The son of one President of the United States and the grand-son of
another, Charles Francis Adams won for himself in his own right a
position of prominence in the history of his times. He studied law
in the office of Daniel Webster, and after beginning practice was
drawn into public life by his election to the Massachusetts
legislature in which he served from 1831 to 1838. A Whig in politics
until the slavery issue became prominent, he was nominated for
Vice-President on the Free Soil ticket with Van Buren in 1848. The
Republican party which grew out of the Free Soil movement elected
him to Congress as a representative of the third Massachusetts
district in 1858 and re-elected him in 1860. In 1861 President
Lincoln appointed him minister to England, and he filled with credit
that place which had been filled by his father and grandfather
before him. He died November 21st, 1886, leaving besides his own
speeches and essays an edition of the works of John and John Quincy
Adams in twenty-two volumes octavo.


THE STATES AND THE UNION
(Delivered in the House of Representatives, January 31st, 1861)

I confess, Mr. Speaker, that I should be very jealous, as a citizen
of Massachusetts, of any attempt on the part of Virginia, for
example, to propose an amendment to the Constitution designed to
rescind or abolish the bill of rights prefixed to our own form of
government. Yet I cannot see why such a proposition would be more
unjustifiable than any counter proposition to abolish slavery in
Virginia, as coming from Massachusetts. If I have in any way
succeeded in mastering the primary elements of our forms of
government, the first and fundamental idea is, the reservation to