Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams by William H. Seward (easy books to read txt) 📕

by pre-eminence in station, and power, and influence among men, to fame; see the end of human distinctions and earthly greatness! Surely man walketh in a vain show; surely man in his best estate is altogether vanity. How pertinent to this scene the words of Job: 'He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty. He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged. He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death!' How, indeed, is the mighty fallen, and the head of the wise laid low! All flesh is grass - all the glory of man as the flower of the field. And shall this vast congregation soon be brought to the grave - that house appointed for all the living? Hear, then, the great announcement of the Son of God: 'I am the resurrection and the life, and whosoever believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.' Is it strange that he who communed so much with the future as the great statesman to whose virtues and memory we now pay this sad, final, solemn tribute of honor and affection, should, in the last conversation I ever had with him, have expressed both regret and astonishment at the indifference among too many of our public men to the truths and ordinances of our holy religion? Is it to affect our hearts that he has been permitted to fall in the midst of us, to arouse us from this insensibility, and cause us to press towards the gates of the eternal city of God? Let us bless God for another great example to shine upon us, that another star (we humbly trust) is planted amid the heavenly constellations to guide us to eternity!"

At the conclusion of the exercises in the capitol, a vast procession, escorted by military companies, conveyed the remains to the Congressional burying ground, where they were to rest until preparations for their removal to Quincy should be completed.

"Sad was the pomp that yesterday beheld,
As with the mourner's heart the anthem swelled;
The rich-plumed canopy, the gorgeous pall,
The sacred march, and sable vested wall! -
These were not rites of inexpressive show,
But hallowed as the types of real woe!
Illustrious deceased! a NATION'S sighs,
A NATION'S HEART, went with thine obsequies!"

The following letter of thanks from Mrs. Adams, addressed to the Speaker, was laid before the House of Representatives: -

"Washington, February 29, 1848. "SIR: The resolutions in honor of my dear deceased husband, passed by the illustrious assembly over which you preside, and of which he at the moment of his death was a member, have been duly communicated to me.

"Penetrated with grief at this distressing event of my life, mourning the loss of one who has been at once my example and my support through the trials of half a century, permit me nevertheless to express through you my deepest gratitude for the signal manner in which the public regard has been voluntarily manifested by your honorable body, and the consolation derived to me and mine from the reflection that the unwearied efforts of an old public servant have not even in this world proved without their reward in the generous appreciation of them by his country.

"With great respect, I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
"LOUISA CATHARINE ADAMS."

On the following week, the Committee of one from each State and Territory in the Union, appointed by the House of Representatives to take charge of the remains of the deceased ex-President, and convey them to Quincy for final interment, commenced their journey. It was a new, yet inexpressibly thrilling and imposing spectacle. The dead body of "the Old Man Eloquent," surrounded and guarded by a son of each of the States and Territories of that Union which he had so largely assisted in consolidating and sustaining, leaves the capitol of the nation, where for more than thirty years he had acted the most conspicuous part among the fathers of the land, to rest in the tomb of its ancestors, amid the venerable shades of Quincy. How solemn the progress of such a procession. It was indeed, "the Funeral March of the Dead!" Wherever it passed, the people rose up and paid the utmost marks of respect to the remains of one who had occupied so large a space in the history of his country. In towns, in villages, in cities, as the mournful cortege swept through, business was suspended, flags were displayed at half mast, bells were tolled, minute guns were fired, civil and military processions received the sacred remains, and watched over them by night and by day, and passed them on from State to State.

"What a progress was it which the dead patriot thus made! From the capitol of the nation, beneath whose dome, and while at his post of duty, he was seized by death - within sight almost of that Mount Vernon where repose the ashes of him, the Father of his Country, who first distinguished, encouraged and employed the extraordinary capacity of the youthful Adams - through cities that in his life time have grown up from villages - passing, at Baltimore, almost beneath the shadow of the monument which there testifies of the valor of those who fell for country in the war of 1812 - and in Philadelphia halting and reposing within the hall where his great father; John Adams, had fearlessly stood for Independence, and where Independence was proclaimed - the dead passed on, everywhere followed by the reverential gaze and the mourning heart, till, reaching the great metropolis of New York, where the same father had been sworn in and taken his seat, as the first Vice President of the United States, with George Washington for President! Thence away the march was resumed, till it reached old Faneuil Hall - the cradle of American liberty, the fitting final restingplace, while yet unburied, of the body of one in whose heart, at no moment of life, did the love of liberty, imbibed or strengthened in that hall, suffer the slightest abatement." [Footnote: King's Eulogy.]

Faneuil Hall was clothed in the dark drapery of mourning, fitting to receive the body of one of the greatest of the many noble sons of the venerable Bay State. Amid solemn dirges and appropriate ceremonies, the chairman of the Congressional Committee surrendered to a Committee from the Legislature of Massachusetts, the sacred remains they had accompanied from the capitol of the United States. -

"Throughout the journey," said the chairman, "there have been displayed manifestations of the highest admiration and respect for the memory of your late distinguished fellow-citizen. In the large cities through which we expected to pass, we anticipated such demonstrations; but in every village and hamlet, at the humblest cottage which we passed, and from the laborers in the field, the same profound respect was testified by their uncovered heads."

The Committee of the Massachusetts Legislature having thus received the body from its Congressional escort, in turn surrendered it to the keeping of the municipal authorities of Boston, for burial at Quincy. This ceremony was performed by Mr. Buckingham, chairman of the Legislative Committee, in these impressive words: -

"In the name and behalf of the Government and People of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, whose honored but humble servant I this day am, I consign to your faithful keeping, Mr. Mayor, the remains of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS - all that was mortal of that venerable man, whose age and whose virtues had rendered him an object of intense interest and admiration to his country and to the world. We place these sacred remains in your possession, to be conveyed to their appointed home - to sleep in the sepulchre and with the dust of his fathers."

Mr. Quincy, the Mayor, in accepting the guardianship conferred upon him in behalf of the city of Boston, replied in the following terms: -

"There is something sublime in the scene that surrounds us. An honored son of Massachusetts - one who was educated by a signer of the Declaration of Independence - one who heard the thunder of the great struggle for liberty on yonder hill, has, after a life of unparalleled usefulness and fidelity, fallen in the capitol of the country he served. His remains were escorted here by delegates from every State in the Union. They have passed over spots ever memorable in history. They have everywhere been received with funeral honors. They have reposed in the hall of independence. They now lie in the cradle of liberty. As a citizen of Massachusetts, I cannot but acknowledge our sense of the honor paid to her distinguished son. Mourned by a nation at its capitol, attended by the representatives of millions to the grave, he has received a tribute to his memory unequalled among men.

"These remains now rest in the cradle of liberty. It is their last resting-place on their journey home. As a statesman's, 'this is to them the last of earth!' To-morrow they will be deposited in the peaceful church-yard of the village of his birth, there to be mourned, not as statesmen mourn for statesmen, but as friends mourn for friends.

"He will be 'gathered to his fathers!' And how great, in this case, is the significance of the expression! It is possible that other men may be attended as he will be to the grave. But when again shall the tomb of a President of the United States open its doors to receive a son who has filled the same office?"

On the following day, the body, under the charge of the municipal officers of Boston, was conveyed to Quincy. In the Unitarian church, in the presence of old neighbors and friends, the last funeral exercises were held, and the last sad burial service was performed.

By the side of the graves of his fathers, overshadowed by aged trees, which had sheltered his head in the days of boyhood, in a plain tomb, prepared under his own direction, and inscribed simply with his name, sleep the ashes of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

"Let no weak drops
Be shed for him. The virgin in her bloom
Cut off, the joyous youth, and darling child,
These are the tombs that claim the tender tear
And elegiac songs. But Adams calls
For other notes of gratulation high;
That now he wanders thro' those endless worlds
He here so well descried; and, wondering, talks
And hymns their Author with his glad compeers.
Columbia's boast! whether with angels thou
Sittest in dread discourse, or fellow blest
Who joy to see the honor of their kind;
Or whether, mounted on cherubic wing,
Thy swift career is with the whirling orbs,
Comparing things with things, in rapture lost,
And grateful adoration for that light