Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams Part 1

Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams.

by Josiah Quincy.

PREFATORY NOTE.

The ensuing Memoir comprises the most important events in the life of a statesman second to none of his contemporaries in laborious and faithful devotion to the service of his country.

The light attempted to be thrown on his course has been derived from personal acquaintance, from his public works, and from authentic unpublished materials.

The chief endeavor has been to render him the expositor of his own motives, principles, and character, without fear or favor,--in the spirit neither of criticism or eulogy.

JOSIAH QUINCY.

BOSTON, _June 1, 1858_.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH.--EDUCATION.--RESIDENCE IN EUROPE.--AT COLLEGE.--AT THE BAR.

--POLITICAL ESSAYS.--MINISTER AT THE HAGUE.--AT BERLIN.--RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES.

John Quincy Adams, son of John and Abigail Adams, was born on the 11th of July, 1767, in the North Parish of Braintree, Ma.s.sachusetts--since incorporated as the town of Quincy. The lives and characters of his parents, intimately a.s.sociated with the history of the American Revolution, have been already ably and faithfully ill.u.s.trated.[1]

[1] See "Letters of Mrs. Adams, with an Introductory Memoir,"

and "The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, with a Life of the Author," by their grandson, Charles Francis Adams.

The origin of his name was thus stated by himself: "My great-grandfather, John Quincy,[2] was dying when I was baptized, and his daughter, my grandmother, requested I might receive his name. This fact, recorded by my father at the time, is not without a moral to my heart, and has connected with that portion of my name a charm of mingled sensibility and devotion. It was filial tenderness that gave the name--it was the name of one pa.s.sing from earth to immortality. These have been, through life, perpetual admonitions to do nothing unworthy of it."

[2] John Quincy represented the town of Braintree in the colonial legislature forty years, and long held the office of speaker.

At Braintree his mother watched over his childhood. At the village school he learned the rudiments of the English language. In after life he often playfully boasted that the dame who taught him to spell flattered him into learning his letters by telling him he would prove a scholar. The notes and habits of the birds and wild animals of the vicinity early excited his attention, and led him to look on nature with a lover's eye, creating an attachment to the home of his childhood, which time strengthened. Many years afterwards, when residing in Europe, he wrote: "Penn's Hill and Braintree North Common Rocks never looked and never felt to me like any other hill or any other rocks; because every rock and every pebble upon them a.s.sociates itself with the first consciousness of my existence. If there is a Bostonian who ever sailed from his own harbor for distant lands, or returned to it from them, without feelings, at the sight of the Blue Hills, which he is unable to express, his heart is differently const.i.tuted from mine."

These local attachments were indissolubly a.s.sociated with the events of the American Revolution, and with the patriotic principles instilled by his mother. Standing with her on the summit of Penn's Hill, he heard the cannon booming from the battle of Bunker's Hill, and saw the smoke and flames of burning Charlestown. During the siege of Boston he often climbed the same eminence alone, to watch the sh.e.l.ls and rockets thrown by the American army.

With a mind prematurely developed and cultivated by the influence of the characters of his parents and the stirring events of that period, he embarked, at the age of eleven years, in February, 1778, from the sh.o.r.e of his native town, with his father, in a small boat, which conveyed them to a ship in Nantasket Roads, bound for Europe. John Adams had been a.s.sociated in a commission with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, as plenipotentiary to the Court of France. After residing in Paris until June, 1779, he returned to America, accompanied by his son. Being immediately appointed, by Congress, minister plenipotentiary to negotiate a treaty of peace and commerce with Great Britain, they both returned together to France in November, taking pa.s.sage in a French frigate. On this his second voyage to Europe, young Adams began a diary, which, with few intermissions, he continued through life.

While in Paris he resumed the study of the ancient and modern languages, which had been interrupted by his return to America.

In July, 1780, John Adams having been appointed amba.s.sador to the Netherlands, his son was removed from the schools of Paris to those of Amsterdam, and subsequently to the University of Leyden. There he pursued his studies until July, 1781, when, in his fourteenth year, he was selected by Francis Dana, minister plenipotentiary from the United States to the Russian court, as his private secretary, and accompanied him through Germany to St. Petersburg. Having satisfactorily discharged his official duties, and pursued his Latin, German, and French studies, with a general course of English history, until September, 1782, he left St. Petersburg for Stockholm, where he pa.s.sed the winter. In the ensuing spring, after travelling through the interior of Sweden, and visiting Copenhagen and Hamburg, he joined his father at the Hague, and accompanied him to Paris. They travelled leisurely, forming an acquaintance with eminent men on their route, and examining architectural remains, the paintings of the great Flemish masters, and all the treasures of the fine arts, in the countries through which they pa.s.sed.

In Paris, young Adams was present at the signing of the treaty of peace in 1783, and was admitted into the society of Franklin, Jefferson, Jay, Barclay, Hartley, the Abbe Mably, and many other eminent statesmen and literary men. After pa.s.sing a few months in England, with his father, he returned to Paris, and resumed his studies, which he continued until May, 1785, when he embarked for the United States. This return to his own country caused a mental struggle, in which his judgment controlled his inclination. His father had just been appointed minister at the Court of Great Britain, and, as one of his family, it would have been to him a high gratification to reside in England. His feelings and views on the occasion he thus expressed:

"I have been seven years travelling in Europe, seeing the world, and in its society. If I return to the United States, I must be subject, one or two years, to the rules of a college, pa.s.s three more in the tedious study of the law, before I can hope to bring myself into professional notice. The prospect is discouraging. If I accompany my father to London, my satisfaction would possibly be greater than by returning to the United States; but I shall loiter away my precious time, and not go home until I am forced to it. My father has been all his lifetime occupied by the interests of the public. His own fortune has suffered.

His children must provide for themselves. I am determined to get my own living, and to be dependent upon no one. With a tolerable share of common sense, I hope, in America, to be independent and free. Rather than live otherwise, I would wish to die before my time."

In this spirit the tempting prospects in Europe were abandoned, and he returned to the United States, to submit to the rules, and to join, with a submissive temper, the comparatively uninteresting a.s.sociations, of college life. After reviewing his studies under an instructor, he entered, in March, 1786, the junior cla.s.s of Harvard University.

Diligence and punctual fulfilment of every prescribed duty, the advantages he had previously enjoyed, and his exemplary compliance with the rules of the seminary, secured to him a high standing in his cla.s.s, which none were disposed to controvert. Here his active and thoughtful mind was prepared for those scenes in future life in which he could not but feel he was destined to take part. Entering into all the literary and social circles of the college, he became popular among his cla.s.smates. By the government his conduct and attainments were duly appreciated, which they manifested by bestowing upon him the second honor of his cla.s.s at commencement; a high distinction, considering the short period he had been a member of the university. The oration he delivered when he graduated, in 1787, on the Importance of Public Faith to the Well-Being of a Community, was printed and published; a rare proof of general interest in a college exercise, which the adaptation of the subject to the times, and the talent it evinced, justified.

After leaving the university, Mr. Adams pa.s.sed three years in Newburyport as a student at law under the guidance of Theophilus Parsons, afterwards chief justice of Ma.s.sachusetts. He was admitted to the bar in 1790, and immediately opened an office in Boston. The ranks of his profession were crowded, the emoluments were small, and his compet.i.tors able. His letters feelingly express his anxiety to relieve his parents from contributing to his support. In November, 1843, in an address to the bar of Cincinnati, Mr. Adams thus described the progress and termination of his practice as a lawyer--

"I have been a member of your profession upwards of half a century.

In the early period of my life, having a father abroad, it was my fortune to travel in foreign countries; still, under the impression which I first received from my mother, that in this country every man should have some trade, that trade which, by the advice of my parents and my own inclination, I chose, was the profession of the Law. After having completed an education in which, perhaps, more than any other citizen of that time I had advantages, and which of course brought with it the inc.u.mbent duty of manifesting by my life that those extraordinary advantages of education, secured to me by my father, had not been worthlessly bestowed,--on coming into life after such great advantages, and having the duty of selecting a profession, I chose that of the Bar. I closed my education as a lawyer with one of the most eminent jurists of the age,--Theophilus Parsons, of Newburyport, at that time a practising lawyer, but subsequently chief justice of the commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts.

Under his instruction and advice I closed my education, and commenced what I can hardly call the practice of the law in the city of Boston.

"At that time, though I cannot say I was friendless, yet my circ.u.mstances were not independent. My father was then in a situation of great responsibility and notoriety in the government of the United States. But he had been long absent from his own country, and still continued absent from that part of it to which he belonged, and of which I was a native. I went, therefore, as a volunteer, an adventurer, to Boston, as possibly many of you whom I now see before me may consider yourselves as having come to Cincinnati. I was without support of any kind. I may say I was a stranger in that city, although almost a native of that spot. I say I can hardly call it practice, because for the s.p.a.ce of one year from that time it would be difficult for me to name any practice which I had to do. For two years, indeed, I can recall nothing in which I was engaged that may be termed practice, though during the second year there were some symptoms that by persevering patience practice might come in time. The third year I continued this patience and perseverance, and, having little to do, occupied my time as well as I could in the study of those laws and inst.i.tutions which I have since been called to administer. At the end of the third year I had obtained something which might be called practice.

"The fourth year I found it swelling to such an extent that I felt no longer any concern as to my future destiny as a member of that profession. But in the midst of the fourth year, by the will of the first President of the United States, with which the Senate was pleased to concur, I was selected for a station, not, perhaps, of more usefulness, but of greater consequence in the estimation of mankind, and sent from home on a mission to foreign parts.

"From that time, the fourth year after my admission to the bar of my native state, and the first year of my admission to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, I was deprived of the exercise of any further industry or labor at the bar by this distinction; a distinction for which a previous education at the bar, if not an indispensable qualification, was at least a most useful appendage."[3]

[3] See _Niles' Weekly Register_, New Series, vol. xv., pp. 218, 219.

While waiting for professional employment, he was instinctively drawn into political discussions. Thomas Paine had just then published his "Rights of Man," for which Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, took upon himself to be sponsor, by publishing a letter expressing his extreme pleasure "that it is to be reprinted here, and that something is at length to be publicly said against the _political heresies_ which have sprung up among us. I have no doubt our citizens will rally a second time round the standard of _Common Sense_."

Notwithstanding the weight of Jefferson's character, and the strength of his recommendation, in June, 1791, young Adams entered the lists against Paine and his pamphlet, which was in truth an encomium on the National a.s.sembly of France, and a commentary on the rights of man, inferring questionable deductions from unquestionable principles. In a series of essays, signed Publicola, published in the _Columbian Centinel_, he states and controverts successively the fundamental doctrines of Paine's work; denies that "whatever a whole nation chooses to do it has a right to do," and maintains, in opposition, that "nations, no less than individuals, are subject to the eternal and immutable laws of justice and morality;" declaring that Paine's doctrine annihilated the security of every man for his inalienable rights, and would lead in practice to a hideous despotism, concealed under the parti-colored garments of democracy. The truth of the views in these essays was soon made manifest by the destruction of the French const.i.tution, so lauded by Paine and Jefferson, the succeeding anarchy, the murder of the French monarch, and the establishment of a military despotism.

In April, 1793, Great Britain declared war against France, then in the most violent frenzy of her revolution. In this war, the feelings of the people of the United States were far from being neutral. The seeds of friendship for the one, and of enmity towards the other belligerent, which the Revolutionary War had plentifully scattered through the whole country, began everywhere to vegetate. Private cupidity openly advocated privateering upon the commerce of Great Britain, in aid of which commissions were issued under the authority of France. To counteract the apparent tendency of these popular pa.s.sions, Mr. Adams published, also in the _Centinel_, a series of essays, signed Marcellus, exposing the lawlessness, injustice, and criminality, of such interference in favor of one of the belligerents. "For if," he wrote, "as the poet, with more than poetical truth, has said, 'war is murder,' the plunder of private property, the pillage of all the regular rewards of honest industry and laudable enterprise, upon the mere pretence of a national contest, in the eye of justice can appear in no other light than highway robbery.

If, however, some apology for the practice is to be derived from the incontrollable law of necessity, or from the imperious law of war, certainly there can be no possible excuse for those who incur the guilt without being able to plead the palliation; for those who violate the rights of nations in order to obtain a license for rapine manifestly show that patriotism is but the cloak for such enterprises; that the true objects are plunder and pillage; and that to those engaged in them it was only the lash of the executioner which kept them in the observance of their civil and political duties."

After developing the folly and madness of such conduct in a nation whose commerce was expanded over the globe, and which was "dest.i.tute of even the defensive apparatus of war," and showing that it would lead to general bankruptcy, and endanger even the existence of the nation, he maintained that "impartial and unequivocal neutrality was the imperious duty of the United States." Their pretended obligation to take part in the war resulting from "the guarantee of the possessions of France in America," he denied, on the ground that either circ.u.mstances had wholly dissolved those obligations, or they were suspended and made impracticable by the acts of the French government.

The ability displayed in these essays attracted the attention of Washington and his cabinet, and the concidence of these views with their own was immediately manifested by the proclamation of neutrality.

Their thoughts were again, soon after, attracted to the author, by a third series of essays, published in November, 1793, in the _Columbian Centinel_, under the signature of Columbus, in which he entered the lists in defence of the const.i.tuted authorities of the United States, exposing and reprobating the language and conduct of Genet, the minister from the French republic, whose repeated insults upon the first magistrate of the American Union, and upon the national government, had been as public and as shameless as they had been unprecedented. For, after Washington, supported by the highest judicial authority of the country, had, as President of the United States, denied publicly Genet's authority to establish consular courts within them, and to issue letters of marque and reprisal to their citizens, against the enemies of France, he had the insolence to appeal from the President, and to deny his power to revoke the exequatur of a French consul, who, by a process issued from his own court, rescued, with an armed force, a vessel out of the custody of justice.

In these essays Genet is denounced as a dangerous enemy; his appeal "as an insolent outrage to _the man_ who was deservedly the object of the grateful affection of the whole people of America;" "as a rude attempt of a beardless foreign stripling, whose commission from a friendly power was his only t.i.tle to respect, not supported by a shadow of right on his part, and not less hostile to the const.i.tution than to the government."

The violence of the times, and the existence of a powerful party in the United States ready to support the French minister in his hostility to the national government, are also ill.u.s.trated by the following facts: "That an American jury had been compelled by the clamor of a collected mult.i.tude to acquit a prisoner without the unanimity required by law;"

"by the circulation of caricatures representing President Washington and a judge of the Supreme Court with a guillotine suspended over their heads;" "by posting upon the mast of a French vessel of war, in the harbor of Boston, the names of twenty citizens, all of them inoffensive, and some of them personally respectable, as objects of detestation to the crew;" "by the threatening, by an anonymous a.s.sa.s.sin, to visit with inevitable death a member of the Legislature of New York, for expressing, with the freedom of an American citizen, his opinion of the proceedings of the French minister;" and "by the formation of a lengthened chain of democratic societies, a.s.suming to themselves, under the semblance of a warmer zeal for the cause of liberty, to control the operations of the government, and to dictate laws to the country."

The talent and knowledge of diplomatic relations, thus displayed, powerfully impressed the administration, and the nomination of Mr. Adams as minister from the United States resident at the Netherlands, by Washington and his cabinet, was confirmed unanimously by the Senate, in June, 1794. At the request of the Secretary of State, he immediately repaired to Philadelphia. His commission was delivered to him on the 11th of July, the day he entered his twenty-eighth year. He embarked in September from Boston, and in October arrived in London, where Messrs.

Jay and Pinckney were then negotiating a treaty between Great Britain and the United States, who immediately admitted him to their deliberations. Concerning this treaty, which occasioned, soon after, such unexampled fury of opposition in the United States, Mr. Adams, at the time, thus expressed his opinion: "The treaty is far from being satisfactory to either Mr. Jay or Mr. Pinckney. It is far below the standard which would be advantageous to the country. It is probable, however, the negotiators will consent to it, as it is, in their opinion, preferable to a war. The satisfaction proposed to be made to the United States for the recent depredations on their commerce, the princ.i.p.al object of Jay's mission, is provided for in as ample a manner as we could expect. The delivery of the posts is protracted to a more distant day than is desirable. But, I think, the compensation made for the present and future detention of them will be a sufficient equivalent.

The commerce with their West India islands, partially opened to us, will be of great importance, and indemnifies for the deprivation of the fur-trade since the treaty of peace, as well as for the negroes carried away contrary to the engagements of the treaty, at least as far as it respects the nation. As to the satisfaction we are to make, I think it is no more than is in justice due from us. The article which provides against the future confiscation of debts, and of property in the funds, is useful, because it is honest. If its operation should turn out more advantageous to them, it will be more honorable for us; and I never can object to entering formally into an obligation to do that which, upon every virtuous principle, ought to be done without it. As a treaty of commerce it will be indeed of little use to us, and we shall never obtain anything more favorable so long as the principles of the navigation act are obstinately adhered to by Great Britain. This system is so much a favorite with the nation that no minister would dare to depart from it. Indeed, I have no idea we shall ever obtain, by compact, a better footing for our commerce with this country than that on which it now stands; and therefore the shortness of time, limited for the operation of this part of the compact, is, I think, beneficial to us."

After remaining fifteen days in London, Mr. Adams sailed, on the 30th of October, for Holland, landed at h.e.l.levoetsluis, and proceeded without delay to the Hague.

His reception as the representative of the United States had scarcely been acknowledged by the President of the States General, before Holland was taken possession of by the French, under Pichegru. The Stadtholder fled, the tree of liberty was planted, and the French national flag displayed before the Stadthouse. The people were kept quiet by seventy thousand French soldiers. The Stadtholder, the n.o.bility, and the regencies of the cities, were all abolished, a provincial munic.i.p.ality appointed, and the country received as an ally of France, under the name of the Batavian Republic; the streets being filled with tri-colored c.o.c.kades, and resounding with the Carmagnole, or the Ma.r.s.eilles Hymn.

Mr. Adams was visited by the representatives of the French people, and recognized as the minister of a nation free like themselves, with whom the most fraternal relations should be maintained. In response, he a.s.sured them of the attachment of his fellow-citizens for the French people, who felt grateful for the obligations they were under to the French nation, and closed with demanding safety and protection for all American persons and property in the country.

Popular societies in Holland were among the most efficient means of the success of the revolution, as they had been in France. Mr. Adams, being solicited to join one of them, declined, considering it improper in a stranger to take part personally in the politics of the country. "It was," he wrote, "unnecessary for me to look out for motives to justify my refusal. I have an aversion to political popular societies in general. To destroy an established power, they are undoubtedly an efficacious instrument, but in their nature they are fit for nothing else. The reign of Robespierre has shown what use they make of power when they obtain it."

The station of Mr. Adams at the Hague gave him opportunities to acquaint himself with parties and persons, their motives and principles, of which he availed himself with characteristic industry.

In October, 1795, he was directed by the Secretary of State to repair to England, and arriving there in November ensuing, he found he was appointed to exchange ratifications of Mr. Jay's treaty with the British government. This mission was far from pleasant to him. In effect it was merely ministerial, and so far as it might result in negotiation, he did not antic.i.p.ate any good. "I am convinced," he wrote, "that Mr. Jay did everything that was to be done; that he did so much affords me a proof of the wisdom with which he conducted the business, that grows stronger the more I see. But circ.u.mstances will do more than any negotiation. The pride of Britain itself must bend to the course of events. The rigor of her system already begins to relax, and one year of war to her and peace to us will be more favorable to our interests, and to the final establishment of our principles, than could possibly be effected by twenty years of negotiation or war."

While in England, the duties of his appointment brought him into frequent intercourse with Lord Grenville and other leading British statesmen of the period. After the objects of his mission had been acceptably fulfilled, he received authority from his government to return to his station, at the Hague, in May, 1796. His time was there devoted to official duties, to the claims of general society, to an extensive correspondence, the study of works on diplomacy, the English and Latin cla.s.sics, and the Dutch and Italian languages.