morning on entering his room at the Department to find Smyth with one of his friends in possession of it, and engaged in making copies of dates and passages he expected to use for Mr. Adams's overthrow. He had already made certificates to be signed by the chief clerk, who was present, and who had furnished him the records. Mr. Adams seeing the design of this vicious, new enemy, took charge of the proceedings in such a way as to show Smyth and his friend at once that the date he had used was the true date of the adoption of the measure, and the discrepancy of one day was only the time between the time of adoption and final engrossing; showing also that the error of punctuation occurred in the hands of the printer, which there had been no opportunity to correct; and that this had all been well understood and provided for and corrected. Smyth, beaten again, retreated as ingloriously as it had been held he did at Lake Erie.

Mr. Adams's reply to Smyth, together with his speech in the United States Senate on the purchase of Louisiana, and a letter from Thomas Jefferson on the same subject, was printed in a pamphlet by Gales and Seaton, editors of the "National Intelligencer." Mr. Adams also published a letter to the people of Virginia, who were constituents of General Smyth. This long letter was dated "Washington, Dec. 28th, 1822," and was addressed "To the Freeholders of Washington, Wythe, Grayson, Russell, Tazewell, Lee. and Scott Counties, Virginia," and was first published in the Richmond Enquirer." It was also printed and circulated in pamphlet form. This letter, in a very neat and high-toned manner, explains and defends his own conduct and public services on points assailed

by General Smyth, and does not neglect to touch up the General's valuable official record.

January 1, 1823, Mr. Adams began with the following prayer, the only thing recorded in his Diary for that day, in the midst of one of the most stormy periods of his life, a performance for which some of our Presidents had not the heart, and none other of them the faculty :

"All gracious Parent! on my bended knee

This dawning day I consecrate to Thee,

With humble heart and fervent voice to raise
The suppliant prayer and ever-grateful praise.
To Thee the past in various blessings owes
Its soothing pleasures, its chastising woes;
To Thee the future with imploring eye
Looks up for health, for virtue, for the sky.
Howe'er the tides of joy or sorrow roll,
Still grant me, Lord, possession of my soul,
Life's checkered scenes with steadfast mind to share,
As Thou shalt doom, to gladden or to bear.
And, O, be mine, when closed this brief career,
The crown of glory's everlasting year!"

CHAPTER XII.

THE CABINET SWIMMER- THE MONROE DOCTRINE". -THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE-HUMAN SLAVERY.

N the 11th of July, 1823, Mr. Adams wrote in his Diary :

I commence upon my fifty-seventh year. Swam with Antoine an hour in the Potomac. We started for the bridge, but, after swimming about half an hour, I perceived, by reference to a house upon the shore beyond which we were to pass, that we had ascended very little above where we had left our clothes, and that the current of the tide was insensibly carrying us into the middle of the river. We continued struggling against the tide about twenty minutes longer without apparently gaining a foot. I then turned back, and in fifteen minutes landed at the rock where I left my clothes, upon which, in the interval, the tide had so much encroached that it began to wet them, and, in another half hour would have soaked them through or floated them away. We had been an hour and five minutes in the water, without touching ground, and before turning back I began to feel myself weary."

On the 9th of August he wrote:

"Swam in the Potomac to the bridge against the tide, and returned with it. One hour and fifty minutes in the water, Antoine being still at hand with the canoe. I was about an hour and a half in going, and not more than twenty minutes in returning."

This kind of uncommonly skillful exercise Mr. Adams took almost daily in the warm seasons during his long residence in Washington, even while he was President. And Antoine, the old Russian here men

tioned, who had been with him at Ghent and in London, was generally his only companion. For many years after this date, a quarter of a century in all, Antoine remained in Mr. Adams's service.

During the long and troublesome negotiations with Spain, covering several years of Mr. Monroe's Administration, was developed, to a great measure, the grand American principle which has since borne the name of "The Monroe Doctrine." In Mr. Monroe's Cabinet there was displayed considerable timidity about pressing the territorial claims of this country too far. Mr. Monroe himself entertained this feeling, and the conviction that Europe looked with disfavor upon the grasping and encroaching tendencies of the United States had no little to do with the relinquishment of Texas in the treaty with Spain. In all of the Cabinet meetings Mr. Adams opposed a timid course, and his voice was always in favor of a decided and distinctly American policy. He not unfrequently startled his colleagues by asserting himself in favor of letting Europe know that this Government regarded the American continents as no field for adventurers from the Old World; that the problem of government on this side of the ocean was to be controlled by circumstances peculiar to America. This was, indeed, not an absolutely new doctrine to him.

He had, as is well known, astonished his associates at Ghent by the announcement that he favored proposing to the Britons the cession of Canada to this country as one of the ways to permanent peace, and a matter in itself natural and proper. In the negotiations for Florida he had worked earnestly for an outlet to the Pacific. He had even been in favor of

the purchase of Louisiana, and only opposed Mr. Jefferson's method of making a State out of that territory. When Mr. Canning pressed the anti-slave-trade alliance, he frankly told him that the United States could have little interest in European schemes. In the very nature of things this Government must stand on principles of its own. In the struggle of Greece, however strong his sympathies, the principles of the American system were uppermost, and he was not disturbed by the popular enthusiasm.

Mr. Jefferson had entertained similar notions, and spoken them before Mr. Monroe's annual message of December, 1823, made the general announcement of the doctrine. Mr. Jefferson favored the occupation of Texas and the annexation of Cuba during Mr. Monroe's Administration.

Mr. Adams's long association with Mr. Monroe might have had something to do with his adoption of some of these exclusive, American views. Still he was naturally bold and aggressive, while Mr. Monroe was cautious and moderate, and Mr. Adams's constant conflicts with the agents of European governments had given him more decided feelings in favor of an exclusive system of diplomacy. His father, Mr. Jefferson, and many other patriots of their time had rejoiced in the fact that this continent is so far from Europe and separated from it by water, and some of them only regretted that this hemisphere was not separated from Europe and the Old World by a sea of fire.

It is, perhaps, not easy to judge correctly as to how far Mr. Monroe might have been in debt to Mr. Adams for the doctrine, so-called, which bears his name. No member of the Cabinet had so much to do