ms with the opinion, as if merely
to say that he held it was to damn him to everlasting infamy. The only
result was that they induced him to consider the matter more (p. 263)
fully, and to express his belief more deliberately. In January, 1842,
Mr. Wise attacked him upon this ground, and a month later Marshall
followed in the same strain. These assaults were perhaps the direct
incentive to what was said soon after by Mr. Adams, on April 14, 1842,
in a speech concerning war with England and with Mexico, of which
there was then some talk. Giddings, among other resolutions, had
introduced one to the effect that the slave States had the exclusive
right to be consulted on the subject of slavery. Mr. Adams said that
he could not give his assent to this. One of the laws of war, he said,
is

"that when a country is invaded, and two hostile armies are set
in martial array, the commanders of both armies have power to
emancipate all the slaves in the invaded territory."

He cited some precedents from South American history, and continued:--

"Whether the war be servile, civil, or foreign, I lay this down
as the law of nations. I say that the military authority takes
for the time the place of all municipal institutions, slavery
among the rest. Under that state of things, so far from its being
true that the States where slavery exists have the exclusive
management of the subject, not only the President of the United
States but the commander of the army has power to order (p. 264)
the universal emancipation of the slaves."

This declaration of constitutional doctrine was made with much
positiveness and emphasis. There for many years the matter rested. The
principle had been clearly asserted by Mr. Adams, angrily repudiated
by the South, and in the absence of the occasion of war there was
nothing more to be done in the matter. But when the exigency at last
came, and the government of the United States was brought face to face
with by far the gravest constitutional problem presented by the great
rebellion, then no other solution presented itself save that which had
been suggested twenty years earlier in the days of peace by Mr. Adams.
It was in pursuance of the doctrine to which he thus gave the first
utterance that slavery was forever abolished in the United States.
Extracts from the last-quoted speech long stood as the motto of the
"Liberator;" and at the time of