We reassembled soon after 2 P. M., and were informed by the committee that Mr. Adams would be with us at three o’clock. There was no other business before the convention. Several topics were proposed by resolutions or motions that were ruled out of order, as not german to the purpose of the meeting. Members were getting impatient. I had begun to fear that some of our ardent ones would break over the agreement under which the convention had been called. Just at this crisis our excellent friend, Francis Jackson, of Boston, came into the hall. His face was radiant with his message of glad tidings. He came straight towards me, and placed in my hand a paper covered with lines, in the clear, beautiful handwriting of that true philanthropist, John Pierpont, with which I was familiar. “A Word from a Petitioner.” Nothing could have been more timely, nothing more appropriate. I seized it, and commenced reading at once:--
“What! our petitions spurned! The prayer Of thousands, tens of thousands, cast Unheard beneath your Speaker’s chair! But you _will_ hear us first or last. The thousands that last year ye scorned Are millions now. Be warned! Be warned!”
The reading of this first stanza brought down the house in rapturous applause. It struck the key-note to which the feelings of all were attuned. Every stanza was received with some response of approval or delight. When the last line was read and I began to fold the paper, “Encore! Encore!!” resounded from every part of the hall. So I read the admirable poem again and better than the first time. And just as I was reading the last stanza, Mr. Adams entered the convention escorted by the committee. Now the applauses rose in deafening cheers. “Hurrah! Hurrah!! Hurrah!!! the hero comes!!!!” Three times three and then again. Mr. Adams tottered to his seat next the President, wellnigh overcome with emotion. And when the uproar ceased and he rose to speak he seemed for the moment no more “the old man eloquent.” He could not utter a word. He stood trembling before us. But the moment passed, and the orator was himself again. His first words were: “My friends, my neighbors, my constituents, though I tremble before _you_, I hope, I trust you know that I have never trembled before the enemies of your liberties, your sacred rights.” Again was the assembly thrown into an uproar of applause, which did not die away until his self-possession had entirely revived. And then he addressed us for nearly an hour, giving a very graphic account of his conflict with the slaveholders in Congress, and making it evident, perhaps more evident to us than to himself, that some of them were determined to rule or else to ruin our Republic.