Chapter VI (3)

After all, this must be the greatest praise of Mr. Adams: In private he corrupted no man nor woman; as a politician he never debauched the public morals of his country, nor used public power for any private end; in public and private he lived clean and above board; he taught a fearless love of truth and the right, both by word and deed. I wish I could add, that was a small praise. But as the times go, as our famous men are, it is a very great fame, and there are few competitors for such renown; I must leave him alone in that glory. Doubtless, as he looked back on his long career, his whole life, motives as well as actions, must have seemed covered with imperfections. I will seek no further to disclose his merits, or "draw his frailties from their dead abode."

He has passed on, where superior gifts and opportunities avail not, nor his long life, nor his high station, nor his wide spread fame; where enemies cease from troubling, and the flattering tongue also is still. Wealth, honor, fame, forsake him at the grave's mouth. It is only the living soul, sullied or clean, which the last angel bears off in his arms to that world where many that seem first shall be last, and the last first; but where justice shall be lovingly done to the great man full of power and wisdom who rules the State, and the feeblest slave whom oppression chains down in ignorance and vice--done by the all-seeing Father of both President and slave, who loves both with equal love. The venerable man is gone home. He shall have his praise. But who shall speak it worthily? Mean men and little, who shrank from him in life, who never shared what was manliest in the man, but mocked at his living nobleness, shall they come forward and with mealy mouths, to sing his requiem, forgetting that his eulogy is their own ban? Some will rejoice at his death; there is one man the less to fear, and they who trembled at his life may well be glad when the earth has covered up the son she bore. Strange men will meet with mutual solace at his tomb, wondering that their common foe is dead, and they are met! The Herods and Pilates of contending parties may be made friends above his grave, and clasping hands may fancy that their union is safer than before; but there will come a day after to-day! Let us leave him to his rest.

The slave has lost a champion who gained new ardor and new strength the longer he fought; America has lost a man who loved her with his heart; Religion has lost a supporter; Freedom an unfailing friend, and Mankind a noble vindicator of our unalienable rights.

It is not long since he was here in our own streets; three winter months have scantly flown: he set out for his toil--but went home to his rest. His labors are over. No man now threatens to assassinate; none to expel; none even to censure. The theatrical thunder of Congress, noisy but harmless, has ended as it ought, in honest tears. South Carolina need ask no more a halter for that one northern neck she could not bend nor break. The tears of his country are dropped upon his urn; the muse of history shall write thereon, in letters not to be effaced, THE ONE GREAT MAN SINCE WASHINGTON, WHOM AMERICA HAD NO CAUSE TO FEAR.

To-day that venerable form lies in the Capitol,--the disenchanted dust. All is silent. But his undying soul, could we deem it still hovering o'er its native soil, bound to take leave yet lingering still, and loath to part, that would bid us love our country, love man, love justice, freedom, right, and above all, love God. To-morrow that venerable dust starts once more to join the dear presence of father and mother, to mingle his ashes with their ashes, as their lives once mingled, and their souls again. Let his native State communicate her last sad sacrament, and give him now, it is all she can, a little earth for charity.

But what shall we say as the dust returns?

"Where slavery's minions cower
Before the servile power,
He bore their ban;
And like the aged oak,
That braved the lightning's stroke,
When thunders round it broke,
Stood up a man.

"Nay, when they stormed aloud,
And round him like a cloud,
Came thick and black,--
He single-handed strove,
And like Olympian Jove,
With his own thunder drove
The phalanx back.

"Not from the bloody field,
Borne on his battered shield,
By foes o'ercome;--
But from a sterner fight,
In the defence of Right,
Clothed with a conqueror's might,
We hail him home.

"His life in labors spent,
That 'Old man eloquent'
Now rests for aye;--
His dust the tomb may claim;--
His spirit's quenchless flame,
His 'venerable name,'[40]
Pass not away."[41]

FOOTNOTES:

[12] See _Social Compact_, etc. Providence, 1848, p. 31, _et al._

[13] See _Address at Washington_, 4th of July, 1821. Second Edition, Cambridge, _passim_.

[14] Reference is made to his _speech in the House of Representatives_, May 8th and 9th, 1840. (Boston, 1840.) It is a little remarkable, that the false principle of the common law, on which Mr. Adams was commenting, as laid down by Blackstone, is corrected by a writer, M. Pothier, who rests on the civil law for his authority. See pp. 6-8, and 20, 21.

[15] _Answer to Paine's Rights of Man_ (London, 1793), originally published in the Columbian Centinel. The London Edition bears the name of _John Adams_ on the title-page.

[16] Mr. Atherton.

[17] See _Oration at Quincy_, 1831, p. 12, _et seq._ (Boston, 1831.)

[18] The _Social Compact_, etc., etc. (Providence, 1842). p. 24.

[19] See Pickering's _Letter to Governor Sullivan, on the Embargo_. Boston, 1808. John Quincy Adams's _Letter to the Hon. H. G. Otis_, etc. Boston, 1808. Pickering's _Interesting Correspondence_, 1808. _Review of the Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late William Cunningham_, etc. 1824. But see, also, Mr. Adams's "Appendix" to the above letter, published _sixteen_ years after the vote on the embargo. Baltimore, 1824. Mr. Pickering's _Brief Remarks on the Appendix_. August, 1824.

[20] Reference is here made to British "_Orders in Council_" of Nov. 22d, 1807. They were not officially made known to the American Congress till Feb. 7th, 1808. They were, however, published in the National Intelligencer, the morning on which the Message was sent to the Senate, Dec. 18th, 1807, but were not mentioned in that document, nor in the debate.

[21] I copy this from the first letter of Mr. Pickering. Mr. Adams wrote a letter (to H. G. Otis) in reply to this of Mr. Pickering, but said nothing respecting the words charged upon him; but in 1824, in an appendix to that letter, he denies that he expressed the "sentiment" which Mr. Pickering charged him with. But he _does not deny the words themselves_. They rest on the authority of Mr. Pickering, his colleague in the Senate, a strong party man, it is true, perhaps not much disposed to conciliation, but a man of most unquestionable veracity. The "sentiment" speaks for itself.

[22] Adams's _Remarks in the House of Representatives_, Jan. 5, 1846.

[23] _Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the late William Cunningham, Esq._ Boston, 1823, Letter xliii. p. 150.

[24] March 15th, 1826.

[25] See Mr. Adams's _Message_, Dec. 2, 1828. The exact sum was $1,197,422.18.

[26] See Mr. Clay's Letter to Mr. A. H. Everett, April 27th, 1825; to Mr. Middleton, respecting the intervention of the Emperor of Russia, May 10th, and Dec. 26th, 1825; to Mr. Gallatin, May 10th, and June 19th, 1826, and Feb. 24th, 1827. _Executive Documents_, Second Session of the 20th Congress, Vol. I.

[27] Report of Mr. Adams's _Lecture on the Chinese War_, in the Boston Atlas, for Dec. 4th and 5th, 1841.

[28] Genesis i. 26-28.

[29] Psalms ii. 6-8.

[30] See Mr. Adams's _Speech on Oregon_, Feb. 9th, 1846. Arguments somewhat akin to this, may be found also in the oration delivered at Newburyport, before cited.

[31] _Address on breaking ground for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal._

[32] _Jubilee of the Constitution_, p. 99.

[33] _Lecture on China._

[34] See his defence of this in his _Address to his Constituents at Braintree_, Sept. 17th, 1842. Boston, 1842, p. 56, _et seq._

[35] In a public address, Mr. Adams once quoted the well-known words of Tacitus (Annal VI. 39), _Par negotiis neque supra_,--applying them to a distinguished man lately deceased. A lady wrote to inquire whence they came. Mr. Adams informed her, and added, they could not be adequately translated in less than seven words in English. The lady replied that they might be well translated in five--_Equal to, not above, duty_, but better in three--JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

[36] _Remarks_ of Mr. Cambreleng.

[37] Mr. Van Buren.

[38] See the _Debates of the House_, January 23d and following, 1837; or Mr. Adams's own account of the matter in his _Letters to his Constituents_, etc. (Boston, 1837.) See, too, his _Series of Speeches on the Right of Petition and the Annexation of Texas_, January 14th and following, 1838. (Printed in a pamphlet. Washington, 1838.)

[39] "Acer et indomitus, quo spes, quoque ira vocasset, Ferre manum, et nunquam temerando parcere ferro; Successus urgere suos; instare favori Numinis; impellens quiequid sibi summa petenti Obstaret, gaudensque viam fecisse ruina."

[40] _Clarum et venerabile nomen._

[41] The above lines are from the pen of the Rev. John Pierpont.