The incongruity of this pompous enterrement de premiere classe, en musique, when the city was imminently menaced by a German bombardment, bordered on the pathetic and the ridiculous.
"My Home In The Field of Honor"
Frances Wilson Huard
Mr. Adams then, in behalf of the committee, after showing that the proceeding of the President in this instance is without precedent or example, and imminently dangerous in its tendencies, proceeds to remark: "The entry upon the bill is, 'Approved: John Tyler;' and that entry makes it the law of the land; and then, by a private note deposited with the law in the Department of State, the same hand which, under the sacred obligation of an official oath, has written the word 'approved,' and added the sign-manual of his name, feels it due to himself to declare that the bill is not approved, and that he doubts both its constitutionality and its policy, and that he signs it only in deference to the declared will of both houses of Congress; not from assent to their reasons, but in submission to their will.
"Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams."
Josiah Quincy
But he had broached, and made no hesitation in maintaining, two opinions imminently dangerous to the very existence of the Massachusetts Colony, and certainly not remarkable for that spirit of charity or toleration upon which he afterwards founded his own government, and which now, in after ages, constitutes his brightest title to renown.
"Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams."
Josiah Quincy
