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Revolution, and a black-ribbon cockade. His route led him through New York, New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield, to Boston.

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His reception in Boston was very imposing. A cavalcade of citizens met him on the Neck, and escorted him through the principal streets of the city to rooms sumptuously prepared for his reception in the Exchange Coffee House. Salutes were fired from Dorchester Heights, the Common, and the forts in the harbor. State Street was brilliantly decorated; and the crowd which was gathered in the commercial emporium of New England was greater than had ever been seen there since the visit of Washington.

From Boston, he passed through New Hampshire and Vermont, to Plattsburg in New York, and thence continued his journey to Ogdensburg, Sackett's Harbor, and Detroit, returning to Washington the latter part of September. His long and fatiguing tour, which then occupied four months, could now be easily performed in three weeks.

When President Monroe was a young man of eighteen, he was wounded at the battle of Trenton. Passing through Hanover,

N.H., in this tour, he called upon the widow of President Wheelock of Dartmouth College, who, when a young lady at her father's house, had with her own hands prepared the bandages with which the surgeon had dressed the wound. In pensive memory of the past, the care-worn statesman and the bereaved widow exchanged their sympathetic greetings, and then separated, not again to meet on this earth.

All along his route, President Monroe met his old companions in arms, many of whom were impoverished. One friend he found whom he had known as a young, scholarly, accomplished officer, and who had contributed lavishly of his fortune to feed and clothe the soldiers of his regiment, but whose threadbare garments too plainly bespoke the poverty which had come with his gray hairs. The President was deeply moved, and, on his retiring, spoke with great warmth of the neglect of our country in making provision for the wants of those who had shed their blood for our independ On his return to Washington, he exerted himself in secur ing a pension-law to cheer the declining years of these fastdisappearing veterans.

ence.

In 1821, President Monroe was re-elected, with scarcely any opposition. Out of 232 electoral votes, Mr. Monroe had 231. The slavery question, which subsequently assumed such formidable dimensions, threatening to whelm the whole Union in ruins, now began to make its appearance. The State of Missouri, which had been carved out of that immense territory which we had purchased of France, applied for admission to the Union with a slavery constitution. There were not a few who foresaw the evils impending. In the long and warm debate which ensued, Mr. Lourie of Maryland said,

"Sir, if the alternative be, as gentlemen broadly intimate, a dissolution of the Union, or the extension of slavery over this whole western country, I, for one, will choose the former. I do not say this lightly. I am aware that the idea is a dreadful one. The choice is a dreadful one. Either side of the alternative fills my mind with horror. I have not, however, yet despaired of the Republic."

After the debate of a week, it was decided that Missouri could not be admitted into the Union with slavery. The question was at length settled by a compromise, proposed by Henry Clay. Missouri was admitted with slavery on the 10th of May, 1821; and

slavery was prohibited over all the territory ceded by France, north of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, north latitude.

The famous "Monroe Doctrine," of which so much has recently been said, originated in this way: In the year 1823, it was ru mored that the Holy Alliance was about to interfere, to prevent the establishment of republican liberty in the European colonies in South America. President Monroe wrote to his old friend Thomas Jefferson, then the sage of Monticello, for advice in the emergency. In the reply, under date of Oct. 24, Mr. Jefferson writes upon the supposition that our attempt to resist this European movement might lead to war,

"Its object is to introduce and establish the American system of keeping out of our land all foreign powers; of never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with the affairs of our nation. It is to maintain our own principle, not to depart from it."

A few weeks after this, on the 2d of December, 1823, President Monroe sent a message to Congress, declaring it to be the policy of this Government not to entangle ourselves with the broils of Europe, and not to allow Europe to interfere with affairs of nations on the American continents; and the doctrine was announced, that any attempt on the part of the European powers, "to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere would be regarded by the United States as dangerous to our peace and safety."

On the 4th of March, 1825, Mr. Monroe, surrendering the presidential chair to his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, retired, with the universal respect of the nation, to his private residence at Oak Hill, in Loudon County, Va. His time had been so entirely consecrated to the country, that he had neglected his own pecuniary interests, and was deeply involved in debt.. In devotion to his duties, he had engaged "in labors outlasting the daily circuit of the sun, and outwatching the vigils of the night." The welfare of the country - the whole country-had ever been the one prominent thought in his mind. If we allow the panorama of his life to pass rapidly before us, we see him, just emerging from boyhood, weltering in blood on the field of Trenton; then, still a youth, he is seated among the sages of the land, forming the laws; then he moves with power which commands attention and respect in the courts of Britain, France, and Spain, defending the rights of his country; then his native State raises him to the highest

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honor in her gift, and twice places in his hand the sceptre of gubernatorial power; again we behold him successfully forging the thunderbolts of war with which to repel invasion, while at the same time he conducts our diplomatic correspondence, and frames our foreign policy, with jealous and often hostile nations; and again we see him, by the almost unanimous voice of his countrymen, placed in the highest post of honor the nation could offer,the Presidency of the United States; and then, with dignity, he retires to a humble home, a poor man in worldly wealth, but rich in all those excellences which can ennoble humanity.

For many years, Mrs. Monroe was in such feeble health, that she rarely appeared in public. In 1830, Mr. Monroe took up his residence with his son-in-law in New York, where he died on the 4th of July, 1831, at the age of seventy-three years. The citi zens of New York conducted his obsequies with pageants more imposing than had ever been witnessed there before. Our country will ever cherish his memory with pride, gratefully enrolling his name in the list of its benefactors, pronouncing him the worthy successor of the illustrious men who had preceded him in the presidential chair.

CHAPTER VI.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

Birth and Childhood.-Education in Europe. - Private Secretary.- Enters Harvard College. -Studies Law. -Minister to the Netherlands. - Commendation of Washington.- Other Missions.-Return to America. - Elected to the Massachusetts Senate. To the National House of Representatives.- Alienation of the Federalists. - Professor of Rhetoric. -Mission to Russia.- Anecdote of Alexander. - Treaty of Ghent. - Secretary of State.-President. - Unscrupulous Opposition. - Retirement. - Returned to the House of Representatives. - Signal Services. - Public Appreciation. - Death.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, the sixth President of the United States, was born in the rural home of his honored father, John Adams,

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RESIDENCE OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

in Quincy, Mass., on the 11th of July, 1767.

His mother,

a woman of exalted worth watched over his childhood during the

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