1
:" .
•
•
I
I:
I.
9 I I
1
•;•
: ... ....
NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES
3 3433 08253661 0
TIIK r.OLLKt'TIOXOF
PRESENTER BY HIS WI1>OW
HIS ]>ATT«1HTER
sxitt (fhj«nsi3uli
S BAXTGHTKH-IBH&AW
rtglar
TO THE
* *s
ASTOR.LKXOX AXD TILDEX FWTXDATIOXS
ix MEMORY OF
; ttallfg
AX1> HIS SOX
.\\ailt v (ftuif rs illasan
LIE rTB XAXT-< '.OMMAXDE It rXITEI) STATKS XAN1
1HMJ»
XATIOXAL PORTRAIT GALLERY.
.
THE
NATIONAL
PORTRAIT GALLERY
OK
DISTINGUISHED AMERICANS.
CONDUCTED BY
JAMES B. LONGACRE, PHILADELPHIA; AND JAMES HERRING, NEW YORK:
v
Under the Superintendence of the American Academy of the Fine Arts.
VOLUME IV.
• These are deeds which should not pass away, And names that must not wittier, though the earth Forgets her empires with a just decay, The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth."
PHILADELPHIA, JAMES B. LONGACRE. NEW YORK, JAMES HERRING.
1839.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839. by JAMES B. LONG ACRE, in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
>\ totor, l#>
NS
ADDRESS.
THE fourth volume of the National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans is brought to a close, under circumstances materially different from those which pre- ceded it. It might reasonably have been expected, that the concluding volume of the series would have appeared much earlier after the publication of the third ; to those, however, who are aware of the peculiar depression experienced by the pub- lishinf interest during the commercial embarrassments which have borne so heavily on our country for the last two years, it cannot be matter of great surprise to learn that the publishers of this work have shared in the general calamity, and that in consequence two years have passed without presenting the date of either upon the fourth volume. Without farther preface, it is sufficient to state, that the derange- ment and uncertainty of the fiscal exchanges throughout the union, rendered the postponement of the publication a measure not only of prudence but of necessity.
It is satisfactory, however, to know that the value of the materials contained in the volume now presented to the patrons of the work, is in no respect diminished by the delay. The interest that must attach to the subjects embraced in its pages can hardly be affected by the lapse of time ; nor has the execution of the work suffered by the length of time allowed for its completion : the greatest disadvan- tage is that which the proprietors and conductors of the work have experienced, by being prevented from realizing any advantage from the subscriptions while the publication was retarded.
As this volume must close our labors for the present, some reference to the pro- gress and purpose of the work seems to be required by the occasion.
The materials, both pictoral and literary, that have been collected and arranged in the volumes now before the public, have been obtained at a cost of labor, time, and money, very far surpassing any calculation that could have been made at the inception of the work. Although it was obvious that resort must be had to remote parts of the country for the pictures and essential documents required, yet the diffi- culty of tracing and obtaining them has, in very many instances, greatly exceeded the anticipations of the conductors. There being in our country no central reposi- tory for the preservation of the Portraits, or the important papers relating to the most distinguished individuals, these materials, so essential to our national history and honor, have frequently fallen into the hands of persons but imperfectly aware of their value, and consequently indifferent to their preservation.
To remedy as far as possible, the disadvantages of this peculiarity in the situa- tion of our country and habits of our people, the National Portrait Gallery \\'a3 undertaken. To a very great extent the object has been accomplished. The in- valuable relics of those whose lives have most eminently contributed to the forma-
ADDRESS.
tion of our character, and proud c : - . as a self-governed people, have in many
- .red from - -i from oblivion.
innot be I : that an equal de _ - :ildmarkth~ -
in such a collection; but whatever ir.: ' attach to any of them as works
of art. their value, as the most , if not the only authentic portraits of persons wh
nar.. - enrolled on the brig; res of our national annals, demands t. .
: .: the gr- -^ require no ap :. _ :he
---;•- - erpetnated : _ -i the pencil ^ iirt,
< y, Trumbul], Solly, Leslie, Newl n, Inman, Mai :..-. Ir.^ham. Durand. &c.,
: .n in the g .ad power of our
-•-.
nipanyinsr memoirs it may be confider.
the limi" - . I • - more intei r and authentic
eoL : . gi :hical and historical : . :.e men of this union
and the: jefore been prest the peop'r. E :ionhas
been used to secure the most perfect accuracy, and to enlist the -hed and eminent
ared in . - hich
the subject and the circumstances would j : . We have, throngl to prod - :k which all who are ; . i by the impulses of pa~ :he
honor. :: rts of our land, mv regard not merely with favor, but •
tion. as a monument of national gratitude and the ev: . . I .
honorable, and virtuous achiever;- . - ........ . :rld
the hi^L lestmj of the i . .
B.
zs IS 39.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME IV.
Pages.
JOHN ADAMS, Second President of the United States, .... 26
Abigail Adams, Consort of John Adams, ....... 10
Samuel Adams, Governor of Massachusetts, &c. ..... 10
Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut, ...... 10
John Rutledge, Governor of South Carolina, ......
Henry Laurens, President of Congress, &c. ...... G
Thomas Sumter, Brigadier General U. S. A. . . . . . . 10
Richard Montgomery, Major General U. S. A. . . . . . . G
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Major General U. S. A. . . . 12
Thomas Pinckney, Major General U. S. A. ...... 4
Oliver Ellsworth, Chief Justice U.S ........ 8
Thomas Mifflin, Major General U. S. A., and Governor of Pennsylvania, . 6
Thomas McKean, Governor of Pennsylvania, &c ...... 10 '
Robert Morris, ...........
Joseph Habersham, Postmaster General, &c. ...... 4
Mordecai Gist, Brigadier General U. S. A. . . . . . . 4
George Rogers Clarke, Brigadier General U. S. A ...... 12
Simon Kenton, Brigadier General, &c ........ 8 ^ - ' w
Joshua Barney, U. S. Navy, ......... 8 • f^4* A
Luther Martin, Attorney General of the State of Maryland,
Samuel Chase, Associate Justice U. S ........ 4 -*1"1 * ix-
Abraham Baldwin, Senator U. S. from Georgia, ..... G
Robert R. Livingston, Chancellor of the State of New York, . John Quincy Adams, Sixth President of the United States, ... 10 Louisa Catherine Adams, Consort of John Quincy Adams, . . . 10 William Harris Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, .... 12
Hugh Lawson White, Senator U. S. from Tennessee, ....
John Randolph, ...........
William Charles Cole Claiborne, Governor of Louisiana, .... 12
John McLean, Associate Justice U.S ........
Edward Everett, Governor of Massachusetts, ......
Thomas Say, Naturalist, .......... 10
Nathaniel Bowditch, LL.D., F.R.S. .......
Philip Syn<T Physick, M.D. .........
John W. Francis, M.D ........... 10
Lydia Huntley Sigourney, .........
Winfield Scott, Major General U. S. A. . ...... 14
Edmund Pendleton Gaines, Major General U. S. A. .....
Nicholas Biddle, President of the Bank of the United States, ... 19
DA
• of
'
eve
1
,
'6.
-
^HM^HB^^B
.
JOHN ADAMS,
AMONG the earliest settlers of the English colonies in New England was a family by the name of Adams. One of the grantees of the char- ter of Charles the First to the London Company was named Thomas Adams, though it does not appear that he was of those who emigrated with Governor Winthrop, in 1630.
It appears by the Governor's journal, that in 1G34 there came a con- siderable number of colonists, under the pastoral superintendence of the Rev. Thomas Parker, in a vessel from Ipswich, in the county of Essex, in the neighborhood of which is the small town of Braintree.
There was, it seems, after their arrival, some difficulty in deciding where they should be located. It was finally determined that Mount Wollaston, situated within the harbor, and distant about nine miles from the three mountains, and whence the intrusive merry mountain- eer Morton had been expelled, should, with an enlarged boundary, be annexed to Boston ; and the lands within that boundary were granted iu various proportions to individuals, chiefly, if not entirely, of the new company from Ipswich.
The settlement soon increased ; and feeling, like all the original set- tlements in New England, the want of religious instruction and social worship, found it a great inconvenience to travel nine or ten miles every Sunday to reach the place of their devotions. In 1630 they be- gan to hold meetings, and to hear occasional preachers, at Mount Wol- laston itself. Three years afterwards they associated themselves under a covenant as a Christian Church ; and in 1040 were incorporated as a separate town, by the name of Braintree.
Of this town Henry Adams, junior, was the first town-clerk ; and the first pages of the original town records, still extant, are in his hand- writing. He was the oldest of eight sons, with whom his father, Henry Adams, had emigrated, probably from Braintree in England, and who had arrived in the vessel from Ipswich in 1634. Henry Adams the
NATIONAL PORTRAITS.
elder, died in 1646, leaving a widow, and a daughter named Ursula, besides the eight sons above-mentioned. He had been a brewer in En- gland, and had set up a brewery in his new habitation. This esta- blishment was continued by the youngest but one of his sons, named Joseph. The other sons sought their fortunes in other towns, and chiefly among their first settlers. Henry, who had been the first town clerk of Braintree, removed, at the time of the incorporation of Med- field in 1652, to that place, and was again the first town-clerk there.
Joseph, the son who remained at Braintree, was born in 1626 ; was at the time of the emigration of the family from England, a boy of eight years old, and died at the age of sixty-eight in 1694, leaving ten children, — five sons and five daughters.
One of these sons, named John, settled in Boston, and was father of Samuel Adams, and grandfather of the revolutionary patriot of that name.
Another son, named also Joseph, was born in 1654 ; married Han- nah Bass, a daughter of Ruth Alden. and grand-daughter of John Al- den of the May Flower, and died in 1736 at the age of eighty-two.
His second son named John, born in 1689, was the father of JOHN ADAMS, the subject of the present memoir. His mother was Susanna, daughter of Peter Boylston, and niece of Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, re- nowned as the first introducer of inoculation for the small-pox in the British dominions.
This JOHN ADAMS was born on the 30th October, 1735, at Brain- tree. His fathers elder brother, Joseph, had been educated at Harvard College ; and was for upwards of sixty years minister of a Congrega- tional church at Newington, New Hampshire.
John Adams, the father, was a farmer of small estate and a com- mon school education. He lived and died, as his father and grand- father had done before him, in that mediocrity of condition between affluence and poverty, most propitious to the exercise of the ordinary duties of life, and to the enjoyment of individual happiness. He was for many years a deacon of the church, and a select man of the town, without enjoying or aspiring to any higher dignity. He was in his religious opinions, like most of the inhabitants of New England at that time, a rigid Calvinist, and was desirous of bestowing upon his eld- est son the benefit of a classical education, to prepare him for the same profession with that of his elder brother, the minister of the gospel at Newington.
JOHN ADAMS, the son, had at that early age no vocation for the Church, nor even for a college education. Upon his father's asking
JOHN ADAMS.
him to what occupation in life he would prefer to be raised, he an- swered that he wished to be a farmer. His lather, without attempt- ing directly to control his inclination, replied that it should be as he desired. He accordingly took him out with himself the next day upon the farm, and gave him practical experience of the labors of the plough, the spade, and the scythe. At the close of the day the young farmer told his father that he would go to school. He retained, however, his fondness for farming to the last years of his life.
He was accordingly placed under the tuition of Mr. Marsh, the keep- er of a school then residing at Braintree, and who, ten years afterwards, was also the instructor of Josiah Quincy, the celebrated patriot, who lived but to share the first trials and to face the impending terrors of the revolution.
In 1751, at the age of sixteen, JOHN ADAMS was admitted as a stu- dent at Harvard College, and in 1755 was graduated as Bachelor of Arts. The class to which he belonged stands eminent on the College catalogue, for the unusual number of men distinguished in after-life.
O ' "
Among them were Samuel Locke, some time President of the College ; Moses Hemmenway, subsequently a divine of high reputation ; Sir John Wentworth, Governor of the province of New Hampshire ; William Browne, a judge of the Superior Court of the Province of Massa- chusetts Bay, and afterwards Governor of the island of Bermuda; David Sewall, many years judge of the District Court of the United States in the district, and afterwards State of Maine ; and Tristram Dalton, a Senator of the United States. Three of these had so far distinguished themselves while under-graduates, that, in the traditions of the College, it was for many years afterwards known by the sons of Harvard as the class of Adams, Hemmenway, and Locke.
John Adams, the father, had thus given to his eldest son a liberal education to fit him for the gospel ministry. He had two other sons, Peter Boylston and Elihu, whom he was educating to the profession which JOHN had at first preferred, of farmers. In this profession Peter Boylston continued to the end of a long life, holding for many years a commission as a justice of the peace, and serving for some time the town of Q,uincy as their representative in the legislature of the Com- monwealth. He died in 1822 at the age of eighty-four, leaving nu- merous descendants among the respectable inhabitants of Quincy and of Boston. Elihu, at the commencement of the Revolution, entered the army as a captain, and with multitudes of others fell a victim to the epidemic dysentery of 1775. He left two sons and one daughter, whose posterity reside in the towns of Randolph, (originally a part of
NATIONAL PORTRAITS.
Braintree,) Abington, and Bridgewater. The daughter was the mother of Aaron Hobart, several years a member of the House of Representa- tives of the United States, and afterwards of the Council of the Com- monwealth.
Among the usages of the primitive inhabitants of the villages of New England, a liberal, that is, a college education, was considered as an outfit for life, and equivalent to the double portion of an eldest son. Upon being graduated at the College in 1755. JOHN ADAMS, at the age of twenty, had received this double portion, and was thenceforth to pro- vide for himself.
" The world was all before him, and Providence his guide."
At the commencement, when he was graduated, there were present one or more of the select-men of the town of Worcester, which was then in want of a teacher for the town school. They proposed to Mr. Adams to undertake this service, and he accepted the invitation. He repaired immediately to Worcester, and took upon him the arduous duties of his office; pursuing at the same time the studies which were to prepare him for the ministry.
His entrance thus upon the theatre of active life was at a period of great political excitement. Precisely at the time when he went to reside at Worcester, occurred the first incidents of the seven years' war, waged between France and Britain for the mastery of the North Ame- rican continent. The disaster of Braddock's defeat and death hap- pened precisely at that time, like the shock of an earthquake through- out the British colonies. Politics were the speculation of every mind —the prevailing topic of every conversation. It was then that he wrote to his kinsman, Nathaniel Webb, that prophetic letter which has been justly called a literary phenomenon, and which shadowed forth the future revolution of Independence, and the naval glories of this Union.
His father had fondly cherished the hope that he was raising, by the education of his son, a monumental pillar of the Calvinistic church ; and he himself, reluctant at the thought of disappointing the hopes of his father, and unwilling to embrace a profession laboring then under strong prejudices unfavorable to it among the people of New England, had acquiesced in the purpose which had devoted him to the gospel ministry. But the progress of his theological studies soon gave him an irresistible, distaste for the Calvinistic doctrines. The writings of
O
Archbishop Tillotson, then at the summit of their reputation ; the pro-
JOHN ADAMS.
found analysis of Bishop Butler, with his sermons upon human na- ture and upon the character of Balaam, took such hold upon his memory, his imagination, and his judgment, that they extirpated from his mind every root of Calvinism that had been implanted in it ; and the philosophical works of Bolingbroke, then a dazzling novelty in the literary world, although wholly successless in their tendency to shake his faith in the sublime and eternal truths of the gospel, contributed ef- fectively to wean him from the creed of the Genevan Reformer.
About one year after his first arrival at Worcester, after much anx- ious deliberation and consultation with confidential friends, he resolv- ed to relinquish the study of divinity, and to undertake that of the law. He accordingly entered the office of Col. James Putnam, then a lawyer of reputation at Worcester, and became at the same time an inmate of his house. With him he lived in perfect harmony for the space of two years, pursuing, with indefatigable diligence, the study of the law, and keeping at the same time the town school. In 1758 he completed his preparatory professional studies ; relinquished his school, and returned to his paternal mansion at Braintree. He applied, though a total stran- ger, to Jeremy Gridley, then the most eminent lawyer in New England, and Attorney-general of the Province, to present him to the judges of the Superior Court for admission to the Bar. Mr. Gridley examined him with regard to his proficiency in the studies appropriate to his profes- sion, and warmly recommended him to the Court, securing thereby his admission.
He opened an office, and commenced the practice in his native town. Two years after, in 1760, he lost his father ; but continued to reside with his mother and brother till 1764. His attendance upon the Courts in the counties of Suffolk, and of the old colony, was as- 'siduous ; but an accidental engagement in a private cause, before the Court at Plymouth, gave him the opportunity to display talents, which brought him immediately into large and profitable practice. In 1762 the seven years' war was concluded by the cession to Great Britain and Spain of all the possessions of France on the continent of North America ; and at the same time commenced in England the system of policy, which terminated in the Revolution of Independence. It com- menced by an increased rigor of exaction and of restriction in the ex- ecution of the laws of trade. For this purpose the officers of the cus- toms were instructed by an order of the royal council, to apply, in cases when they suspected articles of merchandize upon which the duties had not been paid, were concealed, to the justices of the Superior Courts, for writs of assistance, such as were sometimes issued from the Court
NATIONAL PORTRAITS
of Exchequer in England, authorizing them to enter the houses and warehouses of the merchants, to detect the unlawfully imported goods. This was a new and odious process, to which the merchants in the co- lonies had never before been subjected ; and its legality was immediate- ly contested before the Superior Court. It was substantially the same case as that of the general search warrants, which some years after kin- dled so fierce and inextinguishable a flame upon the prosecution of John Wilkes in London. The spirit of English liberty was as sensitive and as intractable in the colonies, as it ever had been in the mother coun- try. The remark of Junius, that the dogs and horses of England lost their metal by removing to another hemisphere, but that patriotism was improved by transportation, meant by him for a sarcasm, was a truth too serious for the derision of a British statesman. The trial of John Peter Zenger, at New- York, had vindicated the freedom of the press, and the rights of juries, twenty years before they issued victorious from the re-considered opinions of Camden, and the preva- ricating wisdom of Mansfield. And in the trial of the writs of as- sistance, at Boston, James Otis had
-"taught the age to quit their clogs
" By the known rules of ancient Liberty ;''
while the search warrants for the Essay on Woman, and the 45th num- ber of the North Briton, and the Letter of Junius to the King, were slumbering in the womb of futurity.
JOHN ADAMS, at the age of twenty-seven, attended as a member of the bar, the trial upon the writs of assistance, and witnessed the splendid exhibitions of genius and learning exerted in the cause of freedom by the pioneer of American Independence, James Otis. Small is the portion of mankind to whom it is given to discern the great events which control the destinies of nations in their seminal principles. The origin of the American Revolution has been usually ascribed to the Stamp Act ; JOHN ADAMS had seen it in the first cam- paign of the seven years' war in 1755. He saw and marked its pro- gress on the argument of James Otis upon writs of assistance in 1762 ; a cause which, although it produced great excitement at the time, would scarcely have been noticed among the historical incidents of the term, but for the minutes, which his curiosity induced him to take of the trial as it proceeded, and from an imperfect copy of which, taken afterwards by one of the law students in his office, the account of it in the subsequent histories of that period has been published.
On the 25th of October, 1764, he was married to Abigail Smith,
JOHN ADAMS.
second daughter of William Smith, minister of a congregational church at Weymouth, then in her twentieth year.
Tiiis was the memorable year of the Stamp Act. and from this year may be dated his first entrance upon political life. His friend and pa- tron, Gridley, had just before that formed, with some other members of the bar and men of literary taste, a small social circle, who met once a week at each other's houses for the discussion of topics of literature and law, oral or in writing. Before this society MR. ADAMS one eve- ning read a short paper of Observations on the Feudal and Canon Law, which he afterwards published in the Patriotic newspaper. The sen- sation which it produced on the public mind was so great, that in the following year it was re-published in London, and there attributed to the pen of Gridley. It has been frequently since re-published, and even now may be considered as a worthy precursor to the declaration of Independence.
Popular commotions prevented the landing of the Stamp Act papers, which had been sent from England to be used in all processes before the judicial courts.
Thomas Hutchinson, at once the Lieut. Governor and Chief Jus- tice of the Superior Court of the Province, had closed the sessions of the Court, on the pretence that they could not be lawfully held but by using the stamps.
The suspension of the Courts was severely felt throughout the Pro- vince ; but especially in the town of Boston, where, after some time, a town meeting was held, at which it was determined to present a peti- tion to the Governor and Council, that the Courts of justice might be forthwith re-opened ; and they prayed to be heard by counsel in sup- port of the petition. This was accorded, and the counsel appointed by the town were Jeremy Gridley, then Attorney-general, James Otis, and JOHN ADAMS, then a young man of thirty, and not even an inha- bitant of the town. The Governor and Council had not ventured to refuse hearing counsel in support of the town petition ; but, perhaps, from the same timid policy, would hear them only with closed doors, and without admitting any supernumerary hearers. They suggested to the three gentlemen, who represented the town, the expediency of deciding between themselves the points upon which they proposed to support the petition. Mr. Gridley, the officer of the crown, without entering upon the question of right, represented only the general and severe distress suffered by all classes of the people, not only of the town, but of the whole province, by the suspension of all pro- ceedings in the Judicial Courts. Mr. Otis argued, that from this unfore-
NATIONAL PORTRAITS.
seen and unexampled state of things, the nature of the case gave a right of necessity, authorizing the Governor and Council to command the re-opening of the Court until the pleasure of the authority beyond the sea could be known. MR. ADAMS assumed, as the basis of his argu- ment, that the British Parliament had no right of taxation over the colonies. That the Stamp Act was an assumption of power, unwarrant- ed by, and inconsistent with, the principles of the English constitution, and with the charter of the Province. That it was null and void ; binding neither upon the people, nor upon the courts of justice in the colony; and that it was the duty of the Governor and Council to re- quire of the judges of the Courts, that they should resume their judi- cial Courts, and proceed without exacting from suitors, or applying to their own records, the use of any stamps whatever. This, and a co- temporaneous resolution of the same import, introduced into the House of Representatives of the Province by Samuel Adams, are believed to have been the first direct denial of the unlimited right of legislation of
o o
Parliament over the colonies in the progress of that controversy. In the argument before the Governor and Council, it could be assumed only by MR. ADAMS. Mr. Gridley being at that time the king's At- torney-general, and Mr. Otis having, in a celebrated pamphlet on the rights of the colonies, shortly before published, admitted the right of taxation to be among the lawful authorities of Parliament.
The Governor and Council deferred their decision upon the petition of the town, and before the period arrived for the next regular session of the Superior Court, the intelligence came of the repeal of the Stamp Act, and relieved them from the necessity of any decision upon it.
The selection of MR. ADAMS as one of the law council of the town of Boston upon this memorable occasion, was at once an introduction to a career of political eminence, and a signal advancement of his profes- sional reputation as a lawyer. He had already, as chairman of a committee of the town of Braintree, draughted instructions, on the sub- ject of the Stamp Act, to the Representative of the town in the general court, which had been published, and attracted much notice ; and he was shortly after elected one of the select-men of the town.
He had formed an intimate acquaintance and warm friendship with Jonathan Sewall. who had married a Miss Qiiincy, a relation of MR. ADAMS. Sewall, a man of fine talents, distinguished as an orator and a writer, had commenced his career as a patriot ; but had been drawn over by the artifices of Bernard and Hutchinson. and by lucrative and honorable offices, to the royal cause. Through him the office of advo- cate-general was offered to MR. ADAMS, which he declined, though
JOHN ADAMS.
tendered with an assurance that no sacrifice of his political sentiments would be expected from him by his acceptance of the office. He was already known in that Court by the defence of Ansell Nickerson, an American seaman, who, in self-defence against a press-gang from a king's ship in the harbor of Boston, had killed, with the stroke of a harpoon, their commander, Lieut. Panton. MR. ADAMS'S defence was, that the usage of impressment had never extended to the colonies ; that the attempt to impress Nickerson was, on the part of Lieutenant Panton, unlawful ; and that the act of Nickerson in killing him was justifiable homicide. Although the commander of the naval force on the Ame- rican station, Captain Hood, afterwards Lord Hood, a name illustrious in the naval annals of Britain, was a member of the Court which decided the fate of Nickerson, he was acquitted and discharged ; and thus, even before the question of Parliamentary taxation had been brought to its issue in blood, it was solemnly settled that the royal prerogative of impressment did not extend to the colonies. That pre- rogative, so utterly irreconcileable with the fundamental principle of the great charter, " nullus homo capietur? that dark spot on the snow-white standard of English freedom, that brand of servitude which Foster, from the judicial bench, stamped on the forehead of the British seaman ; that shame to the legislation of the mother country, was, by the exertions of JOHN ADAMS, banished from the code of co- lonial law.
In the inimitable portrait of the just man drawn by the great Roman Lyric Poet, he is said to be equally immovable from his purpose by the flashing eye of the tyrant, and by the burning fury of a multitude com- manding him to do wrong. Of all revolutions, ancient or modern, that of American Independence was pre-eminently popular. It was emphatically the revolution of the people. Not one noble name of the parent realm is found recorded upon its annals, as armed in the defence of the cause of freedom, or assisting in the councils of the confederacy ; a few foreign nobles, La Fayette, De Kalb, Pulaski, Steuben, Du Por- tail, Du Coudray, and a single claimant of a British peerage, Lord Stirling, warmed by the spirit of freedom, and stimulated by the elec- tric spark of military adventure, joined the standard of our country; and more than one of them laid down their lives in her cause. Of the natives of the land, not one — not Washington himself — could be justly styled the founder of Independence. The title of Liberator, since ap- plied to an immeasurably inferior man in another continent of this he- misphere, could not be, and never was, applied to Washington. Of the nation, formed after the revolution was accomplished, he was by
NATIONAL PORTRAITS.
the one people placed at the head ; of the revolution itself, he was but the arm.
North American Independence was achieved by a new phenomenon in the history of mankind, — by a self-formed, self-constituted, and self- governed Democracy. There were leaders of the people in the seve- ral colonies ; there were representatives of the colonies, and after- wards of the States in the continental Congress ; there was a conti- nental army, a continental navy, and a continental currency ; agents, factors, and soldiers ; but the living soul, the vivifying spirit of the whole, was a steady, firm, resolute, inflexible will of the people, march- ing through fire and sword, and pestilence and famine, and bent to march, were it through the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds— to INDEPENDENCE.
The objections urged from time immemorial against the democra- cies of former ages were, the instability of the popular will — the im- petuosity of their passions — the fluctuation of their counsels, and the impossibility of resisting their occasional and transitory animosities and resentments. Little of al this was seen in the course of the North American revolution. Even before its outset the people were trained to a spirit of self-control, well suited to prepare them for the trials that await- ed them, and to carry them triumphantly through the fiery ordeal. No event contributed more to the formation of this spirit than the tragedy of the 5th of March, 1770, and its consequences. To suppress the popular commotions which the system of Parliamentary taxation had excited and could not fail to provoke, two regiments of soldiers were stationed at Boston ; and becoming daily more odious to the inhabitants, were exposed to continual insults from the unguarded and indiscreet among them. On the 5th of March, a small party of the soldiers, under command of Lieut. Preston, were thus assailed and insulted by a crowd of people gathering round them, until they fired upon them, and killed and wounded several persons. The passions of the people were roused to the highest pitch of indignation, but manifested themselves by no violence or excess. Lieutenant Preston and six of the soldiers were arrested by the civil authority, and tried before the Superior Court for murder. They were so well advised as to apply to JOHN ADAMS and Josiah Quincy, known as among the most ardent amons^ the patriots, to defend them ; and they hesitated not to undertake the task. The momentary passions of the people identified the suffer- ings of the victims of that night with the cause of the country, and JOHN ADAMS and Josiah Q,uincy were signalized as deserters from the standard of freedom. How great was the load of public obloquy under
10
JOHN ADAMS.
which they labored, lives yet in the memory of surviving witnesses ; and is recorded in the memoir of the life of Josiah Q,uincy, which the filial veneration of a son, worthy of such a father, has given to the world. Among the most affecting incidents related in that volume, and the most deeply interesting documents appended to it, are the recital of this event, and the correspondence between Josiah Quincy the defend- er of the soldiers and his father on that occasion. The fortitude of JOHN ADAMS was brought to a test equally severe ; as the elder council for the prisoners on trial, it was his duty to close the argument in their defence. The writer of this article has often heard from indivi- duals, who had been present among the crowd of spectators at the trial, the electrical effect produced upon the jury, and upon the im- mense and excited auditory, by the first sentence with which he opened his defence ; which was the following citation from the then recent- ly published work of Beccaria.
" May it please your Honors, and you, Gentlemen of the Jury.
" I am for the prisoners at the bar, and shall apologize for it only in the words of the Marquis Beccaria. ' If I can but be the instrument of preserving one life, his blessing and tears of transport shall be a suf- ficient consolation to me for the contempt of all mankind.' '
Captain Preston and the soldiers were acquitted, excepting two, who were found guilty of manslaughter, an offence which, being at that time entitled to the benefit of clergy, was subject to no sharp- er penalty than the gentle application of a cold iron to the hand, and, except as a warning for the future, was equivalent to an acquittal.
The town of Boston instituted an annual commemoration of the massacre of the 5th of March, by the delivery of an oration to the inhabitants assembled in town meeting. This anniversary was thus celebrated for a succession of thirteen years, until the close of the Revolutionary War, when that of the 4th of July, the day of na- tional Independence, was substituted in its place. The Boston mas- sacre is, however, memorable as the first example of those annual com- memorations by public discourses ever since so acceptable to the peo- ple.
Within two months after the trial of the soldiers, MR. ADAMS re- ceived a new testimonial of the favor and confidence of his townsmen, by their election of him as one of their Representatives in the General Court or Colonial Legislature. In this body the conflict of principles between metropolitan authority and British colonial liberty was perti- naciously maintained. Sir Francis Bernard had just before closed his inglorious career, by seeking refuge in his own country from the in-
NATIONAL PORTRAITS.
dignation of the people over whom he had been sent to rule. He was succeeded by Thomas Hutchinson, a native of the province, a man of considerable talent, great industry, and of grasping ambition ; who, in evil hour for himself, preferred the path of royal favor to that of pa- triotism for the ascent to power and fortune.
In times of civil commotion, the immediate subject of contention be- tween the parties scarcely ever discloses to the superficial observer the great questions at issue between them. Tiie first collision between Hutchinson and the two branches of the General Court was about the place where they were to hold their sessions.
Hutchinson, by instructions, secretly suggested by himself, convened the General Court at Cambridge, instead of Boston. They claimed it as a chartered ricjht to meet at the town-house in Boston ; and hence
O /
a long controversy between the Governor and the two houses, which, after three years of obstinate discussion, terminated by the restoration of the Legislature to their accustomed place of meeting.
O J. O
By the charter of the colony, the members of the House of Repre- sentatives were annually elected by the people of the towns, and twenty- eight counsellors by the House of Representatives and council, with the approbation of the Governor. The judges of the Superior Court were appointed by the Governor and Council ; and the Governor. Lieutenant-governor, and Judges were paid by annual grants from the General Court. In ordinary times the Council had always been more friendly to the Executive administration, and less disposed to resist the transatlantic authority than the House ; but as the contest with the mother country grew warmer, and the country party in the House stronger, they dropped in their elections to the Council all the partizans of the Court, and elected none but the most determined patriots to the council board. The only resource of the Governor was to disapprove the most obnoxious of the persons elected, and thus to exclude a few of the most prominent leaders ; but in their places the House always elected others of the same principles.
Among the devices to which, at the instigation of Hutchinson him- self, the British Government resorted to remedy these disorders, was that of vacating the charter of the colony ; of reserving to the King in council the appointment of the councillors, and of paying by Par- liamentary authority the Governor and Judges, himself. The drift of these changes could not be mistaken. Hutchinson, who affected the character of a profound constitutional lawyer, entered into long and elaborate discussion of the rights and authority of Parliament in mes- sages to the General Court, which were answered separately by re-
JOHN ADAMS.
ports of committees in both Houses. In the composition of these papers MR. ADAMS was frequently employed, together with his dis- tinguished relative, Samuel Adams. For the discussion of profound constitutional questions, the education of JOHN ADAMS as a lawyer, had pre-eminently qualified him to cope with Hutchinson in his black letter messages ; and for the arguments on chartered rights and statutory law, he was relied upon beyond all others.
In 1772, having removed to his primitive residence at Braintree, he ceased to represent the town of Boston in the Legislature ; but he was soon after elected to the council, and negatived by the Governor. In 1774 he was elected one of the members from the colony of Massachu- setts Bay to the Continental Congress ; and on the first meeting of that body, on the 5th of September of that year, took his seat among the founders of the North American Union. His service in Congress con- tinued until November, 1777, when he was chosen by that body, in the place of Silas Deane, a joint commissioner at the Court of France, with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee.
He embarked for France on the 13th of February, 1778, in the Bos- ton frigate, commanded by Samuel Tucker ; and, after a most tempes- tuous passage of forty-five days, landed at Bordeaux in France. The recognition by France of the Independence of the United States, and the conclusion of the treaties of commerce and of alliance between the two nations, had taken place between the appointment of MR. ADAMS and his arrival at Paris.
After the ratification of those treaties, Congress thought proper to substitute a single minister plenipotentiary at the court of France.
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was appointed the minister. Arthur Lee had previously received a separate commission as minister to the Court of Spain. MR. ADAMS, without waiting for a letter of recall, returned in the summer of 1779. in the French frigate La Sensible, to the United States. The French minister to the United States, the Chevalier de la Luzerne, together with his secretary of legation, since highly dis- tinguished through all the scenes of the French Revolution, Barbe de Marbois, were passengers in the same frigate. They arrived at Boston on the 2d of August, 1779. Precisely at that time the convention which formed the constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachu- setts was about to assemble, and MR. ADAMS was returned to it as a member from the town of Braintree.
The convention assembled at Cambridge on the 1st of September, 1779, and, after appointing a committee of thirty-one members to pre- pare a declaration of rights, and a constitution for the Commonwealth.
13
NATIONAL PORTRAITS.
adjourned