Founding Fathers: Complete Biographies, Their Articles, Historical & Political Documents. Emory Speer
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its career of venality and his election was warmly contested. His opponent, Mr. Jefferson, received sixty-eight votes and Mr. Adams seventy-one. During all the effervescence of party feeling, which arrayed father against son and cut asunder the long cherished ties of friendship between thousands, these two great men remained personal friends, showing at once the magnanimity of their minds and the folly of low minded foaming partizans. It was then that the American press first descended from its lofty and legitimate eminence and planted it before unsullied feet in the obloquious quagmire of party spirit. Since that time partisan presses have been sinking deeper and deeper, until some of them, pro et con., have become so deeply planted in the filth and scum of personal abuse and political slander, that, to use a simile, Archimedes, with the mighty powers of his lever, could not raise them to their pristine elevation in half a century. So far were matters carried by his political friends against the public measures of Mr. Adams in 1800, that Mr. Jefferson was compelled, from a sense of duty, to rebuke the slanders that were uttered, in the following emphatic language, which becomes more forcible from the fact that his own private character had been shamefully attacked by those who supported his political opponent.
“Gentlemen, you do not know that man — there is not upon earth a more perfectly honest man than John Adams. Concealment is no part of his character — of that, he is utterly incapable. It is not in his nature to meditate any thing that he would not publish to the world. The measures of the general government are a fair subject for difference of opinion — but do not found your opinions on the notion that there is the smallest spice of dishonesty, moral or political, in the character of John Adams, for I know him well, and I repeat — that a man more perfectly honest never issued from the hands of his Creator.”
Mr. Adams proceeded to the conscientious and independent discharge of his presidential duties, prompted by the best motives for the glory of his country. His administration, however, became unpopular, and at the expiration of his term the democratic party triumphed, and he retired to Quincy, to once more enjoy the long lost comforts of retirement. Much has been written upon the causes that produced the political overthrow of Mr. Adams. To my mind the solution is brief and plain. His cabinet was not of his own choosing — he was too independent to bend to party management — he opposed the humiliating demands of the then self-styled democratic France — he advocated, most earnestly, the augmentation of the navy of the United States, and recommended the law for suppressing the venality of the press. In the two first points he was impolitic as the head of a party — in the two next, he did what all now acknowledge to be right — and in the last, he took the wrong method to correct one of the most alarming evils of that day — an evil that still hangs over our country like an incubus. The three last were the strong points seized upon by partisans, and were rendered extremely unpopular, and enabled his opponents to defeat his re-election. He retired with a good grace, and remained the personal friend of his rival until the day of his death. He supported the policy of Mr. Jefferson towards England, and approved of the declaration of war in 1812. In writing to a friend, in July of that year, he remarked:
“To your allusion to the war, I have nothing to say — but that it is with surprise that I hear it pronounced, not only in the newspapers, but by persons in authority, ecclesiastical and civil, and political and military — that the declaration of it was altogether unexpected * * * How it is possible that a rational, a social or a moral creature can say the war is unjust, is to me utterly incomprehensible. How it can be said to be unnecessary, is very mysterious. I have thought it necessary for five or six years. How it can be said to be unexpected, is another wonder. I have expected it more than five-and-twenty years, and have great reason to be thankful that it has been postponed so long.”
He attributed the opposition of the eastern states to the war to the impolicy of the government in not cherishing the navy, and compared them to Achilles, who, in consequence of his being deprived of Briseis, withdrew from the Grecian confederacy. The augmentation of the navy was the ne plus ultra of his national policy, and had his views upon this point been carried out by our government, our nation would now have been mistress of the seas, instead of having scarcely armed vessels enough to protect the expanding commerce of our enterprising merchants — a fact that has become a by-word among other nations, and has often crimsoned the cheeks of liberal minded Americans.
Soon after his retirement he was offered the gubernatorial chair of his native state, but declined the honour on account of his advanced age — but continued to take a deep interest in the welfare of his country, and wrote many essays and letters in favour of liberal principles and American rights. After the retirement of Mr. Jefferson, a most happy and interesting correspondence was continued between these two great apostles of liberty. In 1815, Mr. Adams had the gratifying pleasure of seeing his son at the head of the diplomatic commission to conclude a second treaty with Great Britain, which carried his mind back, with all the enthusiastic force of an old man’s memory, to the scenes of 1782–3, when he had performed and executed a similar mission. In 1817, he was placed at the head of the list of presidential electors, and three years after was elected president of the convention that revised the constitution he had written forty years previous. The compliment was duly appreciated by him, but his infirmities did not permit him to preside over the deliberations of that body, although he imparted his counsels and aided greatly in the revision. This was the last public act of this great man — the curtain of the political drama then closed upon him for ever. Two years previous the partner of his bosom had gone to her final rest, which was an affliction most keenly felt by him. For more than half a century she had shared with him the pains and pleasures of their eventful career, and had always met the events of life with christian fortitude. Surrounded by friends who delighted to honour him, his country prosperous and happy, enjoying the full fruition of divine grace, which had produced the fruits of unsophisticated piety through a long life, political animosities buried in oblivion, his now frail bark glided smoothly down the stream of time until the fiftieth anniversary of independence dawned upon his beloved country. On the morning of the fourth of July, 1826, an unexpected debility seized him, and he was unable to leave his bed, but no one imagined he was standing on the last inch of his time. He was asked for a sentiment, to be given for him at the celebration on that day — “INDEPENDENCE FOR EVER,” burst from his dying lips, which were the last words that he ever uttered, with a loud and animated voice. About four o’clock in the afternoon he expired — without an apparent pain, a groan, a murmur or a sigh, with a full assurance of a happy reception in that brighter world, where sin and sorrow never cross the peaceful path of the angelic throng. On the same day, and but a few hours previous, the immortal spirit of the illustrious Jefferson had left its prison of clay, thrown off its mortal coil, and perhaps took its kindred in its flight, and they together “ascended in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the friends they had loved and lost, and whom they should still love and never lose,” there to enjoy, through the rolling ages of eternity, the blissful scenes of angelic purity — the smiles and favours of their Saviour and their God.
This unparalleled combination of extraordinary circumstances produced a deep and unusual sensation in the United States and in Europe. The simultaneous departure of two of the noblest spirits that ever graced the great theatre of human life, illuminating the world around them with freedom — whose actions had resounded through the universe — whose mighty deeds had been and will continue to be a theme of wonder and admiration to the end of time — was an incident that seemed designed by the great Jehovah, to impress their precepts, their examples and their names upon the minds of men with all the force of god-like divinity.
Mr. Adams was a plain man; low in stature, not graceful in his movements, and was sometimes abrupt and repulsive. His manners were rather austere and unbending in public, but in the social circle, with his relatives and friends, he was familiar, pleasing and entertaining. He was not partial to ceremonious etiquette, and was averse to pedantry. Plain strong common sense he practised and admired. He spoke his sentiments freely, and could never have been transformed into a technical politican, even had he enjoyed the magic advantages of modern schools. His open frankness was proverbial, and he often alluded to it as one of his failings. When once in Stewart’s room of paintings, he fixed his eyes upon the portrait of Washington, and then upon his own, and observing the compressed mouth of the former and the open lips of the latter, facetiously remarked as he pointed to it — “Ah! that fellow never could keep his mouth shut.”