John Quincy Adams — 14 - Chapter 3B

This sounds, it must be confessed, a trifle rancorous; but Adams had great excuse for nourishing rancor towards Jackson.

It is time, however, to return to the House of Representatives.

It was not by bearing his share in the ordinary work of that body, important or exciting as that might at one time or another happen to be, that Mr. Adams was to win in Congress that reputation which has been (p. 243) already described as far overshadowing all his previous career.

A

special task and a peculiar mission were before him.

It was a part of his destiny to become the champion of the anti-slavery cause in the national legislature.

Almost the first thing which he did after he had taken his seat in Congress was to present "fifteen petitions signed numerously by citizens of Pennsylvania, praying for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia."

He simply moved their reference to the Committee on the District of Columbia, declaring that he should not support that part of the petition which prayed for abolition in the District.

The time had not yet come when the South felt much anxiety at such manifestations, and these first stones were dropped into the pool without stirring a ripple on the surface.

For about four years more we hear little in the Diary concerning slavery.

It was not until 1835, when the annexation of Texas began to be mooted, that the North fairly took the alarm, and the irrepressible conflict began to develop.

Then at once we find Mr. Adams at the front.

That he had always cherished an abhorrence of slavery and a bitter antipathy to slave-holders as a class is sufficiently indicated by many chance remarks scattered through his Diary from early years.

Now that a great question, vitally (p. 244) affecting the slave power, divided the country into parties and inaugurated the struggle which never again slept until it was settled forever by the result of the civil war, Mr. Adams at once assumed the function of leader.

His position should be clearly understood; for in the vast labor which lay before the abolition party different tasks fell to different men.

Mr. Adams assumed to be neither an agitator nor a reformer; by necessity of character, training, fitness, and official position, he was a legislator and statesman.

The task which accident or destiny allotted to him was neither to preach among the people a crusade against slavery, nor to devise and keep in action the thousand resources which busy men throughout the country were constantly multiplying for the purpose of spreading and increasing a popular hostility towards the great "institution."

Every great cause has need of its fanatics, its vanguard to keep far in advance of what is for the time reasonable and possible; it has not less need of the wiser and cooler heads to discipline and control the great mass which is set in motion by the reckless forerunners, to see to the accomplishment of that which the present circumstances and development of the movement allow to be accomplished.

It fell to Mr. Adams to direct the (p. 245) assault against the outworks which were then vulnerable, and to see that the force then possessed by the movement was put to such uses as would insure definite results instead of being wasted in endeavors which as yet were impossible of achievement.

Drawing his duty from his situation and surroundings, he left to others, to younger men and more rhetorical natures, outside the walls of Congress, the business of firing the people and stirring popular opinion and sympathy.

He was set to do that portion of the work of abolition which was to be done in Congress, to encounter the mighty efforts which were made to stifle the great humanitarian cry in the halls of the national legislature.

This was quite as much as one man was equal to; in fact, it is certain that no one then in public life except Mr. Adams could have done it effectually.

So obvious is this that one cannot help wondering what would have befallen the cause, had he not been just where he was to forward it in just the way that he did.

It is only another among the many instances of the need surely finding the man.

His qualifications were unique; his ability, his knowledge, his prestige and authority, his high personal character, his persistence and courage, his combativeness stimulated by an acrimonious temper but checked by a sound judgment, his merciless power of invective, his independence (p. 246) and carelessness of applause or vilification, friendship or enmity, constituted him an opponent fully equal to the enormous odds which the slave-holding interest arrayed against him.

A like moral and mental fitness was to be found in no one else.

Numbers could not overawe him, nor loneliness dispirit him.

He was probably the most formidable fighter in debate of whom parliamentary records preserve the memory.

The hostility which he encountered beggars description; the English language was deficient in adequate words of virulence and contempt to express the feelings which were entertained towards him.

At home he had not the countenance of that class in society to which he naturally belonged.

A second time he found the chief part of the gentlemen of Boston and its vicinity, the leading lawyers, the rich merchants, the successful manufacturers, not only opposed to him, but entertaining towards him sentiments of personal dislike and even vindictiveness.

This stratum of the community, having a natural distaste for disquieting agitation and influenced by class feeling,--the gentlemen of the North sympathizing with the "aristocracy" of the South,--could not make common cause with anti-slavery people.

Fortunately, however, Mr. Adams was returned by a country district where the old Puritan instincts (p. 247) were still strong.

The intelligence and free spirit of New England were at his back, and were fairly represented by him; in spite of high-bred disfavor they carried him gallantly through the long struggle.

The people of the Plymouth district sent him back to the House every two years from the time of his first election to the year of his death, and the disgust of the gentlemen of Boston was after all of trifling consequence to him and of no serious influence upon the course of history.

The old New England instinct was in him as it was in the mass of the people; that instinct made him the real exponent of New England thought, belief, and feeling, and that same instinct made the great body of voters stand by him with unswerving constancy.

When his fellow Representatives, almost to a man, deserted him, he was sustained by many a token of sympathy and admiration coming from among the people at large.

Time and the history of the United States have been his potent vindicators.

The conservative, conscienceless respectability of wealth was, as is usually the case with it in the annals of the Anglo-Saxon race, quite in the wrong and predestined to well-merited defeat.

It adds to the honor due to Mr. Adams that his sense of right was true enough, and that his vision was clear enough, to lead him out of that strong thraldom which class feelings, (p. 248) traditions, and comradeship are wont to exercise.

But it is time to resume the narrative and to let Mr. Adams's acts--of which after all it is possible to give only the briefest sketch, selecting a few of the more striking incidents--tell the tale of his Congressional life.

On February 14, 1835, Mr. Adams again presented two petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, but without giving rise to much excitement.

The fusillade was, however, getting too thick and fast to be endured longer with indifference by the impatient Southerners.

At the next session of Congress they concluded to try to stop it, and their ingenious scheme was to make Congress shot-proof, so to speak, against such missiles.

On January 4, 1836, Mr. Adams presented an abolition petition couched in the usual form, and moved that it be laid on the table, as others like it had lately been.

But in a moment Mr. Glascock, of Georgia, moved that the petition be not received.

Debate sprang up on a point of order, and two days later, before the question of reception was determined, a resolution was offered by Mr. Jarvis, of Maine, declaring that the House would not entertain any petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

This resolution was supported on the ground that (p. 249) Congress had no constitutional power in the premises.

Some days later, January 18, 1836, before any final action had been reached upon this proposition, Mr. Adams presented some more abolition petitions, one of them signed by "one hundred and forty-eight ladies, citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; for, I said, I had not yet brought myself to doubt whether females were citizens."

The usual motion not to receive was made, and then a new device was resorted to in the shape of a motion that the motion not to receive be laid on the table.

On February 8, 1836, this novel scheme for shutting off petitions against slavery immediately upon their presentation was referred to a select committee of which Mr. Pinckney was chairman.

On May 18 this committee reported in substance: 1. That Congress had no power to interfere with slavery in any State; 2. That Congress ought not to interfere with slavery in the District of Columbia; 3. That whereas the agitation of the subject was disquieting and objectionable, "all petitions, memorials, resolutions or papers, relating in any way or to any extent whatsoever to the subject of slavery or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being either printed or referred, be laid upon the table, and that no further action whatever shall be had (p. 250) thereon."

When it came to taking a vote upon this report a division of the question was called for, and the yeas and nays were ordered.

The first resolution was then read, whereupon Mr. Adams at once rose and pledged himself, if the House would allow him five minutes' time, to prove it to be false.

But cries of "order" resounded; he was compelled to take his seat and the resolution was adopted by 182 to 9. Upon the second resolution he asked to be excused from voting, and his name was passed in the call.

The third resolution with its preamble was then read, and Mr. Adams, so soon as his name was called, rose and said: "I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States, the rules of this House, and the rights of my constituents."

He was interrupted by shrieks of "order" resounding on every side; but he only spoke the louder and obstinately finished his sentence before resuming his seat.

The resolution was of course agreed to, the vote standing 117 to 68. Such was the beginning of the famous "gag" which became and long remained--afterward in a worse shape--a standing rule of the House.

Regularly in each new Congress when the adoption of rules came up, Mr. Adams moved to rescind the "gag;" but for many years his motions continued to be voted down, as a (p. 251) matter of course.

Its imposition was clearly a mistake on the part of the slave-holding party; free debate would almost surely have hurt them less than this interference with the freedom of petition.

They had assumed an untenable position.

Henceforth, as the persistent advocate of the right of petition, Mr. Adams had a support among the people at large vastly greater than he could have enjoyed as the opponent of slavery.

As his adversaries had shaped the issue he was predestined to victory in a free country.

A similar scene was enacted on December 21 and 22, 1837. A "gag" or "speech-smothering" resolution being then again before the House, Mr. Adams, when his name was called in the taking of the vote, cried out "amidst a perfect war-whoop of 'order:' 'I hold the resolution to be a violation of the Constitution, of the right of petition of my constituents and of the people of the United States, and of my right to freedom of speech as a member of this House.'

" Afterward, in reading over the names of members who had voted, the clerk omitted that of Mr. Adams, this utterance of his not having constituted a vote.

Mr. Adams called attention to the omission.

The clerk, by direction of the Speaker, thereupon called his name.

His only reply was by a motion that his answer as already made should be entered (p. 252) on the Journal.

The Speaker said that this motion was not in order.

Mr. Adams, resolute to get upon the record, requested that his motion with the Speaker's decision that it was not in order might be entered on the Journal.

The next day, finding that this entry had not been made in proper shape, he brought up the matter again.

One of his opponents made a false step, and Mr. Adams "bantered him" upon it until the other was provoked into saying that, "if the question ever came to the issue of war, the Southern people would march into New England and conquer it."

Mr. Adams replied that no doubt they would if they could; that he entered his resolution upon the Journal because he was resolved that his opponent's "name should go down to posterity damned to everlasting fame."

No one ever gained much in a war of words with this ever-ready and merciless tongue.

Mr. Adams, having soon become known to all the nation as the indomitable presenter of anti-slavery petitions, quickly found that great numbers of people were ready to keep him busy in this trying task.

For a long while it was almost as much as he could accomplish to receive, sort, schedule, and present the infinite number of petitions and memorials which came to him praying for the abolition of slavery and of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and opposing (p. 253) the annexation of Texas.

It was an occupation not altogether devoid even of physical danger, and calling for an amount of moral courage greater than it is now easy to appreciate.

It is the incipient stage of such a conflict that tests the mettle of the little band of innovators.

When it grows into a great party question much less courage is demanded.

The mere presentation of an odious petition may seem in itself to be a simple task; but to find himself in a constant state of antagonism to a powerful, active, and vindictive majority in a debating body, constituted of such material as then made up the House of Representatives, wore hardly even upon the iron temper and inflexible disposition of Mr. Adams.

"The most insignificant error of conduct in me at this time," he writes in April, 1837, "would be my irredeemable ruin in this world; and both the ruling political parties are watching with intense anxiety for some overt act by me to set the whole pack of their hireling presses upon me."

But amid the host of foes, and aware that he could count upon the aid of scarcely a single hearty and daring friend, he labored only the more earnestly.

The severe pressure against him begat only the more severe counter pressure upon his part.

Besides these natural and legitimate difficulties, Mr. Adams was (p. 254) further in the embarrassing position of one who has to fear as much from the imprudence of allies as from open hostility of antagonists, and he was often compelled to guard against a peculiar risk coming from his very coadjutors in the great cause.

The extremists who had cast aside all regard for what was practicable, and who utterly scorned to consider the feasibility or the consequences of measures which seemed to them to be correct as abstract propositions of morality, were constantly urging him to action which would only have destroyed him forever in political life, would have stripped him of his influence, exiled him from that position in Congress where he could render the most efficient service that was in him, and left him naked of all usefulness and utterly helpless to continue that essential portion of the labor which could be conducted by no one else.

"The abolitionists generally," he said, "are constantly urging me to indiscreet movements, which would ruin me, and weaken and not strengthen their cause."

His family, on the other hand, sought to restrain him from all connection with these dangerous partisans.

"Between these adverse impulses," he writes, "my mind is agitated almost to distraction....

I walk on the edge of a precipice almost every step that I take."

In the midst of all this anxiety, (p. 255) however, he was fortunately supported by the strong commendation of his constituents which they once loyally declared by formal and unanimous votes in a convention summoned for the express purpose of manifesting their support.

His feelings appear by an entry in his Diary in October, 1837:-- "I have gone [he said] as far upon this article, the abolition of slavery, as the public opinion of the free portion of the Union will bear, and so far that scarcely a slave-holding member of the House dares to vote with me upon any question.

I have as yet been thoroughly sustained by my own State, but one step further and I hazard my own standing and influence there, my own final overthrow, and the cause of liberty itself for an indefinite time, certainly for more than my remnant of life.

Were there in the House one member capable of taking the lead in this cause of universal emancipation, which is moving onward in the world and in this country, I would withdraw from the contest which will rage with increasing fury as it draws to its crisis, but for the management of which my age, infirmities, and approaching end totally disqualify me.

There is no such man in the House."

September 15, 1837, he says: "I have been for some time occupied day and night, when at home, in assorting and recording the petitions and remonstrances against the annexation of Texas, and other (p. 256) anti-slavery petitions, which flow upon me in torrents."

The next day he presented the singular petition of one Sherlock S. Gregory, who had conceived the eccentric notion of asking Congress to declare him "an alien or stranger in the land so long as slavery exists and the wrongs of the Indians are unrequited and unrepented of."

September 28 he presented a batch of his usual petitions, and also asked leave to offer a resolution calling for a report concerning the coasting trade in slaves.

"There was what Napoleon would have called a superb NO!

returned to my request from the servile side of the House."

The next day he presented fifty-one more like documents, and notes having previously presented one hundred and fifty more.

In December, 1837, still at this same work, he made a hard but fruitless effort to have the Texan remonstrances and petitions sent to a select committee instead of to that on foreign affairs which was constituted in the Southern interest.

On December 29 he "presented several bundles of abolition and anti-slavery petitions," and said that, having declared his opinion that the gag-rule was unconstitutional, null, and void, he should "submit to it only as to physical force."

January 3, 1838, he presented "about a hundred petitions, (p. 257) memorials, and remonstrances,--all laid on the table."

January 15 he presented fifty more.

January 28 he received thirty-one petitions, and spent that day and the next in assorting and filing these and others which he previously had, amounting in all to one hundred and twenty.

February 14, in the same year, was a field-day in the petition campaign: he presented then no less than three hundred and fifty petitions, all but three or four of which bore more or less directly upon the slavery question.

Among these petitions was one "praying that Congress would take measures to protect citizens from the North going to the South from danger to their lives.

When the motion to lay that on the table was made, I said that, 'In another part of the Capitol it had been threatened that if a Northern abolitionist should go to North Carolina, and utter a principle of the Declaration of Independence'--Here a loud cry of 'order!

order!'

burst forth, in which the Speaker yelled the loudest.

I waited till it subsided, and then resumed, 'that if they could catch him they would hang him!'

I said this so as to be distinctly heard throughout the hall, the renewed deafening shout of 'order!

order!'

notwithstanding.

The Speaker then said, 'The gentleman from Massachusetts will take his seat;' which I did and immediately rose again and presented another petition.

He did not dare tell me that I could not proceed without (p. 258) permission of the House, and I proceeded.

The threat to hang Northern abolitionists was uttered by Preston of the Senate within the last fortnight."