[Footnote: Ibid., V., 12,
13, 53.] He was not disposed to alienate the south, and he contented
himself with confiding his denunciation of slavery to the secret
pages of his diary, while publicly he took his stand on the doctrine
that the proposed restriction upon Missouri was against the
Constitution.[Footnote: Ibid., IV., 529.] As early as 1821 he
recognized that the number of candidates in the field made it almost
certain that the election would be decided by the vote of states in
the House of Representatives, where the vote of the single member
from Illinois would count as much as that of the whole delegation of
New York or Pennsylvania. What Adams needed, therefore, was to
combine New England in his support, obtain, if possible, a majority
in New York, and add the votes of a sufficient number of smaller
states to win the election.
The seventeenth Congress, which met in December, 1821, and lasted
until the spring of 1823, was one of the most ineffective
legislative bodies in the country's history.
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