Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams Part 17

On the 17th of September, 1842, a convention of delegates from the district he represented received Mr. Adams at Braintree, and expressed their thanks for his services on the floor of Congress, especially for his fidelity in their defence "against every attempt of Southern representatives and their Northern allies to sacrifice at the altar of slavery the freedom of speech and the press, the right of pet.i.tion, the protection of free labor, and the immunities and privileges of Northern citizens." Mr. Adams, in reply, after expressing his sensibility at their unabated confidence in the integrity of his intentions, and in his capacity to serve them, declared that it had been his endeavor to discharge all the duties of his station "faithfully and gratefully to them; faithfully to our native and beloved Commonwealth; faithfully to our whole common country, the North American Union; faithfully to the world of mankind, in every quarter of the globe, and under every variety of condition or complexion; faithfully to that creator, G.o.d, who rules the world in justice and mercy, and to whom our final account must be made up by the standard of those attributes." He then proceeded to state, that on receiving their invitation to attend that meeting, it had been his intention to avail himself of the opportunity to unfold to them the professions, principles, and practices, of the federal administration of these United States, under the successive Presidents invested with executive power, from the day when he took his seat as their representative in Congress to the then present hour.

"I trusted it would be in my power to present to your contemplation, not only the outward and ostensible indications of federal policy, proclaimed and trumpeted abroad as the maxims of the Jackson, Van Buren, and Tyler administrations, but to lay bare their secret purposes, and never yet divulged designs for the future government or dissolution of this Union.

"Further reflection convinced me that this exposition would require more time than you could possibly devote to one meeting to hear me.

My friend and colleague, Mr. Appleton, has, in an answer to an invitation of his const.i.tuents to a public dinner, lifted a corner of the veil, and opened a glance at the monstrous and horrible object beneath it; but South Carolina nullification itself, with its appendages of separation, secession, and the forty-bale theory, was but the struggles of Quixotism dreaming itself Genius, to erect on the basis of state sovereignty a system for seating South Carolina slavery on the throne of this Union in the event of success; or of severing the present Union, and inst.i.tuting, with a tier of embryo Southern States to be wrested from the dismemberment of Mexico, a Southern slaveholding confederation to balance the free Republic of the North.

"'The pa.s.sage,' says Mr. Appleton, 'of the revenue bill imposing discriminating duties with a view to the protection and encouragement of American industry, is, under the circ.u.mstances, an event of the very highest importance. Notwithstanding the system had been formerly established in 1816, and fortified by succeeding legislation; notwithstanding its success in the development of our resources and the establishment of manufactures and arts, surpa.s.sing the expectation of the most sanguine; notwithstanding the immense investments of capital made on the faith of the national legislation inviting such application, the attempt was seriously entertained of breaking down this whole system, with a reckless disregard of consequences, either in the wanton destruction of capital, or, what is far more important, in the general paralysis of the industry of the country. _The origin of this attempt may be traced to the mad ambition of certain politicians of South Carolina, who, in 1832, formed the project of a Southern Confederacy, severed from the rest of the Union, with that state for its centre, as affording more security to the slave states for their peculiar inst.i.tutions than exist under the general government._

"'This project led to the invention of a theory of political economy, which was maintained with an ingenuity and perseverance worthy of a better cause, founded on the a.s.sumption that all imports are, in effect, direct taxes upon exports. So indefatigable were the promulgators of this theory, that the whole South was made to believe that a protective tariff was a system of plunder levied upon their productions of cotton, rice, and tobacco, which const.i.tuted the bulk of our exports to foreign markets.'"

Mr. Adams then proceeds to state that the principles of nullification were never more inflexibly maintained, never more inexorably pursued, than they had been by all that portion of the South which had given them countenance, from the day of the death of William Henry Harrison to the present, and that nullification is the creed of the executive mansion at Was.h.i.+ngton, the acting President's _conscience_, and the woof of all his vetoes.

"Nullification," he adds, "portentous and fatal as it is to the prospects and welfare of this Union, is not the only instrument of Southern domination wielded by the executive arm at Was.h.i.+ngton. The dismemberment of our neighboring republic of Mexico, and the acquisition of an immense portion of her territories, was a gigantic and darling project of Andrew Jackson, and is another instrument wielded for the same purpose.

"Within five weeks after the proclamation of the const.i.tution of the Republic of Texas followed the battle of San Jacinto; and from that day the struggles of the Southern politicians, who ruled the councils of this nation, were for upwards of two years unremitting, and unrestrained by any principles of honor, honesty, and truth: openly avowed, and audaciously proclaimed, whenever they dared; clandestinely pursued, under delusive masks and false colors, whenever the occasion required.

"No sooner was the event of the battle of San Jacinto known than memorials and resolutions, from various parts of the Union, were poured in upon Congress, calling upon that body for the immediate recognition of the independence of the Republic of Texas. Many of these memorials and resolutions came from the free states, and one of them from the Legislature of Connecticut, then blindly devoted to the rank Southern, sectional policy of the Jackson administration, by that infatuation of Northern sympathy with Southern interests, which Mr. Appleton points out to our notice, and the true purposes of which had already been sufficiently divulged in an address of Mr.

Clement C. Clay to the Legislature of Alabama. But there was another more hidden impulse to this extreme solicitude for the recognition of the independence of Texas working in the free states, quite as ready to a.s.sume the mask and cap of liberty as the slave-dealing champions of the rights of man. The Texan land and liberty jobbers had spread the contagion of their land-jobbing traffic all over the free states throughout the Union. Land-jobbing, stock-jobbing, slave-jobbing, rights-of-man-jobbing, were all, hand in hand, sweeping over the land like a hurricane. The banks were plunging into desperate debts, preparing for a universal suspension of specie payment, under the shelter of legislative protection to flood the country with irredeemable paper. Gambling speculation was the madness of the day; and, in the wide-spread ruin which we are now witnessing as the last stage of this moral pestilence, Texan bonds and Texan lands form no small portion of the fragments from the wreck of money corporations contributing their a.s.sets of two or three cents to the dollar. All these interests furnished vociferous declaimers for the recognition of Texan independence."

Mr. Adams next states the proceedings of Congress on this subject during the whole of the residue of the Jackson administration, terminating with the recognition by Congress of the independence of Texas. At this period Mr. Van Buren--a Northern man with Southern principles--a.s.sumed the functions of President of the United States. But the recognition of the independence of Texas availed nothing without her annexation to the United States. In October, 1837, a formal proposition from the Republic of Texas for such annexation was communicated to Congress, with the statement that it had been declined by Mr. Van Buren. But the pa.s.sion for the annexation of Texas was not to be so disconcerted. Memorials for and against its annexation poured into Congress, and were referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. "In the debate which arose from their report," says Mr. Adams, "I exposed the whole system of duplicity and perfidy towards Mexico, which had marked the Jackson administration from its commencement to its close. It silenced the clamors for the annexation of Texas to this Union for three years, till the catastrophe of the Van Buren administration. The people of the free states were lulled into the belief that the whole project was abandoned, and that they should hear no more of the slave-trade cravings for the annexation of Texas. Had Harrison lived, they would have heard no more of it to this day. But no sooner was John Tyler installed into the President's house than nullification, and Texas, and war with Mexico, rose again upon the surface, with eye steadily fixed upon the polar star of Southern slave-dealing supremacy in the government of the Union."

Mr. Adams then comments upon the history of the Santa Fe expedition, which was fitted out in the summer of 1841, shortly after the accession of Mr. Tyler, by the then President of Texas, having been originated and concerted within these states, and carried on chiefly by citizens of the United States. That it was known, countenanced, and encouraged, at the presidential house, was, said Mr. Adams, more than questioned; for, while it was on foot, and before it was known, frequent hints were given in public journals, moved by Executive impulse, that at the coming session the annexation of Texas was to be introduced by a citizen of the highest distinction. "But the Texan expedition was ill-starred. Instead of taking and rioting upon the beauty and booty of Santa Fe, they were all captured themselves, without even the glory of putting a price on their lives. They surrendered without firing a gun." The failure of this expedition discomfited the war faction in Congress, and injured for a moment, and only for a moment, the project to which Southern nullification clung with the grasp of death.

Mr. Adams next proceeds to exhibit the evidence to show "the partic.i.p.ation of the administration at Was.h.i.+ngton with this incursion of banditti from Texas against Santa Fe," and to explain "the legislative exploit" by which the treasury of the United States was made to contribute to "the dismemberment of Mexico, and the annexation of an immense portion of its territory to the slave representation of the Union." The internal evidence he regarded as irresistible that "the expedition against Santa Fe was planned within your boundaries, and committed to the execution of your citizens, under the shelter of Mexican banners and commissions."

In the subsequent portion of this address Mr. Adams, regarding the principles of nullification as being at the basis of Mr. Tyler's whole policy, enters at large into its nature, and thus speaks of its origin and a.s.sociation with democracy:

"Let me advert again to the important disclosure in the letter of Mr. Appleton to his const.i.tuents, from which I have taken the liberty of reading to you an extract. Nullification was generated in the hot-bed of slavery. It drew its first breath in the land where the meaning of the word democracy is that a majority of the people are the goods and chattels of the minority; that more than one half of the people are not men, women, and children, but things, to be treated by their owners, not exactly like dogs and horses, but like tables, chairs, and joint-stools; that they are not even fixtures to the soil, as in countries where servitude is divested of its most hideous features,--not even beings in the mitigated degradation from humanity of beasts, or birds, or creeping things,--but dest.i.tute not only of the sensibilities of our own race of men, but of the sensations of all animated nature.

That is the native land of nullification, and it is a theory of const.i.tutional law worthy of its origin. _Democracy_, pure democracy, has at least its foundation in a generous theory of human rights. It is founded on the natural equality of mankind. It is the corner-stone of the Christian religion. It is the first _element_ of _all_ lawful government upon earth. Democracy is self-government of the community by the conjoint will of the majority of numbers. What communion, what affinity, can there be between that principle and nullification, which is the despotism of a corporation--unlimited, unrestrained, _sovereign_ power? Never, never was amalgamation so preposterous and absurd as that of nullification and democracy."

Of the hostility of nullification to the prosperity of the free states he thus speaks:

"The root of the doctrine of nullification is that if the internal improvement of the country should be left to the legislative management of the national government, and the proceeds of the sales of the public lands should be applied as a perpetual and self-acc.u.mulating fund for that purpose, the blessings unceasingly showered upon the people by this process would so grapple the affections of the people to the national authority, that it would, in process of time, overshadow that of the state governments, and settle the preponderancy of power in the free states; and then the undying worm of conscience twinges with terror for the fate of _the peculiar inst.i.tution_. Slavery stands aghast at the prospective promotion of the general welfare, and flies to nullification for defence against the energies of freedom, and the inalienable rights of man."

After stating and commenting upon the policy of General Jackson, as having for its object the "dismembering of Mexico, and restoring slavery to Texas, and of surrounding the South with a girdle of slave states, to eternize the blessings of the peculiar inst.i.tution, and spread them like a garment of praise over the whole North American Union," he explained the effect of party divisions always operating in the United States, and the character of the several proportions of their power. Their results, in tending to revive and strengthen slavery and the slave-trade, which Mr. Adams then foretold, excited melancholy antic.i.p.ations in the mind of every reflecting freeman. What was then prophecy is now history.

"There are two different party divisions always operating in the House of Representatives of the United States,--one sectional, North and South, or, in other words, slave and free; the other political--both sides of which have been known at different times by different names, but are now usually denominated Whigs and Democrats. The Southern or slave party, outnumbered by the free, are cemented together by a common, intense interest of property to the amount of twelve hundred millions of dollars in human beings, the very existence of which is neither allowed nor tolerated in the North. It is the opinion of many theoretical reasoners on the subject of government that, whatever may be its form, the ruling power of every nation is its property. Mr. Van Buren, in one of his messages to Congress, gravely pointed out to them the anti-republican tendencies of a.s.sociated wealth. Reflect now upon the tendencies of twelve hundred millions of dollars of a.s.sociated wealth, directly represented in your national legislature by one hundred members, together with one hundred and forty members representing persons only--freemen, not chattels. Reflect, also, that this twelve hundred millions of dollars of property is peculiar in its character, and comes under a cla.s.sification once denominated by a Governor of Virginia _property acquired by crime_; that it sits uneasy upon the conscience of its owner; that, in the purification of human virtue, and the progress of the Christian religion, it has become, and is daily becoming, more and more odious; that Was.h.i.+ngton and Jefferson, themselves slaveholders, living and dying, bore testimony against it; that it was the dying REMORSE of John Randolph; that it is renounced and abjured by the supreme pontiff of the Roman Church, abolished with execration by the Mahometan despot of Tunis, shaken to its foundations by the imperial autocrat of all the Russias and the absolute monarch of Austria;--all, all bearing reluctant and extorted testimony to the self-evident truth that, by the laws of nature and nature's G.o.d, man cannot be the property of man. Recollect that the first cry of human feeling against this unhallowed outrage upon human rights came from ourselves--from the Quakers of Pennsylvania; that it pa.s.sed from us to England, from England to France, and spread over the civilized world; that, after struggling for nearly a century against the most sordid interests and most furious pa.s.sions of man, it made its way at length into the Parliament, and ascended the throne, of the British Isles. The slave-trade was made piracy first by the Congress of the United States, and then by the Parliament of Great Britain.

"But the curse fastened by the progress of Christian charity and of human rights upon the African slave-trade could not rest there. If the African slave-trade was piracy, the coasting American slave-trade could not be innocent, nor could its aggravated turpitude be denied. In the sight of the same G.o.d who abhors the iniquity of the African slave-trade, neither the American slave-trade nor slavery itself can be held guiltless. From the suppression of the African slave-trade, therefore, the British Parliament, impelled by the irresistible influence of the British people, proceeded to point the battery of its power against slavery itself. At the expense of one hundred millions of dollars, it abolished slavery, and emanc.i.p.ated all the slaves in the British transatlantic colonies; and the government entered upon a system of negotiation with all the powers of the world for the ultimate extinction of slavery throughout the globe.

"The utter and unqualified inconsistency of slavery, in any of its forms, with the principles of the North American Revolution, and the Declaration of our Independence, had so forcibly struck the Southern champions of our rights, that the abolition of slavery and the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves was a darling project of Thomas Jefferson from his first entrance into public life to the last years of his existence. But the a.s.sociated wealth of the slaveholders outweighed the principles of the Revolution, and by the const.i.tution of the United States a compromise was established between slavery and freedom. The extent of the sacrifice of principle made by the North in this compromise can be estimated only by its practical effects.

The principle is that the House of Representatives of the United States is a representation only of the persons and freedom of the North, and of the persons, property, and slavery, of the South. Its practical operation has been to give the balance of power in the house, and in every department of the government, into the hands of the minority of numbers. For practical results look to the present composition of your government in all its departments. The President of the United States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, are all slaveholders. The Chief Justice and four out of the nine Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States are slaveholders. The commander-in-chief of your army and the general next in command are slaveholders. A vast majority of all the officers of your navy, from the highest to the lowest, are slaveholders. Of six heads of the executive departments, three are slaveholders; securing thus, with the President, a majority in all cabinet consultations and executive councils. From the commencement of this century, upwards of forty years, the office of Chief Justice has always been held by slaveholders; and when, upon the death of Judge Marshall, the two senior justices upon the bench were citizens of the free states, and unsurpa.s.sed in eminence of reputation both for learning in the law and for spotless integrity, they were both overlooked and overslaughed by a slaveholder, far inferior to either of them in reputation as a lawyer, and chiefly eminent for his obsequious servility to the usurpations of Andrew Jackson, for which this unjust elevation to the Supreme Judicial bench was the reward.

"As to the house itself, if an article of the const.i.tution had prescribed, or a standing rule of the house had required, that no other than a slaveholder should ever be its Speaker, the regulation could not be more rigorously observed than it is by the compact movements of the slave representation in the house. Of the last six speakers of the house, including the present, every one has been a slaveholder. It is so much a matter of course to see such a person in the chair, that, if a Northern man but thinks of aspiring to the chair, he is only made a laughing-stock for the house.

"With such consequences staring us in the face, what are we to think when we are told that the government of the United States is a democracy of numbers--a government by a majority of the people? Do you not see that the one hundred representatives of persons, property, and slavery, marching in solid phalanx upon every question of interest to their const.i.tuents, will always outnumber the one hundred and forty representatives only of persons and freedom, scattered as their votes will always be by conflicting interests, prejudices, and pa.s.sions?

"But this is not all. The second party division in the house to which I have alluded is political, and known at present by the names of Whigs and Democrats, or Locofocos. The latter are remarkable for an exquisite tenderness of affection for _the people_, and especially for the poor, provided their skins are white, and against the rich. But it is no less remarkable that the princely slaveholders of the South are among the most thoroughgoing of the Democrats; and their alliance with the Northern Democracy is one of the cardinal points of their policy."

The residue of this address is devoted to a searching and severe examination of the whole course of President Tyler's administration, showing that "the sectional division of parties--in other words, the conflict between freedom and slavery--is the axle round which the administration of the national government revolves." "The political divisions with him, and with all Southern statesmen of his stamp, are mere instruments of power to purchase auxiliary support to the cause of slavery even from the freemen of the North."

In closing this most ill.u.s.trative address, he apologizes to his const.i.tuents for any language he may have used in debate which might be deemed harsh or acrimonious, and asks them to consider the adversaries with whom he had to contend; the virulence and rancor, unparalleled in the history of the country, with which he had been pursued; and to remember that, "for the single offence of persisting to a.s.sert the right of the people to pet.i.tion, and the freedom of speech and of the press, he had been twice dragged before the house to be censured and expelled."

One of his a.s.sailants, Thomas F. Marshall, had declared, in an address to his const.i.tuents, his motives for the past, and his purposes for the future, in the following words:

"Though pet.i.tions to dissolve the Union be poured in by thousands, I shall not again interfere on the floor of Congress, since the house have virtually declared that there is nothing contemptuous or improper in offering them, and are willing again to afford Mr.

Adams an opportunity of sweeping all the strings of discord that exist in our country. I acted as I thought for the best, being sincerely desirous to check that man, who, if he could be removed from the councils of the nation, or _silenced_ on the exasperating subject to which he seems to have devoted himself, _none other, I believe, could be found hardy enough, or bad enough, to fill his place_."

"Besides this special and avowed malevolence against me," Mr. Adams remarks,--"this admitted purpose to expel or silence me, for the sake of brow-beating all other members of the free representation, by establis.h.i.+ng over them the reign of terror,--a peculiar system of tactics in the house has been observed towards me, by _silencers_ of the slave representation and their allies of the Northern Democracy."

The system of tactics to which he alludes was, first, to turn him out of the office of chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and, this failing, to induce a majority of the servile portion of that committee to refuse any longer to serve with him; their purpose being exactly that of Mr. Marshall, to remove him from the councils of the nation, or to silence him, for the sake of _intimidating_ all others by "an ostentatious display of a common determination not to serve with any man who would not submit to the gag-rule, and would persist in presenting abolition pet.i.tions." Mr. Adams then ill.u.s.trates the powerful effect of such movements to overawe members from the free states.

"Another practice," he observed, "of this communion of Southern, sectional, and Locofoco antipathy against me is, that I never can take part in any debate upon an important subject, be it only upon a mere abstraction, but a pack opens upon me of personal invective in return.

Language has no word of reproach or railing that is not hurled at me; and the rules of the house allow me no opportunity to reply till every other member of the house has had his turn to speak, if he pleases. By another rule every debate is closed by a majority whenever they get weary of it. The previous question, or a motion to lay the subject on the table, is interposed, and I am not allowed to reply to the grossest falsehoods and most invidious misrepresentations."

This course of party tactics Mr. Adams exhibits by a particular narrative of the misrepresentation to which he had been subjected, closing his statement with the following acknowledgment: "I must do many of the members of the House of Representatives from the South the justice to say that their treatment of me is dictated far more by the pa.s.sions and prejudices of their const.i.tuents than by their own. Were it not for this curse of slavery, there are some of them with whom I should be on terms of the most intimate and confidential friends.h.i.+p. There are many for whom I entertain high esteem, respect, and affectionate attachment. There are among them those who have stood by me in my trials, and scorned to join in the league to sacrifice me as a terror to others."

In September, 1842, at the invitation of the Norfolk County Temperance Society, Mr. Adams delivered at Quincy an address,--not perhaps in concidence with the prevailing expectations of that society, but in perfect unison with his own characteristic spirit of independence. He inst.i.tuted an inquiry into the effect of the _principles_ of total abstinence from the use of spirituous liquors, the administration of pledges, or, in other words, the contracting of engagements by vows; and examined the whole subject with reference to the essential connection which exists between temperance and religion. In the course of his argument he maintains that the moral principles inculcated by the whole tenor of the Old Testament, with regard to temperance, are,--1. That the _temperate_ use of wine is innocent, and without sin.

2. That excess in it is a heinous sin. 3. That the voluntary a.s.sumption of a vow or pledge of total abstinence is an effort of exalted virtue, and highly acceptable in the sight of G.o.d. 4. That the habit of excess in the use of wine is an object of unqualified abhorrence and disgust.

He concluded with a warning to his fellow-citizens to "stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage;" and, after applauding the members of the Norfolk County Temperance Society for their attempts to suppress intemperance, declaring it a holy work, and invoking the blessing of Heaven on their endeavors, he bids them "go forth as missionaries of Christianity among their own kindred. Go, with the commendation of the Saviour to his apostles when he first sent them forth to redeem the world: 'Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.' In the ardor of your zeal for moral reform forget not the rights of personal freedom. All _excess_ is of the nature of intemperance.

Self-government is the foundation of all our political and social inst.i.tutions; and it is by self-government alone that the laws of temperance can be enforced.... Above all, let no tincture of party politics be mingled with the pure stream from the fountain of temperance."

The spirit of this address, and the intimate knowledge of the Scriptures Mr. Adams possessed, will be ill.u.s.trated by the following extract:

"Throughout the whole of the Old Testament the vine is represented as one of the most precious blessings bestowed by the Creator upon man. In the incomparable fable of Jotham, when he lifted up his voice on the summit of Mount Gerizim, and cried to the men of Shechem, 'Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that G.o.d may hearken unto you,' he told them that when the trees of the forest went forth to anoint them a king to reign over them, they offered the crown successively to the olive-tree, the fig-tree, and the _vine_.

They all declined to accept the royal dignity; and when it came to the turn of the vine to a.s.sign the reasons for his refusal, he said, 'Should I leave my _wine_, which cheereth G.o.d and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?' In the one hundred and fourth Psalm,--that most magnificent of all descriptions of the glory, the omnipotence, and the goodness of the Creator, G.o.d,--wine is enumerated among the richest of his blessings bestowed upon man.

'He causeth the gra.s.s to grow,' says the Psalmist, 'for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to s.h.i.+ne, and bread that strengtheneth man's heart.'

"But, while wine was thus cla.s.sed among the choicest comforts and necessaries of life, the cautions and injunctions against the inordinate use of it are repeated and multiplied in every variety of form. 'Wine is a mocker,' says Solomon (Prov. 20:1); 'strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.'

'He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man; he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich.' (21:17.) 'Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry _long_ at the wine; they that go _to seek_ mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright,'--say, like sparkling Champagne.--'At the _last_ it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange wonders, and thine heart shall utter perverse things; yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth on the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.' Never was so exquisite a picture of drunkenness and the drunkard painted by the hand of man.

"Yet in all this there is no interdict upon the _use_ of wine.

The caution and the precept are against excess."

On the 29th of May, 1843, Mr. Adams delivered before the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society a discourse in celebration of the Second Centennial Anniversary of the New England Confederacy of 1643. This work is characterized by that breadth and depth of research for which he was distinguished and eminently qualified. It includes traces of the early settlements of Virginia, New England, Pennsylvania, and New York; of the causes of each, and the spirit in which they were made and conducted, and of the principles which they applied in their intercourse with the aboriginals of the forest. He then proceeds to give an account of the confederation of the four New England colonies, Plymouth, Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven, in 1643, with appropriate statements of the principles and conduct of the founders of each settlement, and of the character and motives of the leaders of each of them.

The origin, motives, and objects of that confederation, he explains; a.n.a.lyzing the distribution of power between the commissioners of the whole confederacy and among the separate governments of the colonies, and showing that it combined the same identical principles with those which gathered and united the thirteen English colonies as the prelude to the Revolution which severed them forever from their national connection with Great Britain; and that the New England Confederacy of 1643 was the model and prototype of the North American Confederacy of 1774.

His sketch of the founder of the Colony of Rhode Island will give a general idea of the spirit and bearing of this discourse:

"Roger Williams was a man who maybe considered the very impersonation of a combined conscientious and contentious spirit.

Born in the land of Sir Hugh Evans and Captain Fluellen, educated at the University of Oxford, at the very period when the monarchical Episcopal Church of England was purging herself, as by fire, from the corruptions of the despotic and soul-degrading Church of Rome, he arrived at Boston in February, 1630, about half a year after the landing of the Ma.s.sachusetts Colony of Governor Winthrop. He was an eloquent preacher, stiff and self-confident in his opinions; ingenious, powerful, and commanding, in impressing them upon others; inflexible in his adherence to them; and, by an inconsistency peculiar to religious enthusiasts, combining the most amiable and affectionate sympathies of the heart with the most repulsive and inexorable exclusions of conciliation, compliance, or intercourse, with his adversaries in opinion.

"On his first arrival he went to Salem, and there soon made himself so acceptable by his preaching, that the people of Mr. Skelton's church invited him to settle with them as his colleague. But he had broached, and made no hesitation in maintaining, two opinions imminently dangerous to the very existence of the Ma.s.sachusetts Colony, and certainly not remarkable for that spirit of charity or toleration upon which he afterwards founded his own government, and which now, in after ages, const.i.tutes his brightest t.i.tle to renown.

The first of these opinions was that the royal charter to the Colony of Ma.s.sachusetts was a nullity, because the King of England had no right to grant lands in foreign countries, which belonged of right to their native inhabitants. This opinion struck directly at all right of property held under the authority of the royal charter, and, followed to its logical conclusions, would have proved the utter impotence of the royal charter to confer power of government, any more than it could convey property in the soil.

"The other opinion was that the Church of Boston was criminal for having omitted to make a public declaration of repentance for having held communion with the Church of England before their emigration; and upon that ground he had refused to join in communion with the Church of Boston.

"By the subtlety and vehemence of his persuasive powers he had prevailed upon Endicott to look upon the cross of St. George in the banners of England as a badge of idolatry, and to cause it actually to be cut out of the flag floating at the fort in Salem. The red cross of St. George in the national banner of England was a grievous and odious eye-sore to mult.i.tudes, probably to a great majority, of the Ma.s.sachusetts colonists; but, in the eyes of the government of the colony, it was the sacred badge of allegiance to the monarchy at home, already deeply jealous of the purposes and designs of the Puritan colony."