esolutions as finally offered glorified the Union. Mr. Adams had offered the greatest possible insult to the people, for which he merited expulsion. The House in mercy would only severely censure, and leave him to the indignation of his countrymen.

He

Mr. Marshall quite met the occasion, in the public estimation. denounced Mr. Adams as a traitor. Mr. Adams arose, was recognized, asked if the House would entertain the resolutions, and called for the reading of the first paragraph of the declaration of independence. It was read down to the point which declared the power to abolish or change a government, when it failed to secure the true ends of government. He then, with severe clearness, pointed out the wrongs and injustice wrought by the government, through the coalition of the slaveholders and democrats, and asserted that it was time the people should, by petitions, arouse the nation.

Mr. Everett, of Vermont, moved to print and postpone the resolutions a week. Mr. Wise supported the resolutions in a long prepared speech of great bitterness. Adams retorted his part in the tragedy of the GravesCilly duel, and turned on Marshall with a withering speech of sarcasm and ridicule, recommending him to go back to his books. Marshall, as if in defiance, arose and stood facing him. A hush fell on the thronged House, as the old man, worked up to his greatest power, poured on him mingled wrath, scorn, and derision. Then he turned to the subject matter of debate. Not so much as a breath, a rustle, was heard. Reporters were charmed, slaveholders shed tears. When he took his seat, Marshall remained standing, until a friend recalled him to the consciousness he had lost. Marshall never fully recovered, and said later, to John Campbell, that he "would rather die a thousand deaths than encounter that old man." Giddings, and the little band about Mr. Adams, were no longer anxious; and the whigs of the north began to gather around him. Not only these, but Mr. Botts, of Virginia, who later behaved so shabbily in Mr. Giddings' case, came to his aid, though he needed none. Marshall again addressed the House, preparing the way to a retreat.

January 3d, Mr. Gilmore proposed to Mr. Adams to withdraw the petition and he would withdraw the resolutions of censure. Mr. Adams refused, entered upon his personal defense, and spoke the rest of the day, reviewing his past course. He and his friends justly complained of the report of this speech, and the next morning he demanded a delay, until a competent reporter could be procured. Marshall objected, and moved the previous question. In the face of this attempt to cut him off, he went on. Dr. Leavett was a competent reporter, and Giddings smuggled him into the House to take down the speech. The slaveholders had him turned out, and he got a place outside the bar. The southerners were so incensed that they soon called Mr. Adams to order. The speaker sustained him, and the House, on an appeal, sustained the chair. Mr. Adams consumed the day, without

finishing. As he was about to resume the next day, a Georgian wished to know how much time it would require. Mr. Adams, in a business way, said he could not tell, but he thought "he could finish in ninety days." This opened new views to the prosecutors. Mr. Adams had used the most of three days in his arraignment of slavery, and proposed to go on for three months. Mr. Botts intervened with a motion to lay the whole subject or the table. This prevailed-one hundred and six to ninety-three, and so the prosecution ended in defeat and humiliation.

The resolutions in Mr. Adams' case being disposed of, the question came up on the reception of the petition he had offered, which was lostforty for reception, one hundred and sixty-six against it. Thereupon, Mr. Adams being still fresh, and there being some daylight left, worked on and presented over two hundred petitions before the House adjourned. On the 14th of March following, D. D. Barnard, of New York, presented a similar petition to that of Mr. Adams, which the now docile House disposed of very placidly.

This inglorious defeat of slavery, in the case of Mr. Adams, had temporary success in the case of Mr. Giddings. In the famous Creole case he offered a set of propositions, somewhat similar, in reply to Mr. Calhoun's formula, on the same subject matter in the Senate. He was censured without being permitted to defend himself, resigned, and in five weeks was in his seat again to work woe on his enemies.

The Creole case stimulated a conspiracy to remove Mr. Adams from the head of the committee on foreign affairs, and replace him by his colleague, Caleb Cushing. On the collapse of the resolution of censure the four southern members of the committee asked to be excused from further service on it, because, as their note said, the House might not remove him, and they were unwilling to serve with him. The House excused them with a shout of acclamation. Others, in notes personally insulting to Mr. Adams, refused to accept the vacant places; the notes were published, and a gross breach of privilege perpetrated, but of this Mr. Adams took no notice.

CHAPTER VI.

LAST YEARS OF MR. ADAMS' CONGRESSIONAL SERVICE-STRICKEN WITH DEATH WHILE AT HIS POST-SUMMARY.

T will be remembered that Mr. Adams made one of his strongest speeches against the admission of Texas, in the earliest years of the controversy, placing the whole subject in the clearest light. The agitation never ceased. Annexation was inevitable. It was one of the sources of strength to the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the north. The Tyler administration patched up a hasty treaty of annexation, and General Jackson, at the Hermitage, signed a letter urging its ratification by the Senate. It was proposed to correlate Texas with Oregon, the northern boundary50° 40'-of which Great Britain disputed. Mr. Webster, secretary of state, gave place to Mr. Upshur, who was soon after killed by the explosion of a gun on the war steamer Princeton, and Mr. Calhoun was placed at the head of the state department. The treaty of annexation was his work. Mr. Benton killed that project in the Senate-beat it to death, southron and slaveholder as he was.

The presidential election was at hand, and parties were divided on the acquisition of Texas. On the defeat of the treaty, Mr. Tyler sent a message to the two houses, asking that Texas be annexed by joint resolution, which question was debated to the end of the session, and in which Mr. Adams bore a conspicuous part. In this condition of affairs, a presidential election pending, Mr. Van Buren, the prominent candidate for democratic nomination, wrote a sensible letter agair st the acquisition of Texas; and Polk was nominated in his stead. The democratic cry of the campaign was: "Polk, Texas, and the tariff of 1842,"-passed by the whigs. Mr. Clay made a speech at Raleigh, wrote a letter against Texas, and was nominated by the whigs. He wrote two more letters on Texas during the canvass, and was beaten. Mr. Adams cordially supported Mr. Clay, as did some of the few pronounced anti-slavery whigs. On the re-assembling of the House, a

close canvass showed a majority of thirty against the annexation scheme Mr. Adams had no confidence in the opposition of any democrat. On the final vote in the House, February 28, 1845, the Senate annexation bill passed by a vote of one hundred and thirty-two to seventy-six. A cannon on the west terrace of the capital announced the victory to the city, which answered with bonfires and revelry. That was the darkest hour ever seen on the western continent for the cause of freedom and justice. The recoil against slavery threw many strong men from the democracy into the ranks of its enemies, among them John P. Hall, Preston King, and Brinkerhoof. Finally, Congress rejected the "Atherton gag "-the twenty-first rule was rescinded. Against this Mr. Adams had steadily fought since its adoption. Steadily the majority for it diminished. In 1842 it was but four; in 1843 it was three; in 1844, the battle over it raged for weeks, with doubtful result. At the next attempt Mr. Adams' motion to rescind was not laid on the table, by a vote of yeas eighty-one, and one hundred and four nays. On the final vote his motion prevailed by one hundred and eight to eighty. It was a victory—a great victory, but how barren. The next petitions for the abolition of slavery, were referred to the committee on the District of Columbia, where they slept as profoundly as in the cavern of the twenty-first rule.

The next battle for the right of petition was over the election of the speaker, mostly after Mr. Adams' departure. If men had a right to petition, they had the right to be heard and decently answered, and coming from the speaker's hand, that depended on the structure of the committees. Mr. Polk announced to the Twenty-ninth Congress, the latest democratic programme: notice to England to terminate the joint occupancy of Oregon, a delivery of the whole, or war. The whigs were supine. To Mr. Adams and the small band now by his side was it left to make head against it. The Senate resolution of notice to England came up in the Senate, February 5, 1846. Mr. Giddings took the floor, and declared that a war with England would add Canada as well as Oregon to the free north. War with England meant emancipation. The black regiments of the British West Indies would land on the helpless southern shores, and slave insurrection ana rapine follow. Mr. Adams followed in a speech equal to his old efforts, though now enfeebled. He put forth his old doctrine-that under the war power, as a means of war, aggressive or defensive, slavery could be abolished. This he announced as early as 1835; and he had brought it forward once or twice since. On this occasion he declared himself in favor of holding the whole of Oregon. The south recoiled with horror. Not long after, Great Britain offered the forty-ninth parallel, and Mr. Polk made haste to accept it.

General Taylor was sent to take possession of Texas, passed into Mexico, found General Ampudia and a Mexican army, and fought the battles of the 8th and 9th of May. Then followed the whole miserable war, lasting beyond Mr. Adams, who, as counsellor and adviser, still kept his place at the head,

though he now seldom mingled in debate. His last speech was made in March, 1847. It was in reference to his old clients, the negroes of the Amistad, who had gone home. Mr. Giddings detected in an appropriation bill-smuggled in by a Senate amendment—an item of fifty thousand dollars, to pay Montez and Ruaz for the men whom the supreme court had decided were not slaves, which rider he assailed on the floor of the House. It aroused Mr. Adams to his old battle fury-the trumpet call to the old knight in armor, and he flashed out with all his wonted vigor and wrath. Members left their seats, reporters dropped their pens, and all gathered round him. When he closed, the Senate amendment was rejected by the House unanimously. It was the last speech of the "old man eloquent." He was to linger for yet nearly a year, with impaired strength.

Fierce hater, warrior, and hard hitter though he was, and ever in strife, yet intensely sincere and of immaculate purity of character and conduct, it is not to be supposed that his better qualities were not recognized in all these years, even by his enemies; none of whom, as it would seem, but profoundly respected while they hated him. In time this respect, in view of his long life and eminent service, came to be a reverence, which unconsciously manifested itself in various striking ways. On one memorable occasion he was enabled by his position, and the possession of qualities which marked him as a leader and a ruler of men, to perform an eminent service to the House itself, and to the country at large. It was an emergency in which overruling devotion to party had involved the House while an inorganic body, and so, in parliamentary language, not a House—in a chaotic condition, from which no opening was apparent, and the country was greatly alarmed by it. Men whose memories cover forty-three years of political history can vividly recall the New Jersey contested election case. The democratic power was waning and that of the whigs increasing. The parties had nearly reached a point of equilibrium in the House, and a few votes passed from one party to the other would change the majority. The Constitution and statutes were silent as to the method of organizing the House on the convocation of a new Congress. The usage was to leave the matter largely in the hands of the clerk of the last House; who was for all purposes out of office, and had no real power in the premises. He made up the list of members-elect, and called the roll. Members whose terms held over took upon themselves the power and duty of organizing the House. It had also been a rule to recognize such claimants to seats, and such alone as came authenticated by the authorities of the state they claimed to represent. This was a prima facie title, resting on more than usage. The Congressional election in New Jersey for 1838 was by general ticket. It was close. Both parties claimed the victory; the state government was in the hands of the whigs, and they gave the certificate and seal of election to the whig claimThe democrats made such inferior showing as they could secure, and

ants.