It might almost be said that the sixth President of the United States was cradled in statesmanship.  Born July 11th, 1767, he was a little lad of ten when he accompanied his father on the French mission.  Eighteen months elapsed before he returned, and three months later he was again upon the water, bound once more for the French capital.  There were school days in Paris, and other school days in Amsterdam and in Leyden; but the boy was only fourteen,—­the mature old child!—­when he went to St. Petersburg as private secretary and interpreter to Francis Dana, just appointed minister plenipotentiary to the court of the Empress Catherine.  Such was his apprenticeship to a public career which began in earnest in 1794, and lasted, with slight interruptions, for fifty-four years.  Minister to the United Netherlands, to Russia, to Prussia, and to England; commissioner to frame the Treaty of Ghent which ended the war of 1812; State Senator, United States Senator; Secretary of State, a position in which he made the treaty with Spain which conceded Florida, and enunciated the Monroe Doctrine before Monroe and far more thoroughly than he; President, and then for many years Member of the National House of Representatives,—­it is strange to find this man writing in his later years, “My whole life has been a succession of disappointments.  I can scarcely recollect a single instance of success to anything that I ever undertook.”

It is true, however, that his successes and even his glories always had some bitter ingredient to spoil their flavor.  As United States Senator he was practically “boycotted” for years, even by his own party members, because he was an Adams.  In 1807 he definitely broke with the Federalist party—­for what he regarded as its slavish crouching under English outrages, conduct which had been for years estranging him—­by supporting Jefferson’s Embargo, as better than no show of resistance at all; and was for a generation denounced by the New England Federalists as a renegade for the sake of office and a traitor to New England.  The Massachusetts Legislature practically censured him in 1808, and he resigned.

His winning of the Presidency brought pain instead of pleasure:  he valued it only as a token of national confidence, got it only as a minority candidate in a divided party, and was denounced by the Jacksonians as a corrupt political bargainer.  And his later Congressional career, though his chief title to glory, was one long martyrdom (even though its worst pains were self-inflicted), and he never knew the immense victory he had actually won.  The “old man eloquent,” after ceasing to be President, was elected in 1830 by his home district a Representative in Congress, and regularly re-elected till his death.  For a long time he bore the anti-slavery standard almost alone in the halls of Congress, a unique and picturesque figure, rousing every demon of hatred in his fellow-members, in constant and envenomed battle with them, and more