lition of slavery in that District. Not that he
would approbate the system of slavery; for he was, and in fact had been
through life, its most determined foe. But he believed the time had not
then arrived for the discussion of that subject in Congress. It was his
settled conviction that a premature agitation of slavery in the national
councils would greatly retard, rather than facilitate, the abolition of
that giant evil--"as the most salutary medicines," he declared in
illustration, "unduly administered, were the most deadly of poisons."

The position taken by Mr. Adams, in presenting these petitions, was
evidently misunderstood by many, and especially by Abolitionists. They
construed it into a disposition on his part to sanction, or at least to
succumb unresistingly, to the inhumanity and enormity of the slave
institution. In this conclusion they signally erred. Mr. Adams, by birth,
education, all the associations of his life, and the fixed principles of
his moral and political character, was an opposer of slavery in every
form. No man felt more keenly the wretched absurdity of professing to base
our Government on the "self-evident truth, that all men are created equal,
and endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness"--of proclaiming our Union the abode of
liberty, the "home of the free," the asylum of the oppressed--while
holding in our midst millions of fellow-beings manacled in hopeless
bondage! No man was more anxious to correct this disgraceful misnomer, and
wipe away its dark stain from our national escutcheon at the earliest
practicable moment. But he was a statesman of profound knowledge and
far-reaching sagacity. He possessed the rare quality of being able to
"bide his time" in all enterprizes. Great as he felt the enormity of
American slavery to be, he would not, in seeking to remove it, select a
time so unseasonable, and adopt measures so unwise, as would result,
Samson-like, in removing the pillars of our great political fabric, and
crushing the glorious Union, formed by the wisdom and cemented by the
blood of our Revolutionary Fathers, into a mass of ruins.

Believing there was a time to withhold and a time to strike, he would
patiently wait until the sentiment of the American people became
sufficiently ripened, under the increasing light and liberality of the
age, to permit slavery to be lawfully and peaceably removed, while the
Union should remain un