“Penetrated with grief at this distressing event of my life, mourning the loss of one who has been at once my example and my support through the trials of half a century, permit me nevertheless to express through you my deepest gratitude for the signal manner in which the public regard has been voluntarily manifested by your honorable body, and the consolation derived to me and mine from the reflection that the unwearied efforts of an old public servant have not even in this world proved without their reward in the generous appreciation of them by his country.

“With great respect, I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
                                             “Louisa Catharine Adams.”

On the following week, the Committee of one from each State and Territory in the Union, appointed by the House of Representatives to take charge of the remains of the deceased ex-President, and convey them to Quincy for final interment, commenced their journey.  It was a new, yet inexpressibly thrilling and imposing spectacle.  The dead body of “the Old Man Eloquent,” surrounded and guarded by a son of each of the States and Territories of that Union which he had so largely assisted in consolidating and sustaining, leaves the capitol of the nation, where for more than thirty years he had acted the most conspicuous part among the fathers of the land, to rest in the tomb of its ancestors, amid the venerable shades of Quincy.  How solemn the progress of such a procession.  It was indeed, “the Funeral March of the Dead!” Wherever it passed, the people rose up and paid the utmost marks of respect to the remains of one who had occupied so large a space in the history of his country.  In towns, in villages, in cities, as the mournful cortege swept through, business was suspended, flags were displayed at half mast, bells were tolled, minute guns were fired, civil and military processions received the sacred remains, and watched over them by night and by day, and passed them on from State to State.

“What a progress was it which the dead patriot thus made!  From the capitol of the nation, beneath whose dome, and while at his post of duty, he was seized by death—­within sight almost of that Mount Vernon where repose the ashes of him, the Father of his Country, who first distinguished, encouraged and employed the extraordinary capacity of the youthful Adams—­through cities that in his life time have grown up from villages—­passing, at Baltimore, almost beneath the shadow of the monument which there testifies of the valor of those who fell for country in the war of 1812—­and in Philadelphia halting and reposing within the hall where his great father; John Adams, had fearlessly stood for Independence, and where Independence was proclaimed—­the dead passed on, everywhere followed by the reverential gaze and the mourning heart, till, reaching the great metropolis of New York, where the same father had been sworn in and taken his seat, as the first Vice President of the United States, with George Washington for President!  Thence away the march was resumed, till it reached old Faneuil Hall—­the cradle of American liberty, the fitting final restingplace, while yet unburied, of the body of one in whose heart, at no moment of life, did the love of liberty, imbibed or strengthened in that hall, suffer the slightest abatement.” [Footnote:  King’s Eulogy.]