The Abolitionists / Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights, 1830-1864

fectually and meritoriously contributed to the liberation of the blac

a time, however, when no other name was heard so often in this country, or which, when used, excited such violent and conflicting emotions. It can justly be said that for many years John Quincy Adams, ind

adversaries. As a general thing, the latter had given up all idea of making any further fight. Northern Presidents, Northern Congressmen, Northern editors, Northern churchmen, were the most ready and servile supporters slavery had. An

covering a period of seventeen years, literally lasted to the last day of his life. He was carried h

he conduct that fight. There was nothing in the eloquence of Demosthenes in Athens, of Cicero in Rome, of Mirabeau in France, of Pitt or Gladstone in England, that surpassed the force and grandeur of the philippics of Adams against American slavery. Alone, for the greater part of his service in Congress, he stood in th

e compared with him. He was literally a walking cyclopedia. He was terrible in invective, matchless at repartee, and insensible

s in congressional encounter

ly quake and tremble through every nerve and joint, when he arraigned before them their political and moral

his expulsion from that body. As one of his biographers, also a distinguished Congressman, expressed it: "It was the preconcerted and deliberate purpose of the s

sed him of treason in countenancing an assault upon the Union, although they were at the time engaged in laying the foundation of a movement looking to its ultimate overth

uth were there. They had come to witness the abasement of the great enemy of their most cherished institution. They were to see him driven from the nation's council chamber, a crushed an

solution charging Mr. Adams with treasonable conduct and directing his expulsion. He supported it with a speech of much ingenuity. Wise followed in a fiery diatribe. Both speakers imprudently indulged in personal allusions of a

he vials of tyrannic wrath had been outpoured. Unexcited he raised his voice, high-keyed, as was usual with him, but clear, untremulous, and f

rciless severity, depicting certain events in their lives with such vividness that the onlookers gazed upon them with visible and unmistakable pity. Said one of

nents frankly admitted their discomf

se at a time when it was almost moribund. He plowed the ground, cutting a deep and broad furrow as he went his way, and in the uptu