Against John Quincy Adams this violence was first directed in full force. To a character spotless as snow, and to universal attainments as a scholar, this illustrious citizen added experience in all the eminent posts of the Republic, which he had filled with an ability and integrity now admitted even by enemies, and which impartial history can never forget. Having been President of the United States, he entered the House of Representatives at the period when the Slave Question, in its revival, first began to occupy public attention. In all the completeness of his nature, he became the representative of Human Freedom. The first struggle occurred on the Right of Petition, which Slave-Masters, with characteristic tyranny, sought to suppress. This was resisted by the venerable patriot, and what he did was always done with his whole heart. Then was poured upon him abuse “as from a cart,” according to a famous phrase of Demosthenes. Slave-Masters, “foaming out their shame,” became conspicuous, not less for the avowal of sentiments at which Civilization blushed than for an effrontery of manner where the accidental legislator was lost in the natural overseer, and the lash of the plantation resounded in the voice. In an address to his constituents, September 17, 1842, Mr. Adams thus frankly describes the treatment he experienced:-- “I never can take part in any debate upon an important subject, be it only upon a mere abstraction, but a pack opens upon me of personal invective in return. Language has no word of reproach and railing that is not hurled at me.” And in the same speech he shows us Slave-Masters:-- “Where the South cannot effect her object by browbeating, she wheedles.” On another occasion, he announced, with accustomed power:-- “Insult, bullying, and threat characterize the Slaveholders in Congress; talk, timidity, and submission, the Representatives from the Free States.” Nor were the Slave-Masters content with violence of words, or with ejaculation of personalities by which debate became a perpetual syringe of liquid foulness, and every one seemed to vie with Squirt the apothecary, according to the verse admired by Pope,-- “Such zeal he had for that vile utensil.”[113] True to the instincts of Slavery, they threatened personal indignity of every kind, and even assassination. And here South Carolina naturally took the lead. The “Charleston Mercury,” which always speaks the true voice of Slavery, said in 1837:-- “Public opinion in the South would now, we are sure, justify an immediate resort to force by the Southern delegation, _even on the floor of Congress_, were they forthwith to seize and drag from the Hall any man who dared to insult them, as that eccentric old showman, John Quincy Adams, has dared to do.”