Our first century: being a popular descriptive portraiture of the one hundred great and memorable events of perpetual interest in the history of our country, political, military, mechanical, social, scientific and commercial: embracing also delineations of all the great historic characters celebrated in the annals of the republic; men of heroism, statesmanship, genius, oratory, adventure and philanthropy . sentatives at Washington, in was about this time, that the anti-shxvery socie-ties of the North began to petition congress for thenbdlition of slavery in the District of Columbia, th
Our first century: being a popular descriptive portraiture of the one hundred great and memorable events of perpetual interest in the history of our country, political, military, mechanical, social, scientific and commercial: embracing also delineations of all the great historic characters celebrated in the annals of the republic; men of heroism, statesmanship, genius, oratory, adventure and philanthropy . sentatives at Washington, in was about this time, that the anti-shxvery socie-ties of the North began to petition congress for thenbdlition of slavery in the District of Columbia, theiiiliiliition of the inter-state slave-trade, and kin-dred measures. Though comparatively few at theoutset, the petitioners for these objects increasedgreatly in numbers during the four or fiveyears, until they reached, in one congress, three-fourths of a million. But not all of these petition-ers were abolitionists, in the then commonlyaccepted meaning of that term. In the defense oft]>e untrammeled right of petition, as also that ofthe freedom of speech and of the press, it becameparties, that not alone was the right to discuss andpetition in regard to slavery involved, but that vital constitutional principles were atstake, and that these must be defended, irrespective of the merits of the particular sub-ject over which the battle was waged. It was upon this broad ground that Mr. Adams,. .MO>Srt:K ITIIIIUN Tit CONGRESS. evident to considcnite men. nl all GREAT AUB MEMORABLE EVENTS. 363 the old man eloquent, as he was famil-iarly called, became at once the championof freedom of debate and the right of peti-tion in the national legislature, makingnot America only, but the civilized world,resound with the clash of the conflict. Ofthe long and eventful life of this extraor-dinary man, the chapter covering theevents here recorded may perhaps beregarded as the most striking and exalted positions he had held, almostfrom the very foundation of the govern-me
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublishersprin, bookyear1876
