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.