al agitations Mr. Adams was constantly
employed in writing and delivering lectures, as Professor of Rhetoric,
and in pursuing his studies of the Greek language and the science of
astronomy. During the ensuing summer, the neglect or withdrawal of some
former friends, and the open asperities of others, were often trying to
his feelings. Rumors were circulated of promises made or of expectations
held out to him by the administration; and, although he unequivocally
denied their truth, belief in them was in accordance with the party
passions of the moment, and was diligently inculcated on the popular
mind by pamphlets and newspapers. Also in the summer and winter of 1808
he had to support an oppressive weight of obloquy, from which he had no
relief, as he asserted, but an unshaken confidence that his course had
been coincident with the true interests of his country, and would
finally be approved by it.

In the winter of 1809 he attended the Supreme Court of the United States
at Washington, and while there first received from Mr. Madison, two days
after his inauguration as President of the United States, an intimation
of his intention to offer him the appointment of minister plenipotentiary
to St. Petersburg. When this nomination and the concurrence of the Senate
became public, it was seized and commented upon as unquestionable
evidence of the motives which had occasioned the change in his political
course, and was made the subject of severe animadversions in all the
forms in which indignant partisans are accustomed to express censure and
reproach. This appointment his political adversaries announced as at once
a proof and the reward of his apostasy. Such insinuations were felt by
Mr. Adams as an insupportable wrong. For seven years he had previously
represented his country at foreign courts, in stations to which he had
been first appointed by Washington himself; who had declared that he must
not think of retiring from the diplomatic line, and pronounced him the
ablest, and destined ultimately to become the head, of the diplomatic
corps.[2] Under these circumstances he felt that even party spirit itself
might have spared towards him this reproach, and have recognized higher
motives than seeking and receiving reward for party services. Actuated by
this sense of wrong, while preparing for his departure on the mission to
Russia, he issued from the press a series of strictures, at once severe
and vindictive, on the policy of the F