Life and public services of John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, with the eulogy delivered before the Legislature of New York

by William H. Seward

"It were no longer seasonable, and would be superfluous, to recapitulate the remarkable incidents of your early life—incidents which associated your name, fortunes, and reputation, in imperishable connection with the independence and history of the North American Union.

"The part which you performed at that important juncture was marked with characters so peculiar, that, realizing the fairest fable of antiquity, its parallel could scarcely be found in the authentic records of human history.

"You deliberately and perseveringly preferred toil, danger, the endurance of every hardship, and privation of every comfort, in defence of a holy cause, to inglorious ease, and the allurements of rank, affluence, and unrestrained youth, at the most splendid and fascinating court of Europe.

"That this choice was not less wise than magnanimous, the sanction of half a century, and the gratulations of unnumbered voices, all unable to express the gratitude of the heart, with which your visit to this hemisphere has been welcomed, afford ample demonstration.

"When the contest of freedom, to which you had repaired as a voluntary champion, had closed, by the complete triumph of her cause in this country of your adoption, you returned to fulfil the duties of the philanthropist and patriot, in the land of your nativity. There, in a consistent and undeviating career of forty years, you have maintained, through every vicissitude of alternate success and disappointment, the same glorious cause to which the first years of your active life had been devoted, the improvement of the moral and political condition of man.

"Throughout that long succession of time, the people of the United States, for whom and with whom you have fought the battles of liberty, have been living in the full possession of its fruits; one of the happiest among the family of nations. Spreading in population; enlarging in territory; acting and suffering according to the condition of their nature; and laying the foundations of the greatest, and, we humbly hope, the most beneficent power, that ever regulated the concerns of man upon earth.

"In that lapse of forty years, the generation of men with whom you co-operated in the conflict of arms, has nearly passed away. Of the general officers of the American army in that war, you alone survive. Of the sages who guided our councils; of the warriors who met the foe in the field, or upon the wave, with the exception of a few to whom unusual length of days has been allotted by Heaven, all now sleep with their fathers. A succeeding, and even a third generation, have arisen to take their places; and their children's children, while rising up to call them blessed, have been taught by them, as well as admonished by their own constant enjoyment of freedom, to include in every benison upon their fathers, the name of him, who came from afar, with them and in their cause to conquer or to fall.

"The universal prevalence of these sentiments was signally manifested by a resolution of Congress, representing the whole people, and all the States of this Union, requesting the President of the United States to communicate to you the assurances of the grateful and affectionate attachment of this government and people, and desiring that a national ship might be employed, at your convenience, for your passage to the borders of our country.

"The invitation was transmitted to you by my venerable predecessor, himself bound to you by the strongest ties of personal friendship; himself one of those whom the highest honors of his country had rewarded for blood early shed in her cause, and for a long life of devotion to her welfare. By him the services of a national ship were placed at your disposal. Your delicacy preferred a more private conveyance, and a full year has elapsed since you landed upon our shores. It were scarcely an exaggeration to say that it has been to the people of the Union a year of uninterrupted festivity and enjoyment, inspired by your presence. You have traversed the twenty-four States of this great confederacy—you have been received with rapture by the survivors of your earliest companions in arms-you have been hailed, as a long-absent parent, by their children, the men and women of the present age; and a rising generation, the hope of future time, in numbers surpassing the whole population of that day when you fought at the head and by the side of their forefathers, have vied with the scanty remnants of that hour of trial, in acclamations of joy, at beholding the face of him whom they feel to be the common benefactor of all. You have heard the mingled voices of the past, the present, and the future age, joining in one universal chorus of delight at your approach; and the shouts of unbidden thousands, which greeted your landing on the soil of freedom, have followed every step of your way, and still resound like the rushing of many waters, from every corner of our land.

"You are now about to return to the country of your birth—of your ancestors—of your posterity. The executive Government of the Union, stimulated by the same feeling which had prompted the Congress to the designation of a national ship for your accommodation in coming hither, has destined the first service of a frigate, recently launched at this metropolis, to the less welcome, but equally distinguished trust, of conveying you home. The name of the ship has added one more memorial to distant regions and to future ages, of a stream already memorable at once in the story of your sufferings and of our independence.