The beauty and chivalry of the South were
there. They had come to witness the abasement of the great enemy of
their most cherished institution. They were to see him driven from the
nation's council chamber, a crushed and dishonored man. Not one
friendly face looked down upon him as he sat coolly awaiting the
attack, and upon the floor about him were few of his colleagues that
gave him their sympathies.
The two most eloquent Congressmen from the South were selected to lead
the prosecution. One was the celebrated Henry A. Wise, of Virginia;
the other "Tom" Marshall, of Kentucky. The latter opened the
proceedings by offering a resolution charging Mr. Adams with
treasonable conduct and directing his expulsion. He supported it with
a speech of much ingenuity. Wise followed in a fiery diatribe. Both
speakers imprudently indulged in personal allusions of a somewhat
scandalous nature, thus laying themselves open, with episodes in their
careers of questionable propriety, to retaliation from a man who
thoroughly knew their records. At this point we have the testimony of
an eye-witness:
"Then uprose that bald, gray old man of seventy-five, his hands
tremulous with constitutional infirmity and age, upon whose
consecrated head the vials of tyrannic wrath had been outpoured.
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