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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.