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JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

SIXTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

ANCESTRY.

HE name of John Quincy Adams is an inspiration to those who are in sympathy with the great men and deeds of the great ages of mankind. He was the product of an ancestry and period, both of which put their forces into him in strong measure. He was born in stirring times, when men were earnestly considering the rights of man and conscience, and were profoundly moved by the questions of duty and life.

John Quincy Adams was born July 11, 1767, in Braintree, Massachusetts, now Quincy, ten miles from Boston, when his father John Adams, second president of the United States, his neighbors, and the thinking men of the American colonies, were agitating the question of British oppressions and American rights. The Adamses were a vigorous race, solid and hardy in mind and body. They were of the genuine Puritan stock, strong-thinking, muscular, resolute, independent. They were descended from the hardy middle class of English society, which in those times craved better fortune and a freer life than were open to them in England. In this new country they rose gradually to better and better conditions. More of them sought education, and were sought for places of public trust. Henry Adams was the first of the family in this country, who fled from religious persecution in Devonshire, England, soon after the

Mayflower landed her freight of pilgrims. Then Joseph, and Joseph his son, and deacon John Adams and his son John and John Quincy, furnish the succession. Through the whole line they were noted for "piety, humility, simplicity, prudence, patience, temperance, frugality, industry and perseverance," the virtues that make genuine men.

The mother of John Quincy Adams was Abigail Smith, aaughter of Rev. William Smith, who had descended from the Quincys. He received his name Quincy from his great-grandfather, on his mother's side. In a letter he once wrote, he said: "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 the time, has connected with that portion of my name, a charm of mingled sensibility and devotion. 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."

John Quincy was a gentleman of wealth, education and influence. He held many places of public trust and honor. Exemplary in private life, and earnest in piety, he enjoyed the public confidence through a civil career of forty years duration. Josiah Quincy, a gentleman of great attainments, who has lately passed away, wrote an excellent biography of John Quincy Adams. The blood and the name of the Adamses and Quincys were thus mingled in him.

Abigail Adams, his mother, was a woman of great personal ability and worth. Scarcely a woman of her time was her superior. Her letters constitute an interesting feature of the literature of her time, and show how, with less opportunity than the men of their time, the women nobly did their part in laying the foundations of American society.

THE TIME.

Times, as well as ancestors, have to do in the make-up of
In 1761 there arose, in the Supreme Court of Massa-

men.

chusetts, a question as to the constitutionality of the laws by which England was systematically taxing her colonies. The cause was argued for the king by the attorney-general, and, against the laws, by James Otis. The question involved was the very one which at last was settled by an appeal to arms. John Adams, then a young lawyer, was present. He recorded his opinion of Otis and the question at issue in these emphatic statements: "Otis was a flame of fire! With a promptitude of classical allusion, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. American independence, was then and there born. Every man of an unusually-crowded audience, appeared to me, to go away ready to take up arms against writs of assistance." On another occasion he said: "James Otis then and there breathed into this nation the breath of life." This was six years before John Quincy Adams was born.

In 1765 the British Parliament passed the Stamp act, which made all transactions in the colonies illegal not recorded on stamped paper, which stamps must be bought of the crown. James Otis and John Adams argued against the constitutionality of the law before the governor and council of Massachusetts. This was two years before the birth of John Quincy Adams.

John Adams was so wrought upon by these things that he wrote a dissertation on the canon and feudal laws, which showed the democratic spirit then active in him, and his ideas of the rights of the people.

The colonies were so aroused by the Stamp act that it was repealed in 1766, one year before the birth of the younger Adams. In the year in which he was born, 1767, a law was passed taxing glass, paper, paints and tea. This roused the spirit of opposition to British oppression still more. John Adams was one of the leaders in that opposition in Boston, and his wife was joined with him in his stout determination to stand for the rights of the colonies. Of such parents and in such times was John Quincy Adams born.

The next year Boston held a meeting to instruct the Provincial Legislature to oppose the British usurpations, and John Adams was on the committee to prepare the instructions, with Richard Dana and Joseph Warren-the same Warren who fell on Bunker Hill, seven years later. On the fifth of March, 1770, a collision occurred between British soldiers and some citizens of Boston, in which five citizens were killed and many wounded, which was called "Bloody Massacre." The excitement grew more and more intense every year, and the Adams family was in the heat of it.

In December, 1773, the tea was destroyed in Boston harbor, and the harbor closed soon after. On September 5, 1774, the first American Congress met in Philadelphia, with John Adams as a member. In 1775, at his suggestion, George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the American army, and on June 17 the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, with Mrs. Adams and her children looking from the summit of Penn's Hill, not far from their home, at the burning of Charlestown, and hearing the distant roar of battle. The mother and children entered into the life of the times just as did Mr. Adams himself. During the siege of Boston, which followed right on, Mrs. Adams kept her house open to the soldiers in their needs, and often gave them food, shelter and sympathy. Her letters to him abound with descriptions of the fearful times, the sleepless nights and anxious days they were passing through, and the scenes in which she and her family had a part. The life, spirit and grandeur of those "times which tried men's souls" were felt by the Adamses as forcibly as by any who then lived. And it was in the midst of those times that John Quincy Adams came into being, charged with the life of the mighty period; and its scenes, deeds and forces were among his first teachers. It can not be otherwise than that he was made in part by these things. His soul was of his times-a product of the American revolution.

HIS BOYHOOD.

Usually boys are boys the world over; but John Quincy Adams was an exception. Edward Everett Hale said of him:

"There seemed to be in his life no such stage as boyhood." When about nine years old he wrote to his father in Congress this letter:

BRAINTREE, June 2, 1777.

DEAR SIR,-I love to receive letters very well, much better than I love to write them. I make a poor figure at composition. My head is much too fickle. My thoughts are running after bird's eggs, play and trifles, till I get vexed with myself. Mamma has a troublesome task to keep me a studying. I own I am ashamed of myself. I have just entered the third volume of Rollin's History, but designed to have got half through it by this time. I am determined to be more diligent. Mr. Thaxter is absent at court. I have set myself a stint this week, to read the third volume half out. If I can but keep my resolution, I may again, at the end of the week, give a better account of myself. I wish, sir, you would give me, in writing, some instructions with regard to the use of my time, and advise me how to proportion my studies and play, and I will keep them by me and endeavor to follow them. With the present determination of growing better, I am, dear sir, your son, JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

P. S.-Sir, if you will please be so good as to favor me with a blank book, I will transcribe the most remarkable passages I meet with in my reading, which will serve to fix them upon my mind.

Very little of the boy in that. The first sentence or two is a little boy-like. The reference to the bird's eggs and play indicate that the boy was in him, but suppressed, and he was bound to crush him out. A nine-year-old reading Rollin's History and transcribing the most remarkable passages to fix them in his mind!

February 13, 1778, John Adams started on a mission to France to which he had been appointed by Congress. He took his son, then not quite eleven, with him. In a note he sent to his wife just as they were to enter the frigate to depart, he said: "Johnny sends his duty to his mamma, and his love to his sisters and brothers. He behaves like a man."

"He behaves like a man!" Glad was the father no doubt to write that; but it indicates that the man was already getting the mastery of the boy, that the training he was receiving from his parents and the times was rapidly developing the man.

He learned the rudiments of an education in the village school of Braintree. In after life he often playfully boasted

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