as a learned man; as an able diplomatist, who had served his country
faithfully at home and abroad; as a President spotless and
incorruptible, but not as a very important personage in American
history. His mark would have been faint and soon effaced from the sands
of time. But the last period of his life was the noblest. He had worn
all the official honors which the nation could bestow; he sought the
greater honor of serving that nation, who had now no added boon to give.
All that he had done as Minister abroad, as Senator, as Secretary, and
President, is little compared with what he did in the House of
Representatives; and while he stood there, with nothing to hope, with
nothing to fear, the hand of Justice wrote his name high up on the walls
of his country. It was surprising to see at his first attendance there,
men who, while he was President, had been the loudest to call out
"Coalition, Bargain, Intrigue, Corruption," come forward and express the
involuntary confidence they felt in his wisdom and integrity, and their
fear, actual though baseless, that his withdrawal from the Committee on
Manufactures would "endanger the very Union itself."[36] Great questions
soon came up: nullification was speedily disposed of; the Bank and the
tariff got ended or compromised, but slavery lay in the consciousness of
the nation, like the one dear but appalling sin in a man's heart. Some
wished to be rid of it, northern men and southern men. It would come up;
to justify that, or excuse it, the American sentiment and idea must be
denied and rejected utterly; the South, who had long known the charms of
Bathsheba, was ready for her sake to make way with Uriah himself. To
remove that monstrous evil, gradually but totally, and restore unity to
the nation, would require a greater change than the adoption of the
Constitution. To keep slavery out of sight, yet in existence,
unjustified, unexcused, unrepented of, a contradiction in the national
consciousness, a political and deadly sin, the sin against the Holy
Spirit of American Liberty, known but not confessed, the public secret
of the people--that would lead to suppressing petitions, suppressing
debate in Congress and out of Congress, to silencing the pulpit, the
press, and the people.
Under these circumstances, Mr. Adams went to Congress, an old man, well
known on both sides the water, the presidential laurels on his brow,
independent and fearless, expecting no reward from men for services
however great. In respect to the subject of slavery, he had no ideas in
advance of the nation; he was far behind the foremost men. He
"deprecated all discussion of slavery or its abolition, in the House,
and gave no countenance to petitions for the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia or the territories." However, he acquired new ideas
as he went on, and became the congressional leader in the great movement
of the American mind towards universal freedom.
Here he stood as the champion of human rights; here he fought, and with
all his might. In 1836, by the celebrated resolution, forbidding debate
on the subject of slavery, the South drove the North to the wall, nailed
it there into shameful silence. A "Northern man with Southern
principles," before entering the President's chair, declared, that if
Congress should pass a law to abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia, he would exercise his veto to prevent the law.[37] Mr. Adams
stood up manfully, sometimes almost alone, and contended for freedom of
speech. Did obstinate men of the North send petitions relative to
slavery, asking for its abolition in the District or elsewhere? Mr.
Adams was ready to present the petitions. Did women petition? It made no
difference with him. Did slaves petition? He stood up there to defend
their right to be heard. The South had overcome many an obstacle, but
that one fearless soul would not bend, and could not be broken. Spite of
rules of order, he contrived to bring the matter perpetually before
Congress, and sometimes to read the most offensive parts of the
petitions. When Arkansas was made a State, he endeavored to abolish
slavery in its domain; he sought to establish international relations
with Hayti, and to secure the right of suffrage for the colored citizens
of the District of Columbia. The laws which forbid blacks to vote in the
Northern States he held "in utter abhorrence."
He saw from afar the plots of southern politicians, plots for extending
the area of slavery, for narrowing the area of freedom, and exposed
those plots. You all remember the tumult it excited when he rose in his
place holding a petition from slaves; that the American Congress was
thrown into long and disgraceful confusion. You cannot have forgotten
the uproar which followed his presenting a petition to dissolve the
Union![38] I know few speeches more noble and manly than his on the
right of petition,--occasioned by that celebrated attempt to stifle
debate, and on the annexation of Texas. Some proposed to censure him,
some clamored, "expel him," some cried out, "burn the petitions!" and
"him with them," screamed yet others. Some threatened to have him
indicted by the grand jury of the district, "or be made amenable to
_another tribunal_," hoping to see "an incendiary brought to condign
punishment." "My life on it," said a southern legislator, "if he
presents that petition from slaves, we shall yet see him within the
walls of the penitentiary." Some in secret threatened to assassinate him
in the streets. They mistook their man; with justice on his side he did
"not fear all the grand juries in the universe." He would not curl nor
cringe, but snorted his defiance in their very face. In front of
ridicule, of desertion, obloquy, rage, and brutal threats, stood up that
old man, bald and audacious, and the chafed rock of Cohasset stands not
firmer mid the yesty waves, nor more triumphant spurns back into the
ocean's face the broken billows of the storm. That New England knee bent
only before his God. That unpretending man--the whole power of the
nation could not move him from his post.
Men threatened to increase the slave power. Said one of the champions of
slavery with prophetic speech, but fatal as Cassandra's in the classic
tale, Americans "would come up in thousands to plant the lone star of
the Texan banner on the Mexican capital.... The boundless wealth of
captured towns and rifled churches, and a lazy, vicious, and luxurious
priesthood, would soon enable Texas to pay her soldiery and redeem her
State debt, and push her victorious arms to the very shores of the
Pacific. And would not all this extend the bounds of slavery? Yes, the
result would be, that before another quarter of a century the extension
of slavery would not stop short of the Western ocean." Against this
danger Mr. Adams armed himself, and fought in the holiest cause--the
cause of human rights.
I know few things in modern times so grand as that old man standing
there in the House of Representatives, the compeer of Washington, a man
who had borne himself proudly in kings' courts, early doing service in
high places, where honor may be won; a man who had filled the highest
office in any nation's gift; a President's son, himself a President,
standing there the champion of the neediest of the oppressed: the
conquering cause pleased others; him only, the cause of the conquered.
Had he once been servile to the hands that wielded power? No thunderbolt
can scare him now! Did he once make a treaty and bind Mexico to bewray
the wandering fugitive who took his life in his hand and fled from the
talons of the American eagle? Now he would go to the stake sooner than
tolerate such a deed! When he went to the Supreme Court, after an
absence of thirty years, and arose to defend a body of friendless
negroes torn from their home and most unjustly held in thrall; when he
asked the judges to excuse him at once both for the trembling faults of
age and the inexperience of youth, the man having labored so long
elsewhere that he had forgotten the rules of court; when he summed up
the conclusion of the whole matter, and brought before those judicial
but yet moistening eyes the great men whom he had once met there--Chase,
Cushing, Martin, Livingston, and Marshall himself; and while he
remembered them that were "gone, gone, all gone," remembered also the
Eternal Justice that is never gone,--why the sight was sublime. It was
not an old patrician of Rome who had been consul, dictator, coming out
of his honored retirement at the Senate's call, to stand in the forum to
levy new armies, marshal them to victory afresh, and gain thereby new
laurels for his brow;--but it was a plain citizen of America, who had
held an office far greater than that of consul, king, or dictator, his
hand reddened by no man's blood, expecting no honors, but coming in the
name of Justice to plead for the slave, for the poor barbarian negro of
Africa, for Cinque and Grabbo, for their deeds comparing them to
Harmodius and Aristogeiton, whose classic memory made each bosom thrill.
That was worth all his honors,--it was worth while to live fourscore
years for that.
When he stood in the House of Representatives, the champion of the
rights of a minority, of the rights of man, he stood colossal. Frederick
the Great seems doubly so, when, single-handed, "that son of the Dukes
of Brandenburg" contended against Austria, France, England, Russia, kept
them all at bay, divided by his skill, and conquered by his might.
Surely he seems great, when measured merely by his deeds. But, in
comparison, Frederick the Great seems Frederick the little: for Adams
fought not for a kingdom, nor for fame, but for Justice and the Eternal
Right; fought, too, with weapons tempered in a heavenly stream![39]
He had his reward. Who ever missed it? From mythological Cain, who slew
his brother, down to Judas Iscariot, and Aaron Burr; from Jesus of
Nazareth, down to the least man that dies or lives--who ever lost his
reward? None. No; not one. Within the wicked heart there dwells the
avenger, with unseen hands, to adjust the cord, to poison the fatal
bowl. In the impenetrable citadel of a good man's consciousness, unseen
by mortal eyes, there stands the palladium of justice, radiant with
celestial light; mortal hands may make and mar,--this they can mar not,
no more than they can make. Things about the man can others build up or
destroy; but no foe, no tyrant, no assassin, can ever steal the man out
of the man. Who would not have the consciousness of being right, even of
trying to be right, though affronted by a whole world, rather than
conscious of being wrong, and hollow, and false, have all the honors of
a nation on his head? Of late years, no party stood up for Mr. Adams,
"The madman of Massachusetts," as they called him, on the floor of
Congress; but he knew that he had, and in his old age, done one
work,--he had contended for the unalienable rights of man, done it
faithfully. The government of God is invisible, His justice the more
certain,--and by that Mr. Adams had his abundant reward.
But he had his poorer and outward rewards, negative and positive. For
his zeal in behalf of freedom he was called "a monarchist in disguise,"
"an alien to the true interests of his country," "a traitor." A
slaveholder from Kentucky published to his constituents that he "was
sincerely desirous to check that man, for if he could be removed from
the councils of the nation, or silenced upon the exasperating subject to
which he had devoted himself, none other, I believe, could be found
hardy enough or bad enough to fill his place." It was worth something to
have an enemy speak such praise as that: but the slaveholder was wrong
in his conjecture; the North has yet other sons not less hardy, not more
likely to be silenced. Still more praise of a similar sort:--at a fourth
of July dinner at Walterborough, in South Carolina, this sentiment was
proposed and responded to with nine cheers: "May we never want a
democrat to trip up the heels of a federalist, or a hangman to prepare a
halter for John Quincy Adams." Considering what he had done and whence
those rewards proceeded, that was honor enough for a yet greater man.
Let me turn to things more grateful. Mr. Adams, through lack of genial
qualities, had few personal friends, yet from good men throughout the
North there went up a hearty thanksgiving for his manly independence,
and prayers for his success. Brave men forgot their old prejudices,
forgot the "Embargo," forgot the "Hartford Convention," forgot all the
hard things which he had ever said, forgot his words in the Senate,
forgot their disappointments, and said--"For this our hearts shall honor
thee, thou brave old man!" In 1843, when, for the first time, he visited
the West, to assist at the foundation of a scientific institution, all
the West rose up to do him reverence. He did not go out to seek honors,
they came to seek him. It was the movement of a noble people, feeling a
noble presence about them no less than within. When Cicero, the only
great man whom Rome never feared, returned from his exile, all Italy
rose up and went out to meet him; so did the North and the West welcome
this champion of freedom, this venerable old man. They came not to honor
one who had been a President, but one who was a man. That alone, said
Mr. Adams, with tears of joy and grief filling his eyes, was reward
enough for all that he had done, suffered, or undertaken. Yes, it was
too much; too much for one man as the reward of one life!
You all remember the last time he was at any public meeting in this
city. A man had been kidnapped in Boston, kidnapped at noon-day, "on the
high road between Faneuil Hall and old Quincy," and carried off to be a
slave! New England hands had seized their brother, sold him into bondage
for ever, and his children after him. In the presence of slavery, as of
arms, the laws are silent,--not always men. Then it appears who are men,
who not! A meeting was called to talk the matter over, in a plain way,
and look in one another's faces. Who was fit to preside in such a case?
That old man sat in the chair in Faneuil Hall; above him was the image
of his father, and his own; around him were Hancock and the other
Adams,--Washington, greatest of all; before him were the men and women
of Boston, met to consider the wrongs done to a miserable negro slave;
the roof of the old Cradle of Liberty spanned over them all. Forty years
before, a young man and a Senator, he had taken the chair at a meeting
called to consult on the wrong done to American seamen, violently
impressed by the British from an American ship of war, the unlucky
Chesapeake; some of you remember that event. Now, an old man, clothed
with half a century of honors, he sits in the same hall, to preside over
a meeting to consider the outrage done to a single slave; a greater
outrage--alas, not done by a hostile, not by an alien hand! One was the
first meeting of citizens he ever presided over, the other was the last;
both for the same object--the defence of the Eternal Right.
* * * * *
But I would not weary you. His death was noble; fit ending for such a
life. He was an old man, the last that had held a diplomatic office
under Washington. He had uttered his oracles; had done his work. The
highest honors of the nation he had worthily worn; but, as his townsmen
tell us,--caring little for the President, and much for the man,--that
was very little in comparison with his character. The good and ill of
the human cup he had tasted, and plentifully, too, as son, husband,
father. He had borne his testimony for freedom and the rights of
mankind; he had stood in Congress almost alone; with a few gallant men
had gone down to the battlefield, and if victory escaped him, it was
because night came on.
He saw others enter the field in good heart, to stand in the imminent
deadly breach; he lived long enough for his own welfare, for his own
ambition; long enough to see the seal broken,--and then, this aged
Simeon, joyful in the consolation, bowed his head and went home in
peace. His feet were not hurt with fetters; he died with his armor on;
died like a Senator in the capitol of the nation; died like an American,
in the service of his country; died like a Christian, full of
immortality; died like a man, fearless and free!
You will ask, What was the secret of his strength? Whence did he gain
such power to stand erect where others so often cringed and crouched low
to the ground? It is plain to see: he looked beyond time, beyond men;
looked to the eternal God, and fearing Him forgot all other fear. Some
of his failings he knew to be such, and struggled with them though he
did not overcome. A man, not over-modest, once asked him what he most of
all lamented in his life, and he replied, "My impetuous temper and
vituperative speech; that I have not always returned good for evil, but
in the madness of my blood have said things that I am ashamed of before
my God!" As the world goes, it needed some greatness to say that.
When he was a boy, his mother, a still woman, and capable, deep-hearted,
and pious, took great pains with his culture; most of all with his
religious culture. When, at the age of ten, he was about to leave home
for years of absence in another land, she took him aside to warn him of
temptations which he could not then understand. She bade him remember
religion and his God--his secret, silent prayer. Often in his day there
came the earthquake of party strife; the fire, the storm, and the
whirlwind of passion; he listened--and God was not there; but there
came, too, the remembrance of his mother's whispered words; God came in
that memory, and earthquake and storm, the fire and the whirlwind were
powerless, at last, before that still small voice. Beautifully did she
write to her boy of ten, "Great learning and superior abilities will be
of little value ... unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity, are
added to them. Remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all
your words and your actions." "Dear as you are to me," says this more
than Spartan, this Christian mother, "Dear as you are to me, I would
much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have
crossed, or that any untimely death cross you in your infant years,
than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child. Let your
observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of
domination and power--the parents of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism.
May you be led to an imitation of that disinterested patriotism and that
noble love of your country, which will teach you to despise wealth,
titles, pomp, and equipage, as mere external advantages, which cannot
add to the internal excellence of your mind, or compensate for the want
of integrity and virtue." She tells him in a letter, that her father, a
plain New England clergyman, of Braintree, who had just died, "left you
a legacy more valuable than gold or silver; he left you his blessing,
and his prayers that you might become a useful citizen, a guardian of
the laws, liberty, and religion of your country.... Lay this bequest up
in your memory and practise upon it; believe me, you will find it a
treasure that neither moth nor rust can destroy."
If a child have such a mother, there is no wonder why he stood fearless,
and bore a charmed life which no opposition could tame down. I wonder
more that one so born and by such a mother bred, could ever once bend a
servile knee; could ever indulge that fierce and dreadful hate; could
ever stoop to sully those hands which hers had joined in prayer. It ill
accords with teachings like her own. I wonder that he could ever have
refused to "deliberate." Religion is a quality that makes a man
independent; disappointment will not render such an one sour, nor
oppression drive him mad, nor elevation bewilder; power will not dazzle,
nor gold corrupt; no threat can silence and no fear subdue.
There are men enough born with greater abilities than Mr. Adams, men
enough in New England, in all the walks of man. But how many are there
in political life who use their gifts so diligently, with such
conscience, such fearless deference to God?--nay, tell us one. I have
not spared his faults; I am no eulogist, to paint a man with
undiscriminating praise. Let his follies warn us, while his virtues
guide. But look on all his faults, and then compare him with our famous
men of the North or the South; with the great whigs or the great
democrats. Ask which was the purest man, the most patriotic, the most
honest; which did his nation the smallest harm and the greatest good;
which for his country and his kind denied himself the most. Shall I
examine their lives, public and private, strip them bare and lay them
down beside his life, and ask which, after all, has the least of blemish
and the most of beauty? Nay, that is not for me to do or to attempt.
In one thing he surpassed most men,--he grew more liberal the more he
grew old, ripening and mellowing, too, with age. After he was seventy
years old, he welcomed new ideas, kept his mind vigorous, and never
fell into that crabbed admiration of past times and buried institutions,
which is the palsy of so many a man, and which makes old age nothing but
a pity, and gray hairs provocative of tears. This is the more remarkable
in a man of his habitual reverence for the past, in one who judged
oftener by the history than by the nature of man.
Times will come when men shall look to that vacant seat. But the thunder
is silent, the lightning gone; other men must take his place and fill it
as they can. Let us not mourn that he has gone from us; let us remember
what was evil in him, but only to be warned of ambition, of party
strife, to love more that large charity which forgives an enemy, and,
through good and ill, contends for mankind. Let us be thankful for the
good he has said and done, be guided by it and blessed. There is a
certain affluence of intellectual power granted to some men, which
provokes admiration for a time, let the man of myriad gifts use his
talent as he may. Such merely cubic greatness of mind is matter of
astonishment rather than a fit subject for esteem and praise. Of that,
Mr. Adams had little, as so many of his contemporaries had more. In him
what most commands respect is, his independence, his love of justice, of
his country and his kind. No son of New England has been ever so
distinguished in political life. But it is no great thing to be
President of the United States; some men it only makes ridiculous. A
worm on a steeple's top is nothing but a worm, no more able to fly than
while creeping in congenial mud; a mountain needs no steeple to lift its
head and show the world what is great and high. The world obeys its
great men, stand where they may.
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.