In Charles Francis Adams’ pamphlet, his most sustained effort to undermine the popular support Daniel Webster enjoyed in Massachusetts in his quest for the Presidency, Adams undertook to demonstrate that when Webster, in his speech on the Executive Patronage Bill in the Senate in February 1835, gave support to Calhoun’s Bill he did so to win Southern support for himself, but in so doing repudiated the historic position of his party and the Constitution itself, which he had earlier earned his reputation defending. The outcome sought by the Bill, ultimately denied by vote of the House of Representatives, was to make the power of removal from office, given specifically and exclusively to the President by the First Congress and affirmed by the Act of 1820 limiting the terms of service of certain officers, subject to the limitation that before a removal became effective the President would be required to give an account of his acts and the reasons for those acts to the Senate. The Constitutional issue turned upon whether the requirement that the power of the President to make appointments in certain classes of offices be with the advice and consent of the Senate carried with it an implied similar restriction governing removals. Charles Francis Adams, then, taking as his pseudonym “A Whig of the Old School,” and taking both his title and motto from Burke, sought to bring overwhelming authority from the debates on ratification and in the First Congress to show that the “Old Whigs,” the witnesses of truth, were unequivocal in their exposition of executive prerogatives. The appeal to precedent stripped Webster and the “New Whigs” of all legitimacy.

The pamphlet, published on 30 September 1835, was a somewhat revised version of eight articles bearing the same title that had appeared in the Boston Daily Advocate and the Columbian Centinel, 23 June–4 August, and in other Massachusetts papers thereafter (p. 163–164, below). Adams was led to bear the expense of pamphlet publication by his own zeal in seeking to inflict whatever further damage he could upon Webster, by his father’s urging, and by the evidence available of the success of the series in the newspapers. Charles Francis Adams thought that the measure of that success lay in the fact that in the speculation aroused about authorship the nominees had been A. H. Everett and John Quincy Adams, “the two best political writers in the State if not in the Country.” Moreover, Hallett, the editor of the Advocate, in praising the articles as “The Essays of the True Whig” chose as his touchstones for the measure of their excellence, the essays of “Cato,” “Publius,” and “Publicola.” By the last named, Hallett linked the author’s gifts with those of John Quincy Adams, who had used that pseudonym. By the second he referred, of course, to the pseudonym used by the author of The Federalist; and by the first he evoked “The Independent Whig,” always associated with “Cato,” as John Trenchard’s and Thomas Gordon’s pseudonym for their “essays on liberty, civil and religious,” in the London Journal, 1720 &c. (p. 190–191, 198, below).

Twin objects impelled Charles Francis Adams to write the papers and to undertake the close analysis of Webster’s speech, and of the authorities on whom he relied, in order to refute Webster’s position. The first was to complete a major piece of writing during his twenty-seventh year, a year which had a talismanic significance in his thinking as “the particular age at which men famous for talent have begun to develope it to the world ... the age at which my father began his public career ... Cicero made his defence of Roscius ... Demosthenes entered upon the public business”; as “the turning point of most men’s lives”; and as “the critical moment of my life.” “Let that fact and its associations ... stir me up” (vol. 5:363, above; p. 153, 198, below).

The second object, which determined the direction his major effort would take, was to square family accounts with Webster. Both John Quincy and Charles Francis Adams were convinced, and apparently on good authority, that Webster, in order to solidify his hold on the National Republican party in Massachusetts as a base for his moves toward the presidential nomination, had been responsible for the intrigue by which John Quincy Adams was deprived of election to the Senate in January–February 1835. See p. 59–79  passim, 138–139, below. Before the end of May, Charles Francis Adams had “resolved upon an attempt at counteraction” and had seized upon Webster’s stand on the Executive Patronage Bill as a suitable instrument. The series of articles would be a principal element in a campaign to “save us from the undermining action of treacherous friends.” As he contemplated “An Appeal” upon its completion, Charles Francis Adams wrote, “I shall be content if the party is punished which has endeavoured to destroy all my father’s standing” (p. 147, 159, 190, below).