John Quincy Adams Part 5

"asked Mr. King if he would accept that mission. His first and immediate impulse was to decline it. He said that his determination to retire from the public service had been (p. 178) made up, and that this proposal was utterly unexpected to him. Of this I was aware; but I urged upon him a variety of considerations to induce his acceptance of it.... I dwelt with earnestness upon all these motives, and apparently not without effect. He admitted the force of them, and finally promised fully to consider of the proposal before giving me a definite answer."

The result was an acceptance by Mr. King, his nomination by the President, and confirmation by the Senate. He was an old Federalist, to whom Mr. Adams owed no favors. With such directness and simplicity were the affairs of the Republic conducted. It is a quaint and pleasing scene from the period of our forefathers: the President, without discussion of "claims" to a distinguished and favorite post, actually selects for it a member of a hostile political organization, an old man retiring from public life; then quietly walks over to his house, surprises him with the offer, and finding him reluctant urgently presses upon him arguments to induce his acceptance. But the whole business of office-seeking and office-distributing, now so overshadowing, had no place under Mr. Adams. On March 5 he sent in several nominations which were nearly all of previous inc.u.mbents.

"Efforts had been made," he writes, "by some of the senators to obtain different nominations, and to introduce a principle of change or (p. 179) rotation in office at the expiration of these commissions, which would make the Government a perpetual and unintermitting scramble for office. A more pernicious expedient could scarcely have been devised.... I determined to renominate every person against whom there was no complaint which would have warranted his removal." A notable instance was that of Sterret, naval officer at New Orleans, "a noisy and clamorous reviler of the Administration," and lately busy in a project for insulting a Louisiana Representative who had voted for Mr.

Adams. Secretary Clay was urgent for the removal of this man, plausibly saying that in the cases of persons holding office at the pleasure of the Administration the proper course was to avoid on the one hand political persecution, and on the other any appearance of pusillanimity. Mr. Adams replied that if Sterret had been actually engaged in insulting a representative for the honest and independent discharge of duty, he would make the removal at once. But the design had not been consummated, and an _intention_ never carried into effect would scarcely justify removal.

"Besides [he added], should I remove this man for this cause it must be upon some fixed principle, which would apply to others as well as to him. And where was it possible to draw the line? (p. 180) Of the custom-house officers throughout the Union, four fifths in all probability were opposed to my election. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, had distributed these positions among his own supporters. I had been urged very earnestly and from various quarters to sweep away my opponents and provide with their places for my friends. I can justify the refusal to adopt this policy only by the steadiness and consistency of my adhesion to my own. If I depart from this in one instance I shall be called upon by my friends to do the same in many. An invidious and inquisitorial scrutiny into the personal dispositions of public officers will creep through the whole Union, and the most selfish and sordid pa.s.sions will be kindled into activity to distort the conduct and misrepresent the feelings of men whose places may become the prize of slander upon them."

Mr. Clay was silenced, and Sterret retained his position, const.i.tuting thereafter only a somewhat striking instance among many to show that nothing was to be lost by political opposition to Mr. Adams.

It was a cruel and discouraging fatality which brought about that a man so suicidally upright in the matter of patronage should find that the bitterest abuse which was heaped upon him was founded in an allegation of corruption of precisely this nature. When before the election the ign.o.ble George Kremer anonymously charged that (p. 181) Mr. Clay had sold his friends in the House of Representatives to Mr.

Adams, "as the planter does his negroes or the farmer his team and horses;" when Mr. Clay promptly published the unknown writer as "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard and a liar;" when next Kremer, being unmasked, avowed that he would make good his charges, but immediately afterward actually refused to appear or testify before a Committee of the House instructed to investigate the matter, it was supposed by all reasonable observers that the outrageous accusation Was forever laid at rest. But this was by no means the case. The author of the slander had been personally discredited; but the slander itself had not been destroyed. So shrewdly had its devisers who saw future usefulness in it managed the matter, that while Kremer slunk away into obscurity, the story which he had told remained an a.s.sertion denied, but not disproved, still open to be believed by suspicious or willing friends. With Adams President and Clay Secretary of State and General Jackson nominated, as he quickly was by the Tennessee Legislature, as a candidate for the next Presidential term, the accusation was too plausible and too tempting to be allowed to fall forever into dusty death; rather it was speedily exhumed from its shallow burial and galvanized into new life. The partisans of (p. 182) General Jackson sent it to and fro throughout the land. No denial, no argument, could kill it. It began to gain that sort of half belief which is certain to result from constant repet.i.tion; since many minds are so const.i.tuted that truth may be actually, as it were, manufactured for them by ceaseless iteration of statement, the many hearings gaining the character of evidence.

It is long since all students of American history, no matter what are their prejudices, or in whose interest their researches are prosecuted, have branded this accusation as devoid of even the most shadowy basis of probability, and it now gains no more credit than would a story that Adams, Clay, and Jackson had conspired together to get Crawford out of their way by a.s.sa.s.sination, and that his paralysis was the result of the drugs and potions administered in performance of this foul plot. But for a while the rumor stalked abroad among the people, and many conspicuously bowed down before it because it served their purpose, and too many others also, it must be confessed, did likewise because they were deceived and really believed it. Even the legislature of Tennessee were not ashamed to give formal countenance to a calumny in support of which not a particle of evidence had ever been adduced. In a preamble to certain resolutions pa.s.sed by this (p. 183) body upon this subject in 1827, it was recited that: "Mr. Adams desired the office of President; he went into the combination without it, and came out with it. Mr. Clay desired that of Secretary of State; he went into the combination without it, and came out with it." No other charge could have wounded Mr. Adams so keenly; yet no course was open to him for refuting the slander. Mr. Clay, beside himself with a just rage, was better able to fight after the fashion of the day--if indeed he could only find somebody to fight. This he did at last in the person of John Randolph, of Roanoke, who adverted in one of his rambling and vituperative harangues to "the coalition of Blifil and Black George--the combination unheard of till then of the Puritan and the black-leg." This language led naturally enough to a challenge from Mr. Clay. The parties met[6] and exchanged shots without result. The pistols were a second time loaded; Clay fired; Randolph fired into the air, walked up to Clay and without a word gave him his hand, which Clay had as it were perforce to take. There was no injury done save to the skirts of Randolph's long flannel coat which were pierced by one of the bullets.

[Footnote 6: April 8, 1826.]

By way of revenge a duel may be effective if the wrong man does (p. 184) not happen to get shot; but as evidence for intelligent men a bloodier ending than this would have been inconclusive. It so happened, however, that Jackson, altogether contrary to his own purpose, brought conclusive aid to President Adams and Secretary Clay. Whether the General ever had any real faith in the charge can only be surmised.

Not improbably he did, for his mental workings were so peculiar in their violence and prejudice that apparently he always sincerely believed all persons who crossed his path to be knaves and villains of the blackest dye. But certain it is that whether he credited the tale or not he soon began to devote himself with all his wonted vigor and pertinacity to its wide dissemination. Whether in so doing he was stupidly believing a lie, or intentionally spreading a known slander, is a problem upon which his friends and biographers have exhausted much ingenuity without reaching any certain result. But sure it is that early in the year 1827 he was so far carried beyond the bounds of prudence as to declare before many persons that he had proof of the corrupt bargain. The a.s.sertion was promptly sent to the newspapers by a Mr. Carter Beverly, one of those who heard it made in the presence of several guests at the Hermitage. The name of Mr. Beverly, at first concealed, soon became known, and he was of course compelled to (p. 185) vouch in his princ.i.p.al. General Jackson never deserted his adherents, whether their difficulties were n.o.ble or ign.o.ble. He came gallantly to the aid of Mr. Beverly, and in a letter of June 6 declared that early in January, 1825, he had been visited by a "member of Congress of high respectability," who had told him of "a great intrigue going on" of which he ought to be informed. This gentleman had then proceeded to explain that Mr. Clay's friends were afraid that if General Jackson should be elected President, "Mr. Adams would be continued Secretary of State (innuendo, there would be no room for Kentucky); that if I would say, or permit any of my confidential friends to say, that in case I were elected President, Mr. Adams should not be continued Secretary of State, by a complete union of Mr. Clay and his friends they would put an end to the Presidential contest in one hour. And he was of opinion it was right to fight such intriguers with their own weapons." This scarcely disguised suggestion of bargain and corruption the General said that he repudiated indignantly. Clay at once publicly challenged Jackson to produce some evidence--to name the "respectable"

member of Congress who appeared in the very unrespectable light of (p. 186) advising a candidate for the Presidency to emulate the alleged baseness of his opponents. Jackson thereupon uncovered James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania. Mr. Buchanan was a friend of the General, and to what point it may have been expected or hoped that his allegiance would carry him in support of his chief in this dire hour of extremity is matter only of inference. Fortunately, however, his fealty does not appear to have led him any great distance from the truth. He yielded to the prevailing desire to pa.s.s along the responsibility to some one else so far as to try to bring in a Mr. Markley, who, however, never became more than a dumb figure in the drama in which Buchanan was obliged to remain as the last important character. With obvious reluctance this gentleman then wrote that if General Jackson had placed any such construction as the foregoing upon an interview which had occurred between them, and which he recited at length, then the General had totally misconstrued--as was evident enough--what he, Mr.

Buchanan, had said. Indeed, that Jackson could have supposed him to entertain the sentiments imputed to him made Mr. Buchanan, as he said, "exceedingly unhappy." In other words, there was no foundation whatsoever for the charge thus traced back to an originator who denied having originated it and said that it was all a mistake. General (p. 187) Jackson was left to be defended from the accusation of deliberate falsehood only by the charitable suggestion that he had been unable to understand a perfectly simple conversation. Apparently Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay ought now to be abundantly satisfied, since not only were they amply vindicated, but their chief vilifier seemed to have been pierced by the point which he had sharpened for them. They had yet, however, to learn what vitality there is in falsehood.

General Jackson and his friends had alone played any active part in this matter. Of these friends Mr. Kremer had written a letter of retraction and apology which he was with difficulty prevented from publishing; Mr. Buchanan had denied all that he had been summoned to prove; a few years later Mr. Beverly wrote and sent to Mr. Clay a contrite letter of regret. General Jackson alone remained for the rest of his life unsilenced, obstinately reiterating a charge disproved by his own witnesses. But worse than all this, acc.u.mulations of evidence long and laboriously sought in many quarters have established a tolerably strong probability that advances of precisely the character alleged against Mr. Adams's friends were made to Mr. Clay by the most intimate personal a.s.sociates of General Jackson. The discussion (p. 188) of this unpleasant suspicion would not, however, be an excusable episode in this short volume. The reader who is curious to pursue the matter further will find all the doc.u.mentary evidence collected in its original shape in the first volume of Colton's "Life of Clay,"

accompanied by an argument needlessly elaborate and surcharged with feeling yet in the main sufficiently fair and exhaustive.

Mr. Benton says that "no President could have commenced his administration under more unfavorable auspices, or with less expectation of a popular career," than did Mr. Adams. From the first a strong minority in the House of Representatives was hostile to him, and the next election made this a majority. The first indication of the shape which the opposition was to take became visible in the vote in the Senate upon confirming Mr. Clay as Secretary of State. There were fourteen nays against twenty-seven yeas, and an inspection of the list showed that the South was beginning to consolidate more closely than heretofore as a sectional force in politics. The formation of a Southern party distinctly organized in the interests of slavery, already apparent in the unanimity of the Southern Electoral Colleges against Mr. Adams, thus received further ill.u.s.tration; and the skilled eye of the (p. 189) President noted "the rallying of the South and of Southern interests and prejudices to the men of the South." It is possible now to see plainly that Mr. Adams was really the first leader in the long crusade against slavery; it was in opposition to him that the South became a political unit; and a true instinct taught him the trend of Southern politics long before the Northern statesmen apprehended it, perhaps before even any Southern statesman had distinctly formulated it. This new development in the politics of the country soon received further ill.u.s.tration. The first message which Mr. Adams had occasion to send to Congress gave another opportunity to his ill-wishers. Therein he stated that the invitation which had been extended to the United States to be represented at the Congress of Panama had been accepted, and that he should commission ministers to attend the meeting. Neither in matter nor in manner did this proposition contain any just element of offence. It was customary for the Executive to initiate new missions simply by the nomination of envoys to fill them; and in such case the Senate, if it did not think the suggested mission desirable, could simply decline to confirm the nomination upon that ground. An example of this has been already seen in the two nominations of Mr.

Adams himself to the Court of Russia in the Presidency of Mr. (p. 190) Madison. But now vehement a.s.saults were made upon the President, alike in the Senate and in the House, on the utterly absurd ground that he had transcended his powers. Incredible, too, as it may seem at this day it was actually maintained that there was no occasion whatsoever for the United States to desire representation at such a gathering. Prolonged and bitter was the opposition which the Administration was compelled to encounter in a measure to which there so obviously ought to have been instant a.s.sent if considered solely upon its intrinsic merits, but upon which nevertheless the discussion actually overshadowed all other questions which arose during the session. The President had the good fortune to find the powerful aid of Mr. Webster enlisted in his behalf, and ultimately he prevailed; but it was of ill augury at this early date to see that personal hostility was so widespread and so rancorous that it could make such a prolonged and desperate resistance with only the faintest pretext of right as a basis for its action. Yet a great and fundamental cause of the feeling manifested lay hidden away beneath the surface in the instinctive antipathy of the slaveholders to Mr. Adams and all his thoughts, his ways, and his doings. For into this question of (p. 191) countenancing the Panama Congress, slavery and "the South" entered and imported into a portion of the opposition a certain element of reasonableness and propriety in a political sense. When we see the Southern statesmen banded against President Adams in these debates, as we know the future which was hidden from them, it almost makes us believe that their vindictiveness was justified by an instinctive forecasting of his character and his mission in life, and that without knowing it they already felt the influence of the acts which he was yet to do against them. For the South, without present dread of an abolition movement, yet hated this Panama Congress with a contemptuous loathing not alone because the South American states had freed all slaves within their limits, but because there was actually a fair chance that Hayti would be admitted to representation at the sessions as a sovereign state. That the President of the United States should propose to send white citizens of that country to sit cheek by jowl on terms of official equality with the revolted blacks of Hayti fired the Southern heart with rage inexpressible. The proposition was a further infusion of cement to aid in the Southern consolidation so rapidly going forward, and was substantially the beginning of the sense of personal alienation henceforth to grow steadily more bitter on (p. 192) the part of the slaveholders towards Mr. Adams. Without designing it he had struck the first blow in a fight which was to absorb his energies for the rest of his life.

Such evil forebodings as might too easily be drawn from the course of this debate were soon and amply fulfilled. The opposition increased rapidly until when Congress came together in December, 1827, it had attained overshadowing proportions. Not only was a member of that party elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, but a decided majority of both Houses of Congress was arrayed against the Administration--"a state of things which had never before occurred under the Government of the United States." All the committees too were composed of four opposition and only three Administration members. With more exciting issues this relationship of the executive and legislative departments might have resulted in dangerous collisions; but in this season of political quietude it only made the position of the President extremely uncomfortable. Mr. Van Buren soon became recognized as the formidable leader and organizer of the Jackson forces. His capacity as a political strategist was so far in advance of that of any other man of those times that it might have secured success even had he been encountered by tactics similar to his (p. 193) own. But since on the contrary he had only to meet straightforward simplicity, it was soon apparent that he would have everything his own way. It was disciplined troops against the militia of honest merchants and farmers; and the result was not to be doubted. Mr. Adams and his friends were fond of comparing Van Buren with Aaron Burr, though predicting that he would be too shrewd to repeat Burr's blunders. From the beginning they declined to meet with his own weapons a man whom they so contemned. It was about this time that a new nomenclature of parties was introduced into our politics. The administrationists called themselves National Republicans, a name which in a few years was changed for that of Whigs, while the opposition or Jacksonians were known as Democrats, a t.i.tle which has been ever since retained by the same party.

The story of Mr. Adams's Administration will detain the historian, and even the biographer, only a very short time. Not an event occurred during those four years which appears of any especial moment. Our foreign relations were all pacific; and no grave crisis or great issue was developed in domestic affairs. It was a period of tranquillity, in which the nation advanced rapidly in prosperity. For many years dulness had reigned in business, but returning activity was encouraged by (p. 194) the policy of the new Government, and upon all sides various industries became active and thriving. So far as the rule of Mr. Adams was marked by any distinguishing characteristic, it was by a care for the material welfare of the people. More commercial treaties were negotiated during his Administration than in the thirty-six years preceding his inauguration. He was a strenuous advocate of internal improvements, and happily the condition of the national finances enabled the Government to embark in enterprises of this kind. He suggested many more than were undertaken, but not perhaps more than it would have been quite possible to carry out. He was always chary of making a show of himself before the people for the sake of gaining popularity. When invited to attend the annual exhibition of the Maryland Agricultural Society, shortly after his inauguration, he declined, and wrote in his Diary: "To gratify this wish I must give four days of my time, no trifle of expense, and set a precedent for being claimed as an article of exhibition at all the cattle-shows throughout the Union." Other gatherings would prefer equally reasonable demands, in responding to which "some duty must be neglected." But the opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio Ca.n.a.l was an event sufficiently momentous and national in its character to (p. 195) justify the President's attendance. He was requested in the presence of a great concourse of people to dig the first shovelful of earth and to make a brief address. The speech-making was easy; but when the digging was to be done he encountered some unexpected obstacle and the soil did not yield to his repeated efforts. Not to be defeated, however, he stripped off his coat, went to work in earnest with the spade and raised the earth successfully. Naturally such readiness was hailed with loud applause and pleased the great crowd who saw it. But in Mr. Adams's career it was an exceptional occurrence that enabled him to conciliate a momentary popularity; it was seldom that he enjoyed or used an opportunity of gaining the cheap admiration or shallow friendship of the mult.i.tude.

At least one moral to be drawn from the story of Mr. Adams's Presidency perhaps deserves rather to be called an _immoral_, and certainly furnishes unwelcome support to those persons who believe that conscientiousness is out of place in politics. It has been said that no sooner was General Jackson fairly defeated than he was again before the people as a candidate for the next election. An opposition to the new Administration was in process of formation actually before there had been time for that Administration to declare, much less (p. 196) to carry out, any policy or even any measure. The opposition was therefore not one of principle; it was not dislike of anything done or to be done; it did not pretend to have a purpose of saving the people from blunders or of offering them greater advantages. It was simply an opposition, or more properly an hostility, to the President and his Cabinet, and was conducted by persons who wished in as short a time as possible themselves to control and fill those positions. The sole ground upon which these opponents stood was, that they would rather have General Jackson at the head of affairs than Mr. Adams. The issue was purely personal; it was so when the opposition first developed, and it remained so until that opposition triumphed.

Under no circ.u.mstances can it be more excusable for an elective magistrate to seek personal good will towards himself than when his rival seeks to supplant him simply on the basis of enjoying a greater measure of such good will. Had any important question of policy been dividing the people, it would have been easy for a man of less moral courage and independence than belonged to Mr. Adams to select the side which he thought right, and to await the outcome at least with constancy. But the only real question raised was this: will Mr. Adams or General Jackson--two individuals representing as yet no (p. 197) antagonistic policies--be preferred by the greater number of voters in 1829? If, however, there was no great apparent issue open between these two men, at least there was a very wide difference between their characters, a point of some consequence in a wholly personal compet.i.tion. It is easy enough now to see how this gaping difference displayed itself from the beginning, and how the advantage for winning was throughout wholly on the side of Jackson. The course to be pursued by Mr. Adams in order to insure victory was obvious enough; being simply to secure the largest following and most efficient support possible. The arts by which these objects were to be attained were not obscure nor beyond his power. If he wished a second term, as beyond question he did, two methods were of certain utility. He should make the support of his Administration a source of profit to the supporters; and he should conciliate good will by every means that offered. To the former end what more efficient means could be devised than a body of office-holders owing their positions to his appointment and likely to have the same term of office as himself? His neglect to create such a corps of stanch supporters cannot be explained on the ground that so plain a scheme of perpetuating power had not then (p. 198) been devised in the Republic. Mr. Jefferson had practised it, to an extent which now seems moderate, but which had been sufficiently extensive to deprive any successor of the honor of novelty in originating it. The times were ripe for it, and the nation would not have revolted at it, as was made apparent when General Jackson, succeeding Mr.

Adams, at once carried out the system with a thoroughness that has never been surpa.s.sed, and with a success in achieving results so great that almost no politician has since failed to have recourse to the same practice. Suggestions and temptations, neither of which were wanting, were however alike thrown away upon Mr. Adams. Friendship or hostility to the President were the only two matters which were sure to have no effect whatsoever upon the fate of an inc.u.mbent or an aspirant. Scarcely any removals were made during his Administration, and every one of the few was based solely upon a proved unfitness of the official. As a consequence very few new appointments were made, and in every instance the appointee was, or was believed to be, the fittest man without regard to his political bias. This entire elimination of the question of party allegiance from every department of the public service was not a specious protestation, but an undeniable fact at which friends grumbled bitterly, and upon which (p. 199) foes counted often with an ungenerous but always with an implicit reliance. It was well known, for example, that in the Customs Department there were many more avowed opponents than supporters of the Administration. What was to be thought, the latter angrily asked, of a president who refused to make any distinction between the sheep and the goats? But while Mr. Adams, unmoved by argument, anger, or entreaty, thus alienated many and discouraged all, every one was made acquainted with the antipodal principles of his rival. The consequence was inevitable; many abandoned Adams from sheer irritation; mult.i.tudes became cool and indifferent concerning him; the great number of those whose political faith was so weak as to be at the ready command of their own interests, or the interests of a friend or relative, yielded to a pressure against which no counteracting force was employed. In a word, no one who had not a strong and independent personal conviction in behalf of Mr. Adams found the slightest inducement to belong to his party. It did not require much political sagacity to see that in quiet times, with no great issue visibly at stake, a following thus composed could not include a majority of the nation. It is true that in fact there was opening an issue as great as has ever been presented to the American people,--an issue between government conducted with a (p. 200) sole view to efficiency and honesty and government conducted very largely, if not exclusively, with a view to individual and party ascendency. The new system afterward inaugurated by General Jackson, directly opposite to that of Mr. Adams and presenting a contrast to it as wide as is to be found in history, makes this fact glaringly plain to us. But during the years of Mr. Adams's Administration it was dimly perceived only by a few. Only one side of the shield had then been shown. The people did not appreciate that Adams and Jackson were representatives of two conflicting principles of administration which went to the very basis of our system of government. Had the issue been as apparent and as well understood then as it is now, in retrospect, the decision of the nation might have been different. But unfortunately the voters only beheld two individuals pitted against each other for the popular suffrage, of whom one, a brilliant soldier, would stand by and reward his friends, and the other, an uninteresting civilian, ignored all distinction between friend and foe.

It was not alone in the refusal to use patronage that Mr. Adams's rigid conscientiousness showed itself. He was equally obstinate in declining ever to stretch a point however slightly in order to (p. 201) win the favor of any body of the people whether large or small. He was warned that his extensive schemes for internal improvement would alienate especially the important State of Virginia. He could not of course be expected to change his policy out of respect to Virginian prejudices; but he was advised to mitigate his expression of that policy, and to some extent it was open to him to do so. But he would not; his utterances went the full length of his opinions, and he persistently urged upon Congress many plans which he approved, but which he could not have the faintest hopes of seeing adopted. The consequence was that he displeased Virginia. He notes the fact in the Diary in the tone of one who endures persecution for righteousness'

sake, and who means to be very stubborn in his righteousness. Again it was suggested to him to embody in one of his messages "something soothing for South Carolina." But there stood upon the statute books of South Carolina an unconst.i.tutional law which had greatly embarra.s.sed the national government, and which that rebellious little State with characteristic contumaciousness would not repeal. Under such circ.u.mstances, said Mr. Adams, I have no "soothing" words for South Carolina.

It was not alone by what he did and by what he would not do that (p. 202) Mr. Adams toiled to insure the election of General Jackson far more sedulously and efficiently than did the General himself or any of his partisans. In most cases it was probably the manner quite as much as the act which made Mr. Adams unpopular. In his anxiety to be upright he was undoubtedly p.r.o.ne to be needlessly disagreeable. His uncompromising temper put on an ungracious aspect. His conscientiousness wore the appearance of offensiveness. The Puritanism in his character was strongly tinged with that old New England notion that whatever is disagreeable is probably right, and that a painful refusal would lose half its merit in being expressed courteously; that a right action should never be done in a pleasing way; not only that no pill should be sugar-coated, but that the bitterest ingredient should be placed on the outside. In repudiating attractive vices the Puritans had rejected also those amenities which might have decently concealed or even mildly decorated the forbidding angularities of a naked Virtue which certainly did not imitate the form of any G.o.ddess who had ever before attracted followers. Mr. Adams was a complete and thorough Puritan, wonderfully little modified by times and circ.u.mstances. The ordinary arts of propitiation would have appeared to him only a feeble and diluted form of dishonesty; while suavity and graciousness of (p. 203) demeanor would have seemed as unbecoming to this rigid official as love-making or wine-bibbing seem to a strait-laced parson. It was inevitable, therefore, that he should never avert by his words any ill-will naturally caused by his acts; that he should never soothe disappointment, or attract calculating selfishness. He was an adept in alienation, a novice in conciliation. His magnetism was negative. He made few friends; and had no interested following whatsoever. No one was enthusiastic on his behalf; no band worked for him with the ardor of personal devotion. His party was composed of those who had sufficient intelligence to appreciate his integrity and sufficient honesty to admire it. These persons respected him, and when election day came they would vote for him; but they did not canva.s.s zealously in his behalf, nor do such service for him as a very different kind of feeling induced the Jackson men to do for their candidate.[7] The fervid laborers in politics left Mr. Adams alone in his chilling (p. 204) respectability, and went over to a camp where all scruples were consumed in the glowing heat of a campaign conducted upon the single and simple principle of securing victory.

[Footnote 7: Mr. Mills, in writing of Mr. Adams's inauguration, expressed well what many felt. "This same President of ours is a man that I can never court nor be on very familiar terms with. There is a cold, repulsive atmosphere about him that is too chilling for my respiration, and I shall certainly keep at a distance from its influence. I wish him G.o.d-speed in his Administration, and am heartily disposed to lend him my feeble aid whenever he may need it in a correct course; but he cannot expect me to become his warm and devoted partisan." A like sentiment was expressed also much more vigorously by Ezekiel Webster to Daniel Webster, in a letter of February 15, 1829. The writer there attributes the defeat of Mr. Adams to personal dislike to him.

People, he said, "always supported his cause from a cold sense of duty," and "we soon satisfy ourselves that we have discharged our duty to the cause of any man when we do not entertain for him one personal kind feeling, nor cannot unless we disembowel ourselves like a trussed turkey of all that is human nature within us." With a candidate "of popular character, like Mr. Clay," the result would have been different. "The measures of his [Adams's] Administration were just and wise and every honest man should have supported them, but many honest men did not for the reason I have mentioned."--_Webster's Private Correspondence_, vol. i. p. 469.]

Mr. Adams's relations with the members of his Cabinet were friendly throughout his term. Men of their character and ability, brought into daily contact with him, could not fail to appreciate and admire the purity of his motives and the patriotism of his conduct; nor was he wanting in a measure of consideration and deference towards them perhaps somewhat greater than might have been expected from him, sometimes even carried to the point of yielding his opinion in (p. 205) matters of consequence. It was his wish that the unity of the body should remain unbroken during his four years of office, and the wish was very nearly realized. Unfortunately, however, in his last year it became necessary for him to fill the mission to England, and Governor Barbour was extremely anxious for the place. It was already apparent that the coming election was likely to result in the succession of Jackson, and Mr. Adams notes that Barbour's extreme desire to receive the appointment was due to his wish to find a good harbor ere the approaching storm should burst. The remark was made without anger, in the tone of a man who had seen enough of the world not to expect too much from any of his fellow men; and the appointment was made, somewhat to the chagrin of Webster and Rush, either one of whom would have gladly accepted it. The vacancy thus caused, the only one which arose during his term, was filled by General Peter B. Porter, a gentleman whom Mr. Adams selected not as his own choice, but out of respect to the wishes of the Cabinet, and in order to "terminate the Administration in harmony with itself." The only seriously unpleasant occurrence was the treachery of Postmaster-General McLean, who saw fit to profess extreme devotion to Mr. Adams while secretly aiding General Jackson. His perfidy was not undetected, and great pressure was (p. 206) brought to bear on the President to remove him. Mr. Adams, however, refused to do so, and McLean had the satisfaction of stepping from his post under Mr. Adams into a judgeship conferred by General Jackson, having shown his impartiality and judicial turn of mind, it is to be supposed, by declaring his warm allegiance to each master in turn.

The picture of President Adams's daily life is striking in its simplicity and its laboriousness. This chief magistrate of a great nation was wont to rise before daybreak, often at four or five o'clock even in winter, not unfrequently to build and light his own fire, and to work hard for hours when most persons in busy life were still comfortably slumbering. The forenoon and afternoon he devoted to public affairs, and often he complains that the unbroken stream of visitors gives him little opportunity for hard or continuous labor.

Such work he was compelled to do chiefly in the evening; and he did not always make up for early hours of rising by a correspondingly early bedtime; though sometimes in the summer we find him going to bed between eight and nine o'clock, an hour which probably few Presidents have kept since then. He strove to care for his health by daily exercise. In the morning he swam in the Potomac, often for a long (p. 207) time; and more than once he encountered no small risk in this pastime. During the latter part of his Presidential term he tried riding on horseback. At times when the weather compelled him to walk, and business was pressing, he used to get his daily modic.u.m of fresh air before the sun was up. A life of this kind with more of hardship than of relaxation in it was ill fitted to sustain in robust health a man sixty years of age, and it is not surprising that Mr. Adams often complained of feeling ill, dejected, and weary. Yet he never spared himself, nor apparently thought his habits too severe, and actually toward the close of his term he spoke of his trying daily routine as const.i.tuting a very agreeable life. He usually began the day by reading "two or three chapters in the Bible with Scott's and Hewlett's Commentaries," being always a profoundly religious man of the old-fashioned school then prevalent in New England.

It could hardly have added to the meagre comforts of such a life to be threatened with a.s.sa.s.sination. Yet this danger was thrust upon Mr.

Adams's attention upon one occasion at least under circ.u.mstances which gave to it a very serious aspect. The tranquillity with which he went through the affair showed that his physical courage was as imperturbable as his moral. The risk was protracted throughout a considerable (p. 208) period, but he never let it disturb the even tenor of his daily behavior or warp his actions in the slightest degree, save only that when he was twice or thrice brought face to face with the intending a.s.sa.s.sin he treated the fellow with somewhat more curt brusqueness than was his wont. But when the danger was over he bore his would-be murderer no malice, and long afterward actually did him a kindly service.

Few men in public life have been subjected to trials of temper so severe as vexed Mr. Adams during his Presidential term. To play an intensely exciting game strictly in accordance with rigid moral rules of the player's own arbitrary enforcement, and which are utterly repudiated by a less scrupulous antagonist, can hardly tend to promote contentment and amiability. Neither are slanders and falsehoods mollifying applications to a statesman inspired with an upright and n.o.ble ambition. Mr. Adams bore such a.s.saults, ranging from the charge of having corruptly bought the Presidency down to that of being a Freemason with such grim stoicism as he could command. The disappearance and probable a.s.sa.s.sination of Morgan at this time led to a strong feeling throughout the country against Freemasonry, and (p. 209) the Jackson men at once proclaimed abroad that Adams was one of the brotherhood, and offered, if he should deny it, to produce the records of the lodge to which he belonged. The allegation was false; he was not a Mason, and his friends urged him to say so publicly; but he replied bitterly that his denial would probably at once be met by a complete set of forged records of a fict.i.tious lodge, and the people would not know whom to believe. Next he was said to have bargained for the support of Daniel Webster, by promising to distribute offices to Federalists. This accusation was a cruel perversion of his very virtues; for its only foundation lay in the fact that in the venturesome but honorable attempt to be President of a nation rather than of a party, he had in some instances given offices to old Federalists, certainly with no hope or possibility of reconciling to himself the almost useless wreck of that now powerless and shrunken party, one of whose liveliest traditions was hatred of him. Stories were even set afloat that some of his accounts, since he had been in the public service, were incorrect. But the most extraordinary and ridiculous tale of all was that during his residence in Russia he had prost.i.tuted a beautiful American girl, whom he then had in his service, in order "to seduce the pa.s.sions of the Emperor Alexander (p. 210) and sway him to political purposes."

These and other like provocations were not only discouraging but very irritating, and Mr. Adams was not of that careless disposition which is little affected by unjust accusation. On the contrary he was greatly incensed by such treatment, and though he made the most stern and persistent effort to endure an inevitable trial with a patience born of philosophy, since indifference was not at his command, yet he could not refrain from the expression of his sentiments in his secret communings. Occasionally he allowed his wrath to explode with harmless violence between the covers of the Diary, and doubtless he found relief while he discharged his fierce diatribes on these private sheets. His vituperative power was great, and some specimens of it may not come amiss in a sketch of the man. The senators who did not call upon him he regarded as of "rancorous spirit." He spoke of the falsehoods and misrepresentations which "the skunks of party slander ... have been ... squirting round the House of Representatives, thence to issue and perfume the atmosphere of the Union." His most intense hatred and vehement denunciation were reserved for John Randolph, whom he thought an abomination too odious and despicable to be described in words, "the image and superscription of a great man stamped (p. 211) upon base metal." "The besotted violence" of Randolph, he said, has deprived him of "all right to personal civility from me;" and certainly this excommunication from courtesy was made complete and effective. He speaks again of the same victim as a "frequenter of gin lane and beer alley." He indignantly charges that Calhoun, as Speaker, permitted Randolph "in speeches of ten hours long to drink himself drunk with bottled porter, and in raving balderdash of the meridian of Wapping to revile the absent and the present, the living and the dead." This, he says, was "tolerated by Calhoun, because Randolph's ribaldry was all pointed against the Administration, especially against Mr. Clay and me." Again he writes of Randolph: "The rancor of this man's soul against me is that which sustains his life: the agony of [his] envy and hatred of me, and the hope of effecting my downfall, are [his] chief remaining sources of vitality. The issue of the Presidential election will kill [him] by the gratification of [his]

revenge." So it was also with W. B. Giles, of Virginia. But Giles's abuse was easier to bear since it had been poured in torrents upon every reputable man, from Washington downwards, who had been prominent in public affairs since the adoption of the Const.i.tution, so that (p. 212) Giles's memory is now preserved from oblivion solely by the connection which he established with the great and honorable statesmen of the Republic by a course of ceaseless attacks upon them. Some of the foregoing expressions of Mr. Adams may be open to objection on the score of good taste; but the provocation was extreme; public retaliation he would not practise, and wrath must sometimes burst forth in language which was not so unusual in that day as it is at present. It is an unquestionable fact, of which the credit to Mr. Adams can hardly be exaggerated, that he never in any single instance found an excuse for an unworthy act on his own part in the fact that compet.i.tors or adversaries were resorting to such expedients.

The election of 1828 gave 178 votes for Jackson and only 83 for Adams.

Calhoun was continued as Vice-President by 171 votes, showing plainly enough that even yet there were not two political parties, in any customary or proper sense of the phrase. The victory of Jackson had been foreseen by every one. What had been so generally antic.i.p.ated could not take Mr. Adams by surprise; yet it was idle for him to seek to conceal his disappointment that an Administration which he (p. 213) had conducted with his best ability and with thorough conscientiousness should not have seemed to the people worthy of continuance for another term. Little suspecting what the future had in store for him, he felt that his public career had culminated and probably had closed forever, and that if it had not closed exactly in disgrace, yet at least it could not be regarded as ending gloriously or even satisfactorily. But he summoned all his philosophy and fort.i.tude to his aid; he fell back upon his clear conscience and comported himself with dignity, showing all reasonable courtesy to his successor and only perhaps seeming a little deficient in filial piety in presenting so striking a contrast to the shameful conduct of his father in a like crucial hour. His retirement brought to a close a list of Presidents who deserved to be called statesmen in the highest sense of that term, honorable men, pure patriots, and, with perhaps one exception, all of the first order of ability in public affairs. It is necessary to come far down towards this day before a worthy successor of those great men is met with in the list. Dr. Von Holst, by far the ablest writer who has yet dealt with American history, says: "In the person of Adams the last statesman who was to occupy it for a long time left the White House."

General Jackson, the candidate of the populace and the (p. 214) representative hero of the ignorant ma.s.ses, inst.i.tuted a new system of administering the Government in which personal interests became the most important element, and that organization and strategy were developed which have since become known and infamous under the name of the "political machine."

While Mr. Adams bore his defeat like a philosopher, he felt secretly very depressed and unhappy by reason of it. He speaks of it as leaving his "character and reputation a wreck," and says that the "sun of his political life sets in the deepest gloom." On January 1, 1829, he writes: "The year begins in gloom. My wife had a sleepless and painful night. The dawn was overcast, and as I began to write my shaded lamp went out, self-extinguished. It was only for lack of oil, and the notice of so trivial an incident may serve but to mark the present temper of my mind." It is painful to behold a man of his vigor, activity, and courage thus prostrated. Again he writes:--

"Three days more and I shall be restored to private life, and left to an old age of retirement though certainly not of repose.

I go into it with a combination of parties and public men against my character and reputation, such as I believe never before was exhibited against any man since this Union existed. Posterity will scarcely believe it, but so it is, that this combination against me has been formed and is now exulting in triumph (p. 215) over me, for the devotion of my life and of all the faculties of my soul to the Union, and to the improvement, physical, moral, and intellectual of my country."

Melancholy words these to be written by an old man who had worked so hard and been so honest, and whose ambition had been of the kind that enn.o.bles him who feels it! Could the curtain of the future have been lifted but for a moment what relief would the glimpse have brought to his crushed and wearied spirit. But though coming events may cast shadows before them, they far less often send bright rays in advance.

So he now resolved "to go into the deepest retirement and withdraw from all connection with public affairs." Yet it was with regret that he foretold this fate, and he looked forward with solicitude to the effect which such a mode of life, newly entered upon at his age, would have upon his mind and character. He hopes rather than dares to predict that he will be provided "with useful and profitable occupation, engaging so much of his thoughts and feelings that his mind may not be left to corrode itself."

His return to Quincy held out the less promise of comfort, because the old chasm between him and the Federalist gentlemen of Boston had been lately reopened. Certain malicious newspaper paragraphs, born of (p. 216) the mischievous spirit of the wretched Giles, had recently set afloat some stories designed seriously to injure Mr. Adams. These were, substantially, that in 1808-9 he had been convinced that some among the leaders of the Federalist party in New England were entertaining a project for separation from the Union, that he had feared that this event would be promoted by the embargo, that he foresaw that the seceding portion would inevitably be compelled into some sort of alliance with Great Britain, that he suspected negotiations to this end to have been already set on foot, that he thereupon gave privately some more or less distinct intimations of these notions of his to sundry prominent Republicans, and even to President Jefferson. These tales, much distorted from the truth and exaggerated as usual, led to the publication of an open letter, in November, 1828, addressed by thirteen Federalists of note in Ma.s.sachusetts to John Quincy Adams, demanding names and specifications and the production of evidence. Mr.

Adams replied briefly, with dignity, and, considering the circ.u.mstances, with good temper, stating fairly the substantial import of what he had really said, declaring that he had never mentioned names, and refusing, for good reasons given, either to do so now (p. 217) or to publish the grounds of such opinions as he had entertained.

It was sufficiently clear that he had said nothing secretly which he had reason to regret; and that if he sought to shun the discussion opened by his adversaries, he was influenced by wise forbearance, and not at all by any fear of the consequences to himself. A dispa.s.sionate observer could have seen that behind this moderate, rather deprecatory letter there was an abundant reserve of controversial material held for the moment in check. But his adversaries were not dispa.s.sionate; on the contrary they were greatly excited and were honestly convinced of the perfect goodness of their cause. They were men of the highest character in public and private life, deservedly of the best repute in the community, of unimpeachable integrity in motives and dealings, influential and respected, men whom it was impossible in New England to treat with neglect or indifference. For this reason it was only the harder to remain silent beneath their published reproach when a refutation was possible. Hating Mr. Adams with an animosity not diminished by the lapse of years since his defection from their party, strong in a consciousness of their own standing before their fellow citizens, the thirteen notables responded with much acrimony to Mr.

Adams's unsatisfactory letter. Thus persistently challenged and (p. 218) a.s.sailed, at a time when his recent crushing political defeat made an attack upon him seem a little ungenerous, Mr. Adams at last went into the fight in earnest. He had the good fortune to be thoroughly right, and also to have sufficient evidence to prove and justify at least as much as he had ever said. All this evidence he brought together in a vindicatory pamphlet, which, however, by the time he had completed it he decided not to publish. But fortunately he did not destroy it, and his grandson, in the exercise of a wise discretion, has lately given it to the world. His foes never knew how deeply they were indebted to the self-restraint which induced him to keep this formidable missive harmless in his desk. Full of deep feeling, yet free from ebullitions of temper, clear in statement, concise in style, conclusive in facts, unanswerable in argument, unrelentingly severe in dealing with opponents, it is as fine a specimen of political controversy as exists in the language. Its historical value cannot be exaggerated, but apart from this as a mere literary production it is admirable. Happy were the thirteen that they one and all went down to their graves complaisantly thinking that they had had the last word in the quarrel, little suspecting how great was their obligation to Mr.

Adams for having granted them that privilege. One would think (p. 219) that they might have writhed beneath their moss-grown headstones on the day when his last word at length found public utterance, albeit that the controversy had then become one of the dusty tales of history.[8]

[Footnote 8: It is with great reluctance that these comments are made, since some persons may think that they come with ill grace from one whose grandfather was one of the thirteen and was supposed to have drafted one or both of their letters. But in spite of the prejudice naturally growing out of this fact, a thorough study of the whole subject has convinced me that Mr. Adams was unquestionably and completely right, and I have no escape from saying so. His adversaries had the excuse of honesty in political error--an excuse which the greatest and wisest men must often fall back upon in times of hot party warfare.]

But this task of writing a demolishing pamphlet against the prominent gentlemen of the neighborhood to which he was about to return for his declining years could hardly have been a grateful task. The pa.s.sage from political disaster to social enmities could not but be painful; and Mr. Adams was probably never more unhappy than at this period of his life. The reward which virtue was tendering to him seemed unmixed bitterness.

Thus at the age of sixty-two years, Mr. Adams found himself that melancholy product of the American governmental system--an ex-President.

At this stage it would seem that the fruit ought to drop from the (p. 220) bough, no further process of development being reasonably probable for it. Yet Mr. Adams had by no means reached this measure of ripeness; he still enjoyed abundant vigor of mind and body, and to lapse into dignified decrepitude was not agreeable, indeed was hardly possible for him. The prospect gave him profound anxiety; he dreaded idleness, apathy, and decay with a keen terror which perhaps const.i.tuted a sufficient guaranty against them. Yet what could he do?

It would be absurd for him now to furbish up the rusty weapons of the law and enter again upon the tedious labor of collecting a clientage.

His property was barely sufficient to enable him to live respectably, even according to the simple standard of the time, and could open to him no occupation in the way of gratifying unremunerative tastes. In March, 1828, he had been advised to use five thousand dollars in a way to promote his reelection. He refused at once, upon principle; but further set forth "candidly, the state of his affairs:"--

"All my real estate in Quincy and Boston is mortgaged for the payment of my debts; the income of my whole private estate is less than $6,000 a year, and I am paying at least two thousand of that for interest on my debt. Finally, upon going out of office in one year from this time, dest.i.tute of all means of (p. 221) acquiring property, it will only be by the sacrifice of that which I now possess that I shall be able to support my family."

At first he plunged desperately into the Latin cla.s.sics. He had a strong taste for such reading, and he made a firm resolve to compel this taste now to stand him in good stead in his hour of need. He courageously demanded solace from a pursuit which had yielded him pleasure enough in hours of relaxation, but which was altogether inadequate to fill the huge vacuum now suddenly created in his time and thoughts. There is much pathos in this spectacle of the old man setting himself with ever so feeble a weapon, yet with stern determination, to conquer the cruelty of circ.u.mstances. But he knew, of course, that the Roman authors could only help him for a time, by way of distraction, in carrying him through a transition period. He soon set more cheerfully at work upon a memoir of his father, and had also plans for writing a history of the United States. Literature had always possessed strong charms for him, and he had cultivated it after his usual studious and conscientious fashion. But his style was too often prolix, sententious, and turgid--faults which marked nearly all the writing done in this country in those days. The world has (p. 222) probably not lost much by reason of the non-completion of the contemplated volumes. He could have made no other contribution to the history of the country at all approaching in value or interest to the Diary, of which a most important part was still to be written. For a brief time just now this loses its historic character, but makes up for the loss by depicting admirably some traits in the mental const.i.tution of the diarist. Tales of enchantment, he says, pleased his boyhood, but "the humors of Falstaff hardly affected me at all.

Bardolph and Pistol and Nym were personages quite unintelligible to me; and the lesson of Sir Hugh Evans to the boy Williams was quite too serious an affair." In truth, no man can ever have been more utterly void of a sense of humor or an appreciation of wit than was Mr. Adams.

Not a single instance of an approach to either is to be found throughout the twelve volumes of his Diary. Not even in the simple form of the "good story" could he find pleasure, and subtler delicacies were wasted on his well-regulated mind as dainty French dishes would be on the wholesome palate of a day-laborer. The books which bore the stamp of well-established approval, the acknowledged cla.s.sics of the English, Latin, and French languages he read with a mingled sense of duty and of pleasure, and evidently with cultivated appreciation, (p. 223) though whether he would have made an original discovery of their merits may be doubted. Occasionally he failed to admire even those volumes which deserved admiration, and then with characteristic honesty he admitted the fact. He tried Paradise Lost ten times before he could get through with it, and was nearly thirty years old when he first succeeded in reading it to the end. Thereafter he became very fond of it, but plainly by an acquired taste. He tried smoking and Milton, he says, at the same time, in the hope of discovering the "recondite charm" in them which so pleased his father. He was more easily successful with the tobacco than with the poetry. Many another has had the like experience, but the confession is not always so frankly forthcoming.