Born at Boston, Feb. 4, 1772: died at Quincy, Mass., July 1, 1864. An American statesman, orator, and historian: son of Josiah Quincy (1744–75). He was a Federalist member of Congress from Massachusetts 1805–13; opposed the embargo, the admission of Louisiana, and the War of 1812; was a member of the Massachusetts legislature; was mayor of Boston 1823–28; and was president of Harvard 1829–1845. He wrote a “History of Harvard University” (1840), “Municipal History of Boston” (1852), “Life of J. Q. Adams” (1858).

Personal

  Few men have acquired so just a distinction for unspotted integrity, fearless justice, consistent principles, high talents, and extensive literature. Still fewer possess the merit of having justified the public confidence by the singleness of heart and purpose, with which they have devoted themselves to the best interests of society. In every station, to which you have been called by the free suffrages of the people, you have discharged its duties with the most exemplary ability, fidelity, and conscientiousness. In your present exalted station, to which you were invited by the combined voice of the guardians of the University, under the most flattering circumstances, every act of your life has conduced to establish the importance and wisdom of the choice.

  It was a noble spectacle to see this venerable man of eighty-five with his memory and all his powers about him, grand, stately, simple, a relic of great times gone by, born before the battle of Bunker Hill, six years old at the Declaration of Independence, whose father had died in the Cause, a member of Congress under Jefferson’s administration.

  This great and good man, and true patriot. He has held no office which he did not fill with singular fidelity, wisdom, and zeal. With an ardor of temperament and energy of soul seldom equalled, he has ever enlisted these high characteristics in the cause of truth, justice, liberty, humanity; always pursuing the right rather than the seemingly expedient, convinced that in the long run the right is the expedient. His rare moral courage has more than once been put to the test, when he has stood alone, braving any amount of obloquy for pursuing what he deemed the truth, and what duty demanded of him.

  Mr. Quincy had many qualities calculated to win favor with the young,—that one above all which is sure to do it, indomitable pluck. With him the dignity was in the man, not in the office. He had some of those little oddities, too, which afford amusement without contempt, and which rather tend to heighten than diminish personal attachment to superiors in station. His punctuality at prayers, and in dropping asleep there, his forgetfulness of names, his singular inability to make even the shortest off-hand speech to the students,—all the more singular in a practised orator,—his occasional absorption of mind, leading him to hand you his sand-box instead of the leave-of-absence he had just dried with it,—the old-fashioned courtesy of his, “Sir, your servant,” as he bowed you out of his study,—all tended to make him popular. He had also a little of what is somewhat contradictorily called dry humor, not without influence in his relations with the students. In taking leave of the graduating class, he was in the habit of paying them whatever honest compliment he could. Who, of a certain year which shall be nameless, will ever forget the gravity with which he assured them that they were “the best-dressed class that had passed through college during his administration?… One great element of his popularity with the students was his esprit de corps. However strict in discipline, he was always on our side as respected the outside world.

  Mr. Quincy had a more intense and efficient will-power than any other man that I ever knew. He combined the sturdy uprightness of purpose and strenuousness of action which are commonly—I will not say how aptly—termed Roman, with the pure and high ethical standard, and the generous regard for human well-being, which are distinctively Christian. He was, by nature and by hereditary right, of the genuine aristocracy, born to rule; and, could the world’s governing and care-taking be in the hands of men of his type, there would be no yearning for democratic institutions.

  M.  A grand, heroic character of the ancient type, whose courage was as great as his patriotism was pure; who kept the enthusiasm of his youth and his faith in the future to the last; who was no sad praiser of the past, no “laudator temporis acti me puero,” but who breathed encouragement to all with his words, and animated youth by his counsel, and never despaired when clouds gathered around the State.
  B.  I knew him well, and all you say of him is just; his uncorrupted and incorruptible principles, his true honesty, his large and liberal sentiments, and his fresh-heartedness made him dear and honored by all men. I would we had many such in the councils of the nation.

General

  Quincy’s “Life of Josiah Quincy” ranks high among the best biographical memoirs that have appeared in our language, and is generally received as a classical book in that department.

  In the “History of Harvard University,” the progress of that distinguished seat of learning, which has had so great and beneficent an influence upon the character and condition of this nation, is traced with minuteness and fidelity through the two centuries which had elapsed since its formation. His style is perspicuous and elegant, and the narrative animated, generally well proportioned and interesting.

  It [“Life of Josiah Quincy”] well deserves a place in every American library, and it is greatly to be hoped that a new edition of it may be forthcoming at no distant day from the same filial hand;—a hand still untrembling under the ceaseless industry of more than four-score years, and never weary of doing another, and still another, labor of love for his kinsfolk, his fellow-citizens, or his country.

  Mr. Quincy’s greatest occasion was the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the college, in 1836, when he delivered the commemorative address, which was the nucleus of his subsequent two-volume history of Harvard College. In this, as always, he showed himself the master of an English style, pure, rich, and vigorous. His elocution, when he had a manuscript before him, retained, with the weight and impressiveness, the fervor which had marked his eloquence in deliberative assemblies; but he no longer, if ever, sustained the even flow of unwritten discourse. When he felt the most strongly, his words seemed at first to be struggling for utterance, and then were poured out in spasmodic jets, with prolonged intervening pauses.