Chapter CLXXII: Death of Mr. Adams

"Just after the yeas and nays were taken on a question, and the
Speaker had risen to put another question to the House, a sudden
cry was heard on the left of the chair, 'Mr. Adams is dying!'
Turning our eyes to the spot, we beheld the venerable man in the
act of falling over the left arm of his chair, while his right
arm was extended, grasping his desk for support. He would have
dropped upon the floor had he not been caught in the arms of
the member sitting next him. A great sensation was created in
the House: members from all quarters rushing from their seats,
and gathering round the fallen statesman, who was immediately
lifted into the area in front of the clerk's table. The Speaker
instantly suggested that some gentleman move an adjournment,
which being promptly done, the House adjourned."

So wrote the editors of the National Intelligencer, friends and associates of Mr. Adams for forty years, and now witnesses of the last scene--the sudden sinking in his chair, which was to end in his death. The news flew to the Senate chamber, the Senate then in session, and engaged in business, which Mr. Benton interrupted, standing up, and saying to the President of the body and the senators:

"I am called on to make a painful announcement to the Senate. I
have just been informed that the House of Representatives has
this instant adjourned under the most afflictive circumstances.
A calamitous visitation has fallen on one of its oldest and
most valuable members--one who has been President of the United
States, and whose character has inspired the highest respect
and esteem. Mr. Adams has just sunk down in his chair, and
has been carried into an adjoining room, and may be at this
moment passing from the earth, under the roof that covers us,
and almost in our presence. In these circumstances the whole
Senate will feel alike, and feel wholly unable to attend to any
business. I therefore move the immediate adjournment of the
Senate."

The Senate immediately adjourned, and all inquiries were directed to the condition of the stricken statesman. He had been removed to the Speaker's room, where he slightly recovered the use of his speech, and uttered in faltering accents, the intelligible words, "_This is the last of earth_;" and soon after, "_I am composed._" These were the last words he ever spoke. He lingered two days, and died on the evening of the 23d--struck the day before, and dying the day after the anniversary of Washington's birth--and attended by every circumstance which he could have chosen to give felicity in death. It was on the field of his labors--in the presence of the national representation, presided by a son of Massachusetts (Robert C. Winthrop, Esq.), in the full possession of his faculties, and of their faithful use--at octogenarian age--without a pang--hung over in his last unconscious moments by her who had been for more than fifty years the worthy partner of his bosom. Such a death was the "crowning mercy" of a long life of eminent and patriotic service, filled with every incident that gives dignity and lustre to human existence.

I was sitting in my library-room in the twilight of a raw and blustering day, the lamp not yet lit, when a note was delivered to me from Mr. Webster--I had saved it seven years, just seven--when it was destroyed in that conflagration of my house which consumed, in a moment, so much which I had long cherished. The note was to inform me that Mr. Adams had breathed his last; and to say that the Massachusetts delegation had fixed upon me to second the motion, which would be made in the Senate the next day, for the customary funeral honors to his memory. Seconding the motion on such an occasion always requires a brief discourse on the life and character of the deceased. I was taken by surprise, for I had not expected such an honor: I was oppressed; for a feeling of inability and unworthiness fell upon me. I went immediately to Mr. Winthrop, who was nearest, to inquire if some other senator had been named to take my place if I should find it impossible to comply with the request. He said there was none--that Mr. Davis, of Massachusetts, would make the motion, and that I was the only one named to second him. My part was then fixed. I went to the other end of the city to see Mr. Davis, and so to arrange with him as to avoid repetitions--which was done, that he should speak of events, and I of characteristics. It was late in the night when I got back to my house, and took pen and paper to note the heads of what I should say. Never did I feel so much the weight of Cicero's admonition--"_Choose with discretion out of the plenty that lies before you._" The plenty was too much. It was a field crowded with fruits and flowers, of which you could only cull a few--a mine filled with gems, of which you could only snatch a handful. By midnight I had finished the task, and was ready for the ceremony.

Mr. Adams died a member of the House, and the honors to his memory commenced there, to be finished in the Senate. Mr. Webster was suffering from domestic affliction--the death of a son and a daughter--and could not appear among the speakers. Several members of the House spoke justly and beautifully; and of these, the pre-eminent beauty and justice of the discourse delivered by Mr. James McDowell, of Virginia (even if he had not been a near connection, the brother of Mrs. Benton), would lead me to give it the preference in selecting some passages from the tributes of the House. With a feeling and melodious delivery, he said:

"It is not for Massachusetts to mourn alone over a solitary
and exclusive bereavement. It is not for her to feel alone
a solitary and exclusive sorrow. No, sir; no! Her sister
commonwealths gather to her side in this hour of her affliction,
and, intertwining their arms with hers, they bend together over
the bier of her illustrious son--feeling as she feels, and
weeping as she weeps, over a sage, a patriot, and a statesman
gone! It was in these great characteristics of individual and of
public man that his country reverenced that son when living, and
such, with a painful sense of her common loss, will she deplore
him now that he is dead.

"Born in our revolutionary day, and brought up in early and
cherished intimacy with the fathers and founders of the
republic, he was a living bond of connection between the present
and the past--the venerable representative of the memories of
another age, and the zealous, watchful, and powerful one of the
expectations, interests, and progressive knowledge of his own.

"There he sat, with his intense eye upon every thing that
passed, the picturesque and rare one man, unapproachable by all
others in the unity of his character and in the thousand-fold
anxieties which centred upon him. No human being ever entered
this hall without turning habitually and with heart-felt
deference first to him, and few ever left it without pausing,
as they went, to pour out their blessings upon that spirit of
consecration to the country which brought and which kept him
here.

"Standing upon the extreme boundary of human life, and
disdaining all the relaxations and exemptions of age, his outer
framework only was crumbling away. The glorious engine within
still worked on unhurt, uninjured, amid all the dilapidations
around it, and worked on with its wonted and its iron power,
until the blow was sent from above which crushed it into
fragments before us. And, however appalling that blow, and
however profoundly it smote upon our own feelings as we beheld
its extinguishing effect upon his, where else could it have
fallen so fitly upon him? Where else could he have been relieved
from the yoke of his labors so well as in the field where he
bore them? Where else would he himself have been so willing to
have yielded up his life, as upon the post of duty, and by the
side of that very altar to which he had devoted it? Where but
in the capitol of his country, to which all the throbbings and
hopes of his heart had been given, would the dying patriot be so
willing that those hopes and throbbings should cease? And where
but from this mansion-house of liberty on earth, could this
dying Christian more fitly go to his mansion-house of eternal
liberty on high?"

Mr. Benton concluded in the Senate the ceremonies which had commenced in the House, pronouncing the brief discourse which was intended to group into one cluster the varied characteristics of the public and private life of this most remarkable man:

"The voice of his native State has been heard, through one of
the senators of Massachusetts, announcing the death of her aged
and most distinguished son. The voice of the other senator from
Massachusetts is not heard, nor is his presence seen. A domestic
calamity, known to us all, and felt by us all, confines him
to the chamber of grief while the Senate is occupied with the
public manifestations of a respect and sorrow which a national
loss inspires. In the absence of that senator, and as the member
of this body longest here, it is not unfitting or unbecoming in
me to second the motion which has been made for extending the
last honors of the Senate to him who, forty-five years ago, was
a member of this body, who, at the time of his death, was among
the oldest members of the House of Representatives, and who,
putting the years of his service together, was the oldest of all
the members of the American government.

"The eulogium of Mr. Adams is made in the facts of his life,
which the senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Davis) has so
strikingly stated, that from early manhood to octogenarian age,
he has been constantly and most honorably employed in the public
service. For a period of more than fifty years, from the time of
his first appointment as minister abroad under Washington, to
his last election to the House of Representatives by the people
of his native district, he has been constantly retained in the
public service, and that, not by the favor of a sovereign, or
by hereditary title, but by the elections and appointments
of republican government. This fact makes the eulogy of the
illustrious deceased. For what, except a union of all the
qualities which command the esteem and confidence of man, could
have insured a public service so long, by appointments free
and popular, and from sources so various and exalted? Minister
many times abroad; member of this body; member of the House
of Representatives; cabinet minister; President of the United
States; such has been the galaxy of his splendid appointments.
And what but moral excellence the most perfect; intellectual
ability the most eminent; fidelity the most unwavering; service
the most useful; would have commanded such a succession of
appointments so exalted, and from sources so various and so
eminent? Nothing less could have commanded such a series of
appointments; and accordingly we see the union of all these
great qualities in him who has received them.

"In this long career of public service, Mr. Adams was
distinguished not only by faithful attention to all the great
duties of his stations, but to all their less and minor
duties. He was not the Salaminian galley, to be launched only
on extraordinary occasions; but he was the ready vessel,
always under sail when the duties of his station required
it, be the occasion great or small. As President, as cabinet
minister, as minister abroad, he examined all questions that
came before him, and examined all, in all their parts--in all
the minutiæ of their detail, as well as in all the vastness
of their comprehension. As senator, and as a member of the
House of Representatives, the obscure committee-room was as
much the witness of his laborious application to the drudgery
of legislation, as the halls of the two Houses were to the
ever-ready speech, replete with knowledge, which instructed all
hearers, enlightened all subjects, and gave dignity and ornament
to all debate.

"In the observance of all the proprieties of life, Mr. Adams
was a most noble and impressive example. He cultivated the
minor as well as the greater virtues. Wherever his presence
could give aid and countenance to what was useful and honorable
to man, there he was. In the exercises of the school and of
the college--in the meritorious meetings of the agricultural,
mechanical, and commercial societies--in attendance upon Divine
worship--he gave the punctual attendance rarely seen but in
those who are free from the weight of public cares.

"Punctual to every duty, death found him at the post of duty;
and where else could it have found him, at any stage of his
career, for the fifty years of his illustrious public life?
From the time of his first appointment by Washington to his
last election by the people of his native town, where could
death have found him but at the post of duty? At that post, in
the fulness of age, in the ripeness of renown crowned with
honors, surrounded by his family, his friends, and admirers,
and in the very presence of the national representation, he has
been gathered to his fathers, leaving behind him the memory of
public services which are the history of his country for half a
century, and the example of a life, public and private, which
should be the study and the model of the generations of his
countrymen."

The whole ceremony was inconceivably impressive. The two Houses of Congress were filled to their utmost capacity, and of all that Washington contained, and neighboring cities could send--the President, his cabinet, foreign ministers, judges of the Supreme Court, senators and representatives, citizens and visitors.