With some his first offense or crime consisted in his being the son of John Adams. With men of such distempered minds as John Randolph, that would have been reason sufficient in the absence of any other considerations for condemning him and his Administration without trial. Randolph went so far as to call Mr. Adams, John II., and say that he was simply serving out his father's term. He hated Mr. Adams and his name with a hatred more intense than ever could have been cherished by the dark-browed race from which he sprang; but was loud in his assertions that he hated Mr. Adams's principles only, and that because of the love he held for his country. The immodest and reckless William B. Giles was another Virginian who engaged with his usual intemperance in the assault upon Mr. Adams. But the opposition to him on account of his origin and name was by no means confined to a few persons. Of course, it was mainly found in the South, but it was there widespread.

A Northern writer at this very time said of him :

"This same President of ours is a man that I can never court nor be on very familiar terms with. There is a cold, repulsive atmosphere about him that is too chilling for my respiration, and I shall certainly keep at a distance from its influence. I wish him Godspeed in his Administration, and am heartily disposed to lend him my feeble aid whenever he may need it in a correct course; but he can not expect me to become his warm and devoted partisan."

This was the kind of support this President received from any source. He had no party, no partisan following. A sense of duty merely led men to give him their countenance and support. The one "great" thing which would have warmed their hearts

toward him, and loosened their tongues in his praise, a cordial opening to their use and disposition the offices under his control, he declined to do. He declined, too, to assume that vulgar pretense of love for all men with whom he came in contact which no

man ever felt, ever could feel. An utterly false standard of attachment and repulsion, of judgment, was quite generally erected for this "cold," intelligent, and just man, but one which runs through all the social and other affairs of the world.

As President, Washington had said that he knew no friend. No other of Washington's successors has so conscientiously acted upon this principle as John Quincy Adams. For the reverse of this principle the Presidents of the United States have met with every degree of censure. Yet it was a repugnant thing in Mr. Adams. He lacked personal magnetism; did not draw men to him. They could not become devoted to him as "partisans," and "love" him. Why should they have done so? This is a purely selfish, and animal standard. What is liked in a flower but its perfume, its exquisite colors, its form? What in a tree, but its fruit, its useful timber, its beautiful foliage? What in man, but virtue? Nothing in the universe can, perhaps, inspire permanent love but virtue. What else is lovable but wisdom, justice, good, and truth? What is beautiful and useful without these qualities? What moral grounds are to be found anywhere for loving anything else?

A woman says, "I do not like the new preacher. He can not preach. Look at his face and head! And how queerly he dresses and holds his fingers!" A woman sends her own child to the "office" to tell the

doctor that "there is no love lost between them." But he would not have been guilty of charging such immorality against her. It never entered his mind that she should "love" him. She was the wife of another man, and had no right to "love" any other. The doctor had in view only the conscientious discharge of his profession, and considered it simple justice to expect his fee where he had not thought his free services a duty. A careful, exact, and honest office-holder executes the law he is sworn to execute. He has no option. He can make no allowances or abatements in the tax assessments, or what not. But his accuracy, and straight-edgedness make him enemies at the next polls. Shall a man become an enemy by doing what the law and his oath require him to do? Does an enemy require a man to do what he should do? What moral code can sustain anything but truth and right? What does it matter whether you "love,” or even like another or not, so that he has virtues in office to challenge every test? Congeniality belongs to a narrow field. Out of that field it may be a suspicious and doubtful quality. Yet by these absurd follies the world judges.

Thus it was that, on false personal grounds, a lukewarm support and a strong opposition met Mr. Adams at the very outset of his Presidency. Political grounds of opposition, to a degree, would have been reasonable. See, for a moment, how this matter stood. The opposition to his Administration on the part of the Jacksonians began on the day of his election in the House. It was strongly and permanently developed before he sent his first message to Congress. And where could this have rested but on the personal

falsities named above? However, to the South he stood on the wrong side of the slave line, and this fact even then attached to him a suspicion which was shared in after days by all the Northern Democratic Presidents, and the whole race of the most intense pro-slavery politicians of that section. Freedom surrounded them with an atmosphere which all their pretensions and political associations could not remove. Still nothing in the past revealed the fact that John Quincy Adams was to become the most consequential and persistent enemy of negro slavery in the United States.

For sixteen years he had been in the public service under Democratic (Republican) Administrations; during Mr. Monroe's entire term occupying what was then, and is yet, ordinarily, the most important position in the Cabinet. In all this time the last of the Virginia Presidents failed to see in him principles he did not usually heartily sanction. There was little difference in practice between him and these Democratic Presidents. It was, therefore, mainly on other than political grounds that the opposition to Mr. Adams's Administration began. To Mr. Calhoun he had fully divulged his sentiments as to slavery, and Mr. Calhoun had said they were noble in themselves, but unsuited to the South.

Yet these sentiments had not become public. His inaugural address put the question of internal improvements in an unusually emphatic form, and his first message set the matter in glowing colors which startled the old party leaders, and sharpened the weapons of abuse in the hands of the Jacksonians. And yet most of the recommendations of the message

were familiar to the Republicans, and had never given them any uneasiness. Mr. Jefferson had not been wholly averse to internal improvements, and had gone so far as to suggest that the Constitution might be amended to give Congress power to legislate for that purpose, if it should be thought best. He did not believe the Constitution granted any such power, yet he cautiously recommended the establishment of a national university. Washington had proposed this, and Mr. Madison renewed the recommendation. Mr. Monroe sustained Congress in the appropriations for improving the Cumberland Road. He also recommended the establishment of a national university, and favored a grand system of internal improvements, if provision for it should first be made by an amendment to the Constitution. But Mr. Monroe's strong tendencies in that way had been attributed to his Secretary of State.

Nobody ever accused Mr. Adams of being a "strict constructionist," and suspicion always pointed toward him. In the Cabinet of General Jackson Mr. Clay would have been deemed a very safe man; at the head of Mr. Adams's he was regarded as especially dangerous by the Jacksonians. But Mr. Rush outdistanced both Adams and Clay, and in his first annual report of the Treasury Department set up what was deemed a very startling and ridiculous scheme for improving the country and educating and bettering the condition of the people.

General Jackson and his followers were going on the principle of breaking down the Adams Administration whether it be right or wrong, and in the first message a tangible ground was furnished them, around