allegiance we have sworn, and to remember that he who has once been a soldier of the motherland degrades himself forever when he becomes the slave of faction.  Then at last, if through life we ever bear these lessons freshly in mind will it be well for us, will it be well for our country, will it be well for those whose names we bear, that our bones also do not molder with those of our brave comrades beneath the sods of Gettysburg, or that our graves do not look down on the swift-flowing Mississippi from the historic heights of Vicksburg?

JOHN ADAMS (1735-1826)

John Adams, second President of the United States, was not a man of the strong emotional temperament which so often characterizes the great orator.  He was fitted by nature for a student and scholar rather than to lead men by the direct appeal the orator makes to their emotions, their passions, or their judgment His inclinations were towards the Church; but after graduating from Harvard College, which he entered at the age of sixteen, he had a brief experience as a school-teacher and found it so distasteful to him that he adopted the law as a relief, without waiting to consult his inclinations further.  “Necessity drove me to this determination,” he writes, “but my inclination was to preach.”  He began the practice of law in his native village of Braintree, Massachusetts, and took no prominent part in public affairs until 1765, when he appeared as counsel for the town of Boston in proceedings growing out of the Stamp Act difficulties.

From this time on, his name is constantly associated with the great events of the Revolution.  That be never allowed his prejudices as a patriot to blind him to his duties as a lawyer, he showed by appearing as counsel for the British soldiers who killed Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, and others, in the Boston riot of 1770.  He was associated in this case with Josiah Quincy, and the two distinguished patriots conducted the case with such ability that the soldiers were acquitted—­as no doubt they should have been.

Elected a member of the Continental Congress, Mr. Adams did work in it which identified him in an enduring way with the formative period of republican institutions in America.  This must be remembered in passing upon his acts when as President, succeeding Washington, he is brought into strong contrast with the extreme republicans of the French school.  In the Continental Congress, contrasted with English royalists and conservatives Mr. Adams himself appeared an extremist, as later on, under the same law of contrast, he appeared conservative when those who were sometimes denounced as “Jacobins” and “Levellers” were fond of denouncing him as a disguised royalist.