public worth, it has one weak apology, that it has furnished a more complete insight to the men and measures of the times. But it may be questionable whether this kind of history is really beneficial, and whether utter ignorance of it would not be more desirable. These things are but a higher rank of the many vulgar and infamous matters which, on the tongue and in the newspapers, degrade and debauch the world.

Mr. Adams's Diary at this time presents American politics in dark and unenticing aspects. The reputed "era of good feeling" was filled with evil machinations and bitterness. Some of the moral scars set upon men at that time have not even yet worn away.

During Mr. Monroe's Administration, human slavery acquired a political importance it had never before reached. From 1818 to the spring of 1821 was waged the first conflict between slavery and freedom. This was henceforth to be the question of questions in this country. All others, at home and abroad, were destined to become insignificant in comparison with it. All others were soon absorbed in it, or in some way made subservient to it. It was a greater check to The Monroe Doctrine than the protests of Europe could have been. And it was destined ultimately to produce an intestine war which would throw into trifling proportions any in which this country had ever been involved.

Although Mr. Adams did not participate in the conflict which ended in the Missouri Compromise and a victory to slavery in 1820, he was, by no means, a calm or disinterested witness to it. While he was supposed to be identified with the "Virginia Dynasty," his principles were those of the cautious and more

statesman-like New England opponents of slavery. The prominence with which his name was subsequently connected with this subject makes it necessary and important to exhibit his views at this time. This may be briefly and, perhaps, satisfactorily done in the following extracts from his Diary, some of them being taken from Mr. Quincy's "Memoir of John Quincy Adams."

Mr. Adams wrote as the contest became warm in Congress :

"There is now every appearance that the slave question will be carried by the superior ability of the slave party. For this much is certain, that if institutions are to be judged by their results, in the composition of the councils of the Union, the slaveholders are much more ably represented than the simple freemen. With the exception of Rufus King, there is not, in either House of Congress, a member from the free States able to cope in powers of the mind with William Pinkney and James Barbour. In the House of Representatives the freemen have none to contend on equal terms either with John Randolph or Clay. Another misfortune to the free party is that some of their ablest men are either, on this question, with their adversaries, or lukewarm in the cause. The slave men have, indeed, a deeper immediate stake in the issue than the partisans of freedom. Their passions and interests are more profoundly agitated, and they have stronger impulses to active energy than their antagonists, whose only individual interest in this case arises from its bearing on the balance of political power between the North and South."

"At our evening parties," Mr. Adams said, "we hear of nothing but the Missouri question and Mr. King's speeches. The slaveholders can not hear of them without being seized with the cramps. They call them seditious and inflammatory, which was far from being their character. Never, since human sentiment and human conduct were influenced by human speech, was there a theme for eloquence like the free side of this question, now before the Congress of the Union. By what fatality does it happen that all the most eloquent orators are on its slavish side?

There is a great mass of cool judgment and of plain sense on the side of freedom and humanity, but the ardent spirits and passions are on the side of oppression. Oh! if but one man could arise with a genius capable of communicating those eternal truths which belong to the question, to lay bare in all its nakedness. that outrage upon the goodness of God, human slavery, now is the time, and this is the occasion, upon which such a man would perform the duties of an angel upon earth!"

"And so a law for perpetuating slavery in Missouri, and, perhaps, in North America, has been smuggled through both Houses of Congress. I have been convinced from the first starting of this question that it could not end otherwise. The fault is in the Constitution of the United States, which has sanctioned a dishonorable compromise with slavery. There is henceforth no remedy for it but a new organization of the Union, to effect which a concert of all the white States is indispensable. Whether that can ever be accomplished is doubtful. It is a contemplation not very creditable to human nature that the cement of common interest produced by slavery is stronger and more solid than that of unmingled freedom. In this instance the slave States have clung together in one unbroken phalanx, and have been victorious by the means of accomplices and deserters from the ranks of freedom.

"Time only can show whether the contest may ever be with equal advantage renewed. But so polluted are all the streams of legislation in the regions of slavery, that this bill has been obtained only by two as unprincipled artifices as dishonesty ever devised; one, by coupling it as an appendage to the bill for admitting Maine, and the other, by this outrage perpetrated by the Speaker upon the rules of the House."

In this last charge Mr. Adams refers to the Speaker's declaring Mr. Randolph's motion to reconsider out of order, until he had an opportunity to send the bills to the Senate, beyond the reach of such a motion. In the discussion in the Cabinet meeting, on the Missouri Bill, Mr. Adams took strong anti-slavery grounds, maintained the natural right of every man, without reference to the color of his skin, to be free, that the

power to enslave people was not a just, good, or wise power, and that the Constitution declared all men to be equal before the law.

From the earnest announcement of his opinions, there was little or no resentment aroused in the Cabinet, and afterwards Mr. Calhoun, when they were alone, eulogized his sentiments, and said they were noble, but that in the South such sentiments were understood as applying only to white men, and that there were some advantages in slavery. One of these was that it produced an unvarying level for white men by deciding that all labor assigned especially to the slave was degrading to the white man, and that he could. not stoop to that. Such reasoning could find no place in the mind of Mr. Adams, and so he said, giving freely all his objections to the institution and the unfortunate condition of the country arising from it. To one of Mr. Calhoun's remarks, Mr. Adams replied:

"It is in truth all perverted sentiment; mistaking labor for slavery, and dominion for freedom. The discussion of this Missouri question has betrayed the secret of their souls. In the abstract they admit slavery to be an evil. They disclaim all participation in the introduction of it, and cast it all on the shoulders of old grandame Great Britain.' But, when probed to the quick upon it, they show at the bottom of their souls pride and vainglory in their very condition of masterdom. They fancy themselves more generous and noble-hearted than the plain freemen, who labor for subsistence. They look down on the simplicity of Yankee manners, because they have no habits of overbearing like theirs, and can not treat negroes like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very source of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice; for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine, which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend on the color of the skin? It perverts human reason, and reduces man endowed with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanc

tioned by the Christian religion; that slaves are happy and contented in their condition; that between the master and slave there are ties of mutual attachment and affection; that the virtues of the master are refined and exalted by the degradation of the slave; while, at the same time, they vent execrations on the slave trade, curse Great Britain for having given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes convicted of crimes for the terror of the example, and writhe in agonies of fear at the very mention of human rights as applicable to men of color.

"The impression produced on my mind, by the progress of this discussion, is, that the bargain between freedom and slavery contained in the Constitution of the United States is morally and politically vicious; inconsistent with the principles on which alone our Revolution can be justified; cruel and oppressive, by riveting the chains of slavery, by pledging the faith of freedom to maintain and perpetuate the tyranny of the master; and grossly unequal and impolitic, by admitting that slaves are at once enemies to be kept in subjection, property to be secured and returned to their owners, and persons not to be represented themselves, but for whom their masters are privileged with nearly a double share of representation. The consequence has been that this slave representation has governed the Union. Benjamin's portion above his brethren has ravined as a wolf. In the morning he has devoured the prey, and in the evening has divided the spoil. It would be no difficult matter to prove, by reviewing the history of the Union under this Constitution, that almost everything which has contributed to the honor and welfare of this Nation has been accomplished in despite of them, or forced upon them; and that everything unpropitious and dishonorable, including the blunders of their adversaries, may be traced to them. I have favored this Missouri compromise, believing it to be all that could be effected under the present Constitution, and from extreme unwillingness to put the Union at hazard. But perhaps it would have been a wiser and bolder course to have persisted in the restriction on Missouri, until it should have ter minated in a convention of the States to revise and amend the Constitution. This would have produced a new. Union of thirteen or fourteen States unpolluted with slavery, with a great and glorious object, that of rallying to their standard the other States, by the universal emancipation of their slaves. If the Union must be dissolved, slavery is precisely the question upon