nection with certain transactions in a duel, and
exasperated that gentleman into crying out that the "charge made by
the gentleman from Massachusetts was as base and black a lie as the
traitor was base and black who uttered it." When he was asked by the
Speaker to put his point of order in writing,--his own request to the
like effect in another case having been refused shortly before,--he
tauntingly congratulated that gentleman "upon his discovery of the
expediency of having points of order reduced to writing--a favor which
he had repeatedly denied to me." When Mr. Wise was speaking, "I
interrupted him occasionally," says Mr. Adams, "sometimes to (p. 286)
provoke him into absurdity." As usual he was left to fight out his
desperate battle substantially single-handed. Only Mr. Everett
occasionally helped him a very little; while one or two others who
spoke against the resolutions were careful to explain that they felt
no personal good will towards Mr. Adams. But he faced the odds
courageously. It was no new thing for him to be pitted alone against a
"solid South." Outside the walls of the House he had some sympathy and
some assistance tendered him by individuals, among others by Rufus
Choate then in the Senate, and by his own colleagues from
Massachusetts. This support aided and cheered him somewhat, but could
not prevent substantially the whole burden of the labor and brunt of
the contest from bearing upon him alone. Among the external
manifestations of feeling, those of hostility were naturally largely
in the ascendant. The newspapers of Washington--the "Globe" and the
"National Intelligencer"--which reported the debates, daily filled
their columns with all the abuse and invective which was poured forth
against him, while they gave the most meagre statements, or none at
all, of what he said in his own defence. Among other amenities he
received from North Carolina an anonymous letter threatening him with
assassination, having also an engraved portrait of him with the (p. 287)
mark of a rifle-ball in the forehead, and the motto "to stop the
music of John Quincy Adams," etc., etc. This missive he read and
displayed in the House, but it was received with profound indifference
by men who would not have greatly objected to the execution of the
barbarous threat.

The prolonged struggle cost him deep anxiety and sleepless nights,
which in the declining years of a laborious life told hardly upon his
aged frame. But aga