Anti-Slavery sentiment there was in the nation. It was but a spark,
but he kept it alive and gradually extended its conflagration.

When Adams entered Congress opposition to slavery was at its lowest
ebb. It was almost extinct. The victory of the slaveholders in the
Missouri contest had elated them most tremendously and had
correspondingly depressed and cowed their adversaries. As a general
thing, the latter had given up all idea of making any further fight.
Northern Presidents, Northern Congressmen, Northern editors, Northern
churchmen, were the most ready and servile supporters slavery had.
Anti-Slavery societies had been abandoned. Anti-Slavery journals had
perished. Disapprovers of the "institution," with the exception of a
few men of the Lundy stamp and the Lundy obscurity, were silent. There
was one magnificent exception.

It was at that crisis that John Quincy Adams entered Congress and
began a fight against slavery that, covering a period of seventeen
years, literally lasted to the last day of his life. He was carried
helpless and dying from the floor of Congress, where he had fallen
when in the discharge of his duties.

The position of Mr. Adams, who had been elected as an independent
candidate, was unique. He owed his official place to no political
party, and was, therefore, free from party shackles in regulating his
course. He took up the fight for the black man's freedom as one who
was himself absolutely free. Most wonderfully did he conduct that
fight. There was nothing in the eloquence of Demosthenes in Athens, of
Cicero in Rome, of Mirabeau in France, of Pitt or Gladstone in
England, that surpassed the force and grandeur of the philippics of
Adams against American slavery. Alone, for the greater part of his