ssed in a black suit, of
which all the materials were wholly of American manufacture. Prominent
among those who after the ceremony hastened to greet him and to shake
hands with him appeared General Jackson. It was the last time that any
friendly courtesy is recorded as having passed between the two.

Many men eminent in public affairs have had their best years embittered
by their failure to secure the glittering prize of the Presidency. Mr.
Adams is perhaps the only person to whom the gaining of that proud
distinction has been in some measure a cause of chagrin. This strange
sentiment, which he undoubtedly felt, was due to the fact that what he
had wished was not the office in and for itself, but the office as a
symbol or token of the popular approval. He had held important and
responsible public positions during substantially his whole active (p. 176)
life; he was nearly sixty years old, and, as he said, he now for the
first time had an opportunity to find out in what esteem the people of
the country held him. What he wished was that the people should now
express their decided satisfaction with him. This he hardly could be
said to have obtained; though to be the choice of a plurality in the
nation and then to be selected by so intelligent a body of
constituents as the Representatives of the United States involved a
peculiar sanction, yet nothing else could fully take the place of that
national indorsement which he had coveted. When men publicly profess
modest depreciation of their successes they are seldom believed; but
in his private Diary Mr. Adams wrote, on December 31, 1825:--

"The year has been the most momentous of those that have passed
over my head, inasmuch as it has witnessed my elevation at the
age of fifty-eight to the Chief Magistracy of my country, to the
summit of laudable or at least blameless worldly ambition; not
however in a manner satisfactory to pride or to just desire; not
by the unequivocal suffrages of a majority of the people; with
perhaps two thirds of the whole people adverse to the actual
result."

No President since Washington had ever come into office so entirely
free from any manner of personal obligations or partisan (p. 177)
entanglements, express or implied, as did Mr. Adams. Throughout the
campaign he had not himself, or by any agent, held out any manner of
tacit inducement to any person whomsoever, contingent upon his
election. He