Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/115

JOHN ADAMS 95 longing after monarchy, bigotry, tyranny, and oppression in general. Especially were they enraged at the passage by the last congress, just before the close of his and their term of office, of a new judiciary act, or rather at Adams's presuming to fill up with federalists the twenty-three' new judicial offices, besides attorneys, marshals, and clerks, created by this act. These nominations, stigmatized as "mid- night appointments," were assailed, as well as he who made them, by every term of party re- proach ; nor did the now triumphant republi- cans rest until, unable to reach these appointees in any other way, they had stripped them of their offices by repealing the act. Though Adams was far more of a speculative philoso- pher than any of his contemporaries in the field of American politics, except Jefferson, he was by no means philosopher enough to sub- mit with patience to the obloquy with which he was now visited. In the agony of his heart he sat down to defend himself with his pen, at least before the tribunal of posterity. He had been in the habit of keeping, during intervals of his life, a diary or journal, large and very valuable extracts from which appear in the 2d and 3d volumes of his collected works. He now set himself to writing an "Autobiogra- phy" and a reply to Hamilton's pamphlet. But though he wrote with great facility and force, neither his eyes, which were weak, his hand, which trembled so as to make the me- chanical labor of writing disagreeable, nor yet his habits or his temperament, were favorable to the labor of correction, condensation, and arrangement ; and he presently abandoned both those works, though some selections from the " Autobiography " have been published by his grandson by way of filling gaps in his diary. Eight years later, when time had somewhat healed over these wounds, they broke out with new malignancy by reason of renewed attacks upon hun by the federalists on account of his son John Quincy Adams having abandoned the federal party, and the disposition evinced by the father to sustain the policy of the admin- istration, rather than that of the federalists, in the disputes which finally terminated in war with Great Britain. Hitherto the Jeffersonian or democratic party had possessed in Boston as its sole newspaper organ "The Chronicle," a very violent paper, of which the staple in times past had been abuse of John Adams as an aristocrat and a monarchist, and the author of the alien and sedition laws. To represent and express the sentiments of a new cohort, which with the years 1806 and 1807 came in Massachusetts to the support of Jefferson, under the leadership of John Q. Adams, a new paper was established called the " Boston Pa- triot," to which both John Q. Adams and his father became contributors. In the earliest numbers of this paper, John Adams printed (and it may be found in the 9th volume of his collected works) "The inadmissible Principles of the King of England's Proclamation of Oct. 16, 1807, considered," being an examination and refutation of the English doctrine of im- pressment as applied to British subjects. Very soon, however, he dropped these topics of the day, and reverted to the past. The old charge having been anew brought up against him by some of the federalist papers, of personal mo- tives in setting on foot the mission to France in 1799, he took up that subject in a series of letters to the " Patriot " also printed in his collected works, vol. ix. into which he incor- porated much of the material collected for his answer to Hamilton. These letters are a valu- able contribution to the history of that inter- esting period, and can hardly fail to be re- garded as a complete vindication of Adams's policy and conduct on that occasion at least if we allow that the immediate welfare of the nation was to be consulted, rather than any supposed prospective interest of any political party. From this beginning Mr. Adams went on to a history especially of his diplomatic ca- reer, into which he introduced many valuable documents in his possession. These publications, interrupted and again commenced from time to time, extended over a space of three years. A portion, embracing perhaps two thirds of the whole, was collected and published in pam- phlets, which, bound together, made an octavo volume, entitled " Correspondence of the late President Adams, originally published in the Boston 'Patriot' in a series of letters." Thus disjointed, and written, as parts of it evince, and as his published correspondence of this pe- riod more clearly shows, under great exasper- ation of feeling, and coming forth, too, at a period when the events of the day engrossed all thoughts, and during which the history of the revolution was less generally known and less a subject of public interest than at any time before or since, these letters failed to at- tract the public attention or to satisfy Mr. Ad- ams's ideal of an historical vindication of himself. Seeing how, amid the ignorance and careless- ness of the times, the true history of the revo- lution was in danger of total oblivion or of be- ing transformed into a sort of legend, he aban- doned his task with expressions to his private correspondents of contempt for history, and of utter despair of ever having justice done to him. But with the establishment of peace in Europe, and the apparent fulfilment, at least for the moment, of all Mr. Adams's prophecies as to the result of the French revolution, the bitter political obloquy of which he had been the mark an obloquy directed against him from two opposite quarters at once began sensibly to relax ; and as those who had been contemporaries with his active life one after another dropped off, he himself began to fill, while yet alive, the position in general estima- tion of a hero of the past. After Mr. Jefferson's withdrawal from political life, through the agency of Dr. Kush, who had all along re- mained the personal friend of both, correspon- dence by letter was renewed between Adams