Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/124

104 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS Aether failed him. Mr. Clay was unable to help him to a single vote. In this desperate emergency, finding his office slipping from un- der him, Mr. Adams made a most unfortunate effort to retrieve his falling fortunes, in the shape of a letter addressed to the electors of Virginia, in which he claimed their votes on the ground of his services twenty years before in exposing and frustrating the alleged New Eng- land plot, which we have already referred to, to dissolve the Union. This ill-judged letter, while it did not gain him a single vote, left him to retire to Quincy (1829) where he had now become possessor of his father's estate, largely augmented by his own shrewd management with a new personal and political quarrel on his hands, and with hard feelings and personal antipathies against him, which for a long time had been in abeyance, thus unseasonably re- vived by himself. Shortly after his return to Massachusetts a correspondence ensued between him and a number of the old federalists and their representatives, which did not tend to mollify matters. No new light was thrown on the alleged plot, though Mr. Adams is under- stood to have written a book or pamphlet on the subject, which however he refrained from publishing, on the judgment of some friends to whom he submitted it, that it would not better his case. After having successfully kept the political seas for nearly forty years, and that in very stormy times, Mr. Adams was at last stranded, as it seemed, high and dry on a po- litical lee shore. He addressed himself for the moment to arranging the papers and preparing a life of his father ; but the fragment of this work which his son has incorporated in his life of his grandfather does not make 'us regret that he soon abandoned it. He had been a versifier from his youth, and he now published a rhymed performance of some length, founded on the story of the conquest of Ireland (" Der- mot McMorrogh," Boston, 1832) ; but this pal- pably was not a field in which he was likely to gather laurels. Though Mr. Adams had now reached an age at which many politicians have voluntarily retired, he had in his temperament too much of innate vigor and indefatigable ac- tivity, and too much of the stormy petrel in his character, to make him willing to leave that political vocation to which, both by na- ture and habit, he was so specially adapted. In fact, the great work of his life remained to be performed. The anti-masonic excitement consequent on the disappearance and alleged murder of William Morgan had, about this time, introduced a new element into the poli- tics of western New York, whence it had spread into Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsyl- vania, and in a less degree into other states. This excitement had taken a strong hold of the congressional district in which Mr. Adams lived, and he himself exhibited a deep interest in it. He signalized his zeal against secret so- cieties by exerting himself to procure the abo- lition of some passwords and secret signs which formed a part of the ceremonial of the Phi Beta Kappa, a literary society of which branches existed in Harvard and other colleges ; and un- der these circumstances the anti-masons of his district brought him forward as a candidate for congress. He accepted the nomination, and was chosen without opposition, and continued to represent the district till his death, 17 years after. The mass of those who had been his supporters for the presidency had looked, since his failure of a reelection, to Mr. Clay as their head and leader. Mr. Adams entered congress in December, 1831, without party or followers, but in a more independent position than he had ever yet occupied. Shortly after his return to public life he was nominated by the anti- masons as their candidate for governor of Mas- sachusetts. The politics of Massachusetts were at that time in a very disorganized state, and a strong effort was made by the Everetts and other personal friends of Mr. Adams, and was favored by Mr. Webster, to induce the so-called national republican party to accept the nomi- nation of Mr. Adams thus made. But for the feeling against him which his Virginia letter had aroused among the old federalists, this effort would probably have been successful. As it was, the national republicans as well as the supporters of the administration each nominated a separate candidate for governor. There was no choice by the people, but as the national republicans carried a majority in the legislature, their candidate, John Davis, was elected over Adams's head (1834) a disap- pointment which tended to place him in a still more independent political position. He gave, however, a general support in congress to that party which had sustained his own administra- tion. He strongly opposed the nullifiers ; yet, as chairman of the committee on manufactures, he strove to discover some middle ground on which the vexed question of the tariff might be satisfactorily settled. On the question of the removal of the deposits he went with the party which now began to take the name of whigs including in that denomination not merely the old national republicans, but a certain number, especially at the south, of deserters from the Jackson ranks. In the affair of the dispute with France in 1835, about the delay in paying the indemnity, which had been stipulated by treaty, for maritime spoliations in Bonaparte's time, true to his pugnacious temperament, he supported Jackson's proposition for issuing let- ters of marque and reprisal, no less energeti- cally than he had formerly supported Jefferson's embargo ; and by a very singular coincidence, this course, like that, cost him a seat in the United States senate. At this very time the Massachusetts legislature were employed in filling an approaching vacancy in that body. Mr. Adams's friends had brought him forward as a candidate, and he was more than onco chosen by the state senate. The house, how- ever, did not concur, but proposed John Davis instead. This question was still pending, with