Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams Part 5

CHAPTER VI.

SECOND TERM OF MONROE'S PRESIDENCY.--STATE OF PARTIES.--REPORT ON WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.--PROCEEDINGS AT GHENT VINDICATED.--VOTES WHEN HE WAS A MEMBER OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES DEFENDED.--INDEPENDENCE OF GREECE.--CONTESTS OF PARTIES.--ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

During the second term of Mr. Monroe's Presidency, Mr. Adams continued to take his full proportion of responsibility in the measures of the administration. Questions concerning the Bank of the United States, the currency, the extinction or extension of slavery, the bankrupt law, the tariff, and internal improvements, brought into discussion the interests of the great States of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, combined with the never-ceasing struggles for power of parties and individuals.

Candidates for the office of President and Vice-President were brought into the field by their respective adherents. Every topic which could exalt or depress either was put in requisition, and office-holders and office-seekers became anxious and alert.

In July, 1821, at the request of the citizens of Was.h.i.+ngton, Mr. Adams delivered an address on the anniversary of American Independence. It did not receive the indulgence usually extended to such efforts, but was made the occasion of severe animadversions on his character and talents.

In December his friends called his attention to calumnies and aspersions copied into the _City Gazette_, from papers issued in Georgia and Tennessee, and expressed their opinions that they ought to be answered by him, as they knew they could be most triumphantly. Mr. Adams replied: "Should I comply with your request, it will be immediately said, I was canva.s.sing for the Presidency. I never, that I can recollect, but once, undertook to answer anything that was published against me, and that was when I was in private life. To answer newspaper accusations would be an endless task. The tongue of falsehood can never be silenced. I have not time to spare from public business to the vindication of myself."

To place Philip P. Barbour, of Virginia, in the Speaker's chair, and to prevent the reelection of John W. Taylor, of New York, the tried friend of the administration, became the next object of all those who hoped to rise by opposing it. The partisans of Barbour were successful, and the consequences of his elevation were immediately apparent. As the Committee of Foreign Relations was, by a practical rule, the medium of communication between Congress and the executive government, it was customary for the Speaker to const.i.tute it chiefly of members who concided in their views. But many of those now appointed by Barbour, especially the chairman, were hostile to their politics. To this committee all the delicate and critical papers relative to the foreign relations of the United States were to be confidentially communicated.

No arrangement could have been more annoying to Mr. Monroe and his cabinet, or more symptomatic of a settled opposition.

By a vote pa.s.sed in March, 1817, the Senate had required of Mr. Adams a report on weights and measures; and in December, 1819, the House of Representatives had by a resolution made the same requisition. To this subject he had directed his attention when in Russia; and had devoted the leisure his duties as Secretary of State permitted, without approximating to its completion, owing to the number and perplexity of details its pursuit involved.

In the summer of 1820 he relinquished a visit to his father and friends in Ma.s.sachusetts, and concentrated his attention, during six months, exclusively on this report, which he finished and made to Congress, in February, 1821. At the conclusion of his work he thus expresses himself: "This subject has occupied, for the last sixty years, many of the ablest men in Europe, and to it all the powers, and all the philosophical and mathematical learning and ingenuity, of France and Great Britain, have been incessantly directed. It was a fearful and oppressive task. It has been executed, and it will be for the public judgment to pa.s.s upon it."

From the abstruse character of this work, the labor, research, and talent, it evidences have never been generally and justly appreciated.

It commences with the wants of individuals antecedent to the existence of communities, and deduces from man's physical organization, and from the exigences of domestic society, the origin of _measures of surface, distance, and capacity_; and that of _weight_, from the difference between the specific gravity of substances and its importance in the exchange of traffic consequent on the multiplication of human wants, with the increase of the social relations. He then proceeds to state and a.n.a.lyze the powers and duties of legislators on the subject, with their respective limitations. The results of his researches relative to the weights and measures of the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, are successively stated. From the inst.i.tutions of the nations of antiquity he derives those of modern Europe and of the United States.

He praises the "stupendous and untiring perseverance of England and France" in this field, and explains the causes which have not rendered their success adequate to their endeavors. The system of modern France on this subject he investigates and applauds, as "one of those attempts to improve the condition of human kind, which, although it may ultimately fail, deserves admiration, as approaching more nearly than any other to the ideal perfection of uniformity in weights and measures." After stating the difficulties which prevented other nations from seconding the endeavors of France, Mr. Adams concludes this elaborate treatise with the opinion that universal uniformity on the subject can only be effected by a general convention, to which all the nations of the world should be parties. Until such a general course of measures be adopted, he regards it as inexpedient for the United States to make any change in their present system. After an elaborate enumeration of the regulations of the several states of the Union, accompanied by voluminous doc.u.ments, he concludes with proposing, "first, to fix the standard with the partial uniformity of which it is susceptible for the present, excluding all innovation. Second, to consult with foreign nations for the future and ultimate establishment of _permanent_ and _universal_ uniformity."

The Senate ordered six hundred copies of this report to be printed. But its final suggestions were not made the subject of action in either branch. A writer of the day said, with equal truth and severity, "It was not noticed in Congress, where ability was wanting, or labor refused, to understand it." As Mr. Adams was one of the candidates in the approaching presidential election, party spirit was inclined to treat with silence and neglect labors which it realized could not fail to command admiration and approval. In England the merits of this report were more justly appreciated. In 1834, Col. Pasley, royal engineer, in a learned work on measures and money, acknowledged the benefits he had derived from "an official report upon weights and measures, published in 1821, by a distinguished American statesman, John Quincy Adams. This author," he adds, "has thrown more light into the history of our old English weights and measures _than all former writers on the subject_; and his views of historical facts, even when occasionally in opposition to the reports of our own parliamentary committees, appear to me most correct. For my own part, I do not think I could have seen my way into the history of English weights and measures in the feudal ages without his guidance."

In the summer of 1821 Mr. Adams was apprized that rumors, very unfavorable to his reputation, even for integrity, had been industriously circulated in the Western country. It had been stated that he had made a proposition at Ghent to grant to the British the right to navigate the Mississippi, in return for the Newfoundland fisheries, and that it was in that section represented as a high misdemeanor. Mr. Adams said, that a proposition to confirm both those rights as they had stood before the war, and as stipulated by the treaty of 1783, had been offered to the British commissioners, not by him, but by the whole American mission, every one of whom had subscribed to it. The proposition was not made by him, but by Mr.

Gallatin, who knew it would be nothing to the British but a mere naked right, of which they could not make any use. It was accordingly promptly rejected by the British commissioners, and made the ground of a counter proposition of renouncing the right they had, under the treaty of 1783, of navigating that river, on condition of our renouncing the old article on the fisheries. Mr. Adams at once declared that, if it was acceded to, he would never sign the treaty; and it was promptly rejected by the American commissioners. When he was again told that he would be accused in the Western States of the proposition to confirm the British rights as they stood before the war, he replied, that he had no doubt it would be so; for Mr. Clay had already, in one of his speeches in Congress, represented that this proposition had been made by a _majority_ of the Ghent commissioners, he being in the minority, without acknowledging _that he had himself signed the note by which the offer was made_, and without disclosing how lightly the concession was estimated by the British commissioners, and how promptly they rejected it.

Accordingly, on the 18th of April, 1822, John Floyd, of Virginia, who, both in that state and in Congress, was active in seeking and scattering malign imputations concerning the political course of Mr. Adams, called, in the House of Representatives, for a letter, written by Jonathan Russell, in 1814, to Mr. Monroe, then Secretary of State, and, as he stated, deposited in that office.

This call of Floyd was the springing of the mine for a long-meditated explosion. On searching the records of state, no such letter could be found. Mr. Russell immediately volunteered a copy, and deposited it in that office. This letter was addressed to James Monroe, then Secretary of State, and was dated Paris, 11th of February, 1815. It was a letter of seven folio sheets of paper, and amounted, said Mr. Adams, to little less than a denunciation of a majority of the Ghent commissioners for proposing the article recognizing the fishery, and the British right to navigate the Mississippi,--a proposition in which Mr. Russell had concurred. He wrote this letter at Paris, where all the commissioners then were, without ever communicating it to Mr. Adams, or letting him know he had any intention of writing such a letter. It was a most elaborate, disingenuous, and sophistical argument against principles in which Mr. Russell himself concurred, and against the joint letters of the 14th December, 1814, to which he signed his name. His motives, Mr.

Adams considered, for writing then to a Virginian Secretary of State, under a Virginian President, were, apparently, at once to recommend himself to their sectional prejudices about the Mississippi, and to injure him in their esteem and favor, for future effect; and that his motive for now abetting Floyd, in his call for these papers as a public doc.u.ment, was to diminish the popularity of Mr. Adams in the Western States.

With these views of the purposes of Floyd and Russell, Mr. Adams immediately endeavored to obtain the original letter, of which Mr.

Russell had now deposited in the Secretary of State's office a paper purporting to be a copy. The original he ascertained was still in the possession of Mr. Monroe, who had received it soon after its date; but, as it was marked "private" by Mr. Russell, he considered it confidential, and did not place it in the office of the Secretary of State. On ascertaining these facts, Mr. Adams claimed the original letter from Mr. Monroe, believing, from internal evidence, that the duplicate, instead of being a true copy of the original, had been in some respects adapted to present effect. Mr. Monroe declined to listen to the repeated remonstrances of Mr. Adams, and continued to maintain that he could not, with honor, make the original letter public. He did not consent until he was called upon for it by a vote of the House of Representatives, proposed by the friends of Mr. Adams, and resisted by Floyd and his party. The original letter being thus obtained, Mr. Adams prepared and published a severe and scrutinizing examination of its facts and suggestions, of the motives which prompted those who had brought it before the public, and of the discrepancies between the original and the alleged copy which Mr. Russell had volunteered to place in the office of the Secretary of State. Mr. Russell replied through the newspapers; on which reply Mr. Adams bestowed a searching and caustic a.n.a.lysis, commenting with great severity on his language and conduct.

The whole of this controversy was published immediately in an octavo pamphlet, including important doc.u.ments relative to the subject and to the transactions of the commissioners at Ghent, by means of which Mr.

Adams vindicates himself and his colleagues from the charges brought against them. This elaborate and powerful defence, on which the strength and character of his mind are deeply impressed, was regarded as triumphant.[1]

[1] This publication is contained in _Niles' Weekly Register_, vol. XXII., pp. 198, 209, 220, 296, 327, and continued in vol.

XXIII., pp. 6 and 9.

Mr. Gallatin also published a pamphlet, generally corroborative of the statements of Mr. Adams; an example which Mr. Clay, another of the Ghent commissioners, being at that time a prominent compet.i.tor with Mr. Adams for the Presidency, did not see fit to follow. But, as total silence on his part might be construed to his disadvantage, he published in the newspapers a letter, dated the 15th of November, 1822, in which he intimated that there were some errors, both as to matter of fact and opinion, in the letter of Mr. Adams, as well as in that of Mr. Gallatin; and declared that he would at some future period, more propitious to calm and dispa.s.sionate consideration, and when there could be no misrepresentation of motives, lay before the public his own narrative of these transactions.

Mr. Adams, on the 18th of the ensuing December, in a communication to the _National Intelligencer_, expressed the pleasure it would have given him, had Mr. Clay thought it advisable to have specified the errors he had intimated, to have rectified them by acknowledgment. He added, that whenever Mr. Clay's accepted time to publish his promised narrative should come, he would be ready, if living, to acknowledge indicated errors, and vindicate contested truth. But, lest it might be postponed until both should be summoned to account for all their errors before a higher tribunal than that of their country, he felt called upon to say that what he had written and published concerning this controversy would, in every particular essential or important to the interest of the nation, or to the character of Mr. Clay, be found to abide unshaken the test of human scrutiny, of talents, and of time.

In July, 1822, a plan for an independent newspaper was proposed to Mr.

Adams by some members of Congress, and the necessity of such a paper was urged upon him with great earnestness. He replied: "An independent newspaper is very necessary to make truth known to the people; but an editor really independent must have a heart of oak, nerves of iron, and a soul of adamant, to carry it through. His first attempt will bring a hornet's nest about his head; and, if they do not sting him to death or to blindness, he will have to pursue his march with them continually swarming over him, and be beset on all sides with obloquy and slander."

In August, 1822, paragraphs from newspapers, laudatory of other candidates, and depreciatory of Mr. Adams, were shown to him, on which he remarked, "The thing is not new. From the nature of our inst.i.tutions, compet.i.tors for public favor and their respective partisans seek success by slander of each other. I disdain the ign.o.ble warfare, and neither wage it myself or encourage it in my friends. But, from appearances, they will decide the election to the Presidency."

In December, 1822, Alexander Smyth, also a representative of one of the districts of Virginia, followed the example of Mr. Floyd, and, in an address to his const.i.tuents, took occasion to introduce malign imputations upon the political course of Mr. Adams. To this end, having ransacked the journals of the Senate of the United States at the time when Mr. Adams was a member, he undertook to attribute to him base motives for the votes he had given, particularly such as would be likely most to affect his popularity in Virginia. Mr. Adams immediately caused to be printed and published an address to the freeholders of Smyth's district; the nature and spirit of which reply will be shown by the following extracts:

"Friends and Fellow-Citizens: By these t.i.tles I presume to address you, though personally known to few of you, because my character has been arraigned before you by your representative in Congress, in a printed handbill, soliciting your suffrages for reelection, who seems to have considered his first claim to the continuance of your favor to consist in the bitterness with which he could censure me. I shall never solicit your suffrages, nor those of your representatives, for anything. But I value your good opinion, and wish to show you that I do not deserve to lose it."--"I come to repel the charges of General Smyth, but neither for the purpose of moving you to withhold your suffrages from him, nor induce the General himself to reconsider his opinion concerning me."--"As to his opinions, you will permit me to be indifferent to the opinions of a man capable of forming his judgment of character from such premises as he has alleged in support of his estimate of mine."--"His mode of proof is this: He has ransacked the journals of the Senate during the five years I had the honor of a seat in that body,--a period the expiration of which is nearly fifteen years distant,--and wherever he has found in the list of yeas and nays my name recorded to a vote which he disapproves, he has imputed it, without knowing any of the grounds on which it was given, to the worst of motives, for the purpose of ascribing them to me. Is this fair? Is this candid? Is this just? Where is the man who ever served in a legislative capacity in your councils whose character could stand a test like this?"

Mr. Adams then proceeds to reply to all the charges brought against him by Alexander Smyth, a.n.a.lyzing and explaining every vote which he had made the subject of animadversion fully and successfully. The close of his defence is as follows:

"Fellow-Citizens: I have explained to you the reasons and real motives of all the votes which your representative, General Alexander Smyth, has laid to my charge, in a printed address to you, and to which unusual publicity has been given in the newspapers. I am aware that, in presenting myself before you to give this explanation, my conduct may again be attributed to unworthy motives.

The best actions may be, and have been, and will be, traced to impure sources, by those to whom troubled waters are a delight. If, in many cases, when the characters of public men are canva.s.sed, however severely, it is their duty to suffer and be silent, there are others, in my belief many others, wherein their duty to their country, as well as to themselves and their children, is to stand forth the guardians and protectors of their own honest fame. Had your representative, in asking again for your votes, contented himself with declaring to you his intentions concerning me, you never would have heard from me in answer to him. But when he imputes to me a character and disposition unworthy of any public man, and adduces in proof mere naked votes upon questions of great public interest, all given under the solemn sense of duty, impressed by an oath to support the const.i.tution, and by the sacred obligations of a public trust, to defend myself against charges so groundless and unprovoked is, in my judgment, a duty of respect to you, no less than a duty of self-vindication to me. I declare to you that not one of the votes which General Smyth has culled from an arduous service of five years in the Senate of the Union, to stigmatize them in the face of the country, was given from any of the pa.s.sions or motives to which he ascribes them; that I never gave a vote either in hostility to the administration of Mr. Jefferson, or in disregard to republican principles, or in aversion to republican patriots, or in favor of the slave-trade, or in denial of due protection to commerce. I will add, that, having often differed in judgment upon particular measures with many of the best and wisest men of this Union of all parties, I have never lost sight either of the candor due to them in the estimate of their motives, or of the diffidence with which it was my duty to maintain the result of my own opinions in opposition to theirs."

In 1823, as the Presidential election approached, the influences to control and secure the interests predominating in the different sections of the country became more active. Crawford, of Georgia, Calhoun, of South Carolina, Adams, of Ma.s.sachusetts, and Clay, of Kentucky, were the most prominent candidates. In December, Barbour, of Virginia, was superseded, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, by Clay, of Kentucky; an event ominous to the hopes of Crawford, and to that resistance to the tariff, and to internal improvements, which was regarded as dependent on his success. The question whether a Congressional caucus, by the instrumentality of which Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, had obtained the Presidency, should be again held to nominate a candidate for that office, was the next cause of political excitement. The Southern party, whose hopes rested on the success of Crawford, were clamorous for a caucus. The friends of the other candidates were either lukewarm or hostile to that expedient.

Pennsylvania, whose general policy favored a protective tariff and public improvements, hesitated. In 1816 she had manifested an opposition to that plan of Congressional influence, and in 1823 a majority of her representatives declined attending any partial meeting of members of Congress that might attempt a nomination. But the Democracy of that state, ever subservient to the views of the Southern aristocracy, held meetings at Philadelphia, and elsewhere, recommending a Congressional caucus. This motion would have been probably adopted, had not the Legislature of Alabama, about this time, nominated Andrew Jackson for the Presidency, and accompanied their resolutions in his favor with a recommendation to their representatives to use their best exertions to prevent a Congressional nomination of a President. The popularity of Jackson, and the obvious importance to his success of the policy recommended by Alabama, fixed the wavering counsels of Pennsylvania, so that only three representatives from that state attended the Congressional caucus, which was soon after called, and which consisted of _only sixty members_, out of _two hundred and sixty-one_, the whole number of the House of Representatives; of which Virginia and New York, under the lead of Mr. Van Buren, const.i.tuted nearly one half. Notwithstanding this meagre a.s.semblage, Mr. Crawford was nominated for the Presidency, under a confident expectation that the influence of the caucus would be conclusive with the people, and the candidate and policy of Virginia would be confirmed in ascendency.

But the days of Congressional caucuses were now numbered. The people took the nomination of President into their own hands, and the insolent a.s.sumption of members of Congress to dictate their choice in respect of this office was henceforth rebuked.

While these intrigues were progressing, Mr. Adams was zealously and laboriously fulfilling his duties as Secretary of State, neither endeavoring himself, nor exciting his friends, to counteract these political movements, one of the chief objects of which was to defeat his chance for the Presidency.

The course of Mr. Adams relative to the application of the Greeks, then struggling for independence, for the aid and countenance of the United States, next brought him into opposition to the prevailing tendency of the popular feeling of the time. A letter was addressed to him, as Secretary of State, by Andrew Luriottis, envoy of the provisional government of the Greeks, at London, entreating that political and commercial relations might be established between the United States and Greece, and proposing to enter upon discussions which might lead to advantageous treaties between the two countries. Mr. Rush, the American minister in London, enclosed this letter to Mr. Adams, and recommended the subject to the favorable attention of our government. Mr. Adams, after expressing the sympathy of the American administration in the cause of Greek freedom and independence, and their best wishes for its success, proceeded to state that their duties precluded their taking part in the war, peace with all the world being the settled policy of the United States; but that if, in the progress of events, the Greeks should establish and organize an independent government, the United States would welcome them, and form with them such diplomatic and commercial relations as were suitable to their respective relations. Mr.

Adams also wrote a letter to Mr. Rush, requesting him to explain to Mr.

Luriottis that the executive of the United States sympathized with the Greek cause, and would render the Greeks any service consistent with neutrality; but that a.s.sistance given by the application of the public force or revenue would involve them in a war with the Sublime Porte, or perhaps with the Barbary powers; that such aid could not be given without an act of Congress, and that the policy of the United States was essentially pacific.

The popular feeling in favor of granting aid to the Greeks soon began to be general and intense. b.a.l.l.s were held and benefits given to raise funds for their relief, and sermons and orations delivered in their behalf, in many parts of the United States. "On this subject," Mr. Adams remarked, "there are two sources of eloquence: the one, with reference to sentiment and enthusiasm; the other, to action. For the Greeks all is enthusiasm. As for action, there is seldom an agreement, and after discussion the subject is apt to be left precisely where it was. Nothing definite, nothing practical, is proposed." The United States were at peace with the Sublime Porte, and he did not think slightly of a war with Turkey. He had not much esteem for that enthusiasm for the Greeks which evaporated in words.

In the ensuing session, on the 9th of January, 1824, Mr. Webster, in the Senate of the United States, proposed a resolve "that provision ought to be made by law for defraying the expense incident to the appointment of an agent or commissioner to Greece, whenever the President shall deem it expedient to make such appointment;" supporting it by a speech adapted to catch the popular tide, then at the full, and, in fact, doing nothing with the appearance of doing something. A member of Congress consulted Mr. Adams on an amendment he proposed to make to the project of Mr.

Webster, as specified in his resolve, it being then under consideration in the House of Representatives. Mr. Adams replied, it was immaterial what form the resolution might a.s.sume; the objection to it would be the same in every form. It was, in his opinion, the intermeddling of the legislature with the duties of the executive; it was the adoption of Clay's South American system; seizing upon the popular feeling of the moment to embarra.s.s the administration. A few days afterwards, Mr. Adams took occasion to state his reasons to Mr. Webster for being averse to his resolution.

Notwithstanding the Virginia doctrine, that the const.i.tution does not authorize the application of public moneys to internal improvement, was one of the hinges on which the selection of candidates in the Southern States turned, Mr. Adams did not refrain from openly expressing his own opinion. In a letter to a gentleman in Maryland, dated January, 1824, he stated that "Congress does possess the power of appropriating money for public improvements. Roads and ca.n.a.ls are among the most essential means of improving the condition of nations; and a people which should deliberately, by the organization of its authorized power, deprive itself of the faculty of multiplying its own blessings, would be as wise as a Creator who should undertake to const.i.tute a human being without a heart."[2]

[2] _Niles' Register_, vol. XXVI., pp. 251-328.

While the election of President was pending, and the event uncertain, a member of Congress from Ohio told Mr. Adams there were sanguine hopes of his success; on which he remarked: "We know so little of that in futurity which is best for ourselves, that whether I ought to wish for success is among the greatest uncertainties of the election. Were it possible to look with philosophical indifference to the event, that is the temper of mind to which I should aspire. But who can hold a firebrand in his hand by thinking of the frosty Caucasus? To suffer without feeling is not in human nature; and when I consider that to me alone, of all the candidates before the nation, failure of success would be equivalent to a vote of censure by the nation upon my past services, I cannot dissemble to myself that I have more at stake in the result than any other individual. Yet a man qualified for the duties of chief magistrate of ten millions of people should be a man proof alike to prosperous and adverse fortune. If I am able to bear success, I must be tempered to endure defeat. He who is equal to the task of serving a nation as her chief ruler must possess resources of a power to serve her, even against her own will. This I would impress indelibly on my own mind; and for a practical realization of which, in its proper result, I look for wisdom and strength from above."

At the close of the year 1824, Mr. Adams responded to a like intimation: "You will be disappointed. To me both alternatives are distressing in prospect. The most formidable is that of success. All the danger is on the pinnacle. The humiliation of failure will be so much more than compensated by the safety in which it will leave me, that I ought to regard it as a consummation devoutly to be wished."

At this period an apprehension being expressed to him that if he was elected Federalists would be excluded from office, he said, he should exclude no person for political opinion, or on account of personal opposition to him; but that his great object would be to break up the remnant of all party distinctions, and to bring the whole people together, in point of sentiment, as much as possible; and that he should turn no one out of office on account of his conduct or opinions in the approaching election.

The result of this electioneering conflict was, that, by the returns of the electoral colleges of the several states, it appeared that none of the candidates had the requisite const.i.tutional majority; the whole number of votes being two hundred and sixty-one--of which Andrew Jackson had ninety-nine, John Quincy Adams eighty-four, William H. Crawford forty-one, and Henry Clay thirty-seven. For the office of Vice-President, John C. Calhoun had one hundred and eighty votes, and was elected.

This result had not been generally antic.i.p.ated by the friends of Mr.

Adams. His political course had been, for sixteen years, identified with the policy of the leading statesmen of the Southern States, and had been acceptable to that section of the Union. It had therefore been hoped that, with regard to him, the general and inherent antipathy to a Northern President, which there existed, would have been weakened, if not subdued. His diplomatic talents had been successfully exercised in carrying into effect Mr. Madison's views during the whole of that statesman's administration. He had been the pillar on which Mr. Monroe had, during both terms of his Presidency, leaned for support, if not for direction. It was, therefore, not without reason antic.i.p.ated that at least a partial support would have been given to him in the region where the influences of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, were predominant. But, of the _eighty-four_ votes cast for Mr. Adams, not one was given by either of the three great Southern slaveholding states. _Seventy-seven_ were given to him by New England and New York.

The other _seven_ were cast by the Middle or recently admitted states.

The selection of President from the candidates now devolved on the House of Representatives, under the provisions of the const.i.tution.

But, again, Mr. Adams had the support of none of those slaveholding states, with the exception of Kentucky, and her delegates were equally divided between him and General Jackson. The decisive vote was, in effect, in the hands of Mr. Clay, then Speaker of the House, who cast it for Mr. Adams;[3] a responsibility he did not hesitate to a.s.sume, notwithstanding the equal division of the Kentucky delegation, and in defiance of a resolution pa.s.sed by the Legislature of that state, declaring their preference for General Jackson.[4] On the final vote Andrew Jackson had _seven_ votes, William H. Crawford _four_, and John Quincy Adams _thirteen_; who was, therefore, forthwith declared President of the United States for four years ensuing the 4th of March, 1825.

[3] _Niles' Register_, vol. XXVII., p. 387.

[4] Ibid., vol. XXVII., p. 321.

In the answer of Mr. Adams to the official notice of his election by the House of Representatives, after paying tribute to the talents and public services of his compet.i.tors, he declared that if, by refusal to accept the trust thus delegated to him, he could give immediate opportunity to the people to express, with a nearer approach to unanimity, the object of their preference, he would not hesitate to decline the momentous charge. But the const.i.tution having, in case of such refusal, otherwise disposed of the resulting contingency, he declared his acceptance of the trust a.s.signed to him by his country through her const.i.tutional organs, confiding in the wisdom of the legislative councils for his guide, and relying above all on the direction of a superintending Providence.