solutions were rejected, as he anticipated; only
three senators--Tracy, of Connecticut, Olcott, of New Hampshire, and
White, of Delaware--voting with him in favor of the first, and
twenty-two voting in the negative; Mr. Pickering, his colleague, asking
to be excused from voting, and Mr. Hillhouse, the remaining Federalist
in the Senate, absenting himself, obviously to avoid voting: after which
the last was unanimously rejected. Concerning his course on this
occasion Mr. Adams wrote: "I have no doubt of incurring much censure and
obloquy for this measure. I hope I shall be prepared for and able to
bear it, from the consciousness of my sincerity and of my duty."

Mr. Adams alone spoke against the bill for the temporary government of
Louisiana, which passed on the ensuing 18th of February; and only four
senators--Messrs. Hillhouse, Olcott, Plummer, and Stone--voted with him
in the negative; Mr. Pickering absenting himself from the question.

In August, 1805, the corporation of Harvard College elected Mr. Adams
Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory on the Boylston foundation. After
modifications of the statutes, which he suggested, were adopted, he
accepted, and immediately entered upon a course of preparatory studies,
reviving his knowledge of the Greek, and making researches among
English, Latin, and French writers, relative to the objects of his
professorship. In the ensuing December, as a member of the Ninth
Congress, he took an active part in the debates and measures of the
Senate.

In January, 1806, he was appointed on a committee, of which Mr. Smith,
of Maryland, was chairman, on that part of the President's message
"relative to the spoliations of our commerce on the high seas, and the
new principles assumed by the British courts of admiralty, as a pretext
for the condemnation of our vessels in their prize courts." The debates
in that committee resulted in two resolutions, both offered by Mr.
Adams, adopted, reported, and finally passed by the Senate, with some
modifications; Mr. Pickering, Mr. Hillhouse, and Mr. Tracy, the three
Federalists in the Senate, voting for them.

British aggressions and British policy towards neutrals were, in the
judgment of Mr. Adams, to be resisted at every hazard. His opinions on
these subjects had been formed from opportunities which no other
American statesman had equally enjoyed. In 1783 he had been present at
the signature of the treaty of peace, and had imbibed the opinions and
fe