represented by that humble Quaker that was to prove the absorbing question of the time, and the fatal stumbling-block of the great orator's highest ambition.
To mark the development of the slavery question, a short retrospect is required. In the House of Representatives, the struggle about the famous twenty-first rule — the rule excluding anti-slavery petitions — began afresh when, in the twenty-seventh Congress, the House was controlled by a Whig majority. Upon Adams's motion the rule was dropped, and the great controversy about the right of petition might have been wisely ended. But the representatives of the slave power, Whigs as well as Democrats, would not rest until it was revived. They insisted that “the hydra of abolitionism must be crushed.” With blind infatuation, they kept slavery before the people as the enemy of the right of petition. They did more. In January, 1842, John Quincy Adams presented a memorial of some citizens of Massachusetts praying Congress “to adopt measures for the peaceful dissolution of the union of these states,” and he moved that the petition be referred to a committee with instruction to report why the prayer could not be granted. Southern members, some of whom were in the habit of threatening the dissolution of the Union on all possible occasions, thought they saw an opportunity for crushing the fearless old champion of the right of petition, and moved that he be censured with the utmost severity for having
