2 ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS. 



ADVENTISTS, SEVENTH-DAY. 



When two years old, Charles Francis was 

 taken to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he 



CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 



learned to speak Russian, German, and French. 

 He was still a child when his father was ap- 

 pointed United States minister to England, 

 and he was placed in an English school. It 

 was just after the close of the War of 1812, 

 and our relations with the mother -country 

 were so unpleasant that the boy learned to 

 use literal knock-down arguments in defending 

 his native land. When the family returned to 

 America, he was placed in the Boston Latin 

 school, and in 1825 graduated at Harvard Col- 

 lege. His father was then President of the 

 United States, and Charles Francis spent two 

 years in Washington, after which he was sent 

 to study law in the office of Daniel Webster. 

 His admission to the bar was obtained in 1828, 

 and in the following year he married Miss 

 Brooks, whose older sisters were the wives of 

 Edward Everett and Rev. Nathaniel Frothing- 

 ham. In 1831, and for five years thereafter, 

 he was a member of the Massachusetts Legis- 

 lature. He was a Whig, but so independent 

 that in 1848 the Free-Soil party nominated 

 him for Vice-President, on the ticket with Mar- 

 tin Van Buren. The ticket was of course de- 

 feated, but from the movement sprang the Re- 

 publican party, which in 1858 elected Mr. 

 Adams to Congress, to represent the Third Dis- 

 trict of Massachusetts, and re-elected him in 

 1860. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed 

 him to the post that had been held by his 

 father and grandfather, that of United States 



minister to England. As the civil war was in 

 progress in this country, and the sympathies 

 of the upper classes in England were 

 largely with the Confederacy, the 

 diplomatist found occasion for graver 

 defense of his country than when he 

 met the school-boys at fisticuffs. He 

 was obliged to deal with some of the 

 most complicated and delicate ques- 

 tions that can arise between nations, 

 notably the capture of the Confeder- 

 ate commissioners, Mason and Slidell, 

 and the building of the "Alabama" 

 and other Confederate cruisers in 

 British ports. In all of these Mr. 

 Adams showed himself the wise and 

 patriotic statesman. He was as far 

 as possible from being the wily and 

 intriguing diplomatist, but his bold 

 and outspoken methods were only 

 equaled by his determination and 

 command of himself. He spent 

 seven years in official life in Eng- 

 land, and on his return retired to 

 private life. He was made Presi- 

 dent of the Board of Overseers of 

 Harvard College. He published nu- 

 merous addresses and orations, and 

 edited the memoirs and works of his 

 father and grandfather, in 22 octavo 

 volumes. (See steel portrait in the 

 "Annual Cyclopedia" for 1871.) 



ADVENTISTS, SEVENTH-DAY. A his- 

 tory of the origin and progress of the 

 Seventh-Day Adventist Church was prepared 

 by direction of the General Conference and 

 published in the " Year-Book " of the denom- 

 ination for 1886. From this account it ap- 

 pears that the formation of the Church was 

 one of the indirect results of the preaching 

 by William Miller, in 1840 and the following 

 years, that the fulfillment of the prophecies 

 of the second coming of Christ would take 

 place in the year 1843. The passing away 

 of that year without any evident verifica- 

 tion of Mr. Miller's predictions produced vari- 

 ous effects upon the minds of those who had 

 put faith in the calculations on which they 

 were based. A very considerable number of 

 them still adhered to the belief that the pro- 

 phetic period ended according to the inter- 

 pretation that had been placed upon it, but 

 concluded that a mistake had been made re- 

 garding the character of the events by which 

 the ending was to be marked. Later in the 

 year 1844, Mrs. Rachel D. Preston, a Seventh- 

 Day Baptist, removed from New York to 

 Washington, N. H., where a company of Ad- 

 ventists, holding to this view, were living. Be- 

 coming acquainted with them, she embraced 

 the doctrine of the near coming of Christ, 

 while they received from her the doctrine of 

 the seventh day as the only true Sabbath ; 

 and, as this doctrine continued to be agitated 

 through the ranks of the disappointed Advent- 

 ists, " many embraced it with joy." Further 



