thoroughly knew their records. At this point we have the testimony of
an eye-witness:

"Then uprose that bald, gray old man of seventy-five, his hands
tremulous with constitutional infirmity and age, upon whose
consecrated head the vials of tyrannic wrath had been outpoured.
Unexcited he raised his voice, high-keyed, as was usual with him,
but clear, untremulous, and firm. Almost in a moment his
infirmities disappeared, although his shaking hand could not but
be noted, trembling, not with fear, but with age."

His speech was absolutely crushing. He met every point that had been
urged against him and triumphantly refuted it. He handled his
oratorical antagonists with merciless severity, depicting certain
events in their lives with such vividness that the onlookers gazed
upon them with visible and unmistakable pity. Said one of these men
when he afterwards understood that a certain party was about to engage
in a controversial debate with Mr. Adams, "Then may the Lord have
mercy on him."

Mr. Adams was not expelled. His opponents frankly admitted their
discomfiture and dropped the whole business.

It cannot be denied that John Quincy Adams, almost by his unaided
efforts, preserved and sustained the life of the Anti-Slavery cause at
a time when it was almost moribund. He plowed the ground, cutting a
deep and broad furrow as he went his way, and in the upturned soil
such laborers as Birney and Garrison and Chase planted the seed that
rooted and grew until it yielded a plentiful harvest.