the Emancipation Proclamation Mr.
Adams was regarded as the chief and sufficient authority for an act so
momentous in its effect, so infinitely useful in a matter of national
extremity. But it was evidently a theory which had taken strong hold
upon him. Besides the foregoing speeches there is an explicit
statement of it in a letter which he wrote from Washington April 4,
1836, to Hon. Solomon Lincoln, of Hingham, a friend and (p. 265)
constituent. After touching upon other topics he says:--

"The new pretensions of the slave representation in Congress of a
right to refuse to receive petitions, and that Congress have no
constitutional power to abolish slavery or the slave-trade in the
District of Columbia, forced upon me so much of the discussion as
I did take upon me, but in which you are well aware I did not and
could not speak a tenth part of my mind. I did not, for example,
start the question whether by the law of God and of nature man
can hold _property_, HEREDITARY property, in man. I did not start
the question whether in the event of a servile insurrection and
war, Congress would not have complete unlimited control over the
whole subject of slavery, even to the emancipation of all the
slaves in the State where such insurrection should break out, and
for the suppression of which the freemen of Plymouth and Norfolk
counties, Massachusetts, should be called by Acts of Congress to
pour out their treasures and to shed their blood. Had I spoken my
mind on these two points, the sturdiest of the abolitionists
would have disavowed the sentiments of their champion."

The projected annexation of Texas, which became a battle-ground
whereon the tide of conflict swayed so long and so fiercely to and
fro, profoundly stirred Mr. Adams's indignation. It is, he said, "a
question of far deeper root and more overshadowing branches than (p. 266)
any or all others that now agitate this country.... I had opened it by
my speech ... on the 25th May, 1836--by far the most noted speech that
I ever made." He based his opposition to the annexation upon
constitutional objections, and on September 18, 1837, offered a
resolution that "the power of annexing the people of any independent
State to this Union is a power not delegated by the Constitution of
the United States to their Congress or to any department of their
government, but reserved to the