anatics, who employed themselves most actively in prejudicing
the minds of the savages against the people who were their neighbors,
and preparing them to refuse to treat for the sale of any of their
territory.

It has ever been the practice of the Puritan to propagate the vilest
heresies, and for the vilest purposes, under the name of philanthropy
and religion. It has burned its enemy at the stake, as, assembled
around, they sang psalms, and sanctified the vilest cruelties with the
name of God's vengeance. It was their great prototype, Cotton Mather,
who blasphemously proclaimed, after the most inhuman massacre of
several hundred Indians, that they, the Puritans of Massachusetts, "had
sent, as a savory scent to the nostrils of God, two hundred or more of
the reeking souls of the godless heathen."

This, ostensibly, was deemed a pious act, and a discharge of a pious
duty, when, in truth, the only motive was to take his home and country,
and appropriate it to their own people. It seems almost impossible to
the race to come squarely up to truth and honesty, in word or act, in
any transaction, as a man or as a people. Sinister and subtle,
expediency, and not principle, seems to be their universal rule of
action. Cold and passionless, incapable of generous emotions, he is
necessarily vindictive and cruel. Patient and persevering, bigoted and
selfish, eschewing as a crime an honorable resentment, he creeps to his
ends like a serpent, with all his cunning and all his venom.

John Quincy Adams, in his nature, was much more like his mother than his
father. His features were those of his mother, and the cold, persevering
hatred of his nature was hers. From his boyhood he was in the habit of
recording, for future use, the most confidential conversations of his
friends, as also all that incautiously fell from an occasional interview
with those less intimate. Had this been done for future reference only
to establish facts in his own mind, there could have been no objection
to the act; but this was not the motive. These memoranda were to rise
up in vengeance when necessary to gratify his spleen or vengeance. He
was naturally suspicious. He gave no man his confidence, and won the
friendship of no one. Malignant and unforgiving, he watched his
opportunity, and never failed to gratify his revengeful nature, whenever
his victim was in his power. The furtive wariness of his small gray
eye, his pinched nose, receding forehead, and thin,