these natural and legitimate difficulties, Mr. Adams was (p. 254)
further in the embarrassing position of one who has to fear as much
from the imprudence of allies as from open hostility of antagonists,
and he was often compelled to guard against a peculiar risk coming
from his very coadjutors in the great cause. The extremists who had
cast aside all regard for what was practicable, and who utterly
scorned to consider the feasibility or the consequences of measures
which seemed to them to be correct as abstract propositions of
morality, were constantly urging him to action which would only have
destroyed him forever in political life, would have stripped him of
his influence, exiled him from that position in Congress where he
could render the most efficient service that was in him, and left him
naked of all usefulness and utterly helpless to continue that
essential portion of the labor which could be conducted by no one
else. "The abolitionists generally," he said, "are constantly urging
me to indiscreet movements, which would ruin me, and weaken and not
strengthen their cause." His family, on the other hand, sought to
restrain him from all connection with these dangerous partisans.
"Between these adverse impulses," he writes, "my mind is agitated
almost to distraction.... I walk on the edge of a precipice almost
every step that I take." In the midst of all this anxiety, (p. 255)
however, he was fortunately supported by the strong commendation of
his constituents which they once loyally declared by formal and
unanimous votes in a convention summoned for the express purpose of
manifesting their support. His feelings appear by an entry in his
Diary in October, 1837:--

"I have gone [he said] as far upon this article, the abolition of
slavery, as the public opinion of the free portion of the Union
will bear, and so far that scarcely a slave-holding member of the
House dares to vote with me upon any question. I have as yet been
thoroughly sustained by my own State, but one step further and I
hazard my own standing and influence there, my own final
overthrow, and the cause of liberty itself for an indefinite
time, certainly for more than my remnant of life. Were there in
the House one member capable of taking the lead in this cause of
universal emancipation, which is moving onward in the world and
in this country, I would withdraw from the contest which will