sentence. Mr. Canning, in a par-
oxysm of extreme irritation, broke out: 'I stop you
there. I will not endure a misrepresentation of what
I say. I never said that Mr. Bagot took offence at
anything that had passed between him and you; and
nothing that I said imported any such thing.' Then
... added in the same passionate manner: 'I am
treated like a school-boy.' I then resumed: 'Mr.
Canning, I have a distinct recollection of the sub-
stance of the short conversation between Mr. Bagot
and me at that time; and it was this
• No doubt,
sir,' said Canning, interrupting me again, no doubt,
sir, Mr. Bagot answered you like a man of good
breeding and good humor.'
>
6
Mr. Adams began again and succeeded in
making, without further interruption, a carefu.
1
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
145
While he
recital of his talk with Mr. Bagot.
was speaking Mr. Canning grew cooler, and ex-
pressed some surprise at what he heard. But in
a few moments the conversation again became
warm and personal. Mr. Adams remarked that
heretofore he had thrown off some of the " cau-
tious reserve" which might have been "strictly
regular" between them, and that
"so long as his (Canning's) professions had been
supported by his conduct' Here Mr. Canning
again stopped me by repeating with great vehemence,
My conduct! I am responsible for my conduct only
to my government!
Mr. Adams replied, substantially, that he
could respect the rights of Mr. Canning and
maintain his own, and that he thought the best
mode of treating this topic in future would be
by writing. Mr. Canning then expressed him-
self as
66 6
•
·
willing to forget all that had now passed.' I
told him that I neither asked nor promised him to
forget. . . He asked again if he was to understand
me as refusing to confer with him further on the
subject. I said, 'No.' Would I appoint a time for
that purpose?' I said, 'Now, if he pleased. . . .
But as he appeared to be under some excitement,
perhaps he might prefer some other time, in which
case I would readily receive him to-morrow at one
o'clock;' upon which he rose and took leave, saying
he would come at that time."
10
146
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
The next day, accordingly, this genial pair
again encountered. Mr. Adams noted at first
in Mr. Canning's manner "an effort at coolness,
but no appearance of cheerfulness or good
humor. I saw there was no relaxation of the
tone he had yesterday assumed, and felt that
none would on my part be suitable." They
went over quietly enough some of the ground
traversed the day before, Mr. Adams again ex-
plaining the impropriety of Mr. Canning ques-
tioning him concerning remarks made in de-
bate in Congress. It was, he said, as if Mr.
Rush, hearing in the House of Commons some-
thing said about sending troops to the Shet-
land Islands, should proceed to question Lord
Castlereagh about it.
"Have you,' said Mr. Canning, 'any claim to the
Shetland Islands?' 'Have you any claim,' said I, 'to
the mouth of Columbia River?' 6
Why, do you not
know,' replied he, 'that we have a claim?' 'I do not
know,' said I, 'what you claim nor what you do not
claim. You claim India; you claim Africa; you
claim''Perhaps,' said he, 'a piece of the moon.'
'No,' said I, 'I have not heard that you claim exclu-
sively any part of the moon; but there is not a spot
on this habitable globe that I could affirm you do not
claim!""
The conversation continued with alternations of
lull and storm, Mr. Canning at times becoming
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
147
warm and incensed and interrupting Mr. Ad-
ams, who retorted with a dogged asperity which
must have been extremely irritating. Mr. Ad-
ams said that he did "not expect to be plied
with captious questions" to obtain indirectly
that which had been directly denied. Mr. Can-
ning, "exceedingly irritated," complained of
the word "captious." Mr. Adams retaliated
by reciting offensive language used by Mr.
Canning, who in turn replied that he had been
speaking only in self-defence. Mr. Canning
found occasion to make again his peculiarly
rasping remark that he should always strive
to show towards Mr. Adams the deference due
to his "more advanced years." After another
very uncomfortable passage, Mr. Adams said
that the behavior of Mr. Canning in making
the observations of members of Congress a basis
of official interrogations was a pretension the
more necessary to be resisted because this
666
6
was not the first time it had been raised by a
British minister here.' He asked, with great emo-
tion, who that minister was. I answered, Mr. Jack-
son.' 'And you got rid of him!' said Mr. Canning,
and you got rid of
This repetition of
in a tone of violent passion
him! — and you got rid of him!'
the same words, always in the same tone, was with
pauses of a few seconds between each of them, as if
tor a reply. I said: 'Sir, my reference to the pre-
148
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
tension of Mr. Jackson was not'
Here Mr.
Canning interrupted me by saying: 'If you think
that by reference to Mr. Jackson I am to be intimi
dated from the performance of my duty you will find
yourself greatly mistaken.' 'I had not, sir,' said I,
'the most distant intention of intimidating you from
the performance of your duty; nor was it with the
intention of alluding to any subsequent occurrences
of his mission; but' Mr. Canning interrupted
me again by saying, still in a tone of high exaspera-
tion, 'Let me tell you, sir, that your reference
to the case of Mr. Jackson is exceedingly offensive.'
'I do not know,' said I, 'whether I shall be able to
finish what I intended to say, under such continual
interruptions.'
Mr. Canning thereupon intimated by a bow his
willingness to listen, and Mr. Adams reiterated
what in a more fragmentary way he had already
said. Mr. Canning then made a formal speech,
mentioning his desire "to cultivate harmony
and smooth down all remnants of asperity be-
tween the two countries," again gracefully re-
ferred to the deference which he should at all
times pay to Mr. Adams's age, and closed by
declaring, with a significant emphasis, that he
would "never forget the respect due from him
to the American Government." Mr. Adams
bowed in silence and the stormy interview
ended. A day or two afterward the disputants
met by accident, and Mr. Canning showed such
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
149
signs of resentment that there passed between
them a "bare salutation.”
In the condition of our relations with Great
Britain at the time of these interviews any
needless ill-feeling was strongly to be depre-
cated. But Mr. Adams's temperament was
such that he always saw the greater chance of
success in strong and spirited conduct; nor
could he endure that the dignity of the Repub-
lic, any more than its safety, should take detri-
ment in his hands. Moreover he understood
Englishmen better perhaps than they have
ever been understood by any other of the pub-
lic men of the United States, and he handled
and subdued them with a temper and skill
highly agreeable to contemplate. The Pres-
ident supported him fully throughout the mat-
ter, and the discomfiture and wrath of Mr.
Canning never became even indirectly a cause
of regret to the country.
As the years allotted to Monroe passed on,
the manoeuvring among the candidates for the
succession to the Presidency grew in activity.
There were several possible presidents in the
field, and during the "era of good feeling"
many an aspiring politician had his brief period
of mild expectancy followed in most cases only
too surely by a hopeless relegation to obscurity.
There were, however, four whose anticipations
150
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
rested upon a substantial basis. William H.
Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, had been
the rival of Monroe for nomination by the Con-
gressional caucus, and had then developed suf-
ficient strength to make him justly sanguine
that he might stand next to Monroe in the suc-
cession as he apparently did in the esteem of
their common party. Mr. Clay, Speaker of the
House of Representatives, had such expecta-
tions as might fairly grow out of his brilliant
reputation, powerful influence in Congress, and
great personal popularity. Mr. Adams was
pointed out not only by his deserts but also by
his position in the Cabinet, it having been the
custom heretofore to promote the Secretary of
State to the Presidency. It was not until the
time of election was near at hand that the
strength of General Jackson, founded of course
upon the effect of his military prestige upon
the masses of the people, began to appear to the
other competitors a formidable element in the
great rivalry. For a while Mr. Calhoun might
have been regarded as a fifth, since he had al-
ready become the great chief of the South; but
this cause of his strength was likewise his weak-
ness, since it was felt that the North was fairly
entitled to present the next candidate. The
others, who at one time and another had aspi
rations, like De Witt Clinton and Tompkins
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
151
were never really formidable, and may be dis-
regarded as insignificant threads in the complex
political snarl which must be unravelled.
As a study of the dark side of political
society during this period Mr. Adams's Diary
is profoundly interesting. He writes with a
charming absence of reserve. If he thinks
there is rascality at work, he sets down the
names of the knaves and expounds their various
villainies of act and motive with delightfully
outspoken frankness.
All his life he was some-
what prone, it must be confessed, to depreciate
the moral characters of others, and to suspect.
unworthy designs in the methods or ends of those
who crossed his path. It was the not unnatural
result of his own rigid resolve to be honest.
Refraining with the stern conscientiousness,
which was in the composition of his Puritan
blood, from every act, whether in public or in
private life, which seemed to him in the least
degree tinged with immorality, he found a sort
of compensation for the restraints and discom-
forts of his own austerity in judging severely the
less punctilious world around him. Whatever
other faults he had, it is unquestionable that
his uprightness was as consistent and unvarying
as can be reached by human nature. Yet his
temptations were made the greater and the
more cruel by the beliefs constantly borne in
152
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
upon him that his rivals did not accept for their
own governance in the contest the same rules
by which he was pledged to himself to abide.
Jealousy enhanced suspicion, and suspicion in
turn pricked jealousy. It is necessary, there-
fore, to be somewhat upon our guard in accept-
ing his estimates of men and acts at this period;
though the broad general impression to be gath-
ered from his treatment of his rivals, even in
these confidential pages, is favorable at least to
his justice of disposition and honesty of inten-
tion.
At the outset Mr. Clay excited Mr. Adams's
most lively resentment. The policy which
seemed most promising to that gentleman lay in
antagonism to the Administration, whereas, in
the absence of substantial party issues, there
seemed, at least to members of that Administra-
tion, to be no proper grounds for such antago-
nism. When, therefore, Mr. Clay found or de-
vised such grounds, the President and his
Cabinet, vexed and harassed by the opposition
of so influential a man, not unnaturally attrib-
uted his tactics to selfish and, in a political sense,
corrupt motives. Thus Mr. Adams stigmatized
his opposition to the Florida treaty as prompted
by no just objection to its stipulations, but by a
malicious wish to bring discredit upon the nego
tiator. Probably the charge was true, and Mr
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
153
Clay's honesty in opposing an admirable treaty
can only be vindicated at the expense of his un-
derstanding, an explanation certainly not to
be accepted. But when Mr. Adams attributed
to the same motive of embarrassing the Admin-
istration Mr. Clay's energetic endeavors to force
a recognition of the insurgent states of South
America, he exaggerated the inimical element
in his rival's motives. It was the business of
the President and Cabinet, and preeminently
of the Secretary of State, to see to it that the
country should not move too fast in this very
nice and perilous matter of recognizing the in-
dependence of rebels. Mr. Adams was the re-
sponsible minister, and had to hold the reins;
Mr. Clay, outside the official vehicle, cracked
the lash probably a little more loudly than he
would have done had he been on the coach-box,
It may be assumed that in advocating his vari-
ous motions looking to the appointment of min-
isters to the new states and to other acts of
recognition, he felt his eloquence rather fired
than dampened by the thought of how much
trouble he was making for Mr. Adams; but that
he was at the same time espousing the cause to
which he sincerely wished well is probably true.
His ardent temper was stirred by this strug-
gle for independence, and his rhetorical nature
could not resist the opportunities for fervid and
154
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
brilliant oratory presented by this struggle for
freedom against medieval despotism. Real con-
victions were sometimes diluted with rodomon-
tade, and a true feeling was to some extent stim-
ulated by the desire to embarrass a rival.
Entire freedom from prejudice would have
been too much to expect from Mr. Adams; but
his criticisms of Clay are seldom marked by any
serious accusations or really bitter explosions of
ill-temper. Early in his term of office he writes
that Mr. Clay has "already mounted his South
American great horse," and that his "project
is that in which John Randolph failed, to con
trol or overthrow the Executive by swaying the
House of Representatives." Again he says that
"Clay is as rancorously benevolent as John
Randolph." The sting of these remarks lay
rather in the comparison with Randolph than
in their direct allegations. In January, 1819,
Adams notes that Clay has "redoubled his ran-
cor against me," and gives himself "free swing
to assault me. . . both in his public speeches
and by secret machinations, without scruple or
delicacy." The diarist gloomily adds, that "all
public business in Congress now connects itself
with intrigues, and there is great danger that
the whole Government will degenerate into a
struggle of cabals." He was rather inclined to
such pessimistic vaticinations; but it must be
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
155
confessed that he spoke with too much reason
on this occasion. In the absence of a sufficient
supply of important public questions to absorb
the energies of the men in public life, the petty
game of personal politics was playing with un-
usual zeal. As time went on, however, and the
South American questions were removed from
the arena, Adams's ill-feeling towards Clay be-
came greatly mitigated. Clay's assaults and
opposition also gradually dwindled away; go-
betweens carried to and fro disclaimers, made
by the principals, of personal ill-will towards
each other; and before the time of election was
actually imminent something as near the en-
tente cordiale was established as could be rea-
sonably expected to exist between competitors.
very unlike both in moral and mental consti-
tution.¹
Mr. Adams's unbounded indignation and pro-
found contempt were reserved for Mr. Craw-
ford, partly, it may be suspected by the cynic-
ally minded, because Crawford for a long time
seemed to be by far the most formidable rival,
but partly also because Crawford was in fact
unable to resist the temptation to use ignoble
means for attaining an end which he coveted too
keenly for his own honor. It was only by de-
1 For a deliberate estimate of Clay's character, see Mr.
Adams's Diary, v. 325.
156
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
grees that Adams began to suspect the under
hand methods and malicious practices of Craw-
ford; but as conviction was gradually brought
home to him his native tendency towards sus-
picion was enhanced to an extreme degree. He
then came to recognize in Crawford a wholly
selfish and scheming politician, who had the
baseness to retain his seat in Mr. Monroe's Cab-
inet with the secret persistent object of giving
the most fatal advice in his power. From that
time forth he saw in every suggestion made by
the Secretary of the Treasury only an insidious
intent to lead the Administration, and especially
the Department of State, into difficulty, failure,
and disrepute. He notes, evidently with per-
fect belief, that for this purpose Crawford was
even covertly busy with the Spanish ambassador
to prevent an accommodation of our differences
with Spain. "Oh, the windings of the human
heart!" he exclaims; "possibly Crawford is not
himself conscious of his real motives for this
conduct." Even the slender measure of charity
involved in this last sentence rapidly evaporated
from the poisoned atmosphere of his mind. He
mentions that Crawford has killed a man in a
duel; that he leaves unanswered a pamphlet
"supported by documents" exhibiting him "in
the most odious light, as sacrificing every prin-
ciple to his ambition." Because Calhoun would
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
157
not support him for the Presidency, Crawford
stimulated a series of attacks upon the War De-
partment. He was the "instigator and animat-
ing spirit of the whole movement both in Con-
gress and at Richmond against Jackson and the
Administration." He was "a worm preying
upon the vitals of the Administration in its own
body." He "solemnly deposed in a court of
justice that which is not true," for the purpose
of bringing discredit upon the testimony given
by Mr. Adams in the same cause. But Mr.
Adams says of this that he cannot bring him-
self to believe that Crawford has been guilty of
wilful falsehood, though convicted of inaccuracy
by his own words; for "ambition debauches
memory itself." A little later he would have
been less merciful. In some vexatious and diffi-
cult commercial negotiations which Mr. Adams
was conducting with France, Crawford is "afraid
of [the result] being too favorable."
To form a just opinion of the man thus un-
pleasantly 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
158
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
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
66 a very
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 ser-
vices so slender, and so thoroughly corrupt, who
had contrived to make himself a candidate for
the Presidency." Nor was this a solitary ex-
pression of the feelings of the distinguished
South Carolinian.
Mr. E. H. Mills, Senator from Massachusetts,
and a dispassionate observer, speaks of Craw-
ford with scant favor as 66
coarse, rough, uned-
ucated, of a pretty strong mind, a great in-
triguer, and determined to make himself Pres-
ident." 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
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
159
following, strong friends, and an extensive in-
fluence. 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 much. One faculty, however, not
of the best, but serviceable, he had in a rare de-
gree; he thoroughly understood all the artifices
of politics; he knew how to interest and organ-
ize 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 manifesta-
tions were received with well-merited disrelish
by the worthier among his contemporaries.
It is the more easy to believe that Adams's
distrust of Crawford was a sincere convic-
tion, when we consider his behavior towards
another dangerous rival, General Jackson. In
view of the new phase which the relationship
between these two men was soon to take on,
Adams's hearty championship of Jackson for
several years prior to 1825 deserves mention.
The Secretary stood gallantly by the General at
a crisis in Jackson's life when he greatly needed
such strong official backing, and in an hour of
extreme need Adams alone in the Cabinet of
160
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Monroe lent an assistance which Jackson after-
wards too readily forgot. Seldom has a govern-
ment been brought by the undue zeal of its ser-
vants into a quandary more perplexing than that
into which the reckless military hero brought the
Administration of President Monroe. Turned
loose in the regions of Florida, checked only by
an uncertain and disputed boundary line running
through half-explored forests, confronted by a
hated foe whose strength he could well afford
to despise, General Jackson, in a war properly
waged only against Indians, ran a wild and
lawless, but very vigorous and effective, career
in Spanish possessions. He hung a couple of
British subjects with as scant trial and meagre
shrift as if he had been a mediæval free-lance;
he marched upon Spanish towns and peremp-
torily forced the blue-blooded commanders to
capitulate in the most humiliating manner;
afterwards, when the Spanish territory had be-
come American, in his civil capacity as Gov-
ernor, he flung the Spanish Commissioner into
jail. He treated instructions, laws, and estab-
lished usages as teasing cobwebs which any
spirited public servant was in duty bound to
break; then he quietly stated his willingness to
let the country take the benefit of his irregular
proceedings and make him the scapegoat or
martyr if such should be needed. How to treat
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
161
this too successful chieftain was no simple prob-
lem. He had done what he ought not to have
done, yet everybody in the country was heartily
glad that he had done it. He ought not to have
hung Arbuthnot and Ambrister, nor to have
seized Pensacola, nor later on to have imprisoned
Callava; yet the general efficiency of his pro-
cedure fully accorded with the secret disposition
of the country. It was, however, not easy to
establish the propriety of his trenchant doings
upon any acknowledged principles of law, and
during the long period through which these dis-
turbing feats extended, Jackson was left in
painful solitude by those who felt obliged to
judge his actions by rule rather than by sym-
pathy. The President was concerned lest his
Administration should be brought into indefen-
sible embarrassment; Calhoun was personally
displeased because the instructions issued from
his department had been exceeded; Crawford
eagerly sought to make the most of such admir-
able opportunities for destroying the prestige
of one who might grow into a dangerous rival;
Clay, who hated a military hero, indulged in a
series of fierce denunciations in the House of
Representatives; Mr. Adams alone stood gal-
lantly by the man who had dared to take vigor-
ous measures upon his own sole responsibility.
His career touched a kindred chord in Adams's
162
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
own independent and courageous character, and
perhaps for the only time in his life the Secre-
tary of State became almost sophistical in the
arguments by which he endeavored to sustain
the impetuous warrior against an adverse Cab-
inet. The authority given to Jackson to cross
the Spanish frontier in pursuit of the Indian en-
emy was justified as being only defensive war-
fare; then "all the rest," argued Adams, "even
to the order for taking the Fort of Barrancas by
storm, was incidental, deriving its character from
the object, which was not hostility to Spain, but
the termination of the Indian war." Through
long and anxious sessions Adams stood fast in
opposing "the unanimous opinions" of the
President, Crawford, Calhoun, and Wirt. Their
policy seemed to him a little ignoble and wholly
blundering, because, he said, "it is weakness
and a confession of weakness. The disclaimer
of power in the executive is of dangerous ex-
ample and of evil consequences. There is in-
justice to the officer in disavowing him, when in
principle he is strictly justifiable." This be-
havior upon Mr. Adams's part was the more
generous and disinterested because the earlier
among these doings of Jackson incensed Don
Onis extremely and were near bringing about
the entire disruption of that important negotia
tion with Spain upon which Mr. Adams had sc
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
163
much at stake. But few civilians have had a
stronger dash of the fighting element than had
Mr. Adams, and this impelled him irresistibly
to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jackson in
such an emergency, regardless of possible con-
sequences to himself. He preferred to insist
that the hanging of Arbuthnot and Ambrister
was according to the laws of war and to main-
tain that position in the teeth of Stratford
Canning rather than to disavow it and render
apology and reparation. So three years later
when Jackson was again in trouble by reason of
his arrest of Callava, he still found a staunch
advocate in Adams, who, having made an argu-
ment for the defence which would have done
credit to a subtle-minded barrister, concluded
by adopting the sentiment of Hume concerning
the execution of Don Pantaleon de Sa by Oliver
Cromwell, if the laws of nations had been
violated, "it was by a signal act of justice de-
serving universal approbation." Later still, on
January 8, 1824, being the anniversary of the
victory of New Orleans, as if to make a con-
spicuous declaration of his opinions in favor of
Jackson, Mr. Adams gave a great ball in his
honor, “at which about one thousand persons
attended." 1
1 Senator Mills says of this grand ball: "Eight large
rooms were open and literally filled to overflowing. There
164
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
He was in favor of offering to the General
the position of minister to Mexico; and before
Jackson had developed into a rival of himself
for the Presidency, he exerted himself to secure
the Vice-Presidency for him. Thus by argu-
ment and by influence in the Cabinet, in many
a private interview, and in the world of society,
also by wise counsel when occasion offered, Mr.
Adams for many years made himself the note-
worthy and indeed the only powerful friend of
General Jackson. Nor up to the last moment,
and when Jackson had become his most danger-
ous competitor, is there any derogatory passage
concerning him in the Diary.
As the period of election drew nigh, interest
in it absorbed everything else; indeed during
the last year of Monroe's Administration public
affairs were so quiescent and the public business
so seldom transcended the simplest routine, that
there was little else than the next Presidency to
be thought or talked of. The rivalship for this,
as has been said, was based not upon conflict-
ing theories concerning public affairs, but solely
upon individual preference for one or another
must have been at least a thousand people there; and so far
as Mr. Adams was concerned it certainly evinced a great deal
of taste, elegance, and good sense. . . . Many stayed till twelve
and one.
It is the universal opinion that nothing has ever
equalled this party here either in brilliancy of preparation of
elegance of the company."
•
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
165
of four men no one of whom at that moment
represented any great principle in antagonism
to any of the others. Under no circumstances
could the temptation to petty intrigue and mali-
cious tale-bearing be greater than when votes
were to be gained or lost solely by personal pre-
dilection. In such a contest Adams was severely
handicapped as against the showy prestige of
the victorious soldier, the popularity of the
brilliant orator, and the artfulness of the most
dexterous political manager then in public life.
Long prior to this stage Adams had established
his rule of conduct in the campaign. So early as
March, 1818, he was asked one day by Mr. Ev-
erett whether he was "determined to do noth-
ing with a view to promote his future election to
the Presidency as the successor of Mr. Monroe,"
and he had replied that he "should do abso-
lutely nothing." To this resolution he sturdily
adhered. Not a breach of it was ever brought
home to him, or indeed save in one instance
soon to be noticed- seriously charged against
him. There is not in the Diary the faintest
trace of any act which might be so much as
questionable or susceptible of defence only by
casuistry. That he should have perpetuated
evidence of any agrant misdoing certainly
could not be expected; but in a record kept
with the fulness and frankness of this Diary we
166
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
On
should read between the lines and detect as it
were in its general flavor, any taint of disingen-
uousness or concealment; we should discern
moral unwholesomeness in its atmosphere. A
thoughtless sentence would slip from the pen,
a sophistical argument would be formulated
for self-comfort, some acquaintance, interview,
or arrangement would slide upon some un-
guarded page indicative of undisclosed matters.
But there is absolutely nothing of this sort.
There is no tinge of bad color; all is clear as
crystal. Not an editor, nor a member of Con-
gress, nor a local politician, not even a private
individual, was intimidated or conciliated.
the contrary it often happened that those who
made advances, at least sometimes stimulated
by honest friendship, got rebuffs instead of
encouragement. Even after the contest was
known to have been transferred to the House
of Representatives, when Washington was act-
ually buzzing with the ceaseless whisperings of
many secret conclaves, when the air was thick
with rumors of what this one had said and that
one had done, when, as Webster said, there
were those who pretended to foretell how a rep-
resentative would vote from the way in which
he put on his hat, when of course stories of
intrigue and corruption poisoned the honest
preeze, and when the streets seemed traversed
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
167
only by the busy tread of the go-betweens, the
influential friends, the wire-pullers of the vari-
ous contestants, - still amid all this noisy ex-
citement and extreme temptation Mr. Adams
held himself almost wholly aloof, wrapped in the
cloak of his rigid integrity. His proud honesty
was only not quite repellent; he sometimes al-
lowed himself to answer questions courteously,
and for a brief period held in check his strong
natural propensity to give offence and make en-
emies. This was the uttermost length that he
could go towards political corruption. He be-
came for a few weeks tolerably civil of speech,
which after all was much for him to do and
doubtless cost him no insignificant effort. Since
the days of Washington he alone presents the
singular spectacle of a candidate for the Pres-
idency deliberately taking the position, and in
a long campaign really never flinching from it:
"that, if the people wish me to be President I
shall not refuse the office; but I ask nothing
from any man or from any body of men."
Yet though he declined to be a courtier of
popular favor he did not conceal from himself
or from others the chagrin which he would feel
if there should be a manifestation of popular
disfavor. Before the popular election he stated
that if it should go against him he should con-
strue it as the verdict of the people that they
168
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
were dissatisfied with his services as a public
man, and he should then retire to private life,
no longer expecting or accepting public func-
tions. He did not regard politics as a struggle
in which, if he should now be beaten in one en-
counter, he would return to another in the hope
of better success in time. His notion was that
the people had had ample opportunity during
his incumbency in appointive offices to measure
his ability and understand his character, and
that the action of the people in electing or not
electing him to the Presidency would be an in-
dication that they were satisfied or dissatisfied
with him. In the latter event he had nothing
more to seek. Politics did not constitute a pro-
fession or career in which he felt entitled to
persist in seeking personal success as he might
in the law or in business. Neither did the cir-
cumstances of the time place him in the position
of an advocate of any great principle which he
might feel it his duty to represent and to fight
for against any number of reverses. No such
element was present at this time in national af-
fairs. He construed the question before the
people simply as concerning their opinion of
him. He was much too proud to solicit and
much too honest to scheme for a favorable ex-
pression. It was a singular and a lofty attitude,
even if a trifle egotistical and not altogether
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
169
unimpeachable by argument. It could not di-
minish but rather it intensified his interest in a
contest which he chose to regard not simply as
a struggle for a glittering prize but as a judg
ment upon the services which he had been for a
lifetime rendering to his countrymen.
How profoundly his whole nature was moved
by the position in which he stood is evident,
often almost painfully, in the Diary. Any at-
tempt to conceal his feeling would be idle, and
he makes no such attempt. He repeats all the
rumors which come to his ears; he tells the
stories about Crawford's illness; he records his
own temptations; he tries hard to nerve himself
to bear defeat philosophically by constantly pre-
dicting it; indeed, he photographs his whole ex-
istence for many weeks; and however eagerly
any person may aspire to the Presidency of the
United States there is little in the picture to
make one long for the preliminary position of
candidate for that honor. It is too much like
the stake and the flames through which the
martyr passed to eternal beatitude, with the
difference as against the candidate that he has
by no means the martyr's certainty of reward.
In those days of slow communication it was
pot until December, 1824, that it became every-
where known that there had been no election of
a President by the people. When the electoral
170
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
college met the result of their ballots was as
follows:-
Crawford had
General Jackson led with
99 votes.
Adams followed with
84
66
41
66
. 37
66
Total.
261 votes.
Clay had.
Mr. Calhoun was elected Vice-President by
the handsome number of 182 votes.
This condition of the election had been quite
generally anticipated; yet Mr. Adams's friends
were not without some feeling of disappoint-
ment. They had expected for him a fair sup-
port at the South, whereas he in fact received
seventy-seven out of his eighty-four votes from
New York and New England; Maryland gave
him three, Louisiana gave him two, Delaware
and Illinois gave him one each.
When the electoral body was known to be
reduced within the narrow limits of the House
of Representatives, intrigue was rather stim-
ulated than diminished by the definiteness
which became possible for it. Mr. Clay, who
could not come before the House, found him-
self transmuted from a candidate to a President-
maker; for it was admitted by all that his great
personal influence in Congress would almost
undoubtedly confer success upon the aspirant
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
171
whom he should favor. Apparently his predi
lections were at least possibly in favor of Craw-
ford; but Crawford's health had been for many
months very bad; he had had a severe paralytic
stroke, and when acting as Secretary of the
Treasury he had been unable to sign his name,
so that a stamp or die had been used; his
speech was scarcely intelligible; and when Mr.
Clay visited him in the retirement in which his
friends now kept him, the fact could not be
concealed that he was for the time at least a
wreck. Mr. Clay therefore had to decide for
nimself, his followers, and the country whether
Mr. Adams or General Jackson should be the
next President of the United States. A cruel
attempt was made in this crisis either to destroy
his influence by blackening his character, or to
intimidate him, through fear of losing his rep-
utation for integrity, into voting for Jackson.
An anonymous letter charged that the friends
of Clay had hinted that, "like the Swiss, they
would fight for those who pay best; " that they
had offered to elect Jackson if he would agree
to make Clay Secretary of State, and that upon
his indignant refusal to make such a bargain
the same proposition had been made to Mr.
Adams, who was found less scrupulous and had
promptly formed the "unholy coalition." This
wretched publication, made a few days before
172
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
the election in the House, was traced to a
dull-witted Pennsylvania Representative by the
name of Kremer, who had obviously been used
as a tool by cleverer men. It met, however, the
fate which seems happily always to attend such
ignoble devices, and failed utterly of any more
important effect than the utter annihilation of
Kremer. In truth, General Jackson's fate had
been sealed from the instant when it had fallen
into Mr. Clay's hands. Clay had long since ex-
pressed his unfavorable opinion of the "military
hero," in terms too decisive to admit of expla-
nation or retraction. Without much real liking
for Adams, Clay at least disliked him much less
than he did Jackson, and certainly his honest
judgment favored the civilian far more than
the disorderly soldier whose lawless career in
Florida had been the topic of some of the
great orator's fiercest invective. The arguments
founded on personal fitness were strongly upon
the side of Adams, and other arguments ad-
vanced by the Jacksonians could hardly deceive
Clay. They insisted that their candidate was
the choice of the people so far as a superiority
of preference had been indicated, and that there-
fore he ought to be also the choice of the House
of Representatives. It would be against the
spirit of the Constitution and a thwarting of
the popular will, they said, to prefer either of
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
173
his competitors. The fallacy of this reasoning,
if reasoning it could be called, was glaring. If
the spirit of the Constitution required the
House of Representatives not to elect from
three candidates before it, but only to induct
an individual into the Presidency by a process
which was in form voting but in fact only a
simple certification that he had received the
highest number of electoral votes, it would have
been a plain and easy matter for the letter of
the Constitution to have expressed this spirit, or
indeed to have done away altogether with this
machinery of a sham election. The Jackson
men had only to state their argument in order
to expose its hollowness; for they said substan-
tially that the Constitution established an elec-
tion without an option; that the electors were
to vote for a person predestined by an earlier
occurrence to receive their ballots. But it was
not alone the Jacksonian logic which was at
fault. The allegations of fact to which that
logic was applied were almost certainly untrue.
It was said that Jackson was the choice of a
plurality of the people because he had received
the largest electoral vote. But the figures of
the popular election showed that Mr. Adams
was a choice of the plurality of the people be-
cause the Adams electors had received more
votes than the Jackson electors throughout the
174
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
country at large. Mr. Adams had had enor
mous majorities in New England: General
Jackson had narrowly carried the South; the
South also had the benefit of the artificial es-
timate based on its slave population. If polit
ical boundary lines were disregarded and the
counting were simply of the number of persons
throughout the country who had voted for Ad-
ams electors and the number who had voted for
Jackson electors, the preponderance of individ-
ual voters was handsomely on Mr. Adams's
side. This alone vindicated the constitutional
provision, which left the House free to select
and elect, without preference, among the three
names before it. Otherwise, indeed, what oc-
casion was there for resorting to the House at
all? The candidate with the largest electoral
vote might as well have been declared to be
chosen by the electors in the first instance.
Plainly there was nothing in all this to perplex
an intelligent man.
The election took place in the House on Feb-
ruary 9, 1825. Daniel Webster and John Ran-
dolph were tellers, and they reported that there
were "for John Quincy Adams, of Massachu-
setts, thirteen votes; for Andrew Jackson, of
Tennessee, seven votes; for William H. Craw-
Lord, of Georgia, four votes." Thereupon the
speaker announced Mr. Adams to have beer
elected President of the United States.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
175
This end of an unusually exciting contest
thus left Mr. Adams in possession of the field,
Mr. Crawford the victim of an irretrievable de-
feat, Mr. Clay still hopeful and aspiring for a
future which had only disappointment in store
for him, General Jackson enraged and revenge-
ful. Not even Mr. Adams was fully satisfied.
When the committee waited upon him to in-
form him of the election, he referred in his re-
ply to the peculiar state of things and said,
"could my refusal to accept the trust thus del-
egated to me give an opportunity to the people
to form and to express with a nearer approach
to unanimity the object of their preference, I
should not hesitate to decline the acceptance of
this eminent charge and to submit the decision
of this momentous question again to their de-
cision." That this singular and striking state-
ment was made in good faith is highly probable.
William H. Seward says that it was unques-
tionably uttered with great sincerity of heart."
The test of action of course could not be ap-
plied, since the resignation of Mr. Adams would
only have made Mr. Calhoun President, and
could not have been so arranged as to bring
about a new election. Otherwise the course of
his argument would have been clear; the fact
that such action involved an enormous sacrifice
would have been to his mind strong evidence
66
176
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
that it was a duty; and the temptation to per-
form a duty, always strong with him, became
ungovernable if the duty was exceptionally dis-
agreeable. Under the circumstances, however,
the only logical conclusion lay in the inaugura-
tion, which took place in the customary simple
fashion on March 4, 1825. Mr. Adams, we are
told, was dressed in a black suit, of which all
the materials were wholly of American man-
ufacture. Prominent among those who after
the ceremony hastened to greet him and to
shake hands with him appeared General Jack-
son. It was the last time that any friendly
courtesy is recorded as having passed between
the two.
This
Many men eminent in public affairs have
had their best years embittered by their failure
to secure the glittering prize of the Presidency.
Mr. Adams is perhaps the only person to whom
the gaining of that proud distinction has been
in some measure a cause of chagrin.
strange sentiment, which he undoubtedly felt,
was due to the fact that what he had wished
was not the office in and for itself, but the office
as a symbol or token of the popular approval.
He had held important and responsible public
positions during substantially his whole active
life; he was nearly sixty years old, and, as he
baid, he now for the first time had an oppor-
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
177
tunity to find out in what esteem the people of
the country held him. What he wished was
that the people should now express their decided
satisfaction with him. This he hardly could be
said to have obtained; though to be the choice
of a plurality in the nation and then to be se-
lected by so intelligent a body of constituents
as the Representatives of the United States
involved a peculiar sanction, yet nothing else
could fully take the place of that national in-
dorsement which he had coveted. When men
publicly profess modest depreciation of their
successes they are seldom believed; but in his
private Diary Mr. Adams wrote, on December
31, 1825 :
"The year has been the most momentous of those
that have passed over my head, inasmuch as it has
witnessed my elevation at the age of fifty-eight to the
Chief Magistracy of my country, to the summit of
laudable or at least blameless worldly ambition; not
however in a manner satisfactory to pride or to just
desire; not by the unequivocal suffrages of a majority
of the people; with perhaps two thirds of the whole
people adverse to the actual result.”
No President since Washington had ever
come into office so entirely free from any man-
ner of personal obligations or partisan entangle-
ments, express or implied, as did Mr. Adams.
Throughout the campaign he had not himself,
12
178
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
or by any agent, held out any manner of tacit
inducement to any person whomsoever, con-
tingent upon his election. He entered upon
the Presidency under no indebtedness. He at
once nominated his Cabinet as follows: Henry
Clay, Secretary of State; Richard Rush, Sec-
retary of the Treasury; James Barbour, Secre-
tary of War; Samuel L. Southard, Secretary
of the Navy; William Wirt, Attorney-General.
The last two were renominations of the incum-
bents under Monroe. The entire absence of
chicanery or the use of influence in the distri-
bution of offices is well illustrated by the fol-
lowing incident. On the afternoon following
the day of inauguration President Adams called
upon Rufus King, whose term of service as sen-
ator from New York had just expired, and who
was preparing to leave Washington on the next
day. In the course of a conversation concern-
ing the nominations which had been sent to the
Senate that forenoon the President said that
he had nominated no minister to the English
court, and
"asked Mr. King if he would accept that mission.
His first and immediate impulse was to decline it. He
said that his determination to retire from the public
service had been made up, and that this proposal was
utterly unexpected to him. Of this I was aware; but
I urged upon him a variety of considerations to in
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
179
duce his acceptance of it. . . . I dwelt with earnest-
ness upon all these motives, and apparently not with-
out effect. He admitted the force of them, and finally
promised fully to consider of the proposal before giv
ing me a definite answer."
With
The result was an acceptance by Mr. King,
his nomination by the President, and confirma-
tion by the Senate. He was an old Federalist,
to whom Mr. Adams owed no favors.
such directness and simplicity were the affairs
of the Republic conducted. It is a quaint and
pleasing scene from the period of our fore-
fathers: the President, without discussion of
"claims" to a distinguished and favorite post,
actually selects for it a member of a hostile
political organization, an old man retiring from
public life; then quietly walks over to his
house, surprises him with the offer, and find-
ing him reluctant urgently presses upon him
arguments to induce his acceptance. But the
whole business of office-seeking and office-dis-
tributing, now so overshadowing, had no place
under Mr. Adams. On March 5 he sent in sev-
eral nominations which were nearly all of pre-
vious incumbents. "Efforts had been made,"
he writes, "by some of the senators to obtain
different nominations, and to introduce a prin-
ciple of change or rotation in office at the ex-
piration of these commissions, which would
180
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
make the Government a perpetual and unin
termitting scramble for office. A more perni-
cious expedient could scarcely have been de-
vised. . . . I determined to renominate every
person against whom there was no complaint
which would have warranted his removal." A
notable instance was that of Sterret, naval officer
at New Orleans, "a noisy and clamorous reviler
of the Administration," and lately busy in a
project for insulting a Louisiana Representative
who had voted for Mr. Adams. Secretary Clay
was urgent for the removal of this man, plausi-
bly saying that in the cases of persons holding
office at the pleasure of the Administration the
proper course was to avoid on the one hand po-
litical persecution, and on the other any appear-
ance of pusillanimity. Mr. Adams replied that
if Sterret had been actually engaged in insulting
a representative for the honest and independent
discharge of duty, he would make the removal
at once. But the design had not been consum-
mated, and an intention never carried into effect
would scarcely justify removal.
“Besides,” he added, "should I remove this man
for this cause it must be upon some fixed principle,
which would apply to others as well as to him. And
where was it possible to draw the line? Of the cus-
tom-house officers throughout the Union, four fifths in
all probability were opposed to my election. Craw
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
181
ford, Secretary of the Treasury, had distributed these
positions among his own supporters. I had been
urged very earnestly and from various quarters to
sweep away my opponents and provide with their
places for my friends. I can justify the refusal to
adopt this policy only by the steadiness and consis-
tency of my adhesion to my own. If I depart from
this in one instance I shall be called upon by my
friends to do the same in many. An invidious and
inquisitorial scrutiny into the personal dispositions of
public officers will creep through the whole Union,
and the most selfish and sordid passions will be
kindled into activity to distort the conduct and mis-
represent the feelings of men whose places may be-
come the prize of slander upon them.”
Mr. Clay was silenced, and Sterret retained
his position, constituting thereafter only a some-
what striking instance among many to show
that nothing was to be lost by political oppo-
sition to Mr. Adams.
It was a cruel and discouraging fatality which
brought about that a man so suicidally upright
in the matter of patronage should find that the
bitterest abuse which was heaped upon him was
founded in an allegation of corruption of pre-
cisely this nature. When before the election the
ignoble George Kremer anonymously charged
that Mr. Clay had sold his friends in the House
of Representatives to Mr. Adams, “as the
planter does his negroes or the farmer his team
1.82
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
and horses;" when Mr. Clay promptly published
the unknown writer as 66 a base and infamous
calumniator, a dastard and a liar;" when next
Kremer, being unmasked, avowed that he would
make good his charges, but immediately after-
ward actually refused to appear or testify before
a Committee of the House instructed to inves-
tigate the matter, it was supposed by all reason-
able observers that the outrageous accusation
was forever laid at rest. But this was by no
means the case. The author of the slander had
been personally discredited; but the slander
itself had not been destroyed. So shrewdly
had its devisers who saw future usefulness in it
managed the matter, that while Kremer slunk
away into obscurity, the story which he had
told remained an assertion denied, but not dis-
proved, still open to be believed by suspicious
or willing friends. With Adams President and
Clay Secretary of State and General Jackson
nominated, as he quickly was by the Tennes-
see Legislature, as a candidate for the next
Presidential term, the accusation was too plaus-
ible and too tempting to be allowed to fall for-
ever into dusty death; rather it was speedily
exhumed from its shallow burial and galvanized
into new life. The partisans of General Jack-
son sent it to and fro throughout the land. No
denial, no argument, could kill it. It began to
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
183
gain that sort of half belief which is certain to
result from constant repetition; since many
minds are so constituted that trutn may be act-
ually, as it were, manufactured for them by
ceaseless iteration of statement, the many hear-
ings gaining the character of evidence.
It is long since all students of American his-
tory, no matter what are their prejudices, or in
whose interest their researches are prosecuted,
have branded this accusation as devoid of even
the most shadowy basis of probability, and it
now gains no more credit than would a story
that Adams, Clay, and Jackson had conspired
together to get Crawford out of their way by
assassination, and that his paralysis was the
result of the drugs and potions administered in
performance of this foul plot. But for a while
the rumor stalked abroad among the people,
and many conspicuously bowed down before it
because it served their purpose, and too many
others also, it must be confessed, did likewise
because they were deceived and really believed
it. Even the legislature of Tennessee were not
ashamed to give formal countenance to a cal-
umny in support of which not a particle of evi-
dence had ever been adduced. In a preamble
to certain resolutions passed by this body upon
this subject in 1827, it was recited that: "Mr.
Adams desired the office of President; he went
184
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
into the combination without it, and came out
with it. Mr. Clay desired that of Secretary of
State; he went into the combination without it,
and came out with it." No other charge could
have wounded Mr. Adams so keenly; yet no
course was open to him for refuting the slan-
der. Mr. Clay, beside himself with a just rage,
was better able to fight after the fashion of the
day -- if indeed he could only find somebody to
fight. This he did at last in the person of John
Randolph of Roanoke, who adverted in one
of his rambling and vituperative harangues to
"the coalition of Blifil and Black George- the
combination unheard of till then of the Puritan
and the black-leg." This language led naturally
enough to a challenge from Mr. Clay. The
parties met 1 and exchanged shots without re-
sult. The pistols were a second time loaded;
Clay fired; Randolph fired into the air, walked
up to Clay and without a word gave him his
hand, which Clay had as it were perforce to
take. There was no injury done save to the
skirts of Randolph's long flannel coat which
were pierced by one of the bullets.
By way of revenge a duel may be effective if
the wrong man does not happen to get shot;
but as evidence for intelligent men a bloodier
ending than this would have been inconclusive
1 April 8, 1826
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
185
It so happened, however, that Jackson, alto-
gether contrary to his own purpose, brought
conclusive aid to President Adams and Secre-
tary Clay. Whether the General ever had any
real faith in the charge can only be surmised.
Not improbably he did, for his mental workings
were so peculiar in their violence and prejudice
that apparently he always sincerely believed all
persons who crossed his path to be knaves and
villains of the blackest die. But certain it is
that whether he credited the tale or not he soon
began to devote himself with all his wonted
vigor and pertinacity to its wide dissemination.
Whether in so doing he was stupidly believing a
lie, or intentionally spreading a known slander,
is a problem upon which his friends and biog-
raphers have exhausted much ingenuity with-
out reaching any certain result. But sure it is
that early in the year 1827 he was so far carried
beyond the bounds of prudence as to declare
before many persons that he had proof of the
corrupt bargain. The assertion was promptly
sent to the newspapers by a Mr. Carter Bev-
erly, one of those who heard it made in the
presence of several guests at the Hermitage.
The name of Mr. Beverly, at first concealed,
soon became known, and he was of course
compelled to vouch in his principal. General
Jackson never deserted his adherents, whether
186
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
""
their difficulties were noble or ignoble. He
came gallantly to the aid of Mr. Beverly, and
in a letter of June 6 declared that early in
January, 1825, he had been visited by a "mem-
ber of Congress of high respectability," who
had told him of "a great intrigue going on
of which he ought to be informed. This gen-
tleman had then proceeded to explain that Mr.
Clay's friends were afraid that if General Jack-
son should be elected President, "Mr. Adams
would be continued Secretary of State (innu-
endo, there would be no room for Kentucky);
that if I would say, or permit any of my con-
fidential friends to say, that in case I were
elected President, Mr. Adams should not be
continued Secretary of State, by a complete
union of Mr. Clay and his friends they would
put an end to the Presidential contest in one
hour. And he was of opinion it was right to
fight such intriguers with their own weapons."
This scarcely disguised suggestion of bargain
and corruption the General said that he repu-
diated indignantly. Clay at once publicly chal-
lenged Jackson to produce some evidence to
name the "respectable" member of Congress
who appeared in the very unrespectable light
of advising a candidate for the Presidency to
emulate the alleged baseness of his opponents.
Jackson thereupon uncovered James Buchanan
-
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
187
of Pennsylvania. Mr. Buchanan was a friend
of the General, and to what point it may have
been expected or hoped that his allegiance
would carry him in support of his chief in this
dire hour of extremity is matter only of in-
ference. Fortunately, however, his fealty does
not appear to have led him any great distance
from the truth. He yielded to the prevailing
desire to pass along the responsibility to some
one else so far as to try to bring in a Mr. Mark-
ley, who, however, never became more than a
dumb figure in the drama in which Buchanan
was obliged to remain as the last important
character. With obvious reluctance this gen-
tleman then wrote that if General Jackson had
placed any such construction as the foregoing
upon an interview which had occurred between
them, and which he recited at length, then the
General had totally misconstrued as was evi-
dent enough—what he, Mr. Buchanan, had
said. Indeed, that Jackson could have sup-
posed him to entertain the sentiments imputed
to him made Mr. Buchanan, as he said, "ex-
ceedingly unhappy." In other words, there was
no foundation whatsoever for the charge thus
traced back to an originator who denied having
originated it and said that it was all a mistake.
General Jackson was left to be defended from
the accusation of deliberate falsehood only by
188
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
the charitable suggestion that he had been un-
able to understand a perfectly simple conver-
sation. Apparently Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay
ought now to be abundantly satisfied, since not
only were they amply vindicated, but their chief
vilifier seemed to have been pierced by the
point which he had sharpened for them. They
had yet, however, to learn what vitality there is
in falsehood.
General Jackson and his friends had alone
played any active part in this matter. Of these
friends Mr. Kremer had written a letter of re-
traction and apology which he was with diffi-
culty prevented from publishing; Mr. Buchanan
had denied all that he had been summoned to
prove; a few years later Mr. Beverly wrote and
sent to Mr. Clay a contrite letter of regret.
General Jackson alone remained for the rest
of his life unsilenced, obstinately reiterating a
charge disproved by his own witnesses. But
worse than all this, accumulations of evidence
long and laboriously sought in many quarters
have established a tolerably strong probability
that advances of precisely the character alleged
against Mr. Adams's friends were made to Mr.
Clay by the most intimate personal associates
of General Jackson. The discussion of this
unpleasant suspicion would not, however, be an
excusable episode in this short volume. The
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
189
reader who is curious to pursue the matter fur-
ther will find all the documentary evidence col-
lected in its original shape in the first volume
of Colton's Life of Clay, accompanied by an
argument needlessly elaborate and surcharged
with feeling yet in the main sufficiently fair
and exhaustive.
Mr. Benton says that "no President could
have commenced his administration under more
unfavorable auspices, or with less expectation
of a popular career," than did Mr. Adams.
From the first a strong minority in the House
of Representatives was hostile to him, and the
next election made this a majority. The first
indication of the shape which the opposition
was to take became visible in the vote in the
Senate upon confirming Mr. Clay as Secretary
of State. There were fourteen nays against
twenty-seven yeas, and an inspection of the
list showed that the South was beginning to
consolidate more closely than heretofore as a
sectional force in politics. The formation of
a Southern party distinctly organized in the
interests of slavery, already apparent in the
unanimity of the Southern Electoral Colleges
against Mr. Adams, thus received further illus-
tration; and the skilled eye of the President
noted "the rallying of the South and of South-
ern interests and prejudices to the men of the
190
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
South." It is possible now to see plainly that
Mr. Adams was really the first leader in the long
crusade against slavery; it was in opposition tc
him that the South became a political unit; anċ
a true instinct taught him the trend of Southerr
politics long before the Northern statesmen ap
prehended it, perhaps before even any Southerr
statesman had distinctly formulated it. This
new development in the politics of the country
soon received further illustration. The first
message which Mr. Adams had occasion to send
to Congress gave another opportunity to his ill
wishers. Therein he stated that the invitation
which had been extended to the United States
to be represented at the Congress of Panama
had been accepted, and that he should commis
sion ministers to attend the meeting. Neither
in matter nor in manner did this proposition
contain any just element of offence. It was
customary for the Executive to initiate new
missions simply by the nomination of envoys tc
fill them; and in such case the Senate, if it did
not think the suggested mission desirable could
simply decline to confirm the nomination upon
that ground. An example of this has been al
ready seen in the two nominations of Mr. Ad
ams himself to the Court of Russia in the Pres-
idency of Mr. Madison. But now vehement
assaults were made upon the President, alikę
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
191
in the Senate and in the House, on the utterly
absurd ground that he had transcended his
powers. Incredible, too, as it may seem at this
day it was actually maintained that there was
no occasion whatsoever for the United States
to desire representation at such a gathering.
Prolonged and bitter was the opposition which
the Administration was compelled to encounter
in a measure to which there so obviously ought
to have been instant assent if considered solely
upon its intrinsic merits, but upon which never-
theless the discussion actually overshadowed
all other questions which arose during the ses-
sion. The President had the good fortune to
find the powerful aid of Mr. Webster enlisted
in his behalf, and ultimately he prevailed; but
it was of ill augury at this early date to see
that personal hostility was so widespread and
so rancorous that it could make such a pro-
longed and desperate resistance with only the
faintest pretext of right as a basis for its action.
Yet a great and fundamental cause of the feel-
ing manifested lay hidden away beneath the
surface in the instinctive antipathy of the slave-
holders to Mr. Adams and all his thoughts,
his ways, and his doings. For into this ques-
tion of countenancing the Panama Congress,
slavery and "the South" entered and imported
into a portion of the opposition a certain ele-
192
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
ment of reasonableness and propriety in a po-
litical sense. When we see the Southern states-
men banded against President Adams in these
debates, as we know the future which was hid-
den from them, it almost makes us believe that
their vindictiveness was justified by an instinct-
ive forecasting of his character and his mission
in life, and that without knowing it they al-
ready felt the influence of the acts which he was
yet to do against them. For the South, with-
out present dread of an abolition movement,
yet hated this Panama Congress with a con-
temptuous loathing not alone because the South
American States had freed all slaves within
their limits, but because there was actually a
fair chance that Hayti would be admitted to
representation at the sessions as a sovereign
state. That the President of the United States
should propose to send white citizens of that
country to sit cheek by jowl on terms of offi-
cial equality with the revolted blacks of Hayti,
fired the Southern heart with rage inexpres-
sible. The proposition was a further infusion
of cement to aid in the Southern consolidation
so rapidly going forward, and was substantially
the beginning of the sense of personal aliena-
tion henceforth to grow steadily more bitter on
the part of the slaveholders towards Mr. Ad.
ams. Without designing it he had struck the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
193
first blow in a fight which was to absorb his
energies for the rest of his life.
66
Such evil forebodings as might too easily be
drawn from the course of this debate were soon
and amply fulfilled. The opposition increased
rapidly until when Congress came together in
December, 1827, it had attained overshadowing
proportions. Not only was a member of that
party elected Speaker of the House of Represen-
tatives, but a decided majority of both Houses
of Congress was arrayed against the Adminis-
tration a state of things which had never
before occurred under the Government of the
United States." All the committees too were
composed of four opposition and only three Ad-
ministration members. With more exciting
issues this relationship of the executive and leg-
islative departments might have resulted in
dangerous collisions; but in this season of po-
litical quietude it only made the position of the
President extremely uncomfortable. Mr. Van
Buren soon became recognized as the formid-
able leader and organizer of the Jackson forces.
His capacity as a political strategist was so far
in advance of that of any other man of those
times that it might have secured success even
had he been encountered by tactics similar to
his own. But since on the contrary he had only
to meet straightforward simplicity it was soon
13
194
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
apparent that he would have everything his
own way. It was disciplined troops against the
militia of honest merchants and farmers; and
the result was not to be doubted. Mr. Adams
and his friends were fond of comparing Van
Buren with Aaron Burr, though predicting that
he would be too shrewd to repeat Burr's blun-
ders. From the beginning they declined to
meet with his own weapons a man whom they
so contemned. It was about this time that a
new nomenclature of parties was introduced
into our politics. The administrationists called
themselves National Republicans, a name which
in a few years was changed for that of Whigs,
while the opposition or Jacksonians were known
as Democrats, a title which has been ever since
retained by the same party.
The story of Mr. Adams's Administration will
detain the historian, and even the biographer,
only a very short time. Not an event occurred
during those four years which appears of any
especial moment. Our foreign relations were
all pacific; and no grave crisis or great issue was
developed in domestic affairs. It was a period
of tranquillity, in which the nation advanced
rapidly in prosperity. For many years dulness
had reigned in business, but returning activity
was encouraged by the policy of the new Gov-
ernment, and upon all sides various industries
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
195
became active and thriving. So far as the rule
of Mr. Adams was marked by any distinguish-
ing characteristic, it was by a care for the ma-
terial welfare of the people. More commercial
treaties were negotiated during his Administra-
tion than in the thirty-six years preceding his
inauguration. He was a strenuous advocate of
internal improvements, and happily the condi-
tion of the national finances enabled the Gov-
ernment to embark in enterprises of this kind.
He suggested many more than were under-
taken, but not perhaps more than it would have
been quite possible to carry out. He was al-
ways chary of making a show of himself before
the people for the sake of gaining popularity.
When invited to attend the annual exhibition
of the Maryland Agricultural Society, shortly
after his inauguration, he declined, and wrote
in his Diary: "To gratify this wish I must
give four days of my time, no trifle of expense,
and set a precedent for being claimed as an
article of exhibition at all the cattle-shows
throughout the Union." Other gatherings
would prefer equally reasonable demands, in
responding to which "some duty must be neg-
lected." But the opening of the Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal was an event sufficiently mo-
mentous and national in its character to justify
the President's attendance. He was requested
196
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
in the presence of a great concourse of people
to dig the first shovelful of earth and to make
a brief address. The speech-making was easy;
but when the digging was to be done he en-
countered some unexpected obstacle and the
soil did not yield to his repeated efforts. Not
to be defeated, however, he stripped off his
coat, went to work in earnest with the spade
and raised the earth successfully. Naturally
such readiness was hailed with loud applause
and pleased the great crowd who saw it. But
in Mr. Adams's career it was an exceptional oc-
currence that enabled him to conciliate a mo-
mentary popularity; it was seldom that he en-
joyed or used an opportunity of gaining the
cheap admiration or shallow friendship of the
multitude.
At least one moral to be drawn from the
story of Mr. Adams's Presidency perhaps de-
serves rather to be called an immoral, and cer-
tainly furnishes unwelcome support to those
persons who believe that conscientiousness is
out of place in politics. It has been said that
no sooner was General Jackson fairly defeated
than he was again before the people as a can-
didate for the next election. An opposition to
the new Administration was in process of for-
mation actually before there had been time for
that Administration to declare, much less to
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
197
carry out, any policy or even any measure. The
opposition was therefore not one of principle;
it was not dislike of anything done or to be
done; it did not pretend to have a purpose of
saving the people from blunders or of offering
them greater advantages. It was simply an op-
position, or more properly an hostility, to the
President and his Cabinet, and was conducted
by persons who wished in as short a time as
possible themselves to control and fill those po-
sitions. The sole ground upon which these op-
ponents stood was, that they would rather have
General Jackson at the head of affairs than Mr.
Adams. The issue was purely personal; it was
so when the opposition first developed, and it
remained so until that opposition triumphed.
Under no circumstances can it be more ex-
cusable for an elective magistrate to seek per-
sonal good-will towards himself than when his
rival seeks to supplant him simply on the basis
of enjoying a greater measure of such good-will.
Had any important question of policy been di-
viding the people it would have been easy for a
man of less moral courage and independence than
belonged to Mr. Adams to select the side which
he thought right and to await the outcome at
least with constancy. But the only real ques-
tion raised was this: will Mr. Adams or Gen-
eral Jackson two individuals representing as
198
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
yet no antagonistic policies be preferred by
the greater number of voters in 1829? If, how-
ever, there was no great apparent issue open be-
tween these two men, at least there was a very
wide difference between their characters, a point.
of some consequence in a wholly personal com-
petition. It is easy enough now to see how this
gaping difference displayed itself from the be-
ginning, and how the advantage for winning was
throughout wholly on the side of Jackson. The
course to be pursued by Mr. Adams in order to
insure victory was obvious enough; being sim-
ply to secure the largest following and most
efficient support possible. The arts by which
these objects were to be attained were not ob-
scure nor beyond his power. If he wished a
second term, as beyond question he did, two
methods were of certain utility. He should
make the support of his Administration a source
of profit to the supporters; and he should con-
ciliate good-will by every means that offered.
To the former end what more efficient means
could be devised than a body of office-holders
owing their positions to his appointment and
likely to have the same term of office as him-
self? His neglect to create such a corps of
staunch supporters cannot be explained on the
ground that so plain a scheme of perpetuating
power had not then been devised in the Repub
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
199
lic. Mr. Jefferson had practised it, to an extent
which now seems moderate, but which had been
sufficiently extensive to deprive any successor
of the honor of novelty in originating it. The
times were ripe for it, and the nation would not
have revolted at it, as was made apparent when
General Jackson, succeeding Mr. Adams, at
once carried out the system with a thoroughness
that has never been surpassed, and with a suc-
cess in achieving results so great that almost
no politician has since failed to have recourse
to the same practice. Suggestions and temp-
tations, neither of which were wanting, were
however alike thrown away upon Mr. Adams.
Friendship or hostility to the President were
the only two matters which were sure to have
no effect whatsoever upon the fate of an incum-
bent or an aspirant. Scarcely any removals
were made during his Administration, and every
one of the few was based solely upon a proved
unfitness of the official. As a consequence very
few new appointments were made, and in
every
instance the appointee was, or was believed to
be, the fittest man without regard to his political
bias. This entire elimination of the question of
party allegiance from every department of the
public service was not a specious protestation,
but an undeniable fact at which friends grum-
bled bitterly, and upon which foes counted often
200
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
with an ungenerous but always with an implicit
reliance. It was well known, for example, that
in the Customs Department there were many
more avowed opponents than supporters of the
Administration. What was to be thought, the
latter angrily asked, of a President who refused
to make any distinction between the sheep and
the goats? But while Mr. Adams, unmoved by
argument, anger, or entreaty, thus alienated
many and discouraged all, every one was made
acquainted with the antipodal principles of his
rival. The consequence was inevitable; many
abandoned Adams from sheer irritation; multi-
tudes became cool and indifferent concerning
him; the great number of those whose political
faith was so weak as to be at the ready com-
mand of their own interests, or the interests of
a friend or relative, yielded to a pressure against
which no counteracting force was employed. In
a word, no one who had not a strong and inde-
pendent personal conviction in behalf of Mr. Ad-
ams found the slightest inducement to belong to
his party. It did not require much political sa-
gacity to see that in quiet times, with no great
issue visibly at stake, a following thus composed
could not include a majority of the nation. It is
true that in fact there was opening an issue as
great as has ever been presented to the Ameri
can people—an issue between government con
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
201
ducted with a sole view to efficiency and honesty,
and government conducted very largely, if not
exclusively, with a view to individual and party
ascendancy. The new system afterward inaug-
urated by General Jackson, directly opposite to
that of Mr. Adams and presenting a contrast to
it as wide as is to be found in history, makes
this fact glaringly plain to us. But during the
years of Mr. Adams's Administration it was
dimly perceived only by a few. Only one side
of the shield had then been shown. The people
did not appreciate that Adams and Jackson
were representatives of two conflicting prin-
ciples of administration which went to the very
basis of our system of government. Had the
issue been as apparent and as well understood
then as it is now, in retrospect, the decision of
the nation might have been different. But un-
fortunately the voters only beheld two individ-
uals pitted against each other for the popular
suffrage, of whom one, a brilliant soldier, would
stand by and reward his friends, and the other,
an uninteresting civilian, ignored all distinction
between friend and foe.
It was not alone in the refusal to use patron-
age that Mr. Adams's rigid conscientiousness
showed itself. He was equally obstinate in de-
clining ever to stretch a point however slightly
in order to win the favor of any body of the
202
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
people whether large or small. He was warned
that his extensive schemes for internal improve-
ment would alienate especially the important
State of Virginia. He could not of course be
expected to change his policy out of respect
to Virginian prejudices; but he was advised to
mitigate his expression of that policy, and to
some extent it was open to him to do so. But
he would not; his utterances went the full
length of his opinions, and he persistently urged
upon Congress many plans which he approved,
but which he could not have the faintest hopes
of seeing adopted. The consequence was that
he displeased Virginia. He notes the fact in
the Diary in the tone of one who endures per-
secution for righteousness' sake, and who means
to be very stubborn in his righteousness. Again
it was suggested to him to embody in one of his
messages "something soothing for South Caro-
lina." But there stood upon the statute books
of South Carolina an unconstitutional law which
had greatly embarrassed the national govern-
ment, and which that rebellious little State with
characteristic contumaciousness would not re-
peal. Under such circumstances, said Mr. Ad-
ams, I have no "soothing" words for South
Carolina.
It was not alone by what he did and by what
he would not do that Mr. Adams toiled to in
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
203
sure the election of General Jackson far more
sedulously and efficiently than did the General
himself or any of his partisans. In most cases
it was probably the manner quite as much as
the act which made Mr. Adams unpopular. In
his anxiety to be upright he was undoubtedly
prone to be needlessly disagreeable. His un-
compromising temper put on an ungracious as-
pect. His conscientiousness wore the appear-
ance of offensiveness. The Puritanism in his
character was strongly tinged with that old New
England notion that whatever is disagreeable is
probably right, and that a painful refusal would
lose half its merit in being expressed courteously;
that a right action should never be done in a
pleasing way; not only that no pill should be
sugar-coated, but that the bitterest ingredient
should be placed on the outside. In repudiat-
ing attractive vices the Puritans had rejected
also those amenities which might have decently
concealed or even mildly decorated the forbid-
ding angularities of a naked Virtue which cer-
tainly did not imitate the form of any goddess
who had ever before attracted followers. Mr.
Adams was a complete and thorough Puritan,
wonderfully little modified by times and circum-
stances. The ordinary arts of propitiation
would have appeared to him only a feeble and
diluted form of dishonesty; while suavity and
204
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
graciousness of demeanor would have seemed as
unbecoming to this rigid official as love-making
or wine-bibbing seem to a strait-laced parson.
It was inevitable, therefore, that he should never
avert by his words any ill-will naturally caused
by his acts; that he should never soothe disap-
pointment, or attract calculating selfishness. He
was an adept in alienation, a novice in concilia-
tion. His magnetism was negative. He made
few friends; and had no interested following
whatsoever. No one was enthusiastic on his be-
half; no band worked for him with the ardor of
personal devotion. His party was composed of
those who had sufficient intelligence to appre-
ciate his integrity and sufficient honesty to ad-
mire it. These persons respected him, and when
election day came they would vote for him; but
they did not canvas zealously in his behalf, nor
do such service for him as a very different kind
of feeling induced the Jackson men to do for
their candidate.1 The fervid laborers in pol-
itics left Mr. Adams alone in his chilling re-
1 Mr. Mills, in writing of Mr. Adams's inauguration, ex-
pressed well what many felt. "This same President of ours
is a man that I can never court nor be on very familiar terms
with. There is a cold, repulsive atmosphere about him that is
too chilling for my respiration, and I shall certainly keep at a
distance from its influence. I wish him God-speed in his Ad
ministration, and am heartily disposed to lend him my feeble
aid whenever he may need it in a correct course; but he can.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
205
spectability, and went over to a camp where all
scruples were consumed in the glowing heat of
a campaign conducted upon the single and sim-
ple principle of securing victory.
Mr. Adams's relations with the members of
his Cabinet were friendly throughout his term.
Men of their character and ability, brought
into daily contact with him, could not fail to
appreciate and admire the purity of his motives
and the patriotism of his conduct; nor was he
wanting in a measure of consideration and def-
erence towards them perhaps somewhat greater
than might have been expected from him, some-
times even carried to the point of yielding his
opinion in matters of consequence. It was his
not expect me to become his warm and devoted partisan." A
like sentiment was expressed also much more vigorously by
Ezekiel Webster to Daniel Webster, in a letter of February 15,
1829. The writer there attributes the defeat of Mr. Adams
to personal dislike to him. People, he said, "always sup-
ported his cause from a cold sense of duty," and "we soon sat-
isfy ourselves that we have discharged our duty to the cause
of any man when we do not entertain for him one personal
kind feeling, nor cannot unless we disembowel ourselves like a
trussed turkey of all that is human nature within us." With
a candidate "of popular character, like Mr. Clay," the result
would have been different. "The measures of his [Adams's]
Administration were just and wise and every honest man
should have supported them, but many honest men did not for
he reason I have mentioned."-Webster's Private Corre-
spondence, vol. i. p. 469.
206
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
wish that the unity of the body should remain
unbroken during his four years of office, and
the wish was very nearly realized. Unfortu-
nately, however, in his last year it became neces-
sary for him to fill the mission to England, and
Governor Barbour was extremely anxious for
the place. It was already apparent that the
coming election was likely to result in the suc-
cession of Jackson, and Mr. Adams notes that
Barbour's extreme desire to receive the appoint-
ment was due to his wish to find a good harbor
ere the approaching storm should burst. The
remark was made without anger, in the tone of
a man who had seen enough of the world not to
expect too much from any of his fellow-men ;
and the appointment was made, somewhat to
the chagrin of Webster and Rush, either one of
whom would have gladly accepted it. The
vacancy thus caused, the only one which arose
during his term, was filled by General Peter B.
Porter, a gentleman whom Mr. Adams selected
not as his own choice, but out of respect to the
wishes of the Cabinet, and in order to "termi-
nate the Administration in harmony with itself.”
The only seriously unpleasant occurrence was
the treachery of Postmaster-General McLean,
who saw fit to profess extreme devotion to Mr.
Adams while secretly aiding General Jackson,
His perfidy was not undetected, and great pres
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
207
sure was brought to bear on the President to
remove him. Mr. Adams, however, refused to
do so, and McLean had the satisfaction of step-
ping from his post under Mr. Adams into a
judgeship conferred by General Jackson, hav-
ing shown his impartiality and judicial turn of
mind, it is to be supposed, by declaring his
warm allegiance to each master in turn.
The picture of President Adams's daily life
is striking in its simplicity and its laboriousness.
This chief magistrate of a great nation was
wont to rise before daybreak, often at four or
five o'clock even in winter, not unfrequently to
build and light his own fire, and to work hard
for hours when most persons in busy life were
still comfortably slumbering. The forenoon and
afternoon he devoted to public affairs, and often
he complains that the unbroken stream of vis-
itors gives him little opportunity for hard or
continuous labor. Such work he was compelled
to do chiefly in the evening; and he did not al-
ways make up for early hours of rising by a
correspondingly early bed-time; though some-
times in the summer we find him going to bed
between eight and nine o'clock, an hour which
probably few Presidents have kept since then.
He strove to care for his health by daily exer-
cise. In the morning he swam in the Potomac,
often for a long time; and more than once he
208
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
encountered no small risk in this pastime. Dur-
ing the latter part of his Presidential term he
tried riding on horseback. At times when the
weather compelled him to walk, and business
was pressing, he used to get his daily modicum
of fresh air before the sun was up. A life of
this kind with more of hardship than of relax-
ation in it was ill fitted to sustain in robust
health a man sixty years of age, and it is not
surprising that Mr. Adams often complained of
feeling ill, dejected, and weary. Yet he never
spared himself, nor apparently thought his hab-
its too severe, and actually toward the close of
his term he spoke of his trying daily routine as
constituting a very agreeable life. He usually
began the day by reading "two or three chap-
ters in the Bible with Scott's and Hewlett's Com-
mentaries," being always a profoundly religious
man of the old-fashioned school then prevalent
in New England.
It could hardly have added to the meagre
comforts of such a life to be threatened with
assassination. Yet this danger was thrust upon
Mr. Adams's attention upon one occasion at
least under circumstances which gave to it a
very serious aspect. The tranquillity with which
he went through the affair showed that his
physical courage was as imperturbable as his
moral. The risk was protracted throughout a
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
209
considerable period, but he never let it disturb
the even tenor of his daily behavior or warp
his actions in the slightest degree, save only
that when he was twice or thrice brought face
to face with the intending assassin he treated
the fellow with somewhat more curt brusque-
ness than was his wont. But when the danger
was over he bore his would-be murderer no
malice, and long afterward actually did him a
kindly service.
Few men in public life have been subjected to
trials of temper so severe as vexed Mr. Adams
during his Presidential term. To play an in-
tensely exciting game strictly in accordance with
rigid moral rules of the player's own arbitrary
enforcement, and which are utterly repudiated
by a less scrupulous antagonist, can hardly
tend to promote contentment and amiability.
Neither are slanders and falsehoods mollifying
applications to a statesman inspired with an up-
right and noble ambition. Mr. Adams bore such
assaults ranging from the charge of having cor-
ruptly bought the Presidency down to that of
being a Freemason with such grim stoicism as
he could command. The disappearance and
probable assassination of Morgan at this time
led to a strong feeling throughout the country
against Freemasonry, and the Jackson men at
14
210
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
once proclaimed abroad that Adams was one of
the brotherhood and offered, if he should deny
it, to produce the records of the lodge to which
he belonged. The allegation was false; he was
not a Mason, and his friends urged him to say
so publicly; but he replied bitterly that his
denial would probably at once be met by a com-
plete set of forged records of a fictitious lodge,
and the people would not know whom to be-
lieve. Next he was said to have bargained for
the support of Daniel Webster, by promising
to distribute offices to Federalists. This accusa-
tion was a cruel perversion of his very virtues;
for its only foundation lay in the fact that in
the venturesome but honorable attempt to be
President of a nation rather than of a party,
he had in some instances given offices to old
Federalists, certainly with no hope or possibil-
ity of reconciling to himself the almost useless
wreck of that now powerless and shrunken
party, one of whose liveliest traditions was
hatred of him. Stories were even set afloat
that some of his accounts, since he had been in
the public service, were incorrect. But the
most extraordinary and ridiculous tale of all
was that during his residence in Russia he had
prostituted a beautiful American girl, whom he
then had in his service, in order "to seduce the
passions of the Emperor Alexander and sway
him to political purposes."
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
211
These and other like provocations were not
only discouraging but very irritating, and Mr.
Adams was not of that careless disposition
which is little affected by unjust accusation.
On the contrary he was greatly incensed by
such treatment, and though he made the most
stern and persistent effort to endure an inev
itable trial with a patience born of philosophy,
since indifference was not at his command, yet
he could not refrain from the expression of his
sentiments in his secret communings. Occa-
sionally he allowed his wrath to explode with
harmless violence between the covers of the
Diary, and doubtless he found relief while he
discharged his fierce diatribes on these private
sheets. His vituperative power was great, and
some specimens of it may not come amiss in a
sketch of the man. The senators who did not
call upon him he regarded as of " rancorous
spirit." He spoke of the falsehoods and misrep-
resentations which "the skunks of party slander
have been . . squirting round the House
of Representatives, thence to issue and perfume
the atmosphere of the Union." His most in-
tense hatred and vehement denunciation were
reserved for John Randolph, whom he thought
an abomination too odious and despicable to be
described in words, "the image and superscrip-
tion of a great man stamped upon base metal. '
•
•
212
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
"The besotted violence" of Randolph, he said,
has deprived him of "all right to personal
civility from me;" and certainly this excom-
munication from courtesy was made complete
and effective. He speaks again of the same
victim as a "frequenter of gin lane and beer
alley." He indignantly charges that Calhoun,'
as Speaker, permitted Randolph "in speeches of
ten hours long to drink himself drunk with
bottled porter, and in raving balderdash of the
meridian of Wapping to revile the absent and
the present, the living and the dead." This, he
says, was "tolerated by Calhoun, because Ran-
dolph's ribaldry was all pointed against the
Administration, especially against Mr. Clay and
me." Again he writes of Randolph:
rancor of this man's soul against me is that
which sustains his life; the agony of [his]
envy and hatred of me, and the hope of effect-
ing my downfall, are [his] chief remaining
sources of vitality. The issue of the Presiden-
tial election will kill [him] by the gratification
of [his] revenge." So it was also with W. B.
Giles of Virginia. But Giles's abuse was easier
to bear since it had been poured in torrents
upon every reputable man, from Washington
downwards, who had been prominent in public
affairs since the adoption of the Constitution,
so that Giles's memory is now preserved from
"The
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
213
oblivion solely by the connection which he es-
tablished with the great and honorable states-
men of the Republic by a course of ceaseless
attacks upon them. Some of the foregoing ex-
pressions of Mr. Adams may be open to objec-
tion on the score of good taste; but the provo-
cation was extreme; public retaliation he would
not practise, and wrath must sometimes burst
forth in language which was not so unusual in
that day as it is at present. It is an unques-
tionable fact, of which the credit to Mr. Adams
can hardly be exaggerated, that he never in
any single instance found an excuse for an un-
worthy act on his own part in the fact that com-
petitors or adversaries were resorting to such ex-
pedients.
The election of 1828 gave 178 votes for Jack-
son and only 83 for Adams. Calhoun was con-
tinued as Vice-President by 171 votes, showing
plainly enough that even yet there were not
two political parties, in any customary or proper
sense of the phrase. The victory of Jackson had
been foreseen by every one. What had been so
generally anticipated could not take Mr. Adams
by surprise; yet it was idle for him to seek to
conceal his disappointment that an Administra
tion which he had conducted with his best abil-
ity and with thorough conscientiousness should
214
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
not have seemed to the people worthy of con-
tinuance for another term. Little suspecting
what the future had in store for him, he felt that
his public career had culminated and probably
had closed forever, and that if it had not closed
exactly in disgrace, yet at least it could not be
regarded as ending gloriously or even satisfac-
torily. But he summoned all his philosophy and
fortitude to his aid; he fell back upon his clear
conscience and comported himself with dignity,
showing all reasonable courtesy to his successor
and only perhaps seeming a little deficient in
filial piety in presenting so striking a contrast
to the shameful conduct of his father in a like
crucial hour. His retirement brought to a close
a list of Presidents who deserved to be called
statesmen in the highest sense of that term, hon-
orable men, pure patriots, and, with perhaps one
exception, all of the first order of ability in pub
lic affairs. It is necessary to come far down to-
wards this day before a worthy successor of those
great men is met with in the list. Dr. Von Holst,
by far the ablest writer who has yet dealt with
American history, says: "In the person of Ad-
ams the last statesman who was to occupy it
for a long time left the White House." Gen-
eral Jackson, the candidate of the populace, and
the representative hero of the ignorant masses,
instituted a new system of administering the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
215
Government in which personal interests became
the most important element, and that organiza-
tion and strategy were developed which have
since become known and infamous under the
name of the "political machine."
While Mr. Adams bore his defeat like a phil-
osopher, he felt secretly very depressed and un-
happy by reason of it. He speaks of it as leav-
ing his "character and reputation a wreck,"
and says that the "sun of his political life sets
in the deepest gloom." On January 1, 1829,
he writes: "The year begins in gloom. My
wife had a sleepless and painful night. The
dawn was overcast, and as I began to write my
shaded lamp went out, self-extinguished.
was only for lack of oil, and the notice of so
trivial an incident may serve but to mark the
present temper of my mind." It is painful to
behold a man of his vigor, activity, and courage
thus prostrated. Again he writes:-
It
"Three days more and I shall be restored to pri-
vate life, and left to an old age of retirement though
certainly not of repose. I go into it with a combina-
tion of parties and public men against my character
and reputation, such as I believe never before was
exhibited against any man since this Union existed.
Posterity will scarcely believe it, but so it is, that this
combination against me has been formed and is now
exulting in triumph over me, for the devotion of my
216
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
life and of all the faculties of my soul to the Union,
and to the improvement, physical, moral, and intel-
lectual of my country."
Melancholy words these to be written by an
old man who had worked so hard and been so
honest, and whose ambition had been of the
kind that ennobles him who feels it! Could the
curtain of the future have been lifted but for
a moment what relief would the glimpse have
brought to his crushed and wearied spirit. But
though coming events may cast shadows before
them, they far less often send bright rays in ad-
vance. So he now resolved "to go into the
deepest retirement and withdraw from all con-
nection with public affairs." Yet it was with
regret that he foretold this fate, and he looked
forward with solicitude to the effect which such
a mode of life, newly entered upon at his age,
would have upon his mind and character. He
hopes rather than dares to predict that he will
be provided "with useful and profitable occupa-
tion, engaging so much of his thoughts and feel-
ings that his mind may not be left to corrode
itself."
His return to Quincy held out the less prom-
ise of comfort, because the old chasm between
him and the Federalist gentlemen of Boston had
been lately reopened. Certain malicious news-
paper paragraphs, born of the mischievous spirit
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
217
of the wretched Giles, had recently set afloat
some stories designed seriously to injure Mr. Ad-
ams. These were, substantially, that in 1808–9
he had been convinced that some among the
leaders of the Federalist party in New Eng-
land were entertaining a project for separation
from the Union, that he had feared that this
event would be promoted by the embargo, that
he foresaw that the seceding portion would in-
evitably be compelled into some sort of alliance
with Great Britain, that he suspected negotia-
tions to this end to have been already set on
foot, that he thereupon gave privately some
more or less distinct intimations of these no-
tions of his to sundry prominent Republicans,
and even to President Jefferson. These tales,
much distorted from the truth and exaggerated
as usual, led to the publication of an open letter,
in November, 1828, addressed by thirteen Fed-
eralists of note in Massachusetts to John Quincy
Adams, demanding names and specifications and
the production of evidence. Mr. Adams replied
briefly, with dignity, and, considering the cir-
cumstances, with good temper, stating fairly the
substantial import of what he had really said,
declaring that he had never mentioned names,
and refusing, for good reasons given, either to
do so now or to publish the grounds of such
opinions as he had entertained. It was suffi-
218
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
ciently clear that he had said nothing secretly
which he had reason to regret; and that if he
sought to shun the discussion opened by his ad-
versaries, he was influenced by wise forbearance,
and not at all by any fear of the consequences
to himself. A dispassionate observer could
have seen that behind this moderate, rather de-
precatory letter there was an abundant reserve
of controversial material held for the moment
in check. But his adversaries were not dispas-
sionate; on the contrary they were greatly ex-
cited and were honestly convinced of the perfect
goodness of their cause. They were men of
the highest character in public and private life,
deservedly of the best repute in the community,
of unimpeachable integrity in motives and deal-
ings, influential and respected, men whom it was
impossible in New England to treat with neg-
lect or indifference. For this reason it was only
the harder to remain silent beneath their pub-
lished reproach when a refutation was possible.
Hating Mr. Adams with an animosity not dimin-
ished by the lapse of years since his defection
from their party, strong in a consciousness of
their own standing before their fellow-citizens,
the thirteen notables responded with much ac-
rimony to Mr. Adams's unsatisfactory letter.
Thus persistently challenged and assailed, at a
time when his recent crushing political defeat
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
219
made an attack upon him seem a little ungen-
erous, Mr. Adams at last went into the fight
in earnest. He had the good fortune to be
thoroughly right, and also to have sufficient
evidence to prove and justify at least as much
as he had ever said. All this evidence he
brought together in a vindicatory pamphlet,
which, however, by the time he had completed
it he decided not to publish. But fortunately
he did not destroy it, and his grandson, in the
exercise of a wise discretion, has lately given it
to the world. His foes never knew how deeply
they were indebted to the self-restraint which
induced him to keep this formidable missive
harmless in his desk. Full of deep feeling, yet
free from ebullitions of temper, clear in state-
ment, concise in style, conclusive in facts, un-
answerable in argument, unrelentingly severe
in dealing with opponents, it is as fine a speci-
men of political controversy as exists in the
language. Its historical value cannot be ex-
aggerated, but apart from this as a mere liter-
ary production it is admirable. Happy were
the thirteen that they one and all went down to
their graves complaisantly thinking that they
had had the last word in the quarrel, little sus-
pecting how great was their obligation to Mr.
Adams for having granted them that privilege.
One would think that they might have writhed
220
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
beneath their moss-grown headstones on the day
when his last word at length found public ut-
terance, albeit that the controversy had then
become one of the dusty tales of history.1
But this task of writing a demolishing pam-
phlet against the prominent gentlemen of the
neighborhood to which he was about to return
for his declining years, could hardly have been a
grateful task. The passage from political dis-
aster to social enmities could not but be painful;
and Mr. Adams was probably never more un-
happy than at this period of his life. The re-
vard which virtue was tendering to him seemed
nmixed bitterness.
Thus at the age of sixty-two years, Mr. Ad-
ams found himself that melancholy product of
the American governmental system-an
an ex-
President. At this stage it would seem that the
fruit ought to drop from the bough, no further
1 It is with great reluctance that these comments are made,
since some persons may think that they come with ill grace
from one whose grandfather was one of the thirteen and was
supposed to have drafted one or both of their letters. But
in spite of the prejudice naturally growing out of this fact, a
thorough study of the whole subject has convinced me that
Mr. Adams was unquestionably and completely right, and I
have no escape from saying so. His adversaries had the ex-
cuse of honesty in political error -an excuse which the great-
est and wisest men must often fall back upon in times of hot
party warfare.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
221
process of development being reasonably prob.
able for it. Yet Mr. Adams had by no means
reached this measure of ripeness; he still en-
joyed abundant vigor of mind and body, and to
lapse into dignified decrepitude was not agree-
able, indeed was hardly possible for him. The
prospect gave him profound anxiety; he dreaded
idleness, apathy, and decay with a keen terror
which perhaps constituted a sufficient guaranty
against them. Yet what could he do? It would
be absurd for him now to furbish up the rusty
weapons of the law and enter again upon the
tedious labor of collecting a clientage. His
property was barely sufficient to enable him to
live respectably, even according to the simple
standard of the time, and could open to him no
occupation in the way of gratifying unremuner-
ative tastes. In March, 1828, he had been ad-
vised to use five thousand dollars in a way to
promote his reëlection. He refused at once,
upon principle; but further set forth "candidly,
the state of his affairs "
"All my real estate in Quincy and Boston is mort-
gaged for the payment of my debts; the income of
my whole private estate is less than $6,000 a year,
and I am paying at least two thousand of that for in-
terest on my debt. Finally, upon going out of office
in one year from this time, destitute of all means of
acquiring property, it will only be by the sacrifice of
222
JJHN QUINCY ADAMS.
that which I now possess that I shall be able to sup
port my family."
At first he plunged desperately into the Latin
classics. He had a strong taste for such read-
ing, and he made a firm resolve to compel this
taste now to stand him in good stead in his hour
of need. He courageously demanded solace
from a pursuit which had yielded him pleasure
enough in hours of relaxation, but which was
altogether inadequate to fill the huge vacuum
now suddenly created in his time and thoughts.
There is much pathos in this spectacle of the
old man setting himself with ever so feeble a
weapon, yet with stern determination, to con-
quer the cruelty of circumstances. But he
knew, of course, that the Roman authors could
only help him for a time, by way of distraction,
in carrying him through a transition period.
He soon set more cheerfully at work upon a
memoir of his father, and had also plans for
writing a history of the United States. Liter-
ature had always possessed strong charms for
him, and he had cultivated it after his usual
studious and conscientious fashion. But his
style was too often prolix, sententious, and tur-
gid — faults which marked nearly all the writ-
ing done in this country in those days. The
world has probably not lost much by reason of
the non-completion of the contemplated vol
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
223
umes. He could have made no other contribu-
tion to the history of the country at all approach-
ing in value or interest to the Diary, of which
a most important part was still to be written.
For a brief time just now this loses its historic
character, but makes up for the loss by depicting
admirably some traits in the mental constitu-
tion of the diarist. Tales of enchantment, he
says, pleased his boyhood, but "the humors of
Falstaff hardly affected me at all. Bardolph and
Pistol and Nym were personages quite unintel-
ligible to me; and the lesson of Sir Hugh Evans
to the boy Williams was quite too serious an af-
fair." In truth, no man can ever have been
more utterly void of a sense of humor or an ap-
preciation of wit than was Mr. Adams. Not a
single instance of an approach to either is to be
found throughout the twelve volumes of his
Diary. Not even in the simple form of the
"good story" could he find pleasure, and subtler
delicacies were wasted on his well-regulated
mind as dainty French dishes would be on the
wholesome palate of a day-laborer. The books
which bore the stamp of well-established ap-
proval, the acknowledged classics of the Eng-
lish, Latin, and French languages he read with
a mingled sense of duty and of pleasure, and
evidently with cultivated appreciation, though
whether he would have made an original dis-
224
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
covery of their merits may be doubted. Oc
casionally he failed to admire even those vol-
umes which deserved admiration, and then with
characteristic honesty he admitted the fact. He
tried Paradise Lost ten times before he could
get through with it, and was nearly thirty years
old when he first succeeded in reading it to the
end. Thereafter he became very fond of it,
but plainly by an acquired taste. He tried
smoking and Milton, he says, at the same time,
in the hope of discovering the "recondite
charm" in them which so pleased his father.
He was more easily successful with the tobacco
than with the poetry. Many another has had
the like experience, but the confession is not
always so frankly forthcoming.
Fate, however, had in store for Mr. Adams
labors to which he was better suited than those
of literature, and tasks to be performed which
the nation could ill afford to exchange for an
apotheosis of our second President, or even for
a respectable but probably not very readable
history. The most brilliant and glorious years
of his career were yet to be lived. He was to
earn in his old age a noble fame and distinction
far transcending any achievement of his youth
and middle age, and was to attain the highest
pinnacle of his fame after he had left the great-
est office of the Government, and during a pe
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. ·
225
riod for which presumably nothing better had
been allotted than that he should tranquilly
await the summons of death. It is a striking
circumstance that the fullness of greatness for
one who had been Senator, Minister to England,
Secretary of State, and President, remained to
be won in the comparatively humble position of
a Representative in Congress.
15
CHAPTER III.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
IN September, 1830, Mr. Adams notes in his
Diary a suggestion made to him that he might
if he wished be elected to the national House
of Representatives from the Plymouth district.
The gentleman who threw out this tentative
proposition, remarked that in his opinion the
acceptance of this position by an ex-President
"instead of degrading the individual would
elevate the representative character." Mr. Ad-
ams replied, that he "had in that respect no
scruple whatever. No person could be degraded
by serving the people as a Representative in
Congress. Nor in my opinion would an ex-
President of the United States be degraded by
serving as a selectman of his town, if elected
thereto by the people." A few weeks later his
election was accomplished by a flattering vote,
the poll showing for him 1817 votes out of 2565,
with only 373 for the next candidate. He con-
tinued thenceforth to represent this district un-
til his death, a period of about sixteen years.
During this time he was occasionally suggested
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
227
as a candidate for the governorship of the State,
but was always reluctant to stand. The feeling
between the Freemasons and the anti-Masons
ran very high for several years, and once he was
prevailed upon to allow his name to be used by
the latter party. The result was that there was
no election by the people; and as he had been
very loath to enter the contest in the beginning,
he insisted upon withdrawing from before the
legislature. We have now therefore only to pur-
sue his career in the lower house of Congress.
Unfortunately, but of obvious necessity, it is
possible to touch only upon the more salient
points of this which was really by far the most
striking and distinguished portion of his life.
To do more than this would involve an expla-
nation of the politics of the country and the
measures before Congress much more elaborate
than would be possible in this volume. It will
be necessary, therefore, to confine ourselves to
drawing a picture of him in his character as the
great combatant of Southern slavery. In the
waging of this mighty conflict we shall see
both his mind and his character developing in
strength even in these years of his old age, and
his traits standing forth in bolder relief than
ever before. In his place on the floor of the
House of Representatives he was destined to
appear a more impressive figure than in any
228
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
of the higher positions which he had previously
filled. There he was to do his greatest work
and to win a peculiar and distinctive glory
which takes him out of the general throng even
of famous statesmen and entitles his name to
be remembered with an especial reverence. Ad-
equately to sketch his achievements, and so to
do his memory the honor which it deserves,
would require a pen as eloquent as has been
wielded by any writer of our language. I can
only attempt a brief and insufficient narrative.
In his conscientious way he was faithful and
industrious to a rare degree. He was never ab-
sent and seldom late; he bore unflinchingly the
burden of severe committee work, and shirked
no toil on the plea of age or infirmity. He at-
tended closely to all the business of the House;
carefully formed his opinions on every question;
never failed to vote except for cause; and always
had a sufficient reason independent of party al-
legiance to sustain his vote. Living in the age
of oratory, he earned the name of " the old man
eloquent." Yet he was not an orator in the
sense in which Webster, Clay, and Calhoun
were orators. He was not a rhetorician; he had
neither grace of manner nor a fine presence,
neither an imposing delivery, nor even pleasing
tones. On the contrary, he was exceptionally
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
229
lacking in all these qualities. He was short,
rotund, and bald; about the time when he en-
tered Congress, complaints become frequent in
his Diary of weak and inflamed eyes, and soon
these organs became so rheumy that the water
would trickle down his cheeks; a shaking of the
hand grew upon him to such an extent that in
time he had to use artificial assistance to steady
it for writing; his voice was high, shrill, liable
to break, piercing enough to make itself heard,
but not agreeable. This hardly seems the pict-
ure of an orator; nor was it to any charm of el-
ocution that he owed his influence, but rather to
the fact that men soon learned that what he said
was always well worth hearing. When he en-
tered Congress he had been for much more than
a third of a century zealously gathering knowl-
edge in public affairs, and during his career in
that body every year swelled the already vast
accumulation. Moreover, listeners were always
sure to get a bold and an honest utterance and
often pretty keen words from him, and he never
spoke to an inattentive audience or to a thin
house. Whether pleased or incensed by what
he said, the Representatives at least always list-
ened to it. He was by nature a hard fighter,
and by the circumstances of his course in Con-
gress this quality was stimulated to such a de-
gree that Parliamentary history does not show
230
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
his equal as a gladiator. His power of invective
was extraordinary, and he was untiring and
merciless in his use of it. Theoretically he
disapproved of sarcasm, but practically he could
not refrain from it. Men winced and cowered
before his milder attacks, became sometimes
dumb, sometimes furious with mad rage before
his fiercer assaults. Such struggles evidently
gave him pleasure, and there was scarce a back
in Congress that did not at one time or another
feel the score of his cutting lash; though it was
the Southerners and the Northern allies of
Southerners whom chiefly he singled out for
torture. He was irritable and quick to wrath;
he himself constantly speaks of the infirmity of
his temper, and in his many conflicts his prin-
cipal concern was to keep it in control. His
enemies often referred to it and twitted him
with it. Of alliances he was careless, and friend-
ships he had almost none. But in the creation
of enmities he was terribly successful. Not so
much at first, but increasingly as years went on,
a state of ceaseless, vigilant hostility became his
normal condition. From the time when he fairly
entered upon the long struggle against slavery,
he enjoyed few peaceful days in the House.
But he seemed to thrive upon the warfare, and
to be never so well pleased as when he was
bandying hot words with slave-holders and the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
231
Northern supporters of slave-holders. When
the air of the House was thick with crimination
and abuse he seemed to suck in fresh vigor and
spirit from the hate-laden atmosphere. When in-
vective fell around him in showers, he screamed
back his retaliation with untiring rapidity and
marvellous dexterity of aim. No odds could
appal him. With his back set firm against a
solid moral principle, it was his joy to strike
out at a multitude of foes. They lost their
heads as well as their tempers, but in the ex-
tremest moments of excitement and anger Mr.
Adams's brain seemed to work with machine-
like coolness and accuracy. With flushed face,
streaming eyes, animated gesticulation, and
cracking voice, he always retained perfect mas-
tery of all his intellectual faculties. He thus
became a terrible antagonist, whom all feared,
yet fearing could not refrain from attacking, so
bitterly and incessantly did he choose to exert
his wonderful power of exasperation. Few men
could throw an opponent into wild blind fury
with such speed and certainty as he could; and
he does not conceal the malicious gratification
which such feats brought to him. A leader of
such fighting capacity, so courageous, with such
a magazine of experience and information, and
with a character so irreproachable, could have
won brilliant victories in public life at the head
232
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
of even a small band of devoted followers. But
Mr. Adams never had and apparently never
wanted followers. Other prominent public men.
were brought not only into collision but into
comparison with their contemporaries. But Mr.
Adams's individuality was so strong that he can
be compared with no one. It was not an indi-
viduality of genius nor to any remarkable extent
of mental qualities; but rather an individuality
of character. To this fact is probably to be
attributed his peculiar solitariness. Men touch
each other for purposes of attachment through
their characters much more than through their
minds. But few men, even in agreeing with Mr.
Adams, felt themselves in sympathy with him.
Occasionally conscience, or invincible logic, or
even policy and self-interest, might compel one
or another politician to stand beside him in de-
bate or in voting; but no current of fellow-
feeling ever passed between such temporary
comrades and him. It was the cold connection
of duty or of business. The first instinct of
nearly every one was opposition towards him;
coalition might be forced by circumstances but
never came by volition. For the purpose of
winning immediate successes this was of course
a most unfortunate condition of relationships.
Yet it had some compensations: it left such
influence as Mr. Adams could exert by stead.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
233
fastness and argument entirely unweakened by
suspicion of hidden motives or personal ends.
He had the weight and enjoyed the respect
which a sincerity beyond distrust must always
command in the long run. Of this we shall see
some striking instances.
One important limitation, however, belongs to
this statement of solitariness. It was confined
to his position in Congress. Outside of the city
of Washington great numbers of the people,
especially in New England, lent him a hearty
support and regarded him with friendship and
admiration. These men had strong convictions
and deep feelings, and their adherence counted
for much. Moreover, their numbers steadily
increased, and Mr. Adams saw that he was the
leader in a cause which engaged the sound sense
and the best feeling of the intelligent people of
the country, and which was steadily gaining
ground. Without such encouragement it is
doubtful whether even his persistence would
have held out through so long and extreme a
trial. The sense of human fellowship was need-
ful to him; he could go without it in Congress,
but he could not have gone without it alto-
gether.
Mr. Adams took his seat in the House as a
member of the twenty-second Congress in De-
cember, 1831. He had been elected by the Na-
234
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
tional Republican, afterward better known as
the Whig party, but one of his first acts was to
declare that he would be bound by no partisan
connection, but would in every matter act inde-
pendently. This course he regarded as a "duty
imposed upon him by his peculiar position," in
that he "had spent the greatest portion of his
life in the service of the whole nation and had
been honored with their highest trust." Many
persons had predicted that he would find him-
self subjected to embarrassments and perhaps to
humiliations by reason of his apparent descent
in the scale of political dignities. He notes,
however, that he encountered no annoyance on
this score, but on the contrary he was rather
treated with an especial respect. He was made
chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, a
laborious as well as an important and honor-
able position at all times, and especially so at
this juncture when the rebellious mutterings
of South Carolina against the protective tariff
were already to be heard rolling and swelling
like portentous thunder from the fiery Southern
regions. He would have preferred to exchange
this post for a place upon the Committee on
Foreign Affairs, for whose business he felt more
fitted. But he was told that in the impending
crisis his ability, authority, and prestige were
all likely to be needed in the place allotted to
him to aid in the salvation of the country.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
235
The nullification chapter of our history can-
not here be entered upon at length, and Mr.
Adams's connection with it must be very shortly
stated. At the first meeting of his committee
he remarks: "A reduction of the duties upon
many of the articles in the tariff was under-
stood by all to be the object to be effected;"
and a little later he said that he should be dis-
posed to give such aid as he could to any plan
for this reduction which the Treasury Depart-
ment should devise. “He should certainly not
consent to sacrifice the manufacturing interest,
he said, "but something of concession would be
due from that interest to appease the discon-
tents of the South." He was in a reasonable
frame of mind; but unfortunately other people
were rapidly ceasing to be reasonable. When
Jackson's message of December 4, 1832, was
promulgated, showing a disposition to do for
South Carolina pretty much all that she de-
manded, Mr. Adams was bitterly indignant.
The message, he said, "recommends a total
change in the policy of the Union with refer-
ence to the Bank, manufactures, internal im-
provement, and the public lands. It goes to
dissolve the Union into its original elements,
and is in substance a complete surrender to the
nullifiers of South Carolina." When, somewhat
later on, the President lost his temper and flamed
236
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
out in his famous proclamation to meet the nul
lification ordinance, he spoke in tones more
pleasing to Mr. Adams. But the ultimate com-
promise which disposed of the temporary dis-
sension without permanently settling the funda-
mental question of the constitutional right of
nullification, was extremely distasteful to him.
He was utterly opposed to the concessions which
were made while South Carolina still remained
contumacious. He was for compelling her to
retire altogether from her rebellious position
and to repeal her unconstitutional enactments
wholly and unconditionally, before one jot
should be abated from the obnoxious duties.
When the bill for the modification of the tariff
was under debate, he moved to strike out all
but the enacting clause, and supported his mo-
tion in a long speech, insisting that no tariff
ought to pass until it was known whether
there was any measure by which a State could
defeat the laws of the Union." In a minority
report from his own committee he strongly cen-
sured the policy of the Administration. He was
for meeting, fighting out, and determining at
this crisis the whole doctrine of state rights and
secession. "One particle of compromise," he
said, with what truth events have since shown
clearly enough, would "directly lead to the
final and irretrievable dissolution of the Union.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
237
In his usual strong and thorough-going fashion
he was for persisting in the vigorous and spirited
measures, the mere brief declaration of which,
though so quickly receded from, won for Jack-
son a measure of credit greater than he de-
served. Jackson was thrown into a great rage
by the threats of South Carolina, and replied
to them with the same prompt wrath with
which he had sometimes resented insults from
individuals. But in his cool inner mind he was
in sympathy with the demands which that State
preferred, and though undoubtedly he would
have fought her, had the dispute been forced to
that pass, yet he was quite willing to make con-
cessions, which were in fact in consonance with
his own views as well as with hers, in order to
avoid that sad conclusion. He was satisfied to
have the instant emergency pass over in a man-
ner rendered superficially creditable to himself
by his outburst of temper, under cover of which
he sacrificed the substantial matter of principle
without a qualm. He shook his fist and shouted
defiance in the face of the nullifiers, while Mr.
Clay smuggled a comfortable concession into
their pockets. Jackson, notwithstanding his
belligerent attitude, did all he could to help
Clay and was well pleased with the result. Mr.
Adams was not. He watched the disingenuous
game with disgust. It is certain that if he had
238
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
still been in the White House, the matter would
have had a very different ending, bloodier, it
may be, and more painful, but much more con-
clusive.
For the most part Mr. Adams found himself
in opposition to President Jackson's Adminis-
tration. This was not attributable to any sense
of personal hostility towards a successful rival,
but to an inevitable antipathy towards the
measures, methods, and ways adopted by the
General so unfortunately transferred to civil
life. Few intelligent persons, and none having
the statesman habit of mind, befriended the
reckless, violent, eminently unstatesmanlike
President. His ultimate weakness in the nulli-
fication matter, his opposition to internal im-
provements, his policy of sacrificing the public
lands to individual speculators, his warfare
against the Bank of the United States conducted
by methods the most unjustifiable, the transac-
tion of the removal of the deposits so disreputa-
ble and injurious in all its details, the importa-
tion of Mrs. Eaton's visiting list into the politics
and government of the country, the dismissal
of the oldest and best public servants as a part
of the nefarious system of using public offices
as rewards for political aid and personal adher
ence, the formation from base ingredients of the
ignoble "Kitchen Cabinet," - all these doings
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
239
together with much more of the like sort, con-
stituted a career which could only seem blunder-
ing, undignified, and dishonorable in the eyes of
a man like Mr. Adams, who regarded states-
manship with the reverence due to the noblest
of human callings.
Right as Mr. Adams was generally in his op-
position to Jackson, yet once he deserves credit
for the contrary course. This was in the matter
of our relations with France. The treaty of 1831
secured to this country an indemnity of $5,000,-
000, which, however, it had never been possible
to collect. This procrastination raised Jackson's
ever ready ire, and casting to the winds any
further dunning, he resolved either to have
the money or to fight for it.
He sent a mes-
sage to Congress, recommending that if France
should not promptly settle the account, letters
of marque and reprisal against her commerce
should be issued. He ordered Edward Living-
ston, minister at Paris, to demand his pass-
ports and cross over to London. These emi-
nently proper and ultimately effectual measures
alarmed the large party of the timid; and the
General found himself in danger of extensive
desertions even on the part of his usual support-
But as once before in a season of his dire
extremity his courage and vigor had brought
the potent aid of Mr. Adams to his side, so now
ers.
240
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
again he came under a heavy debt of gratitude
to the same champion. Mr. Adams stood by
him with generous gallantry, and by a telling
speech in the House probably saved him from
serious humiliation and even disaster. The
President's style of dealing had roused Mr. Ad-
ams's spirit, and he spoke with a fire and vehe-
mence which accomplished the unusual feat of
changing the predisposed minds of men too fa-
miliar with speech-making to be often much in-
fluenced by it in the practical matter of voting.
He thought at the time that the success of this
speech, brilliant as it appeared, was not unlikely
to result in his political ruin. Jackson would
befriend and reward his thorough-going parti-
sans at any cost to his own conscience or the
public welfare; but the exceptional aid, ten-
dered not from a sense of personal fealty to him-
self, but simply from the motive of aiding the
right cause happening in the especial instance
to have been espoused by him, never won from
him any token of regard. In November, 1837,
Mr. Adams, speaking of his personal relations
with the President, said:
66
Though I had served him more than any other
living man ever did, and though I supported his Ad-
ministration at the hazard of my own political de-
struction, and effected for him at a moment when his
own friends were deserting him what no other mem
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
241
ber of Congress ever accomplished for him an
unanimous vote of the House of Representatives to
support him in his quarrel with France; though I
supported him in other very critical periods of his Ad-
ministration, my return from him was insult, indig-
nity, and slander."
Antipathy had at last become the definitive
condition of these two men antipathy both
political and personal. At one time a singular
effort to reconcile them-probably though not
certainly undertaken with the knowledge of
Jackson was made by Richard M. Johnson.
This occurred shortly before the inauguration
of the war conducted by the President against
the Bank of the United States; and judging by
the rest of Jackson's behavior at this period,
there was probably at least as much of calcula-
tion in his motives, if in fact he was cognizant
of Johnson's approaches, as there was of any
real desi to reestablish the bygone relation of
honorable friendship. To the advances thus
made Mr. Adams replied a little coldly, not
quite repellently, that Jackson, having been re-
sponsible for the suspension of personal inter-
course, must now be undisguisedly the active
party in renewing it. At the same time he pro-
fessed himself "willing to receive in a spirit of
conciliation any advance which in that spirit
General Jackson might make." But nothing
16
242
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
came of this intrinsically hopeless attempt. On
the contrary the two drew rapidly and more
widely apart, and entertained concerning each
other opinions which grew steadily more un
favorable, and upon Adams's part more con-
temptuous, as time went on.
Fifteen months later General Jackson made
his visit to Boston, and it was proposed that
Harvard College should confer upon him the
degree of Doctor of Laws. The absurdity of
the act, considered simply in itself, was admit-
ted by all. But the argument in its favor was
based upon the established usage of the College
as towards all other Presidents, so that its omis-
sion in this case might seem a personal slight.
Mr. Adams, being at the time a member of the
Board of Overseers, strongly opposed the prop-
osition, but of course in vain. All that he could
do was, for his own individual part, to refuse to
be present at the conferring of the degree, giv-
ing as the minor reason for his absence, that he
could hold no friendly intercourse with the Pres-
ident, but for the major reason that "independ-
ent of that, as myself an affectionate child of
our Alma Mater, I would not be present to wit-
ness her disgrace in conferring her highest lit-
erary honors upon a barbarian who could not
write a sentence of grammar and hardly could
spell his own name." "A Doctorate of Laws,'
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
243
he said, "for which an apology was necessary,
was a cheap honor and . . . a sycophantic com-
pliment." After the deed was done, he used to
amuse himself by speaking of "Doctor Andrew
Jackson." This same eastern tour of Jackson's
called forth many other expressions of bitter
sarcasm from Adams. The President was ill
and unable to carry out the programme of en-
tertainment and exhibition prepared for him:
whereupon Mr. Adams remarks:-
"I believe much of his debility is politic.
•
He
is one of our tribe of great men who turn disease to
commodity, like John Randolph, who for forty years
was always dying. Jackson, ever since he became a
mark of public attention, has been doing the same
thing. . . . He is now alternately giving out his
chronic diarrhoea and making Warren bleed him for a
pleurisy, and posting to Cambridge for a doctorate of
laws; mounting the monument of Bunker's Hill to
hear a fulsome address and receive two cannon balls
from Edward Everett," etc. "Four fifths of his sick-
ness is trickery, and the other fifth mere fatigue.”
This sounds, it must be confessed, a trifle
rancorous; but Adams had great excuse for
nourishing rancor towards Jackson.
It is time, however, to return to the House
of Representatives. It was not by bearing his
share in the ordinary work of that body, im
portant or exciting as that might at one time or
244
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
another happen to be, that Mr. Adams was to
win in Congress that reputation which has
been already described as far overshadowing all
his previous career. A special task and a pe-
culiar mission were before him. It was a part
of his destiny to become the champion of the
anti-slavery cause in the national legislature.
Almost the first thing which he did after he
had taken his seat in Congress was to present
"fifteen petitions signed numerously by citizens
of Pennsylvania, praying for the abolition of
slavery and the slave-trade in the District of
Columbia." He simply moved their reference
to the Committee on the District of Columbia,
declaring that he should not support that part
of the petition which prayed for abolition in
the District. The time had not yet come when
the South felt much anxiety at such manifesta-
tions, and these first stones were dropped into
the pool without stirring a ripple on the sur-
face. For about four years more we hear little
in the Diary concerning slavery. It was not until
1835, when the annexation of Texas began to be
mooted, that the North fairly took the alarm,
and the irrepressible conflict began to develop.
Then at once we find Mr. Adams at the front.
That he had always cherished an abhorrence of
slavery and a bitter antipathy to slave-holders
as a class, is sufficiently indicated by many
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
245
chance remarks scattered through his Diary
from early years. Now that a great question,
vitally affecting the slave power, divided the
country into parties and inaugurated the strug-
gle which never again slept until it was settled
forever by the result of the civil war, Mr. Ad-
ams at once assumed the function of leader.
His position should be clearly understood; for
in the vast labor which lay before the abolition
party different tasks fell to different men. Mr.
Adams assumed to be neither an agitator nor
a reformer; by necessity of character, training,
fitness, and official position, he was a legislator
and statesman. The task which accident or
destiny allotted to him, was neither to preach
among the people a crusade against slavery, nor
to devise and keep in action the thousand re-
sources which busy men throughout the country
were constantly multiplying for the purpose of
spreading and increasing a popular hostility
towards the great "institution." Every great
cause has need of its fanatics, its vanguard to
keep far in advance of what is for the time
reasonable and possible; it has not less need
of the wiser and cooler heads to discipline and
control the great mass which is set in motion
by the reckless forerunners, to see to the ac-
complishment of that which the present circum-
stances and development of the movement al-
246
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
low to be accomplished. It fell to Mr. Adams
to direct the assault against the outworks which
were then vulnerable, and to see that the force
then possessed by the movement was put to
such uses as would insure definite results in-
stead of being wasted in endeavors which as
yet were impossible of achievement. Drawing
his duty from his situation and surroundings,
he left to others, to younger men and more
rhetorical natures, outside the walls of Congress,
the business of firing the people and stirring
popular opinion and sympathy. He was set to
do that portion of the work of abolition which
was to be done in Congress, to encounter the
mighty efforts which were made to stifle the
great humanitarian cry in the halls of the na-
tional legislature. This was quite as much as
one man was equal to ; in fact, it is certain that
no one then in public life except Mr. Adams
could have done it effectually. So obvious is
this that one cannot help wondering what would
have befallen the cause, had he not been just
where he was to forward it in just the way that
he did. It is only another among the many
instances of the need surely finding the man.
His qualifications were unique; his ability, his
knowledge, his prestige and authority, his high
personal character, his persistence and courage,
his combativeness stimulated by an acrimoni
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
247
ous temper but checked by a sound judgment,
his merciless power of invective, his indepen
dence and carelessness of applause or vilification,
friendship or enmity, constituted him an oppo-
nent fully equal to the enormous odds which
the slave-holding interest arrayed against him.
A like moral and mental fitness was to be
found in no one else. Numbers could not over-
awe him, nor loneliness dispirit him. He was
probably the most formidable fighter in debate
of whom parliamentary records preserve the
memory. The hostility which he encountered
beggars description; the English language was
deficient in adequate words of virulence and
contempt to express the feelings which were
entertained towards him. At home he had
not the countenance of that class in society to
which he naturally belonged. A second time
he found the chief part of the gentlemen of
Boston and its vicinity, the leading lawyers, the
rich merchants, the successful manufacturers,
not only opposed to him, but entertaining to-
wards him sentiments of personal dislike and
even vindictiveness. This stratum of the com-
munity, having a natural distaste for disquieting
agitation and influenced by class feeling the
gentlemen of the North sympathizing with the
"aristocracy" of the South, could not make
common cause with anti-slavery people. For-
248
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
tunately, however, Mr. Adams was returned by
a country district where the old Puritan in-
stincts were still strong. The intelligence and
free spirit of New England were at his back, and
were fairly represented by him; in spite of high-
bred disfavor they carried him gallantly through
the long struggle. The people of the Plymouth
District sent him back to the House every two
years from the time of his first election to the
year of his death, and the disgust of the gentle-
men of Boston was after all of trifling conse-
quence to him and of no serious influence upon
the course of history. The old New England
instinct was in him as it was in the mass of the
people; that instinct made him the real ex-
ponent of New England thought, belief, and
feeling, and that same instinct made the great
body of voters stand by him with unswerving
constancy. When his fellow Representatives,
almost to a man, deserted him, he was sus-
tained by many a token of sympathy and admi-
ration coming from among the people at large.
Time and the history of the United States have
been his potent vindicators. The conservative,
conscienceless respectability of wealth was, as
is usually the case with it in the annals of the
Anglo-Saxon race, quite in the wrong and pre-
destined to well-merited defeat. It adds to the
honor due to Mr. Adams that his sense of right
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
249
was true enough, and that his vision was clear
enough to lead him out of that strong thraldom
which class feelings, traditions, and comradeship
are wont to exercise.
But it is time to resume the narrative and to
let Mr. Adams's acts, of which after all it is
possible to give only the briefest sketch, select-
ing a few of the more striking incidents, tell
the tale of his Congressional life.
On February 14, 1835, Mr. Adams again pre-
sented two petitions for the abolition of slavery
in the District of Columbia, but without giving
rise to much excitement. The fusillade was,
however, getting too thick and fast to be en-
dured longer with indifference by the impatient
Southerners. At the next session of Congress
they concluded to try to stop it, and their in-
genious scheme was to make Congress shot-
proof, so to speak, against such missiles. On
January 4, 1836, Mr. Adams presented an abo-
lition petition couched in the usual form, and
moved that it be laid on the table, as others like
it had lately been. But in a moment Mr. Glas-
cock, of Georgia, moved that the petition be
not received. Debate sprang up on a point of
order, and two days later, before the question
of reception was determined, a resolution was
offered by Mr. Jarvis, of Maine, declaring that
the House would not entertain any petitions for
250
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
the abolition of slavery in the District of Co-
lumbia. This resolution was supported on the
ground that Congress had no constitutional
power in the premises. Some days later, Jan-
uary 18, 1836, before any final action had been
reached upon this proposition, Mr. Adams pre-
sented some more abolition petitions, one of
them signed by "one hundred and forty-eight
ladies, citizens of the Commonwealth of Massa-
chusetts; for, I said, I had not yet brought my-
self to doubt whether females were citizens."
The usual motion not to receive was made, and
then a new device was resorted to in the shape
of a motion that the motion not to receive be
laid on the table.
On February 8, 1836, this novel scheme for
shutting off petitions against slavery immedi-
ately upon their presentation was referred to
a select committee of which Mr. Pinckney was
chairman. On May 18 this committee reported
in substance: 1. That Congress had no power
to interfere with slavery in any State; 2. That
Congress ought not to interfere with slavery in
the District of Columbia; 3. That whereas
the agitation of the subject was disquieting and
objectionable, "all petitions, memorials, resolu-
tions or papers, relating in any way or to any
extent whatsoever to the subject of slavery or
the abolition of slavery, shall, without being
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
251
either printed or referred, be laid upon the
table, and that no further action whatever shall
be had thereon." When it came to taking a
vote upon this report a division of the question
was called for, and the yeas and nays were
ordered. The first resolution was then read,
whereupon Mr. Adams at once rose and pledged
himself, if the House would allow him five min-
utes time, to prove it to be false. But cries of
"order" resounded; he was compelled to take
his seat and the resolution was adopted by 182
to 9. Upon the second resolution he asked to
be excused from voting, and his name was
passed in the call. The third resolution with
its preamble was then read, and Mr. Adams, so
soon as his name was called, rose and said: “I
hold the resolution to be a direct violation of
the Constitution of the United States, the rules.
of this House, and the rights of my constit-
úents." He was interrupted by shrieks of
"order" resounding on every side; but he only
spoke the louder and obstinately finished his
sentence before resuming his seat. The resolu-
tion was of course agreed to, the vote standing
117 to 68. Such was the beginning of the fa-
mous "gag" which became and long remained
afterward in a worse shape a standing
rule of the House. Regularly in each new Con-
gress when the adoption of rules came up, Mr.
252
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Adams moved to rescind the "gag;
gag;" but for
many years his motions continued to be voted
down, as a matter of course. Its imposition was
clearly a mistake on the part of the slave-hold-
ing party; free debate would almost surely have
hurt them less than this interference with the
freedom of petition. They had assumed an un-
tenable position. Henceforth, as the persistent
advocate of the right of petition, Mr. Adams
had a support among the people at large vastly
greater than he could have enjoyed as the
opponent of slavery. As his adversaries had
shaped the issue he was predestined to victory
in a free country.
""
A similar scene was enacted on December 21
and 22, 1837. A "gag" or "speech-smothering'
resolution being then again before the House,
Mr. Adams, when his name was called in the
taking of the vote, cried out "amidst a perfect
war-whoop of 'order:' 'I hold the resolution to
be a violation of the Constitution, of the right
of petition of my constituents and of the people
of the United States, and of my right to free-
dom of speech as a member of this House.""
Afterward, in reading over the names of mem-
bers who had voted, the clerk omitted that of
Mr. Adams, this utterance of his not having
constituted a vote. Mr. Adams called attention
to the omission. The clerk, by direction of the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
253
Speaker, thereupon called his name. His only
reply was by a motion that his answer as al-
ready made should be entered on the Journal.
The Speaker said that this motion was not in
order. Mr. Adams, resolute to get upon the rec-
ord, requested that his motion with the Speak-
er's decision that it was not in order might be
entered on the Journal. The next day, finding
that this entry had not been made in proper
shape, he brought up the matter again. One of
his opponents made a false step, and Mr. Adams
"bantered him upon it until the other was
provoked into saying that, "if the question ever
came to the issue of war, the Southern people
would march into New England and conquer
it." Mr. Adams replied that no doubt they
would if they could; that he entered his resolu-
tion upon the Journal because he was resolved
that his opponent's "name should go down to
posterity damned to everlasting fame." No one
ever gained much in a war of words with this
ever-ready and merciless tongue.
""
Mr. Adams, having soon become known to all
the nation as the indomitable presenter of anti-
slavery petitions, quickly found that great num-
bers of people were ready to keep him busy in
this trying task. For a long while it was al-
most as much as he could accomplish to receive,
sort, schedule, and present the infinite number
254
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
of petitions and memorials which came to him
praying for the abolition of slavery and of the
slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and op-
posing the annexation of Texas. It was an oc-
cupation not altogether devoid even of physical
danger, and calling for an amount of moral
courage greater than it is now easy to appre-
ciate. It is the incipient stage of such a con-
flict that tests the mettle of the little band of
innovators. When it grows into a great party
question much less courage is demanded. The
mere presentation of an odious petition may
seem in itself to be a simple task; but to find
himself in a constant state of antagonism to a
powerful, active, and vindictive majority in a
debating body, constituted of such material as
then made up the House of Representatives,
wore hardly even upon the iron temper and in-
flexible disposition of Mr. Adams. "The most
insignificant error of conduct in me at this
time," he writes in April, 1837, "would be my
irredeemable ruin in this world; and both the
ruling political parties are watching with in-
tense anxiety for some overt act by me to set
the whole pack of their hireling presses upon
me.” But amid the host of foes, and aware
that he could count upon the aid of scarcely a
single hearty and daring friend, he labored only
the more earnestly. The severe pressure against
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
255
him begat only the more severe counter pres-
sure upon his part.
Besides these natural and legitimate difficul-
ties, Mr. Adams was further in the embarrass-
ing position of one who has to fear as much
from the imprudence of allies as from open hos-
tility of antagonists, and he was often compelled
to guard against a peculiar risk coming from
his very coadjutors in the great cause. The ex-
tremists who had cast aside all regard for what
was practicable, and who utterly scorned to con-
sider the feasibility or the consequences of meas-
ures which seemed to them to be correct as ab-
stract propositions of morality, were constantly
urging him to action which would only have
destroyed him forever in political life, would
have stripped him of his influence, exiled him
from that position in Congress where he could
render the most efficient service that was in
him, and left him naked of all usefulness and
utterly helpless to continue that essential por-
tion of the labor which could be conducted by
no one else. "The abolitionists generally," he
said, “are constantly urging me to indiscreet
movements, which would ruin me, and weaken
and not strengthen their cause." His family,
on the other hand, sought to restrain him from
all connection with these dangerous partisans.
"Between these adverse impulses," he writes,
256
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
66 my mind is agitated almost to distraction. . . .
I walk on the edge of a precipice almost every
step that I take." In the midst of all this anx-
iety, however, he was fortunately supported by
the strong commendation of his constituents
which they once loyally declared by formal and
unanimous votes in a convention summoned for
the express purpose of manifesting their sup-
port. His feelings appear by an entry in his
Diary in October, 1837:-
66
"I have gone,” he said, as far upon this article,
the abolition of slavery, as the public opinion of the
free portion of the Union will bear, and so far that
scarcely a slave-holding member of the House dares
to vote with me upon any question. I have as yet
been thoroughly sustained by my own State, but one
step further and I hazard my own standing and in-
fluence there, my own final overthrow, and the cause
of liberty itself for an indefinite time, certainly for
more than my remnant of life. Were there in the
House one member capable of taking the lead in this
cause of universal emancipation, which is moving on-
ward in the world and in this country, I would with-
draw from the contest which will rage with increasing
fury as it draws to its crisis, but for the management
of which my age, infirmities, and approaching end
totally disqualify me. There is no such man in the
House."
September 15, 1837, he says: "I have been
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
257
for some time occupied day and night, when at
home, in assorting and recording the petitions
and remonstrances against the annexation of
Texas, and other anti-slavery petitions, which
flow upon me in torrents." The next day he
presented the singular petition of one Sherlock.
S. Gregory, who had conceived the eccentric.
notion of asking Congress to declare him "an
alien or stranger in the land so long as slavery
exists and the wrongs of the Indians are unre-
quited and unrepented of." September 28 he
presented a batch of his usual petitions, and
also asked leave to offer a resolution calling for
a report concerning the coasting trade in slaves.
"There was what Napoleon would have called
a superb NO! returned to my request from the
servile side of the House." The next day he
presented fifty-one more like documents, and
notes having previously presented one hundred
and fifty more.
In December, 1837, still at this same work,
he made a hard but fruitless effort to have the
Texan remonstrances and petitions sent to a
select committee instead of to that on foreign af-
fairs which was constituted in the Southern in-
terest. On December 29 he "presented several
bundles of abolition and anti-slavery petitions,"
and said that, having declared his opinion that
the gag-rule was unconstitutional, null, and
17
258
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
void, he should "submit to it only as to physical
force." January 3, 1838, he presented "about
a hundred petitions, memorials, and remon-
strances, — all laid on the table." January 15
he presented fifty more. January 28 he re-
ceived thirty-one petitions, and spent that day
and the next in assorting and filing these and
others which he previously had, amounting in
all to one hundred and twenty. February 14,
in the same year, was a field-day in the petition
campaign: he presented then no less than three
hundred and fifty petitions, all but three or four
of which bore more or less directly upon the
slavery question. Among these petitions was
one
"praying that Congress would take measures to
protect citizens from the North going to the South
from danger to their lives. When the motion to lay
that on the table was made, I said that, 'In another
part of the Capitol it had been threatened that if a
Northern abolitionist should go to North Carolina,
and utter a principle of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence' Here a loud cry of 'order! order!' burst
forth, in which the Speaker yelled the loudest. I
waited till it subsided, and then resumed, 'that if they
could catch him they would hang him!' I said this
so as to be distinctly heard throughout the hall, the
renewed deafening shout of order! order!' notwith-
standing. The Speaker then said, 'The gentleman
from Massachusetts will take his seat;' which I dish,
6
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
259
and immediately rose again and presented another
petition. He did not dare tell me that I could not
proceed without permission of the House, and I pro-
ceeded. The threat to hang Northern abolitionists
was uttered by Preston of the Senate within the last
fortnight."
On March 12, of the same year, he presented
ninety-six petitions, nearly all of an anti-slav-
ery character, one of them for "expunging the
Declaration of Independence from the Jour-
nals."
On December 14, 1838, Mr. Wise, of Vir
ginia, objected to the reception of certain anti-
slavery petitions. The Speaker ruled his ob-
jection out of order, and from this ruling Wise
appealed. The question on the appeal was
taken by yeas and nays. When Mr. Adams's
name was called, he relates:
6
"I rose and said, 'Mr. Speaker, considering all the
resolutions introduced by the gentleman from New
Hampshire as’· The Speaker roared out, The
gentleman from Massachusetts must answer Aye or
No, and nothing else. Order!' With a reinforced
voice—I refuse to answer, because I consider all
the proceedings of the House as unconstitutional'
While in a firm and swelling voice I pronounced dis-
tinctly these words, the Speaker and about two thirds
of the House cried, 'order! order! order!' till it be-
came a perfect yell. I paused a moment for it to
260
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
cease and then said, 'a direct violation of the Consti-
tution of the United States.' While speaking these
words with loud, distinct, and slow articulation, the
bawl of 'order! order!' resounded again from two
thirds of the House. The Speaker, with agonizing
lungs, screamed, 'I call upon the House to support
me in the execution of my duty!' I then coolly re-
sumed my seat. Waddy Thompson, of South Caro-
lina, advancing into one of the aisles with a sarcastic
smile and silvery tone of voice, said, 'What aid from
the House would the Speaker desire?' The Speaker
snarled back, ‘The gentleman from South Carolina
is out of order!' and a peal of laughter burst forth
from all sides of the House."
So that little skirmish ended, much more
cheerfully than was often the case.
December 20, 1838, he presented fifty anti
slavery petitions, among which were three pray-
ing for the recognition of the Republic of Hayti.
Petitions of this latter kind he strenuously in-
sisted should be referred to a select committee,
or else to the Committee on Foreign Affairs,
accompanied in the latter case with explicit
instructions that a report thereon should be
brought in. He audaciously stated that he asked
for these instructions because so many petitions.
of a like tenor had been sent to the Foreign
Affairs Committee, and had found it a limbo
from which they never again emerged, and the
chairman had said that this would continue to
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
261
be the case.
The chairman, sitting two rows
behind Mr. Adams, said, "that insinuation
should not be made against a gentleman!" "I
shall make," retorted Mr. Adams, "what insin-
uation I please. This is not an insinuation, but
a direct, positive assertion.”
January 7, 1839, he cheerfully records that
he presented ninety-five petitions, bearing "di-
rectly or indirectly upon the slavery topics,"
and some of them very exasperating in their
language. March 30, 1840, he handed in no
less than five hundred and eleven petitions,
many of which were not receivable under the
"gag" rule adopted on January 28 of that
year, which had actually gone the length of re-
fusing so much as a reception to abolition pe-
titions. April 13, 1840, he presented a peti-
tion for the repeal of the laws in the District of
Columbia, which authorized the whipping of
Besides this he had a multitude of
others, and he only got through the presentation
of them "just as the morning hour expired."
On January 21, 1841, he found much amuse-
ment in puzzling his Southern adversaries by
presenting some petitions in which, besides the
usual anti-slavery prayers, there was a prayer
to refuse to admit to the Union any new State
whose constitution should tolerate slavery. The
Speaker said that only the latter prayer could
women.
262
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
be received under the "gag" rule. Connor, of
North Carolina, moved to lay on the table so
much of the petition as could be received. Mr.
Adams tauntingly suggested that in order to do
this it would be necessary to mutilate the doc-
ument by cutting it into two pieces; whereat
there was great wrath and confusion, "the
House got into a snarl, the Speaker knew not
what to do." The Southerners raved and fumed
for a while, and finally resorted to their usual
expedient, and dropped altogether a matter
which so sorely burned their fingers.
A fact, very striking in view of the subse-
quent course of events, concerning Mr. Adams's
relation with the slavery question, seems hith-
erto to have escaped the attention of those who
have dealt with his career. It may as well find
a place here as elsewhere in a narrative which it
is difficult to make strictly chronological. Ap-
parently he was the first to declare the doc-
trine, that the abolition of slavery could be law-
fully accomplished by the exercise of the war
powers of the Government. The earliest ex-
pression of this principle is found in a speech
made by him in May, 1836, concerning the
distribution of rations to fugitives from Indian
hostilities in Alabama and Georgia. He then
said:
"From the instant that your slave-holding States
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
263
become the theatre of war, civil, servile, or foreign,
from that instant the war powers of the Constitution
extend to interference with the institution of slavery
in every way in which it can be interfered with, from
a claim of indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed,
to a cession of the State burdened with slavery to a
foreign power."
In June, 1841, he made a speech of which no
report exists, but the contents of which may be
in part learned from the replies and references
to it which are on record. Therein he appears
to have declared that slavery could be abolished
in the exercise of the treaty-making power,
having reference doubtless to a treaty conclud-
ing a war.
These views were of course mere abstract ex-
pressions of opinion as to the constitutionality
of measures the real occurrence of which was
anticipated by nobody. But, as the first sug-
gestions of a doctrine in itself most obnoxious
to the Southern theory and fundamentally de-
structive of the great Southern "institution"
under perfectly possible circumstances, this enun-
ciation by Mr. Adams gave rise to much indig-
nation. Instead of allowing the imperfectly
formulated principle to lose its danger in obliv-
ion, the Southerners assailed it with vehemence.
They taunted Mr. Adams with the opinion, as if
merely to say that he held it was to damn him
264
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
to everlasting infamy. The only result was that
they induced him to consider the matter more
fully, and to express his belief more deliber-
ately. In January, 1842, Mr. Wise attacked
him upon this ground, and a month later Mar-
shall followed in the same strain. These as-
saults were perhaps the direct incentive to what
was said soon after by Mr. Adams, on April
14, 1842, in a speech concerning war with Eng-
land and with Mexico, of which there was then
some talk. Giddings, among other resolutions,
had introduced one to the effect that the slave
States had the exclusive right to be consulted
on the subject of slavery. Mr. Adams said that
he could not give his assent to this. One of the
laws of war, he said, is
"that when a country is invaded, and two hostile
armies are set in martial array, the commanders of
both armies have power to emancipate all the slaves
in the invaded territory."
He cited some precedents from South Ameri-
can history, and continued:
“Whether the war be servile, civil, or foreign, I lay
this down as the law of nations. I say that the mil-
itary authority takes for the time the place of all mu-
nicipal institutions, slavery among the rest. Under
that state of things, so far from its being true that the
States where slavery exists have the exclusive man-
agement of the subject, not only the President of the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
265
United States but the commander of the army has
power to order the universal emancipation of the
slaves."
This declaration of constitutional doctrine
was made with much positiveness and emphasis.
There for many years the matter rested. The
principle had been clearly asserted by Mr. Ad-
ams, angrily repudiated by the South, and in
the absence of the occasion of war there was
nothing more to be done in the matter. But
when the exigency at last came, and the govern-
ment of the United States were brought face
to face with by far the gravest constitutional
problem presented by the great rebellion, then
no other solution presented itself save that which
had been suggested twenty years earlier in the
days of peace by Mr. Adams. It was in pur-
suance of the doctrine to which he thus gave
the first utterance that slavery was forever abol-
ished in the United States. Extracts from the
last-quoted speech long stood as the motto of
the "Liberator;" and at the time of the Eman-
cipation Proclamation Mr. Adams was regarded
as the chief and sufficient authority for an act
so momentous in its effect, so infinitely useful
in a matter of national extremity. But it was
evidently a theory which had taken strong hold
upon him. Besides the foregoing speeches there
is an explicit statement of it in a letter which
266
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
he wrote from Washington April 4, 1836, to
Hon. Solomon Lincoln, of Hingham, a friend
and constituent. After touching upon other
topics he says:—
"The new pretensions of the slave representation
in Congress of a right to refuse to receive petitions, and
that Congress have no constitutional power to abolish
slavery or the slave-trade in the District of Columbia,
forced upon me so much of the discussion as I did
take upon me, but in which you are well aware I did
not and could not speak a tenth part of my mind. I
did not, for example, start the question whether by
the law of God and of nature man can hold property,
HEREDITARY property, in man. I did not start the
question whether in the event of a servile insurrection
and war, Congress would not have complete unlimited
control over the whole subject of slavery, even to the
emancipation of all the slaves in the State where such
insurrection should break out, and for the suppression
of which the freemen of Plymouth and Norfolk coun-
ties, Massachusetts, should be called by Acts of Con-
gress to pour out their treasures and to shed their
blood. Had I spoken my mind on these two points,
the sturdiest of the abolitionists would have disavowed
the sentiments of their champion."
The projected annexation of Texas, which
became a battle-ground whereon the tide of
conflict swayed so long and so fiercely to and
fro, profoundly stirred Mr. Adams's indigna-
tion. It is, he said, "a question of far deeper
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
267
root and more overshadowing branches than
any or all others that now agitate this country.
.. I had opened it by my speech. . . on
the 25th May, 1836 by far the most noted
speech that I ever made." He based his oppo-
sition to the annexation upon constitutional
objections, and on September 18, 1837, offered
a resolution that "the power of annexing the
people of any independent State to this Union
is a power not delegated by the Constitution of
the United States to their Congress or to any
department of their government, but reserved
to the people." The Speaker refused to re-
ceive the motion, or even allow it to be read,
on the ground that it was not in order. Mr.
Adams repeated substantially the same motion
in June, 1838, then adding "that any attempt
by act of Congress or by treaty to annex the
Republic of Texas to this Union would be an
usurpation of power which it would be the
right and the duty of the free people of the
Union to resist and annul." The story of his
opposition to this measure is, however, so in-
terwoven with his general antagonism to slav-
ery, that there is little occasion for treating
them separately.¹
1 In an address to his constituents in September, 1842, Mr
Adams spoke of his course concerning Texas. Having men
tioned Mr. Van Buren's reply, derlining the formal proposition
268
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
People sometimes took advantage of his
avowed principles concerning freedom of peti-
tion to put him in positions which they thought
would embarrass him or render him ridiculous.
Not much success, however, attended these fool-
ish efforts of shallow wits. It was not easy to
disconcert him or to take him at disadvantage.
July 28, 1841, he presented a paper of this
character coming from sundry Virginians and
praying that all the free colored population
should be sold or expelled from the country.
made in 1837 by the Republic of Texas for annexation to the
United States, he continued: "But the slave-breeding passion
for the annexation was not to be so disconcerted. At the en-
suing session of Congress numerous petitions and memorials
for and against the annexation were presented to the House,
. . . and were referred to the Committee of Foreign Affairs,
who, without ever taking them into consideration, towards the
close of the session asked to be discharged from the consider-
ation of them all. It was on this report that the debate arose,
in which I disclosed the whole system of duplicity and perfidy
towards Mexico, which had marked the Jackson Administra-
tion from its commencement to its close. It silenced the
clamors for the annexation of Texas to this Union for three
years till the catastrophe of the Van Buren Administration.
The people of the free States were lulled into the belief that
the whole project was abandoned, and that they should hear
no more of slave-trade cravings for the annexation of Texas.
Had Harrison lived they would have heard no more of them
to this day, but no sooner was John Tyler installed in the
President's House, than nullification and Texas and war with
Mexico rose again upon the surface, with eye steadily fixed
upon the Polar Star of Southern slave-dealing supremacy in
the government of the Union."
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
269
He simply stated as he handed in the sheet that
nothing could be more abhorrent to him than
this prayer, and that his respect for the right of
petition was his only motive for presenting this.
It was suspended under the "gag" rule, and
its promoters, unless very easily amused, must
have been sadly disappointed with the fate and
effect of their joke. On March 5, 1838, he
received from Rocky Mount in Virginia a letter
and petition praying that the House would ar-
raign at its bar and forever expel John Quincy
Adams. He presented both documents, with
a resolution asking that they be referred to a
committee for investigation and report. His
enemies in the House saw that he was sure
to have the best of the sport, if the matter
should be pursued, and succeeded in laying it
on the table. Waddy Thompson thoughtfully
improved the opportunity to mention to Mr.
Adams that he also had received a petition,
"numerously signed,” praying for Mr. Adams's
expulsion, but had never presented it. In the
following May Mr. Adams presented another
petition of like tenor. Dromgoole said that he
supposed it was a "quiz," and that he would
move to lay it on the table, "unless the gentle-
man from Massachusetts wished to give it an-
other direction." Mr. Adams said that "the
gentleman from Massachusetts cared very lit-
270
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
tle about it," and it found the limbo of the
"table.'
To this same period belongs the memorable
tale of Mr. Adams's attempt to present a peti-
tion from slaves. On February 6, 1837, he
brought in some two hundred abolition peti-
tions. He closed with one against the slave-
trade in the District of Columbia purporting
to be signed by "nine ladies of Fredericksburg,
Virginia," whom he declined to name because,
as he said, in the present disposition of the
country," he did not know what might happen
to them if he did name them." Indeed, he
added, he was not sure that the petition was
genuine; he had said, when he began to pre-
sent his petitions, that some among them were
so peculiar that he was in doubt as to their
genuineness, and this fell within the descrip-
tion. Apparently he had concluded and was
about to take his seat, when he quickly caught
up another sheet, and said that he held in his
hand a paper concerning which he should wish
to have the decision of the Speaker before pre-
senting it. It purported to be a petition from
twenty-two slaves, and he would like to know
whether it came within the rule of the House
concerning petitions relating to slavery. The
Speaker, in manifest confusion, said that he
could not answer the question until he knew
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
271
the contents of the document. Mr. Adams,
remarking that "it was one of those petitions
which had occurred to his mind as not being
what it purported to be," proposed to send it
up to the Chair for inspection. Objection was
made to this, and the Speaker said that the
circumstances were so extraordinary that he
would take the sense of the House. That body,
at first inattentive, now became interested, and
no sooner did a knowledge of what was going
on spread among those present than great ex-
citement prevailed. Members were hastily
brought in from the lobbies; many tried to
speak, and from parts of the hall cries of
"Expel him! Expel him!" were heard. For a
brief interval no one of the enraged Southern-
ers was equal to the unforeseen emergency.
Mr. Haynes moved the rejection of the peti-
tion. Mr. Lewis deprecated this motion, being
of opinion that the House must inflict punish-
ment on the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. Haynes thereupon withdrew a motion which
was so obviously inadequate to the vindictive
gravity of the occasion. Mr. Grantland stood
ready to second a motion to punish Mr. Adams,
and Mr. Lewis said that if punishment should
not be meted out it would "pe better for the
representatives from the slave-holding States
to go home at once." Mr. Alford said that so
272
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
soon as the petition should be presented he
would move that it should "be taken from the
House and burned." At last Mr. Thompson
got a resolution into shape as follows:
"That the Hon. John Quincy Adams, by the at-
tempt just made by him to introduce a petition pur-
porting on its face to be from slaves, has been guilty
of a gross disrespect to this House, and that he be
instantly brought to the bar to receive the severe
censure of the Speaker."
In supporting this resolution he said that
Mr. Adams's action was in gross and wilful vio-
lation of the rules of the House and an insult
to its members. He even threatened criminal
proceedings before the grand jury of the Dis-
trict of Columbia, saying that if that body had
the "proper intelligence and spirit" people.
might “yet see an incendiary brought to con-
dign punishment." Mr. Haynes, not satisfied
with Mr. Thompson's resolution, proposed a
substitute to the effect that Mr. Adams had
"rendered himself justly liable to the severest
censure of this House and is censured accord-
ingly." Then there ensued a little more ex-
cited speech-making and another resolution, that
Mr. Adams,
"by his attempt to introduce into this House a
petition from slaves for the abolition of slavery in
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
273
the District of Columbia, has committed an outrage
on the feelings of the people of a large portion of
this Union; a flagrant contempt on the dignity of this
House; and, by extending to slaves a privilege only
belonging to freemen, directly incites the slave pop-
ulation to insurrection; and that the said member
be forthwith called to the bar of the House and be
censured by the Speaker."
Mr. Lewis remained of opinion that it might
be best for the Southern members to go home,
- a proposition which afterwards drew forth a
flaming speech from Mr. Alford, who, far from
inclining to go home, was ready to stay "until
this fair city is a field of Waterloo and this
beautiful Potomac a river of blood." Mr.
Patton, of Virginia, was the first to speak a
few words to bring members to their senses,
pertinently asking whether Mr. Adams had
"attempted to offer" this petition, and whether
it did indeed pray for the abolition of slavery.
It might be well, he suggested, for his friends
to be sure of their facts before going further.
Then at last Mr. Adams, who had not at all
lost his head in the general hurly-burly, rose
and said, that amid these numerous resolutions
charging him with "high crimes and misde-
meanors" and calling him to the bar of the
House to answer for the same, he had thought
it proper to remain silent until the House should
18
274
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
take some action; that he did not suppose
that, if he should be brought to the bar of the
House, he should be "struck mute by the pre-
vious question" before he should have been
given an opportunity to "say a word or two"
in his own defence. As to the facts:
"I did
not present the petition," he said, “and I ap-
peal to the Speaker to say that I did not. . .
I intended to take the decision of the Speaker
before I went one step towards presenting or
offering to present that petition." The con-
tents of the petition, should the House ever
choose to read it, he continued, would render
necessary some amendments at least in the last
resolution, since the prayer was that slavery
should not be abolished! "The gentleman from
Alabama may perchance find, that the object
of this petition is precisely what he desires to
accomplish; and that these slaves who have
sent this paper to me are his auxiliaries instead
of being his opponents."
These remarks caused some discomfiture
among the Southern members, who were glad
to have time for deliberation given them by a
maundering speech from Mr. Mann, of New
York, who talked about "the deplorable spec-
tacle shown off every petition day by the hon-
orable member from Massachusetts in present-
ing the abolition petitions of his infatuated
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
275
friends and constituents;" charged Mr. Adams
with running counter to the sense of the whole
country with a “violence paralleled only by
the revolutionary madness of desperation," and
twitted him with his political friendlessness,
with his age, and with the insinuation of wan-
ing faculties and judgment. This little phial
having been emptied, Mr. Thompson arose and
angrily assailed Mr. Adams for contemptuously
trifling with the House, which charge he based
upon the entirely unproved assumption that
the petition was not a genuine document. He
concluded by presenting new resolutions bet-
ter adapted to the recent development of the
case:
1. "That the Hon. John Quincy Adams, by an
effort to present a petition from slaves, has committed
a gross contempt of this House.
"2. That the member from Massachusetts above-
named, by creating the impression and leaving the
House under such impression, that the said petition
was for the abolition of slavery, when he knew that
it was not, has trifled with the House.
"3. That the Hon. John Quincy Adams receive the
censure of the House for his conduct referred to in
the preceding resolutions."
Mr. Pinckney said that the avowal by Mr.
Adams that he had in his possession the peti-
tion of slaves was an admission of communi-
276
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
cation with slaves, and so was evidence of col-
lusion with them; and that Mr. Adams had
thus rendered himself indictable for aiding and
abetting insurrection. A fortiori, then, was
he not amenable to the censure of the House?
Mr. Haynes, of Georgia, forgetting that the pe-
tition had not been presented, announced his
intention of moving that it should be rejected
subject only to a permission for its withdrawal;
another member suggested that, if the petition
should be disposed of by burning, it would be
well to commit to the same combustion the
gentleman who presented it.
On the next day some more resolutions were
ready, prepared by Dromgoole, who in his sober
hours was regarded as the best parliamentarian
in the Southern party. These were, that Mr.
Adams
"by stating in his place that he had in his posses-
sion a paper purporting to be a petition from slaves,
and inquiring if it came within the meaning of a res-
olution heretofore adopted (as preliminary to its
presentation), has given color to the idea that slaves
have the right of petition and of his readiness to be
their organ; and that for the same he deserves the
censure of the House.
•
“That the aforesaid John Quincy Adams receive a
censure from the Speaker in the presence of the
House of Representatives."
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
277
Mr. Alford, in advocating these resolutions,
talked about "this awful crisis of our beloved
country." Mr. Robertson, though opposing
the resolutions, took pains "strongly to con-
demn . . . the conduct of the gentleman from
Massachusetts." Mr. Adams's colleague, Mr.
Lincoln, spoke in his behalf, so also did Mr.
Evans, of Maine; and Caleb Cushing made a
powerful speech upon his side. Otherwise than
this Mr. Adams was left to carry on the con-
test single-handed against the numerous array
of assailants, all incensed and many fairly sav-
age. Yet it is a striking proof of the dread
in which even the united body of hot-blooded
Southerners stood of this hard fighter from the
North, that as the debate was drawing to a close,
after they had all said their say and just before
his opportunity came for making his elabo-
rate speech of defence they suddenly and op-
portunely became ready to content themselves.
with a mild resolution, which condemned gen-
erally the presentation of petitions from slaves,
and, for the disposal of this particular case,
recited that Mr. Adams had "solemnly dis-
claimed all design of doing anything disrespect-
ful to the House," and had "avowed his inten-
tion not to offer to present" to the House the
petition of this kind held by him; that "there
fore all further proceedings in regard to his
278
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
""
conduct do now cease. A sneaking effort by
Mr. Vanderpoel to close Mr. Adams's mouth
by moving the previous question involved too
much cowardice to be carried; and so on Febru-
ary 9 the sorely bated man was at last able to
begin his final speech. He conducted his de-
fence with singular spirit and ability, but at too
great length to admit of even a sketch of what
he said. He claimed the right of petition for
slaves, and established it so far as argument can
establish anything. He alleged that all he had
done was to ask a question of the Speaker, and
if he was to be censured for so doing, then how
much more, he asked, was the Speaker deserv-
ing of censure who had even put the same
question to the House, and given as his reason
for so doing that it was not only of novel but
of difficult import! He repudiated the idea
that any member of the House could be held
by a grand jury to respond for words spoken
in debate, and recommended the gentlemen
who had indulged in such preposterous threats
“to study a little the first principles of civil
liberty," excoriating them until they actually
arose and tried to explain away their own lan-
guagé.
He cast infinite ridicule upon the un-
happy expression of Dromgoole, "giving color
to an idea." Referring to the difficulty which
he encountered by reason of the variety and
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
279
disorder of the resolutions and charges against
him with which "gentlemen from the South
had pounced down upon him like so many
eagles upon a dove," there was an exquisite
- he said: "When I
sarcasm in the simile!
•
•
take up one idea, before I can give color to
the idea, it has already changed its form and
presents itself for consideration under other
colors. What defence can be made against
this new crime of giving color to ideas?" As
for trifling with the House by presenting a
petition which in the course of debate had be-
come pretty well known and acknowledged to
be a hoax designed to lead Mr. Adams into a
position of embarrassment and danger, he dis-
claimed any such motive, reminding members
that he had given warning, when beginning to
present his petitions, that he was suspicious
that some among them might not be genuine.¹
1 Mr. Adams afterward said: "I believed the petition signed
by female names to be genuine. . . . I had suspicions that the
other, purporting to be from slaves, came really from the hand
of a master who had prevailed on his slaves to sign it, that
they might have the appearance of imploring the members
from the North to cease offering petitions for their emancipa-
tion, which could have no other tendency than to aggravate
their servitude, and of being so impatient under the operation
of petitions in their favor as to pray that the Northern mem-
bers who should persist in presenting them should be ex-
pelled." It was a part of the prayer of the petition that Mr.
Adams should be expelled if he should continue to present
abolition petitions.
280
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
But while denying all intention of trifling with
the House, he rejected the mercy extended to
him in the last of the long series of resolutions
before that body. "I disclaim not," he said,
66
any particle of what I have done, not a sin-
gle word of what I have said do I unsay; nay,
I am ready to do and to say the same to-mor-
row." He had no notion of aiding in making
a loophole through which his blundering en-
emies might escape, even though he himself
should be accorded the privilege of crawling
through it with them. At times during his
speech "there was great agitation in the
House," but when he closed no one seemed am-
bitious to reply. His enemies had learned
anew a lesson, often taught to them before and
often to be impressed upon them again, that it
was perilous to come to close quarters with Mr.
Adams. They gave up all idea of censuring
him, and were content to apply a very mild
emollient to their own smarting wounds in the
shape of a resolution, to the effect that slaves
did not possess the right of petition secured by
the Constitution to the people of the United
States.
In the winter of 1842-3 the questions arising
out of the affair of the Creole rendered the
position then held by Mr. Adams at the head of
the House Committee on Foreign Affairs ex
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
281
ceedingly distasteful to the slave-holders. On
January 21, 1842, a somewhat singular mani-
festation of this feeling was made when Mr.
Adams himself presented a petition from Geor-
gia praying for his removal from this Chair-
manship. Upon this he requested to be heard
in his own behalf. The Southern party, not
sanguine of any advantage from debating the
matter, tried to lay it on the table. The peti-
tion was alleged by Habersham, of Georgia, to
be undoubtedly another hoax. But Mr. Adams,
loath to lose a good opportunity, still claimed
to be heard on the charges made against him
by the "infamous slave-holders." Mr. Smith, of
Virginia, said that the House had lately given
Mr. Adams leave to defend himself against the
charge of monomania, and asked whether he
was doing so. Some members cried "Yes!
Yes!"; others shouted "No! he is establishing
the fact." The wrangling was at last brought
to an end by the Speaker's declaration, that the
petition must lie over for the present. But the
scene had been only the prelude to one much
longer, fiercer, and more exciting. No sooner
was the document thus temporarily disposed of
than Mr. Adams rose and presented the peti-
tion of forty-five citizens of Haverhill, Massa-
chusetts, praying the House "immediately to
adopt measures peaceably to dissolve the union
282
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
of these States," for the alleged cause of the
incompatibility between free and slave-holding
communities. He moved "its reference to a
select committee, with instructions to report
an answer to the petitioners showing the rea-
sons why the prayer of it ought not to be
granted."
In a moment the House was aflame with ex-
citement. The numerous members who hated
Mr. Adams thought that at last he was experi-
encing the divinely sent madness which fore-
runs destruction. Those who sought his polit-
ical annihilation felt that the appointed and
glorious hour of extinction had come; those
who had writhed beneath the castigation of his
invective exulted in the near revenge. While
one said that the petition should never have
been brought within the walls of the House,
and another wished to burn it in the presence
of the members, Mr. Gilmer, of Virginia, offered
a resolution, that in presenting the petition
Mr. Adams " had justly incurred the censure of
the House." Some objection was made to this
resolution as not being in order; but Mr. Ad-
ams said that he hoped that it would be re-
ceived and debated and that an opportunity
would be given him to speak in his own de-
fence; "especially as the gentleman from Vir-
ginia had thought proper to play second fiddle
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
283
1
to his colleague ¹ from Accomac." Mr. Gilmer
retorted that he "played second fiddle to no
man. He was no fiddler, but was endeavoring
to prevent the music of him who,
'In the space of one revolving moon,
Was statesman, poet, fiddler, and buffoon.""
On
The resolution was then laid on the table. The
House rose, and Mr. Adams went home and
noted in his diary, "evening in meditation,"
for which indeed he had abundant cause.
the following day Thomas F. Marshall, of Ken-
tucky, offered a substitute for Gilmer's resolu-
tion. This new fulmination had been prepared
in a caucus of forty members of the slave-hold-
ing party, and was long and carefully framed.
Its preamble recited, in substance, that a pe-
tition to dissolve the Union, proposing to
Congress to destroy that which the several
members had solemnly and officially sworn to
support, was a "high breach of privilege, a
contempt offered to this House, a direct propo-
sition to the Legislature and each member of
it to commit perjury, and involving necessarily
in its execution and its consequences the de-
struction of our country and the crime of high
treason:" wherefore it was to be resolved that
Mr. Adams, in presenting a petition for dissolu-
tion, had offered the deepest indignity to the
1 Henry A. Wise.
284
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
House" and "an insult to the people;" that
if "this outrage" should be "permitted to pass
unrebuked and unpunished" he would have
"disgraced his country . . . in the eyes of the
whole world;" that for this insult and this
"wound at the Constitution and existence of his
country, the peace, the security and liberty of
the people of these States" he " might well be
held to merit expulsion from the national coun-
cils ;" and that "the House deem it an act of
grace and mercy when they only inflict upon
him their severest censure;" that so much they
must do "for the maintenance of their own
purity and dignity; for the rest they turned
him over to his own conscience and the indig-
nation of all true American citizens."
These resolutions were then advocated by
Mr. Marshall at great length and with extreme
bitterness. Mr. Adams replied shortly, stating
that he should wish to make his full defence at
a later stage of the debate. Mr. Wise followed
in a personal and acrimonious harangue; Mr.
Everett¹ gave some little assistance to Mr. Ad-
ams, and the House again adjourned. The fol-
lowing day Wise continued his speech, very
elaborately. When he closed, Mr. Adams, who
had "determined not to interrupt him till he
had discharged his full cargo of filthy invec-
tive," rose to "make a preliminary point." He
1 Horace Everett of Vermont.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
285
questioned the right of the House to entertain
Marshall's resolutions since the preamble as-
sumed him to be guilty of the crimes of subor-
nation of perjury and treason, and the resolu-
tions themselves censured him as if he had been
found guilty; whereas in fact he had not been
tried upon these charges and of course had not
been convicted. If he was to be brought to
trial upon them he asserted his right to have
the proceedings conducted before a jury of his
peers, and that the House was not a tribunal
having this authority. But if he was to be
tried for contempt, for which alone he could
lawfully be tried by the House, still there were
an hundred members sitting on its benches who
were morally disqualified to judge him, who
could not give him an impartial trial, because
they were prejudiced and the question was one
"on which their personal, pecuniary, and most
sordid interests were at stake." Such consid-
erations, he said, ought to prevent many gen-
tlemen from voting, as Mr. Wise had avowed
that they would prevent him. Here Wise in-
terrupted to disavow that he was influenced by
any such reasons, but rather, he said, by the
"personal loathing, dread, and contempt I feel
for the man." Mr. Adams, continuing after this
pleasant interjection, admitted that he was in
the power of the majority, who might try him
286
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
against law and condemn him against right if
they would.
"If they say they will try me, they must try me.
If they say they will punish me, they must punish
me. But if they say that in peace and mercy they
will spare me expulsion, I disdain and cast away their
mercy; and I ask them if they will come to such a
trial and expel me. I defy them. I have constituents
to go to who will have something to say if this House
expels me. Nor will it be long before the gentlemen
will see me here again."
Such was the fierce temper and indomitable
courage of this inflexible old man!
He flung
contempt in the face of those who had him
wholly in their power, and in the same breath
in which he acknowledged that power he dared
them to use it. He charged Wise with the
guilt of innocent blood, in connection with cer-
tain transactions in a duel, and exasperated
that gentleman into crying out that the "charge
made by the gentleman from Massachusetts was
as base and black a lie as the traitor was base
and black who uttered it." When he was asked
by the Speaker to put his point of order in writ
ing, his own request to the like effect in an-
other case having been refused shortly before,
- he tauntingly congratulated that gentleman
"upon his discovery of the expediency of having
points of order reduced to writing a favor
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
287
which he had repeatedly denied to me." When
Mr. Wise was speaking, "I interrupted him oc-
casionally," says Mr. Adams, "sometimes to
provoke him into absurdity." As usual he was
left to fight out his desperate battle substan-
tially single-handed. Only Mr. Everett occa-
sionally helped him a very little; while one or
two others who spoke against the resolutions
were careful to explain that they felt no per-
sonal good-will towards Mr. Adams. But he
faced the odds courageously. It was no new
thing for him to be pitted alone against a "solid
South." Outside the walls of the House he had
some sympathy and some assistance tendered
him by individuals, among others by Rufus
Choate then in the Senate, and by his own col-
leagues from Massachusetts. This support aided
and cheered him somewhat, but could not pre-
vent substantially the whole burden of the labor
and brunt of the contest from bearing upon him
alone. Among the external manifestations of
feeling, those of hostility were naturally largely
in the ascendant. The newspapers of Washing-
ton—the Globe and the National Intelligencer
- which reported the debates, daily filled their
columns with all the abuse and invective which
was poured forth against him, while they gave
the most meagre statements, or none at all, of
what he said in his own defence. Among other
288
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
amenities he received from North Carolina an
anonymous letter threatening him with assas-
sination, having also an engraved portrait of
him with the mark of a rifle-ball in the fore-
head, and the motto "to stop the music of
John Quincy Adams," etc., etc. This missive
he read and displayed in the House, but it was
received with profound indifference by men who
would not have greatly objected to the execu-
tion of the barbarous threat.
The prolonged struggle cost him deep anx-
iety and sleepless nights, which in the declining
years of a laborious life told hardly upon his
aged frame. But against all odds of numbers
and under all disadvantages of circumstances
the past repeated itself and Mr. Adams alone
won a victory over all the cohorts of the South.
Several attempts had been made during the
debate to lay the whole subject on the table.
Mr. Adams said that he would consent to this
simply because his defence would be a very
long affair, and he did not wish to have the
time of the House consumed and the business
of the nation brought to a stand solely for the
consideration of his personal affairs. These prop-
ositions failing, he began his speech and soon
was making such headway that even his adver
saries were constrained to see that the opportu
nity which they had conceived to be within their
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
289
grasp was eluding them, as had so often hap-
pened before. Accordingly on February 7 the
motion to “lay the whole subject on the table
forever" was renewed and carried by one hun-
dred and six votes to ninety-three. The House
then took up the original petition and refused
to receive it by one hundred and sixty-six to
forty. No sooner was this consummation reached
than the irrepressible champion rose to his feet
and proceeded with his budget of anti-slavery
petitions, of which he "presented nearly two
hundred, till the House adjourned."
Within a very
short time there came further
and convincing proof that Mr. Adams was vic-
tor. On February 26 he writes: "D. D. Bar-
nard told me he had received a petition from
his District, signed by a small number of very
respectable persons, praying for a dissolution of
the Union. He said he did not know what to
do with it. I dined with him." By March 14
this dinner bore fruit. Mr. Barnard had made
up his mind "what to do with it." He pre-
sented it, with a motion that it be referred to a
select committee with instructions to report ad-
versely to its prayer. The well-schooled House
now took the presentation without a ripple of
excitement, and was content with simply voting
not to receive the petition.
In the midst of the toil and anxiety imposed
19
290
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
upon Mr. Adams by this effort to censure and
disgrace him, the scheme, already referred to,
for displacing him from the chairmanship of the
Committee on Foreign Affairs had been actively
prosecuted. He was notified that the Southern
members had formed a cabal for removing him
and putting Caleb Cushing in his place. The
plan was, however, temporarily checked, and so
soon as Mr. Adams had triumphed in the House
the four Southern members of the committee
sent to the House a paper begging to be ex-
cused from further services on the committee,
"because from recent occurrences it was doubt-
ful whether the House would remove the chair-
man, and they were unwilling to serve with one
in whom they had no confidence." The fugi-
tives were granted, "by a shout of acclamation,"
the excuse which they sought for so welcome a
reason, and the same was also done for a fifth
member. Three more of the same party, nomi-
nated to fill these vacancies, likewise asked to be
excused, and were so. Their letters preferring
this request were "so insulting personally to
Mr. Adams as to constitute "gross breaches of
privilege." "The Speaker would have refused
to receive or present them had they referred to
any other man in the House." They were pub-
lished, but Mr. Adams, after some hesitation,
determined not to give them the importance
""
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
291
which would result from any public notice in
the House upon his part. He could afford to
keep silence, and judged wisely in doing so.
Amid all the animosity and rancor enter-
tained towards Mr. Adams, there yet lurked
a degree of respect for his courage, honesty,
and ability which showed itself upon occasion,
doubtless not a little to the surprise of the
members themselves who were hardly conscious
that they entertained such sentiments until
startled into a manifestation of them. An em-
inent instance of this is to be found in the story
of the troubled days preceding the organization
of the twenty-sixth Congress. On December
2, 1839, the members elect of that body came
together in Washington, with the knowledge
that the seats of ive gentlemen from New Jer-
sey, who brought with them the regular guber-
natorial certificate of their election, would be
contested by five other claimants. According
to custom Garland, clerk of the last House,
called the assemblage to order and began the
roll-call. When he came to New Jersey he
called the name of one member from that State,
and then said that there were five other seats
which were contested, and that not feeling
authorized to decide the dispute he would pass
over the names of the New Jersey members
and proceed with the roll till the House should
292
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
be formed, when the question could be de
cided. Plausible as appeared this abstention
from an exercise of authority in so grave a dis-
pute, it was nevertheless really an assumption
and not a deprecation of power, and as such
was altogether unjustifiable. The clerk's sole
business was to call the names of those persons
who presented the usual formal credentials; he
had no right to take cognizance that the seats
of any such persons might be the subject of a
contest, which could properly be instituted, con-
ducted, and determined only before and by the
House itself when organized. But his course
was not innocent of a purpose. So evenly was
the House divided that the admission or ex-
clusion of these four members in the first in-
stance would determine the po itical complexion
of the body. The members holding the certifi-
cates were Whigs; if the clerk could keep them
out until the organization of the House should
be completed, then the Democrats would con-
trol that organization, would elect their Speaker,
and through him would make up the commit-
tees.
Naturally enough this arrogation of power
by the clerk, the motives and consequences of
which were abundantly obvious, raised a ter-
rible storm. The debate continued till four
'clock in the afternoon, when a motion was
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
293
made to adjourn. The clerk said that he could
put no question, not even of adjournment,
till the House should be formed. But there
was a general cry to adjourn, and the clerk
declared the House adjourned. Mr. Adams
went home and wrote in his Diary that the
clerk's "two decisions form together an insur-
mountable objection to the transaction of any
business, and an impossibility of organizing the
House. . . The most curious part of the case
is, that his own election as clerk depends upon
the exclusion of the New Jersey members.'
The next day was consumed in a fierce debate
as to whether the clerk should be allowed to
read an explanatory statement. Again the clerk
refused to put the question of adjournment,
but, "upon inspection," declared an adjourn-
ment. Some called out "a count! a count!"
while most rushed out of the hall, and Wise
cried loudly, "Now we are a mob ! The next
day there was more violent debating, but no
progress towards a decision. Various party
leaders offered resolutions, none of which ac-
complished anything. The condition was ridic-
ulous, disgraceful, and not without serious pos
sibilities of danger. Neither did any light of
encouragement break in any quarter. In the
crisis there seemed, by sudden consent of all, to
be a turning towards Mr Adams. Prominent
""
294
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
men of both parties came to him and begged
him to interfere. He was reluctant to plunge
into the embroilment; but the great urgency
and the abundant assurances of support placed
little less than actual compulsion upon him.
Accordingly on December 5 he rose to address
the House. He was greeted as a Deus ex
machina. Not speaking to the clerk, but turn-
ing directly to the assembled members, he be-
gan: "Fellow-citizens! Members elect of the
twenty-sixth Congress!" He could not resist.
the temptation of administering a brief but se-
vere and righteous castigation to Garland; and
then, ignoring that functionary altogether, pro-
ceeded to beg the House to organize itself. To
this end he said that he would offer a resolution
ordering the clerk to call the members from
New Jersey possessing the credentials from the
Governor of that State." There had been al-
ready no lack of resolutions, but the difficulty
lay in the clerk's obstinate refusal to put the
question upon them. So now the puzzled cry
went up: "How shall the question be put?"
"I intend to put the question myself," said the
dauntless old man, wholly equal to the emer-
gency. A tumult of applause resounded upon
ali sides. Rhett, of South Carolina, sprang up
and offered a resolution, that Williams, of North
Carolina, the oldest member of the House, be
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
295
appointed chairman of the meeting; but upon
objection by Williams, he substituted the name
of Mr. Adams, and put the question. He was
"answered by an almost universal shout in the
affirmative." Whereupon Rhett and Williams.
conducted the old man to the chair. It was a
proud moment. Wise, of Virginia, afterward
said, addressing a complimentary speech to Mr.
Adams, "and if, when you shall be gathered to
your fathers, I were asked to select the words
which in my judgment are calculated to give at
once the best character of the man, I would in-
scribe upon your tomb this sentence, I will put
the question myself!"" Doubtless Wise and a
good many more would have been glad enough
to put almost any epitaph on a tombstone for
Mr. Adams.1 It must, however, be acknowl-
edged that the impetuous Southerners behaved
very handsomely by their arch foe on this oc-
casion, and were for once as chivalrous in fact
as they always were in profession.
Smooth water had by no means been reached
when Mr. Adams was placed at the helm; on
the contrary, the buffetting became only the
more severe when the members were no longer
1 Not quite two years later, pending a motion to reprimand
Mr. Wise for fighting with a member on the floor of the
House, that gentleman took pains insultingly to say, “that
there was but one man in the House whose judgment he was
anwilling to abide by," and that man was Mr. Adams.
296
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
restrained by a lurking dread of grave disaster
if not of utter shipwreck. Between two bit-
terly incensed and evenly divided parties en-
gaged in a struggle for an important prize, Mr.
Adams, having no strictly lawful authority per-
taining to his singular and anomalous position,
was hard taxed to perform his functions. It is
impossible to follow the intricate and acrimo-
nious quarrels of the eleven days which suc-
ceeded until on December 16, upon the eleventh
ballot, R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, was elected
Speaker, and Mr. Adams was relieved from the
most arduous duty imposed upon him during
his life. In the course of the debates there had
been "much vituperation and much equally
unacceptable compliment " lavished upon him.
After the organization of the House, there was
some talk of moving a vote of thanks, but he
entreated that it should not be done. "In the
rancorous and bitter temper of the Adminis-
tration party, exasperated by their disappoint.
ment in losing their Speaker, the resolution of
thanks," he said, "would have been lost if it
had been offered." However this might have
been, history has determined this occurrence
to have been one of the most brilliant episodes
in a life which had many distinctions.
A few incidents indicative of respect must
have been welcome enough in the solitary fight-
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
297
laden career of Mr. Adams. He needed some
occasional encouragement to keep him from
sinking into despondency; for though he was of
so unyielding and belligerent a disposition, of
such ungracious demeanor, so uncompromising
with friend and foe, yet he was a man of deep
and strong feelings, and in a way even very sen-
sitive though a proud reserve kept the secret of
this quality so close that few suspected it. His
Diary during his Congressional life shows a
man doing his duty sternly rather than cheer-
fully, treading resolutely a painful path, having
the reward which attends upon a clear conscience,
but neither light-hearted nor often even happy.
Especially he was frequently disappointed at the
returns which he received from others, and con-
sidered himself" ill-treated by every public man
whom circumstances had brought into competi-
tion with him;" they had returned his "acts of
kindness and services" with "gross injustice."
The reflection did not induce him to deflect his
course in the least, but it was made with much
bitterness of spirit. Toward the close of 1835
he writes:
(6
Among the dark spots in human nature which in
the course of my life I have observed, the devices of
rivals to ruin me have been sorry pictures of the
heart of man. . . . H. G. Otis, Theophilus Parsons,
Timothy Pickering, James A. Bayard, Henry Clay,
298
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Jonathan Russell, William H. Crawford, John C.
Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and John
Davis, W. B. Giles, and John Randolph, have used
up their faculties in base and dirty tricks to thwart
my progress in life and destroy my character."
Truly a long and exhaustive list of enmities!
One can but suspect that a man of so many
quarrels must have been quarrelsome. Certain
it is, however, that in nearly every difference
which Mr. Adams had in his life a question of
right and wrong, of moral or political principle,
had presented itself to him. His intention was
always good, though his manner was so habit-
ually irritating. He himself says that to nearly
all these men Russell alone specifically ex-
cepted — he had "returned good for evil,” that
he had "never wronged any one of them," and
had even "neglected too much his self-defence.
against them." In October, 1833, he said: “I
subject myself to so much toil and so much
enmity, with so very little apparent fruit, that
I sometimes ask myself whether I do not mis-
take my own motives. The best actions of my
life make me nothing but enemies." In Feb-
ruary, 1841, he made a powerful speech in cas-
tigation of Henry A. Wise, who had been up-
holding in Southern fashion slavery, duelling,
and nullification. He received afterward some
messages of praise and sympathy, but noteć
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
299
66
with pain that his colleagues thought it one of
his eccentric, wild, extravagant freaks of pas-
sion;" and with a pathetic sense of loneliness he
adds: "All around me is cold and discouraging
and my own feelings are wound up to a pitch
that my reason can scarcely endure. A few
days later he had the pleasure of hearing one of
the members say, in a speech, that there was an
opinion among many that Mr. Adams was in-
sane and did not know what he said. While a
fight was going on such incidents only fired his
blood, but afterwards the reminiscence affected
his spirits cruelly.
In August, 1840, he writes that he has been
twelve years submitting in silence to the "foul-
est and basest aspersions," to which it would
have been waste of time to make reply, since
the public ear had not been open to him.
"Is
the time arriving," he asks, "for me to speak?
or must I go down to the grave and leave pos-
terity to do justice to my father and to me?"
He has had at least the advantage of saying
his say to posterity in a very effective and con-
vincing shape in that Diary, which so discom-
fited and enraged General Jackson. There is
plain enough speaking in its pages, which were
a safety valve whereby much wrath escaped.
Mr. Adams had the faculty of forcible expres-
sion when he chose to employ it, as may be seen
300
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
•
from a few specimen sentences. On March 28,
1840, he remarks that Atherton "this day emit-
ted half an hour of his rotten breath against"
a pending bill. Atherton was infamous as the
mover of the "gag" resolution, and Mr. Adams
abhorred him accordingly. Duncan, of Cincin-
nati, mentioned as "delivering a dose of balder-
dash," is described as "the prime bully of the
Kinderhook Democracy," without "perception.
of any moral distinction between truth and
falsehood, .. a thorough-going hack-dema-
gogue, coarse, vulgar, and impudent, with a
vein of low humor exactly suited to the rabble
of a popular city and equally so to the taste of
the present House of Representatives." Other
similar bits of that pessimism and belief in the
deterioration of the times, so common in old
men, occasionally appear. In August, 1835, he
thinks that "the signs of the times are porten-
tous. All the tendencies of legislation are to
the removal of restrictions from the vicious and
the guilty, and to the exercise of all the powers
of government, legislative, judicial, and exec-
utive, by lawless assemblages of individuals."
December 27, 1838, he looks upon the Senate
and the House, "the cream of the land, the
culled darlings of fifteen millions," and ob-
serves that "the remarkable phenomenon that
they present is the level of intellect and of
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
301
morals upon which they stand; and this uni-
versal mediocrity is the basis upon which the
liberties of this nation repose." In July, 1840,
he thinks that
"parties are falling into profligate factions. I
have seen this before; but the worst symptom now is
the change in the manners of the people. The con-
tinuance of the present Administration
will open
wide all the flood-gates of corruption. Will a change
produce reform? Pause and ponder! Slavery, the
Indians, the public lands, the collection and disburse-
ment of public money, the tariff, and foreign affairs:
- what is to become of them?"
66
On January 29, 1841, Henry A. Wise uttered
a motley compound of eloquence and folly, of
braggart impudence and childish vanity, of self-
laudation and Virginian narrow-mindedness."
After him Hubbard, of Alabama, "began grunt-
ing against the tariff." Three days later Black,
of Georgia," poured forth his black bile" for
an hour and a half. The next week we find
Clifford, of Maine, "muddily bothering hist
trickster invention " to get over a rule of the
House, and "snapping like a mackerel at a red
rag" at the suggestion of a way to do so. In
July, 1841, we again hear of Atherton as a
cross-grained numskull . . . snarling against
the loan bill." With such peppery passages
n great abundance the Diary is thickly and
302
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
piquantly besprinkled. They are not always
pleasant, perhaps not even always amusing, but
they display the marked element of censorious-
ness in Mr. Adams's character, which it is nec-
essary to appreciate in order to understand some
parts of his career.
If Mr. Adams never had the cheerful sup-
he often have
He said that
port of popularity, so neither did
the encouragement of success.
he was paying in his declining years for the
good luck which had attended the earlier por-
tion of his life. On December 14, 1833, he
calculates that he has three fourths of the peo-
ple of Massachusetts against him, and by es-
tranging the anti-Masons he is about to become
obnoxious to the whole. "My public life will
terminate by the alienation from me of all man-
kind. . . . It is the experience of all ages that
the people grow weary of old men. I cannot
flatter myself that I shall escape the common
law of our nature." Yet he acknowledges that
he is unable to "abstract himself from the great
questions which agitate the country." Soon
after he again writes in the same vein: "To
be forsaken by all mankind seems to be the
destiny that awaits my last days." August 6,
1835, he gives as his reason for not accepting
an invitation to deliver a discourse, that "in-
stead of having any beneficial influence upor
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
303
the public mind, it would be turned as an in-
strument of obloquy against myself.” So it
had been, as he enumerates, with his exertions
against Freemasonry, his labors for internal
improvement, for the manufacturing interest,
for domestic industry, for free labor, for the
disinterested aid then lately brought by him to
Jackson in the dispute with France; "so it
will be to the end of my political life.”
When to unpopularity and reiterated disap-
pointment we add the physical ills of old age, it
no longer surprises us to find Mr. Adams at
times harsh and bitter beyond the excuse of the
occasion. That he was a man of strong phys-
ique and of extraordinary powers of endur-
ance, often surpassing those of young and vigor-
ous men, is evident. For example, one day in
March, 1840, he notes incidentally: "I walked
home and found my family at dinner. From
my breakfast yesterday morning until one this.
afternoon, twenty-eight hours, I had fasted."
Many a time he showed like, if not quite equal
vigor. But he had been a hard worker all his
life, and testing the powers of one's constitution
does not tend to their preservation; he was by
no means free from the woes of the flesh or from
the depression which comes with years and the
dread of decrepitude. Already as early as
October 7, 1833, he fears that his health is "
"ir-
304
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
""
retrievable;" he gets but five hours a night of
“disturbed unquiet sleep -full of tossings."
February 17, 1834, his "voice was so hoarse and
feeble that it broke repeatedly, and he could
scarcely articulate. It is gone forever," he very
mistakenly but despondingly adds, "and it is
in vain for me to contend against the decay of
time and nature." His enemies found little
truth in this foreboding for many sessions there-
after. Only a year after he had performed his
feat of fasting for twenty-eight hours of busi-
ness, he received a letter from a stranger advis-
ing him to retire. He admits that perhaps he
ought to do so, but says that more than sixty
years of public life have made activity necessary
to him; it is the "weakness of his nature
which he has "intellect enough left to perceive
but not energy to control," so that "the world
will retire from me before I shall retire from
the world."
""
The brief sketch which can be given in a
volume of this size of so long and so busy a
life does not suffice even to indicate all its
many industries. The anti-slavery labors of
Mr. Adams during his Congressional career
were alone an abundant occupation for a man
in the prime of life; but to these he added a
wonderful list of other toils and interests. He
was not only an incessant student in history
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
305
politics, and literature, but he also constantly
invaded the domain of science. He was Chair-
man of the Congressional Committee on the
Smithsonian bequest, and for several years he
gave much time and attention to it, striving to
give the fund a direction in favor of science;
he hoped to make it subservient to a plan which
he had long cherished for the building of a
noble national observatory. He had much
committee work; he received many visitors,
he secured hours of leisure for his favorite pur-
suit of composing poetry; he delivered an enor-
mous number of addresses and speeches upon
all sorts of occasions; he conducted an exten-
sive correspondence; he was a very devout man,
regularly going to church and reading three
chapters in his Bible every day; and he kept
up faithfully his colossal Diary. For several
months in the midst of Congressional duties he
devoted great labor, thought, and anxiety to
the famous cause of the slaves of the Amistad,
in which he was induced to act as counsel be-
fore the Supreme Court. Such were the labors
of his declining age. To men of ordinary cali-
bre the multiplicity of his acquirements and
achievements is confounding and incredible.
He worked his brain and his body as unspar-
ingly as if they had been machines insensible to
the pleasure or necessity of rest. Surprisingly
20
306
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
did they submit to his exacting treatment, last-
ing in good order and condition far beyond
what was then the average of life and vigorous
faculties among his contemporaries engaged in
public affairs.
In August, 1842, while he was still tarrying
in the unwholesome heats of Washington, he
had some symptoms which he thought premon-
itory, and he speaks of the next session of Con-
gress as probably the last which he should ever
attend. March 25, 1844, he gives a painful
sketch of himself. Physical disability, he says,
must soon put a stop to his Diary. That morn-
ing he had risen "at four, and with smarting,
bloodshot eyes and shivering hand, still sat
down and wrote to fill up the chasm of the
closing days of last week." If his remaining
days were to be few he was at least resolved to
make them long for purposes of unremitted la-
bor.
But he had one great joy and distinguished
triumph still in store for him. From the time
when the "gag" rule had been first established,
Mr. Adams had kept up an unbroken series of
attacks upon it at all times and by all means.
At the beginning of the several sessions, when
the rules were established by the House, he
always moved to strike out this one. Year
after year his motion was voted down, but year
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
307
after year he renewed it with invincible per-
severance. The majorities against him began
to dwindle till they became almost impercep-
tible; in 1842 it was a majority of four; in
1843, of three; in 1844 the struggle was pro-
tracted for weeks, and Mr. Adams all but car-
ried the day. It was evident that victory was
not far off, and a kind fate had destined him to
live not only to see but himself to win it. On
December 3, 1844, he made his usual motion
and called for the yeas and nays; a motion was
made to lay his motion on the table, and upon
that also the question was taken by yeas and
nays- eighty-one yeas, one hundred and four
nays, and his motion was not laid on the table.
The question was then put upon it, and it was
carried by the handsome vote of one hundred
and eight to eighty. In that moment the
"gag" rule became a thing of the past, and
Mr. Adams had conquered in his last fight.
"Blessed, forever blessed, be the name of God!"
he writes in recording the event. A week aft-
erwards some anti-slavery petitions were re-
ceived and actually referred to the Committee
on the District of Columbia. This glorious con-
summation having been achieved, this advanced
stage in the long conflict having been reached,
Mr. Adams could not hope for life to see an-
other goal passed. His work was nearly done;
308
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
he had grown aged, and had worn himself out
faithfully toiling in the struggle which must
hereafter be fought through its coming phases
and to its final success by others, younger men
than he, though none of them certainly having
over him any other militant advantage save
only the accident of youth.
His mental powers were not less than at any
time in the past when, on November 19, 1846,
he was struck by paralysis in the street in Bos-
ton. He recovered from the attack, however,
sufficiently to resume his duties in Washington
some three months later. His reappearance
in the House was marked by a pleasing inci-
dent: all the members rose together; business
was for the moment suspended; his old accus-
tomed seat was at once surrendered to him by
the gentleman to whom it had fallen in the
allotment, and he was formally conducted to it
by two members. After this, though punctual
in attendance, he only once took part in debate.
On February 21, 1848, he appeared in his seat
as usual. At half-past one in the afternoon
the Speaker was rising to put a question, when
he was suddenly interrupted by cries of "Stop!
Stop! Mr. Adams!" Some gentlemen near
Mr. Adams had thought that he was striving
to rise to address the Speaker, when in an in-
stant he fell over insensible. The members
thronged around him in great confusion. The
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
30C
House hastily adjourned. He was placed on ɛ
sofa and removed first to the hall of the ro-
tunda and then to the Speaker's room. Medi
cal men were in attendance but could be of no
service in the presence of death. The stern
old fighter lay dying almost on the very field of
so many battles and in the very tracks in
which he had so often stood erect and uncon-
querable, taking and dealing so many mighty
blows. Late in the afternoon some inarticu-
late mutterings were construed into the words,
"Thank the officers of the House." Soon again
he said intelligibly, "This is the last of earth!
I am content! It was his extreme utterance.
He lay thereafter unconscious till the evening
of the 23d, when he passed quietly away.
He lies buried "under the portal of the
church at Quincy" beside his wife, who sur-
vived him four years, his father and his mother.
The memorial tablet inside the church bears
upon it the words "Alteri Sæculo," - surely
never more justly or appropriately applied to
any man than to John Quincy Adams, hardly
abused and cruelly misappreciated in his own
day but whom subsequent generations already
begin to honor as one of the greatest of Amer-
ican statesmen, not only preeminent in ability
and acquirements, but even more to be honored
for profound, immutable honesty of purpose
and broad, noble humanity of aims.
INDEX.
ADAMS, Dr, English Commissioner
to treat for peace, 77.
Adams, John, Minister to Paris, 4;
Minister to St. James's, 14; be-
comes President, 23; nominates
his son Minister to Prussia, 24;
and recalls him, 24; leaves Wash-
ngton, 25; breaks the Federal
party, 26.
Adams, John Quincy, birth, 1; nam-
ing, 1; childhood during Revolu-
tion, 2; letter to his father, 3;
goes to Paris, 4; letter to his
mother, 5; begins his diary, 6;
depicted therein, 10 et seq.; life
abroad, in Russia and at Paris, 13,
14; returns home and goes to
Harvard College, 15-17; studies
law and begins practice, 17; pub-
lishes political papers of "Publi-
cola," Marcellus," "Colum-
bus," and "Barnevelt," 18; Min-
ister to the Hague, 19-21; diplo-
matic errand to England, 21; en-
gagement and marriage, 22, 23;
transferred to court of Portugal,
23; Minister to Prussia, 24; re-
called, 24; returns to the law,
24; political prospects and con-
nections, 25, 27; ill-treated by
Jefferson, 28; elected to State
Senate, 28; offends the Federal-
ists by his independence, 29;
elected to United States Senate,
30; goes to Washington, 30;
hardly treated there by Federal-
ists, 31; unpopular in the Senate,
32 et seq.; relationship with Pick-
ering, 32; action concerning ad-
mission of Louisiana, 35; con-
cerning impeachment of Judge
Chase, 26; improvement of his
position in the Senate, 36; posi-
tion concerning relations of
United States with England, 38
et seq.; disagreement with Feder-
alists, 40, 50; supports non-im-
portation act, 40, and see 49; on
the decrees and orders of France
and England, 42, 47 et seq.; behav-
ior concerning affair of Chesa-
peake and Leopard, 51; expelled
from Federal party, 52, 56 et seq.;
supports the embargo, 52; resigns
his Senatorship, 57; his course
considered, 57 et seq.; justified in
leaving the Federal party, 61 et
seq.; effects of his doing so, 64;
relationship with Republican
party, 65, 66; his own reflections
at this time, 66, 67; nominated
Minister to Russia, 69, 70; life
and services in Russia, 71-75; ap-
pointed Commissioner to treat for
peace with Great Britain, 75 et
seq.; his share in the ensuing ne-
gotiation, 77-93; relationship
with Clay, 84; habits, 85; opin-
ion as to the Mississippi and the
fisheries, 88-90; appointed Minis-
ter to England, 98; his stay and
services there, 99-101; relations
with Canning and Castlereagh,
99, 100; appointed Secretary of
State by President Monroe, 101;
in Washington society, 104; can-
didate for Presidency, 106; pol-
icy towards revolted Spanish col-
onies, 110; his negotiations with
Don Onis, the Spanish Minister,
112 et seq.; concludes the treaty,
116; but at once encounters mis-
understandings, 117, 118; and
thereupon advises vigorous meas-
ures, 119; reopens negotiations
with Vivês, 124; finally concludes
treaty, 125, 126; feeling about
slavery at time of Missouri Com-
promise, 120-124; sends in his
report on weights and measures
127; dignified behavior in foreign
relations, 128 et seq.; originates
312
INDEX.
the Monroe Doctrine, 131, 132,
137; views concerning acquisition
of territory by United States,
131; opposition to "Holy Alli-
ance," 133; receives droll propo-
sition from Portugal, 135; holds
United States aloof from Euro-
pean entanglements, 125-137; in-
terviews with Stratford Canning
as to slave-trade, 136, 138-140;
angry discussion with Stratford
Canning, 141-149; feelings to-
wards Mr. Clay during Presiden-
tial campaign, 152-155; hatred of
Randolph, 154; and of Crawford,
155-157; behavior towards Gen-
eral Jackson, 159-164; rules. of
conduct during Presidential cam-
paign, 164-167; feelings concern-
ing the campaign, 167-169; elec-
toral vote for, 170; elected by in-
fluence of Clay, 170-174; feelings
concerning his election, 175-177;
his inauguration, 176; enmity
with Jackson, 176; nominates
his Cabinet, 178; makes Rufus
King Minister to England, 178;
principle as to distribution of
offices, 179-181; charged with
having bargained with Clay for
his election, 181-189; political
prospects of his administration,
189 et seq.; relations towards the
South and political parties, 189-
193; Jacksonian opposition to his
administration, 193; nominates
emissaries to Panama Congress,
190; internal policy of his admin-
istration, 194-196; at the Chesa-
peake and Ohio Canal, 195; true
issue between him and Jackson,
196-201; refuses to propitiate
support, 201-205; relations with
his Cabinet, 205-207; routine of
daily life as President, 207;
threatened with assassination,
208; political charges against,
209, 210; pungent passages from
his diary, 211-213; beaten in
Presidential campaign of 1827,
213; opinion of Von Holst con-
cerning, 214; feelings concerning
his defeat, 215; quarrel with the
thirteen Federalists, 216-220; his
finances, 221; his literary habits,
222-224; election to Congress, 226,
233; as an orator, 228; in Congress,
230-234; position with regard to
the tariff, South Carolina, and
President Jackson, 235-238; gen-
erally in opposition to Jackcon's
administration, 239; but,aids him
in affair with France, 239, 240;
personal relations with Jackson,
240-243; his relations towards
abolition and slavery in Congress,
244 et seq.; his function in the
anti-slavery contest, 245, 246;
consequent unpopularity, 247;
but supported by some, 248; pre-
sents anti-slavery petitions, 249-
252, 254, 257-262; opposes the
gag
" rule, 251, 252, 257, 259,
261; relations with abolitionists,
255 et seq; supported by his con-
stituents, 256; presents petition
of Sherloch S. Gregory, 257; ef-
forts concerning Texan petitions,
etc., 257; concerning petitions re-
lating to Hayti, 260; declares the
war powers of the Government
to include abolition of slavery,
262-266; opposes annexation of
Texas, 266, 267; presents petition
for his own expulsion, 268, 269;
presents petition from slaves, 270
et seq; attempt to remove him
from Chairmanship of Foreign
Affairs Committee, 280, 290; pre-
sents petition for dissolution of
the Union, 281 et seq. ; services of,
at organization of twenty-sixth
Congress, in the dispute over the
New Jersey members, 291 et seq.;
his reflections concerning his un-
popularity, 297-299; physical con-
dition in old age, 303, 304, 306;
multiplicity of labors, 305; suc-
ceeds in effecting abolition of the
gag "rule, 306-308; paralysis,
308; death, 308, 309.
BAGOT, Mr., British Minister, refer
ence to by Mr. Canning, 143, 144.
Barnard, D. D., presents petition for
dissolution of the Union, 289.
Barnevelt," papers of, 18.
Barron, Commodore, commander of
the Chesapeake, 45.
"
Bayard, appointed Commissioner to
treat for peace with Great Britain
75, 76.
Berlin decree, issued, 41.
CALHOUN, John C., candidate for
Presidency, 107, 150; remark con-
cerning Southern alliance with
England, 122; opinion of Craw-
ford, 158.
Canning, Stratford, interviews with
INDEX.
313
Mr. Adams as to slave trade, 136,
138-140; angry discussion of Mr.
Adams with, 141-149.
Castlereagh, Lord, position towards
the United States in 1814, 93, 94;
relations of Mr. Adams with, 99,
100.
Chase, Judge, impeachment of, 36.
Chesapeake, affair of the, 45, 50;
public meeting, 51.
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal opened,
195.
Clay, Henry, appointed Commis-
sioner to treat for peace with
England, 77; relations with Mr.
Adams, 84, 152–155;
84, 152-155; feelings
about the Mississippi and the
Fisheries, 88-90; Commissioner at
London, 98; losses at cards, 104;
relations with Monroe's adminis-
tration, 107, 152, 155; concerning
South American states, 110, 153,
154; opposes Spanish treaty, 113,
117, 125; candidate for Presi-
dency, 150; controls Presidential |
election in 1825, 170-174; made
Secretary of State, 178; votes at
his confirmation, 189; charged
with having made a corrupt bar-
gain with Mr. Adams, 181-189;
duel with Randolph, 184.
Columbia River, discussion between |
Mr. Adams and Canning as to set-
tlement upon, 141-149.
"Columbus," papers of, 18.
Congress, troubles at organization
of twenty-sixth, 291 et seq.
Crawford, William II., in the Treas-
ury, 106; candidate for Presi-
dency, 106, 107, 150; behavior of,
concerning Spanish treaty, 113;
hated by Mr. Adams, 155–157
Calhoun's opinion of, 158.
DANA, Francis, Minister to Russia,
13.
Deas, Mr., at London, 21, 22.
De Neuville, French Minister, ser-
vices to Mr. Adams concerning
Spanish treaty, 115.
Diary, beginning of, 6; remarks
concerning, 8 et seq.; during
Presidential campaign, 151, 165,
169; during Presidency, 211-213;
some extracts from, 300 et seq.
EMBARGO, Supported by Mr. Adams,
52 et seq.
England, relations of United States
with, in 1806, 1807, 37, 38; viola-
|
tions of international law by, 39,
41; impressment of American
seamen by, 43 et seq.; harm done
by, to United States, 46; appoints
Commissioners to treat for peace
with United States, 77; sugges
tion of Southern alliance with,
122.
FEDERALISTS, controversy of the
thirteen, with Adams, 216–220.
Federal party, schism in the, 26,
27; condition of, in Massachu-
setts, 28; relations of, with J.
Q. Adams, 28; elects him to State
Senate, 28; to United States Sen-
ate, 30; treats Mr. Adams se-
verely in the Senate, 31; behavior
towards England in 1806, 40, 47;
in affair of the Chesapeake, 52;
expels Mr. Adams, 52; further an-
tipathy to him, in matter of em-
bargo, 53; criticised, 59-61; de-
cay of, 105.
Florida ceded to United States,
125.
116,
"GAG "rule, so called, established,
251, 252, 261; petitions partially
receivable under, 262; rescinded,
306-308.
Gallatin, Commissioner to treat for
peace with Great Britain, 75, 76;
Commissioner at London, 98.
Gambier, Lord, Commissioner to
treat for peace, 77.
Garland, clerk, behavior of at or-
ganization of twenty sixth Con-
gress, 291 et seq.
Ghent, negotiations at. See Treaty.
Goulburn, Commissioner to treat
for peace, 77.
Greece, affairs of, 135.
Grenville, Lord, negotiations of Mr
Adams with, 21, 22.
HAYTI, petitions relating to, 260.
IMPRESSMENT of American seamen
by England, 43 et seq.
Jar's treaty ratified, 21, 22.
Jackson, General Andrew, and the
Spanish treaty, 126; candidate for
Presidency, 150; Adams's treat-
ment of, 159-164; loses the Presi-
dential election, 170-174; his con-
nection with the charge of a
corrupt understanding between
Adams and Clay, 185-189; his
314
INDEX.
Representatives from, 291 et seq.
Non-importation act, passed, 40.
Northeastern fisheries, in treaty of
1814, 88-90, 92, 95.
party led by Van Buren, 193; | New Jersey, dispute over seats of
the question at issue between
him and Adams, 196-201; elected
President, 213; his message of
December 4, 1832, 235; behavior
towards France concerning her
indebtedness, 239; made Doctor
of Laws by Harvard College, 242;
personal relations with J. Q. Ad-
ams, 240-243.
Jackson, Mr., British Minister, ref-
erence to, by Mr. Canning, 147,
148.
Jefferson, Thomas, ill-treats J. Q.
Adams, 28.
Johnson, Joshua, father-in-law of
Mr. Adams, 22.
KING, Rufus, Minister to England,
178.
LEOPARD, the, attacks the Chesa-
peake, 45, 50; public meeting con-
cerning the attack, 51.
Lloyd, James N., chosen to United
States Senate in place of Mr. Ad-
ams, 57.
Louisiana, admission of, 35; dis-
putes as to boundary of, 111,
113.
"MARCELLUS," papers of, 18.
ONIS, Don, Spanish Minister, 111;
character of, 112; his part in ne-
gotiating treaty between Spain
and United States, 112 et seq.; ap
pealed to concerning misunder-
standings under the treaty, 117
118.
PANAMA, Congress of, 190.
Parsons, Theophilus,
instructs
Adams in law, 17.
Pickering, Timothy, candidate for
United States Senate, 30; elected,
32; relationship with Mr. Adams,
32; votes against Mr. Adams as
Minister to Russia, 70.
Porter, General Peter B., a member
of the Cabinet, 206.
Portugal, Mr. Adams appointed
Minister to, 23; proposal to United
States to establish an "American
System," 135.
Prussia, Mr. Adams goes as Minis-
ter to, 24.
"Publicola," papers of, 18.
McLean, double-dealing of, 206, RANDOLPH, John, hated by Mr
207.
Milan decree issued, 42.
Mills, Hon. E. H., sketch of Wash-
ington by, 102'; remarks about
Mr. Adams, 104; about Crawford,
158.
Mississippi, navigation of the, 88-
90, 95.
Missouri, admission of, into Union,
120; bearing of this upon Spanish
treaty, 124, 125.
Monroe Doctrine, originated by Mr.
Adams, 130, 132, 137.
Monroe, President, nominates Mr.
Adams Secretary of State, 101; in
society at Washington, 103; his
administration, 102, 106, 108; op-
posed by Clay, 107, 110; anxious
for treaty with Spain, 114; his
relationship to the Monroe Doc-
trine, 130-137.
Moose Ísland, in treaty of 1814, 91.
NEUTRALITY Act passed, 109.
New England, position of, concern-
ing British aggressions in 1806,
47.
Adams, 154, 211, 212; duel with
Clay, 184.
Report on weights and measures,
127.
Republican party, Adams's rela-
tions with, in 1806-7, 65, 66.
Romanzoff, Count, offers mediation
of Russia between United States
and England, 75.
Russell, Jonathan, appointed Com
missioner to treat for peace with
England, 77.
Russia, Mr. Adams appointed Min-
ister to, 70; life in, 71-75.
SECTIONALISM as a basis of political
parties, 189–193.
Slavery, petitions for abolition of,
presented by Mr. Adams, 249–252,
254; efforts to stop reception of
these petitions, 249-252; may be
abolished by virtue of war pow-
ers of United States Government,
262-266; petitions for abolishing,
referred to Committee on District
of Columbia, 307; and see chap
ter iii., passim.
INDEX.
315
Slaves, presentation of petition of,
270 et seq.
Slave-trade, propositions for its sup-
pression, 136, 138-140.
South, a party of the, first organ-
ized, 189-193.
South America, States of, anxious
for recognition by United States,
109; proposed interference in af-
fairs of, by Holy Alliance, 133;
Mr. Clay's course concerning, 110,
153, 154.
Spain, difficulties with, 110, 111;
treaty with, concluded, 116; re-
fuses ratification, 118
TEXAS, petitions concerning, 257;
annexation of, opposed by Mr.
Adams, 266, 267.
Treaty of peace with England in
1814, negotiations concerning,
77-93; terms of, 94, 96; opinions
concerning in England, 96, 97,
98; in the United States, 97; of
1783, 80; concluded with Spain,
116; but misunderstandings arise
concerning, 117; not ratified by
Spain, 118; finally ratified, 125.
UNITED STATES, relations of, with
England in 1806, 378.
VAN BUREN, leads opposition to Mr.
Adams's administration, 193.
Vivês, Spanish Minister, arrives,
124; concludes treaty, 125.
Von Holst, opinion of Mr. Adams,
214
WAR power of United States Gov-
ernment to abolish slavery, 262-
266.
Washington, in 1803, 30; in 1817,
102-104.
Washington, George, treatment of
Mr. Adams, 23.
Weights and measures, report on,
127.
Wise, Henry A., treatment of Mr.
Adams, 295
American Statesmen.
A Series of Biographies of Men conspicuous in the
Political History of the United States.
EDITED BY
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• ·
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"
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7
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