Adams the Younger--The Son Also Rises Part II

                 

                            John Quincy Adams presidential portrait.

The years of the Monroe Administration were already being called the Era of Good Feelings because following the War of 1812 the Federalists had all but disappeared making the Democratic Republicans the single major political party.  But it was unwieldy and had lost the ideological cohesion of the heady days of the Revolution of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and the party swept into office, crushing John Adam’s hopes for a second term.

The orderly system of party caucus which anointed the favorite of the sitting President had broken down and the era of Revolutionary Founders had run out.  Despite the advantage of being Monroe’s obvious choice and a distinguished eight years as Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams found himself no more than a regional choice of the New England and Mid-Atlantic states.  Other regionally backed candidates emerged to challenge him—John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, William H. Crawford of Georgia, Henry Clay of Kentucky, and Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. 

Each also represented a nuanced political difference.  Calhoun was a fierce nationalist in those days. Clay was the leader of a faction that wanted western expansion and Federally funded internal improvements like canals and roads.  Crawford was the choice of former Presidents Jefferson and Madison as the logical defender of traditional Republicanism.  And the bellicose Jackson ran as an old conservative favoring limited Federal authority on one hand and western populism on the other.  Adams was left as what we would call today a technocrat who had no independent patronage base.

With no unseemly public campaigning by any of the candidates, the race devolved into complicated jockeying for position in the background.  Calhoun dropped out of the race, presumably in favor of Jackson, but possibly also to benefit his fellow Unitarian Adams—the two were among the co-founders of Washington’s All Souls Church.  At any rate, both Adams and Jackson named him their vice-presidential running mate. Crawford, with strong support across the old South, fell ill and for a while looked like he might also have to drop out.  The popular Jackson swamped Clay in the West.  

After the November election there was no clear Electoral College winner.  Adams carried 7 states with 84 Electoral Votes.  Jackson did even better—12 states with 99 votes, but not enough to carry the day.  Crawford lagged far behind with 2 states and 41 votes.  With the race destined to go to the House of Representatives the odd man out Clay, who carried three states but only 37 votes despite besting Crawford in the popular vote, threw his considerable support in the House to Adams insuring a victory in that body.  Clay’s national program was clearly closer to Adams than any other candidate and he personally distrusted his regional rival Jackson.

Jackson, the leader in both electoral and popular votes was outraged.  That outrage grew when Adams appointed Clay as his Secretary of State.  Jackson furiously charged that the election had been stolen from him by a corrupt bargain between Adams and Clay.  He immediately launched what amounted to a four-year campaign to build a political organization to crush Adams in 1832 and win the Presidency and vindication.

Adams, a stickler for separation of church and state, became the only man to be sworn into the Presidency with his hand on a copy of the Constitution not the Bible.

With most pressing foreign policy issues laid to rest by his own successful eight years as head of the State Department, Adams concentrated on domestic issues, at first with some success.  With the support of Clay, now his most trusted advisor, the President pushed an aggressive program of internal improvements and won funding for such projects as the extension of the Cumberland Road into Ohio, the beginning of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, the construction of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal and the Louisville & Portland Canal around the falls of the Ohio, the connection of the Great Lakes to the Ohio River system in Ohio and Indiana; and the enlargement and rebuilding of the Dismal Swamp Canal in North Carolina.

He also supported a high protective tariff, popular both in industrializing New England and Mid-Atlantic states and which was a keystone of Clay’s American System.  But as maneuvering for a new, higher tariff bill went forward, Adams’s supporters in Congress, now known as National Republicans, lost control to Jackson’s supporters, now known as Democrats.  In tricky and duplicitous maneuvering designed by Vice President Calhoun, tariffs on raw materials thought to be obnoxious to New England were added to the bill in the hope that many representatives of that region would be forced to abandon their support.  Then the Southern Democrats, who put forth the program, would withdraw their support, dooming the tariff.  But it did not work out that way.  A substantial minority of New Englanders in Congress supported the Tariff as best for the whole nation.  When not enough of them turned against it, the Tariff of 1828 passed. 

Adams signed it in the face of voracious opposition from the South which labeled it the Tariff of Abominations because of the hardships it imposed on the Planter class, which was dependent on cheap imported manufactured goods. Adams knew it was probably the end of his presidency.

In the election of 1828, the careful plans of Jackson and his new Democratic Party came to fruition.  Adams, like his father, was swept out of office by a virtual bloodless revolution.  Jackson conducted the first real popular election campaign for president while Adams sat traditionally above the fray and reluctant to engage in retail politics to shore up support.  

This map shows how overwhelmed John Quincy Adams was in the election of 1828.

Jackson, with Calhoun once again his running mate, won 15 states, 178 Electoral College votes, and carried a landslide 56% of the popular vote.  Adams and new running mate Richard Rush could only garner 83 Electoral votes from 9 states.  Despite not caring much for the job, the rejection stung.  Like his father before him, Adams left town before his enemy’s inauguration.

Adams decided to do what no other former President had ever done, and none has done since—run for election to the House of Representatives.  He was handily elected as a National Republican in 1840 and went on to be returned to the House seven more times until he literally died in his traces.

In his early years in the House, he led opposition to Jackson’s popular Indian Removal policies and defended the Second Bank of The United States, the main target of Jackson’s wrath.

A run for Governor of Massachusetts in 1834 failed when he lost to a Democrat.  But he kept his House seat.

Adams became increasingly concerned with rising sectionalism, and particularly the issue of the expansion of slavery.  He felt that slavery would either destroy the Union or be ended by a blood bath slave insurrection.

In 1836 the House voted for the so-called Gag Rule which immediately tabled any petitions about slavery, banning discussion or debate of the issue.  The crafty Adams found a way to bring the discussion to the fore anyway.  He laid a petition from a Georgia man calling for disunion to support slavery in the South.  Although he did not support the petition, he did so because it violated the Gag Rule.  Infuriated Southerners called for his censure.  But in his defense in a trial before the House, Adams was able to bring up the topics of slavery and the dangers to democracy by the Gag Rule.  He wielded control of the debate for two solid weeks, gaining national attention.  When the Democratic majority realized that they had been trapped, they tried to withdraw the charges.  But Adams would not let them.  He insisted on an up-or-down vote which he won.

Adams would challenge the Gag Rule again and again, proud to “be obnoxious to the faction.”

If he was obnoxious before, he doubled down during the Amistad Case.  A shipload of chained slaves destined for sale in the Caribbean managed to take control of their Spanish slave ship, La Amistad in 1839, killing many of the crew and forcing the survivors to return them to Africa.  The crew tricked the mutineers and instead sailed north into American waters where the ship was intercepted by a Revenue Cutter off the shores of New York. 

The slaves were taken into custody and the Spanish government demanded the return of its “rightful property.”  A Federal District Court, however, ruled that under the terms of a treaty between Great Britain and the United States which outlawed the international slave trade, Spain had no claim on the men.  Moreover, it ruled that they had properly taken action to free themselves from what amounted to an illegal kidnapping.

The decision outraged Southerners and set up a major diplomatic crisis with the Spanish.  President Martin Van Buren ordered the Justice Department to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.  Congressman Adams offered his assistance in arguing the case before the Court.  After Roger Sherman Baldwin, the young lawyer who represented the slaves from the beginning opened with two days of argument, Adams stood before the Court on his own on February 24, 1841.

John Quincy Adams arguing in defense of the Amistad rebels before the Supreme Court.  The skilled and detailed summation of the issues went on for hours and one justice literally died on the bench.

He boldly attacked President Van Buren for inappropriately assuming unconstitutional powers in the case by ordering intervention.  Then as the most experienced diplomat in American history and the actual author of some of the Treaties cited by Attorney General Gilpin who was personally arguing the case for the government, Adams skillfully demolished claims that the treaties demanded the return of the men to Spain.  Adams argued for eight and a half hours during which time Justice Philip Barbour died.  After a recess for the funeral, he concluded his arguments on March 1.

The Court affirmed the lower court’s ruling on March 9 with Justice Joseph Story citing many of Adams’s arguments in the ruling that freed the rebels.

Adams became a hero of the cause of anti-slavery and more of a villain than ever to the South.

Back in Congress he continued to oppose slavery in any way possible and continued his attacks on the Gag Rule.  He led opposition to the Annexation of Texas as a slave state.

His other major contributions in Congress included authoring a compromise on the Tariff of 1828 that he himself had signed ending the Nullification Crisis and the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution with the funds bequeathed to the United States by English millionaire James Smithson for the “increase and diffusion of knowledge.” A lot of hands were out for a slice of that pie, but Adams insisted on the creation of a national academy.  When the bequest was unwisely invested in shaky bonds, Adams argued to immediately accept the money with repayment of the losses.  Congress decided to accept the legacy bequeathed to the nation and pledged the faith of the United States to the charitable trust on July 1, 1836.

John Quincy Adams became the first President ever photographed when he sat for this daguerreotype as a member of the House of Representatives shortly before his death.

Indefatigably, Adams plugged on despite deteriorating health and advaanced age. But on February 28, 1848 Adams rose to speak against a resolution honoring officers who served in the Mexican War, which he had voraciously opposed.  With opponents trying to shout him down, Adams suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage while standing at his desk and collapsed.  He was carried to the Speaker’s Room off the floor of the House where two days later he died after whispering to his wife and son Charles Francis, “This is the last of earth. I am content.”

John Quincy Adams on his death bed in the Speaker's Room of the House of Representatives in a late 19th Century print.

After a brief internment in the Capitol crypt, his remains were returned to Quincy where he was first laid to rest in the church yard of First Parish Church.  Later his remains were moved to a crypt inside the church next to his mother and father.  The resting place can still be viewed at the Unitarian church that came to be called the Church of the Presidents.

The Fugitive Slave Law Split the Nation

A U.S. Marshall and a slave catcher attempt to capture a Black woman and child under the Fugitive Slave Act in this cartoon.

The infamous Fugitive Slave Act was passed by Congress on September 18, 1850.  It was one part of a larger Compromise of 1850 meant to ease tensions between slave and free states.  It did not work.  In fact attempts at enforcement of the law enraged many Northerners who would otherwise have been content to let slavery be out of sight and mind in the South.

A Fugitive Slave Law had been in the Federal statutes since 1793.  It was an enforcement provision for Article 4, Section 2 of the Constitution, which required the return of runaway slaves and was passed at a time when slavery was still legal in most states on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.  But one by one Northern states had abandoned slavery.  Within the next decade the last slaves in some gradual emancipation plans would be freed.  Many Northern states had fairly sizable populations of Free Blacks.  Southern states, however, with the introduction of a wide spread cotton economy were more dependent on slavery than ever and the end of the international slave trade had cut off a supply of fresh bodies from Africa and the Caribbean.

Slavery was not only disappearing in the North, but public opinion was also swinging against it, particularly in New England and those states carved from the old Northwest Territories that were heavily settled by the New England diaspora.  Many states had taken actions to blunt the enforcement of the 1793 law.  Several had enacted Personal Liberty Laws by which a captured Negro could demand a jury trial where the claimant would have to prove that he or she was legal owner.  This was to prevent free Blacks in the North from being kidnapped and taken south to be sold into slavery—a common practice among slave chasers.  Other laws forbad state and local officials from rendering assistance to slave chasers or the use of local jails to hold them.  This practice was upheld by an 1842 Supreme Court decision, Prigg v. Pennsylvania, which essentially gutted enforcement of the 1793 law in much of the North.

Beyond legal barriers, there was growing popular resistance to slavery which manifested itself in the network of the Underground Railroad which actively assisted fleeing slaves to reach either Canada or settle in relatively safe portions of the North under assumed identities.  In several cities citizens actively interfered with slave catchers.  All of this, of course, infuriated the South.

The Underground Railroad abetting and harboring escaped slaves on their flight to freedom was a manifestation of growing opposition to slavery and slave catchers in the north.

Other issues were also inflaming North/South tensions, principally whether slavery would be extended in the vast territories obtained in the Mexican War.  The South wanted all of the land opened to slavery—or failing that something like an extension of the Missouri Compromise line that would allow territories to the south of the same or similar line eventually be admitted to the Union as slave states.  They even hoped to possibly divide Texas into two or more states and break off southern California somewhere north of Los Angeles.  That would give the South and slave holding border states control of the Senate, and by extension the Federal government itself. 

Northerners, on the other hand, wanted to exclude slavery from all newly organized territories and keep Texas and California unified, with the understanding that California would enter the Union as a free state, balancing slave holding Texas.

Henry Clay arguing for compromise on the Senate floor.  His Whig rivals, Daniel Websrer in the front row just behind the man standing, and John C. Calhoun glaring at the left of the three men on the upper right.

President Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican War and himself a Louisiana planter and slave holder, stood with the North in opposing the extension of slavery.  His Whig party was becoming unraveled over the issue.  Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, a borderer state Whig who had long dreamed of the Presidency, set out to craft a compromise early in the year.  But with the President of his own party in opposition, the compromise fell apart in the Senate.

When the new session of Congress convened in March Democrat Stephen Douglas of Illinois and Massachusetts Whig Daniel Webster—Clay’s long time rival for party leadership—advanced a modified version of Clay’s compromise proposals.  It varied from Clay’s failed version mostly in the disposal of the thorny issue of Texas.  The new version was mainly crafted by Douglas and incorporated the Democratic platform principle of Popular Sovereignty—that residents of Territories should be able to decide by voting whether or not slavery would be allowed—for the two proposed Territories carved from Texas claims—Utah and New Mexico.  Mormon controlled Utah would definitely opt to be a free territory, and everyone knew that it was unlikely that sparsely populated New Mexico, which was totally unsuitable to a plantation economy, would elect to allow slavery.  California would be admitted to the Union undivided as a free state.

New Englanders turned on their long-time political hero Daniel Webster for agreeing to include a tough Fugitive Slave Law in a new compromise to "save the Union."

Debate was fierce.  Most northern Whigs led by William Steward of New York were bitterly opposed because the package did not include Wilmot Proviso, a long sought provision that would have permanently banned slavery from territory acquired as a result of the Mexican War.  Even though no new slave Territories or States were created, the application of the principle of Popular Sovereignty left the possibility open in the future.  They were also outraged by the inclusion of the Fugitive Slave Act.

On the other hand Southern firebrands led by John C. Calhoun were just as voraciously opposed because they did not get the division of California or any new slave holding Territories.  They also had to give up the continuation of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, although slavery itself would be preserved there.

In his last great political battle South Carolina's John C. Calhoun led the firebrands in opposition to the compromise because it didn't guarantee the extension of slavery.

Numerous alternative plans were advanced and beaten back.  Douglas and Webster, with the support of Clay, had to stitch together a Senate majority from Northern Democrats, moderate Southern Democrats, and Southern Whigs.  The opposition was split between two extremes, Northern Whigs on one hand, and southern firebrands on the other.

The compromise got a boost when Taylor died suddenly and his Vice President Millard Fillmore ascended to the White House.  Fillmore was one of Webster’s few Northern Whig allies and supported the compromise.  Douglas divided the proposal into five separate bills from an original omnibus bill, and carefully crafted narrow majorities for each part, with each bill getting support from a slightly different combination of forces.  It was precarious, but it worked.

Rising Democratic star and leading proponent of Popular Sovereignty Stephen A. Douglas devised the plan to split the compromise into separate parts and build different majorities in support of each.

The bills, passed independently between September 9 and 20 and quickly signed into law by President Fillmore included:

• The admission of California as a free state.
• The abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia.
• The organization Territory of New Mexico (including present-day Arizona) and the Territory of Utah under the rule of popular sovereignty.
• The enactment of Fugitive Slave Act requiring all U.S. citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves.
• Texas ceding of much of its western land claims in exchange for $10 million to pay off its national debt.

Douglas and Webster thought they had crafted a compromise which saved the union.  Instead, they reaped the whirlwind, especially because of the onerous provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act.

The Act made any Federal Marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave liable to a fine of $1,000. Local law enforcement was required to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave on no more evidence than a claimant’s sworn testimony of ownership. The suspected slave could not ask for a jury trial or testify on his or her own behalf. Anyone aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was subject to a six month imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Officers who captured a fugitive slave were entitled to a bonus or promotion for their work. Slave owners only needed to supply an affidavit to a Federal Marshal to capture an escaped slave and since a suspected slave was not eligible for a trial to prove his status, many free blacks could be conscripted into slavery.

Outrage in the North, particularly in New England, was fierce.  Daniel Webster, the political hero of the region for more than 40 years, was excoriated as a traitor.  The hand of Abolitionists, a previously despised minority, was greatly strengthened.  Some Abolitionists even contemplated northern secession from the union in response to the Act and the still open possibility of the extension of slavery into new territories.  Even Ralph Waldo Emerson flirted with the idea. 

Abolitionists sometimes published warnings interfering with slave chasers, a source of outrage in the South.

Citizens of Boston and other towns organized to oppose slave catchers and interfere with their work in every way possible.  Handbills were circulated warning free Blacks that the local police were cooperating with slave catchers under the law.

Politically, the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law spelled the end of the Whigs as a national party.  Northern Whigs swung to the new Free Soil Party and four years later into the new Republican Party alongside anti-slavery northern Democrats.  Southern Whigs were re-absorbed into the Democratic Party from which most of them had originated.  Democrats were riven by sectional conflicts themselves.

Whatever “peace” might have been bought fell apart four years later as the future of Kansas turned on the principle of Popular Sovereignty leading to a local civil war as slave holders and Free Soilers rushed to the territory to attempt to control the Territorial Government.

From a modern perspective, it is useful to compare the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act to the Arizona anti-immigration legislation of a few years back which became a model for even more draconian legislation in Tea Party dominated states—most of them in the Deep South. There were many parallels including requiring local police to act on mere suspicion, and the denial of detainees of adequate rights to prove their status, thus inevitably leading to the detention deportation of legal immigrants and even citizens.  And citizens aiding suspected illegals would be criminalized themselves.  Many of the more draconian provisions of the anti-immigration laws were gutted by Federal Courts, but other onerous provisions remain in force and right wing zealots continually demand harsher measures.  With some armed “volunteers” took up patrolling the borders.

Donald Trump and his allies use sophisticated AI to stir divisions over issues like immigration, reproductive rights, and guns to bring modern America to the eve of a second Civil War.

Donald Trump made the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants and the erection of an impenetrable boarder wall the center piece of his campaigns.  Meanwhile many Americans have been revolted and repelled by the ugly rhetoric.  Regional and philosophic divisions are sharper than ever.  Trump and his allies are encouraging violence against his opponents.   The bonkers Haitian-immigrants-are-pet-eaters in Ohio has resulted in a deluge of bomb threats in Springfield targeting city officials, police, schools, and individuals and organizations in the hope that vigilantism and terrorism will spread to efforts to discourage Kamala Haris voters and prevent her from taking office.  It is a rehearsal for a second Civil War.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.