Slave Power. With no expectation of victory,—indeed, with the certainty of defeat, more than two hundred and ninety thousand men cast their votes for a principle. Though this new party of freedom secured no electoral vote, and but five members of Congress, "its success," in the language of Edmund Quincy," was unprecedented, taking into consideration its brief existence and formidable foes."

CHAPTER XIV.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
CHASE.

SALMON P.

Death of Mr. Adams. His earnest advocacy of the right of petition. - Change of views concerning Abolitionism. - Democratic defeat in the State of New York. Radical utterances of Mr. Seward. His election to the United States Senate. Ohio early in the antislavery ranks. - Prominent part taken by Mr. Chase. Friends of freedom hold the balance of power in the new legislature.-Adroit management. - Repeal of "black laws."- Election of Mr. Chase to United States Senate.

On the 21st of February, 1848, John Quincy Adams was stricken with apoplexy in his seat in the House of Representatives. He was borne to the Speaker's room, where, two days afterward, the aged statesman died. It was, in his own touching words, his "last of earth," a striking but fitting close of a long and illustrious career. Indeed, had it been left for him to choose the mode of his departure, he could hardly have chosen a death in richer harmony with his life. On the very spot of his grandest triumphs, under the roof that had so often resounded with his ringing words, " the old man eloquent" passed away.

Though Mr. Adams was distinguished above all others in his earnest, persistent, and finally triumphant vindication of the right of petition and freedom of speech, he was not, at least until near the close of life, in hearty accord with Abolitionists, with whom he never affiliated, from whom he often received severe criticisms and censures, and to whom he sometimes applied words indicating little confidence in their plans, if in their purposes, of action. Yet he was a trusted leader in their great fight for freedom of speech, while it was his voice that first enunciated the doctrine-novel to all, and greatly distasteful to slaveholders of the right of the gov ernment, under the war power, to emancipate the slaves; the

very right on which President Lincoln based the Proclamation of Emancipation.

As, however, he drew near the close of life, his views, changed. If his abhorrence of slavery did not increase, his anxiety for the future of his country deepened, and he became more and more cognizant of the machinations of those who seemed determined either to make the government entirely subservient to the behests of the Slave Power or to destroy it. His long participation in public affairs, his intimate relations with public men, his protracted observation of statesmen and their measures, his consummate knowledge of the schemings and the indirect purposes of too many, who, with fair professions, sought merely to promote their own personal and partisan ends, protected him from what deceived others, and prepared him to interpret both the utterances and the silences of those who spoke as loudly and as intelligibly in his car by the latter as by the former. John Minor Botts, in his history of the rise, progress, and disastrous failure of the great Rebellion, states that the policy and avowed purposes of Mr. Calhoun converted him, and that the open and brazen avowals that the acquisition of Texas was mainly sought to extend and perpetuate slavery made Mr. Adams an Abolitionist. Mr. Botts gives the substance of an interview, after he had expressed sentiments he had not been understood to entertain. "Upon the adjournment of the House," he said, "we walked down together, and I took occasion to refer to his remarks, which I do not now precisely recollect, and said that I thought he did not intend to say all that his language could imply. Yes,' he replied, 'I said it deliberately and purposely.' But,' said I, Mr. Adams, you are not an Abolitionist.' Yes, I am,' said he. I never have been one until now; but when I see the Constitution of my country struck down by the South for such purposes as are openly avowed, no alternative is left me. I must oppose them with all the means within my reach. I must fight the Devil with his own fire; and, to do this effectually, I am obliged to co-operate with the Abolition party, who have been hateful to me heretofore. If the South had consulted her true interest, and fol

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lowed your counsel on the Twenty-first Rule and on the Texa question, their institutions would never have been endangered by the North; but, if matters are to take the shape foreshadowed by Mr. Calhoun and others of the Democratic party, then no one can foretell what may be the consequences.'

Nor did Mr. Adams express his convictions in equivocal and mealy words. In August, 1847, he wrote to Governor Slade of Vermont that the existence of slavery was "a moral pestilence" which "preyed on the human race"; that it was "the great evil now suffered by the race of men,—an evil to be extinguished by the will of man himself and by the operations of that will." He declared his belief, that, "if the will of the free portion of this North American people could be organized for action, the people of the whole American Union would ipso facto become free." He avowed himself in favor of an improvement in "the popular education," which, he said, "shall administer to the soul of every male child born within the free portion of these States the principle of that oath which it is said the Carthaginian Hamilcar administered to his son Hannibal with reference to Rome, - eternal, inextinguishable hatred, not to Rome, nor any existing nation, but to slavery throughout the earth."

"The revolution," he said, "to be effected in the North American confederacy, preliminary to the abolition of slavery throughout the earth, is in the will of the portion of the American people already free. They now suffer themselves to be told that slavery is nothing to them, and they sleep in bonds. of voluntary servitude. How long they will so sleep it will be of no use for me to inquire. The day of their awakening is reserved for a future age."

Mr. Adams had witnessed for fifteen years the continued aggressions of the Slave Power and its continued successes. No wonder, then, that the venerable statesman looked not to the immediate future, but to a coming age, for that awakening of the people which was to precede and procure that breaking of those "bonds of voluntary servitude" he so much deplored, and of whose speedy rupture he was so hopeless. Indeed, his very hopelessness revealed a deeper insight into the na

ture, workings, and tenacity of the system than did the more positive and confident utterances and anticipations of those who criticised him for his lack of zeal and want of co-operation. There can be little doubt as to his position, had he lived to see the struggle which at once witnessed and attested that awakening, and which resulted in the destruction of what he so thoroughly deprecated and so evidently understood.

But even while the golden radiance of the great man's departure lingered in the horizon, there was heralded the rising of two ascending luminaries, who were destined to shine in the political firmament with great and signal, if not with the same effulgence,men who not only trod worthily in the footsteps in which he had walked, but who did not hesitate to go farther in the same path in which he had led the way, to take up and proclaim a more perfect evangel, of which his had been but the forerunner. Just one year from the disappearance of Mr. Adams from the theatre on which he had borne so prominent and important a part were elected to the Senate of the United States William H. Seward of New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Both were deeply inspired by the spirit of freedom, and had labored earnestly in its behalf. Both were men of large capacity, superior culture, laudable ambition, and tireless industry; and their entrance upon this new and broader sphere of action was welcomed by the antislavery men of the nation with high and exciting hopes that they would prove worthy champions of a noble cause. Nor were these hopes doomed to disappointment.

In the election of 1848, the Democratic party of New York had been riven in twain and completely routed. The Whigs had elected all but one of its thirty-four members of Congress. They had secured four fifths of the legislature, and Hamilton Fish had been elected governor by a plurality of one hundred thousand. Mr. Seward had done much to retain the antislavery Whigs of that and other Northern States, notwithstanding the rejection of the Wilmot proviso by the national convention. During the presidential canvass he said little of platforms or candidates, but spoke with signal ability in behalf of the Union, equal rights, the diffusion of knowledge, the development of the country, and the abolition of slavery.