Rome was no longer fit for freedom, and needed a Dictator and a Sovereign, when Pompey and Caesar divided the citizens.

What though the magnanimity of Adams was not appreciated, and his contemporaries preferred his military competitor in the subsequent election?
The sword gathers none but ripe fruits, and the masses of any people will sometimes prefer them to the long maturing harvest, which the statesmen of the living generations sow, to be reaped by their successors.

For all this Adams cared not.

He had extinguished the factions which for forty years had endangered the State.

He had left on the records of history instructions and an example teaching how faction could be overthrown, and his country might resort to them when danger should recur.