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 somewhat 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 discomforts 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 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, therefore, to be somewhat upon our guard in accepting his estimates of men and acts at this period; though the broad general impression to be gathered from his treatment of his rivals, even in these confidential pages, is favorable at least to his justice of disposition and honesty of intention.

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 Administration, to be no proper grounds for such antagonism. When, therefore, Mr. Clay found or devised such grounds, the President and his Cabinet, vexed and harassed by the opposition of so influential a man, not unnaturally attributed 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 negotiator. Probably the charge was true, and Mr. Clay's honesty in opposing an admirable treaty can only be vindicated at the expense of his understanding,—an explanation certainly not to be accepted. But when Mr. Adams attributed to the same motive of embarrassing the Administration 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 preëminently 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 independence of rebels. Mr. Adams was the responsible 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 various motions looking to the appointment of ministers 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 struggle for independence, and his rhetorical nature could not resist the opportunities for fervid and brilliant oratory presented by this struggle for freedom against mediæval despotism. Real convictions were sometimes diluted with rodomontade, and a true feeling was to some extent stimulated 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 control 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 rancor 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 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 unusual zeal. As time went on, however, and the South American questions were removed from the arena, Adams's ill-feeling towards Clay became 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 entente cordiale was established as could be reasonably expected to exist between competitors very unlike both in moral and mental constitution.[4]

Mr. Adams's unbounded indignation and profound contempt were reserved for Mr. Crawford, partly, it may be suspected by the cynically 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 degrees that Adams began to suspect the underhand methods and malicious practices of Crawford; but as conviction was gradually brought home to him his native tendency towards suspicion 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 Cabinet 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 perfect 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 principle to his ambition." Because Calhoun would not support him for the Presidency, Crawford stimulated a series of attacks upon the War Department. He was the "instigator and animating spirit of the whole movement both in Congress 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 himself 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 difficult 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 unpleasantly sketched is difficult. For nearly eight years Mr. Adams was brought into close and constant relations with him, and as a result formed a very low opinion of his character and by no means a high estimate of his abilities. Even after making a liberal allowance for the prejudice naturally supervening from their rivalry there is left a residuum of condemnation abundantly sufficient to ruin a more vigorous reputation than Crawford has left behind him. Apparently Mr. Calhoun, though a fellow Southerner, thought no better of the ambitious Georgian than did Mr. Adams, to whom one day he remarked that Crawford was "a very singular instance of a man of such character rising to the eminence he now occupies; that there has not been in the history of the Union another man with abilities so ordinary, with services so slender, and so thoroughly corrupt, who had contrived to make himself a candidate for the Presidency." Nor was this a solitary expression of the feelings of the distinguished South Carolinian.

Mr. E. H. Mills, Senator from Massachusetts, and a dispassionate observer, speaks of Crawford with scant favor as "coarse, rough, uneducated, of a pretty strong mind, a great intriguer, and determined to make himself President." He adds: "Adams, Jackson, and Calhoun all think well of each other, and are united at least in one thing,—to wit, a most thorough dread and abhorrence of Crawford."

Yet Crawford was for many years not only never without eager expectations of his own, which narrowly missed realization and might not have missed it had not his health broken down a few months too soon, but he had a large following, strong friends, and an extensive influence. But if he really had great ability he had not the good fortune of an opportunity to show it; and he lives in history rather as a man from whom much was expected than as a man who achieved much. One faculty, however, not of the best, but serviceable, he had in a rare degree: he thoroughly understood all the artifices of politics; he knew how to interest and organize partisans, to obtain newspaper support, and generally to extend and direct his following after that fashion which soon afterward began to be fully developed by the younger school of our public men. He was the avant courier of a bad system, of which the first crude manifestations were received with well-merited disrelish by the worthier among his contemporaries.

It is the more easy to believe that Adams's distrust of Crawford was a sincere conviction, 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 Monroe lent an assistance which Jackson afterwards too readily forgot. Seldom has a government been brought by the undue zeal of its servants 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 peremptorily forced the blue-blooded commanders to capitulate in the most humiliating manner; afterwards, when the Spanish territory had become American, in his civil capacity as Governor, he flung the Spanish Commissioner into jail. He treated instructions, laws, and established 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 this too successful chieftain was no simple problem. 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 procedure 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 disturbing feats extended, Jackson was left in painful solitude by those who felt obliged to judge his actions by rule rather than by sympathy. The President was concerned lest his Administration should be brought into indefensible embarrassment; Calhoun was personally displeased because the instructions issued from his department had been exceeded; Crawford eagerly sought to make the most of such admirable 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 gallantly by the man who had dared to take vigorous measures upon his own sole responsibility. His career touched a kindred chord in Adams's own independent and courageous character, and perhaps for the only time in his life the Secretary of State became almost sophistical in the arguments by which he endeavored to sustain the impetuous warrior against an adverse Cabinet. The authority given to Jackson to cross the Spanish frontier in pursuit of the Indian enemy was justified as being only defensive warfare; 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 example and of evil consequences. There is injustice to the officer in disavowing him, when in principle he is strictly justifiable." This behavior 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 negotiation with Spain upon which Mr. Adams had so 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 consequences to himself. He preferred to insist that the hanging of Arbuthnot and Ambrister was according to the laws of war and to maintain 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 stanch advocate in Adams, who, having made an argument 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 deserving universal approbation." Later still, on January 8, 1824, being the anniversary of the victory of New Orleans, as if to make a conspicuous declaration of his opinions in favor of Jackson, Mr. Adams gave a great ball in his honor, "at which about one thousand persons attended."[5]

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 argument 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 noteworthy and indeed the only powerful friend of General Jackson. Nor up to the last moment, and when Jackson had become his most dangerous 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 conflicting theories concerning public affairs, but solely upon individual preference for one or another 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 malicious tale-bearing be greater than when votes were to be gained or lost solely by personal predilection. 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. Everett whether he was "determined to do nothing 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 absolutely 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 flagrant misdoing certainly could not be expected; but in a record kept with the fulness and frankness of this Diary we should read between the lines and detect as it were in its general flavor any taint of disingenuousness 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 unguarded 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 Congress, nor a local politician, not even a private individual, was intimidated or conciliated. On 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 actually 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 representative would vote from the way in which he put on his hat, when of course stories of intrigue and corruption poisoned the honest breeze, and when the streets seemed traversed only by the busy tread of the go-betweens, the influential friends, the wire-pullers of the various contestants,—still amid all this noisy excitement 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 allowed himself to answer questions courteously, and for a brief period held in check his strong natural propensity to give offence and make enemies. This was the uttermost length that he could go towards political corruption. He became 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 Presidency 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 construe it as the verdict of the people that they were dissatisfied with his services as a public man, and he should then retire to private life, no longer expecting or accepting public functions. He did not regard politics as a struggle in which, if he should now be beaten in one encounter, 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 indication that they were satisfied or dissatisfied with him. In the latter event he had nothing more to seek. Politics did not constitute a profession 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 circumstances 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 affairs. 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 expression. It was a singular and a lofty attitude even if a trifle egotistical and not altogether unimpeachable by argument. It could not diminish 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 judgment 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 attempt 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 predicting it; indeed, he photographs his whole existence 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 not until December, 1824, that it became everywhere known that there had been no election of a president by the people. When the Electoral College met the result of their ballots was as follows:—

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 disappointment. They had expected for him a fair support 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 stimulated than diminished by the definiteness which became possible for it. Mr. Clay, who could not come before the House, found himself 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 whom he should favor. Apparently his predilections were at least possibly in favor of Crawford; 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 himself, 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 reputation 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 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 expressed his unfavorable opinion of the "military hero," in terms too decisive to admit of explanation 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 advanced 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 therefore 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 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 substantially that the Constitution established an election without an option; that the electors were to vote for a person predestined by an earlier occurrence to receive their ballots. But besides their unsoundness in argument, their statistical position was far from being what they undertook to represent it. The popular vote had been so light that it really looked as though the people had cared very little which candidate should succeed; and to talk about a manifestation of the popular will was absurd, for the only real manifestation had been of popular indifference. For example, in 1823 Massachusetts had cast upwards of 66,000 votes in the state election, whereas in this national election she cast only a trifle more than 37,000. Virginia distributed a total of less than 15,000 among all four candidates. Pluralities did not signify much in such a condition of sentiment as was indicated by these figures. Moreover, in six States, viz., Vermont, New York, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, the electors were chosen by the legislatures, not by the people; so that there was no correct way of counting them at all in a discussion of pluralities. Guesses and approximations favored Adams, and to an important degree; for these six States gave to Adams thirty-six votes, to Jackson nineteen, to Crawford six, to Clay four. In New York, Jackson had hardly an appreciable following. Moreover, in other States many thousands of votes which had been "cast for no candidate in particular, but in opposition to the caucus ticket generally," were reckoned as if they had been cast for Jackson or against Adams, as suited the especial case. Undoubtedly Jackson did have a plurality, but undoubtedly it fell very far short of the imposing figure, nearly 48,000, which his supporters had the audacity to name.

The election took place in the House on February 9, 1825. Daniel Webster and John Randolph were tellers, and they reported that there were "for John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, thirteen votes; for Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, seven votes; for William H. Crawford, of Georgia, four votes." Thereupon the speaker announced Mr. Adams to have been elected President of the United States.

This end of an unusually exciting contest thus left Mr. Adams in possession of the field, Mr. Crawford the victim of an irretrievable defeat, Mr. Clay still hopeful and aspiring for a future which had only disappointment in store for him, General Jackson enraged and revengeful. Not even Mr. Adams was fully satisfied. When the committee waited upon him to inform him of the election, he referred in his reply to the peculiar state of things and said, "could my refusal to accept the trust thus delegated 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 decision." That this singular and striking statement was made in good faith is highly probable. William H. Seward says that it was "unquestionably uttered with great sincerity of heart." The test of action of course could not be applied, 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 that it was a duty; and the temptation to perform a duty, always strong with him, became ungovernable if the duty was exceptionally disagreeable. Under the circumstances, however, the only logical conclusion lay in the inauguration, 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 manufacture. Prominent among those who after the ceremony hastened to greet him and to shake hands with him appeared General Jackson. It was the last time that any friendly courtesy is recorded as having passed between the two.

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. This 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 said, he now for the first time had an opportunity 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 selected 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 indorsement 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 manner of personal obligations or partisan entanglements, express or implied, as did Mr. Adams. Throughout the campaign he had not himself, or by any agent, held out any manner of tacit inducement to any person whomsoever, contingent 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, Secretary of the Treasury; James Barbour, Secretary of War; Samuel L. Southard, Secretary of the Navy; William Wirt, Attorney-General. The last two were renominations of the incumbents under Monroe. The entire absence of chicanery or the use of influence in the distribution of offices is well illustrated by the following incident: On the afternoon following the day of inauguration President Adams called upon Rufus King, whose term of service as Senator from New York had just expired, and who was preparing to leave Washington on the next day. In the course of a conversation concerning 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 induce his acceptance of it.... I dwelt with earnestness upon all these motives, and apparently not without effect. He admitted the force of them, and finally promised fully to consider of the proposal before giving me a definite answer."

The result was an acceptance by Mr. King, his nomination by the President, and confirmation by the Senate. He was an old Federalist, to whom Mr. Adams owed no favors. With such directness and simplicity were the affairs of the Republic conducted. It is a quaint and pleasing scene from the period of our forefathers: 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 finding him reluctant urgently presses upon him arguments to induce his acceptance. But the whole business of office-seeking and office-distributing, now so overshadowing, had no place under Mr. Adams. On March 5 he sent in several nominations which were nearly all of previous incumbents. "Efforts had been made," he writes, "by some of the senators to obtain different nominations, and to introduce a principle of change or rotation in office at the expiration of these commissions, which would make the Government a perpetual and unintermitting scramble for office. A more pernicious expedient could scarcely have been devised.... 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, plausibly 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 political persecution, and on the other any appearance 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 consummated, 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 custom-house officers throughout the Union, four fifths in all probability were opposed to my election. Crawford, 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 consistency 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 misrepresent the feelings of men whose places may become the prize of slander upon them."

Mr. Clay was silenced, and Sterret retained his position, constituting thereafter only a somewhat striking instance among many to show that nothing was to be lost by political opposition 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 precisely 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 and horses;" when Mr. Clay promptly published the unknown writer as "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 afterward actually refused to appear or testify before a Committee of the House instructed to investigate the matter, it was supposed by all reasonable 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 disproved, 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 Tennessee Legislature, as a candidate for the next Presidential term, the accusation was too plausible and too tempting to be allowed to fall forever into dusty death; rather it was speedily exhumed from its shallow burial and galvanized into new life. The partisans of General Jackson sent it to and fro throughout the land. No denial, no argument, could kill it. It began to gain that sort of half belief which is certain to result from constant repetition; since many minds are so constituted that truth may be actually, as it were, manufactured for them by ceaseless iteration of statement, the many hearings gaining the character of evidence.

It is long since all students of American history, 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 calumny in support of which not a particle of evidence 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 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 slander. 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[6] and exchanged shots without result. 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. It so happened, however, that Jackson, altogether contrary to his own purpose, brought conclusive aid to President Adams and Secretary 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 dye. 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 biographers have exhausted much ingenuity without 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 Beverly, 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 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 "member of Congress of high respectability," who had told him of "a great intrigue going on" of which he ought to be informed. This gentleman had then proceeded to explain that Mr. Clay's friends were afraid that if General Jackson should be elected President, "Mr. Adams would be continued Secretary of State (innuendo, there would be no room for Kentucky); that if I would say, or permit any of my confidential 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 repudiated indignantly. Clay at once publicly challenged 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, 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 inference. 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. Markley, 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 gentleman 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 evident enough—what he, Mr. Buchanan, had said. Indeed, that Jackson could have supposed him to entertain the sentiments imputed to him made Mr. Buchanan, as he said, "exceedingly 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 the charitable suggestion that he had been unable to understand a perfectly simple conversation. 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 retraction and apology which he was with difficulty 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 reader who is curious to pursue the matter further will find all the documentary evidence collected 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 illustration; and the skilled eye of the President noted "the rallying of the South and of Southern interests and prejudices to the men of the 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 to him that the South became a political unit; and a true instinct taught him the trend of Southern politics long before the Northern statesmen apprehended it, perhaps before even any Southern 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 commission 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 to 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 already seen in the two nominations of Mr. Adams himself to the Court of Russia in the Presidency of Mr. Madison. But now vehement assaults were made upon the President, alike 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 nevertheless the discussion actually overshadowed all other questions which arose during the session. 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 prolonged and desperate resistance with only the faintest pretext of right as a basis for its action. Yet a great and fundamental cause of the feeling manifested lay hidden away beneath the surface in the instinctive antipathy of the slaveholders to Mr. Adams and all his thoughts, his ways, and his doings. For into this question of countenancing the Panama Congress, slavery and "the South" entered and imported into a portion of the opposition a certain element of reasonableness and propriety in a political sense. When we see the Southern statesmen banded against President Adams in these debates, as we know the future which was hidden from them, it almost makes us believe that their vindictiveness was justified by an instinctive forecasting of his character and his mission in life, and that without knowing it they already felt the influence of the acts which he was yet to do against them. For the South, without present dread of an abolition movement, yet hated this Panama Congress with a contemptuous 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 official equality with the revolted blacks of Hayti fired the Southern heart with rage inexpressible. 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 alienation henceforth to grow steadily more bitter on the part of the slaveholders towards Mr. Adams. Without designing it he had struck the first blow in a fight which was to absorb his energies for the rest of his life.

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 Representatives, but a decided majority of both Houses of Congress was arrayed against the Administration—"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 Administration members. With more exciting issues this relationship of the executive and legislative departments might have resulted in dangerous collisions; but in this season of political quietude it only made the position of the President extremely uncomfortable. Mr. Van Buren soon became recognized as the formidable 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 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 blunders. 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 Government, and upon all sides various industries became active and thriving. So far as the rule of Mr. Adams was marked by any distinguishing characteristic, it was by a care for the material welfare of the people. More commercial treaties were negotiated during his Administration than in the thirty-six years preceding his inauguration. He was a strenuous advocate of internal improvements, and happily the condition of the national finances enabled the Government to embark in enterprises of this kind. He suggested many more than were undertaken, but not perhaps more than it would have been quite possible to carry out. He was always 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 neglected." But the opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was an event sufficiently momentous and national in its character to justify the President's attendance. He was requested 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 encountered 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 occurrence that enabled him to conciliate a momentary popularity; it was seldom that he enjoyed 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 deserves rather to be called an immoral, and certainly 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 candidate for the next election. An opposition to the new Administration was in process of formation actually before there had been time for that Administration to declare, much less to 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 opposition, 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 positions. The sole ground upon which these opponents 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 excusable for an elective magistrate to seek personal 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 dividing 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 question raised was this: will Mr. Adams or General Jackson—two individuals representing as yet no antagonistic policies—be preferred by the greater number of voters in 1829? If, however, there was no great apparent issue open between these two men, at least there was a very wide difference between their characters, a point of some consequence in a wholly personal competition. It is easy enough now to see how this gaping difference displayed itself from the beginning, 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 simply to secure the largest following and most efficient support possible. The arts by which these objects were to be attained were not obscure 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 conciliate 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 himself? His neglect to create such a corps of stanch supporters cannot be explained on the ground that so plain a scheme of perpetuating power had not then been devised in the Republic. 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 success in achieving results so great that almost no politician has since failed to have recourse to the same practice. Suggestions and temptations, 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 incumbent 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 grumbled bitterly, and upon which foes counted often 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; multitudes became cool and indifferent concerning him; the great number of those whose political faith was so weak as to be at the ready command 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 independent personal conviction in behalf of Mr. Adams found the slightest inducement to belong to his party. It did not require much political sagacity 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 American people,—an issue between government conducted with a sole view to efficiency and honesty and government conducted very largely, if not exclusively, with a view to individual and party ascendency. The new system afterward inaugurated 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 principles 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 unfortunately the voters only beheld two individuals 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 patronage that Mr. Adams's rigid conscientiousness showed itself. He was equally obstinate in declining ever to stretch a point however slightly in order to win the favor of any body of the people whether large or small. He was warned that his extensive schemes for internal improvement 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 persecution 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 Carolina." But there stood upon the statute books of South Carolina an unconstitutional law which had greatly embarrassed the national government, and which that rebellious little State with characteristic contumaciousness would not repeal. Under such circumstances, said Mr. Adams, 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 insure 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 uncompromising temper put on an ungracious aspect. His conscientiousness wore the appearance 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 repudiating attractive vices the Puritans had rejected also those amenities which might have decently concealed or even mildly decorated the forbidding angularities of a naked Virtue which certainly 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 circumstances. The ordinary arts of propitiation would have appeared to him only a feeble and diluted form of dishonesty; while suavity and 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 disappointment, or attract calculating selfishness. He was an adept in alienation, a novice in conciliation. His magnetism was negative. He made few friends; and had no interested following whatsoever. No one was enthusiastic on his behalf; no band worked for him with the ardor of personal devotion. His party was composed of those who had sufficient intelligence to appreciate his integrity and sufficient honesty to admire it. These persons respected him, and when election day came they would vote for him; but they did not canvass 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.[7] The fervid laborers in politics left Mr. Adams alone in his chilling respectability, and went over to a camp where all scruples were consumed in the glowing heat of a campaign conducted upon the single and simple 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 deference towards them perhaps somewhat greater than might have been expected from him, sometimes even carried to the point of yielding his opinion in matters of consequence. It was his wish that the unity of the body should remain unbroken during his four years of office, and the wish was very nearly realized. Unfortunately, however, in his last year it became necessary 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 succession of Jackson, and Mr. Adams notes that Barbour's extreme desire to receive the appointment 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 "terminate 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 pressure was brought to bear on the President to remove him. Mr. Adams, however, refused to do so, and McLean had the satisfaction of stepping from his post under Mr. Adams into a judgeship conferred by General Jackson, having 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 visitors gives him little opportunity for hard or continuous labor. Such work he was compelled to do chiefly in the evening; and he did not always make up for early hours of rising by a correspondingly early bedtime; though sometimes 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 exercise. In the morning he swam in the Potomac, often for a long time; and more than once he encountered no small risk in this pastime. During 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 relaxation 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 habits 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 chapters in the Bible with Scott's and Hewlett's Commentaries," being always a profoundly religious man of the old-fashioned school then prevalent in New England.