Chapter XIII (2)

"Roger Williams was a man who maybe considered the very
impersonation of a combined conscientious and contentious spirit.
Born in the land of Sir Hugh Evans and Captain Fluellen, educated at
the University of Oxford, at the very period when the monarchical
Episcopal Church of England was purging herself, as by fire, from
the corruptions of the despotic and soul-degrading Church of Rome,
he arrived at Boston in February, 1630, about half a year after the
landing of the Massachusetts Colony of Governor Winthrop. He was an
eloquent preacher, stiff and self-confident in his opinions;
ingenious, powerful, and commanding, in impressing them upon others;
inflexible in his adherence to them; and, by an inconsistency
peculiar to religious enthusiasts, combining the most amiable and
affectionate sympathies of the heart with the most repulsive and
inexorable exclusions of conciliation, compliance, or intercourse,
with his adversaries in opinion.

"On his first arrival he went to Salem, and there soon made himself
so acceptable by his preaching, that the people of Mr. Skelton's
church invited him to settle with them as his colleague. But he had
broached, and made no hesitation in maintaining, two opinions
imminently dangerous to the very existence of the Massachusetts
Colony, and certainly not remarkable for that spirit of charity or
toleration upon which he afterwards founded his own government, and
which now, in after ages, constitutes his brightest title to renown.
The first of these opinions was that the royal charter to the Colony
of Massachusetts was a nullity, because the King of England had no
right to grant lands in foreign countries, which belonged of right
to their native inhabitants. This opinion struck directly at all
right of property held under the authority of the royal charter,
and, followed to its logical conclusions, would have proved the
utter impotence of the royal charter to confer power of government,
any more than it could convey property in the soil.

"The other opinion was that the Church of Boston was criminal for
having omitted to make a public declaration of repentance for having
held communion with the Church of England before their emigration;
and upon that ground he had refused to join in communion with the
Church of Boston.

"By the subtlety and vehemence of his persuasive powers he had
prevailed upon Endicott to look upon the cross of St. George in the
banners of England as a badge of idolatry, and to cause it actually
to be cut out of the flag floating at the fort in Salem. The red
cross of St. George in the national banner of England was a grievous
and odious eye-sore to multitudes, probably to a great majority, of
the Massachusetts colonists; but, in the eyes of the government of
the colony, it was the sacred badge of allegiance to the monarchy at
home, already deeply jealous of the purposes and designs of the
Puritan colony."

On the 4th of July, 1843, Mr. Adams, in a letter addressed to the citizens of Bangor, in Maine, declining their invitation to deliver an address on the 1st of August, the anniversary of British emancipation of slavery in the West Indies, thus expressed his views on that subject:

"The extinction of SLAVERY from the face of the earth is a problem,
moral, political, religious, which at this moment rocks the
foundations of human society throughout the regions of civilized
man. It is indeed nothing more nor less than the consummation of
the Christian religion. It is only as _immortal_ beings that all
mankind can in any sense be said to be born equal; and when the
Declaration of Independence affirms as a self-evident truth that
all men are born equal, it is precisely the same as if the
affirmation had been that all men are born with immortal souls;
for, take away from man his soul, the immortal spirit that is
within him, and he would be a mere tamable beast of the field, and,
like others of his kind, would become the property of his tamer.
Hence it is, too, that, by the law of nature and of God, man can
never be made the property of man. And herein consists the fallacy
with which the holders of slaves often delude themselves, by
assuming that the test of property is human law. The soul of one
man cannot by human law be made the property of another. The owner
of a slave is the owner of a living corpse; but he is not the owner
of a man."

In illustration of this principle he observes that "the natural equality of mankind, affirmed by the signers of the Declaration of Independence to be _held up_ by them as self-evident truth, was not so held by their enemies. Great Britain held that sovereign power was unlimitable, and the natural equality of mankind was a fable. France and Spain had no sympathies for the rights of human nature. Vergennes plotted with Gustavus of Sweden the revolution in Sweden from liberty to despotism. Turgot, shortly after our Declaration of Independence, advised Louis Sixteenth that it was for _the interest_ of France and Spain that the insurrection of the Anglo-American colonies _should be suppressed_. But none of them foresaw or imagined what would be the consequence of the triumphant establishment in the continent of North America of an Anglo-Saxon American nation on the foundation of the natural equality of mankind, and the inalienable rights of man."

Mr. Adams then states and reasons upon these consequences in Europe and the United States: the abolition of slavery by the judicial decision of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, three years after the Declaration of Independence. Since that day there has not been a slave within that state. The same principle is corroborated by the fact that the Declaration of Independence imputes slavery in Virginia to George the Third, as one of the crimes which proved him to be a tyrant, unfit to rule a free people; and that at least twenty slaveholders, if not thirty, among whom were George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, avowed abolitionists, were signers of that Declaration.

He next states that "the result of the North American revolutionary war had prepared the minds of the people of the British nation to contemplate with calm composure the new principle engrafted upon the association of the civilized race of man, the self-evident truth, the natural equality of mankind and the rights of man." He then introduces Anthony Benezet, a member of the society of Friends, and Granville Sharp, an English philanthropist, "blowing the single horn of human liberty and the natural equality of mankind against the institution of slavery, practised from time immemorial by all nations, ancient and modern; supported by the denunciation of the traffic in slaves by the popular writers both in France and England,--by Locke, Addison, and Sterne, as well as by Raynal, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire; succeeded by the association of Thomas Clarkson and two or three Englishmen together, for the purpose of arraying the power of the British empire for the total abolition of slavery throughout the earth." The success of that association he next illustrates,--until this "emanation of the Christian faith is now, under the cross of St. George, overflowing from the white cliffs of Albion, and sweeping the slave-trade and slavery from the face of the terraqueous globe." He proceeds:

"People of that renowned island!--children of the land of our
forefathers!--proceed, proceed in this glorious career, till the
whole earth shall be redeemed from the greatest curse that ever has
afflicted the human race. Proceed until millions upon millions of
your brethren of the human race, restored to the rights with which
they were endowed by your and their Creator, but of which they have
been robbed by ruffians of their own race, shall send their choral
shouts of redemption to the skies in blessings upon your names. O,
with what pungent mortification and shame must I confess that in the
transcendent glories of that day our names will not be associated
with yours! May Heaven in mercy grant that we may be spared the
deeper damnation of seeing our names recorded, not among the
liberators, but with the oppressors of mankind!"

After inquiring what we have done in the United States to support "the principle proclaimed to the world as that which was to be the vital spark of our existence as a community among the nations of the earth," and declaring that we have done nothing, he thus enumerates the proceedings which disqualify us from presuming to share in the festivities and unite in the songs of triumph of the 1st of August, and shows how little we have concurred with Great Britain in her attempts to break the chain of slavery. He inquires into what we are doing:

"Are we not suffering our own hands to be manacled, and our
own feet to be fettered, with the chains of slavery? Is it not
enough to be told that, by a fraudulent perversion of language in
the constitution of the United States, we have falsified the
constitution itself, by admitting into both the legislative and
executive departments of the government an overwhelming
representation of one species of _property_, to the exclusion of
all others, and that the odious property in slaves?

"Is it not enough that, by this exclusive privilege of property
representation, confined to one section of the country, an
irresistible ascendency in the action of the general government has
been secured, not indeed to that section, but to an oligarchy of
slaveholders in that section--to the cruel oppression of the poor
in that same section itself? Is it not enough that, by the
operation of this radical iniquity in the organization of the
government, an immense disproportion of all offices, from the
highest to the lowest, civil, military, naval, executive, and
judicial, are held by slaveholders? Have we not seen the sacred
right of petition totally suppressed for the people of the free
states during a succession of years, and is it not yet inexorably
suppressed? Have we not seen, for the last twenty years, the
constitution and solemn treaties with foreign nations trampled on
by cruel oppression and lawless imprisonment of colored mariners
in the Southern States, in cold-blooded defiance of a solemn
adjudication by a Southern judge in the Circuit Court of the Union?
And is not this enough? Have not the people of the free states been
required to renounce for their citizens the right of habeas corpus
and trial by jury; and, to coërce that base surrender of the only
practical security to all personal rights, have not the
slave-breeders, by state legislation, subjected to fine and
imprisonment the colored citizens of the free states, for merely
coming within their jurisdiction? Have we not tamely submitted for
years to the daily violation of the freedom of the post-office and
of the press by a committee of seal-breakers? And have we not seen
a sworn Postmaster-general formally avow that, though he could not
license this cut-purse protection of the peculiar institution, the
perpetrators of this highway robbery must justify themselves by the
plea of necessity? And has the pillory or the penitentiary been the
reward of that Postmaster-general? Have we not seen
printing-presses destroyed; halls erected for the promotion of
human freedom levelled with the dust, and consumed by fire; and
wanton, unprovoked murder perpetrated with impunity, by
slave-mongers? Have we not seen human beings, made in the likeness
of God, and endowed with immortal souls, burnt at the stake, not
for their offences, but for their color? Are not the journals of
our Senate disgraced by resolutions calling for _war_, to indemnify
the slave-pirates of the Enterprise and the Creole for the
self-emancipation of their slaves; and to inflict vengeance, by a
death of torture, upon the heroic self-deliverance of Madison
Washington? Have we not been fifteen years plotting rebellion
against our neighbor republic of Mexico, for abolishing slavery
throughout all her provinces? Have we not aided and abetted one of
her provinces in insurrection against her for that cause? And have
we not invaded openly, and sword in hand, another of her provinces,
and all to effect her dismemberment, and to add ten more slave
states to our confederacy? Has not the cry of war for the conquest
of Mexico, for the expansion of reïnstituted slavery, for the
robbery of priests, and the plunder of religious establishments,
yet subsided? Have the pettifogging, hair-splitting, nonsensical,
and yet inflammatory bickerings about the right of search,
pandering to the thirst for revenge in France, panting for war to
prostrate the disputed title of her king--has the sound of this
war-trumpet yet faded away upon our ears? Has the supreme and
unparalleled absurdity of stipulating by treaty to keep a squadron
of eighty guns for five years without intermission upon the coast
of Africa, to suppress the African slave-trade, and at the same
time denying, at the point of the bayonet, the right of that
squadron to board or examine any slaver all but sinking under a
cargo of victims, if she but hoist a foreign flag--has this
diplomatic bone been yet picked clean? Or is our _indirect_
participation in the African slave-trade to be protected, at
whatever expense of blood and treasure? Is the supreme Executive
Chief of this commonwealth yet to speak not for himself, but
for her whole people, and pledge _them_ to shoulder their
muskets, and to endorse their knapsacks, against the fanatical,
non-resistant abolitionists, whenever the overseers may please to
raise the bloody flag with the swindling watch-word of 'Union'?
O, my friends, I have not the heart to join in the festivity on
the First of August--the British anniversary of disenthralled
humanity--while all this, and infinitely more that I could tell,
but that I would spare the blushes of my country, weigh down my
spirits with the uncertainty, sinking into my grave as I am,
whether she is doomed to be numbered among the first liberators
or the last oppressors of the race of immortal man!

"Let the long-trodden-down African, restored by the cheering voice
and Christian hand of Britain to his primitive right and condition
of manhood, clap his hands and shout for joy on the anniversary of
the First of August. Let the lordly Briton strip off much of his
pride on other days of the year, and reserve it all for the pride of
conscious beneficence on this day. What lover of classical learning
can read the account in Livy, or in Plutarch, of the restoration to
freedom of the Grecian cities by the Roman consul Flaminius, without
feeling his bosom heave, and his blood flow cheerily in his veins?
The heart leaps with sympathy when we read that, on the first
proclamation by the herald, the immense assembled multitude, in the
tumult of astonishment and joy, could scarcely believe their own
ears, and made him repeat the proclamation, and then '_Tum ab
certo jam gaudio, tantus cum clamore, plausus est ortus, totiesque
repetitus, ut facile appararet nihil omnium bonorum multitudini
gratius quam libertatem esse_.--Then rang the welkin with long
and redoubled shouts of exultation, clearly proving that, of all the
enjoyments accessible to the hearts of men, nothing is so delightful
to them as liberty.' Upwards of two thousand years have revolved
since that day, and the First of August is to the Briton of this age
what the day of the proclamation of Flaminius was to the ancient
Roman. Yes! let them celebrate the First of August as the day to
them of deliverance and glory; and leave to us the pleasant
employment of commenting upon their motives, of devising means to
shelter the African slaver from their search, and of squandering
millions to support, on a pestilential coast, a squadron of the
stripes and stars, with instructions sooner to scuttle their ships
than to molest the pirate slaver who shall make his flagstaff the
herald of a lie!"

In July, 1843, the Cincinnati Astronomical Society earnestly solicited Mr. Adams to lay the corner-stone of their Observatory. No invitation could have been more coïncident with the prevailing interest of his heart, and he immediately accepted it, notwithstanding his advanced age, and the great distance which the performance of the duty required him to travel. Some of his constituents having questioned the propriety of this acceptance, and expressed doubts whether the duties it imposed were compatible with his other public obligations, Mr. Adams, in an address to them, at Dedham, on the 4th of July, took occasion to state that the encouragement of the arts and sciences, and of all good literature, is expressly enjoined by the constitution of Massachusetts. The patronage and encouragement of them is therefore one of the most sacred duties of the people of that state, and enjoined upon them and their children as a part of their duty to God. "The voices of your forefathers, founders of your social compact, calling from their graves, command you to this duty; and I deem it, as your representative, a tacit and standing instruction from you to perform, as far as may be my ability, that part of your constitutional duty for you. It is in this sense that, in accepting the earnest invitation from a respectable and learned society, in a far distant state and city of the Union, to unite with them in the act of erecting an edifice for the observation of the heavens, and thereby encouraging the science of astronomy, I am fulfilling an obligation of duty to you, and in your service." The nature of this duty he thus illustrates:

"From the Ptolemies of Egypt and Alexander of Macedon, from Julius
Cæsar to the Arabian Caliphs Haroun al Raschid, Almamon, and
Almansor, from Alphonso of Castile to Nicholas, the present Emperor
of all the Russias,--who, at the expense of one million of rubles,
has erected at Pulkova the most perfect and best-appointed
observatory in the world,--royal and imperial power has never been
exercised with more glory, never more remembered with the applause
and gratitude of mankind, than when extending the hand of patronage
and encouragement to the science of astronomy. You have neither
Cæsar nor Czar, Caliph, Emperor, nor King, to monopolize this glory
by largesses extracted from the fruits of your industry. The
founders of your constitution have left it as their dying
commandment to you, to achieve, as the lawful sovereigns of the
land, this resplendent glory to yourselves--to patronize and
encourage the arts and sciences, and all good literature."

Mr. Adams left Quincy for Cincinnati on the 25th of October, and returned to Washington on the 24th of November. At Saratoga, Rochester, Buffalo, he was received with marked attention; and in every place where he rested assemblages of the inhabitants took occasion to evidence their respect and interest in his character by congratulatory addresses, and welcomed his presence by every token of civility and regard. At Columbus he was met by a deputation from Cincinnati, and, in approaching that city, he was escorted into it by a procession and cavalcade. No demonstration of honor and gratitude for the exertion he had made, and the fatigues he had undergone, for their gratification, was omitted. His whole progress was an ovation.

In the presence of a large concourse of the citizens of Cincinnati, Mr. Adams was introduced to the Astronomical Society by its president, Judge Burnet, who gave, in an appropriate address, a rapid sketch of the history of his life and his public services, touching with delicacy and judgment on the trials to which his political course had been subjected. The following tributes, from their truth, justice, and appropriateness, are entitled to distinct remembrance:

"Being a son of one of the framers and defenders of the Declaration
of Independence, his political principles were formed in the school
of the sages of the Revolution, from whom he imbibed the spirit of
liberty while he was yet a boy.

"Having been brought up among the immediate descendants of the
Puritan fathers, whose landing in Massachusetts in the winter of
1620 gave immortality to the rock of Plymouth, his moral and
religious impressions were derived from a source of the most rigid
purity; and his manners and habits were formed in a community where
ostentation and extravagance had no place. In this fact we see why
it is that he has always been distinguished for his purity of
motive, simplicity of manners, and republican plainness in his style
of living and in his intercourse with society. To the same causes
may be ascribed his firmness, his directness of purpose, and his
unyielding adherence to personal as well as political liberty. You
have recently seen him stand as unmoved as the rock of Gibraltar,
defending the right of petition, and the constitutional privileges
of the representatives of the people, assembled in Congress, though
fiercely assailed by friends and by foes.

"It is a remarkable fact that during the whole of his public life,
which has already continued more than half a century, he never
connected himself with a political party, or held himself bound to
support or oppose any measure for the purpose of advancing or
retarding the views of a party; but he has held himself free at all
times to pursue the course which duty pointed out, however he may
have been considered by some as adhering to a party. This fact
discloses the reason why he has been applauded at times, and at
other times censured, by every party which has existed under the
government. The truth is that, while the American people have been
divided into two great political sections, each contending for its
own aggrandizement, Mr. Adams has stood between them, uninfluenced
by either, contending for the aggrandizement of the nation. His
life has been in some respects _sui generis_; and I venture the
opinion that, generally, when his course has differed most from the
politicians opposed to him, it has tended most to the advancement
of the public good.

"As a proof of the desire Mr. Adams has always cherished for the
advancement of science, I might refer to his annual message to
Congress in December, 1825, in which he recommended the
establishment of a National University, and an Astronomical
Observatory, and referred to the hundred and thirty of those
'light-houses of the skies' existing in Europe, as casting a
reproach on our country for its unpardonable negligence on that
important subject. The manner in which that recommendation was
received and treated can never be forgotten. It must at this day be
a source of great comfort to that devoted friend of science that
those who yet survive of the highly-excited party which attempted to
cast on him reproach and ridicule for that proposition, and
especially for assimilating those establishments to light-houses of
the skies, have recently admitted the wisdom of his advice by making
ample appropriations to accomplish the very object he then proposed."

The oration Mr. Adams delivered on that occasion is, perhaps, the most extraordinary of his literary efforts, evidencing his comprehensive grasp of the subject, and the intensity of his interest in it. It embraces an outline of the history of astronomy, illustrated by an elevated and excited spirit of philosophy. Those who cultivated, those who patronized, and those who advanced it, are celebrated, and the events of their lives and the nature of their services are briefly related. The operations of the mind which are essential to its progress are touched upon. The intense labor and peculiar intellectual qualifications incident to and required for its successful pursuit are intimated. Nor are the inventors of those optical instruments, who had contributed to the advancement of this science beyond all previous anticipation, omitted in this extensive survey of its nature, progress, and history.

After celebrating "the gigantic energies and more than heroic labors of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo," he pronounced Newton "the consummation of them all."

"It was his good fortune," observed Mr. Adams, "to be born and to live in a country where there was no college of cardinals to cast him into prison, and doom him to spend his days in repeating the seven penitential psalms, for shedding light upon the world, and publishing mathematical truths. Newton was not persecuted by the dull and ignorant instruments of political or ecclesiastical power. He lived in honor among his countrymen; was a member of one Parliament, received the dignity of knighthood, held for many years a lucrative office, and at his decease was interred in solemn state in Westminster Abbey, where a monument records his services to mankind, among the sepulchres of the British kings.

"From the days of Newton down to the present hour, the science of astronomy has been cultivated, with daily deepening interest, by all the civilized nations of Europe--by England, France, Prussia, Sweden, several of the German and Italian states, and, above all, by Russia, whose present sovereign has made the pursuit of knowledge a truly imperial virtue."

After speaking of the patronage extended to this science by the nations and sovereigns of Europe, he terminates his developments with this stirring appeal to his own countrymen:

"But what, in the mean time, have we been doing? While our fathers
were colonists of England we had no distinctive political or
literary character. The white cliffs of Albion covered the soil of
our nativity, though another hemisphere first opened our eyes on
the light of day, and oceans rolled between us and them. We were
Britons born, and we claimed to be the countrymen of Chaucer and
Shakspeare, Milton and Newton, Sidney and Locke, Arthur and Alfred,
as well as of Edward the Black Prince, Harry of Monmouth, and
Elizabeth. But when our fathers abjured the name of Britons, and
'assumed among the nations of the earth the separate and equal
station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled
them,' they tacitly contracted the engagement for themselves, and
above all for their posterity, to contribute, in their corporate
and national capacity, their full share, ay, and more than their
full share, of the virtues that elevate and of the graces that
adorn the character of civilized man. They announced themselves as
_reformers_ of the institution of civil society. They spoke of the
laws of nature, and in the name of nature's God; and by that sacred
adjuration they pledged us, their children, to labor with united
and concerted energy, from the cradle to the grave, to purge the
earth of all slavery; to restore the race of man to the full
enjoyment of those rights which the God of nature had bestowed upon
him at his birth; to disenthrall his limbs from chains, to break
the fetters from his feet and the manacles from his hands, and set
him free for the use of all his physical powers for the improvement
of his own condition. The God in whose name they spoke had taught
them, in the revelation of the Gospel, that the only way in which
man can discharge his duty to Him is by loving his neighbor as
himself, and doing with him as he would be done by; respecting his
rights while enjoying his own, and applying all his emancipated
powers of body and of mind to self-improvement and the improvement
of his race."