John Quincy Adams Part 8

In the crisis there seemed, by sudden consent of all, to be a turning towards Mr. Adams. Prominent men of both parties came to him and begged him to interfere. He was reluctant to plunge into the embroilment; but the great urgency and the abundant a.s.surances of support placed little less than actual compulsion upon him.

Accordingly on December 5 he rose to address the House. He was (p. 293) greeted as a _Deus ex machina_. Not speaking to the clerk, but turning directly to the a.s.sembled members, he began: "Fellow citizens! Members elect of the twenty-sixth Congress!" He could not resist the temptation of administering a brief but severe and righteous castigation to Garland; and then, ignoring that functionary altogether, proceeded to beg the House to _organize itself_. To this end he said that he would offer a resolution "ordering the clerk to call the members from New Jersey possessing the credentials from the Governor of that State."

There had been already no lack of resolutions, but the difficulty lay in the clerk's obstinate refusal to put the question upon them. So now the puzzled cry went up: "How shall the question be put?" "I intend to put the question myself," said the dauntless old man, wholly equal to the emergency. A tumult of applause resounded upon all sides. Rhett, of South Carolina, sprang up and offered a resolution, that Williams, of North Carolina, the oldest member of the House, be appointed chairman of the meeting; but upon objection by Williams, he subst.i.tuted the name of Mr. Adams, and put the question. He was "answered by an almost universal shout in the affirmative." Whereupon Rhett and Williams conducted the old man to the chair. It was a (p. 294) proud moment. Wise, of Virginia, afterward said, addressing a complimentary speech to Mr. Adams, "and if, when you shall be gathered to your fathers, I were asked to select the words which in my judgment are calculated to give at once the best character of the man, I would inscribe upon your tomb this sentence, 'I will put the question myself!'" Doubtless Wise and a good many more would have been glad enough to put almost any epitaph on a tombstone for Mr. Adams.[13] It must, however, be acknowledged that the impetuous Southerners behaved very handsomely by their arch foe on this occasion, and were for once as chivalrous in fact as they always were in profession.

[Footnote 13: Not quite two years later, pending a motion to reprimand Mr. Wise for fighting with a member on the floor of the House, that gentleman took pains insultingly to say, "that there was but one man in the House whose judgment he was unwilling to abide by," and that man was Mr.

Adams.]

Smooth water had by no means been reached when Mr. Adams was placed at the helm; on the contrary, the buffeting became only the more severe when the members were no longer restrained by a lurking dread of grave disaster if not of utter shipwreck. Between two bitterly incensed and evenly divided parties engaged in a struggle for an important prize, Mr. Adams, having no strictly lawful authority pertaining to (p. 295) his singular and anomalous position, was hard taxed to perform his functions. It is impossible to follow the intricate and acrimonious quarrels of the eleven days which succeeded until on December 16, upon the eleventh ballot, R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, was elected Speaker, and Mr. Adams was relieved from the most arduous duty imposed upon him during his life. In the course of the debates there had been "much vituperation and much equally unacceptable compliment" lavished upon him. After the organization of the House, there was some talk of moving a vote of thanks, but he entreated that it should not be done.

"In the rancorous and bitter temper of the Administration party, exasperated by their disappointment in losing their Speaker, the resolution of thanks," he said, "would have been lost if it had been offered." However this might have been, history has determined this occurrence to have been one of the most brilliant episodes in a life which had many distinctions.

A few incidents indicative of respect must have been welcome enough in the solitary fight-laden career of Mr. Adams. He needed some occasional encouragement to keep him from sinking into despondency; for though he was of so unyielding and belligerent a disposition, of such ungracious demeanor, so uncompromising with friend and foe, (p. 296) yet he was a man of deep and strong feelings, and in a way even very sensitive though a proud reserve kept the secret of this quality so close that few suspected it. His Diary during his Congressional life shows a man doing his duty sternly rather than cheerfully, treading resolutely a painful path, having the reward which attends upon a clear conscience, but neither light-hearted nor often even happy. Especially he was frequently disappointed at the returns which he received from others, and considered himself "ill-treated by every public man whom circ.u.mstances had brought into compet.i.tion with him;"

they had returned his "acts of kindness and services" with "gross injustice." The reflection did not induce him to deflect his course in the least, but it was made with much bitterness of spirit. Toward the close of 1835 he writes:--

"Among the dark spots in human nature which in the course of my life I have observed, the devices of rivals to ruin me have been sorry pictures of the heart of man.... H. G. Otis, Theophilus Parsons, Timothy Pickering, James A. Bayard, Henry Clay, Jonathan Russell, William H. Crawford, John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and John Davis, W. B. Giles, and John Randolph, have used up their faculties in base and dirty tricks to thwart my progress in life and destroy my character."

Truly a long and exhaustive list of enmities! One can but suspect (p. 297) that a man of so many quarrels must have been quarrelsome. Certain it is, however, that in nearly every difference which Mr. Adams had in his life a question of right and wrong, of moral or political principle, had presented itself to him. His intention was always good, though his manner was so habitually irritating. He himself says that to nearly all these men--Russell alone specifically excepted--he had "returned good for evil," that he had "never wronged any one of them,"

and had even "neglected too much his self-defence against them." In October, 1833, he said: "I subject myself to so much toil and so much enmity, with so very little apparent fruit, that I sometimes ask myself whether I do not mistake my own motives. The best actions of my life make me nothing but enemies." In February, 1841, he made a powerful speech in castigation of Henry A. Wise, who had been upholding in Southern fashion slavery, duelling, and nullification. He received afterward some messages of praise and sympathy, but noted with pain that his colleagues thought it one of his "eccentric, wild, extravagant freaks of pa.s.sion;" and with a pathetic sense of loneliness he adds: "All around me is cold and discouraging and my own feelings are wound up to a pitch that my reason can scarcely (p. 298) endure." A few days later he had the pleasure of hearing one of the members say, in a speech, that there was an opinion among many that Mr. Adams was insane and did not know what he said. While a fight was going on such incidents only fired his blood, but afterwards the reminiscence affected his spirits cruelly.

In August, 1840, he writes that he has been twelve years submitting in silence to the "foulest and basest aspersions," to which it would have been waste of time to make reply, since the public ear had not been open to him. "Is the time arriving," he asks, "for me to speak? or must I go down to the grave and leave posterity to do justice to my father and to me?"

He has had at least the advantage of saying his say to posterity in a very effective and convincing shape in that Diary, which so discomfited and enraged General Jackson. There is plain enough speaking in its pages, which were a safety valve whereby much wrath escaped. Mr. Adams had the faculty of forcible expression when he chose to employ it, as may be seen from a few specimen sentences. On March 28, 1840, he remarks that Atherton "this day emitted half an hour of his rotten breath against" a pending bill. Atherton was infamous as the mover of the "gag" resolution, and Mr. Adams abhorred him accordingly. (p. 299) Duncan, of Cincinnati, mentioned as "delivering a dose of balderdash,"

is described as "the prime bully of the Kinderhook Democracy," without "perception of any moral distinction between truth and falsehood, ...

a thorough-going hack-demagogue, coa.r.s.e, vulgar, and impudent, with a vein of low humor exactly suited to the rabble of a popular city and equally so to the taste of the present House of Representatives."

Other similar bits of that pessimism and belief in the deterioration of the times, so common in old men, occasionally appear. In August, 1835, he thinks that "the signs of the times are portentous. All the tendencies of legislation are to the removal of restrictions from the vicious and the guilty, and to the exercise of all the powers of government, legislative, judicial, and executive, by lawless a.s.semblages of individuals." December 27, 1838, he looks upon the Senate and the House, "the cream of the land, the culled darlings of fifteen millions," and observes that "the remarkable phenomenon that they present is the level of intellect and of morals upon which they stand; and this universal mediocrity is the basis upon which the liberties of this nation repose." In July, 1840, he thinks that

"parties are falling into profligate factions. I have seen this before; but the worst symptom now is the change in the (p. 300) manners of the people. The continuance of the present Administration ... will open wide all the flood-gates of corruption. Will a change produce reform? Pause and ponder! Slavery, the Indians, the public lands, the collection and disburs.e.m.e.nt of public money, the tariff, and foreign affairs:--what is to become of them?"

On January 29, 1841, Henry A. Wise uttered "a motley compound of eloquence and folly, of braggart impudence and childish vanity, of self-laudation and Virginian narrow-mindedness." After him Hubbard, of Alabama, "began grunting against the tariff." Three days later Black, of Georgia, "poured forth his black bile" for an hour and a half. The next week we find Clifford, of Maine, "muddily bothering his trickster invention" to get over a rule of the House, and "snapping like a mackerel at a red rag" at the suggestion of a way to do so. In July, 1841, we again hear of Atherton as a "cross-grained numskull ...

snarling against the loan bill." With such peppery pa.s.sages in great abundance the Diary is thickly and piquantly besprinkled. They are not always pleasant, perhaps not even always amusing, but they display the marked element of censoriousness in Mr. Adams's character, which it is necessary to appreciate in order to understand some parts of his career.

If Mr. Adams never had the cheerful support of popularity, so (p. 301) neither did he often have the encouragement of success. He said that he was paying in his declining years for the good luck which had attended the earlier portion of his life. On December 14, 1833, he calculates that he has three fourths of the people of Ma.s.sachusetts against him, and by estranging the anti-Masons he is about to become obnoxious to the whole. "My public life will terminate by the alienation from me of all mankind.... It is the experience of all ages that the people grow weary of old men. I cannot flatter myself that I shall escape the common law of our nature." Yet he acknowledges that he is unable to "abstract himself from the great questions which agitate the country." Soon after he again writes in the same vein: "To be forsaken by all mankind seems to be the destiny that awaits my last days." August 6, 1835, he gives as his reason for not accepting an invitation to deliver a discourse, that "instead of having any beneficial influence upon the public mind, it would be turned as an instrument of obloquy against myself." So it had been, as he enumerates, with his exertions against Freemasonry, his labors for internal improvement, for the manufacturing interest, for domestic industry, for free labor, for the disinterested aid then lately brought (p. 302) by him to Jackson in the dispute with France; "so it will be to the end of my political life."

When to unpopularity and reiterated disappointment we add the physical ills of old age, it no longer surprises us to find Mr. Adams at times harsh and bitter beyond the excuse of the occasion. That he was a man of strong physique and of extraordinary powers of endurance, often surpa.s.sing those of young and vigorous men, is evident. For example, one day in March, 1840, he notes incidentally: "I walked home and found my family at dinner. From my breakfast yesterday morning until one this afternoon, twenty-eight hours, I had fasted." Many a time he showed like, if not quite equal vigor. But he had been a hard worker all his life, and testing the powers of one's const.i.tution does not tend to their preservation; he was by no means free from the woes of the flesh or from the depression which comes with years and the dread of decrepitude. Already as early as October 7, 1833, he fears that his health is "irretrievable;" he gets but five hours a night of "disturbed unquiet sleep--full of tossings." February 17, 1834, his "voice was so hoa.r.s.e and feeble that it broke repeatedly, and he could scarcely articulate. It is gone forever," he very mistakenly but despondingly adds, "and it is in vain for me to contend against (p. 303) the decay of time and nature." His enemies found little truth in this foreboding for many sessions thereafter. Only a year after he had performed his feat of fasting for twenty-eight hours of business, he received a letter from a stranger advising him to retire. He admits that perhaps he ought to do so, but says that more than sixty years of public life have made activity necessary to him; it is the "weakness of his nature" which he has "intellect enough left to perceive but not energy to control," so that "the world will retire from me before I shall retire from the world."

The brief sketch which can be given in a volume of this size of so long and so busy a life does not suffice even to indicate all its many industries. The anti-slavery labors of Mr. Adams during his Congressional career were alone an abundant occupation for a man in the prime of life; but to these he added a wonderful list of other toils and interests. He was not only an incessant student in history, politics, and literature, but he also constantly invaded the domain of science.

He was Chairman of the Congressional Committee on the Smithsonian bequest, and for several years he gave much time and attention to it, striving to give the fund a direction in favor of science; he (p. 304) hoped to make it subservient to a plan which he had long cherished for the building of a n.o.ble national observatory. He had much committee work; he received many visitors; he secured hours of leisure for his favorite pursuit of composing poetry; he delivered an enormous number of addresses and speeches upon all sorts of occasions; he conducted an extensive correspondence; he was a very devout man, regularly going to church and reading three chapters in his Bible every day; and he kept up faithfully his colossal Diary. For several months in the midst of Congressional duties he devoted great labor, thought, and anxiety to the famous cause of the slaves of the Amistad, in which he was induced to act as counsel before the Supreme Court. Such were the labors of his declining age. To men of ordinary calibre the multiplicity of his acquirements and achievements is confounding and incredible. He worked his brain and his body as unsparingly as if they had been machines insensible to the pleasure or necessity of rest. Surprisingly did they submit to his exacting treatment, lasting in good order and condition far beyond what was then the average of life and vigorous faculties among his contemporaries engaged in public affairs.

In August, 1842, while he was still tarrying in the unwholesome (p. 305) heats of Washington, he had some symptoms which he thought premonitory, and he speaks of the next session of Congress as probably the last which he should ever attend. March 25, 1844, he gives a painful sketch of himself. Physical disability, he says, must soon put a stop to his Diary. That morning he had risen "at four, and with smarting, bloodshot eyes and shivering hand, still sat down and wrote to fill up the chasm of the closing days of last week." If his remaining days were to be few he was at least resolved to make them long for purposes of unremitted labor.

But he had one great joy and distinguished triumph still in store for him. From the time when the "gag" rule had been first established, Mr.

Adams had kept up an unbroken series of attacks upon it at all times and by all means. At the beginning of the several sessions, when the rules were established by the House, he always moved to strike out this one. Year after year his motion was voted down, but year after year he renewed it with invincible perseverance. The majorities against him began to dwindle till they became almost imperceptible; in 1842 it was a majority of four; in 1843, of three; in 1844 the struggle was protracted for weeks, and Mr. Adams all but carried the day. It was evident that victory was not far off, and a kind fate (p. 306) had destined him to live not only to see but himself to win it.

On December 3, 1844, he made his usual motion and called for the yeas and nays; a motion was made to lay his motion on the table, and upon that also the question was taken by yeas and nays--eighty-one yeas, one hundred and four nays, and his motion was _not_ laid on the table.

The question was then put upon it, and it was carried by the handsome vote of one hundred and eight to eighty. In that moment the "gag" rule became a thing of the past, and Mr. Adams had conquered in his last fight. "Blessed, forever blessed, be the name of G.o.d!" he writes in recording the event. A week afterwards some anti-slavery pet.i.tions were received and actually referred to the Committee on the District of Columbia. This glorious consummation having been achieved, this advanced stage in the long conflict having been reached, Mr. Adams could not hope for life to see another goal pa.s.sed. His work was nearly done; he had grown aged, and had worn himself out faithfully toiling in the struggle which must hereafter be fought through its coming phases and to its final success by others, younger men than he, though none of them certainly having over him any other militant advantage save only the accident of youth.

His mental powers were not less than at any time in the past when, (p. 307) on November 19, 1846, he was struck by paralysis in the street in Boston. He recovered from the attack, however, sufficiently to resume his duties in Washington some three months later. His reappearance in the House was marked by a pleasing incident: all the members rose together; business was for the moment suspended; his old accustomed seat was at once surrendered to him by the gentleman to whom it had fallen in the allotment, and he was formally conducted to it by two members. After this, though punctual in attendance, he only once took part in debate. On February 21, 1848, he appeared in his seat as usual. At half past one in the afternoon the Speaker was rising to put a question, when he was suddenly interrupted by cries of "Stop! Stop!--Mr. Adams!" Some gentlemen near Mr. Adams had thought that he was striving to rise to address the Speaker, when in an instant he fell over insensible. The members thronged around him in great confusion. The House hastily adjourned. He was placed on a sofa and removed first to the hall of the rotunda and then to the Speaker's room. Medical men were in attendance but could be of no service in the presence of death. The stern old fighter lay dying almost on the very field of so many battles and in the very tracks in which he had (p. 308) so often stood erect and unconquerable, taking and dealing so many mighty blows. Late in the afternoon some inarticulate mutterings were construed into the words, "Thank the officers of the House." Soon again he said intelligibly, "This is the last of earth! I am content!"

It was his extreme utterance. He lay thereafter unconscious till the evening of the 23d, when he pa.s.sed quietly away.

He lies buried "under the portal of the church at Quincy" beside his wife, who survived him four years, his father and his mother. The memorial tablet inside the church bears upon it the words "Alteri Saeculo,"--surely never more justly or appropriately applied to any man than to John Quincy Adams, hardly abused and cruelly misappreciated in his own day but whom subsequent generations already begin to honor as one of the greatest of American statesmen, not only preeminent in ability and acquirements, but even more to be honored for profound, immutable honesty of purpose and broad, n.o.ble humanity of aims.