"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 counties, Massachusetts, should be called by Acts of Congress 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 indignation. It is, he said, "a question of far deeper 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 opposition 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 receive 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 interwoven with his general antagonism to slavery, that there is little occasion for treating them separately.[9]

People sometimes took advantage of his avowed principles concerning freedom of petition to put him in positions which they thought would embarrass him or render him ridiculous. Not much success, however, attended these foolish 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. 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 arraign 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 gentleman from Massachusetts wished to give it another direction." Mr. Adams said that "the gentleman from Massachusetts cared very little 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 petition from slaves. On February 6, 1837, he brought in some two hundred abolition petitions. 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 present his petitions, that some among them were so peculiar that he was in doubt as to their genuineness, and this fell within the description. 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 presenting 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 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 excitement 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 Southerners was equal to the unforeseen emergency. Mr. Haynes moved the rejection of the petition. Mr. Lewis deprecated this motion, being of opinion that the House must inflict punishment 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 "be better for the representatives from the slave-holding States to go home at once." Mr. Alford said that so 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 attempt just made by him to introduce a petition purporting 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 violation of the rules of the House and an insult to its members. He even threatened criminal proceedings before the grand jury of the District of Columbia, saying that if that body had the "proper intelligence and spirit" people might "yet see an incendiary brought to condign 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 accordingly." Then there ensued a little more excited 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 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 population 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 misdemeanors" 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 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 previous 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 appeal 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 contents 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 spectacle shown off every petition day by the honorable member from Massachusetts in presenting the abolition petitions of his infatuated 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 waning 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 better adapted to the recent development of the case:—

Mr. Pinckney said that the avowal by Mr. Adams that he had in his possession the petition of slaves was an admission of communication with slaves, and so was evidence of collusion 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 petition 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

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 condemn ... 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 contest single-handed against the numerous array of assailants, all incensed and many fairly savage. 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 elaborate speech of defence, they suddenly and opportunely became ready to content themselves with a mild resolution, which condemned generally the presentation of petitions from slaves, and, for the disposal of this particular case, recited that Mr. Adams had "solemnly disclaimed all design of doing anything disrespectful to the House," and had "avowed his intention not to offer to present" to the House the petition of this kind held by him; that "therefore all further proceedings in regard to his 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 February 9 the sorely bated man was at last able to begin his final speech. He conducted his defence 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 deserving 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 language. He cast infinite ridicule upon the unhappy expression of Dromgoole, "giving color to an idea." Referring to the difficulty which he encountered by reason of the variety and 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 sarcasm in the simile!—he said: "When I 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 become pretty well known and acknowledged to be a hoax designed to lead Mr. Adams into a position of embarrassment and danger, he disclaimed 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.[10] 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, "any particle of what I have done, not a single word of what I have said do I unsay; nay, I am ready to do and to say the same to-morrow." He had no notion of aiding in making a loophole through which his blundering enemies 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 ambitious 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 1842-43 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 exceedingly distasteful to the slave-holders. On January 21, 1842, a somewhat singular manifestation of this feeling was made when Mr. Adams himself presented a petition from Georgia praying for his removal from this Chairmanship. 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 petition 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 petition of forty-five citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, praying the House "immediately to adopt measures peaceably to dissolve the union 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 reasons why the prayer of it ought not to be granted."

In a moment the House was aflame with excitement. The numerous members who hated Mr. Adams thought that at last he was experiencing the divinely sent madness which foreruns destruction. Those who sought his political 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. Adams said that he hoped that it would be received and debated and that an opportunity would be given him to speak in his own defence; "especially as the gentleman from Virginia had thought proper to play second fiddle to his colleague[11] 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.'"

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. On the following day Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky, offered a substitute for Gilmer's resolution. This new fulmination had been prepared in a caucus of forty members of the slave-holding party, and was long and carefully framed. Its preamble recited, in substance, that a petition 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 proposition to the Legislature and each member of it to commit perjury, and involving necessarily in its execution and its consequences the destruction of our country and the crime of high treason:" wherefore it was to be resolved that Mr. Adams, in presenting a petition for dissolution, had "offered the deepest indignity to the 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 councils;" 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 indignation 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. Everett[12] gave some little assistance to Mr. Adams, and the House again adjourned. The following 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 invective," rose to "make a preliminary point." He questioned the right of the House to entertain Marshall's resolutions since the preamble assumed him to be guilty of the crimes of subornation of perjury and treason, and the resolutions 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 considerations, he said, ought to prevent many gentlemen from voting, as Mr. Wise had avowed that they would prevent him. Here Wise interrupted 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 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 certain 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 writing,—his own request to the like effect in another 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 which he had repeatedly denied to me." When Mr. Wise was speaking, "I interrupted him occasionally," says Mr. Adams, "sometimes to provoke him into absurdity." As usual he was left to fight out his desperate battle substantially single-handed. Only Mr. Everett occasionally helped him a very little; while one or two others who spoke against the resolutions were careful to explain that they felt no personal 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 colleagues from Massachusetts. This support aided and cheered him somewhat, but could not prevent 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 Washington—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 amenities he received from North Carolina an anonymous letter threatening him with assassination, having also an engraved portrait of him with the mark of a rifle-ball in the forehead, 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 execution of the barbarous threat.

The prolonged struggle cost him deep anxiety 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 propositions failing, he began his speech and soon was making such headway that even his adversaries were constrained to see that the opportunity which they had conceived to be within their grasp was eluding them, as had so often happened before. Accordingly on February 7 the motion to "lay the whole subject on the table forever" was renewed and carried by one hundred 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 victor. On February 26 he writes: "D. D. Barnard 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 presented it, with a motion that it be referred to a select committee with instructions to report adversely 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 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 excused from further services on the committee, "because from recent occurrences it was doubtful whether the House would remove the chairman, and they were unwilling to serve with one in whom they had no confidence." The fugitives 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, nominated 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 published, but Mr. Adams, after some hesitation, determined not to give them the importance 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 entertained 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 eminent 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 five gentlemen from New Jersey, who brought with them the regular gubernatorial 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 be formed, when the question could be decided. Plausible as appeared this abstention from an exercise of authority in so grave a dispute, 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, conducted, 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 exclusion of these five members in the first instance would determine the political complexion of the body. The members holding the certificates were Whigs; if the clerk could keep them out until the organization of the House should be completed, then the Democrats would control that organization, would elect their Speaker, and through him would make up the committees.

Naturally enough this arrogation of power by the clerk, the motives and consequences of which were abundantly obvious, raised a terrible storm. The debate continued till four o'clock in the afternoon, when a motion was 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 insurmountable 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 adjournment. 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 accomplished anything. The condition was ridiculous, disgraceful, and not without serious possibilities 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 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 turning directly to the assembled members, he began: "Fellow citizens! Members elect of the twenty-sixth Congress!" He could not resist the temptation of administering a brief but severe and righteous castigation to Garland; and then, ignoring that functionary altogether, proceeded 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 already 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 emergency. A tumult of applause resounded upon all sides. Rhett, of South Carolina, sprang up and offered a resolution, that Williams, of North Carolina, the oldest member of the House, be 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 inscribe 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.[13] It must, however, be acknowledged that the impetuous Southerners behaved very handsomely by their arch foe on this occasion, 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 buffeting became only the more severe when the members were no longer restrained by a lurking dread of grave disaster if not of utter shipwreck. Between two bitterly incensed and evenly divided parties engaged in a struggle for an important prize, Mr. Adams, having no strictly lawful authority pertaining to his singular and anomalous position, was hard taxed to perform his functions. It is impossible to follow the intricate and acrimonious quarrels of the eleven days which succeeded 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 Administration party, exasperated by their disappointment 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-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 sensitive 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 cheerfully, 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 considered himself "ill-treated by every public man whom circumstances had brought into competition 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:—

"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, 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 habitually irritating. He himself says that to nearly all these men—Russell alone specifically excepted—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 mistake my own motives. The best actions of my life make me nothing but enemies." In February, 1841, he made a powerful speech in castigation of Henry A. Wise, who had been upholding in Southern fashion slavery, duelling, and nullification. He received afterward some messages of praise and sympathy, but noted with pain that his colleagues thought it one of his "eccentric, wild, extravagant freaks of passion;" 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 insane 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 "foulest 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 posterity 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 convincing shape in that Diary, which so discomfited 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 expression when he chose to employ it, as may be seen from a few specimen sentences. On March 28, 1840, he remarks that Atherton "this day emitted 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 Cincinnati, mentioned as "delivering a dose of balderdash," is described as "the prime bully of the Kinderhook Democracy," without "perception of any moral distinction between truth and falsehood, ... a thorough-going hack-demagogue, 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 portentous. 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 executive, 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 observes that "the remarkable phenomenon that they present is the level of intellect and of morals upon which they stand; and this universal 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 continuance 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 disbursement of public money, the tariff, and foreign affairs:—what is to become of them?"

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 grunting 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 his 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 in great abundance the Diary is thickly and piquantly besprinkled. They are not always pleasant, perhaps not even always amusing, but they display the marked element of censoriousness in Mr. Adams's character, which it is necessary to appreciate in order to understand some parts of his career.

If Mr. Adams never had the cheerful support of popularity, so neither did he often have the encouragement of success. He said that he was paying in his declining years for the good luck which had attended the earlier portion of his life. On December 14, 1833, he calculates that he has three fourths of the people of Massachusetts against him, and by estranging the anti-Masons he is about to become obnoxious to the whole. "My public life will terminate by the alienation from me of all mankind.... 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 "instead of having any beneficial influence upon the public mind, it would be turned as an instrument 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 disappointment 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 physique and of extraordinary powers of endurance, often surpassing those of young and vigorous 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 "irretrievable;" 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 thereafter. Only a year after he had performed his feat of fasting for twenty-eight hours of business, he received a letter from a stranger advising 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, politics, and literature, but he also constantly invaded the domain of science. He was Chairman 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 pursuit of composing poetry; he delivered an enormous number of addresses and speeches upon all sorts of occasions; he conducted an extensive 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 before the Supreme Court. Such were the labors of his declining age. To men of ordinary calibre the multiplicity of his acquirements and achievements is confounding and incredible. He worked his brain and his body as unsparingly as if they had been machines insensible to the pleasure or necessity of rest. Surprisingly did they submit to his exacting treatment, lasting 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 premonitory, and he speaks of the next session of Congress 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 morning 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 labor.

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 after year he renewed it with invincible perseverance. The majorities against him began to dwindle till they became almost imperceptible; in 1842 it was a majority of four; in 1843, of three; in 1844 the struggle was protracted for weeks, and Mr. Adams all but carried 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 afterwards some anti-slavery petitions were received and actually referred to the Committee on the District of Columbia. This glorious consummation having been achieved, this advanced stage in the long conflict having been reached, Mr. Adams could not hope for life to see another goal passed. His work was nearly done; 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 Boston. 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 incident: all the members rose together; business was for the moment suspended; his old accustomed 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 instant he fell over insensible. The members thronged around him in great confusion. The House hastily adjourned. He was placed on a sofa and removed first to the hall of the rotunda and then to the Speaker's room. Medical 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 unconquerable, taking and dealing so many mighty blows. Late in the afternoon some inarticulate 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 survived 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 American statesmen, not only preëminent in ability and acquirements, but even more to be honored for profound, immutable honesty of purpose and broad, noble humanity of aims.

INDEX