than a match for them all.  He fought single-handed for the right of petition as an indefeasible right, not hesitating to submit a petition from citizens of Virginia praying for his own expulsion from Congress as a nuisance.  In 1836 he presented a petition from one hundred and fifty-eight ladies, citizens of Massachusetts, “for, I said, I had not yet brought myself to doubt whether females were citizens.”  After eight years of persistent struggle against the “Atherton gag law,” which practically denied the right of petition in matters relating to slavery, he carried a vote rescinding it, and nothing of the kind was again enacted.  He had a fatal stroke of paralysis on the floor of Congress February 21st, 1848, and died two days later.

As a writer he was perspicuous, vigorous, and straightforward.  He had entered Harvard in the middle of the college course, and been graduated with honors.  He had then studied and practiced law.  He was Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard from 1806 to 1809, and was well drilled in the use of language, but was too downright in his temper and purposes to spend much labor upon artistic effects.  He kept an elaborate diary during the greater part of his life,—­since published in twelve volumes of “Memoirs” by his son Charles Francis Adams; a vast storehouse of material relating to the political history of the country, but, as published, largely restricted to public affairs.  He delivered orations on Lafayette, on Madison, on Monroe, on Independence, and on the Constitution; published essays on the Masonic Institution and various other matters; a report on weights and measures, of enormous labor and permanent value; Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory; a tale in verse on the Conquest of Ireland, with the title ‘Dermot MacMorrogh’; an account of Travels in Silesia; and a volume of ‘Poems of Religion and Society.’  He had some facility in rhyme, but his judgment was not at fault in informing him that he was not a poet.  Mr. Morse says that “No man can have been more utterly void of a sense of humor or an appreciation of wit”; and yet he very fairly anticipated Holmes in his poem on ’The Wants of Man,’ and hits rather neatly a familiar foible in the verse with which he begins ’Dermot MacMorrogh’:—­

“’Tis strange how often readers will indulge
Their wits a mystic meaning to discover;
Secrets ne’er dreamt of by the bard divulge,
And where he shoots a cluck, will find a plover;
Satiric shafts from every line promulge,
Detect a tyrant where he draws a lover: 
Nay, so intent his hidden thoughts to see,
Cry, if he paint a scoundrel—­’That means me.’”

Selections from Letters and Memoirs used by permission of
J.B.  Lippincott Company.

LETTER TO HIS FATHER

(At the Age of Ten)