the chief part of the gentlemen of
Boston and its vicinity, the leading lawyers, the rich merchants, the
successful manufacturers, not only opposed to him, but entertaining
towards him sentiments of personal dislike and even vindictiveness.
This stratum of the community, having a natural distaste for disquieting
agitation and influenced by class feeling,--the gentlemen of the North
sympathizing with the "aristocracy" of the South,--could not make
common cause with anti-slavery people. Fortunately, however, Mr. Adams
was returned by a country district where the old Puritan instincts (p. 247)
were still strong. The intelligence and free spirit of New England
were at his back, and were fairly represented by him; in spite of
high-bred disfavor they carried him gallantly through the long
struggle. The people of the Plymouth district sent him back to the
House every two years from the time of his first election to the year
of his death, and the disgust of the gentlemen of Boston was after all
of trifling consequence to him and of no serious influence upon the
course of history. The old New England instinct was in him as it was
in the mass of the people; that instinct made him the real exponent of
New England thought, belief, and feeling, and that same instinct made
the great body of voters stand by him with unswerving constancy. When
his fellow Representatives, almost to a man, deserted him, he was
sustained by many a token of sympathy and admiration coming from among
the people at large. Time and the history of the United States have
been his potent vindicators. The conservative, conscienceless
respectability of wealth was, as is usually the case with it in the
annals of the Anglo-Saxon race, quite in the wrong and predestined to
well-merited defeat. It adds to the honor due to Mr. Adams that his
sense of right was true enough, and that his vision was clear enough,
to lead him out of that strong thraldom which class feelings, (p. 248)
traditions, and comradeship are wont to exercise.

But it is time to resume the narrative and to let Mr. Adams's acts--of
which after all it is possible to give only the briefest sketch,
selecting a few of the more striking incidents--tell the tale of his
Congressional life.

On February 14, 1835, Mr. Adams again presented two petitions for the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, but without giving
rise to much excitement. The fusillade was, however, getting too thick
and