OF JOHN ADAM S. BEGUN BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. COMPLETED BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. REVISED AND CORRECTED. LIBERTATEM, AMICITIAM, FIDEM RETINEBIS. VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 1871. Storage Library E 322 · A5 1871 V. I Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 7-92875 CONTENTS. PAGE Conference with Lord Howe-Origin of Parties-Foreign Commission to France-Services in forming a Constitution for Massachusetts-Commission to negotiate Treaties (v) PREFACE. THE fierce struggle at arms which has just passed away, by giving an intense agitation to the popular mind, during a series of events of immediate and paramount importance, has, very naturally, in a corresponding measure relaxed the interest that had down to that time been absorbed in the only similar one which has happened on this portion of the American continent before. Of the latter, existing generations only know from the narrative transmitted to them, the reading of which must now appear cold in comparison with the realities that have been so lately forced upon their senses. The consequence is a sudden and marked change in the way it has come to be regarded. It is at once pushed into the background of the past, the history of which is found in books read by living men with perfect calmness, if not absolute indifference. The questions which spring from opposite views taken of the facts, as obtained by painful investigation, become the special care of those literary speculators who serve the world by endeavoring quietly to sift out the truth, and form no longer the ground upon which the passions of great parties continue enlisted in actual conflict. It appears tolerably plain that new problems are opening, which will receive a solution in the distant future from other sources than mere authority or precedent. The great controversies of the past are not, therefore, likely to be renewed in the precise lines of coming political thought, and the vehemence which animated old (vii) |