During the administration of John Quincy Adams, he was really the Chief Magistrate. He submitted neither his reason nor his conscience to the control of any partisan cabal. No man was appointed to office in obedience to political dictation, and no faithful public servant was proscribed. The result rewarded his magnanimity. Faction ceased to exist. When South Carolina, a few years afterward, assumed the very ground that the ancient republican party had indicated as lawful and constitutional, and claimed the right and power to set aside, within her own limits, acts of Congress which she pronounced void, because they transcended the Federal authority, she called on the republican party throughout the Union in vain. The dangerous heresy had been renounced forever. Since that time there has been no serious project of a combination to resist the laws of the Union, much less of a conspiracy to subvert the Union itself.
What though the elements of political strife remain? They are necessary for the life of free States. What though there still are parties, and the din and turmoil of their contests are ceaselessly heard? They are founded now on questions of mere administration, or on the more ephemeral questions of personal merit. Such parties are dangerous only in the decline, not in the vigor of Republics. Rome was no longer fit for freedom, and needed a Dictator and a Sovereign, when Pompey and Caesar divided the citizens. What though the magnanimity of Adams was not appreciated, and his contemporaries preferred his military competitor in the subsequent election? The sword gathers none but ripe fruits, and the masses of any people will sometimes prefer them to the long maturing harvest, which the statesmen of the living generations sow, to be reaped by their successors. For all this Adams cared not. He had extinguished the factions which for forty years had endangered the State. He had left on the records of history instructions and an example teaching how faction could be overthrown, and his country might resort to them when danger should recur. For himself he knew well, none knew better, that
“He who ascends to mountain-tops
shall find
The loftiest peaks most
wrapt in clouds and snow.
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the
hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory
glow,
And far beneath the
earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly
blow
Contending tempests
on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to their
summits led.”