from Virginia had thought proper to play
second fiddle to his colleague[11] from Accomac." Mr. Gilmer retorted
that he "played second fiddle to no man. He was no fiddler, but (p. 282)
was endeavoring to prevent the music of him who,
'In the space of one revolving moon,
Was statesman, poet, fiddler, and buffoon.'"
The resolution was then laid on the table. The House rose, and Mr.
Adams went home and noted in his Diary, "evening in meditation," for
which indeed he had abundant cause. On the following day Thomas F.
Marshall, of Kentucky, offered a substitute for Gilmer's resolution.
This new fulmination had been prepared in a caucus of forty members of
the slave-holding party, and was long and carefully framed. Its
preamble recited, in substance, that a petition to dissolve the Union,
proposing to Congress to destroy that which the several members had
solemnly and officially sworn to support, was a "high breach of
privilege, a contempt offered to this House, a direct proposition to
the Legislature and each member of it to commit perjury, and involving
necessarily in its execution and its consequences the destruction of
our country and the crime of high treason:" wherefore it was to be
resolved that Mr. Adams, in presenting a petition for dissolution, had
"offered the deepest indignity to the House" and "an insult to the
people;" that if "this outrage" should be "permitted to pass unrebuked
and unpunished" he would have "disgraced his country ... in the (p. 283)
eyes of the whole world;" that for this insult and this "wound at
the Constitution and existence of his country, the peace, the security
and liberty of the people of these States" he "might well be held to
merit expulsion from the national councils;" and that "the House deem
it an act of grace and mercy when they only inflict upon him their
severest censure;" that so much they must do "for the maintenance of
their own purity and dignity; for the rest they turned him over to his
own conscience and the indignation of all true American citizens."
[Footnote 11: Henry A. Wise.]
These resolutions were then advocated by Mr. Marshall at great length
and with extreme bitterness. Mr. Adams replied shortly, stating that
he should wish to make his full defence at a later stage of the
debate. Mr. Wise followed in a personal and acrimonious harangue; Mr.
Everett[12] gave some little assistance to Mr. Adams, and the House
again adjourned. The f
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