" How useful were
his services in these transitional years appeared as soon as John
Quincy Adams grasped, with incautious hands, the helm which Monroe
relinquished.[Footnote: On Monroe's personal traits, see Adams,
Memoirs, IV., 240 et passim; J. Q. Adams, Eulogy on the Life and
Character of James Monroe; Schouler, United States, IV., 201-207.]
"Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my
predecessors," wrote President Adams, in his first annual message,
"I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and
oftener in need of your indulgence." In his reply to the
notification of his election by the House, after adverting to the
fact that one of his competitors had received a larger minority of
the electoral vote than his own, he declared that, if his refusal of
the office would enable the people authoritatively to express their
choice, he should not hesitate to decline; [Footnote: Richardson,
Messages and Papers, II., 293.] he believed that perhaps two-thirds
of the people were adverse to the result of the election.
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