Thus do these two assaults upon the Declaration practically proceed from one source. In their essential ideas they are _Calhounism_.
On the other side is arrayed a name illustrious for various public service, and for unsurpassed championship of Freedom: I mean John Quincy Adams. Entering the House of Representatives after a long life, at home and abroad, as Senator, as Minister, as Secretary of State, and finally as President, he added to all these titles by the ability and constancy with which he upheld the Rights of Man. Mr. Calhoun was at this time in the Senate; but Mr. Adams incessantly met all his assumptions for Slavery,--exposing its hateful character, insisting upon its _prohibition_ in the Territories, and especially vindicating the Declaration of Independence. Never has the recent pretension, in the name of Popular Sovereignty, been more completely anticipated and exposed. And now, that this argument may not stand entirely upon my words, I quote from him. Says John Quincy Adams, in his oration on the Fourth of July, 1831, at Quincy:--
“Unlimited power belongs not to the nature of man, and rotten will be the foundation of every government leaning upon such a maxim for its support.… The pretence of an absolute, irresistible, despotic power existing in every government _somewhere_ is incompatible with the first principle of natural right.… The _sovereignty_ which would arrogate to itself absolute, unlimited power must appeal for its sanction to those illustrious expounders of Human Rights, Pharaoh of Egypt and Herod the Great of Judea.”[29]
In another passage of the same oration, the patriot statesman says, in words which answer a portion of Mr. Thayer’s arguments:--
“It has sometimes been objected to the Declaration, that it deals too much in abstractions. But this was its characteristic excellence; for upon those abstractions hinged the justice of the cause. Without them our Revolution would have been but successful rebellion. Right, truth, justice are all abstractions. The Divinity that stirs within the soul of man is abstraction. The Creator of the universe is a spirit, and all spiritual nature is abstraction. Happy would it be, could we answer with equal confidence another objection, not to the Declaration, but to the consistency of the people by whom it was proclaimed!”[30]
