Federalists, had a grudge against me, which they would not lose the opportunity of indulging. To one thing, however, I had made up my mind, I would take no one step to advance or promote pretensions to the Presidency. If that office was to be the prize of cabal and intrigue, of purchasing newspapers, bribing by appointments, or bargaining for foreign missions, I had no ticket in that lottery. Whether I had the qualification necessary for the President of the United States was, to say the least, very doubtful to myself. But that I had no talent for obtaining the office by such means was perfectly clear. I had neither talent nor inclination for intrigue. I can do nothing either to canvass for myself or to counteract the canvassing of others. I will devote none of my time to devising laws to increase my own patronage and multiply canvassers in my favor. My time is now not sufficient to discharge the duties of my office; any part of it which I should spend in efforts to make partisans or to pull down competitors would be an abandonment of public for personal aims. For this, if I had the talent, I have not the will; and if I had the will, I have not the talent."

But, for all this, from which he never departed to any great extent, and which had always been his principle, Mr. Adams was a candidate for the Presidency in his own mind. In the main, too, his life had been wonderfully successful in the way of public advancement, and that he found justly no great fault with the work he had done may be seen from these words written in his Diary two or three days before the beginning of the second term of Mr. Monroe's Presidency :

"At this moment, standing on the isthmus between the past. and the future, I look back with satisfaction solid and pure, at what has been accomplished of public service, with humility and regret that more has not been effected, and with unbounded gratitude to the Disposer of all results; forward the prospect is beset with difficulties and dangers. Let me advance cheerily to meet the dispensations of time; pursuing with singleness of soul the path of duty; imploring for the faculty to will and to do; to 'move in charity, to rest in Providence, and to turn on the poles of truth."

At this time Mr. Adams had quite an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Clay's qualifications for the Presidency. He was inclined to the belief that Mr. Clay would sacrifice one part of the Union in his attachment to the other, and that he would be engaged in a perpetual system of intrigues with Congress. He thought Mr. Clay's private character and moral principles were not those which should belong to a great political leader. However well grounded were these opinions Mr. Adams certainly greatly modified them not long subsequently, or found some palliation for principles and practices he did not sanction. Nor is there any doubt that his views of Mr. Clay were at that period colored somewhat by his feelings concerning what he believed to be Mr. Clay's intrigues against him. Of Mr. Calhoun he wrote: "Calhoun was a man of fair and candid mind, of honorable principles, of clear and quick understanding, of cool self-possession, of enlarged philosophical views, and of ardent patriotism." And how utterly did Mr. Adams soon afterwards reverse this opinion! Of Mr. Crawford he never did think well. He considered Mr. Crawford never too great to be cunning, or to stoop for the accomplishment of a purpose.

The summers of 1821 and 1822 were periods of great labor and excitement to Mr. Adams. Mr. Monroe's Cabinet was the point around which most of the political turmoil of the country centered. Crawford had for many years been working for the Presidency, and now Mr. Calhoun was led to believe that his chances to succeed Mr. Monroe were good. Mr. Adams was in the hands of his friends, so to speak. Clay's partisans were loud and earnest. Party organ

izations did not exist. The contest was purely personal. The newspapers chose their champions, and a fierce war was unscrupulously waged on all hands. Mr. Adams considered himself misrepresented and maligned on every side. To a great extent he lost his respect for Mr. Calhoun, and in the summer of 1822, he wrote of him that "his personal intercourse with him then was necessarily an intercourse of civility, and not of confidence."

Mr. Jonathan Russell, who had now returned to America dissatisfied with his loss of the public support which he thought his eminent services deserved, published a bitter attack upon Mr. Adams's conduct in the negotiations at Ghent in relation to the fisheries and the navigation of the Mississippi.

In the "National Intelligencer," of Washington, on the morning of July 17, 1822, Mr. Adams published an answer to this unwarranted assault, which his friends believed would not only destroy Russell's story, but also his reputation. He subsequently wrote several other papers in the same line of defense, and in September the whole was published in a book of several hundred pages under the title: "The Duplicate Letters, the Fisheries, and the Mississippi. Documents relating to the Transactions at the Negotiations of Ghent." Peter Force took upon himself the risk and responsibility of, publishing this work at his own expense, which could not have been very successful, even as a campaign document.

John Floyd, of Virginia, also entered the ranks of the newspaper assailants of Mr. Adams; and on the 31st of August Mr. Adams replied to him in the "National Intelligencer."

Mr. Clay, who had gained, if anybody had, from Jonathan Russell's villainous assault on Mr. Adams, also published a letter in the "National Intelligencer" merely promising that he would at another time present a full statement concerning Ghent proceedings, and intimating that some of Mr. Adams's assertions were not correct. This promise Mr. Clay did not fulfill, and after waiting some time Mr. Adams also appeared in another article in the "Intelligencer," ridiculing Mr. Clay's purpose and promise, and reasserting that his own presentation of the Ghent negotiations, so far as they had been brought in question, would be found to abide unshaken the test of time and of human scrutiny. and talent. Even this banter, Mr. Clay failed to take up, and at this stage Mr. Adams plainly appeared as the conqueror. Of the result the "National Gazette," of Washington, said on the morning of the 25th of May, 1822

"Upon the merits of the main argument, we do not intend, and indeed have not room, to express an opinion to-day; but we may remark at once, that so far as regards the proposal to allow the British the free navigation of the Mississippi, Mr. Adams has placed his conduct and views beyond the reach of calumny and misrepresentation for the future."

Indeed, the whole matter was mischievous and foundationless, and to a great extent, sprang from the evil spirit of Jonathan Russell, who hoped by the controversy to advance himself, and who thus effected his own political ruin.

In the "National Intelligencer" on July 17, 1822, in his long introductory article, Mr. Adams said: "Mr. Jonathan Russell having thought proper to transfer the scene of his attack upon the character

and conduct of his colleagues, the majority of the late mission to Ghent, and especially upon mine, from the House of Representatives of the United States, where he first volunteered to bring it forward, to the newspapers, it becomes necessary for my defense, and that of my colleagues, against this assault, to apply to his new statements and representations a few of those 'correctives,' which, at the call of the House of Representatives, I did apply to the original and duplicate of his letter of 11th February, 1815."

Having applied these wholesome "correctives" to his satisfaction, Mr. Adams disposes of the whole matter in these words:

"I have no intention, however, of pursuing this controversy further in the newspapers. I propose to publish in one collection, the Ghent documents called for by the resolution of the House of Representatives; the message of the President to the House, with Mr. Russell's letters and my remarks; his publication of 27th June, in the Boston Statesman,' and mine in answer thereto, in the 'National Intelligencer,' with other papers rectifying other representations of Mr. Russell; and discussing the effect of war upon treaties and treaty stipulations; the value of the Mississippi navigation to the British, and of the fishing liberty to us, and the rights by which we have held and still hold them. That there ever was any difference of opinion between the American plenipotentiaries at Ghent upon measures in which they all finally concurred, would never have been made known to the public by me. Satisfied with an equal share of responsibility for all which they had done, contented and grateful for the satisfaction of our common country, with the general result of our services, I had no private interests or feelings to indulge at the expense of others, and my earnest desire would have been, to have seen in every member of the commission, for the rest of my days, no other than a friend and a brother. Disappointed in this wish, my next hope is that even the discords of Ghent may be turned to the promotion of future harmony in the Union. From the nature of our federative Constitution, it is