John Quincy Adams — 15 - Chapter 3C

On March 12, of the same year, he presented ninety-six petitions, nearly all of an anti-slavery character, one of them for "expunging the Declaration of Independence from the Journals."

On December 14, 1838, Mr. Wise, of Virginia, objected to the reception of certain anti-slavery petitions.

The Speaker ruled his objection out of order, and from this ruling Wise appealed.

The question on the appeal was taken by yeas and nays.

When Mr. Adams's name was called, he relates:-- "I rose and said, 'Mr. Speaker, considering all the resolutions introduced by the gentleman from New Hampshire as'--The Speaker roared out, 'The gentleman from Massachusetts must answer Aye or No, and nothing else.

Order!'

With a reinforced voice--'I refuse to answer, because I consider all the proceedings of the House as unconstitutional'--While in a firm and swelling voice I pronounced distinctly these words, the Speaker and about two thirds of the House cried, 'order!

order!

order!'

till it became a perfect yell.

I paused a moment for it to cease and then said, 'a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States.'

While speaking these words with loud, distinct, and slow (p. 259) articulation, the bawl of 'order!

order!'

resounded again from two thirds of the House.

The Speaker, with agonizing lungs, screamed, 'I call upon the House to support me in the execution of my duty!'

I then coolly resumed my seat.

Waddy Thompson, of South Carolina, advancing into one of the aisles with a sarcastic smile and silvery tone of voice, said, 'What aid from the House would the Speaker desire?'

The Speaker snarled back, 'The gentleman from South Carolina is out of order!'

and a peal of laughter burst forth from all sides of the House."

So that little skirmish ended, much more cheerfully than was often the case.

December 20, 1838, he presented fifty anti-slavery petitions, among which were three praying for the recognition of the Republic of Hayti.

Petitions of this latter kind he strenuously insisted should be referred to a select committee, or else to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, accompanied in the latter case with explicit instructions that a report thereon should be brought in.

He audaciously stated that he asked for these instructions because so many petitions of a like tenor had been sent to the Foreign Affairs Committee, and had found it a limbo from which they never again emerged, and the chairman had said that this would continue to be the case.

The chairman, sitting two rows behind Mr. Adams, said, "that insinuation should not be (p. 260) made against a gentleman!"

"I shall make," retorted Mr. Adams, "what insinuation I please.

This is not an insinuation, but a direct, positive assertion."

January 7, 1839, he cheerfully records that he presented ninety-five petitions, bearing "directly or indirectly upon the slavery topics," and some of them very exasperating in their language.

March 30, 1840, he handed in no less than five hundred and eleven petitions, many of which were not receivable under the "gag" rule adopted on January 28 of that year, which had actually gone the length of refusing so much as a reception to abolition petitions.

April 13, 1840, he presented a petition for the repeal of the laws in the District of Columbia, which authorized the whipping of women.

Besides this he had a multitude of others, and he only got through the presentation of them "just as the morning hour expired."

On January 21, 1841, he found much amusement in puzzling his Southern adversaries by presenting some petitions in which, besides the usual anti-slavery prayers, there was a prayer to refuse to admit to the Union any new State whose constitution should tolerate slavery.

The Speaker said that only the latter prayer could be _received_ under the "gag" rule.

Connor, of North Carolina, (p. 261) moved to lay on the table so much of the petition as could be received.

Mr. Adams tauntingly suggested that in order to do this it would be necessary to mutilate the document by cutting it into two pieces; whereat there was great wrath and confusion, "the House got into a snarl, the Speaker knew not what to do."

The Southerners raved and fumed for a while, and finally resorted to their usual expedient, and dropped altogether a matter which so sorely burned their fingers.

A fact, very striking in view of the subsequent course of events, concerning Mr. Adams's relation with the slavery question, seems hitherto to have escaped the attention of those who have dealt with his career.

It may as well find a place here as elsewhere in a narrative which it is difficult to make strictly chronological.

Apparently he was the first to declare the doctrine, that the abolition of slavery could be lawfully accomplished by the exercise of the war powers of the Government.

The earliest expression of this principle is found in a speech made by him in May, 1836, concerning the distribution of rations to fugitives from Indian hostilities in Alabama and Georgia.

He then said:-- "From the instant that your slave-holding States become the theatre of war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that instant (p. 262) the war powers of the Constitution extend to interference with the institution of slavery in every way in which it can be interfered with, from a claim of indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, to a cession of the State burdened with slavery to a foreign power."

In June, 1841, he made a speech of which no report exists, but the contents of which may be in part learned from the replies and references to it which are on record.

Therein he appears to have declared that slavery could be abolished in the exercise of the treaty-making power, having reference doubtless to a treaty concluding a war.

These views were of course mere abstract expressions of opinion as to the constitutionality of measures the real occurrence of which was anticipated by nobody.

But, as the first suggestions of a doctrine in itself most obnoxious to the Southern theory and fundamentally destructive of the great Southern "institution" under perfectly possible circumstances, this enunciation by Mr. Adams gave rise to much indignation.

Instead of allowing the imperfectly formulated principle to lose its danger in oblivion, the Southerners assailed it with vehemence.

They taunted Mr. Adams with the opinion, as if merely to say that he held it was to damn him to everlasting infamy.

The only result was that they induced him to consider the matter more (p. 263) fully, and to express his belief more deliberately.

In January, 1842, Mr. Wise attacked him upon this ground, and a month later Marshall followed in the same strain.

These assaults were perhaps the direct incentive to what was said soon after by Mr. Adams, on April 14, 1842, in a speech concerning war with England and with Mexico, of which there was then some talk.

Giddings, among other resolutions, had introduced one to the effect that the slave States had the exclusive right to be consulted on the subject of slavery.

Mr. Adams said that he could not give his assent to this.

One of the laws of war, he said, is "that when a country is invaded, and two hostile armies are set in martial array, the commanders of both armies have power to emancipate all the slaves in the invaded territory."

He cited some precedents from South American history, and continued:-- "Whether the war be servile, civil, or foreign, I lay this down as the law of nations.

I say that the military authority takes for the time the place of all municipal institutions, slavery among the rest.

Under that state of things, so far from its being true that the States where slavery exists have the exclusive management of the subject, not only the President of the United States but the commander of the army has power to order (p. 264) the universal emancipation of the slaves."

This declaration of constitutional doctrine was made with much positiveness and emphasis.

There for many years the matter rested.

The principle had been clearly asserted by Mr. Adams, angrily repudiated by the South, and in the absence of the occasion of war there was nothing more to be done in the matter.

But when the exigency at last came, and the government of the United States was brought face to face with by far the gravest constitutional problem presented by the great rebellion, then no other solution presented itself save that which had been suggested twenty years earlier in the days of peace by Mr. Adams.

It was in pursuance of the doctrine to which he thus gave the first utterance that slavery was forever abolished in the United States.

Extracts from the last-quoted speech long stood as the motto of the "Liberator;" and at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation Mr. Adams was regarded as the chief and sufficient authority for an act so momentous in its effect, so infinitely useful in a matter of national extremity.

But it was evidently a theory which had taken strong hold upon him.

Besides the foregoing speeches there is an explicit statement of it in a letter which he wrote from Washington April 4, 1836, to Hon. Solomon Lincoln, of Hingham, a friend and (p. 265) constituent.

After touching upon other topics he says:-- "The new pretensions of the slave representation in Congress of a right to refuse to receive petitions, and that Congress have no constitutional power to abolish slavery or the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, forced upon me so much of the discussion as I did take upon me, but in which you are well aware I did not and could not speak a tenth part of my mind.

I did not, for example, start the question whether by the law of God and of nature man can hold _property_, HEREDITARY property, in man.

I did not start the question whether in the event of a servile insurrection and war, Congress would not have complete unlimited control over the whole subject of slavery, even to the emancipation of all the slaves in the State where such insurrection should break out, and for the suppression of which the freemen of Plymouth and Norfolk counties, Massachusetts, should be called by Acts of Congress to pour out their treasures and to shed their blood.

Had I spoken my mind on these two points, the sturdiest of the abolitionists would have disavowed the sentiments of their champion."

The projected annexation of Texas, which became a battle-ground whereon the tide of conflict swayed so long and so fiercely to and fro, profoundly stirred Mr. Adams's indignation.

It is, he said, "a question of far deeper root and more overshadowing branches than (p. 266) any or all others that now agitate this country....

I had opened it by my speech ...

on the 25th May, 1836--by far the most noted speech that I ever made."

He based his opposition to the annexation upon constitutional objections, and on September 18, 1837, offered a resolution that "the power of annexing the people of any independent State to this Union is a power not delegated by the Constitution of the United States to their Congress or to any department of their government, but reserved to the people."

The Speaker refused to receive the motion, or even allow it to be read, on the ground that it was not in order.

Mr. Adams repeated substantially the same motion in June, 1838, then adding "that any attempt by act of Congress or by treaty to annex the Republic of Texas to this Union would be an usurpation of power which it would be the right and the duty of the free people of the Union to resist and annul."

The story of his opposition to this measure is, however, so interwoven with his general antagonism to slavery, that there is little occasion for treating them separately.

[9] [Footnote 9: In an address to his constituents in September, 1842, Mr. Adams spoke of his course concerning Texas.

Having mentioned Mr. Van Buren's reply, declining the formal proposition made in 1837 by the Republic of Texas for annexation to the United States, he continued: "But the slave-breeding passion for the annexation was not to be so disconcerted.

At the ensuing session of Congress numerous petitions and memorials for and against the annexation were presented to the House, ...

and were referred to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, who, without ever taking them into consideration, towards the close of the session asked to be discharged from the consideration of them all.

It was on this report that the debate arose, in which I disclosed the whole system of duplicity and perfidy towards Mexico, which had marked the Jackson Administration from its commencement to its close.

It silenced the clamors for the annexation of Texas to this Union for three years till the catastrophe of the Van Buren Administration.

The people of the free States were lulled into the belief that the whole project was abandoned, and that they should hear no more of slave-trade cravings for the annexation of Texas.

Had Harrison lived they would have heard no more of them to this day, but no sooner was John Tyler installed in the President's House than nullification and Texas and war with Mexico rose again upon the surface, with eye steadily fixed upon the Polar Star of Southern slave-dealing supremacy in the government of the Union."

] People sometimes took advantage of his avowed principles (p. 267) concerning freedom of petition to put him in positions which they thought would embarrass him or render him ridiculous.

Not much success, however, attended these foolish efforts of shallow wits.

It was not easy to disconcert him or to take him at disadvantage.

July 28, 1841, he presented a paper of this character coming from sundry Virginians and praying that all the free colored population should be sold or expelled from the country.

He simply stated as he handed in the sheet that nothing could be more abhorrent to him than this (p. 268) prayer, and that his respect for the right of petition was his only motive for presenting this.

It was suspended under the "gag" rule, and its promoters, unless very easily amused, must have been sadly disappointed with the fate and effect of their joke.

On March 5, 1838, he received from Rocky Mount in Virginia a letter and petition praying that the House would arraign at its bar and forever expel John Quincy Adams.

He presented both documents, with a resolution asking that they be referred to a committee for investigation and report.

His enemies in the House saw that he was sure to have the best of the sport if the matter should be pursued, and succeeded in laying it on the table.

Waddy Thompson thoughtfully improved the opportunity to mention to Mr. Adams that he also had received a petition, "numerously signed," praying for Mr. Adams's expulsion, but had never presented it.

In the following May Mr. Adams presented another petition of like tenor.

Dromgoole said that he supposed it was a "quiz," and that he would move to lay it on the table, "unless the gentleman from Massachusetts wished to give it another direction."

Mr. Adams said that "the gentleman from Massachusetts cared very little about it," and it found the limbo of the "table."

To this same period belongs the memorable tale of Mr. Adams's (p. 269) attempt to present a petition from slaves.

On February 6, 1837, he brought in some two hundred abolition petitions.

He closed with one against the slave-trade in the District of Columbia purporting to be signed by "nine ladies of Fredericksburg, Virginia," whom he declined to name because, as he said, in the present disposition of the country, "he did not know what might happen to them if he did name them."

Indeed, he added, he was not sure that the petition was genuine; he had said, when he began to present his petitions, that some among them were so peculiar that he was in doubt as to their genuineness, and this fell within the description.

Apparently he had concluded and was about to take his seat, when he quickly caught up another sheet, and said that he held in his hand a paper concerning which he should wish to have the decision of the Speaker before presenting it.

It purported to be a petition from twenty-two slaves, and he would like to know whether it came within the rule of the House concerning petitions relating to slavery.

The Speaker, in manifest confusion, said that he could not answer the question until he knew the contents of the document.

Mr. Adams, remarking that "it was one of those petitions which had occurred to his mind as not being what (p. 270) it purported to be," proposed to send it up to the Chair for inspection.

Objection was made to this, and the Speaker said that the circumstances were so extraordinary that he would take the sense of the House.

That body, at first inattentive, now became interested, and no sooner did a knowledge of what was going on spread among those present than great excitement prevailed.

Members were hastily brought in from the lobbies; many tried to speak, and from parts of the hall cries of "Expel him!

Expel him!"

were heard.

For a brief interval no one of the enraged Southerners was equal to the unforeseen emergency.

Mr. Haynes moved the rejection of the petition.

Mr. Lewis deprecated this motion, being of opinion that the House must inflict punishment on the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. Haynes thereupon withdrew a motion which was so obviously inadequate to the vindictive gravity of the occasion.

Mr. Grantland stood ready to second a motion to punish Mr. Adams, and Mr. Lewis said that if punishment should not be meted out it would "be better for the representatives from the slave-holding States to go home at once."

Mr. Alford said that so soon as the petition should be presented he would move that it should "be taken from the House and burned."

At last Mr. Thompson got a resolution (p. 271) into shape as follows:-- "That the Hon. John Quincy Adams, by the attempt just made by him to introduce a petition purporting on its face to be from slaves, has been guilty of a gross disrespect to this House, and that he be instantly brought to the bar to receive the severe censure of the Speaker."

In supporting this resolution he said that Mr. Adams's action was in gross and wilful violation of the rules of the House and an insult to its members.

He even threatened criminal proceedings before the grand jury of the District of Columbia, saying that if that body had the "proper intelligence and spirit" people might "yet see an incendiary brought to condign punishment."

Mr. Haynes, not satisfied with Mr. Thompson's resolution, proposed a substitute to the effect that Mr. Adams had "rendered himself justly liable to the severest censure of this House and is censured accordingly."

Then there ensued a little more excited speech-making and another resolution, that Mr. Adams, "by his attempt to introduce into this House a petition from slaves for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, has committed an outrage on the feelings of the people of a large portion of this Union; a flagrant contempt on the dignity (p. 272) of this House; and, by extending to slaves a privilege only belonging to freemen, directly incites the slave population to insurrection; and that the said member be forthwith called to the bar of the House and be censured by the Speaker."

Mr. Lewis remained of opinion that it might be best for the Southern members to go home,--a proposition which afterwards drew forth a flaming speech from Mr. Alford, who, far from inclining to go home, was ready to stay "until this fair city is a field of Waterloo and this beautiful Potomac a river of blood."

Mr. Patton, of Virginia, was the first to speak a few words to bring members to their senses, pertinently asking whether Mr. Adams had "attempted to offer" this petition, and whether it did indeed pray for the abolition of slavery.

It might be well, he suggested, for his friends to be sure of their facts before going further.

Then at last Mr. Adams, who had not at all lost his head in the general hurly-burly, rose and said, that amid these numerous resolutions charging him with "high crimes and misdemeanors" and calling him to the bar of the House to answer for the same, he had thought it proper to remain silent until the House should take some action; that he did not suppose that, if he should be brought to the bar of the House, he should be "struck mute by the (p. 273) previous question" before he should have been given an opportunity to "say a word or two" in his own defence.

As to the facts: "I did not present the petition," he said, "and I appeal to the Speaker to say that I did not....

I intended to take the decision of the Speaker before I went one step towards presenting or offering to present that petition."

The contents of the petition, should the House ever choose to read it, he continued, would render necessary some amendments at least in the last resolution, since the prayer was that slavery should _not_ be abolished!"

The gentleman from Alabama may perchance find, that the object of this petition is precisely what he desires to accomplish; and that these slaves who have sent this paper to me are his auxiliaries instead of being his opponents."

These remarks caused some discomfiture among the Southern members, who were glad to have time for deliberation given them by a maundering speech from Mr. Mann, of New York, who talked about "the deplorable spectacle shown off every petition day by the honorable member from Massachusetts in presenting the abolition petitions of his infatuated friends and constituents," charged Mr. Adams with running counter to the sense of the whole country with a "violence paralleled only (p. 274) by the revolutionary madness of desperation," and twitted him with his political friendlessness, with his age, and with the insinuation of waning faculties and judgment.

This little phial having been emptied, Mr. Thompson arose and angrily assailed Mr. Adams for contemptuously trifling with the House, which charge he based upon the entirely unproved assumption that the petition was not a genuine document.

He concluded by presenting new resolutions better adapted to the recent development of the case:-- "1. That the Hon. John Quincy Adams, by an effort to present a petition from slaves, has committed a gross contempt of this House.

"2. That the member from Massachusetts above-named, by creating the impression and leaving the House under such impression, that the said petition was for the abolition of slavery, when he knew that it was not, has trifled with the House.

"3. That the Hon. John Quincy Adams receive the censure of the House for his conduct referred to in the preceding resolutions."

Mr. Pinckney said that the avowal by Mr. Adams that he had in his possession the petition of slaves was an admission of communication with slaves, and so was evidence of collusion with them; and that Mr. Adams had thus rendered himself indictable for aiding and abetting (p. 275) insurrection.

A _fortiori_, then, was he not amenable to the censure of the House?

Mr. Haynes, of Georgia, forgetting that the petition had not been presented, announced his intention of moving that it should be rejected subject only to a permission for its withdrawal; another member suggested that, if the petition should be disposed of by burning, it would be well to commit to the same combustion the gentleman who presented it.

On the next day some more resolutions were ready, prepared by Dromgoole, who in his sober hours was regarded as the best parliamentarian in the Southern party.

These were, that Mr. Adams "by stating in his place that he had in his possession a paper purporting to be a petition from slaves, and inquiring if it came within the meaning of a resolution heretofore adopted (as preliminary to its presentation), has given color to the idea that slaves have the right of petition and of his readiness to be their organ; and that for the same he deserves the censure of the House.