Volume 2 — VI. (continued 2)

You all remember the last time he was at any public meeting in this city. A man had been kidnapped in Boston, kidnapped at noon-day, "on the high road between Faneuil Hall and old Quincy," and carried off to be a slave! New England hands had seized their brother, sold him into bondage for ever, and his children after him. In the presence of slavery, as of arms, the laws are silent,—not always men. Then it appears who are men, who not! A meeting was called to talk the matter over, in a plain way, and look in one another's faces. Who was fit to preside in such a case? That old man sat in the chair in Faneuil Hall; above him was the image of his father, and his own; around him were Hancock and the other Adams,—Washington, greatest of all; before him were the men and women of Boston, met to consider the wrongs done to a miserable negro slave; the roof of the old Cradle of Liberty spanned over them all. Forty years before, a young man and a Senator, he had taken the chair at a meeting called to consult on the wrong done to American seamen, violently impressed by the British from an American ship of war, the unlucky Chesapeake; some of you remember that event. Now, an old man, clothed with half a century of honors, he sits in the same hall, to preside over a meeting to consider the outrage done to a single slave; a greater outrage—alas, not done by a hostile, not by an alien hand! One was the first meeting of citizens he ever presided over, the other was the last; both for the same object—the defence of the Eternal Right.

But I would not weary you. His death was noble; fit ending for such a life. He was an old man, the last that had held a diplomatic office under Washington. He had uttered his oracles; had done his work. The highest honors of the nation he had worthily worn; but, as his townsmen tell us,—caring little for the President, and much for the man,—that was very little in comparison with his character. The good and ill of the human cup he had tasted, and plentifully, too, as son, husband, father. He had borne his testimony for freedom and the rights of mankind; he had stood in Congress almost alone; with a few gallant men had gone down to the battlefield, and if victory escaped him, it was because night came on.

He saw others enter the field in good heart, to stand in the imminent deadly breach; he lived long enough for his own welfare, for his own ambition; long enough to see the seal broken,—and then, this aged Simeon, joyful in the consolation, bowed his head and went home in peace. His feet were not hurt with fetters; he died with his armor on; died like a Senator in the capitol of the nation; died like an American, in the service of his country; died like a Christian, full of immortality; died like a man, fearless and free!

You will ask, What was the secret of his strength? Whence did he gain such power to stand erect where others so often cringed and crouched low to the ground? It is plain to see: he looked beyond time, beyond men; looked to the eternal God, and fearing Him forgot all other fear. Some of his failings he knew to be such, and struggled with them though he did not overcome. A man, not over-modest, once asked him what he most of all lamented in his life, and he replied, "My impetuous temper and vituperative speech; that I have not always returned good for evil, but in the madness of my blood have said things that I am ashamed of before my God!" As the world goes, it needed some greatness to say that.

When he was a boy, his mother, a still woman, and capable, deep-hearted, and pious, took great pains with his culture; most of all with his religious culture. When, at the age of ten, he was about to leave home for years of absence in another land, she took him aside to warn him of temptations which he could not then understand. She bade him remember religion and his God—his secret, silent prayer. Often in his day there came the earthquake of party strife; the fire, the storm, and the whirlwind of passion; he listened—and God was not there; but there came, too, the remembrance of his mother's whispered words; God came in that memory, and earthquake and storm, the fire and the whirlwind were powerless, at last, before that still small voice. Beautifully did she write to her boy of ten, "Great learning and superior abilities will be of little value ... unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity, are added to them. Remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and your actions." "Dear as you are to me," says this more than Spartan, this Christian mother, "Dear as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed, or that any untimely death cross you in your infant years, than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child. Let your observations and comparisons produce in your mind an abhorrence of domination and power—the parents of slavery, ignorance, and barbarism. May you be led to an imitation of that disinterested patriotism and that noble love of your country, which will teach you to despise wealth, titles, pomp, and equipage, as mere external advantages, which cannot add to the internal excellence of your mind, or compensate for the want of integrity and virtue." She tells him in a letter, that her father, a plain New England clergyman, of Braintree, who had just died, "left you a legacy more valuable than gold or silver; he left you his blessing, and his prayers that you might become a useful citizen, a guardian of the laws, liberty, and religion of your country.... Lay this bequest up in your memory and practise upon it; believe me, you will find it a treasure that neither moth nor rust can destroy."

If a child have such a mother, there is no wonder why he stood fearless, and bore a charmed life which no opposition could tame down. I wonder more that one so born and by such a mother bred, could ever once bend a servile knee; could ever indulge that fierce and dreadful hate; could ever stoop to sully those hands which hers had joined in prayer. It ill accords with teachings like her own. I wonder that he could ever have refused to "deliberate." Religion is a quality that makes a man independent; disappointment will not render such an one sour, nor oppression drive him mad, nor elevation bewilder; power will not dazzle, nor gold corrupt; no threat can silence and no fear subdue.

There are men enough born with greater abilities than Mr. Adams, men enough in New England, in all the walks of man. But how many are there in political life who use their gifts so diligently, with such conscience, such fearless deference to God?—nay, tell us one. I have not spared his faults; I am no eulogist, to paint a man with undiscriminating praise. Let his follies warn us, while his virtues guide. But look on all his faults, and then compare him with our famous men of the North or the South; with the great whigs or the great democrats. Ask which was the purest man, the most patriotic, the most honest; which did his nation the smallest harm and the greatest good; which for his country and his kind denied himself the most. Shall I examine their lives, public and private, strip them bare and lay them down beside his life, and ask which, after all, has the least of blemish and the most of beauty? Nay, that is not for me to do or to attempt.

In one thing he surpassed most men,—he grew more liberal the more he grew old, ripening and mellowing, too, with age. After he was seventy years old, he welcomed new ideas, kept his mind vigorous, and never fell into that crabbed admiration of past times and buried institutions, which is the palsy of so many a man, and which makes old age nothing but a pity, and gray hairs provocative of tears. This is the more remarkable in a man of his habitual reverence for the past, in one who judged oftener by the history than by the nature of man.

Times will come when men shall look to that vacant seat. But the thunder is silent, the lightning gone; other men must take his place and fill it as they can. Let us not mourn that he has gone from us; let us remember what was evil in him, but only to be warned of ambition, of party strife, to love more that large charity which forgives an enemy, and, through good and ill, contends for mankind. Let us be thankful for the good he has said and done, be guided by it and blessed. There is a certain affluence of intellectual power granted to some men, which provokes admiration for a time, let the man of myriad gifts use his talent as he may. Such merely cubic greatness of mind is matter of astonishment rather than a fit subject for esteem and praise. Of that, Mr. Adams had little, as so many of his contemporaries had more. In him what most commands respect is, his independence, his love of justice, of his country and his kind. No son of New England has been ever so distinguished in political life. But it is no great thing to be President of the United States; some men it only makes ridiculous. A worm on a steeple's top is nothing but a worm, no more able to fly than while creeping in congenial mud; a mountain needs no steeple to lift its head and show the world what is great and high. The world obeys its great men, stand where they may.

After all, this must be the greatest praise of Mr. Adams: In private he corrupted no man nor woman; as a politician he never debauched the public morals of his country, nor used public power for any private end; in public and private he lived clean and above board; he taught a fearless love of truth and the right, both by word and deed. I wish I could add, that was a small praise. But as the times go, as our famous men are, it is a very great fame, and there are few competitors for such renown; I must leave him alone in that glory. Doubtless, as he looked back on his long career, his whole life, motives as well as actions, must have seemed covered with imperfections. I will seek no further to disclose his merits, or "draw his frailties from their dead abode."

He has passed on, where superior gifts and opportunities avail not, nor his long life, nor his high station, nor his wide spread fame; where enemies cease from troubling, and the flattering tongue also is still. Wealth, honor, fame, forsake him at the grave's mouth. It is only the living soul, sullied or clean, which the last angel bears off in his arms to that world where many that seem first shall be last, and the last first; but where justice shall be lovingly done to the great man full of power and wisdom who rules the State, and the feeblest slave whom oppression chains down in ignorance and vice—done by the all-seeing Father of both President and slave, who loves both with equal love. The venerable man is gone home. He shall have his praise. But who shall speak it worthily? Mean men and little, who shrank from him in life, who never shared what was manliest in the man, but mocked at his living nobleness, shall they come forward and with mealy mouths, to sing his requiem, forgetting that his eulogy is their own ban? Some will rejoice at his death; there is one man the less to fear, and they who trembled at his life may well be glad when the earth has covered up the son she bore. Strange men will meet with mutual solace at his tomb, wondering that their common foe is dead, and they are met! The Herods and Pilates of contending parties may be made friends above his grave, and clasping hands may fancy that their union is safer than before; but there will come a day after to-day! Let us leave him to his rest.

The slave has lost a champion who gained new ardor and new strength the longer he fought; America has lost a man who loved her with his heart; Religion has lost a supporter; Freedom an unfailing friend, and Mankind a noble vindicator of our unalienable rights.

It is not long since he was here in our own streets; three winter months have scantly flown: he set out for his toil—but went home to his rest. His labors are over. No man now threatens to assassinate; none to expel; none even to censure. The theatrical thunder of Congress, noisy but harmless, has ended as it ought, in honest tears. South Carolina need ask no more a halter for that one northern neck she could not bend nor break. The tears of his country are dropped upon his urn; the muse of history shall write thereon, in letters not to be effaced, The one great man since Washington, whom America had no cause to fear.

To-day that venerable form lies in the Capitol,—the disenchanted dust. All is silent. But his undying soul, could we deem it still hovering o'er its native soil, bound to take leave yet lingering still, and loath to part, that would bid us love our country, love man, love justice, freedom, right, and above all, love God. To-morrow that venerable dust starts once more to join the dear presence of father and mother, to mingle his ashes with their ashes, as their lives once mingled, and their souls again. Let his native State communicate her last sad sacrament, and give him now, it is all she can, a little earth for charity.

But what shall we say as the dust returns?

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