Chapter VI (1)

A DISCOURSE OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. DELIVERED AT THE MELODEON, IN BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1848.

Within a few days one of the most distinguished statesmen of the age has passed away; a man who has long been before the public, familiarly known in the new world and the old. He was one of the prominent monuments of the age. It becomes us to look at his life, works, and public character, with an impartial eye; to try him by the Christian standard. Let me extenuate nothing, add nothing, and set down nought from any partial love or partial hate. His individuality has been so marked in a long life, his good and evil so sharply defined, that one can scarcely fail to delineate its most important features.

God has made some men great and others little. The use of great men is to serve the little men; to take care of the human race, and act as practical interpreters of justice and truth. This is not the Hebrew rule, nor the heathen, nor the common rule, only the Christian. The great man is to be the servant of mankind, not they of him. Perhaps greatness is always the same thing in kind, differing only in mode and in form, as well as degree. The great man has more of human nature than other men, organized in him. So far as that goes, therefore, he is more me than I am myself. We feel that superiority in all our intercourse with great men, whether kings, philosophers, poets, or saints. In kind we are the same; different in degree.

In nature we find individuals, not orders and genera; but for our own convenience in understanding and recollecting, we do a little violence to nature, and put the individuals into classes. In this way we understand better both the whole and each of its parts. Human nature furnishes us with individual great men; for convenience we put them into several classes, corresponding to their several modes or forms of greatness. It is well to look at these classes before we examine any one great man; this will render it easier to see where he belongs and what he is worth. Actual service is the test of actual greatness; he who renders, of himself, the greatest actual service to mankind, is actually the greatest man. There may be other tests for determining the potential greatness of men, or the essential; this is the Christian rule for determining the actual greatness. Let us arrange these men in the natural order of their work.

First of all, there are great men who discover general truths, great ideas, universal laws, or invent methods of thought and action. In this class the vastness of a man's genius may be measured, and his relative rank ascertained by the transcendency of his ideas, by the newness of his truth, by its practical value, and the difficulty of attaining it in his time, and under his peculiar circumstances. In literature it is such men who originate thoughts, and put them into original forms; they are the great men of letters. In philosophy we meet with such; and they are the great men of science. Thus Socrates discovered the philosophical method of minute analysis that distinguished his school, and led to the rapid advance of knowledge in the various and even conflicting academies, which held this method in common, but applied it in various ways, well or ill, and to various departments of human inquiry; thus Newton discovered the law of gravitation, universal in nature, and by the discovery did immense service to mankind. In politics we find similar, or analogous men, who discover yet other laws of God, which bear the same relation to men in society that gravitation bears to the orbs in heaven, or to the dust and stones in the street; men that discover the first truths of politics, and teach the true method of human society. Such are the great men in politics.

We find corresponding men in religion; men who discover an idea so central that all sectarianism of parties or of nations seems little in its light; who discover and teach the universal law which unifies the race, binding man to man, and men to God; who discover the true method of religion conducting to natural worship without limitation, to free piety, free goodness, free thought. To my mind such are the greatest of great men, when measured by the transcendency of their doctrine and the service they render to all. By the influence of their idea, letters, philosophy, and politics become nobler and more beautiful, both in their forms and their substance.

Such is the class of discoverers; men who get truth at first hand, truth pertaining either especially to literature, philosophy, politics, religion, or at the same time to each and all of them.

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The next class consists of such as organize these ideas, methods, truths, and laws; they concretize the abstract, particularize the general; they apply philosophy to practical purposes, organizing the discoveries of science into a railroad, a mill, a steam-ship, and by their work an idea becomes fact. They organize love into families, justice into a state, piety into a church. Wealth is power, knowledge is power, religion power; they organize all these powers, wealth, knowledge, religion, into common life, making divinity humanity, and that society.

This organizing genius is a very great one, and appears in various forms. One man spreads his thought out on the soil, whitening the land with bread-corn; another applies his mind to the rivers of New England, making them spin and weave for the human race; this man will organize his thought into a machine with one idea, joining together fire and water, iron and wood, animating them into a new creature, ready to do man's bidding; while that with audacious hand steals the lightning of heaven, organizes his plastic thought within that pliant fire, and sends it of his errands to fetch and carry tidings between the ends of the earth.

Another form of this mode of greatness is seen in politics, in organizing men. The man spreads his thought out on mankind, puts men into true relations with one another and with God; he organizes strength, wisdom, justice, love, piety; balances the conflicting forces of a nation, so that each man has his natural liberty as complete as if the only man, yet, living in society, gathers advantages from all the rest. The highest degree of this organizing power is the genius for legislation, which can enact justice and eternal right into treaties and statutes, codifying the divine thought into human laws, making absolute religion common life and daily custom, and balancing the centripetal power of the mass, with the centrifugal power of the individual, into a well-proportioned state, as God has balanced these two conflicting forces into the rhythmic ellipses above our heads. It need not be disguised, that politics are the highest business for men of this class, nor that a great statesman or legislator is the greatest example of constructive skill. It requires some ability to manage the brute forces of Nature, or to combine profitably nine-and-thirty clerks in a shop; how much more to arrange twenty millions of intelligent, free men, not for a special purpose, but for all the ends of universal life!

Such is the second class of great men; the organizers, men of constructive heads, who form the institutions of the world, the little and the great.

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The next class consists of men who administer the institutions after they are founded. To do this effectually and even eminently, it requires no genius for original organization of truths freshly discovered, none for the discovery of truths, outright. It requires only a perception of those truths, and an acquaintance with the institutions wherein they have become incarnate; a knowledge of details, of formulas, and practical methods, united with a strong will and a practised understanding,--what is called a turn for affairs, tact, or address; a knowledge of routine and an acquaintance with men. The success of such men will depend on these qualities; they "know the ropes" and the soundings, the signs of the times; can take advantage of the winds and the tides.

In a shop, farm, ship, factory, or army, in a church or a State, such men are valuable; they cannot be dispensed with; they are wheels to the carriage; without them cannot a city be inhabited. They are always more numerous than both the other classes; more such are needed, and therefore born. The American mind, just now, runs eminently in this direction. These are not men of theories, or of new modes of thought or action, but what are called practical men, men of a few good rules, men of facts and figures, not so full of ideas as of precedents. They are called common-sense men; not having too much common-sense to be understood. They are not likely to be fallen in with far off at sea; quite as seldom out of their reckoning in ordinary weather. Such men are excellent statesmen in common times, but in times of trouble, when old precedents will not suit the new case, and men must be guided by the nature of man, not his history, they are not strong enough for the place, and get pushed off by more constructive heads.

These men are the administrators, or managers. If they have a little less of practical sense, such men fall a little below, and turn out only critics, of whom I will not now stop to discourse.

To have a railroad, there must have been first the discoverers, who found out the properties of wood and iron, fire and water, and their latent power to carry men over the earth; next, the organizers, who put these elements together, surveyed the route, planned the structure, set men to grade the hill, to fill the valley, and pave the road with iron bars; and then the administrators, who, after all that is done, procure the engines, engineers, conductors, ticket-distributors, and the rest of the "hands;" they buy the coal and see it is not wasted, fix the rates of fare, calculate the savings, and distribute the dividends. The discoverers and organizers often fare hard in the world, lean men, ill clad and suspected, often laughed at, while the administrator is thought the greater man, because he rides over their graves and pays the dividends, where the organizer only called for the assessments, and the discoverer told what men called a dream. What happens in a railroad happens also in a Church, or a State.

Let us for a moment compare these three classes of great men. Measured by the test referred to, the discoverers are the greatest of all. They anticipate the human race, with long steps, striding before their kind. They learn not only from the history of man, but man's nature; not by empirical experience alone, but by a transcendent intuition of truth, now seen as a law, now as an idea. They are wiser than experience, and by divination through their nobler nature know at once what the human race has not learned in its thousands of years, kindling their lamp at the central fire now streaming from the sky, now rushing broad-sheeted and terrible as ground-lightning from the earth. Of such men there are but few, especially in the highest mode of this greatness. A single One makes a new world, and men date ages after him.

Next in order of greatness comes the organizer. He, also, must have great intellect, and character. It is no light work to make thoughts things. It requires mind to make a mill out of a river, bricks, iron, and stone, and set all the Connecticut to spinning cotton. But to construct a State, to harness fittingly twenty million men, animated by such divergent motives, possessing interests so unlike--this is the greatest work of constructive skill. To translate the ideas of the discoverer into institutions, to yoke men together by mere "abstractions," universal laws, and by such yoking save the liberty of all and secure the welfare of each--that is the most creative of poetry, the most constructive of sciences. In modern times, it is said, Napoleon is the greatest example of this faculty; not a discoverer, but an organizer of the highest power and on the largest scale. In human history he seems to have had no superior, perhaps no equal.

Some callings in life afford little opportunity to develop the great qualities above alluded to. How much genius lies latent no man can know; but he that walks familiarly with humble men often stumbles over masses of unsunned gold, where men proud in emptiness, looked only for common dust. How many a Milton sits mute and inglorious in his shop; how many a Cromwell rears only corn and oxen for the world's use, no man can know. Some callings help to light, some hide and hinder. But there is none which demands more ability than politics; they develop greatness, if the man have the germ thereof within him. True, in politics, a man may get along with a very little ability, without being a discoverer or an organizer; were it otherwise we should not be blessed with a very large House, or a crowded Senate. Nay, experience shows that in ordinary times one not even a great administrator may creep up to a high place and hang on there awhile. Few able administrators sit on the thrones of Europe at this day. But if power be in the man, the hand of politics will draw out the spark.

In America, politics more than elsewhere demand greatness, for ours is, in theory, the government of all, for all, and by all. It requires greater range of thought to discover the law for all than for a few; after the discovery thereof it is more difficult to construct a democracy than a monarchy, or an aristocracy, and after that is organized, it is more difficult to administer. It requires more manhood to wield at will "the fierce democratie" of America than to rule England or France; yet the American institutions are germane to human nature, and by that fact are rendered more easy, complicated as they are.

In politics, when the institutions are established, men often think there is no room for discoverers and organizers; that administrators alone are needed, and choose accordingly. But there are ideas well known, not yet organized into institutions: that of free trade, of peace, of universal freedom, universal education, universal comfort, in a word, the idea of human brotherhood. These wait to be constructed into a State without injustice, without war, without slavery, ignorance, or want. It is hardly true that Infinity is dry of truths, unseen as yet; there are truths enough waiting to be discovered; all the space betwixt us and God is full of ideas, waiting for some Columbus to disclose new worlds. Men are always saying there is no new thing under the sun, but when the discoverer comes, they see their mistake. We want the new eye.

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Now, it is quite plain where we are to place the distinguished person of whom I speak. Mr. Adams was not a discoverer; not an organizer. He added no truth to mankind, not known before, and even well known; he made no known truth a fact. He was an administrator of political institutions. Taking the whole land into consideration, comparing him with his competitors, measuring him by his apparent works, at first sight he does not seem very highly eminent in this class of political administrators. Nay, some would set him down, not an administrator so much as a political critic.

Here there is danger of doing him injustice, by neglecting a fact so obvious, that it is seldom seen. Mr. Adams was a northern man, with northern habits, methods, and opinions. By the North, I mean the free States. The chief business of the North is to get empire over nature; all tends to that. Young men of talents become merchants, merchant-manufacturers, merchant-traders. The object directly aimed at, is wealth; not wealth by plunder, but by productive work. Now, to get dominion over nature, there must be education, universal education, otherwise there is not enough intelligent industry, which alone insures that dominion. With widespread intelligence, property will be widely distributed, and, of course, suffrage and civil power will get distributed. All is incomplete without religion. I deny not that these peculiarities of the North, come, also, from other sources, but they all are necessary to attain the chief object thereof--dominion over the material world. The North subdues nature by thought, and holds her powers in thrall. As results of this, see the increase in wealth which is signified by northern railroads, ships, mills, and shops; in the colleges, schools, churches, which arise; see the skill developed in this struggle with nature, the great enterprises which come of that, the movements of commerce, manufactures, the efforts--and successful, too--for the promotion of education, of religion. All is democratic, and becomes more so continually, each descendant founding institutions more liberal than those of the parent State. Men designedly, and, as their business, become merchants, mechanics, and the like; they are politicians by exception, by accident, from the necessity of the case. Few northern men are politicians by profession; they commonly think it better to be a collector or a postmaster, than a Senator, estimating place by money, not power. Northern politicians are bred as lawyers, clergymen, mechanics, farmers, merchants. Political life is an accident, not an end.

In the South, the aim is to get dominion over men; so, the whole working population must be in subjection, in slavery. While the North makes brute nature half intelligent, the South makes human nature half brutal, the man becoming a thing. Talent tends to politics, not trade. Young men of ability go to the army or navy, to the public offices, to diplomatic posts, in a word, to politics. They learn to manage men. To do this, they not only learn what men think, but why they think it. The young man of the North seeks a fortune; of the South, a reputation and political power. The politician of the South makes politics the study and work of his whole life; all else is accidental and subordinate. He begins low, but ends high; he mingles with men; has bland and agreeable manners; is frank, honorable, manly, and knows how to persuade.

See the different results of causes so unlike. The North manages the commercial affairs of the land, the ships, mills, farms, and shops; the spiritual affairs, literature, science, morals, education, religion;--writes, calculates, instructs, and preaches. But the South manages the political affairs, and has free-trade or tariff, war or peace, just as she will. Of the eight Presidents who were elected in fifty years, only three were northern men. Each of them has retired from office, at the end of a single term, in possession of a fortune, but with little political influence. Each of the five southern Presidents has been twice elected; only one of them was rich. There is no accident in all this. The State of Rhode Island has men that can administer the Connecticut or the Mississippi; that can organize Niagara into a cotton factory; yes, that can get dominion over the ocean and the land: but the State of South Carolina has men that can manage the Congress, can rule the North and South, and make the nation do their bidding.

So the South succeeds in politics, but grows poor, and the North fails in politics, but thrives in commerce and the arts. There great men turn to politics, here to trade. It is so in time of peace, but, in the day of trouble, of storms, of revolution like the old one, men of tall heads will come up from the ships and the shops, the farms and the colleges of the North, born discoverers and organizers, the aristocracy of God, and sit down in the nation's councils to control the State. The North made the revolution, furnished the men, the money, the ideas, and the occasion for putting them into form. At the making of the Constitution, the South out-talked the North; put in such claims as it saw fitting, making the best bargain it could, violating the ideas of the Revolution, and getting the North, not only to consent to slavery, but to allow it to be represented in Congress itself. Now, the South breaks the Constitution just when it will, puts northern sailors in its jails, and the North dares not complain, but bears it "with a patient shrug." An eastern merchant is great on a southern exchange, makes cotton rise or fall, but no northern politician has much weight at the South, none has ever been twice elected President. The North thinks it is a great thing to get an inoffensive northern man as Speaker, in the House of Representatives. The South is an aristocracy, which the democracy of the North would not tolerate a year, were it at the North itself. Now it rules the land, has the northern masses, democrats and whigs, completely under its thumb. Does the South say, "Go," they hasten; "Come," they say "Here we are;" "Do this," they obey in a moment; "Whist," there is not a mouse stirring in all the North. Does the South say "Annex," it is done; "Fight," men of the North put on the collar, lie lies, issue their proclamations, enroll their soldiers, and declare it is moral treason for the most insignificant clergyman to preach against the war.

All this needs to be remembered in judging of Mr. Adams. True he was regularly bred to politics, and "to the manor born;" but he was a New England man, with northern notions, northern habits, and though more than fifty years in public life, yet he seems to have sought the object of New England far more than the object of the South. Measure his greatness by his service; but that is not to be measured by immediate and apparent success.

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In a notice so brief as this, I can say but little of the details of Mr. Adams's life, and purposely pass over many things, dwelling mainly on such as are significant of his character. He was born at Quincy, the 11th of July, 1767; in 1777 he went to Europe with his father, then Minister to France. He remained in Europe most of the time, his powers developing with rapidity and promise of future greatness, till 1785, when he returned and entered the junior class in Harvard College. In 1787, he graduated with distinguished honors. He studied law at Newburyport, with Judge Parsons, till 1790, and was a lawyer in Boston, till 1794.

That may be called the period of his education He enjoyed the advantages of a residence abroad, which enabled him to acquire a knowledge of foreign languages, modes of life, and habits of thought. His father's position brought the son in contact with the ablest men of the age. He was Secretary of the American minister to Russia at the age of fourteen. He early became acquainted with Franklin and Jefferson, men who had a powerful influence on his youthful mind. For three years he was a student with Judge Parsons, a very remarkable man. These years, from 1767 to 1794, form a period marked by intense mental activity in America and in Europe. The greatest subjects which claim human attention, the laws that lie at the foundation of society, the State, the church, and the family, were discussed as never before. Mr. Adams drew in liberty and religion from his mother's breast. His cradle rocked with the Revolution. When eight years old, from a hill-top hard by his house he saw the smoke of Charlestown, burning at the command of the oppressor. The lullaby of his childhood was the roar of cannon at Lexington and Bunker Hill. He was born in the gathering of the storm, of a family that felt the blast, but never bent thereto; he grew up in its tumult. Circumstances like these make their mark on the character.

His attention was early turned to the most important matters. In 1793, he wrote several papers in the "Centinel," at Boston, on neutral rights, advising the American government to remain neutral in the quarrel between France, our ally, and others; the papers attracted the attention of Washington, who appointed the author Minister to Holland. He remained abroad in various diplomatic services in that country, in Russia and England, till 1801, when he was recalled by his father, and returned home. It was an important circumstance, that he was abroad during that time when the nation divided into two great parties. He was not called on to take sides with either; he had a vantage ground whence he could overlook both, approve their good and shun their evil. The effect of this is abundantly evident in all his life. He was not dyed in the wool by either political party,--the moral sense of the man drowned in the process of becoming a federalist or a democrat.

In 1802, he was elected to the Senate of Massachusetts, yet not wholly by the votes of one party. In 1803, he was chosen to the Senate of the United States. In the Massachusetts Legislature he was not a strict party man; he was not elected to the Senate by a strictly party vote. In 1806, he was inaugurated as Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, and continued in that office about three years. In 1808, he resigned his place in the Senate. In 1809, he was sent by Mr. Madison as Minister to Russia, and remained abroad in various ministries and commissions, till 1817, when he returned, and became Secretary of State under Mr. Monroe. This office he filled till he became President, in 1825. In 1829, failing of reelection, he retired to private life. In 1831, he was elected as one of the Representatives to Congress from Massachusetts, and continued there till his death, the first President that ever sat in an American Congress.

It will be fifty-four years the thirtieth of next May, since he began his public career. What did he aim at in that long period? At first sight, it is easy to see the aim of some of the conspicuous men of America. It has obviously been the aim of Mr. Clay to build up the "American System," by the establishment of protective duties; that of Mr. Calhoun to establish free trade, leaving a man to buy where he can buy cheapest, and sell where he can sell dearest. In respect to these matters the two are exactly opposite to one another--antithetic as the poles. But each has also, and obviously, another aim,--to build up the institution of slavery in the South. In this they agree, and if I understand them aright, this is the most important political design of each; for which Mr. Calhoun would forego even free trade, and Mr. Clay would "compromise" even a tariff. Looked at in reference to their aims, there is a certain continuity of action in both these gentlemen. I speak not now of another object which both have equally and obviously aimed at; not of the personal, but the political object.

At first sight, it does not appear that Mr. Adams had any definite scheme of measures which he aimed to establish; there is no obvious unity of idea, or continuity of action, that forces itself upon the spectator. He does not seem to have studied the two great subjects of our political economy, finance and trade, very deeply, or even with any considerable width of observation or inquiry; he had no financial or commercial hobby. He has worked with every party, and against every party; all have claimed, none held him. Now he sides with the federalists, then with the democrats; now he opposes France, showing that her policy is that of pirates; now he contends against England; now he works in favor of General Jackson, who put down the nullification of South Carolina with a rough hand; then he opposes the general in his action against the Bank; now he contends for the Indians, then for the Negroes; now attacks Masonry, and then Free trade. He speaks in favor of claiming and holding "the whole of Oregon;" then against annexing Texas.

But there is one sentiment which runs through all his life: an intense love of freedom for all men; one idea, the idea that each man has unalienable rights. These are what may be called the American sentiment, and the American idea; for they lie at the basis of American institutions, except the "patriarchal," and shine out in all our history--I should say, our early history. These two form the golden thread on which Mr. Adams's jewels are strung. Love of human freedom in its widest sense is the most marked and prominent thing in his character. This explains most of his actions. Studied with this in mind, his life is pretty consistent. This explains his love of the Constitution. He early saw the peculiarity of the American government; that it rested in theory on the natural rights of man, not on a compact, not on tradition, but on somewhat anterior to both, on the unalienable rights universal in man, and equal in each. He looked on the American Constitution as an attempt to organize these rights; resting, therefore, not on force, but natural law; not on power, but right. But with him the Constitution was not an idol; it was a means, not an end. He did more than expound it; he went back of the Constitution, to the Declaration of Independence, for the ideas of the Constitution; yes, back of the Declaration to Human Nature and the Laws of God, to legitimate these ideas. The Constitution is a compromise between those ideas and institutions and prejudices existing when it was made; not an idol, but a servant. He saw that the Constitution is "not the work of eternal justice, ruling through the people," but the work "of man; frail, fallen, imperfect man, following the dictates of his nature, and aspiring to be perfect."[12] Though a "constitutionalist," he did not worship the Constitution. He was much more than a "defender of the Constitution,"--a defender of Human Rights.

Mr. Adams had this American sentiment and idea in an heroic degree. Perhaps no political man now living has expressed them so fully. With a man like him, not very genial or creative, having no great constructive skill, and not without a certain pugnacity in his character, this sentiment and idea would naturally develop themselves in a negative form, that of opposition to Wrong, more often than in the positive form of direct organization of the Right; would lead to criticism oftener than to creation. Especially would this be the case if other men were building up institutions in opposition to this idea. In him they actually take the form of what he called "The unalienable right of resistance to oppression." His life furnishes abundant instances of this. He thought the Indians were unjustly treated, cried out against the wrong; when President, endeavored to secure justice to the Creeks in Georgia, and got into collision with Governor Troup. He saw, or thought he saw, that England opposed the American idea, both in the new world and the old. In his zeal for freedom he sometimes forgot the great services of England in that same cause, and hated England, hated her with great intensity of hatred, hated her political policy, her monarchy, and her aristocracy, mocked at the madness of her king, for he thought England stood in the way of freedom.[13] Yet he loved the English name and the English blood, was "proud of being himself descended from that stock," thinking it worth noting, "that Chatham's language was his mother tongue, and Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own." He confessed no nation had done more for the cause of human improvement. He loved the Common Law of England, putting it far above the Roman Law, perhaps not without doing a little injustice to the latter.[14] The common law was a rude and barbarous code. But human liberty was there; a trial by jury was there; the habeas corpus was there. It was the law of men "regardful of human rights."

This sentiment led him to defend the right of petition in the House of Representatives, as no other man had dared to do. He cared not whether it was the petition of a majority, or a minority; of men or women, free men or slaves. It might be a petition to remove him from a committee, to expel him from the House, a petition to dissolve the Union--he presented it none the less. To him there was but one nature in all, man or woman, bond or free, and that was human nature, the most sacred thing on earth. Each human child had unalienable rights, and though that child was a beggar or slave, had rights, which all the power in the world, bent into a single arm, could not destroy nor abate, though it might ravish away. This induced him to attempt to procure the right of suffrage for the colored citizens of the District of Columbia.

This sentiment led him to oppose tyranny in the House of Representatives, the tyranny of the majority. In one of his juvenile essays, published in 1791, contending against a highly popular work, he opposed the theory that a State has the right to do what it pleases, declaring it had no right to do wrong.[15] In his old age he had not again to encounter the empty hypothesis of Thomas Paine, but the substantial enactment of the "Representatives" of the people of the United States. The hypothesis was trying to become a fact. The South had passed the infamous Gag-Law, which a symbolical man from New Hampshire had presented, though it originated with others.[16] By that law the mouth of the North was completely stopped in Congress, so that not one word could be said about the matter of slavery.

The North was quite willing to have it stopped, for it did not care to speak against slavery, and the gag did not stop the mouth of the Northern purse. You may take away from the North its honor, if you can find it; may take away its rights; may imprison its free citizens in the jails of Louisiana and the Carolinas; yes, may invade the "Sacred soil of the North," and kidnap a man out of Boston itself, within sight of Faneuil Hall, and the North will not complain; will bear it with that patient shrug, waiting for yet further indignities. Only when the Northern purse is touched, is there an uproar. If the postmaster demands silver for letters, there is instant alarm; the repeal of a tariff rouses the feelings, and an embargo once drove the indignant North to the perilous edge of rebellion! Mr. Adams loved his dollars as well as most New England men; he looked out for their income as well; guarded as carefully against their outgo; though conscientiously upright in all his dealings, kind and hospitable, he has never been proved generous, and generosity is the commonest virtue of the North; is said to have been "close," if not mean. He loved his dollars as well as most men, but he loved justice more; honor more; freedom more; the Unalienable Rights of man far more.

He looked on the Constitution as an instrument for the defence of the Rights of man. The government was to act as the people had told how. The Federal government was not sovereign; the State government was not sovereign;[17] neither was a court of ultimate appeal;--but the People was sovereign; had the right of Eminent Domain over Congress and the Constitution, and making that, had set limits to the government. He guarded therefore against all violation of the Constitution, as a wrong done to the people; he would not overstep its limits in a bad cause; not even in a good one. Did Mr. Jefferson obtain Louisiana by a confessed violation of the Constitution, Mr. Adams would oppose the purchase of Louisiana, and was one of the six senators who voted against it. Making laws for that Territory, he wished to extend the trial by jury to all criminal prosecutions, while the law limited that form of trial to capital offences. Before that Territory had a representative in Congress, the American government wished to collect a revenue there. Mr. Adams opposed that too. It was "assuming a dangerous power;" it was government without the consent of the governed, and therefore an unjust government. "All exercise of human authority must be under the limitation of right and wrong." All other power is despotic, and "in defiance of the laws of nature and of God."[18]

This love of freedom led him to hate and oppose the tyranny of the strong over the weak, to hate it most in its worst form; to hate American Slavery, doubtless the most infamous form of that tyranny now known amongst the nations of Christendom, and perhaps the most disgraceful thing on earth. Mr. Adams called slavery a vessel of dishonor so base that it could not be named in the Constitution with decency. In 1805, he wished to lay a duty on the importation of slaves, and was one of five senators who voted to that effect. He saw the power of this institution--the power of money and the power of votes which it gives to a few men. He saw how dangerous it was to the Union; to American liberty, to the cause of man. He saw that it trod three millions of men down to the dust, counting souls but as cattle. He hated nothing as he hated this; fought against nothing so manfully. It was the lion in the pathway of freedom, which frightened almost all the politicians of the North and the East and the West, so that they forsook that path; a lion whose roar could wellnigh silence the forum and the bar, the pulpit and the press; a lion who rent the Constitution, trampled under foot the Declaration of Independence, and tore the Bible to pieces. Mr. Adams was ready to rouse up this lion, and then to beard him in his den. Hating slavery, of course he opposed whatever went to strengthen its power; opposed Mr. Atherton's Gag-law; opposed the annexation of Texas; opposed the Mexican war; and, wonderful to tell, actually voted against it, and never took back his vote.

When Secretary of State, this same feeling led him to oppose conceding to the British the right of searching American vessels supposed to be concerned in the slave-trade, and when Representative to oppose the repeal of the law giving "protection" to American sailors. It appeared also in private intercourse with men. No matter what was a man's condition, Mr. Adams treated him as an equal.

* * * * *

This devotion to freedom and the unalienable rights of man, was the most important work of his life. Compared with some other political men, he seems inconsistent, because he now opposes one evil, then its opposite evil. But his general course is in this direction, and, when viewed in respect to this idea, seems more consistent than that of Mr. Webster, or Calhoun, or Clay, when measured by any great principle. This appears in his earlier life. In 1802, he became a member of the Massachusetts Senate. The majority of the General Court were federalists. It was a time of intense political excitement, the second year of Mr. Jefferson's administration. The custom is well known--to take the whole of the Governor's Council from the party which has a majority in the General Court. On the 27th of May, 1802, Mr. Adams stood up for the rights of the minority. He wanted some anti-federalists in the Council of Governor Strong, and as Senator threw his first vote to secure that object. Such was the first legislative action of John Quincy Adams. In the House of Representatives, in 1831, the first thing he did was to present fifteen petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, though, from constitutional scruples, opposed to granting the petitions. The last public act of his life was this:--The question was before the House on giving medals to the men distinguished in the Mexican war; the minority opposing it wanted more time for debate; the previous question was moved, Mr. Adams voted for the last time,--voted "No," with unusual emphasis; the great loud No of a man going home to God full of "The unalienable right of resistance to oppression," its emphatic word on his dying lips. There were the beginning, the middle, and the end, all three in the same spirit, all in favor of mankind; a remarkable unity of action in his political drama.

Somebody once asked him, What are the recognized principles of politics? Mr. Adams answered that there were none: the recognized precepts are bad ones, and so not principles. But, continued the inquirer, is not this a good one--To seek "The greatest good of the greatest number?" No, said he, that is the worst of all, for it looks specious while it is ruinous. What shall become of the minority, in that case? This is the only principle,--"To seek the greatest good of all."

I do not say there were no exceptions to this devotion to freedom in a long life; there are some passages in his history which it is impossible to justify, and hard to excuse. In early life he was evidently ambitious of place, and rank, and political power. I must confess, it seems to me, at some times, he was not scrupulous enough about the means of attaining that place and power. He has been much censured for his vote in favor of the Embargo, in 1807. His vote, howsoever unwise, may easily have been an honest vote. To an impartial spectator at this day, perhaps it will be evidently so. His defence of it I cannot think an honest defence, for in that he mentions arguments as impelling him to his vote which could scarcely have been present to his mind at the time, and, if they were his arguments then, were certainly kept in silence--they did not appear in the debate,[19] they were not referred to in the President's message.[20]

I am not to praise Mr. Adams simply because he is dead; what is wrong before is wrong after death. It is no merit to die; shall we tell lies about him because he is dead? No, the Egyptian people scrutinized and judged their kings after death--much more should we our fellow-citizens, intrusted with power to serve the State. "A lavish and undistinguishing eulogium is not praise." I know what coals of terrible fire lie under my feet, as I speak of this matter, and how thin and light is the coat of ashes deposited there in forty years; how easily they are blown away at the slightest breath of "Hartford Convention," or the "Embargo," and the old flame of political animosity blazes forth anew, while the hostile forms of "federalists" and "democrats" come back to light. I would not disquiet those awful shades, nor bring them up again. But a word must be said. The story of the embargo is well known: the President sent his message to the Senate recommending it, and accompanied with several documents. The message was read and assigned to a committee; the ordinary rule of business was suspended; the bill was reported by the committee; drafted, debated, engrossed, and completely passed through all its stages, the whole on the same day, in secret session, and in about four hours! Yet it was a bill that involved the whole commerce of the country, and prostrated that commerce, seriously affecting the welfare of hundreds of thousands of men. Eight hundred thousand tons of shipping were doomed to lie idle and rot in port. The message came on Friday. Some of the Senators wanted yet further information and more time for debate, at least for consideration,--till Monday. It could not be! Till Saturday, then. No; the bill must pass now, no man sleeping on that question. Mr. Adams was the most zealous for passing the bill. In that "debate," if such it can be called, while opposing a postponement for further information and reflection, he said, "The President has recommended the measure on his high responsibility; I would _not consider_, I would _not deliberate_; I would _act_. Doubtless the _President possesses such further information as will justify the measure_!"[21] To my mind, that is the worst act of his public life; I cannot justify it. I wish I could find some reasonable excuse for it. What had become of the "sovereignty of the people," the "unalienable right of resistance to oppression?" Would _not consider_; would _not deliberate_; would _act_ without doing either; leave it all to the "high responsibility" of the President, with a "doubtless" he has "further information" to justify the measure! It was a shame to say so; it would have disgraced a Senator in St. Petersburg. Why not have the "further information" laid before the Senate? What would Mr. Adams have said, if President Jackson, Tyler, or Polk, had sent such a message, and some Senator or Representative had counselled submissive action, without considering, without deliberation? With what appalling metaphors would he describe such a departure from the first duty of a statesman; how would the tempestuous eloquence of that old patriot shake the Hall of Congress till it rung again, and the nation looked up with indignation in its face! It is well known what Mr. Adams said in 1834, when Mr. Polk, in the House of Representatives, seemed over-laudatory of the President: "I shall never be disposed to interfere with any member who shall rise on this floor and pronounce a panegyric upon the chief magistrate.

'No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning.'"

Yet the future of Mr. Polk was not so obvious in 1834, as the reward of Mr. Adams in 1808.

This act is particularly glaring in Mr. Adams. The North often sends men to Washington who might have done it without any great inconsistency; men, too, not so remarkable for infirmity in the head, as for that less pardonable weakness in the knees and the neck; men that bend to power "right or wrong." Mr. Adams was not afflicted with that weakness, and so the more to be censured for this palpable betrayal of a trust so important. I wish I could find some excuse for it. He was forty years old; not very old, but old enough to know better. His defence made the matter worse. The Massachusetts Legislature disapproved of his conduct; chose another man to succeed him in the Senate. Then Mr. Adams resigned his seat, and soon after was sent minister to Russia, as he himself subsequently declared,[22] "in consequence of the support he had for years given to the measures of Mr. Jefferson's administration against Great Britain." But his father said of that mission of his son, "Aristides is banished because he is too just."[23] It is easy to judge of the temper of the times, when such words as those of the father could be said on such an occasion, and that by a man who had been President of the United States! When a famine occurs, disease appears in the most hideous forms; men go back to temporary barbarism. In times of political strife, such diseases appear of the intellectual and moral powers. No man who did not live in those times can fully understand the obliquity of mind and moral depravity which then displayed themselves amongst those otherwise without reproach. Says Mr. Adams himself, referring to that period, "Imagination in her wildest vagaries can scarcely conceive the transformation of temper, the obliquities of intellect, the perversions of moral principle, effected by junctures of nigh and general excitement." However, it must be confessed that this, though not the only instance of injustice, is the only case of servile compliance with the Executive to be found in the whole life of the man. It was a grievous fault, but grievously did he answer it; and if a long life of unfaltering resistance to every attempt at the assumption of power is fit atonement, then the expiation was abundantly made.

About the same time, Mr. Adams was chairman of a committee of the Senate, appointed to consider the case of a Senator from Ohio. His conduct, on that occasion, has been the theme of violent attack, and defence as violent. To the calm spectator, at this day, his conduct seems unjustifiable, inconsistent with the counsels of justice, which, though moving with her "Pace of snail," looks always towards the right, and will not move out of her track, though the heavens fall.

While Mr. Adams was President, Hayti became free; but he did not express any desire that the United States should acknowledge her independence, and receive her minister at Washington,--an African plenipotentiary. In his message,[24] he says, "There are circumstances that have hitherto forbidden the acknowledgment," and mentions "additional reasons for withholding that acknowledgment." In the instructions to the American functionary, sent to the celebrated Congress of Panama, it is said, the President "is not prepared now to say that Hayti ought to be recognized as an independent sovereign power;" he "does not think it would be proper at this time to recognize it as a new State." He was unwilling to consent to the independence of Cuba, for fear of an insurrection of her slaves, and the effect at home. The duty of the United States would be "To defend themselves against the contagion of such near and dangerous examples," that would "constrain them ... to employ all means necessary to their security." That is, the President would be constrained to put down the blacks in Cuba, who were exercising "The unalienable right of resistance to oppression," for fear the blacks in the United States would discover that they also were men, and had "Unalienable rights!" Had he forgotten the famous words, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God?" The defence of such language on such an occasion is, that Mr. Adams's eyes were not yet open to the evil of slavery. That is a good defence, if true. To me it seems a true defence. Even great men do not see every thing. In 1800, Fisher Ames, while delivering the eulogy on General Washington, censured even the British government, because, "In the wilds of Africa, it obstructed the commerce in slaves!" No man is so wise as mankind. It must be confessed that Mr. Adams, while Secretary of State, and again, while President, showed no hostility to the institution of slavery. His influence all went the other way. He would repress the freedom of the blacks, in the West Indies, lest American slavery should be disturbed, and its fetters broke; he would not acknowledge the independence of Hayti, he would urge Spain to make peace with her descendants, for the same reason--"not for those new republics," but lest the negroes in Cuba and Porto Rico should secure their freedom. He negotiated with England, and she paid the United States more than a million of dollars[25] for the fugitive slaves who took refuge under her flag during the late war. Mr. Adams had no scruples about receiving the money during his administration. An attempt was repeatedly made by his secretary, Mr. Clay, through Mr. Gallatin, and then through Mr. Barbour, to induce England to restore the "fugitive slaves who had taken refuge in the Canadian provinces," who, escaping from the area of freedom, seek the shelter of the British crown.[26] Nay, he negotiated a treaty with Mexico, which bound her to deliver up fugitive slaves, escaping from the United States--a treaty which the Mexican Congress refused to ratify! Should a great man have known better? Great men are not always wise. Afterwards, public attention was called to the matter; humble men gave lofty counsel; Mr. Adams used different language, and recommended different measures. But long before that, on the 7th of December, 1804, Mr. Pickering, his colleague in the Senate of the United States, offered a resolution, for the purpose of amending the Constitution, so as to apportion representatives, and direct taxes among the States, according to their free inhabitants.