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

half of the people it was thought too feeble to sustain itself, and secure the rights for which governments are instituted among men. By as many it was thought liable to be converted into an over-shadowing despotism, more formidable and more odious than the monarchy which had been subverted. These conflicting opinions revealed themselves in like discordance upon every important question of administration, and were made the basis of parties, which soon became jealous and irreconcilable, and ultimately inveterate, and even in some degree disloyal.

These domestic feuds were aggravated by pernicious influences from Europe. In the progress of western civilization, the nations of the earth had become social. The new Republic could not, like the Celestial Empire, or that of Japan, confine itself within its own boundaries, and exist without national intercourse. It had entered the family of nations. But the position it was to assume, and the advantages it was to be allowed to enjoy, were yet to be ascertained and fixed. Its independence, confessed to be only a doubtful experiment at home, was naturally thought ephemeral in Europe. Its example was ominous, and the European Powers willingly believed that, if discountenanced and baffled, America would soon relapse into colonial subjugation. Such prejudices were founded in the fixed habits of society. Not only the thirteen colonies, but the whole American hemisphere, had been governed by European States from the period of its discovery. The very soil belonged to the trans-atlantic monarchs by discovery, or by ecclesiastical gift. Dominion over it attached by divine right to their persons, and drew after it obligations of inalienable allegiance upon those who became the inhabitants of the new world. The new world was indeed divided between different powers, but the system of government was the same. It was administered for the benefit of the parental State alone. Each power prohibited all foreign trade with its Colonies, and all intercourse between them and other plantations, supplied its Colonies with what they needed from abroad, interdicted their manufactures, and monopolized their trade. The prevalence of this system over the whole continent of America and the adjacent islands prevented all enterprize in the colonies, discouraged all improvement, and retarded their progress to independence.

The American Revolution sundered these bonds only so far as they confined thirteen of the British Colonies, and left the remaining British dominions, and the continent, from Georgia around Cape Horn to the Northern Ocean, under the same thraldom as before. Even the United States had attained only physical independence. The moral influences of the colonial system oppressed them still. Their trade, their laws, their science, their literature, their social connections, their ecclesiastical relations, their manners and their habits, were still colonial; and their thoughts continually clung around the ancient and majestic States of the Eastern Continent.

The American Revolution, so happily concluded here, broke out in France simultaneously with the beginning of Washington's administration. The French nation passed in fifteen years from absolute despotism under Louis XVI., through all the phases of democracy to a military despotism under Napoleon Bonaparte; and retained through all these changes, only two characteristics - unceasing ferocity of faction, and increasing violence of aggression against foreign States. The scandal of the French Revolution fell back upon the United States of America, who were regarded as the first disturbers of the ancient social system. The principal European monarchs combined, under the guidance of England, to arrest the presumptuous career of France and extirpate democracy by the sword. Nevertheless, the republican cause, however odious in Europe, was our national cause. The sympathies of a large portion of the American people could not be withdrawn from the French nation, which always claimed, even when marshalled into legions under the Corsican conqueror, to be fighting the battles of freedom; while, on the other side, the citizens who regarded innovation as worse than tyranny, considered England and her allies as engaged in sustaining the cause of order, of government, and of society itself.

The line already drawn between the American people in regard to their organic law, naturally became the dividing line of the popular sympathies in the great European conflict. Thus deeply furrowed, that line became "a great gulf fixed." The Federal party unconsciously became an English party, although it indignantly disowned the epithet; and the Republican party became a French party, although with equal sincerity it denied the gross impeachment. Each belligerent was thus encouraged to hope some aid from the United States, through the ever-expected triumph of its friends; while both conceived contemptuous opinions of a people who, from too eager interest in a foreign fray, suffered their own national rights to be trampled upon with impunity by the contending States.

Washington set the new machine of government in motion. He formed his cabinet of recognized leaders of the adverse parties. Hamilton and Knox of the Federal party were balanced by Jefferson and Randolph of the adverse party. "Washington took part with neither, but held the balance between them with the scrupulous justice which marked his lofty nature." On the 25th of April, 1793, he announced the neutrality of the United States between the belligerents, and his decision, without winning the respect of either, exasperated both. Each invaded our national rights more flagrantly than before, and excused the injustice by the plea of necessary retaliation against its adversary, and each found willing apologists in a sympathizing faction in our own country.

Commercial and political relations were to be established between the United States and the European Powers in this season of conflict. Ministers were needed who could maintain and vindicate abroad the same impartiality practised by Washington at home. There was one citizen eminently qualified for such a trust in such a conjuncture. Need I say that citizen was the younger Adams, and that Washington had the sagacity to discover him?

John Quincy Adams successively completed missions at the Hague and at Berlin, in the period intervening between 1794 and 1801, with such advantage and success, that in 1802 he was honored by his native commonwealth with a seat as her representative in the Senate of the United States. The insults offered to our country by the belligerents increased in aggravation as the contest between them became more violent and convulsive. France, in 1804, laid aside even the name and forms of a Republic, and the first consul, dropping the emblems of popular power, placed the long-coveted diadem upon his brow, where its jewels sparkled among the laurels he had won in the conquest of Italy. Washington's administration had passed away, leaving the American people in sullen discontent. John Adams had succeeded, and had atoned by the loss of power for the offence he had given by causing a just but unavailing war to be declared against France. Jefferson was at the head of the Government; he thought the belligerents might be reduced to forbearance by depriving them of our commercial contributions of supplies, and recommended, first an embargo, and then non-intercourse. Britain was an insular and France a continental power. The effects of these measures would therefore be more severe on the former than on the latter, and, unhappily, they were more severe on our own country than on either of the offenders.

Massachusetts was the chief commercial State in the Union. She saw the ruin of her commerce involved in the policy of Jefferson, and regarded it as an unworthy concession to the usurper of the French throne. In this emergency John Quincy Adams turned his back on Massachusetts, and threw into the uprising scale of the administration, the weight of his talents and of his already eminent fame. Massachusetts instructed the recusant to recant. He refused to obey, and resigned his place. His change of political relations astounded the country, and, with the customary charity of partisan zeal, was attributed to venality. It is now seen by us in the light reflected upon it by the habitual independence, unquestioned purity, and lofty patriotism of his whole life; and thus seen, constitutes only the first marked one of many instances wherein he broke the green withes which party fastened upon him, and maintained the cause of his country, referring the care of his fame to God and to an impartial posterity. Like Decimus Brutus, whom Julius Caesar saluted among his executioners with the exclamation "Et tu, Brute!" John Quincy Adams was not unfaithful, but he could not be obliged where he was not left free.

Jefferson retired in 1809, leaving to his successor, the scholastic and peace-loving Madison, the perilous legacy of perplexed foreign relations, and embittered domestic feuds. Great Britain now filled the measure of exasperations, by insolently searching our vessels on the high seas, and impressing into her marine all whom she chose to suspect of having been born in her allegiance, even though they had renounced it and had assumed the relations of American citizens. War was therefore imminent and inevitable. Russia was then coming forward to a position of commanding influence in Europe, and her youthful Emperor Alexander had won, by his chivalrous bearing, the respect of mankind. John Quincy Adams was wisely sent by the United States, to establish relations of amity with the great power of the North; and while he was thus engaged, the flames of European war, which had been so long averted, involved his own country. War was declared against Great Britain.

It was just. It was necessary. Yet it was a war that dared Great Britain to re-assert her ancient sovereignty. It was a war with a power whose wealth and credit were practically inexhaustible, a power whose navy rode unchecked over all the seas, and whose impregnable garrisons encircled the globe.

Against such a power the war was waged by a nation that had not yet accumulated wealth, nor established credit, nor even opened avenues suitable for transporting munitions of war through its extended territories - that had only the germ of a navy, an inconsiderable army, and not one substantial fortress. Yet such a war, under such circumstances, was denounced as unnecessary and unjust, though for no better reason than because greater contumelies had been endured at the hands of France. Thus a domestic feud, based on the very question of the war itself, enervated the national strength, and encouraged the mighty adversary.

The desperate valor displayed at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, at Fort Erie and Plattsburgh, and the brilliant victories won in contests between single ships of war on the ocean and armed fleets on the lakes, vindicated the military prowess of the United States, but brought us no decisive advantage. A suspension of the conflict in Europe followed Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia, and left America alone opposed to her great adversary. Peace was necessary, because the national credit was exhausted - because the fortunes of the war were inclining against us - and because the opposition to it was ripening into disorganizing councils. Adams had prepared the way by securing the mediation of Alexander. Then, in that critical period, associated with Russell, Bayard, the learned and versatile Gallatin, and the eloquent and chivalric Clay, he negotiated with firmness, with assiduity, with patience, and with consummate ability, a definitive treaty of peace - a treaty of peace which, although it omitted the causes of the war already obsolete, saved and established and confirmed in its whole integrity the independence of the Republic - a treaty of peace that yet endures, and, we willingly hope, may endure forever.

After fulfilling a subsequent mission at the Court of St. James, the pacificator entered the domestic service of the country as Secretary of State in the administration of James Monroe; and at the expiration of that administration became President of the United States. He attained the honors of the Republic at the age of fifty-seven, in the forty-ninth year of independence. He was sixth in the succession, and with him closed the