Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams.

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The compromise, by which Missouri was admitted into the Union, did not
finally settle the question in. Congress. At the next session it
reappeared, in consequence of the insertion into the constitution of
Missouri of an article declaring it to be the duty of the Legislature to
pass laws prohibiting free negroes and persons of color from coming into
Missouri; which declaration was directly repugnant to that article in
the constitution of the United States which provides that the citizens
of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens of the other states. The only mode of getting out of this
difficulty, said Mr. Adams, was "for Congress to pass a resolution
declaring the State of Missouri to be admitted from and after the time
when the article repugnant to the constitution of the United States
should be expunged from its constitution. This question was much more
clear against Missouri than was that of their first admission into the
Union; but the people of the North, like many of their representatives
in Congress, began to give indications of a disposition to flinch from
the consequences of this question, and to be unwilling to bear their
leaders out."

Mr. Adams, in conversation with one of the senators of the South,
observed, that "the article in the Missouri constitution is directly
repugnant to the rights reserved to every citizen in the Union in the
constitution of the United States. Its purport is to disfranchise all
the people of color who were citizens of the free states. The
Legislatures of those states are bound in duty to protect the rights of
their own citizens; and if Congress, by the admission of Missouri with
that clause in her constitution, should sanction this outrage upon
those rights, the states a portion of whose citizens should be thus
cast out of the pale of the Union would be bound to vindicate them by
retaliation. If I were a member of the Legislature of one of these
states, I would move for a declaratory act, that so long as the article
in the constitution of Missouri, depriving the colored citizens of the
state (say) of Massachusetts of their rights as citizens of the United
States within the State of Missouri, should subsist, so long the white
citizens of Missouri should be held as aliens within the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, and not entitled to claim or enjoy, within the same,
any right or privilege of a citizen of the United States." And Mr.
Adams said he would go further, and declare that Congress, by their
sanction of the Missouri constitution, by admitting that state into the
Union without excepting against that article which disfranchised a
portion of the citizens of Massachusetts, had violated the constitution
of the United States. Therefore, until that portion of the citizens of
Massachusetts whose rights were violated by the article in the Missouri
compromise should be reintegrated in the full enjoyment and possession
of those rights, no clause or article of the constitution of the United
States should, within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, be so
understood as to authorize any person whatsoever to claim the property
or possession of a human being as a slave; and he would prohibit by law
the delivery of any fugitive upon the claim of his master. All which,
he said, should be done, not to violate, but to redeem from violation,
the constitution of the United States. It was indeed to be expected
that such laws would again be met by retaliatory laws of Missouri and
the other slaveholding states, and the consequences would be a
dissolution _de facto_ of the Union; but that dissolution would be
commenced by the article in the Missouri constitution. "That article,"
declared Mr. Adams, "is itself a dissolution of the Union. If
acquiesced in, it will change the terms of the federal compact--change
its terms by robbing thousands of citizens of their rights. And what
citizens? The poor, the unfortunate, the helpless, already cursed by
the mere color of their skin; already doomed by their complexion to
drudge in the lowest offices of society; excluded by their color from
all the refined enjoyments of life accessible to others; excluded from
the benefits of a liberal education,--from the bed, the table, and all
the social comforts, of domestic life. This barbarous article deprives
them of the little remnant of right yet left them--their rights as
citizens and as men. Weak and defenceless as they are, so much the more
sacred the obligation of the Legislatures of the states to which they
belong to defend their lawful rights. I would defend them, should the
dissolution of the Union be the consequence; for it would be, not to
the defence, but to the violation of their rights, to which all the
consequences would be imputable; and, if the dissolution of the Union
must come, let it come from no other cause but this. If slavery be the
destined sword, in the hand of the destroying angel, which is to sever
the ties of this Union, the same sword will cut asunder the bonds of
slavery itself."

"In the House of Representatives, on the 4th of December," writes Mr.
Adams, "Mr. Eustis, of Massachusetts, made a speech against the
resolution for admitting Missouri into the Union without condition, and
it was rejected, _ninety-three_ to _seventy-nine_. On the 19th of
December he offered a resolution admitting Missouri into the Union
conditionally; namely, 'from and after the time when they shall have
expunged from their constitution the article repugnant to the
constitution of the United States.' On the 24th of January, 1821, this
resolution was rejected by a vote of one hundred and forty-six to six.
It satisfies neither party. It is too strong for the slave party, and
not strong enough for the free party." In December and January the
subject was ardently debated in the House of Representatives, and,
after commitment and various attempts at amendment, on the 13th of
February the report of a committee of the House of Representatives in
favor of admitting Missouri into the Union, in conformity with the
resolution which had passed the Senate, was rejected, eighty-five to
eighty.

The proceedings of the House of Representatives, in counting the votes
for President and Vice-President, are thus stated by Mr. Adams: "On
the 14th of February, while the electoral votes for President and
Vice-President were counting, those of Missouri were objected to
because Missouri was not a state of the Union--on which a tumultuous
scene arose. A Southern member moved, in face of the rejection by a
majority of the House, that Missouri _is_ one of the states of this
Union, and that her votes ought to be counted. Mr. Clay avoided the
question by moving that it should lie on the table, and then that a
message should be sent to the Senate informing them that the House were
_now_ ready to proceed in continuing the enumeration of the electoral
votes, according to the joint resolution; which was ordered. The Senate
accordingly proceeded to open the votes of Missouri, and they were
counted. The result was declared by the President of the Senate, in the
alternative that if the votes of Missouri were counted there were two
hundred and thirty-one votes for James Monroe as President, and two
hundred and eighteen votes for Daniel D. Tompkins as Vice-President;
and if not counted, there would be two hundred and twenty-eight votes
for James Monroe as President, and two hundred and fifteen for Daniel
D. Tompkins as Vice-President; but, in either event, both were elected
to their respective offices. He therefore declared them to be so
elected.

"After the two houses had separated, Mr. Randolph moved two resolutions:
one, that the electoral votes of the State of Missouri had been counted,
and formed part of the majorities by which the President and
Vice-President had been elected; and the other, that the result of the
election had not been declared by the presiding officer conformably to
the constitution and the law, and therefore the whole proceedings had
been irregular and illegal. This motion, after a very disorderly debate,
was disposed of by adjournment. Mr. Randolph was for bringing Missouri
into the Union by storm, and by bullying a majority of the House into a
minority. The only result was disorder and tumult.

"On the 23d of February, the Missouri question being still undecided, on
a motion of Mr. Clay, the House of Representatives chose by ballot a
committee of twenty-three members, who were joined by a committee of
seven from the Senate. Their object was a last attempt to devise a plan
for admitting Missouri into the Union. On the 26th, the committee
proposed a _conditional_ admission, upon terms more humiliating to
the people of Missouri than it would have been to require that they
should expunge the exceptionable article from their constitution; for
they declared it a fundamental condition of their admission that the
article should never be construed to authorize the passage of any law by
which any citizen of the states of this Union should be excluded from
his privileges under the constitution of the United States; and they
required that the Legislature of the state, by a solemn public act,
should declare the assent of the state to this condition, and transmit a
copy of the act, by the first Monday of November ensuing, to the
President of the United States. But, in substance, this condition bound
them to nothing. The resolution was, however, taken up this day in the
House of Representatives, read three times, and passed by a vote of
eighty-seven to eighty-one. On the 28th of February, the Senate, by a
vote of twenty-eight to fourteen, adopted the resolution.

"This second Missouri question was compromised like the first. The
majority against the unconditional admission into the Union was small,
but very decided. The problem for the slave representation to solve was
the precise extent of concession necessary for them to detach from the
opposite party a number of antiservile votes just sufficient to turn the
majority. Mr. Clay found, at last, this expedient, which the slave
voters would not have accepted from any one not of their own party, and
to which his greatest difficulty was to obtain the assent of his own
friends. The timid and the weak-minded dropped off, one by one, from the
free side of the question, until a majority was formed for the
compromise, of which the servile have the substance, and the liberals
the shadow.

"In the progress of this affair the distinctive character of the
inhabitants of the several great divisions of this Union has been shown
more in relief than perhaps in any national transaction since the
establishment of the constitution. It is, perhaps, accidental that the
combination of talent and influence has been the greatest on the slave
side. The importance of the question has been much greater to them than
to the other side. Their union of exertion has been consequently closer
and more unshakable. They have threatened and entreated, bullied and
wheedled, until their more simple adversaries have been half coaxed,
half frightened into a surrender of their principles for a bauble of
insignificant promises. The champions of the North did not judiciously
select their position for this contest. There must be, some time, a
conflict on this very question between slave and free representation.
This, however, was not the proper occasion for contesting it."

At this period Mr. Adams considered that the greatest danger of the
Union was in the overgrown extent of its territory, combining with the
slavery question. The want of slaves was not in the lands, but in their
inhabitants. Slavery had become in the South and South-western states a
condition of existence. On the falling off of the revenue, which
occurred about this time, he observed that "it stirs up the spirit of
economy and retrenchment; and, as the expenditures of the war department
are those on which the most considerable saving can be made, at them the
economists level their first and principal batteries. Individual,
personal jealousies, envyings, and resentments, partisan ambition, and
private interests and hopes, mingle in the motives which prompt this
policy. About one half of the members of Congress are seekers of office
at the nomination of the President. Of the remainder, at least one half
have some appointment or favor to ask for their relatives. But there are
two modes of obtaining their ends: the one, by subserviency; the other,
by opposition. These may be called the cringing canvass and the flouting
canvass. As the public opinion is most watchful of the cringing canvass,
the flouters are the most numerous party."

CHAPTER VI.

SECOND TERM OF MONROE'S PRESIDENCY.--STATE OF PARTIES.--REPORT ON
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.--PROCEEDINGS AT GHENT VINDICATED.--VOTES WHEN HE
WAS A MEMBER OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES DEFENDED.--INDEPENDENCE
OF GREECE.--CONTESTS OF PARTIES.--ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES.

During the second term of Mr. Monroe's Presidency, Mr. Adams continued
to take his full proportion of responsibility in the measures of the
administration. Questions concerning the Bank of the United States, the
currency, the extinction or extension of slavery, the bankrupt law, the
tariff, and internal improvements, brought into discussion the interests
of the great States of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, combined
with the never-ceasing struggles for power of parties and individuals.
Candidates for the office of President and Vice-President were brought
into the field by their respective adherents. Every topic which could
exalt or depress either was put in requisition, and office-holders and
office-seekers became anxious and alert.

In July, 1821, at the request of the citizens of Washington, Mr. Adams
delivered an address on the anniversary of American Independence. It did
not receive the indulgence usually extended to such efforts, but was
made the occasion of severe animadversions on his character and talents.
In December his friends called his attention to calumnies and aspersions
copied into the _City Gazette_, from papers issued in Georgia and
Tennessee, and expressed their opinions that they ought to be answered
by him, as they knew they could be most triumphantly. Mr. Adams replied:
"Should I comply with your request, it will be immediately said, I was
canvassing for the Presidency. I never, that I can recollect, but once,
undertook to answer anything that was published against me, and that was
when I was in private life. To answer newspaper accusations would be an
endless task. The tongue of falsehood can never be silenced. I have not
time to spare from public business to the vindication of myself."

To place Philip P. Barbour, of Virginia, in the Speaker's chair, and to
prevent the reelection of John W. Taylor, of New York, the tried friend
of the administration, became the next object of all those who hoped to
rise by opposing it. The partisans of Barbour were successful, and the
consequences of his elevation were immediately apparent. As the
Committee of Foreign Relations was, by a practical rule, the medium of
communication between Congress and the executive government, it was
customary for the Speaker to constitute it chiefly of members who
coincided in their views. But many of those now appointed by Barbour,
especially the chairman, were hostile to their politics. To this
committee all the delicate and critical papers relative to the foreign
relations of the United States were to be confidentially communicated.
No arrangement could have been more annoying to Mr. Monroe and his
cabinet, or more symptomatic of a settled opposition.

By a vote passed in March, 1817, the Senate had required of Mr. Adams a
report on weights and measures; and in December, 1819, the House of
Representatives had by a resolution made the same requisition. To this
subject he had directed his attention when in Russia; and had devoted
the leisure his duties as Secretary of State permitted, without
approximating to its completion, owing to the number and perplexity of
details its pursuit involved.

In the summer of 1820 he relinquished a visit to his father and friends
in Massachusetts, and concentrated his attention, during six months,
exclusively on this report, which he finished and made to Congress, in
February, 1821. At the conclusion of his work he thus expresses himself:
"This subject has occupied, for the last sixty years, many of the ablest
men in Europe, and to it all the powers, and all the philosophical and
mathematical learning and ingenuity, of France and Great Britain, have
been incessantly directed. It was a fearful and oppressive task. It has
been executed, and it will be for the public judgment to pass upon it."

From the abstruse character of this work, the labor, research, and
talent, it evidences have never been generally and justly appreciated.
It commences with the wants of individuals antecedent to the existence
of communities, and deduces from man's physical organization, and from
the exigences of domestic society, the origin of _measures of surface,
distance, and capacity_; and that of _weight_, from the difference
between the specific gravity of substances and its importance in the
exchange of traffic consequent on the multiplication of human wants,
with the increase of the social relations. He then proceeds to state
and analyze the powers and duties of legislators on the subject, with
their respective limitations. The results of his researches relative to
the weights and measures of the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans,
are successively stated. From the institutions of the nations of
antiquity he derives those of modern Europe and of the United States.
He praises the "stupendous and untiring perseverance of England and
France" in this field, and explains the causes which have not rendered
their success adequate to their endeavors. The system of modern France
on this subject he investigates and applauds, as "one of those attempts
to improve the condition of human kind, which, although it may
ultimately fail, deserves admiration, as approaching more nearly than
any other to the ideal perfection of uniformity in weights and
measures." After stating the difficulties which prevented other nations
from seconding the endeavors of France, Mr. Adams concludes this
elaborate treatise with the opinion that universal uniformity on the
subject can only be effected by a general convention, to which all the
nations of the world should be parties. Until such a general course of
measures be adopted, he regards it as inexpedient for the United States
to make any change in their present system. After an elaborate
enumeration of the regulations of the several states of the Union,
accompanied by voluminous documents, he concludes with proposing,
"first, to fix the standard with the partial uniformity of which it is
susceptible for the present, excluding all innovation. Second, to
consult with foreign nations for the future and ultimate establishment
of _permanent_ and _universal_ uniformity."

The Senate ordered six hundred copies of this report to be printed. But
its final suggestions were not made the subject of action in either
branch. A writer of the day said, with equal truth and severity, "It was
not noticed in Congress, where ability was wanting, or labor refused,
to understand it." As Mr. Adams was one of the candidates in the
approaching presidential election, party spirit was inclined to treat
with silence and neglect labors which it realized could not fail to
command admiration and approval. In England the merits of this report
were more justly appreciated. In 1834, Col. Pasley, royal engineer, in a
learned work on measures and money, acknowledged the benefits he had
derived from "an official report upon weights and measures, published
in 1821, by a distinguished American statesman, John Quincy Adams. This
author," he adds, "has thrown more light into the history of our old
English weights and measures _than all former writers on the subject_;
and his views of historical facts, even when occasionally in opposition
to the reports of our own parliamentary committees, appear to me most
correct. For my own part, I do not think I could have seen my way into
the history of English weights and measures in the feudal ages without
his guidance."

In the summer of 1821 Mr. Adams was apprized that rumors, very
unfavorable to his reputation, even for integrity, had been
industriously circulated in the Western country. It had been stated
that he had made a proposition at Ghent to grant to the British the
right to navigate the Mississippi, in return for the Newfoundland
fisheries, and that it was in that section represented as a high
misdemeanor. Mr. Adams said, that a proposition to confirm both those
rights as they had stood before the war, and as stipulated by the
treaty of 1783, had been offered to the British commissioners, not by
him, but by the whole American mission, every one of whom had
subscribed to it. The proposition was not made by him, but by Mr.
Gallatin, who knew it would be nothing to the British but a mere naked
right, of which they could not make any use. It was accordingly
promptly rejected by the British commissioners, and made the ground of
a counter proposition of renouncing the right they had, under the
treaty of 1783, of navigating that river, on condition of our
renouncing the old article on the fisheries. Mr. Adams at once declared
that, if it was acceded to, he would never sign the treaty; and it was
promptly rejected by the American commissioners. When he was again told
that he would be accused in the Western States of the proposition to
confirm the British rights as they stood before the war, he replied,
that he had no doubt it would be so; for Mr. Clay had already, in one
of his speeches in Congress, represented that this proposition had been
made by a _majority_ of the Ghent commissioners, he being in the
minority, without acknowledging _that he had himself signed the note by
which the offer was made_, and without disclosing how lightly the
concession was estimated by the British commissioners, and how promptly
they rejected it.

Accordingly, on the 18th of April, 1822, John Floyd, of Virginia, who,
both in that state and in Congress, was active in seeking and scattering
malign imputations concerning the political course of Mr. Adams, called,
in the House of Representatives, for a letter, written by Jonathan
Russell, in 1814, to Mr. Monroe, then Secretary of State, and, as he
stated, deposited in that office.

This call of Floyd was the springing of the mine for a long-meditated
explosion. On searching the records of state, no such letter could be
found. Mr. Russell immediately volunteered a copy, and deposited it in
that office. This letter was addressed to James Monroe, then Secretary
of State, and was dated Paris, 11th of February, 1815. It was a letter
of seven folio sheets of paper, and amounted, said Mr. Adams, to little
less than a denunciation of a majority of the Ghent commissioners for
proposing the article recognizing the fishery, and the British right to
navigate the Mississippi,--a proposition in which Mr. Russell had
concurred. He wrote this letter at Paris, where all the commissioners
then were, without ever communicating it to Mr. Adams, or letting him
know he had any intention of writing such a letter. It was a most
elaborate, disingenuous, and sophistical argument against principles in
which Mr. Russell himself concurred, and against the joint letters of
the 14th December, 1814, to which he signed his name. His motives, Mr.
Adams considered, for writing then to a Virginian Secretary of State,
under a Virginian President, were, apparently, at once to recommend
himself to their sectional prejudices about the Mississippi, and to
injure him in their esteem and favor, for future effect; and that his
motive for now abetting Floyd, in his call for these papers as a public
document, was to diminish the popularity of Mr. Adams in the Western
States.

With these views of the purposes of Floyd and Russell, Mr. Adams
immediately endeavored to obtain the original letter, of which Mr.
Russell had now deposited in the Secretary of State's office a paper
purporting to be a copy. The original he ascertained was still in the
possession of Mr. Monroe, who had received it soon after its date; but,
as it was marked "private" by Mr. Russell, he considered it
confidential, and did not place it in the office of the Secretary of
State. On ascertaining these facts, Mr. Adams claimed the original
letter from Mr. Monroe, believing, from internal evidence, that the
duplicate, instead of being a true copy of the original, had been in
some respects adapted to present effect. Mr. Monroe declined to listen
to the repeated remonstrances of Mr. Adams, and continued to maintain
that he could not, with honor, make the original letter public. He did
not consent until he was called upon for it by a vote of the House of
Representatives, proposed by the friends of Mr. Adams, and resisted by
Floyd and his party. The original letter being thus obtained, Mr. Adams
prepared and published a severe and scrutinizing examination of its
facts and suggestions, of the motives which prompted those who had
brought it before the public, and of the discrepancies between the
original and the alleged copy which Mr. Russell had volunteered to place
in the office of the Secretary of State. Mr. Russell replied through the
newspapers; on which reply Mr. Adams bestowed a searching and caustic
analysis, commenting with great severity on his language and conduct.

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