John Quincy Adams

On July 11, 1767, in the North Parish of Braintree, since set off as the town of Quincy, in Massachusetts, was born John Quincy Adams. Two streams of as good blood as flowed in the colony mingled in the veins of the infant. If heredity counts for anything he began life with an excellent chance of becoming famous-non sine d?s animosus infans. He was called after his great-grandfather on the mother's side, John Quincy, a man of local note who had borne in his day a distinguished part in provincial affairs. Such a naming was a simple and natural occurrence enough, but Mr.

Adams afterward moralized upon it in his characteristic way:-

"The incident which gave rise to this circumstance is not without its moral to my heart. He was dying when I was baptized; and his daughter, my grandmother, present at my birth, requested that I might receive his name. The fact, recorded by my father at the time, 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 passing from earth to immortality. These have been among the strongest links of my attachment to the name of Quincy, and have been to me through life a perpetual admonition to do nothing unworthy of it."

Fate, which had made such good preparation for him before his birth, was not less kind in arranging the circumstances of his early training and development. His father was deeply engaged in the patriot cause, and the first matters borne in upon his opening intelligence concerned the public discontent and resistance to tyranny. He was but seven years old when he clambered with his mother to the top of one of the high hills in the neighborhood of his home to listen to the sounds of conflict upon Bunker's Hill, and to watch the flaming ruin of Charlestown. Profound was the impression made upon him by the spectacle, and it was intensified by many an hour spent afterward upon the same spot during the siege and bombardment of Boston. Then John Adams went as a delegate to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, and his wife and children were left for twelve months, as John Quincy Adams says,-it is to be hoped with a little exaggeration of the barbarity of British troops toward women and babes,-"liable every hour of the day and of the night to be butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried into Boston as hostages, by any foraging or marauding detachment." Later, when the British had evacuated Boston, the boy, barely nine years old, became "post-rider" between the city and the farm, a distance of eleven miles each way, in order to bring all the latest news to his mother.

Not much regular schooling was to be got amid such surroundings of times and events, but the lad had a natural aptitude or affinity for knowledge which stood him in better stead than could any dame of a village school. The following letter to his father is worth preserving:-

Braintree, June the 2d, 1777.

Dear Sir,-I love to receive letters very well, much better than I love to write them. I make but a poor figure at composition, my head is much too fickle, my thoughts are running after birds' eggs, play and trifles till I get vexed with myself. I have but just entered the 3d volume of Smollett, tho' I had designed to have got it half through by this time. I have determined this week to be more diligent, as Mr. Thaxter will be absent at Court and I Cannot pursue my other Studies. I have Set myself a Stent and determine to read the 3d volume Half out. If I can but keep my resolution I will write again at the end of the week and give a better account of myself. I wish, Sir, you would give me some instructions with regard to my time, and advise me how to proportion my Studies and my Play, in writing, and I will keep them by me and endeavor to follow them. I am, dear Sir, with a present determination of growing better. Yours.

P.S. Sir, if you will be so good as to favor me with a Blank book, I will transcribe the most remarkable occurrences I met with in my reading, which will serve to fix them upon my mind.

Not long after the writing of this model epistle, the simple village life was interrupted by an unexpected change. John Adams was sent on a diplomatic journey to Paris, and on February 13, 1778, embarked in the frigate Boston. John Quincy Adams, then eleven years old, accompanied his father and thus made his first acquaintance with the foreign lands where so many of his coming years were to be passed. This initial visit, however, was brief; and he was hardly well established at school when events caused his father to start for home. Unfortunately this return trip was a needless loss of time, since within three months of their setting foot upon American shores the two travellers were again on their stormy way back across the Atlantic in a leaky ship, which had to land them at the nearest port in Spain. One more quotation must be given from a letter written just after the first arrival in France:-

Passy, September the 27th, 1778.

Honored Mamma,-My Pappa enjoins it upon me to keep a Journal, or a Diary of the Events that happen to me, and of objects that I see, and of Characters that I converse with from day to day; and altho' I am Convinced of the utility, importance and necessity of this Exercise, yet I have not patience and perseverance enough to do it so Constantly as I ought. My Pappa, who takes a great deal of pains to put me in the right way, has also advised me to Preserve Copies of all my letters, and has given me a Convenient Blank Book for this end; and altho' I shall have the mortification a few years hence to read a great deal of my Childish nonsense, yet I shall have the Pleasure and advantage of Remarking the several steps by which I shall have advanced in taste, judgment and knowledge. A Journal Book and a letter Book of a Lad of Eleven years old Can not be expected to Contain much of Science, Literature, arts, wisdom, or wit, yet it may serve to perpetuate many observations that I may make, and may hereafter help me to recollect both persons and things that would other ways escape my memory.

He continues with resolutions "to be more thoughtful and industrious for the future," and reflects with pleasure upon the prospect that his scheme "will be a sure means of improvement to myself, and enable me to be more entertaining to you." What gratification must this letter from one who was quite justified in signing himself her "dutiful and affectionate son" have brought to the Puritan bosom of the good mother at home! If the plan for the diary was not pursued during the first short flitting abroad, it can hardly be laid at the door of the "lad of eleven years" as a serious fault. He did in fact begin it when setting out on the aforementioned second trip to Europe, calling it

A Journal by J. Q. A.,

From America to Spain.

Vol. I.

Begun Friday, 12 of November, 1779.

The spark of life in the great undertaking flickered in a somewhat feeble and irregular way for many years thereafter, but apparently gained strength by degrees until in 1795, as Mr. C. F. Adams tells us, "what may be denominated the diary proper begins," a very vigorous work in more senses than one. Continued with astonishing persistency and faithfulness until within a few days of the writer's death, the latest entry is of the 4th of January, 1848. Mr. Adams achieved many successes during his life as the result of conscious effort, but the greatest success of all he achieved altogether unconsciously. He left a portrait of himself more full, correct, vivid, and picturesque than has ever been bequeathed to posterity by any other personage of the past ages. Any mistakes which may be made in estimating his mental or moral attributes must be charged to the dulness or prejudice of the judge, who could certainly not ask for better or more abundant evidence. Few of us know our most intimate friends better than any of us may know Mr. Adams, if we will but take the trouble. Even the brief extracts already given from his correspondence show us the boy; it only concerns us to get them into the proper light for seeing them accurately. If a lad of seven, nine, or eleven years of age should write such solemn little effusions amid the surroundings and influences of the present day, he would probably be set down justly enough as either an offensive young prig or a prematurely developed hypocrite. But the precocious Adams had only a little of the prig and nothing of the hypocrite in his nature. Being the outcome of many generations of simple, devout, intelligent Puritan ancestors, living in a community which loved virtue and sought knowledge, all inherited and all present influences combined to make him, as it may be put in a single word, sensible. He had inevitably a mental boyhood and youth, but morally he was never either a child or a lad; all his leading traits of character were as strongly marked when he was seven as when he was seventy, and at an age when most young people simply win love or cause annoyance, he was preferring wisdom to mischief, and actually in his earliest years was attracting a certain respect.

These few but bold and striking touches which paint the boy are changed for an infinitely more elaborate and complex presentation from the time when the Diary begins. Even as abridged in the printing, this immense work ranks among the half-dozen longest diaries to be found in any library, and it is unquestionably by far the most valuable. Henceforth we are to travel along its broad route to the end; we shall see in it both the great and the small among public men halting onward in a way very different from that in which they march along the stately pages of the historian, and we shall find many side-lights, by no means colorless, thrown upon the persons and events of the procession. The persistence, fulness, and faithfulness with which it was kept throughout so busy a life are marvellous, but are also highly characteristic of the most persevering and industrious of men. That it has been preserved is cause not only for thankfulness but for some surprise also. For if its contents had been known, it is certain that all the public men of nearly two generations who figure in it would have combined into one vast and irresistible conspiracy to obtain and destroy it. There was always a superfluity of gall in the diarist's ink. Sooner or later every man of any note in the United States was mentioned in his pages, and there is scarcely one of them, who, if he could have read what was said of him, would not have preferred the ignominy of omission. As one turns the leaves he feels as though he were walking through a graveyard of slaughtered reputations wherein not many headstones show a few words of measured commendation. It is only the greatness and goodness of Mr. Adams himself which relieve the universal atmosphere of sadness far more depressing than the melancholy which pervades the novels of George Eliot. The reader who wishes to retain any comfortable degree of belief in his fellow men will turn to the wall all the portraits in the gallery except only the inimitable one of the writer himself. For it would be altogether too discouraging to think that so wide an experience of men as Mr. Adams enjoyed through his long, varied, and active life must lead to such an unpleasant array of human faces as those which are scattered along these twelve big octavos. Fortunately at present we have to do with only one of these likenesses, and that one we are able to admire while knowing also that it is beyond question accurate. One after another every trait of Mr. Adams comes out; we shall see that he was a man of a very high and noble character veined with some very notable and disagreeable blemishes; his aspirations were honorable, even the lowest of them being more than simply respectable; he had an avowed ambition, but it was of that pure kind which led him to render true and distinguished services to his countrymen; he was not only a zealous patriot, but a profound believer in the sound and practicable tenets of the liberal political creed of the United States; he had one of the most honest and independent natures that was ever given to man; personal integrity of course goes without saying, but he had the rarer gift of an elevated and rigid political honesty such as has been unfrequently seen in any age or any nation; in times of severe trial this quality was even cruelly tested, but we shall never see it fail; he was as courageous as if he had been a fanatic; indeed, for a long part of his life to maintain a single-handed fight in support of a despised or unpopular opinion seemed his natural function and almost exclusive calling; he was thoroughly conscientious and never knowingly did wrong, nor even sought to persuade himself that wrong was right; well read in literature and of wide and varied information in nearly all matters of knowledge, he was more especially remarkable for his acquirements in the domain of politics, where indeed they were vast and ever growing; he had a clear and generally a cool head, and was nearly always able to do full justice to himself and to his cause; he had an indomitable will, unconquerable persistence, and infinite laboriousness. Such were the qualities which made him a great statesman; but unfortunately we must behold a hardly less striking reverse to the picture, in the faults and shortcomings which made him so unpopular in his lifetime that posterity is only just beginning to forget the prejudices of his contemporaries and to render concerning him the judgment which he deserves. Never did a man of pure life and just purposes have fewer friends or more enemies than John Quincy Adams. His nature, said to have been very affectionate in his family relations, was in its aspect outside of that small circle singularly cold and repellent. If he could ever have gathered even a small personal following his character and abilities would have insured him a brilliant and prolonged success; but, for a man of his calibre and influence, we shall see him as one of the most lonely and desolate of the great men of history; instinct led the public men of his time to range themselves against him rather than with him, and we shall find them fighting beside him only when irresistibly compelled to do so by policy or strong convictions. As he had little sympathy with those with whom he was brought in contact, so he was very uncharitable in his judgment of them; and thus having really a low opinion of so many of them he could indulge his vindictive rancor without stint; his invective, always powerful, will sometimes startle us by its venom, and we shall be pained to see him apt to make enemies for a good cause by making them for himself.

This has been, perhaps, too long a lingering upon the threshold. But Mr. Adams's career in public life stretched over so long a period that to write a full historical memoir of him within the limited space of this volume is impossible. All that can be attempted is to present a sketch of the man with a few of his more prominent surroundings against a very meagre and insufficient background of the history of the times. So it may be permissible to begin with a general outline of his figure, to be filled in, shaded, and colored as we proceed. At best our task is much more difficult of satisfactory achievement than an historical biography of the customary elaborate order.

During his second visit to Europe, our mature youngster-if the word may be used of Mr. Adams even in his earliest years-began to see a good deal of the world and to mingle in very distinguished society. For a brief period he got a little schooling, first at Paris, next at Amsterdam, and then at Leyden; altogether the amount was insignificant, since he was not quite fourteen years old when he actually found himself engaged in a diplomatic career. Francis Dana, afterward Chief Justice of Massachusetts, was then accredited as an envoy to Russia from the United States, and he took Mr. Adams with him as his private secretary. Not much came of the mission, but it was a valuable experience for a lad of his years. Upon his return he spent six months in travel and then he rejoined his father in Paris, where that gentleman was engaged with Franklin and John Jay in negotiating the final treaty of peace between the revolted colonies and the mother country. The boy "was at once enlisted in the service as an additional secretary, and gave his help to the preparation of the papers necessary to the completion of that instrument which dispersed all possible doubt of the Independence of his Country."

On April 26, 1785, arrived the packet-ship Le Courier de L'Orient, bringing a letter from Mr. Gerry containing news of the appointment of John Adams as Minister to St. James's. This unforeseen occurrence made it necessary for the younger Adams to determine his own career, which apparently he was left to do for himself. He was indeed a singular young man, not unworthy of such confidence! The glimpses which we get of him during this stay abroad show him as the associate upon terms of equality with grown men of marked ability and exercising important functions. He preferred diplomacy to dissipation, statesmen to mistresses, and in the midst of all the temptations of the gayest capital in the world, the chariness with which he sprinkled his wild oats amid the alluring gardens chiefly devoted to the culture of those cereals might well have brought a blush to the cheeks of some among his elders, at least if the tongue of slander wags not with gross untruth concerning the colleagues of John Adams. But he was not in Europe to amuse himself, though at an age when amusement is natural and a tinge of sinfulness is so often pardoned; he was there with the definite and persistent purpose of steady improvement and acquisition. At his age most young men play the cards which a kind fortune puts into their hands, with the reckless intent only of immediate gain, but from the earliest moment when he began the game of life Adams coolly and wisely husbanded every card which came into his hand, with a steady view to probable future contingencies, and with the resolve to win in the long run. So now the resolution which he took in the present question illustrated the clearness of his mind and the strength of his character. To go with his father to England would be to enjoy a life precisely fitted to his natural and acquired tastes, to mingle with the men who were making history, to be cognizant of the weightiest of public affairs, to profit by all that the grandest city in the world had to show. It was easy to be not only allured by the prospect but also to be deceived by its apparent advantages. Adams, however, had the sense and courage to turn his back on it, and to go home to the meagre shores and small society of New England, there to become a boy again, to enter Harvard College, and come under all its at that time rigid and petty regulations. It almost seems a mistake, but it was not. Already he was too ripe and too wise to blunder. He himself gives us his characteristic and sufficient reasons:-

"Were I now to go with my father probably my immediate satisfaction might be greater than it will be in returning to America. After having been travelling for these seven years almost and all over Europe, and having been in the world and among company for three; to return to spend one or two years in the pale of a college, subjected to all the rules which I have so long been freed from; and afterwards not expect (however good an opinion I may have of myself) to bring myself into notice under three or four years more, if ever! It is really a prospect somewhat discouraging for a youth of my ambition, (for I have ambition though I hope its object is laudable). But still

'Oh! how wretched

Is that poor man, that hangs on Princes' favors,'

or on those of any body else. I am determined that so long as I shall be able to get my own living in an honorable manner, I will depend upon no one. My father has been so much taken up all his lifetime with the interests of the public, that his own fortune has suffered by it: so that his children will have to provide for themselves, which I shall never be able to do if I loiter away my precious time in Europe and shun going home until I am forced to it. With an ordinary share of common sense, which I hope I enjoy, at least in America I can live independent and free; and rather than live otherwise I would wish to die before the time when I shall be left at my own discretion. I have before me a striking example of the distressing and humiliating situation a person is reduced to by adopting a different line of conduct, and I am determined not to fall into the same error."

It is needless to comment upon such spirit and sense, or upon such just appreciation of what was feasible, wise, and right for him, as a New Englander whose surroundings and prospects were widely different from those of the society about him. He must have been strongly imbued by nature with the instincts of his birthplace to have formed, after a seven years' absence at his impressible age, so correct a judgment of the necessities and possibilities of his own career in relationship to the people and ideas of his own country.

Home accordingly he came, and by assiduity prepared himself in a very short time to enter the junior class at Harvard College, whence he was graduated in high standing in 1787. From there he went to Newburyport, then a thriving and active seaport enriched by the noble trade of privateering in addition to more regular maritime business, and entered as a law student the office of Theophilus Parsons, afterwards the Chief Justice of Massachusetts. On July 15, 1790, being twenty-three years old, he was admitted to practice. Immediately afterward he established himself in Boston, where for a time he felt strangely solitary. Clients of course did not besiege his doors in the first year, and he appears to have waited rather stubbornly than cheerfully for more active days. These came in good time, and during the second, third, and fourth years, his business grew apace to encouraging dimensions.

He was, however, doing other work than that of the law, and much more important in its bearing upon his future career. He could not keep his thoughts, nor indeed his hands, from public affairs. When, in 1791, Thomas Paine produced the "Rights of Man," Thomas Jefferson acting as midwife to usher the bantling before the people of the United States, Adams's indignation was fired, and he published anonymously a series of refuting papers over the signature of Publicola. These attracted much attention, not only at home but also abroad, and were by many attributed to John Adams. Two years later, during the excitement aroused by the reception and subsequent outrageous behavior here of the French minister, Genet, Mr. Adams again published in the Boston "Centinel" some papers over the signature of Marcellus, discussing with much ability the then new and perplexing question of the neutrality which should be observed by this country in European wars. These were followed by more, over the signature of Columbus, and afterward by still more in the name of Barnevelt, all strongly reprobating the course of the crazy-headed foreigner. The writer was not permitted to remain long unknown. It is not certain, but it is highly probable, that to these articles was due the nomination which Mr. Adams received shortly afterward from President Washington, as Minister Resident at the Hague. This nomination was sent in to the Senate, May 29, 1794, and was unanimously confirmed on the following day. It may be imagined that the change from the moderate practice of his Boston law office to a European court, of which he so well knew the charms, was not distasteful to him. There are passages in his Diary which indicate that he had been chafing with irrepressible impatience "in that state of useless and disgraceful insignificancy," to which, as it seemed to him, he was relegated, so that at the age of twenty-five, when "many of the characters who were born for the benefit of their fellow creatures, have rendered themselves conspicuous among their contemporaries, ... I still find myself as obscure, as unknown to the world, as the most indolent or the most stupid of human beings." Entertaining such a restless ambition, he of course accepted the proffered office, though not without some expression of unexplained doubt. October 31, 1794, found him at the Hague, after a voyage of considerable peril in a leaky ship, commanded by a blundering captain. He was a young diplomat, indeed; it was on his twenty-seventh birthday that he received his commission.

The minister made his advent upon a tumultuous scene. All Europe was getting under arms in the long and desperate struggle with France. Scarcely had he presented his credentials to the Stadtholder ere that dignitary was obliged to flee before the conquering standards of the French. Pichegru marched into the capital city of the Low Countries, hung out the tri-color, and established the "Batavian Republic" as the ally of France. The diplomatic representatives of most of the European powers forthwith left, and Mr. Adams was strongly moved to do the same, though for reasons different from those which actuated his compeers. He was not, like them, placed in an unpleasant position by the new condition of affairs, but on the contrary he was very cordially treated by the French and their Dutch partisans, and was obliged to fall back upon his native prudence to resist their compromising overtures and dangerous friendship. Without giving offence he yet kept clear of entanglements, and showed a degree of wisdom and skill which many older and more experienced Americans failed to evince, either abroad or at home, during these exciting years. But he appeared to be left without occupation in the altered condition of affairs, and therefore was considering the propriety of returning, when advices from home induced him to stay. Washington especially wrote that he must not think of retiring, and prophesied that he would soon be "found at the head of the diplomatic corps, be the government administered by whomsoever the people may choose." He remained, therefore, at the Hague, a shrewd and close observer of the exciting events occurring around him, industriously pursuing an extensive course of study and reading, making useful acquaintances, acquiring familiarity with foreign languages, with the usages of diplomacy and the habits of distinguished society. He had little public business to transact, it is true; but at least his time was well spent for his own improvement.

An episode in his life at the Hague was his visit to England, where he was directed to exchange ratifications of the treaty lately negotiated by Mr. Jay. But a series of vexatious delays, apparently maliciously contrived, detained him so long that upon his arrival he found this specific task already accomplished by Mr. Deas. He was probably not disappointed that his name thus escaped connection with engagements so odious to a large part of the nation. He had, however, some further business of an informal character to transact with Lord Grenville, and in endeavoring to conduct it found himself rather awkwardly placed. He was not minister to the Court of St. James, having been only vaguely authorized to discuss certain arrangements in a tentative way, without the power to enter into any definitive agreement. But the English Cabinet strongly disliking Mr. Deas, who in the absence of Mr. Pinckney represented for the time the United States, and much preferring to negotiate with Mr. Adams, sought by many indirect and artful subterfuges to thrust upon him the character of a regularly accredited minister. He had much ado to avoid, without offence, the assumption of functions to which he had no title, but which were with designing courtesy forced upon him. His cool and moderate temper, however, carried him successfully through the whole business, alike in its social and its diplomatic aspect.

Another negotiation, of a private nature also, he brought to a successful issue during these few months in London. He made the acquaintance of Miss Louisa Catherine Johnson, daughter of Joshua Johnson, then American Consul at London, and niece of that Governor Johnson, of Maryland, who had signed the Declaration of Independence and was afterwards placed on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. To this lady he became engaged; and returning not long afterward he was married to her on July 26, 1797. It was a thoroughly happy and, for him, a life-long union.

President Washington, toward the close of his second term, transferred Mr. Adams to the Court of Portugal. But before his departure thither his destination was changed. Some degree of embarrassment was felt about this time concerning his further continuance in public office, by reason of his father's accession to the Presidency. He wrote to his mother a manly and spirited letter, rebuking her for carelessly dropping an expression indicative of a fear that he might look for some favor at his father's hands. He could neither solicit nor expect anything, he justly said, and he was pained that his mother should not know him better than to entertain any apprehension of his feeling otherwise. It was a perplexing position in which the two were placed. It would be a great hardship to cut short the son's career because of the success of the father, yet the reproach of nepotism could not be lightly encountered, even with the backing of clear consciences. Washington came kindly to the aid of his doubting successor, and in a letter highly complimentary to Mr. John Quincy Adams strongly urged that well-merited promotion ought not to be kept from him, foretelling for him a distinguished future in the diplomatic service. These representations prevailed; and the President's only action as concerned his son consisted in changing his destination from Portugal to Prussia, both missions being at that time of the same grade, though that to Prussia was then established for the first time by the making and confirming of this nomination.

To Berlin, accordingly, Mr. Adams proceeded in November, 1797, and had the somewhat cruel experience of being "questioned at the gates by a dapper lieutenant, who did not know, until one of his private soldiers explained to him, who the United States of America were." Overcoming this unusual obstacle to a ministerial advent, and succeeding, after many months, in getting through all the introductory formalities, he found not much more to be done at Berlin than there had been at the Hague. But such useful work as was open to him he accomplished in the shape of a treaty of amity and commerce between Prussia and the United States. This having been duly ratified by both the powers, his further stay seemed so useless that he wrote home suggesting his readiness to return; and while awaiting a reply he travelled through some portions of Europe which he had not before seen. His recall was one of the last acts of his father's administration, made, says Mr. Seward, "that Mr. Jefferson might have no embarrassment in that direction," but quite as probably dictated by a vindictive desire to show how wide was the gulf of animosity which had opened between the family of the disappointed ex-President and his triumphant rival.

Mr. Adams, immediately upon his arrival at home, prepared to return to the practice of his profession. It was not altogether an agreeable transition from an embassy at the courts of Europe to a law office in Boston, with the necessity of furbishing up long disused knowledge, and a second time patiently awaiting the influx of clients. But he faced it with his stubborn temper and practical sense. The slender promise which he was able to discern in the political outlook could not fail to disappoint him, since his native predilections were unquestionably and strongly in favor of a public career. During his absence party animosities had been developing rapidly. The first great party victory since the organization of the government had just been won, after a very bitter struggle, by the Republicans or Democrats, as they were then indifferently called, whose exuberant delight found its full counterpart in the angry despondency of the Federalists. That irascible old gentleman, the elder Adams, having experienced a very Waterloo defeat in the contest for the Presidency, had ridden away from the capital, actually in a wild rage, on the night of the 3d of March, 1801, to avoid the humiliating pageant of Mr. Jefferson's inauguration. Yet far more fierce than this natural party warfare was the internal dissension which rent the Federal party in twain. Those cracks upon the surface and subterraneous rumblings, which the experienced observer could for some time have noted, had opened with terrible uproar into a gaping chasm, when John Adams, still in the Presidency, suddenly announced his determination to send a mission to France at a crisis when nearly all his party were looking for war. Perhaps this step was, as his admirers claim, an act of pure and disinterested statesmanship. Certainly its result was fortunate for the country at large. But for John Adams it was ruinous. At the moment when he made the bold move, he doubtless expected to be followed by his party. Extreme was his disappointment and boundless his wrath, when he found that he had at his back only a fraction, not improbably less than half, of that party. He learned with infinite chagrin that he had only a divided empire with a private individual; that it was not safe for him, the President of the United States, to originate any important measure without first consulting a lawyer quietly engaged in the practice of his profession in New York; that, in short, at least a moiety, in which were to be found the most intelligent members, of the great Federal party, when in search of guidance, turned their faces toward Alexander Hamilton rather than toward John Adams. These Hamiltonians by no means relished the French mission, so that from this time forth a schism of intense bitterness kept the Federal party asunder, and John Adams hated Alexander Hamilton with a vigor not surpassed in the annals of human antipathies. His rage was not assuaged by the conduct of this dreaded foe in the presidential campaign; and the defeated candidate always preferred to charge his failure to Hamilton's machinations rather than to the real will of the people. This, however, was unfair; it was perfectly obvious that a majority of the nation had embraced Jeffersonian tenets, and that Federalism was moribund.

To this condition of affairs John Quincy Adams returned. Fortunately he had been compelled to bear no part in the embroilments of the past, and his sagacity must have led him, while listening with filial sympathy to the interpretations placed upon events by his incensed parent, yet to make liberal allowance for the distorting effects of the old gentleman's rage. Still it was in the main only natural for him to regard himself as a Federalist of the Adams faction. His proclivities had always been with that party. In Massachusetts the educated and well-to-do classes were almost unanimously of that way of thinking. The select coterie of gentlemen in the State, who in those times bore an active and influential part in politics, were nearly all Hamiltonians, but the adherents of President Adams were numerically strong. Nor was the younger Adams himself long left without his private grievance against Mr. Jefferson, who promptly used the authority vested in him by a new statute to remove Mr. Adams from the position of commissioner in bankruptcy, to which, at the time of his resuming business, he had been appointed by the judge of the district court. Long afterward Jefferson sought to escape the odium of this apparently malicious and, for those days, unusual action, by a very Jeffersonian explanation, tolerably satisfactory to those persons who believed it.

On April 5, 1802, Mr. Adams was chosen by the Federalists of Boston to represent them in the State Senate. The office was at that time still sought by men of the best ability and position, and though it was hardly a step upward on the political ladder for one who had represented the nation in foreign parts for eight years, yet Mr. Adams was well content to accept it. At least it reopened the door of political life, and moreover one of his steadfast maxims was never to refuse any function which the people sought to impose upon him. It is worth noting, for its bearing upon controversies soon to be encountered in this narrative, that forty-eight hours had not elapsed after Mr. Adams had taken his seat before he ventured upon a display of independence which caused much irritation to his Federalist associates. He had the hardihood to propose that the Federalist majority in the legislature should permit the Republican minority to enjoy a proportional representation in the council. "It was the first act of my legislative life," he wrote many years afterward, "and it marked the principle by which my whole public life has been governed from that day to this. My proposal was unsuccessful, and perhaps it forfeited whatever confidence might have been otherwise bestowed upon me as a party follower." Indeed, all his life long Mr. Adams was never submissive to the party whip, but voted upon every question precisely according to his opinion of its merits, without the slightest regard to the political company in which for the time being he might find himself. A compeer of his in the United States Senate once said of him, that he regarded every public measure which came up as he would a proposition in Euclid, abstracted from any party considerations. These frequent derelictions of his were at first forgiven with a magnanimity really very creditable, so long as it lasted, especially to the Hamiltonians in the Federal party; and so liberal was this forbearance that when in February, 1803, the legislature had to elect a Senator to the United States Senate, he was chosen upon the fourth ballot by 86 votes out of 171. This was the more gratifying to him and the more handsome on the part of the anti-Adams men in the party, because the place was eagerly sought by Timothy Pickering, an old man who had strong claims growing out of an almost life-long and very efficient service in their ranks, and who was moreover a most stanch adherent of General Hamilton.

So in October, 1803, we find Mr. Adams on his way to Washington, the raw and unattractive village which then constituted the national capital, wherein there was not, as the pious New Englander instantly noted, a church of any denomination; but those who were religiously disposed were obliged to attend services "usually performed on Sundays at the Treasury Office and at the Capitol." With what anticipations Mr. Adams's mind was filled during his journey to this embryotic city his Diary does not tell; but if they were in any degree cheerful or sanguine they were destined to cruel disappointment. He was now probably to appreciate for the first time the fierce vigor of the hostility which his father had excited. In Massachusetts social connections and friendships probably mitigated the open display of rancor to which in Washington full sway was given. It was not only the Republican majority who showed feelings which in them were at least fair if they were strong, but the Federal minority were maliciously pleased to find in the son of the ill-starred John Adams a victim on whom to vent that spleen and abuse which were so provokingly ineffective against the solid working majority of their opponents in Congress. The Republicans trampled upon the Federalists, and the Federalists trampled on John Quincy Adams. He spoke seldom, and certainly did not weary the Senators, yet whenever he rose to his feet he was sure of a cold, too often almost an insulting, reception. By no chance or possibility could anything which he said or suggested please his prejudiced auditors. The worst augury for any measure was his support; any motion which he made was sure to be voted down, though not unfrequently substantially the same matter being afterward moved by somebody else would be readily carried. That cordiality, assistance, and sense of fellowship which Senators from the same State customarily expect and obtain from each other could not be enjoyed by him. For shortly after his arrival in Washington, Mr. Pickering had been chosen to fill a vacancy in the other Massachusetts senatorship, and appeared upon the scene as a most unwelcome colleague. For a time, indeed, an outward semblance of political comradeship was maintained between them, but it would have been folly for an Adams to put faith in a Pickering, and perhaps vice versa. This position of his, as the unpopular member of an unpopular minority, could not be misunderstood, and many allusions to it occur in his Diary. One day he notes a motion rejected; another day, that he has "nothing to do but to make fruitless opposition;" he constantly recites that he has voted with a small minority, and at least once he himself composed the whole of that minority; soon after his arrival he says that an amendment proposed by him "will certainly not pass; and, indeed, I have already seen enough to ascertain that no amendments of my proposing will obtain in the Senate as now filled;" again, "I presented my three resolutions, which raised a storm as violent as I expected;" and on the same day he writes, "I have no doubt of incurring much censure and obloquy for this measure;" a day or two later he speaks of certain persons "who hate me rather more than they love any principle;" when he expressed an opinion in favor of ratifying a treaty with the Creeks, he remarks quite philosophically, that he believes it "surprised almost every member of the Senate, and dissatisfied almost all;" when he wanted a committee raised he did not move it himself, but suggested the idea to another Senator, for "I knew that if I moved it a spirit of jealousy would immediately be raised against doing anything." Writing once of some resolutions which he intended to propose, he says that they are "another feather against a whirlwind. A desperate and fearful cause in which I have embarked, but I must pursue it or feel myself either a coward or a traitor." Another time we find a committee, of which he was a member, making its report when he had not even been notified of its meeting.

It would be idle to suppose that any man could be sufficiently callous not to feel keenly such treatment. Mr. Adams was far from callous and he felt it deeply. But he was not crushed or discouraged by it, as weaker spirits would have been, nor betrayed into any acts of foolish anger which must have recoiled upon himself. In him warm feelings were found in singular combination with a cool head. An unyielding temper and an obstinate courage, an invincible confidence in his own judgment, and a stern conscientiousness carried him through these earlier years of severe trial as they had afterwards to carry him through many more. "The qualities of mind most peculiarly called for," he reflects in the Diary, "are firmness, perseverance, patience, coolness, and forbearance. The prospect is not promising; yet the part to act may be as honorably performed as if success could attend it." He understood the situation perfectly and met it with a better skill than that of the veteran politician. By a long and tedious but sure process he forced his way to steadily increasing influence, and by the close of his fourth year we find him taking a part in the business of the Senate which may be fairly called prominent and important. He was conquering success.

But if Mr. Adams's unpopularity was partly due to the fact that he was the son of his father, it was also largely attributable not only to his unconciliatory manners but to more substantial habits of mind and character. It is probably impossible for any public man, really independent in his political action, to lead a very comfortable life amid the struggles of party. Under the disadvantages involved in this habit Mr. Adams labored to a remarkable degree. Since parties were first organized in this Republic no American statesman has ever approached him in persistent freedom of thought, speech, and action. He was regarded as a Federalist, but his Federalism was subject to many modifications; the members of that party never were sure of his adherence, and felt bound to him by no very strong ties of political fellowship. Towards the close of his senatorial term he recorded, in reminiscence, that he had more often voted with the administration than with the opposition.

The first matter of importance concerning which he was obliged to act was the acquisition of Louisiana and its admission as a state of the Union. The Federalists were bitterly opposed to this measure, regarding it as an undue strengthening of the South and of the slavery influence, to the destruction of the fair balance of power between the two great sections of the country. It was not then the moral aspect of the slavery element which stirred the northern temper, but only the antagonism of interests between the commercial cities of the North and the agricultural communities of the South. In the discussions and votes which took place in this business Mr. Adams was in favor of the purchase, but denied with much emphasis the constitutionality of the process by which the purchased territory was brought into the fellowship of States. This imperfect allegiance to the party gave more offence than satisfaction, and he found himself soundly berated in leading Federalist newspapers in New England, and angrily threatened with expulsion from the party. But in the famous impeachment of Judge Chase, which aroused very strong feelings, Mr. Adams was fortunately able to vote for acquittal. He regarded this measure, as well as the impeachment of Judge Pickering at the preceding session, as parts of an elaborate scheme on the part of the President for degrading the national judiciary and rendering it subservient to the legislative branch of the government. So many, however, even of Mr. Jefferson's stanch adherents revolted against his requisitions on this occasion, and he himself so far lost heart before the final vote was taken, that several Republicans voted with the Federalists, and Mr. Adams could hardly claim much credit with his party for standing by them in this emergency.

It takes a long while for such a man to secure respect, and great ability for him ever to achieve influence. In time, however, Mr. Adams saw gratifying indications that he was acquiring both, and in February, 1806, we find him writing:-

"This is the third session I have sat in Congress. I came in as a member of a very small minority, and during the two former sessions almost uniformly avoided to take a lead; any other course would have been dishonest or ridiculous. On the very few and unimportant objects which I did undertake, I met at first with universal opposition. The last session my influence rose a little, at the present it has hitherto been apparently rising."

He was so far a cool and clear-headed judge, even in his own case, that this encouraging estimate may be accepted as correct upon his sole authority without other evidence. But the fair prospect was overcast almost in its dawning, and a period of supreme trial and of apparently irretrievable ruin was at hand.

Topics were coming forward for discussion concerning which no American could be indifferent, and no man of Mr. Adams's spirit could be silent. The policy of Great Britain towards this country, and the manner in which it was to be met, stirred profound feelings and opened such fierce dissensions as it is now difficult to appreciate. For a brief time Mr. Adams was to be a prominent actor before the people. It is fortunately needless to repeat, as it must ever be painful to remember, the familiar and too humiliating tale of the part which France and England were permitted for so many years to play in our national politics, when our parties were not divided upon American questions, but wholly by their sympathies with one or other of these contending European powers. Under Washington the English party had, with infinite difficulty, been able to prevent their adversaries from fairly enlisting the United States as active partisans of France, in spite of the fact that most insulting treatment was received from that country. Under John Adams the same so-called British faction had been baulked in their hope of precipitating a war with the French. Now in Mr. Jefferson's second administration, the French party having won the ascendant, the new phase of the same long struggle presented the question, whether or not we should be drawn into a war with Great Britain. Grave as must have been the disasters of such a war in 1806, grave as they were when the war actually came six years later, yet it is impossible to recall the provocations which were inflicted upon us without almost regretting that prudence was not cast to the winds and any woes encountered in preference to unresisting submission to such insolent outrages. Our gorge rises at the narration three quarters of a century after the acts were done.

Mr. Adams took his position early and boldly. In February, 1806, he introduced into the Senate certain resolutions strongly condemnatory of the right, claimed and vigorously exercised by the British, of seizing neutral vessels employed in conducting with the enemies of Great Britain any trade which had been customarily prohibited by that enemy in time of peace. This doctrine was designed to shut out American merchants from certain privileges in trading with French colonies, which had been accorded only since France had become involved in war with Great Britain. The principle was utterly illegal and extremely injurious. Mr. Adams, in his first resolution, stigmatized it "as an unprovoked aggression upon the property of the citizens of these United States, a violation of their neutral rights, and an encroachment upon their national independence." By his second resolution, the President was requested to demand and insist upon the restoration of property seized under this pretext, and upon indemnification for property already confiscated. By a rare good fortune, Mr. Adams had the pleasure of seeing his propositions carried, only slightly modified by the omission of the words "to insist." But they were carried, of course, by Republican votes, and they by no means advanced their mover in the favor of the Federalist party. Strange as it may seem, that party, of which many of the foremost supporters were engaged in the very commerce which Great Britain aimed to suppress and destroy, seemed not to be so much incensed against her as against their own government. The theory of the party was, substantially, that England had been driven into these measures by the friendly tone of our government towards France, and by her own stringent and overruling necessities. The cure was not to be sought in resistance, not even in indignation and remonstrance addressed to that power, but rather in cementing an alliance with her, and even, if need should be, in taking active part in her holy cause. The feeling seemed to be that we merited the chastisement because we had not allied ourselves with the chastiser. These singular notions of the Federalists, however, were by no means the notions of Mr. John Quincy Adams, as we shall soon see.

On April 18, 1806, the Non-importation Act received the approval of the President. It was the first measure indicative of resentment or retaliation which was taken by our government. When it was upon its passage it encountered the vigorous resistance of the Federalists, but received the support of Mr. Adams. On May 16, 1806, the British government made another long stride in the course of lawless oppression of neutrals, which phrase, as commerce then was, signified little else than Americans. A proclamation was issued declaring the whole coast of the European continent, from Brest to the mouth of the Elbe, to be under blockade. In fact, of course, the coast was not blockaded, and the proclamation was a falsehood, an unjustifiable effort to make words do the work of war-ships. The doctrine which it was thus endeavored to establish had never been admitted into international law, has ever since been repudiated by universal consent of all nations, and is intrinsically preposterous. The British, however, designed to make it effective, and set to work in earnest to confiscate all vessels and cargoes captured on their way from any neutral nation to any port within the proscribed district. On November 21, next following, Napoleon retaliated by the Berlin decree, so called, declaring the entire British Isles to be under blockade, and forbidding any vessel which had been in any English port after publication of his decree to enter any port in the dominions under his control. In January, 1807, England made the next move by an order, likewise in contravention of international law, forbidding to neutrals all commerce between ports of the enemies of Great Britain. On November 11, 1807, the famous British Order in Council was issued, declaring neutral vessels and cargoes bound to any port or colony of any country with which England was then at war, and which was closed to English ships, to be liable to capture and confiscation. A few days later, November 25, 1807, another Order established a rate of duties to be paid in England upon all neutral merchandise which should be permitted to be carried in neutral bottoms to countries at war with that power. December 17, 1807, Napoleon retorted by the Milan decree, which declared denationalized and subject to capture and condemnation every vessel, to whatsoever nation belonging, which should have submitted to search by an English ship, or should be on a voyage to England, or should have paid any tax to the English government. All these regulations, though purporting to be aimed at neutrals generally, in fact bore almost exclusively upon the United States, who alone were undertaking to conduct any neutral commerce worthy of mention. As Mr. Adams afterwards remarked, the effect of these illegal proclamations and unjustifiable novel doctrines "placed the commerce and shipping of the United States, with regard to all Europe and European colonies (Sweden alone excepted), in nearly the same state as it would have been, if, on that same 11th of November, England and France had both declared war against the United States." The merchants of this country might as well have burned their ships as have submitted to these decrees.

All this while the impressment of American seamen by British ships of war was being vigorously prosecuted. This is one of those outrages so long ago laid away among the mouldering tombs in the historical graveyard that few persons now appreciate its enormity, or the extent to which it was carried. Those who will be at the pains to ascertain the truth in the matter will feel that the bloodiest, most costly, and most disastrous war would have been better than tame endurance of treatment so brutal and unjustifiable that it finds no parallel even in the long and dark list of wrongs which Great Britain has been wont to inflict upon all the weaker or the uncivilized peoples with whom she has been brought or has gratuitously forced herself into unwelcome contact. It was not an occasional act of high-handed arrogance that was done; there were not only a few unfortunate victims, of whom a large proportion might be of unascertained nationality. It was an organized system worked upon a very large scale. Every American seaman felt it necessary to have a certificate of citizenship, accompanied by a description of his features and of all the marks upon his person, as Mr. Adams said, "like the advertisement for a runaway negro slave." Nor was even this protection by any means sure to be always efficient. The number of undoubted American citizens who were seized rose in a few years actually to many thousands. They were often taken without so much as a false pretence to right; but with the acknowledgment that they were Americans, they were seized upon the plea of a necessity for their services in the British ship. Some American vessels were left so denuded of seamen that they were lost at sea for want of hands to man them; the destruction of lives as well as property, unquestionably thus caused, was immense. When after the lapse of a long time and of infinite negotiation the American citizenship of some individual was clearly shown, still the chances of his return were small; some false and ignoble subterfuge was resorted to; he was not to be found; the name did not occur on the rolls of the navy; he had died, or been discharged, or had deserted, or had been shot. The more illegal the act committed by any British officer the more sure he was of reward, till it seemed that the impressment of American citizens was an even surer road to promotion than valor in an engagement with the enemy. Such were the substantial wrongs inflicted by Great Britain; nor were any pains taken to cloak their character; on the contrary, they were done with more than British insolence and offensiveness, and were accompanied with insults which alone constituted sufficient provocation to war. To all this, for a long time, nothing but empty and utterly futile protests were opposed by this country. The affair of the Chesapeake, indeed, threatened for a brief moment to bring things to a crisis. That vessel, an American frigate, commanded by Commodore Barron, sailed on June 22, 1807, from Hampton Roads. The Leopard, a British fifty-gun ship, followed her, and before she was out of sight of land, hailed her and demanded the delivery of four men, of whom three at least were surely native Americans. Barron refused the demand, though his ship was wholly unprepared for action. Thereupon the Englishman opened his broadsides, killed three men and wounded sixteen, boarded the Chesapeake and took off the four sailors. They were carried to Halifax and tried by court-martial for desertion: one of them was hanged; one died in confinement, and five years elapsed before the other two were returned to the Chesapeake in Boston harbor. This wound was sufficiently deep to arouse a real spirit of resentment and revenge, and England went so far as to dispatch Mr. Rose to this country upon a pretended mission of peace, though the fraudulent character of his errand was sufficiently indicated by the fact that within a few hours after his departure the first of the above named Orders in Council was issued but had not been communicated to him. As Mr. Adams indignantly said, "the same penful of ink which signed his instructions might have been used also to sign these illegal orders." Admiral Berkeley, the commander of the Leopard, received the punishment which he might justly have expected if precedent was to count for anything in the naval service of Great Britain,-he was promoted.

It is hardly worth while to endeavor to measure the comparative wrongfulness of the conduct of England and of France. The behavior of each was utterly unjustifiable; though England by committing the first extreme breach of international law gave to France the excuse of retaliation. There was, however, vast difference in the practical effect of the British and French decrees. The former wrought serious injury, falling little short of total destruction, to American shipping and commerce; the latter were only in a much less degree hurtful. The immense naval power of England and the channels in which our trade naturally flowed combined to make her destructive capacity as towards us very great. It was the outrages inflicted by her which brought the merchants of the United States face to face with ruin; they suffered not very greatly at the hands of Napoleon. Neither could the villainous process of impressment be conducted by Frenchmen. France gave us cause for war, but England seemed resolved to drive us into it.

As British aggressions grew steadily and rapidly more intolerable, Mr. Adams found himself straining farther and farther away from those Federalist moorings at which, it must be confessed, he had long swung very precariously. The constituency which he represented was indeed in a quandary so embarrassing as hardly to be capable of maintaining any consistent policy. The New England of that day was a trading community, of which the industry and capital were almost exclusively centred in ship-owning and commerce. The merchants, almost to a man, had long been the most Anglican of Federalists in their political sympathies. Now they found themselves suffering utterly ruinous treatment at the hands of those whom they had loved overmuch. They were being ruthlessly destroyed by their friends, to whom they had been, so to speak, almost disloyally loyal. They saw their business annihilated, their property seized, and yet could not give utterance to resentment, or counsel resistance, without such a humiliating devouring of all their own principles and sentiments as they could by no possibility bring themselves to endure. There was but one road open to them, and that was the ignoble one of casting themselves wholly into the arms of England, of rewarding her blows with caresses, of submitting to be fairly scourged into a servile alliance with her. It is not surprising that the independent temper of Mr. Adams revolted at the position which his party seemed not reluctant to assume at this juncture. Yet not very much better seemed for a time the policy of the administration. Jefferson was far from being a man for troubled seasons, which called for high spirit and executive energy. His flotillas of gunboats and like idle and silly fantasies only excited Mr. Adams's disgust. In fact, there was upon all sides a strong dread of a war with England, not always openly expressed, but now perfectly visible, arising with some from regard for that country, in others prompted by fear of her power. Alone among public men Mr. Adams, while earnestly hoping to escape war, was not willing to seek that escape by unlimited weakness and unbounded submission to lawless injury.

On November 17, 1807, Mr. Adams, who never in his life allowed fear to become a motive, wrote, with obvious contempt and indignation: "I observe among the members great embarrassment, alarm, anxiety, and confusion of mind, but no preparation for any measure of vigor, and an obvious strong disposition to yield all that Great Britain may require, to preserve peace, under a thin external show of dignity and bravery." This tame and vacillating spirit roused his ire, and as it was chiefly manifested by his own party it alienated him from them farther than ever. Yet his wrath was so far held in reasonable check by his discretion that he would still have liked to avoid the perilous conclusion of arms, and though his impulse was to fight, yet he could not but recognize that the sensible course was to be content, for the time at least, with a manifestation of resentment, and the most vigorous acts short of war which the government could be induced to undertake. On this sentiment were based his introduction of the aforementioned resolutions, his willingness to support the administration, and his vote for the Non-importation Act in spite of a dislike for it as a very imperfectly satisfactory measure. But it was not alone his naturally independent temper which led him thus to feel so differently from other members of his party. In Europe he had had opportunities of forming a judgment more accurate than was possible for most Americans concerning the sentiments and policy of England towards this country. Not only had he been present at the negotiations resulting in the treaty of peace, but he had also afterwards been for several months engaged in the personal discussion of commercial questions with the British minister of foreign affairs. From all that he had thus seen and heard he had reached the conviction, unquestionably correct, that the British were not only resolved to adopt a selfish course towards the United States, which might have been expected, but that they were consistently pursuing the further distinct design of crippling and destroying American commerce, to the utmost degree which their own extensive trade and great naval authority and power rendered possible. So long as he held this firm belief, it was inevitable that he should be at issue with the Federalists in all matters concerning our policy towards Great Britain. The ill-will naturally engendered in him by this conviction was increased to profound indignation when illiberal measures were succeeded by insults, by substantial wrongs in direct contravention of law, and by acts properly to be described as of real hostility. For Mr. Adams was by nature not only independent, but resentful and combative. When, soon after the attack of the Leopard upon the Chesapeake, he heard the transaction "openly justified at noon-day," by a prominent Federalist,[1] "in a public insurance office upon the exchange at Boston," his temper rose. "This," he afterward wrote, "this was the cause ... which alienated me from that day and forever from the councils of the Federal party." When the news of that outrage reached Boston, Mr. Adams was there, and desired that the leading Federalists in the city should at once "take the lead in promoting a strong and clear expression of the sentiments of the people, and in an open and free-hearted manner, setting aside all party feelings, declare their determination at that crisis to support the government of their country." But unfortunately these gentlemen were by no means prepared for any such action, and foolishly left it for the friends of the administration to give the first utterance to a feeling which it is hard to excuse any American for not entertaining beneath such provocation. It was the Jeffersonians, accordingly, who convened "an informal meeting of the citizens of Boston and the neighboring towns," at which Mr. Adams was present, and by which he was put upon a committee to draw and report resolutions. These resolutions pledged a cheerful co?peration "in any measures, however serious," which the government might deem necessary and a support of the same with "lives and fortunes." The Federalists, learning too late that their backwardness at this crisis was a blunder, caused a town meeting to be called at Faneuil Hall a few days later. This also Mr. Adams attended, and again was put on the committee to draft resolutions, which were only a little less strong than those of the earlier assemblage. But though many of the Federalists thus tardily and reluctantly fell in with the popular sentiment, they were for the most part heartily incensed against Mr. Adams. They threatened him that he should "have his head taken off for apostasy," and gave him to understand that he "should no longer be considered as having any communion with the party." If he had not already quite left them, they now turned him out from their community. But such abusive treatment was ill adapted to influence a man of his temper. Martyrdom, which in time he came to relish, had not now any terrors for him; and he would have lost as many heads as ever grew on Hydra, ere he would have yielded on a point of principle.

His spirit was soon to be demonstrated. Congress was convened in extra session on October 26, 1807. The administration brought forward the bill establishing an embargo. The measure may now be pronounced a blunder, and its proposal created a howl of rage and anguish from the commercial states, who saw in it only their utter ruin. Already a strong sectional feeling had been developed between the planters of the South and the merchants of the North and East, and the latter now united in the cry that their quarter was to be ruined by the ignorant policy of this Virginian President. Terrible then was their wrath, when they actually saw a Massachusetts Senator boldly give his vote for what they deemed the most odious and wicked bill which had ever been presented in the halls of Congress. Nay, more, they learned with horror that Mr. Adams had even been a member of the committee which reported the bill, and that he had joined in the report. Henceforth the Federal party was to be like a hive of enraged hornets about the devoted renegade. No abuse which they could heap upon him seemed nearly adequate to the occasion. They despised him; they loathed him; they said and believed that he was false, selfish, designing, a traitor, an apostate, that he had run away from a failing cause, that he had sold himself. The language of contumely was exhausted in vain efforts to describe his baseness. Not even yet has the echo of the hard names which he was called quite died away in the land; and there are still families in New England with whom his dishonest tergiversation remains a traditional belief.

Never was any man more unjustly aspersed. It is impossible to view all the evidence dispassionately without not only acquitting Mr. Adams but greatly admiring his courage, his constancy, his independence. Whether the embargo was a wise and efficient or a futile and useless measure has little to do with the question of his conduct. The emergency called for strong action. The Federalists suggested only a temporizing submission, or that we should avert the terrible wrath of England by crawling beneath her lashes into political and commercial servitude. Mr. Jefferson thought the embargo would do, that it would aid him in his negotiations with England sufficiently to enable him to bring her to terms; he had before thought the same of the Non-importation Act. Mr. Adams felt, properly enough, concerning both these schemes, that they were insufficient and in many respects objectionable; but that to give the administration hearty support in the most vigorous measures which it was willing to undertake, was better than to aid an opposition utterly nerveless and servile and altogether devoid of so much as the desire for efficient action. It was no time to stay with the party of weakness; it was right to strengthen rather than to hamper a man so pacific and spiritless as Mr. Jefferson; to show a readiness to forward even his imperfect expedients; to display a united and indignant, if not quite a hostile front to Great Britain, rather than to exhibit a tame and friendly feeling towards her. It was for these reasons, which had already controlled his action concerning the non-importation bill, that Mr. Adams joined in reporting the embargo bill and voted for it. He never pretended that he himself had any especial fancy for either of these measures, or that he regarded them as the best that could be devised under the circumstances. On the contrary, he hoped that the passage of the embargo would allow of the repeal of its predecessor. That he expected some good from it, and that it did some little good, cannot be denied. It did save a great deal of American property, both shipping and merchandise, from seizure and condemnation; and if it cut off the income it at least saved much of the principal of our merchants. If only the bill had been promptly repealed so soon as this protective purpose had been achieved, without awaiting further and altogether impossible benefits to accrue from it as an offensive measure, it might perhaps have left a better memory behind it. Unfortunately no one can deny that it was continued much too long. Mr. Adams saw this error and dreaded the consequences. After he had left Congress and had gone back to private life, he exerted all the influence which he had with the Republican members of Congress to secure its repeal and the substitution of the Non-intercourse Act, an exchange which was in time accomplished, though much too tardily. Nay, much more than this, Mr. Adams stands forth almost alone as the advocate of threatening if not of actually belligerent measures. He expressed his belief that "our internal resources [were] competent to the establishment and maintenance of a naval force, public and private, if not fully adequate to the protection and defence of our commerce, at least sufficient to induce a retreat from hostilities, and to deter from a renewal of them by either of the warring parties;" and he insisted that "a system to that effect might be formed, ultimately far more economical, and certainly more energetic," than the embargo. But his "resolution met no encouragement." He found that it was the embargo or nothing, and he thought the embargo was a little better than nothing, as probably it was.

All the arguments which Mr. Adams advanced were far from satisfying his constituents in those days of wild political excitement, and they quickly found the means of intimating their unappeasable displeasure in a way certainly not open to misapprehension. Mr. Adams's term of service in the Senate was to expire on March 3, 1809. On June 2 and 3, 1808, anticipating by many months the customary time for filling the coming vacancy, the legislature of Massachusetts proceeded to choose James Lloyd, junior, his successor. The votes were, in the Senate 21 for Mr. Lloyd, 17 for Mr. Adams; in the House 248 for Mr. Lloyd, and 213 for Mr. Adams. A more insulting method of administering a rebuke could not have been devised. At the same time, in further expression of disapprobation, resolutions strongly condemnatory of the embargo were passed. Mr. Adams was not the man to stay where he was not wanted, and on June 8 he sent in his letter of resignation. On the next day Mr. Lloyd was chosen to serve for the balance of his term.

Thus John Quincy Adams changed sides. The son of John Adams lost the senatorship for persistently supporting the administration of Thomas Jefferson. It was indeed a singular spectacle! In 1803 he had been sent to the Senate of the United States by Federalists as a Federalist; in 1808 he had abjured them and they had repudiated him; in 1809, as we are soon to see, he received a foreign appointment from the Republican President Madison, and was confirmed by a Republican Senate. Many of Mr. Adams's acts, many of his traits, have been harshly criticised, but for no act that he ever did or ever was charged with doing has he been so harshly assailed as for this journey from one camp to the other. The gentlemen of wealth, position, and influence in Eastern Massachusetts, almost to a man, turned against him with virulence; many of their descendants still cherish the ancestral prejudice; and it may yet be a long while before the last mutterings of this deep-rooted antipathy die away. But that they will die away in time cannot be doubted. Praise will succeed to blame. Truth must prevail in a case where such abundant evidence is accessible; and the truth is that Mr. Adams's conduct was not ignoble, mean, and traitorous, but honorable, courageous, and disinterested. Those who singled him out for assault, though deaf to his arguments, might even then have reflected that within a few years a large proportion of the whole nation had changed in their opinions as he had now at last changed in his, so that the party which under Washington hardly had an existence and under John Adams was not, until the last moment, seriously feared, now showed an enormous majority throughout the whole country. Even in Massachusetts, the intrenched camp of the Federalists, one half of the population were now Republicans. But that change of political sentiment which in the individual voter is often admired as evidence of independent thought is stigmatized in those more prominent in politics as tergiversation and apostasy.

It may be admitted that there are sound reasons for holding party leaders to a more rigid allegiance to party policy than is expected of the rank and file; yet certainly, at those periods when substantially new measures and new doctrines come to the front, the old party names lose whatever sacredness may at other times be in them, and the political fellowships of the past may properly be reformed. Novel problems cannot always find old comrades still united in opinions. Precisely such was the case with John Quincy Adams and the Federalists. The earlier Federalist creed related to one set of issues, the later Federalist creed to quite another set; the earlier creed was sound and deserving of support; the later creed was not so. It is easy to see, as one looks backward upon history, that every great and successful party has its mission, that it wins its success through the substantial righteousness of that mission, and that it owes its downfall to assuming an erroneous attitude towards some subsequent matter which becomes in turn of predominating importance. Sometimes, though rarely, a party remains on the right side through two or even more successive issues of profound consequence to the nation. The Federalist mission was to establish the Constitution of the United States as a vigorous, efficient, and practical system of government, to prove its soundness, safety, and efficacy, and to defend it from the undermining assaults of those who distrusted it and would have reduced it to imbecility. Supplementary and cognate to this was the further task of giving the young nation and the new system a chance to get fairly started in life before being subjected to the strain of war and European entanglements. To this end it was necessary to hold in check the Jeffersonian or French party, who sought to embroil us in a foreign quarrel. These two functions of the Federalist party were quite in accord; they involved the organizing and domestic instinct against the disorganizing and meddlesome; the strengthening against the enfeebling process; practical thinking against fanciful theories. Fortunately the able men had been generally of the sound persuasion, and by powerful exertions had carried the day and accomplished their allotted tasks so thoroughly that all subsequent generations of Americans have been reaping the benefit of their labors. But by the time that John Adams had concluded his administration the great Federalist work had been sufficiently done. Those who still believe that there is an overruling Providence in the affairs of men and nations may well point to the history of this period in support of their theory. Republicanism was not able to triumph till Federalism had fulfilled all its proper duty and was on the point of going wrong.

During this earlier period John Quincy Adams had been a Federalist by conviction as well as by education. Nor was there any obvious reason for him to change his political faith with the change of party success, brought about as that was before its necessity was apparent but by the sure and inscrutable wisdom so marvellously enclosed in the great popular instinct. It was not patent, when Mr. Jefferson succeeded Mr. Adams, that Federalism was soon to become an unsound political creed-unsound, not because it had been defeated, but because it had done its work, and in the new emergency was destined to blunder. During Mr. Jefferson's first administration no questions of novel import arose. But they were not far distant, and soon were presented by the British aggressions. A grave crisis was created by this system of organized destruction of property and wholesale stealing of citizens, now suddenly practised with such terrible energy. What was to be done? What had the two great parties to advise concerning the policy of the country in this hour of peril? Unfortunately for the Federalists old predilections were allowed now to govern their present action. Excusably Anglican in the bygone days of Genet's mission, they now remained still Anglican, when to be Anglican was to be emphatically un-American. As one reads the history of 1807 and 1808 it is impossible not to feel almost a sense of personal gratitude to John Quincy Adams that he dared to step out from his meek-spirited party and do all that circumstances rendered possible to promote resistance to insults and wrongs intolerable. In truth, he was always a man of high temper, and eminently a patriotic citizen of the United States. Unlike too many even of the best among his countrymen in those early years of the Republic, he had no foreign sympathies whatsoever; he was neither French nor English, but wholly, exclusively, and warmly American. He had no second love; the United States filled his public heart and monopolized his political affections. When he was abroad he established neither affiliations nor antipathies, and when he was at home he drifted with no party whose course was governed by foreign magnets. It needs only that this characteristic should be fully understood in order that his conduct in 1808 should be not alone vindicated but greatly admired.

At that time it was said, and it has been since repeated, that he was allured by the loaves and fishes which the Republicans could distribute, while the Federalists could cast to him only meagre and uncertain crusts. Circumstances gave to the accusation such a superficial plausibility that it was believed by many honest men under the influence of political prejudice. But such a charge, alleged concerning a single act in a long public career, is to be scanned with suspicion. Disproof by demonstration is impossible; but it is fair to seek for the character of the act in a study of the character of the actor, as illustrated by the rest of his career. Thus seeking we shall see that, if any traits can be surely predicated of any man, independence, courage, and honesty may be predicated of Mr. Adams. His long public life had many periods of trial, yet this is the sole occasion when it is so much as possible seriously to question the purity of his motives-for the story of his intrigue with Mr. Clay to secure the Presidency was never really believed by any one except General Jackson, and the beliefs of General Jackson are of little consequence. From the earliest to the latest day of his public life, he was never a party man. He is entitled to the justification to be derived from this life-long habit, when, in 1807-8, he voted against the wishes of those who had hoped to hold him in the bonds of partisan alliance. In point of fact, so far from these acts being a yielding to selfish and calculating temptation, they called for great courage and strength of mind; instead of being tergiversation, they were a triumph in a severe ordeal. Mr. Adams was not so dull as to underrate, nor so void of good feeling as to be careless of, the storm of obloquy which he had to encounter, not only in such shape as is customary in like instances of a change of sides in politics, but, in his present case, of a peculiarly painful kind. He was to seem unfaithful, not only to a party, but to the bitter feud of a father whom he dearly loved and greatly respected; he was to be reviled by the neighbors and friends who constituted his natural social circle in Boston; he was to alienate himself from the rich, the cultivated, the influential gentlemen of his neighborhood, his comrades, who would almost universally condemn his conduct. He was to lose his position as Senator, and probably to destroy all hopes of further political success so far as it depended upon the good will of the people of his own State. In this he was at least giving up a certainty in exchange for what even his enemies must admit to have been only an expectation.

But in fact it is now evident that there was not upon his part even an expectation. At the first signs of the views which he was likely to hold, that contemptible but influential Republican, Giles, of Virginia, also one or two others of the same party, sought to approach him with insinuating suggestions. But Mr. Adams met these advances in a manner frigid and repellent even beyond his wont, and far from seeking to conciliate these emissaries, and to make a bargain, or even establish a tacit understanding for his own benefit, he held them far aloof, and simply stated that he wished and expected nothing from the administration. His mind was made up, his opinion was formed; no bribe was needed to secure his vote. Not thus do men sell themselves in politics. The Republicans were fairly notified that he was going to do just as he chose; and Mr. Jefferson, the arch-enemy of all Adamses, had no occasion to forego his feud to win this recruit from that family.

Mr. Adams's Diary shows unmistakably that he was acting rigidly upon principle, that he believed himself to be injuring or even destroying his political prospects, and that in so doing he taxed his moral courage severely. The whole tone of the Diary, apart from those few distinct statements which hostile critics might view with distrust, is despondent, often bitter, but defiant and stubborn. If in later life he ever anticipated the possible publication of these private pages, yet he could hardly have done so at this early day. Among certain general reflections at the close of the year 1808, he writes: "On most of the great national questions now under discussion, my sense of duty leads me to support the Administration, and I find myself, of course, in opposition to the Federalists in general. But I have no communication with the President, other than that in the regular order of business in the Senate. In this state of things my situation calls in a peculiar manner for prudence; my political prospects are declining, and, as my term of service draws near its close, I am constantly approaching to the certainty of being restored to the situation of a private citizen. For this event, however, I hope to have my mind sufficiently prepared."

In July, 1808, the Republicans of the Congressional District wished to send him to the House of Representatives, but to the gentleman who waited upon him with this proposal he returned a decided negative. Other considerations apart, he would not interfere with the re?lection of his friend, Mr. Quincy.

Certain remarks, written when his senatorial term was far advanced, when he had lost the confidence of the Federalists without obtaining that of the Republicans, may be of interest at this point. He wrote, October 30, 1807: "I employed the whole evening in looking over the Journal of the Senate, since I have been one of its members. Of the very little business which I have commenced during the four sessions, at least three fourths has failed, with circumstances of peculiar mortification. The very few instances in which I have succeeded, have been always after an opposition of great obstinacy, often ludicrously contrasting with the insignificance of the object in pursuit. More than one instance has occurred where the same thing which I have assiduously labored in vain to effect has been afterwards accomplished by others, without the least resistance; more than once, where the pleasure of disappointing me has seemed to be the prominent principle of decision. Of the preparatory business, matured in committees, I have had a share, gradually increasing through the four sessions, but always as a subordinate member. The merely laborious duties have been readily assigned to me, and as readily undertaken and discharged. My success has been more frequent in opposition than in carrying any proposition of my own, and I hope I have been instrumental in arresting many unadvised purposes and projects. Though as to the general policy of the country I have been uniformly in a small, and constantly deceasing minority; my opinions and votes have been much oftener in unison with the Administration than with their opponents; I have met with at least as much opposition from my party friends as from their adversaries,-I believe more. I know not that I have made any personal enemies now in Senate, nor can I flatter myself with having acquired any personal friends. There have been hitherto two, Mr. Tracey and Mr. Plumer, upon whom I could rely, but it has pleased Providence to remove one by death, and the changes of political party have removed the other." This is a striking paragraph, certainly not written by a man in a very cheerful or sanguine frame of mind, not by one who congratulates himself on having skilfully taken the initial steps in a brilliant political career; but, it is fair to say, by one who has at least tried to do his duty, and who has not knowingly permitted himself to be warped either by passion, prejudice, party alliances, or selfish considerations.

As early as November, 1805, Mr. Adams, being still what may be described as an independent Federalist, was approached by Dr. Rush with tentative suggestions concerning a foreign mission. Mr. Madison, then Secretary of State, and even President Jefferson were apparently not disinclined to give him such employment, provided he would be willing to accept it at their hands. Mr. Adams simply replied, that he would not refuse a nomination merely because it came from Mr. Jefferson, though there was no office in the President's gift for which he had any wish. Perhaps because of the unconciliatory coolness of this response, or perhaps for some better reason, the nomination did not follow at that time. No sooner, however, had Mr. Madison fairly taken the oath of office as President than he bethought him of Mr. Adams, now no longer a Federalist, but, concerning the present issues, of the Republican persuasion. On March 6, 1809, Mr. Adams was notified by the President personally of the intention to nominate him as Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia. It was a new mission, the first minister ever nominated to Russia having been only a short time before rejected by the Senate. But the Emperor had often expressed his wish to exchange ministers, and Mr. Madison was anxious to comply with the courteous request. Mr. Adams's name was accordingly at once sent to the Senate. But on the following day, March 7, that body resolved that "it is inexpedient at this time to appoint a minister from the United States to the Court of Russia." The vote was seventeen to fifteen, and among the seventeen was Mr. Adams's old colleague, Timothy Pickering, who probably never in his life cast a vote which gave him so much pleasure. Mr. Madison, however, did not readily desist from his purpose, and a few months later, June 26, he sent a message to the Senate, stating that the considerations previously leading him to nominate a minister to Russia had since been strengthened, and again naming Mr. Adams for the post. This time the nomination was confirmed with readiness, by a vote of nineteen to seven, Mr. Pickering, of course, being one of the still hostile minority.

At noon on August 5, 1809, records Mr. Adams, "I left my house at the corner of Boylston and Nassau streets, in Boston," again to make the tedious and uncomfortable voyage across the Atlantic. A miserable and a dangerous time he had of it ere, on October 23, he reached St. Petersburg. Concerning the four years and a half which he is now to spend in Russia very little need be said. His active duties were of the simplest character, amounting to little more than rendering occasional assistance to American shipmasters suffering beneath the severities so often illegally inflicted by the contesting powers of Europe. But apart from the slender practical service to be done, the period must have been interesting and agreeable for him personally, for he was received and treated throughout his stay by the Emperor and his courtiers with distinguished kindness. The Emperor, who often met him walking, used to stop and chat with him, while Count Romanzoff, the minister of foreign affairs, was cordial beyond the ordinary civility of diplomacy. The Diary records a series of court presentations, balls, fêtes, dinners, diplomatic and other, launches, displays of fireworks, birthday festivities, parades, baptisms, plays, state funerals, illuminations, and Te Deums for victories; in short, every species of social gayety and public pageant. At all these Mr. Adams was always a bidden and apparently a welcome guest. It must be admitted, even by his detractors, that he was an admirable representative of the United States abroad. Having already seen much of the distinguished society of European courts, but retaining a republican simplicity, which was wholly genuine and a natural part of his character and therefore was never affected or offensive in its manifestations, he really represented the best element in the politics and society of the United States. Winning respect for himself he won it also for the country which he represented. Thus he was able to render an indirect but essential service in cementing the kindly feeling which the Russian Empire entertained for the American Republic. Russia could then do us little good and almost no harm, yet the friendship of a great European power had a certain moral value in those days of our national infancy. That friendship, so cordially offered, Mr. Adams was fortunately well fitted to conciliate, showing in his foreign callings a tact which did not mark him in other public relations. He was perhaps less liked by his travelling fellow countrymen than by the Russians. The paltry ambition of a certain class of Americans for introduction to high society disgusted him greatly, and he was not found an efficient ally by these would-be comrades of the Russian aristocracy. "The ambition of young Americans to crowd themselves upon European courts and into the company of nobility is a very ridiculous and not a very proud feature of their character," he wrote; "there is nothing, in my estimate of things, meaner than courting society where, if admitted, it is only to be despised." He himself happily combined extensive acquirements, excellent ability, diplomatic and courtly experience, and natural independence of character without ill-bred self-assertion, and never failed to create a good impression in the many circles into which his foreign career introduced him.

The ambassadors and ministers from European powers at St. Petersburg were constantly wrangling about precedence and like petty matters of court etiquette. "In all these controversies," writes Mr. Adams, "I have endeavored to consider it as an affair in which I, as an American minister, had no concern; and that my only principle is to dispute upon precedence with nobody." A good-natured contempt for European follies may be read between the lines of this remark; wherein it may be said that the Monroe Doctrine is applied to court etiquette.

He always made it a point to live within the meagre income which the United States allowed him, but seems to have suffered no diminution of consideration for this reason. One morning, walking on the Fontanka, he met the Emperor, who said: "Mons. Adams, il y a cent ans que je ne vous ai vu;" and then continuing the conversation, "asked me whether I intended to take a house in the country this summer. I said, No.... 'And why so?' said he. I was hesitating upon an answer when he relieved me from embarrassment by saying, 'Peut-être sont-ce des considerations de finance?' As he said it with perfect good humor and with a smile, I replied in the same manner: 'Mais Sire, elles y sont pour une bonne part.'"[2]

The volume of the journal which records this residence in St. Petersburg is very interesting as a picture of Russian life and manners in high society. Few travellers write anything nearly so vivid, so thorough, or so trustworthy as these entries. Moreover, during the whole period of his stay the great wars of Napoleon were constantly increasing the astonishment of mankind, and created intense excitement at the Court of Russia. These feelings waxed stronger as it grew daily more likely that the Emperor would have to take his turn also as a party defendant in the great conflict. Then at last came the fact of war, the invasion of Russia, the burning of Moscow, the disastrous retreat of the invaders ending in ignominious flight, the advance of the allies, finally the capture of Paris. All this while Mr. Adams at St. Petersburg witnessed first the alarm and then the exultation of the court and the people as the rumors now of defeat, anon of victory, were brought by the couriers at tantalizing intervals; and he saw the rejoicings and illuminations which rendered the Russian capital so brilliant and glorious during the last portion of his residence. It was an experience well worth having, and which is pleasantly depicted in the Diary.

In September, 1812, Count Romanzoff suggested to Mr. Adams the readiness of the Emperor to act as mediator in bringing about peace between the United States and England. The suggestion was promptly acted upon, but with no directly fortunate results. The American government acceded at once to the proposition, and at the risk of an impolitic display of readiness dispatched Messrs. Gallatin and Bayard to act as Commissioners jointly with Mr. Adams in the negotiations. These gentlemen, however, arrived in St. Petersburg only to find themselves in a very awkward position. Their official character might not properly be considered as attaching unless England should accept the offer of mediation. But England had refused, in the first instance, to do this, and she now again reiterated her refusal without regard for the manifestation of willingness on the part of the United States. Further, Mr. Gallatin's nomination was rejected by the Senate after his departure, on the ground that his retention of the post of Secretary of the Treasury was incompatible, under the Constitution, with this diplomatic function. So the United States appeared in a very annoying attitude, her Commissioners were uncomfortable and somewhat humiliated; Russia felt a certain measure of vexation at the brusque and positive rejection of her friendly proposition on the part of Great Britain; and that country alone came out of the affair with any self-satisfaction.

But by the time when all hopes of peace through the friendly offices of Russia were at an end, that stage of the conflict had been reached at which both parties were quite ready to desist. The United States, though triumphing in some brilliant naval victories, had been having a sorry experience on land, where, as the Russian minister remarked, "England did as she pleased." A large portion of the people were extremely dissatisfied, and it was impossible to ignore that the outlook did not promise better fortunes in the future than had been encountered in the past. On the other hand, England had nothing substantial to expect from a continuance of the struggle, except heavy additional expenditure which it was not then the fashion to compel the worsted party to recoup. She accordingly intimated her readiness to send Commissioners to G?ttingen, for which place Ghent was afterwards substituted, to meet American Commissioners and settle terms of pacification. The United States renewed the powers of Messrs. Adams, Bayard, and Gallatin, a new Secretary of the Treasury having in the meantime been appointed, and added Jonathan Russell, then Minister to Sweden, and Henry Clay. England deputed Lord Gambier, an admiral, Dr. Adams, a publicist, and Mr. Goulburn, a member of Parliament and Under Secretary of State. These eight gentlemen accordingly met in Ghent on August 7, 1814.

It was upwards of four months before an agreement was reached. During this period Mr. Adams kept his Diary with much more even than his wonted faithfulness, and it undoubtedly presents the most vivid picture in existence of the labors of treaty-making diplomatists. The eight were certainly an odd assemblage of peacemakers. The ill-blood and wranglings between the opposing Commissions were bad enough, yet hardly equalled the intestine dissensions between the American Commissioners themselves. That the spirit of peace should ever have emanated from such an universal embroilment is almost sufficiently surprising to be regarded as a miracle. At the very beginning, or even before fairly beginning, the British party roused the jealous ire of the Americans by proposing that they all should meet, for exchanging their full powers, at the lodgings of the Englishmen. The Americans took fire at this "offensive pretension to superiority" which was "the usage from Ambassadors to Ministers of an inferior order." Mr. Adams cited Martens, and Mr. Bayard read a case from Ward's "Law of Nations." Mr. Adams suggested sending a pointed reply, agreeing to meet the British Commissioners "at any place other than their own lodgings;" but Mr. Gallatin, whose valuable function was destined to be the keeping of the peace among his fractious colleagues, as well as betwixt them and the Englishmen, substituted the milder phrase, "at any place which may be mutually agreed upon." The first meeting accordingly took place at the H?tel des Pays Bas, where it was arranged that the subsequent conferences should be held alternately at the quarters of the two Commissions. Then followed expressions, conventional and proper but wholly untrue, of mutual sentiments of esteem and good will.

No sooner did the gentlemen begin to get seriously at the work before them than the most discouraging prospects were developed. The British first presented their demands, as follows: 1. That the United States should conclude a peace with the Indian allies of Great Britain, and that a species of neutral belt of Indian territory should be established between the dominions of the United States and Great Britain, so that these dominions should be nowhere conterminous, upon which belt or barrier neither power should be permitted to encroach even by purchase, and the boundaries of which should be settled in this treaty. 2. That the United States should keep no naval force upon the Great Lakes, and should neither maintain their existing forts nor build new ones upon their northern frontier; it was even required that the boundary line should run along the southern shore of the lakes; while no corresponding restriction was imposed upon Great Britain, because she was stated to have no projects of conquest as against her neighbor. 3. That a piece of the province of Maine should be ceded, in order to give the English a road from Halifax to Quebec. 4. That the stipulation of the treaty of 1783, conferring on English subjects the right of navigating the Mississippi, should be now formally renewed.

The Americans were astounded; it seemed to them hardly worth while to have come so far to listen to such propositions. Concerning the proposed Indian pacification they had not even any powers, the United States being already busied in negotiating a treaty with the tribes as independent powers. The establishment of the neutral Indian belt was manifestly contrary to the established policy and obvious destiny of the nation. Neither was the answer agreeable, which was returned by Dr. Adams to the inquiry as to what was to be done with those citizens of the United States who had already settled in those parts of Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio, included within the territory which it was now proposed to make inalienably Indian. He said that these people, amounting perhaps to one hundred thousand, "must shift for themselves." The one-sided disarmament upon the lakes and along the frontier was, by the understanding of all nations, such an humiliation as is inflicted only on a crushed adversary. No return was offered for the road between Halifax and Quebec; nor for the right of navigating the Mississippi. The treaty of peace of 1783, made in ignorance of the topography of the unexplored northern country, had established an impossible boundary line running from the Lake of the Woods westward along the forty-ninth parallel to the Mississippi; and as appurtenant to the British territory, thus supposed to touch the river, a right of navigation upon it was given. It had since been discovered that a line on that parallel would never touch the Mississippi. The same treaty had also secured for the United States certain rights concerning the Northeastern fisheries. The English now insisted upon a re-affirmance of the privilege given to them, without a re-affirmance of the privilege given to the United States; ignoring the fact that the recent acquisition of Louisiana, making the Mississippi wholly American, materially altered the propriety of a British right of navigation upon it.

Apart from the intolerable character of these demands, the personal bearing of the English Commissioners did not tend to mitigate the chagrin of the Americans. The formal civilities had counted with the American Commissioners for more than they were worth, and had induced them, in preparing a long dispatch to the home government, to insert "a paragraph complimentary to the personal deportment" of the British. But before they sent off the document they revised it and struck out these pleasant phrases. Not many days after the first conference Mr. Adams notes that the tone of the English Commissioners was even "more peremptory, and their language more overbearing, than at the former conferences." A little farther on he remarks that "the British note is overbearing and insulting in its tone, like the two former ones." Again he says:-

"The tone of all the British notes is arrogant, overbearing, and offensive. The tone of ours is neither so bold nor so spirited as I think it should be. It is too much on the defensive, and too excessive in the caution to say nothing irritating. I have seldom been able to prevail upon my colleagues to insert anything in the style of retort upon the harsh and reproachful matter which we receive."

Many little passages-at-arms in the conferences are recited which amply bear out these remarks as regards both parties. Perhaps, however, it should be admitted that the Americans made up for the self-restraint which they practised in conference by the disagreements and bickerings in which they indulged when consulting among themselves. Mr. Gallatin's serene temper and cool head were hardly taxed to keep the peace among his excited colleagues. Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay were especially prone to suspicions and to outbursts of anger. Mr. Adams often and candidly admits as much of himself, apparently not without good reason. At first the onerous task of drafting the numerous documents which the Commission had to present devolved upon him, a labor for which he was well fitted in all respects save, perhaps, a tendency to prolixity. He did not, however, succeed in satisfying his comrades, and the criticisms to which they subjected his composition galled his self-esteem severely, so much so that erelong he altogether relinquished this function, which was thereafter performed chiefly by Mr. Gallatin. As early as August 21, Mr. Adams says, not without evident bitterness, that though they all were agreed on the general view of the subject, yet in his "exposition of it, one objects to the form, another to the substance, of almost every paragraph." Mr. Gallatin would strike out everything possibly offensive to the Englishmen; Mr. Clay would draw his pen through every figurative expression; Mr. Russell, not content with agreeing to all the objections of both the others, would further amend the construction of every sentence; and finally Mr. Bayard would insist upon writing all over again in his own language. All this nettled Mr. Adams exceedingly. On September 24 he again writes that it was agreed to adopt an article which he had drawn, "though with objections to almost every word" which he had used. "This," he says, "is a severity with which I alone am treated in our discussions by all my colleagues. Almost everything written by any of the rest is rejected, or agreed to with very little criticism, verbal or substantial. But every line that I write passes a gauntlet of objections by every one of my colleagues, which finally issues, for the most part, in the rejection of it all." He reflects, with a somewhat forced air of self-discipline, that this must indicate some faultiness in his composition which he must try to correct; but in fact it is sufficiently evident that he was seldom persuaded that his papers were improved. Amid all this we see in the Diary many exhibitions of vexation. One day he acknowledges, "I cannot always restrain the irritability of my temper;" another day he informed his colleagues, "with too much warmth, that they might be assured I was as determined as they were;" again he reflects, "I, too, must not forget to keep a constant guard upon my temper, for the time is evidently approaching when it will be wanted." Mr. Gallatin alone seems not to have exasperated him; Mr. Clay and he were constantly in discussion, and often pretty hotly. Instead of coming nearer together, as time went on, these two fell farther apart. What Mr. Clay thought of Mr. Adams may probably be inferred from what we know that Mr. Adams thought of Mr. Clay. "Mr. Clay is losing his temper, and growing peevish and fractious," he writes on October 31; and constantly he repeats the like complaint. The truth is, that the precise New Englander and the impetuous Westerner were kept asunder not only by local interests but by habits and modes of thought utterly dissimilar. Some amusing glimpses of their private life illustrate this difference. Mr. Adams worked hard and diligently, allowing himself little leisure for pleasure; but Mr. Clay, without actually neglecting his duties, yet managed to find ample time for enjoyment. More than once Mr. Adams notes that, as he rose about five o'clock in the morning to light his own fire and begin the labors of the day by candle-light, he heard the parties breaking up and leaving Mr. Clay's rooms across the entry, where they had been playing cards all night long. In these little touches one sees the distinctive characters of the men well portrayed.

The very extravagance of the British demands at least saved the Americans from perplexity. Mr. Clay, indeed, cherished an "inconceivable idea" that the Englishmen would "finish by receding from the ground they had taken;" but meantime there could be no difference of opinion concerning the impossibility of meeting them upon that ground. Mr. Adams, never lacking in courage, actually wished to argue with them that it would be for the interests of Great Britain not less than of the United States if Canada should be ceded to the latter power. Unfortunately his colleagues would not support him in this audacious policy, the humor of which is delicious. It would have been infinitely droll to see how the British Commissioners would have hailed such a proposition, by way of appropriate termination of a conflict in which the forces of their nation had captured and ransacked the capital city of the Americans!

On August 21 the Englishmen invited the Americans to dinner on the following Saturday. "The chance is," wrote Mr. Adams, "that before that time the whole negotiation will be at an end." The banquet, however, did come off, and a few more succeeded it; feasts not marked by any great geniality or warmth, except perhaps occasionally warmth of discussion. So sure were the Americans that they were about to break off the negotiations that Mr. Adams began to consider by what route he should return to St. Petersburg; and they declined to renew the tenure of their quarters for more than a few days longer. Like alarms were of frequent occurrence, even almost to the very day of agreement. On September 15, at a dinner given by the American Commissioners, Lord Gambier asked Mr. Adams whether he would return immediately to St. Petersburg. "Yes," replied Mr. Adams, "that is, if you send us away." His lordship "replied with assurances how deeply he lamented it, and with a hope that we should one day be friends again." On the same occasion Mr. Goulburn said that probably the last note of the Americans would "terminate the business," and that they "must fight it out." Fighting it out was a much less painful prospect for Great Britain just at that juncture than for the United States, as the Americans realized with profound anxiety. "We so fondly cling to the vain hope of peace, that every new proof of its impossibility operates upon us as a disappointment," wrote Mr. Adams. No amount of pride could altogether conceal the fact that the American Commissioners represented the worsted party, and though they never openly said so even among themselves, yet indirectly they were obliged to recognize the truth. On November 10 we find Mr. Adams proposing to make concessions not permitted by their instructions, because, as he said:-

"I felt so sure that [the home government] would now gladly take the state before the war as the general basis of the peace, that I was prepared to take on me the responsibility of trespassing upon their instructions thus far. Not only so, but I would at this moment cheerfully give my life for a peace on this basis. If peace was possible, it would be on no other. I had indeed no hope that the proposal would be accepted."

Mr. Clay thought that the British would laugh at this: "They would say, Ay, ay! pretty fellows you, to think of getting out of the war as well as you got into it." This was not consoling for the representatives of that side which had declared war for the purpose of curing grievances and vindicating alleged rights. But that Mr. Adams correctly read the wishes of the government was proved within a very few days by the receipt of express authority from home "to conclude the peace on the basis of the status ante bellum." Three days afterwards, on November 27, three and a half months after the vexatious haggling had been begun, we encounter in the Diary the first real gleam of hope of a successful termination: "All the difficulties to the conclusion of a peace appear to be now so nearly removed, that my colleagues all consider it as certain. I myself think it probable."

There were, however, some three weeks more of negotiation to be gone through before the consummation was actually achieved, and the ill blood seemed to increase as the end was approached. The differences between the American Commissioners waxed especially serious concerning the fisheries and the navigation of the Mississippi. Mr. Adams insisted that if the treaty of peace had been so far abrogated by the war as to render necessary a re-affirmance of the British right of navigating the Mississippi, then a re-affirmance of the American rights in the Northeastern fisheries was equally necessary. This the English Commissioners denied. Mr. Adams said it was only an exchange of privileges presumably equivalent. Mr. Clay, however, was firmly resolved to prevent all stipulations admitting such a right of navigation, and the better to do so he was quite willing to let the fisheries go. The navigation privilege he considered "much too important to be conceded for the mere liberty of drying fish upon a desert," as he was pleased to describe a right for which the United States has often been ready to go to war and may yet some time do so. "Mr. Clay lost his temper," writes Mr. Adams a day or two later, "as he generally does whenever this right of the British to navigate the Mississippi is discussed. He was utterly averse to admitting it as an equivalent for a stipulation securing the contested part of the fisheries. He said the more he heard of this [the right of fishing], the more convinced he was that it was of little or no value. He should be glad to get it if he could, but he was sure the British would not ultimately grant it. That the navigation of the Mississippi, on the other hand, was an object of immense importance, and he could see no sort of reason for granting it as an equivalent for the fisheries." Thus spoke the representative of the West. The New Englander-the son of the man whose exertions had been chiefly instrumental in originally obtaining the grant of the Northeastern fishery privileges-naturally went to the other extreme. He thought "the British right of navigating the Mississippi to be as nothing, considered as a grant from us. It was secured to them by the peace of 1783, they had enjoyed it at the commencement of the war, it had never been injurious in the slightest degree to our own people, and it appeared to [him] that the British claim to it was just and equitable." Further he "believed the right to this navigation to be a very useless thing to the British.... But their national pride and honor were interested in it; the government could not make a peace which would abandon it." The fisheries, however, Mr. Adams regarded as one of the most inestimable and inalienable of American rights. It is evident that the United States could ill have spared either Mr. Adams or Mr. Clay from the negotiation, and the joinder of the two, however fraught with discomfort to themselves, well served substantial American interests.

Mr. Adams thought the British perfidious, and suspected them of not entertaining any honest intention of concluding a peace. On December 12, after an exceedingly quarrelsome conference, he records his belief that the British have "insidiously kept open" two points, "for the sake of finally breaking off the negotiations and making all their other concessions proofs of their extreme moderation, to put upon us the blame of the rupture."

On December 11 we find Mr. Clay ready "for a war three years longer," and anxious "to begin to play at brag" with the Englishmen. His colleagues, more complaisant or having less confidence in their own skill in that game, found it difficult to placate him; he "stalked to and fro across the chamber, repeating five or six times, 'I will never sign a treaty upon the status ante bellum with the Indian article. So help me God!'" The next day there was an angry controversy with the Englishmen. The British troops had taken and held Moose Island in Passamaquoddy Bay, the rightful ownership of which was in dispute. The title was to be settled by arbitrators. But the question, whether the British should restore possession of the island pending the arbitration, aroused bitter discussion. "Mr. Goulburn and Dr. Adams (the Englishman) immediately took fire, and Goulburn lost all control of his temper. He has always in such cases," says the Diary, "a sort of convulsive agitation about him, and the tone in which he speaks is more insulting than the language which he uses." Mr. Bayard referred to the case of the Falkland Islands. "'Why' (in a transport of rage), said Goulburn, 'in that case we sent a fleet and troops and drove the fellows off; and that is what we ought to have done in this case.'" Mr. J. Q. Adams, whose extensive and accurate information more than once annoyed his adversaries, stated that, as he remembered it, "the Spaniards in that case had driven the British off,"-and Lord Gambier helped his blundering colleague out of the difficulty by suggesting a new subject, much as the defeated heroes of the Iliad used to find happy refuge from death in a god-sent cloud of dust. It is amusing to read that in the midst of such scenes as these the show of courtesy was still maintained; and on December 13 the Americans "all dined with the British Plenipotentiaries," though "the party was more than usually dull, stiff, and reserved." It was certainly forcing the spirit of good fellowship. The next day Mr. Clay notified his colleagues that they were going "to make a damned bad treaty, and he did not know whether he would sign it or not;" and Mr. Adams also said that he saw that the rest had made up their minds "at last to yield the fishery point," in which case he also could not sign the treaty. On the following day, however, the Americans were surprised by receiving a note from the British Commissioners, wherein they made the substantial concession of omitting from the treaty all reference to the fisheries and the navigation of the Mississippi. But Mr. Clay, on reading the note, "manifested some chagrin," and "still talked of breaking off the negotiation," even asking Mr. Adams to join him in so doing, which request, however, Mr. Adams very reasonably refused. Mr. Clay had also been anxious to stand out for a distinct abandonment of the alleged right of impressment; but upon this point he found none of his colleagues ready to back him, and he was compelled perforce to yield. Agreement was therefore now substantially reached; a few minor matters were settled, and on December 24, 1814, the treaty was signed by all the eight negotiators.

It was an astonishing as well as a happy result. Never, probably, in the history of diplomacy has concord been produced from such discordant elements as had been brought together in Ghent. Dissension seemed to have become the mother of amity; and antipathies were mere preliminaries to a good understanding; in diplomacy as in marriage it had worked well to begin with a little aversion. But, in truth, this consummation was largely due to what had been going on in the English Cabinet. At the outset Lord Castlereagh had been very unwilling to conclude peace, and his disposition had found expression in the original intolerable terms prepared by the British Commissioners. But Lord Liverpool had been equally solicitous on the other side, and was said even to have tendered his resignation to the Prince Regent, if an accommodation should not be effected. His endeavors were fortunately aided by events in Europe. Pending the negotiations Lord Castlereagh went on a diplomatic errand to Vienna, and there fell into such threatening discussions with the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, that he thought it prudent to have done with the American war, and wrote home pacific advices. Hence, at last, came such concessions as satisfied the Americans.

The treaty established "a firm and universal peace between his Britannic Majesty and the United States." Each party was to restore all captured territory, except that the islands of which the title was in dispute were to remain in the occupation of the party holding them at the time of ratification until that title should be settled by commissioners; provision was made also for the determination of all the open questions of boundary by sundry boards of commissioners; each party was to make peace with the Indian allies of the other. Such were, in substance, the only points touched upon by this document. Of the many subjects mooted between the negotiators scarcely any had survived the fierce contests which had been waged concerning them. The whole matter of the navigation of the Mississippi, access to that river, and a road through American territory, had been dropped by the British; while the Americans had been well content to say nothing of the Northeastern fisheries, which they regarded as still their own. The disarmament on the lakes and along the Canadian border, and the neutralization of a strip of Indian territory, were yielded by the English. The Americans were content to have nothing said about impressment; nor was any one of the many illegal rights exercised by England formally abandoned. The Americans satisfied themselves with the reflection that circumstances had rendered these points now only matters of abstract principle, since the pacification of Europe had removed all opportunities and temptations for England to persist in her previous objectionable courses. For the future it was hardly to be feared that she would again undertake to pursue a policy against which it was evident that the United States were willing to conduct a serious war. There was, however, no provision for indemnification.

Upon a fair consideration, it must be admitted that though the treaty was silent upon all the points which the United States had made war for the purpose of enforcing, yet the country had every reason to be gratified with the result of the negotiation. The five Commissioners had done themselves ample credit. They had succeeded in agreeing with each other; they had avoided any fracture of a negotiation which, up to the very end, seemed almost daily on the verge of being broken off in anger; they had managed really to lose nothing, in spite of the fact that their side had had decidedly the worst of the struggle. They had negotiated much more successfully than the armies of their countrymen had fought. The Marquis of Wellesley said, in the House of Lords, that "in his opinion the American Commissioners had shown a most astonishing superiority over the British during the whole of the correspondence." One cannot help wishing that the battle of New Orleans had taken place a little earlier, or that the negotiation had fallen a little later, so that news of that brilliant event could have reached the ears of the insolent Englishmen at Ghent, who had for three months been enjoying the malicious pleasure of lending to the Americans English newspapers containing accounts of American misfortunes. But that fortunate battle was not fought until a few days after the eight Commissioners had signed their compact. It is an interesting illustration of the slowness of communication which our forefathers had to endure, that the treaty crossed the Atlantic in a sailing ship in time to travel through much of the country simultaneously with the report of this farewell victory. Two such good pieces of news coming together set the people wild with delight. Even on the dry pages of Niles's "Weekly Register" occurs the triumphant paragraph: "Who would not be an American? Long live the Republic! All hail! last asylum of oppressed humanity! Peace is signed in the arms of victory!" It was natural that most of the ecstasy should be manifested concerning the military triumph, and that the mass of the people should find more pleasure in glorifying General Jackson than in exalting the Commissioners. The value of their work, however, was well proved by the voice of Great Britain. In the London "Times" of December 30 appeared a most angry tirade against the treaty, with bitter sneers at those who called the peace an "honorable" one. England, it was said, "had attempted to force her principles on America, and had failed." Foreign powers would say that the English "had retired from the combat with the stripes yet bleeding on their backs,-with the recent defeats at Plattsburgh and on Lake Champlain unavenged." The most gloomy prognostications of further wars with America when her naval power should have waxed much greater were indulged. The loss of prestige in Europe, "the probable loss of our trans-Atlantic provinces," were among the results to be anticipated from this treaty into which the English Commissioners had been beguiled by the Americans. These latter were reviled with an abuse which was really the highest compliment. The family name of Mr. Adams gained no small access of distinction in England from this business.

After the conclusion of the treaty Mr. Adams went to Paris, and remained there until the middle of May, 1815, thus having the good fortune to witness the return of Napoleon and a great part of the events of the famous "hundred days." On May 26 he arrived in London, where there awaited him, in the hands of the Barings, his commission as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain. His first duty was, in connection with Mr. Clay and Mr. Gallatin, to negotiate a treaty of commerce, in which business he again met the same three British Commissioners by whom the negotiations at Ghent had been conducted, of whose abilities the government appeared to entertain a better opinion than the Marquis of Wellesley had expressed. This negotiation had been brought so far towards conclusion by his colleagues before his own arrival that Mr. Adams had little to do in assisting them to complete it. This little having been done, they departed and left him as Minister at the Court of St. James. Thus he fulfilled Washington's prophecy, by reaching the highest rank in the American diplomatic service.

Of his stay in Great Britain little need be said. He had few duties of importance to perform. The fisheries, the right of impressment, and the taking away and selling of slaves by British naval officers during the late war, formed the subjects of many interviews between him and Lord Castlereagh, without, however, any definite results being reached. But he succeeded in obtaining, towards the close of his stay, some slight remission of the severe restrictions placed by England upon our trade with her West Indian colonies. His relations with a cabinet in which the principles of Castlereagh and Canning predominated could hardly be cordial, yet he seems to have been treated with perfect civility. Indeed, he was not a man whom it was easy even for an Englishman to insult. He remarks of Castlereagh, after one of his first interviews with that nobleman: "His deportment is sufficiently graceful, and his person is handsome. His manner was cold, but not absolutely repulsive." Before he left he had the pleasure of having Mr. Canning specially seek acquaintance with him. He met, of course, many distinguished and many agreeable persons during his residence, and partook of many festivities, especially of numerous civic banquets at which toasts were formally given in the dullest English fashion and he was obliged to display his capacity for "table-cloth oratory," as he called it, more than was agreeable to him. He was greatly bored by these solemn and pompous feedings. Partly in order to escape them he took a house at Ealing, and lived there during the greater part of his stay in England. "One of the strongest reasons for my remaining out of town," he writes, "is to escape the frequency of invitations at late hours, which consume so much precious time, and with the perpetually mortifying consciousness of inability to return the civility in the same manner." The republican simplicity, not to say poverty, forced upon American representatives abroad, was a very different matter in the censorious and unfriendly society of London from what it had been at the kindly disposed Court of St. Petersburg. The relationship between the mother country and the quondam colonies, especially at that juncture, was such as to render social life intolerably trying to an under-paid American minister.

Mr. Adams remained in England until June 15, 1817, when he sailed from Cowes, closing forever his long and honorable diplomatic career, and bidding his last farewell to Europe. He returned home to take the post of Secretary of State in the cabinet of James Monroe, then lately inaugurated as President of the United States.