Note (back) — Chapter III

Accordingly on December 5 he rose to address the House. He was greeted as a Deus ex machina. Not speaking to the clerk, but turning directly to the assembled members, he began: "Fellow citizens! Members elect of the twenty-sixth Congress!" He could not resist the temptation of administering a brief but severe and righteous castigation to Garland; and then, ignoring that functionary altogether, proceeded to beg the House to organize itself. To this end he said that he would offer a resolution "ordering the clerk to call the members from New Jersey possessing the credentials from the Governor of that State." There had been already no lack of resolutions, but the difficulty lay in the clerk's obstinate refusal to put the question upon them. So now the puzzled cry went up: "How shall the question be put?" "I intend to put the question myself," said the dauntless old man, wholly equal to the emergency. A tumult of applause resounded upon all sides. Rhett, of South Carolina, sprang up and offered a resolution, that Williams, of North Carolina, the oldest member of the House, be appointed chairman of the meeting; but upon objection by Williams, he substituted the name of Mr. Adams, and put the question. He was "answered by an almost universal shout in the affirmative." Whereupon Rhett and Williams conducted the old man to the chair. It was a proud moment. Wise, of Virginia, afterward said, addressing a complimentary speech to Mr. Adams, "and if, when you shall be gathered to your fathers, I were asked to select the words which in my judgment are calculated to give at once the best character of the man, I would inscribe upon your tomb this sentence, 'I will put the question myself!'" Doubtless Wise and a good many more would have been glad enough to put almost any epitaph on a tombstone for Mr. Adams.[13] It must, however, be acknowledged that the impetuous Southerners behaved very handsomely by their arch foe on this occasion, and were for once as chivalrous in fact as they always were in profession.