at the termination of his revolutionary and
diplomatic career.

During the absence of Mr. Adams in Europe, the Constitution of the
United States had been formed and adopted. He highly approved of its
provisions, and on his return, when it was about to go into operation,
he was selected by the friends of the Constitution to be placed on the
ticket with Washington as a candidate for one of the two highest offices
in the gift of the people. He was consequently elected vice-president,
and on the assembling of the Senate he took his seat, as president of
that body, at New York, in April, 1789. Having been re-elected to that
office in 1792, he held it, and presided in the Senate with great
dignity, during the entire period of the administration of Washington,
whose confidence he enjoyed, and by whom he was consulted on important
questions. In his valedictory address to the Senate he remarks: "It is a
recollection of which nothing can ever deprive me, and it will be a
source of comfort to me through the remainder of my life that, on the
one hand, I have for eight years held the second situation under our
Constitution, in perfect and uninterrupted harmony with the first,
without envy in the one, or jealousy in the other, so, on the other
hand, I have never had the smallest misunderstanding with any member of
the Senate."

In 1790 Mr. Adams wrote his celebrated "Discourses on Davila;" they were
anonymously published at first, in the _Gazette of the United States_,
of Philadelphia, in a series of numbers; they may be considered as a
sequel to his "Defence of the American Constitutions." He was a decided
friend and patron of literature and the arts, and while in Europe,
having obtained much information on the subject of public institutions,
he contributed largely to the advancement of establishments in his
native State for the encouragement of arts, sciences, and letters.

On the retirement of General Washington from the presidency of the
United States, Mr. Adams was elected his successor, after a close and
spirited contest with two rivals for that high office; Mr. Jefferson
being supported by the Democratic or Republican party, while a portion
of the Federal party preferred Mr. Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina,
who was placed on the ticket with Mr. Adams. The result was the election
of Mr. Adams as president, and in March, 1797, he entered upon his
duties in that office. He came to the presidency in a stormy time. In
the la