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.

Reconsidering Lincoln—Was he a Liberator or Racist? Part 1

                                 The Emancipation monument removed from Boston.

Note—Tomorrow is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.  Inspired in the wake of protests demanding the removal of monuments of Confederate heroes which spread to other historic figures complicit or compliant of slavery  five years ago a memorial to Emancipation featuring a benevolent Abraham Lincoln over a kneeling but liberated figure Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout undertook a detailed reconsideration of the Liberator’s evolving views on slavery, race, and the post-liberation role of Freedmen.  We will share those posts again over the next three days. 

Although buried in Christmas excitement and rising Coronavirus dread in 2021 the removal of an iconic monument to Emancipation was removed from its prominent location in Boston by the city shocked many, offended some, and caused waves of hypocritical hysteria across the racist right wing media echo chamber.  The statue depicting a standing Abraham Lincoln and an unchained former slave was a copy of one by sculptor Thomas Ball erected in Washington, D.C. and paid for by mostly small donations from ex-slaves and Black veterans of the Union Army.  After all, hadn’t Lincoln been rapturously embraced as the Great Emancipator and a benevolent liberator new Freedmen after the Civil War and for the next 150 years by Afro-Americans? 

The removal came in response to a petition originated by artist Tory Bullock which 12,000 people signed and in the wake of nation-wide demonstrations demanding the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials to other historical figures with troubling connections to slavery and oppression including slave holding Founders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  But in Boston those sponsoring the removal campaign were at first reluctant to say that they were targeting Lincoln.  The problem, they said was the depiction of the naked and kneeling former bondsman at his feet.  They felt it was degrading and dehumanizing. 

Sculptor Ball had modeled the figure on Archer Alexander, the last man captured under the Fugitive Slave Act.  Lincoln’s outstretched arm seemed to beckon the man to rise as if he was bestowing a gift.  Although Black Freedmen and Army veterans raised the money with small donations for the Washington statue the process of designing and commissioning the statue was controlled by the Western Sanitary Commission, a division of the White-led Civil War relief agency that raised funds for medical supplies and sponsored nurses for the Union Army.  Comprised of wealthy liberals, many of them Unitarians, the Commission brought its own preconceived notions to the design. 

Veteran abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke at the dedication of the original Washington, D.C. version of the Emancipation memorial.

Veteran abolitionist Fredrick Douglass was a principal speaker at the monument’s dedication in 1876.  Although he lauded the celebration and intent, he voiced even then his deep reservations about the depiction of the Black man.  In a letter about the occasion, he wrote: 

Admirable as is the monument by Mr. Ball in Lincoln park, it does not, as it seems to me, tell the whole truth and perhaps no one monument could be made to tell the whole truth of any subject which it might be designed to illustrate. 

After Douglass noting that the monument omitted mention of the role President Ulysses S. Grant played in enfranchising former enslaved people, he said memorials should aspire to portray Black people in a new light: 

The negro here, though rising, is still on his knees and nude. What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man. 

After the Boston copy was removed, a similar campaign was launched to remove the original in the nation’s capital.  But the gaze quickly turned to Lincoln himself who was called a racist based on his own words and for using slaves as mere pawns in a war between White elites.  Demands to remove Lincoln statues spread to several college campuses and monuments were vandalized in some cities. 

A statue of Lincoln was toppled during the on-going Black Lives Matter protests that rocked Portland, Oregon for weeks in 2000.

So, who was the real Lincoln?  Emancipator or just another racist politician?  A bit of both and not totally either.  

“He was a man of his time and place” is the get-out-of-jail-free-card usually laid down by apologists for Thomas Jefferson for his dismal personal performance as a slave master and failing to live up to all the soaring rhetoric in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence.  Hell, I used it myself until accumulating evidence could no longer be denied.  Jefferson was at least a philosopher capable of understanding the hypocrisy and contradictions of his lofty ideals and his grubby reliance on chattel slavery to support his lavish lifestyle.  He could not give up his books, fine wine, mountain top vistas, and the sexual comfort of his house slave and dead wife’s half-sister for the life of a yeoman farmer on the frontier walking behind his own plow. 

The excuse might be more apt for Lincoln who was brought up in much more humble circumstances than the Virginian and without any claims or expectations of aristocracy.  No one else ever ascended to the Presidency from such hard scrabble roots.  Lincoln was born into poverty in that famous log cabin in Kentucky and was raised on the Indiana frontier.  His father, Peter, evidentially owned a slave for a while but treated his son as a virtual bondman not only on his own farm but leased out for hard labor to others.  Young Abe bitterly resented it and fled to Illinois as soon as he reached his majority and was no longer obliged to his father. 

In 1831 he settled in a New Salem, a squalid village with dim prospects.  Most of his neighbors were pioneer types with Southern or border state roots.   Illinois was by then a Free State, but there were few Blacks in the neighborhood.  Young Lincoln first earned his living as a hired man and as a casual laborer doing chores like chopping firewood and splitting fence rails.  

Young Lincoln was mortified by the slave auctions in New Orleans when he floated a flat boat down the Mississippi to the city.  It profoundly effected him.

One opportunity he had was joining with a few friends to build a flatboat to take down the Sangamon and Mississippi Rivers with a cargo of local goods including molasses, corn meal, and livestock to sell in New Orleans.  There they would also break up the boat and sell it for lumber.  The trip famously changed his life. He watched the harsh and abusive exploitation of slaves on the docks along the river.  Even more shocking was seeing the slave auctions in the city where families were broken up, young girls and women stripped to show off their sexual charms, and many of both sexes and all ages bore scars from whippings.  Lincoln was shaken to the core.  If he had never given much thought to slavery before, his natural sympathy and instinctive urge to serve the underdog made him a life-long opponent of slavery. 

But it did not then make him an abolitionist, nor did he ever become one.  His reverence for the Constitution prevented him from attacking the peculiar institution where it already existed and was protected.  Instead, opposition to extending slavery into new territories and states became his steady cause.  He held out hope that increasing commerce and farming innovations would gradually lead slave states to voluntarily abandon the system in some distant time. 

A Black abolitionist would later compare this to “having sympathy for a beaten horse.  He might be moved to constrain the abuser but could not imagine attacking the system that encouraged the cruelty.” 

Lincoln built his reputation as an important local leader in his years in the near frontier settlement of New Salem, Illinois.  He rose from casual laborer, to store clerk and owner, to Postmaster, militia officer, county surveyor, and political candidate.  Yet he had little direct contact with Black folks.

Meanwhile, back in New Salem Lincoln went about doing everything he could to punch every ticket to personal advancement.  He opened and operated his own store.  Importantly, he enlisted as a volunteer militia officer during the Black Hawk War.  Although he saw no action, he re-enlisted as a private when his short enlistment expired.  The same year he made his first run for office as a candidate for the state legislature.  He lost that election but made his name known and carried his home New Salem precinct by a whopping 277 of 300 votes.  He served as local Postmaster which put him in direct contact with almost everyone and was later made County Surveyor.  

Relentlessly ambitious, Lincoln saved up to buy books like Blackstone’s Commentaries and Chitty’s Pleadings and read law on his own. He later said of his legal education that “I studied with nobody.” 

Tomorrow—The Illinois years