Such was the fierce temper and indomitable courage of this inflexible old man! He flung contempt in the face of those who had him wholly in their power, and in the same breath in which he acknowledged that power he dared them to use it. He charged Wise with the guilt of innocent blood, in connection with certain transactions in a duel, and exasperated that gentleman into crying out that the "charge made by the gentleman from Massachusetts was as base and black a lie as the traitor was base and black who uttered it." When he was asked by the Speaker to put his point of order in writing,--his own request to the like effect in another case having been refused shortly before,--he tauntingly congratulated that gentleman "upon his discovery of the expediency of having points of order reduced to writing--a favor which he had repeatedly denied to me." When Mr. Wise was speaking, "I interrupted him occasionally," says Mr. Adams, "sometimes to (p. 286) provoke him into absurdity." As usual he was left to fight out his desperate battle substantially single-handed. Only Mr. Everett occasionally helped him a very little; while one or two others who spoke against the resolutions were careful to explain that they felt no personal good will towards Mr. Adams. But he faced the odds courageously. It was no new thing for him to be pitted alone against a "solid South." Outside the walls of the House he had some sympathy and some assistance tendered him by individuals, among others by Rufus Choate then in the Senate, and by his own colleagues from Massachusetts. This support aided and cheered him somewhat, but could not prevent substantially the whole burden of the labor and brunt of the contest from bearing upon him alone. Among the external manifestations of feeling, those of hostility were naturally largely in the ascendant. The newspapers of Washington--the "Globe" and the "National Intelligencer"--which reported the debates, daily filled their columns with all the abuse and invective which was poured forth against him, while they gave the most meagre statements, or none at all, of what he said in his own defence. Among other amenities he received from North Carolina an anonymous letter threatening him with assassination, having also an engraved portrait of him with the (p. 287) mark of a rifle-ball in the forehead, and the motto "to stop the music of John Quincy Adams," etc., etc. This missive he read and displayed in the House, but it was received with profound indifference by men who would not have greatly objected to the execution of the barbarous threat.