troy without himself showing passion,
made a combination of qualities as rare as it was formidable. His
previous career had been one of eminent respectability, to be coldly
admired and forgotten. His service in the House gave him a name
as enduring as the Republic whose history he adorned.

In breadth and thoroughness of learning, Mr. Adams surpassed all
his contemporaries in public life. His essays, orations, and
addresses were surprisingly numerous, and upon a great variety of
subjects. It cannot be said, however, that he contributed any
thing to the permanent literature of the country. Nor, in a true
estimate of his extraordinary career in Congress, can it be asserted
that he attained the first rank as a parliamentary debater. It
must be borne in mind that much of his fame in the House of
Representatives was derived from the nature of the one question
with which he became so conspicuously identified. It was in large
degree the moral courage of his position which first fixed the
attention of the country and then attracted its admiration. The
men with whom he had exciting scenes in regard to the "right of
petition" and its cognate issues were in no case the leading
statesmen of the day. Wise, Bynum, Dromgoole, Pinckney, Lewis,
Thomas F. Marshall, and the other Southern representatives with
whom Mr. Adams came in conflict, were ready and brilliant men, but
were far below the first rank of debaters. Indeed, with few
exceptions, the really eminent debaters were in the Senate during
the period of Mr. Adams's service in the House. Mr. Clay, Mr.
Webster, Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Benton, Mr. Hayne, Mr. Silas Wright, Mr.
Crittenden, Mr. Ewing, Mr. Watkins Leigh, Mr. Rives, Mr. Choate,
Mr. John M. Clayton, Mr. Berrien, were an altogether higher and
abler class of men than those with whom Mr. Adams had his frequent
wrangles in the House. The weapons which he so successfully employed
against the young "fire-eaters" would have proved pointless and
valueless in a contest with any one of the eminent men who in that
long period gave character to the Senate.

The only time Mr. Adams ever crossed swords in the House with a
man of commanding power was in the famous discussion of January,
1836, with George Evans of Maine. Mr. Adams had made a covert but
angry attack on Mr. Webster for his opposition to the Fortification
Bill in the preceding Congress, when President Jackson was making
such energetic demonstrations of his readines