Page images
PDF
EPUB

to use artificial assistance to steady it for writing; his voice was high, shrill, liable to break, piercing enough to make itself heard, but not agreeable. This hardly seems the picture of an orator; nor was it to any charm of elocution that he owed his influence, but rather to the fact that men soon learned that what he said was always worth hearing. When he entered Congress he had been for much more than a third of a century zealously gathering knowledge in public affairs, and during his career in that body every year swelled the already vast accumulation. Moreover, listeners were always sure to get a bold and an honest utterance and often pretty keen words from him, and he never spoke to an inattentive audience or to a thin house. Whether pleased or incensed by what he said, the Representatives at least always listened to it. He was by nature a hard fighter, and by the circumstances of his course in Congress this quality was stimulated to such a degree that parliamentary history does not show his equal as a gladiator. His power of invective was extraordinary, and he was untiring and merciless in his use of it. Theoretically he disapproved of sarcasm, but practically he could not refrain from it. Men winced and cowered before his milder attacks, became sometimes dumb, sometimes furious with mad rage before his fiercer assaults. Such struggles evidently gave him pleasure, and there was scarce a back in Congress that did not at one time or another feel the score of his cutting lash; though it was the Southerners and the Northern allies of Southerners whom chiefly he singled out for torture. He was irritable and quick to wrath; he himself constantly speaks of the infirmity of his temper, and in his many conflicts his principal concern was to keep it in control. His enemies often referred to it and twitted him with it. Of alliances he was careless, and friendships he had almost none. But in the creation of enmities he was terribly successful. Not so much at first, but increasingly as years went on, a state of ceaseless, vigilant hostility became his normal condition. From the time when he fairly entered upon the long struggle against slavery, he enjoyed few peaceful days in the House. But he seemed to thrive upon the warfare, and to be never so well pleased as when he was bandying hot words with slave-holders and the Northern supporters of slave-holders. When the air of the House was thick with crimination and abuse he seemed to suck in fresh vigor and spirit from the hate-laden atmosphere. When invective fell around him in showers, he screamed back his retaliation with untiring rapidity and marvellous dexterity of aim. No odds could appall him. With his back set firm against a solid moral principle, it was his joy to strike out at a multitude of foes. They lost their heads as well as their tempers, but in the extremest moments of excitement and anger Mr. Adams's brain seemed to work with machine-like coolness and accuracy. With flushed face, streaming eyes, animated gesticulation, and cracking voice, he always retained perfect mastery of all his intellectual faculties. He thus became a terrible antagonist, whom all feared, yet fearing could not refrain from attacking, so bitterly and incessantly did he choose to exert his wonderful power of exasperation. Few men could throw an opponent into wild blind fury with such speed and certainty as he could; and he does not conceal the malicious gratification which such feats brought to him. A leader

of such fighting capacity, so courageous, with such a magazine of experience and information, and with a character so irreproachable, could have won brilliant victories in public life at the head of even a small band of devoted followers. But Mr. Adams never had and apparently never wanted followers. Other prominent public men were brought not only into collision but into comparison with their contemporaries. But Mr. Adams's individuality was so strong that he can be compared with no one. It was not an individuality of genius nor to any remarkable extent of mental qualities; but rather an individuality of character. To this fact is probably to be attributed his peculiar solitariness. Men touch each other for purposes of attachment through their characters much more than through their minds. But few men, even in agreeing with Mr. Adams, felt themselves in sympathy with him. Occasionally conscience, or invincible logic, or even policy and selfinterest, might compel one or another politician to stand beside him in debate or in voting; but no current of fellow-feeling ever passed between such temporary comrades and him. It was the cold connection of duty or of business. The first instinct of nearly every one was opposition towards him; coalition might be forced by circumstances but never came by volition. For the purpose of winning immediate successes this was of course a most unfortunate condition of relationships. Yet it had some compensations: it left such influence as Mr. Adams could exert by steadfastness and argument entirely unweakened by suspicion of hidden motives or personal ends. He had the weight and enjoyed the respect which a sincerity beyond distrust must always command in the long run.

Robert Kelley Weeks.

BORN in New York, N. Y., 1840. DIED in New York, N. Y., 1876.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

[A Popular History of the United States. 1876.]

10 the thoughtful student of history several things seem necessary to the perpetuity and complete success of American institutions. The first of these is the prevalence of the idea of National Unity. Of this spake Wash

ington in his Farewell Address, warning his countrymen in solemn words to preserve and defend that government which constituted them one people. Of this wrote Hamilton and Adams. For this pleaded Webster in his great orations. Upon this the far-seeing statesmen of the present day, rising above the strifes of party and the turmoils of war, plant themselves as the one thing vital in American politics. The idea that the United States are one Nation, and not thirty-eight nations, is the grand cardinal doctrine of a sound political faith. State pride and sectional attachment are natural passions in the human breast, and are so near akin to patriotism as to be distinguished from it only in the court of a higher reason. But there is a nobler love of country —a patriotism that rises above all places and sections, that knows no County, no State, no North, no South, but only native land; that claims no mountain slope; that clings to no river bank; that worships no range of hills; but lifts the aspiring eye to a continent redeemed from barbarism by common sacrifices and made sacred by the shedding of kindred blood. Such a patriotism is the cable and sheet-anchor of our hope.

A second requisite for the preservation of American institutions is the Universal Secular Education of the People. Monarchies govern their subjects by authority and precedent; republics by right reason and free will. Whether one method or the other will be better, turns wholly upon the intelligence of the governed. If the subject have not the knowledge and discipline necessary to govern himself, it is better that a king, in whom some skill in the science of government is presupposed, should rule him. As between two stupendous evils, the rational tyranny of the intelligent few is preferable to the furious and irrational tyranny of the ignorant many. No force which has moved among men, impelling to bad action, inspiring to crime, overturning order, tearing away the bulwarks of liberty and right, and converting civilization into a waste, has been so full of evil and so powerful to destroy as a blind, ignorant, and factious democracy. A republic without intelligence—even a high degree of intelligence-is a paradox and an impossibility. What means that principle of the Declaration of Independence which declares the consent of the governed to be the true foundation of all just authority? What kind of "consent" is referred to? Manifestly not the passive and unresisting acquiescence of the mind which, like the potter's clay, receives whatever is impressed upon it; but that active, thinking, resolute, conscious, personal consent which distinguishes the true freeman from the puppet. When the people of the United States rise to the heights of this noble and intelligent self-assertion, the occupation of the party leader-most despicable of all tyrants-will be gone forever; and in order that the people may ascend to that high plane, the means by which intelligence is fostered, right reason exalted, and a calm and rational public opinion produced, must be universally secured. The public Free School is the fountain whose streams shall make glad all the lands of liberty. We must educate or perish.

A third thing necessary to the perpetuity of American liberties is Toleration-toleration in the broadest and most glorious sense. In the colonial times intolerance embittered the lives of our fathers. Until the present day the baleful shadow has been upon the land. The proscriptive vices of the

Middle Age have flowed down with the blood of the race and tainted the life that now is, with a suspicion and distrust of freedom. Liberty in the minds of men has meant the privilege of agreeing with the majority. Men have desired free thought, but fear has stood at the door. It remains for the United States to build a highway, broad and free, into every field of liberal inquiry, and to make the poorest of men who walks therein more secure in life and reputation than the soldier who sleeps behind the rampart. Proscription has no part nor lot in the American system. The stake, the gibbet, and the rack, thumb-screws, sword, and pillory, have no place on this side of the sea. Nature is diversified; so are human faculties, beliefs, and practices. Essential freedom is the right to differ; and that right must be sacredly respected. Nor must the privilege of dissent be conceded with coldness and disdain, but openly, cordially, and with good will. No loss of rank, abatement of character, or ostracism from society must darken the pathway of the humblest of the seekers after truth. The right of free thought, free inquiry, and free speech, is as clear as the noonday and bounteous as the air and ocean. Without a full and cheerful recognition of this right, America is only a name, her glory a dream, her institutions a mockery.

The fourth idea, essential to the welfare and stability of the Republic, is the Nobility of Labor. It is the mission of the United States to ennoble toil and honor the toiler. In other lands to labor has been considered the lot of serfs and peasants; to gather the fruits and consume them in luxury and war, the business of the great. Since the mediæval times European society has been organized on the basis of a nobility and a people. To be a nobleman was to be distinguished from the people; to be one of the people was to be forever debarred from nobility. Thus has been set on human industry the stigma of perpetual disgrace. Something of this has been transmitted to the new civilization in the West-a certain disposition to renew the old order of lord and laborer. Let the odious distinction perish: the true lord is the laborer and the true laborer the lord. It is the genius of American institutions, in the fulness of time, to wipe the last opprobrious stain from the brow of toil and to crown the toiler with the dignity, lustre, and honor of a full and perfect manhood.

HE

Rossiter Johnson.

BORN in Rochester, N. Y., 1840.

LAURENCE.

[Idler and Poet. 1883.]

came in the glory of summer; in the terror of summer he went:

Like a blossom the breezes have wafted; like a bough that the tempest has rent. His blue eyes unclosed in the morning, his brown eyes were darkened at morn, And the durance of pain could not banish the beauty wherewith he was born.

« PreviousContinue »