had become cold, dark, and cheerless. Of the members who remained, to prevent the public business from dying for want of a quorum, most, but himself, were sinking from exhaustion, although they had probably taken their meals at the usual hours, in the course of the day. After the adjournment, I went up to his seat, to join company with him homeward; and, as I knew he came to the house at eight o'clock in the morning, and it was then past midnight, I expressed a hope that he had taken some refreshment in the course of the day. He said he had not left his seat, but, holding up a bit of hard bread in his fingers, gave me to understand in what way he had sustained

nature.

Such was his course in the House of Representatives, up to the year 1835, during which I was the daily witness of it, as an humble associate member. Had he retired from Congress at that time, it would have been, perhaps, rather with a reputation brought to the house, than achieved on the floor; a reputation "enough to fill the ambition of a common man," nay, of a very uncommon one; but it would probably have been thought that, surpassing most others, he had hardly equalled himself. But from this time forward, for ten years, (1835-1845,) he assumed a position in a great degree new, and put forth a wonderful increase of energy and power. Some of the former questions, which had long occupied Congress, had

been, at least for the time, disposed of, and new ones came up, which roused Mr. Adams to a higher action of his faculties than he had yet displayed. He was now sixty-eight years of age,-a time of life, I need not say, at which, in most cases, the firmest frame gives way, and the most ardent temper cools; but the spirit of Mr. Adams,-bold and indomitable as his whole life showed it to be,-blazed forth, from this time forward, for ten years, with a fervor and strength which astonished his friends, and stands, as I think, almost, if not quite, without a parallel. I do not forget the limits prescribed to me by the circumstances under which I speak; but no one, capable of estimating the noblest traits of character, can wish me to slur over this period of Mr. Adams's life; no one, but must be touched with the spectacle which, day after day, and month after month, and session after session, was exhibited by him, to whom had now been accorded, by universal consent, the title of the "old man eloquent;"-and far more deserving of it he was, than the somewhat frigid rhetorician on whom it was originally bestowed. There he sat, the deepest-stricken in years, but, of the whole body, the individual most capable of physical endurance and intellectual effort; his bare head erect, while younger men drooped; "his peremptory, eagle-sighted eye" unquenched, both by day and by night:

intrepidus vultu, meruitque timeri

Non metuens.

It is unnecessary to state that the new questions, to which I refer, were those connected with slavery. On no great question, perhaps, has the progress of public opinion been more decided, both in Europe and America, than on this subject. It is but a little more than a century since England eagerly stipulated with Spain for the right to supply the Spanish colonies with slaves from Africa; and the carrying trade, from the same ill-fated coasts to our own Southern States, then colonies, was conducted by the merchants and navigators of our own New England. Within the present generation, we have seen the slave trade denounced as a capital felony in both countries. I am not aware that any discussion of this subject, of a nature powerfully to affect the public mind, took place in Congress, till full thirty years after the adoption of the constitution. It then arose on occasion of the admission of the State of Missouri into the Union, and on the proposition to incorporate into the constitution of that State the principle of the immortal ordinance of 1787, for the organization of the territory northwest of the Ohio, viz., "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall be duly convicted." Mr. Adams was in the department of state at the time of the admission of Missouri, and was not called upon to take any part in the discussion.

The general agitation of the subject in the commu

nity at large dates from a still more recent period, commencing about the time of Mr. Adams's accession to the presidency. It was animated, no doubt, by the movement which took place about the same time in Great Britain, and which, in the course of a few years, resulted in that most illustrious act of Christian benevolence, by which, in a single day, eight hundred thousand fellow-beings passed from a state of bondage to one of unconditional freedom, and that without a cry or a gesture that threatened the public peace.

The public opinion of the United States, sympathizing as it must at all times with that of the other great branches of the human family, was deeply interested in the progress of these discussions abroad, and received a powerful impulse from their result. With the organized agitation, in the free States, of the questions connected with slavery, Mr. Adams did not, as a citizen I believe, intimately connect himself. Toward their introduction into Congress, as subjects of free discussion, he contributed more than any other man; than all others united. He approached the subject, however, with a caution inspired by a profound sense of its difficulty and delicacy. I know it to have been his opinion, as late as 1828, that, for the presidency and vice-presidency, the candidates ought to be selected from the two great sections of the country. His first act as a member of Congress, in 1831, was to present the memorial of

the "Friends," of Philadelphia, praying, among other things, for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; but, while he paid the highest tribute to the motives of the petitioners, he avowed himself not prepared to grant the prayer of the memorial. But whether it was that his own opinions and feelings had shared the movement of the general mind of the age on this subject; or that he perceived, in the course of a few years, that the time had come when it must be met and discussed in all its aspects; certain it is that, from the time the right of petition was drawn distinctly in question, Mr. Adams placed himself boldly on that ground, and, from that time forward, stood firmly at his post, as the acknowledged congressional leader. No labor was too great, no attention too minute, to be bestowed by him in receiving and presenting the petitions which were poured into his hands. from every part of the country. No strength or violence of opposition, or menaces of danger, deterred him from the office he had assumed; and every attempt to dishearten and silence him but established, the more firmly, the moral ascendency which he had acquired in the house. His warmest opponents, while they condemned his policy, admitted his sincerity, admired his courage, and owned his power. His rising to address the house became the signal for mute and respectful attention; the distant clustered round his seat; the listless and the idle gave heed,