John Quincy Adams | Page 2

was of a grade rarely seen; and, in unison with his extraordinary courage and independence, it seemed to the average politician actually irritating and offensive. He was in the same difficulty in which Aristides the Just found himself. But neither (p. viii) assaults nor political solitude daunted or discouraged him. His career in the House of Representatives is a tale which has not a rival in congressional history. I regret that it could not be told here at greater length. Stubbornly fighting for freedom of speech and against the slaveholders, fierce and unwearied in old age, falling literally out of the midst of the conflict into his grave, Mr. Adams, during the closing years of his life, is one of the most striking figures of modern times. I beg the reader of this volume to put into its pages more warmth of praise than he will find therein, and so do a more correct justice to an honest statesman and a gallant friend of the oppressed. Doing this, he will improve my book in the particular wherein I think that it chiefly needs improvement. JOHN T. MORSE, JR. July, 1898.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
Page Youth and Diplomacy 1
CHAPTER II.
Secretary of State and President 101
CHAPTER III.
In the House of Representatives 225
Index 309

ILLUSTRATIONS
John Quincy Adams Frontispiece
From the original painting by John Singleton Copley, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.
The vignette of Mr. Adams's home in Quincy is from a photograph. Page William H. Crawford 107
From the painting by Henry Ulke, in the Treasury Department at Washington.
Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.
Stratford Canning 149
After a drawing (1853) by George Richmond. Autograph from "Life of Stratford Canning."
Henry A. Wise 291
From a photograph by Brady, in the Library of the State Department at Washington.
Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (p. 001)
CHAPTER I
YOUTH AND DIPLOMACY
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 (p. 002) 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 (p. 003) 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