For two years after the end of his presidency John Quincy Adams wrote
The Last Two Years of Leisure portion of his Memoirs which began:
March 4th, 1829.—This day Andrew Jackson of Tennessee
was inaugurated as President of the United States.
I had caused a notification to be published in the
National Intelligencer and Journal, requesting the
citizens of the District and others, my friends,
who might be disposed to visit me, according to
the usage heretofore, to dispense with that formality.
Very few, therefore, came out.
Mr. Williams of North Carolina and Mr. Bartlett
of New Hampshire came with Mr. Gales who
brought the inaugural address of the President.
It is short, written with some eloquence, and
remarkable chiefly for a significant threat of reform.
Dr. Huntt was here and Lloyd Rodgers with Charles Carroll,
a grandson of the patriarch of that name.
Colonel Mercer came with Miss Hay and R. Peters.
Sergeant, Silsbee, Crowninshield, Chambers and Blake
came together, and Dr. Watkins rode out alone.
The day was warm and spring-like, and I rode
on my horse with Watkins into the city,
and thence through F street to the Rockville Turnpike,
and over that till I came to the turn of the road
by which I returned over College Hill back to the house.
Near the post office I was overtaken by a man
named Dulaney, who first inquired whether I could
inform him how he could see John Quincy Adams,
and when I gave him my name told me his,
and that he came from Waterford in Virginia and was
charged to ask of me a return of the papers sent to me
last summer and relating to the post-office at that place.
He came with me to my house,
and I gave him the papers, which he took away.
I resumed drowsily this evening the writing
of my reply to the appeal of the confederates.
I can scarcely realize my situation.
Hitherto I have prayed for direction from above
in concerns of my country and of mankind.
I need it not less, and pray for it with equal fervor now
for those of myself, my family, and of all
whose dependence is upon me.
From indolence and despondency and indiscretion
may I specially be preserved!1
On 11 March 1829 John Quincy Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
11th. I received a letter from Mr. James A. Hamilton,
Acting Secretary of State, mentioning that
he had received the direction of the President
to see me upon public business, and asking me
to fix a time when he might call on me.
I answered him, fixing from one to three o’clock.
He came between two and three.
He said Mr. Clay in a conversation with him had informed
him that there were certain public stocks and documents in
my possession which I intended to transfer to the President.
He had mentioned this to the President, who had
then directed him to ask this interview of me.
I showed him the certificates of stock, three percents,
standing in the name of the President of the United States
in trust for the Seneca Indians; told him of those in the
name of W. Eustis, Secretary of War, and his successors,
for the Wyandot annuity; and gave him a list
of the whole with the assurance that
I would deliver them to the order of the President.
I showed him also the book containing the secret
correspondence of the negotiation for a treaty
with the Ottoman Porte, still pending, of which
I gave him a summary history; told him I had
intended to give it personally to the President, and now
proposed to give it to the Secretary of State upon his arrival,
but would deliver the book upon the order of the President.
He spoke to me also of my letter to him concerning
his father, with which he appeared to be satisfied.
Said his father had published an article in Coleman’s paper
in favor of the Louisiana purchase, and that there
was a letter from his father to George Cabot very
earnestly urging against the disunion project of 1804.2
Adams at the end of the month of March wrote in his Memoirs:
The Month. The greatest change in my condition occurred
at the beginning of this month which has ever befallen me—
dismission from the public service
and retirement to private life.
After fourteen years of incessant and unremitted
employment, I have passed to a life of total leisure;
and from living in a constant crowd,
to a life of almost total solitude.
I have continued as yet, however,
to be much engaged with writing.
Some letters and my reply to the appeal
of the confederates, absorb my time.
I rise between five and six; write till nine; breakfast;
read the newspapers, the Philippics Pelham,
Senate journals, documents, and my own diary,
and write alternately till three or four; walk or ride
from one to two hours; dine between five and six; read,
write, or doze from seven to eleven, and then to bed.3
On 4 April 1829 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
4th. Mr. Van Buren, the new Secretary of State,
paid me a morning visit with Mr. Hamilton.
Of the new Administration he is the only person
who has shown me this mark of common civility….
Van Buren, by far the ablest man of them all,
but wasting most of his ability upon mere personal intrigues,
retains the forms of civility, and pursues enmity
as if he thought it might be one day
his interest to seek friendship.
His principles are all subordinate to his ambition,
and he will always be of that doctrine
upon which he shall see his way clear to rise.
Our conversation was about the weather and the climate,
and upon the negotiation with the Porte, which from a late
paragraph in an English newspaper, I fear is broken off.4
On 22 March 1830 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
He spoke also of the debate which will soon take place
on the Indian question and of the unconstitutional Acts
of the Legislatures of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,
assuming jurisdiction over the Indians within their limits.
Upon which I said there was nothing left for the minority
to do but to record the exposure of perfidy and tyranny
of which the Indians are to be made the victims,
and to leave the punishment of it to Heaven.5
On 6 June 1830 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
The first session of the Twenty-First Congress
was closed last Monday.
Of the four bills of internal improvement which passed
both Houses of Congress on Saturday, the President
approved only one, and with that he sent a message
announcing that he signed it with the understanding
that it should receive a particular construction.
As it was an appropriation for a road, the construction
of the laws will depend entirely upon himself;
but the explanatory message qualifying the signature
of the President to an Act of Congress is unexampled
in this country and contrary to the spirit of the Constitution—
a usurpation of the Judiciary power and
susceptible of great abuse as a precedent.6
Joseph Richardson was the Representative from the Plymouth district in the Congress,
and on 18 September 1830 he told John Quincy Adams that he would not run
for re-election if Adams would run for his seat.
Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
Mr. Richardson said that if I would serve, he believed
the election could be carried by a large majority, as the
Old Colony Memorial and the Hingham Gazette, the only
newspapers printed in the district, and another paper
published in the adjoining district, and taken by some
of his constituents, would support the nomination;
but if I should decline, it was not probable that
the district would unite upon any other person,
and there would be no election.
He then said that he thought that the service in
the House of Representatives of an ex-President
of the United States, instead of degrading the individual,
would elevate the Representative character.
I said I had in that respect no scruple whatever.
No person could be downgraded by serving
the people as a Representative in Congress.
Nor in my opinion would an ex-President of
the United States be degraded by serving as a
Selectman of his town, if elected thereto by the people.
But age and infirmity had their
privileges and their disqualifications.
I had not the slightest desire to be elected to Congress,
and could not consent to be a candidate for election.
I knew not how the election would turn, and if chosen,
it might depend upon circumstances whether
I should deem it my duty to serve or to decline.
The state of my health, the degree of opposition
to the choice, the character of the candidate in opposition,
might each or all contribute to my determination.
Mr. Richardson said this was sufficient,
and he would go to work.7
On September 25 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
Mr. Bailey spoke of the nomination, which first
appeared in the Boston Courier, of me to represent
the Plymouth district in the next Congress.
Where and with whom and in what motive this project
originated is yet a mystery; but it has taken root
in the district, and I received this morning the
Hingham Gazette of yesterday, in which my name is
proposed in an editorial article and in two communications.
Mr. Bailey said he had been asked by several persons
whether I would accept the office if elected,
and enquired whether he might answer that question
if again put to him, as it certainly would be.
I said I could not answer it myself.
To say that I would accept would be so near to asking
for a vote, that I did not feel disposed to go so far.
I wished the people to act spontaneously
at their own discretion.
If they should elect me, whether I could serve them
might depend upon circumstances.
The meeting of the Congress would not be
till December of the next year.
What the state of things might then be, I could not foresee.
If I should finally decline, I would give notice of it
to the people of the district in season to enable
them to agree upon another person to take
the place as effectually as they could now.
Mr. Bailey said there was no prospect that
they could now agree upon a candidate,
or that a choice would be effected, if I should decline.8
On October 13 Adams wrote in his Memoirs about a
Republican Convention that had met in Halifax on the 12th:
The Convention then was dissolved and the delegates
from the towns met separately, chose the same Moderator,
Seth Sprague, and another Secretary, and then
unanimously voted to support John Quincy Adams
to represent the district in the Twenty-Second Congress….
I thanked them for their kind attention and said that
I should acquiesce entirely in the course which
might be taken by the people of the district.
And so I am launched again
upon the faithless wave of politics.9
On November 6 a newspaper reported that John Quincy had won the election
for the Plymouth district with 1,817 votes over a Jackson Democrat
who got 373 votes and a Federalist with 279.
In 1830 Adams was elected to the United States House of Representatives.
On 4 January 1831 Representative Adams wrote in his Memoirs about
the corrupt government regarding the situation in the state of Georgia:
4th. The resolutions of the Legislature of Georgia
setting at defiance the Supreme Court of the United States
are published and approved by the Telegraph,
the Administration newspaper at this place.
By extending the laws of Georgia over the country and
people of the Cherokees, the Constitution, laws,
and treaties of the United States were quoad hoc set aside.
They were chaff before the wind.
In pursuance of these laws of Georgia, a Cherokee Indian
is prosecuted for the murder of another Indian
before a State Court of Georgia,
tried by a jury of white men and sentenced to death.
He appeals to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States, who issues an injunction to the
Governor of and Executive officers of Georgia, upon
the appeal to the laws and treaties of the United States.
The Governor of Georgia refuses obedience
to this injunction, and the Legislature pass
resolutions that they will not appear to answer
before the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Constitution, the laws and treaties of the
United States are prostrate in the State of Georgia.
Is there any remedy for this state of things?
None.
Because the Executive of the United States
is in league with the State of Georgia.
He will not take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
A majority of both Houses of Congress sustain him
in this neglect and violation of his duty.
There is no harmony in the Government of the Union.
The arm refuses its office; the whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
This example of the State of Georgia will be imitated by
other States, and with regard to other national interests—
perhaps the tariff—still more probably the public lands.
As the Executive and Legislative now fail to sustain
the Judiciary, it is not improbable that occasions may
arise in which the Judiciary will fail in turn to sustain them.
The Union is in the most imminent danger
of dissolution from the old inherent vice of
confederacies, anarchy in the members.
To this end one-third of the people is perverted,
one-third slumbers, and the rest wring their hands
with unavailing lamentations in the foresight
of evil which they cannot avert.
The ship is about to founder.
A merciful Providence can save.10
On January 10 Adams wrote prophetically about Europe
and the United States in his Memoirs:
10th. I answered Mr. Monroe’s letter and made
some observations upon the present state of Europe.
Perhaps the most important point of view
in which we should consider it is the influence
which it will exercise over this country.
Its first effect will be, or rather has been, to strengthen
the principle of democracy over all Europe and America,
and it will proportionably diminish the securities of property.
In England the reform in Parliament cannot be effected
without intrenching upon very extensive rights of property.
The reduction of taxes will necessarily require
at least a partial sponging of the national debt.
It is scarcely possible to foresee the extent
to which this will stagger the rights of property
and shatter the confidence of credit.
The abolition of tithes must overthrow the Established
Church and dissolve the connection between Church
and State, and shake the pillars of the Christian religion.
That it will only shake its pillars, I hope and believe.
If the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, neither will
the revolutions of empires nor the convulsions of the people.
In France the alliance between political reform
and religious infidelity is closer than in England.
It is everywhere formidable.
The fall of the Church of England will exclude the
Bishops from the House of Peers, and the hereditary
rights of the temporal peerage will not much longer
withstand the consuming blaze of public opinion.
A hereditary crown has no support in popular sentiment
and none in reason, but as forming part
of one system with a hereditary peerage.
All are equally obnoxious to democracy.
The abolition of slavery will pass like a pestilence
over all the British Colonies in the West Indies;
it may prove an earthquake upon this continent.
The present English Ministry are nearly as much
pledged to it as to the reform in Parliament.
They will flinch from it and forfeit their pledge,
but they will probably not last long;
a more democratic Ministry will succeed,
and reform will not, cannot, stop short till it makes
an effective attempt for the abolition of slavery.
This is, perhaps, the only part of the doctrine
of European democracy which will find no favor here.
It may aggravate the condition of slaves in our
Southern States; but the result of the Missouri question,
and the attitude of parties have silenced all the
declaimers for the abolition of slavery in the Union.
This state of things, however, is not to continue forever.
It is possible that the danger of the abolition doctrines,
when brought home to the Southern States,
may teach them the value of the Union—
the only thing that can maintain their system of slavery.
However, this may be, I apprehend that
the inevitable predominance of democracy,
which is impending over Europe, will not end
without producing bitter fruits in our own country.11
In January and February 1831 Adams was reading the
Memoirs of Thomas Jefferson and writing about his career.
Adams on February 19 wrote in his Memoirs:
I had a morning visit from Mr. Bell of
New Hampshire, who spoke of the proceedings
in the Senate upon the Turkish Treaty.
The Senate have advised and consented to the
ratification of the treaty with the exception of
the secret article, but no provision has yet been
made for the expenses incident to the negotiation.
The General Appropriation bill being before the Senate,
a motion is made to add an item for compensation to all the
Commissioners who have been employed in the negotiation
and for the outfit and salary for a Minister at Constantinople.
Tazewell objects to this appropriation under
an old pretense that the President has no right
to institute a new mission during the recess;
an engine which they wielded against me, and
to which he now resorts by an affectation of consistency.
Jackson has not only repeated all my sins in this matter,
but suffered a whole session of Congress to pass
without nominating his Commissioners to the Senate,
and finally sends a treaty concluded by them
without nominating them at all.
Mr. Bell himself thinks this unconstitutional and sustains
Tazewell’s objection, though not upon the same principle.
He asked me some questions respecting the practice of
the Government heretofore; and I mentioned to him the
negotiation of the two treaties with Algiers—
first by Decatur and Shaler, and next by Chauncy and
Shaler, and as far as I recollect, that the first had not been
submitted to the Senate till after the Second was concluded.
Mr. Bell did not perceive from anything that has yet
occurred in the Senate what would be the probable
effect of the new war of political elements.12
On 4 March 1831 John Quincy Adams began
The Twenty-Second Congress portion of his Memoirs:
March 4th, 1831.—On this day the writer must be
regarded as commencing a new term of official service,
although he did not enter upon the duties
until the ensuing month of December.
This term embraces the sixteen
remaining years of his life.13
Adams on March 12 wrote in his Memoirs:
12th. I walked to the Capitol and heard J. Sergeant
for about three hours before the Supreme Court
upon the injunction prayed by the Cherokee nation
of Indians against the State of Georgia, the Legislature
of which has passed a law extending the jurisdiction
of the State over them and their lands.
The question is upon the jurisdiction of the Court.
The Governor of Georgia was summoned to appear,
but refused, and the Legislature passed resolutions denying
the right of the Court to issue the summons, and declaring
their regret that Chief-Justice Marshall had issued it.
Sergeant and Wirt are now arguing the question of
jurisdiction without any counsel to oppose them;
but the weight of the State will be too heavy for them.
The old vice of confederacies is pressing upon us—
anarchy in the members.
Whenever a State does set itself in defiance against
the laws or power of the Union, they are prostrated.
This is what the States having Indian tribes within their
limits are now doing with impunity, and all the powers
of the General Government for protection of the Indians,
or the execution of the treaties with them, are nullified.
Mr. Sergeant’s argument made it necessary for him
to maintain that the Cherokee nation are a foreign State;
and this is the very point upon which the judgment
of the Court may be against them.
The argument was cold and dry, resting upon
constructions of passages in the Constitution
and precedents of authorities.14
Adams, after being advised by his son Charles Francis Adams on Masons,
wrote in his Memoirs on May 31 and June 2:
31st. Charles told me that a man called upon him
and wished to have a conversation with him on the
subject of my correspondence with R. Rush upon Masonry.
Charles is afraid of the consequences of my expressing
an opinion upon the Masonic controversy,
supposing it will be imputed to selfish motives.
But this is the vital essence of all political collisions.
No man can escape them; and a man susceptible
of being intimidated by them is not fit
for any useful agency in public affairs.
I have for nearly five years abstained from taking part
in the Masonic controversy as much as possible,
but upon such questions there is a time when it
becomes the duty of a good citizen to take his side.
In the conflict between Freemasonry and its adversaries,
I apprehend the time is approaching when my duty to my
country will require a free and open avowal of my opinions;
and whatever may be the consequences,
I should not flinch from it.
The danger is not imaginary, nor I hope, underrated by me.
Consideration is a guardian angel.
June 2nd. With Mr. Welles I had much conversation
and with Judge Hall much upon Masonry and Anti-Masonry.
Hall has all the feelings upon him of a Mason, as they are
now manifesting themselves among thousands of people.
He is ashamed of the institution and yet
has a deep-rooted attachment to it.
He speaks of it as an insignificant, harmless,
and foolish institution, but considers the
opposition to it factious, hypocritical, and persecuting.
He finds among the Anti-Masons no characters
for whom he entertains respect.
He denies that he ever took any oath which
he considered as incompatible with the laws of the land,
but he does not know what the oath of the
Royal Arch degree is, and does not deny that it has
been correctly stated in the Anti-Masonic publications.
He thinks the Anti-Masonic excitement mischievous,
hypocritical, and transient, and that
it will very shortly blow itself out.
He thinks it the duty of every good citizen to check
the spirit and cool the effervescence of Anti-Masonry,
and with that view approves the selection made
by the Legislature of Senators last week,
when in every instance they chose the Masonic candidate
with the smaller number of primary votes in preference
to the Anti-Masonic candidate with the larger number.
From these opinions I warmly dissented,
till it was nearly half-past twelve, when I attended
in the Senate-chamber of the Legislature the semi-annual
meeting of the Overseers of Harvard University.15
Adams on July 23 in a letter to Richard Rush urged him to run for President,
writing, “It may become your indispensable duty.”16
Rush declined to do so.
John Quincy Adams on September 7 wrote to Henry Clay, who had been elected
to the United States Senate, and Adams wrote this on interposition and nullification:
The doctrine in all its parts is so averse
to my convictions that I can view it in
no other light than as organized civil war.17
Adams in a letter to Edward Ingersoll on September 21 and 22
wrote on his opposition to Masons:
It became the solemn and sacred, civic, and social duty
of every Masonic Lodge in the United States either
to dissolve itself or to discard forever … all oaths,
all penalties, all secrets and all fantastic titles, exhibitions
and ceremonies hitherto used in the institution.18
On 5 December 1831 he wrote in his Memoirs:
5th. The first session of the Twenty-Second Congress
of the United States commenced.
Half an hour before noon, I attended in the hall of the
House of Representatives and took the seat No. 203.19
The members of the House of Representatives
elected Andrew Stevenson of Virginia to be Speaker.
On December 12 Adams wrote this in his Memoirs:
12th. Attended the House of Representatives.
The appointment of the standing committees was
announced, and I am Chairman of the Committee on
Manufactures—a station of high responsibility and perhaps
of labor more burdensome than any other in the House;
far from the line of occupation in which all my life has been
passed, and for which I feel myself not to be well qualified.
I know not even enough of it to
form an estimate of its difficulties.
I only know that it is not the place suited to my
acquirements and capacities, such as they are;
yet as little as I esteem the Speaker,
I have no fault to find with him for the appointment.
The petitions were called for by States,
commencing with Maine and proceeding southward.
I presented fifteen petitions signed numerously by citizens
of Pennsylvania, praying for the abolition of slavery
and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia.
I moved that they should be referred to the
Committee on the District of Columbia.20
Adams on December 13 wrote in his Memoirs:
I had asked Mr. Everett to consent to exchange places
with me on the committees—to take my place as
Chairman of Manufactures and to give me that of
second upon the Committee of Foreign Relations,
where he was placed; to which he readily agreed
if the Speaker would consent,
which he said he did not believe he would.
After the adjournment I went into the Speaker’s chamber
and proposed to him to authorize the exchange;
but he said he had no power to make the alteration;
that the appointment of committees being once made
was the act of the House, and he had no authority
to change the arrangement in any manner.21
On 26 December 1831 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
Mr. Clay asked me how I felt upon turning boy
again to go into the House of Representatives.
I told him that hitherto I had found the labor light enough,
but the House had not yet got to business.
He repeated several times that I should find my situation
extremely laborious; and that I knew right well before.
Labor I shall not refuse, so long as my hand,
my eyes, and my brain do not desert me;
but what shall I do for that which I cannot give?
Mr. Clay spoke of the reduction of the tariff
and said there were other points to be
considered besides the taking off of the duties.
One was changing the mode of valuation,
which he deemed highly important;
another was shortening the credit of
importations and introducing a system
of cash payments, as for the public lands;
a third was the expediency of increasing
the duties upon some of the protected articles,
so as to make them nearly prohibitory.
To increase the duties for the express purpose of
diminishing the revenue was an idea well deserving
of meditation, and which had not occurred to me.
I asked whether in the gracious operation of remitting taxes,
there would not be a mixture of harshness in extending
the protective system, and a danger of increasing
the discontents of the Southern States, already
bitterly complaining of the unequal operation of the duties.
He said the discontents were almost all, if not entirely,
imaginary or fictitious, and in almost all the
Southern States had, in a great measure, subsided.
Here is one great error of Mr. Clay.
He spoke of the report upon iron to the New York
Tariff Convention and of their address to the people,
which he said was an unequal composition.
I wished this conversation to be extended,
but others came in, and it was interrupted.
Of the visitors, Mr. Dickerson, the Senator from New Jersey,
was the most remarkable; and Mr. John Branch,
late Secretary of the Navy, and now a member
of the House from North Carolina, left a card here.22
On December 28 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
I observed that an immediate remission of duties with
a declared disposition to increase the duties upon the
protected articles, would be a defiance not only to the South,
as had been observed by Mr. Everett, but defiance also
of the President, and of the whole Administration party;
and against them combined I thought it
not possible that this bill should pass.
Mr. Clay said he did not care who it defied.
To preserve, maintain, and strengthen the American system
he would defy the South, the President, and the devil;
that if the Committee of Manufactures had committed
themselves as I had stated, they had given a very
foolish and improvident pledge; there was no necessity
for the payment of the debt on the 4th of March 1833;
and much more of like import.
To which I made a respectful, but very warm reply.
I said that without determining whether the President’s
passion to pay off the whole of the public debt by the
4th of March 1833 was the wisest idea that ever
entered into the heart of man; it was one in which
I thought he ought to be indulged and not opposed.
It was an idea which would take greatly with the people;
to oppose it would be invidious,
and there was justice in it too.23
On 2 March 1832 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
Colonel Richard M. Johnson asked me to walk with him
and said he wished to speak with me of the state of the
personal relations between the President Jackson and me;
that he (Johnson) wished the relations of friendly personal
intercourse between us to be restored, and that he
thought the first advances to it should be made by him.
He had also spoken of it to Mr. Cass, the Secretary of War,
who agreed with him on this point.
I said that the personal intercourse between
General Jackson and me had been suspended
by himself without informing me of the reason why.
I had never known his reason.
I had seen at the time in the Telegraph an
anonymous statement that it was because he knew
that I had caused or countenanced abusive charges
against Mrs. Jackson in the newspapers.
The fact was not so.
I never had caused or countenanced,
directly or indirectly, any such publication.
But General Jackson had never asked of me the question,
and I did not deem it necessary to notice
anonymous charges in the Telegraph.
Colonel Johnson said he had always been sure it was so;
that General Jackson had come here with dispositions
entirely friendly to me, and intending to call upon me;
that his mind had been poisoned here by scoundrel
office-seekers; that he was a warm-tempered,
passionate man and had been led to believe that
I was the cause of those publications against his wife;
but that he (Johnson) knew that the President’s feelings
were now as friendly to me as they had ever been.
He had told him that at the time of the debate in the
House of Representatives on the Seminole War
questions he had received more assistance from me,
in drawing up the minority report of the military committee,
than from all the world beside.
He did not now speak by the authority of General Jackson,
but he knew that his disposition towards me was friendly,
and had no doubt, if a friendly advance from him
would be accepted by me, that he would make it.
I said I had no desire that the interruption of social
intercourse between us should continue,
and was disposed to receive any friendly
advance from General Jackson with kindness.24
On 5 December 1832 Adams in his Memoirs wrote his response
to President Jackson’s annual message to Congress:
5th. The message of the President gives great
dissatisfaction to all those with whom I converse,
and will be received with rapture by his partisans.
He has cast away all the neutrality which he had
heretofore maintained upon the conflicting interests
and opinions of the different sections of the country,
and surrenders the whole Union to the nullifiers
of the South and the land-robbers of the West.
I confess this is neither more nor less than I expected,
and no more than I predicted nearly two years since,
in a letter I think, to Peter B. Porter.
This message already puts my temper
and my discretion upon a trial equally severe.
Dissimulation I cannot practice.
Passion can do nothing but mischief.
I walk between burning ploughshares and have
no support upon earth with a fearful foreboding that
every effort I could make for the good of my country
would recoil in evil upon myself and my family.25
On 11 August 1835 Representative John Quincy Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
There is a great fermentation upon this subject
of slavery at this time in all parts of the Union.
The emancipation of the slaves in the British West Indies;
the Colonization Society here; the current of public
opinion running everywhere stronger and stronger
into democracy and popular supremacy,
contribute all to shake the fetters of servitude.
The theory of the rights of man has taken
deep root in the soil of civil society.
It has allied itself with the feelings of humanity
and the precepts of Christian benevolence.
It has armed itself with the
strength of organized association.
It has linked itself with the religious
doctrines and religious fervor.
Anti-slavery associations are formed in this country
and in England, and they are already
cooperating in concerted agency together.
The have raised funds to support and circulate
inflammatory newspapers and pamphlets gratuitously,
and they send multitudes of them into the Southern country,
into the midst of the swarms of slaves.
There is an Englishman by the name of Thompson,
lately come over from England, who is travelling
about the country, holding meetings and making
eloquent inflammatory harangues,
preaching the immediate abolition of slavery.
The general disposition of the people here is averse
to these movements, and Thompson has
several times been routed by popular tumults.26
On 9 July 1835 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
Philadelphia, 9th. Atlee, Edwin B.; Barton, Isaac;
Semple, Matthew; Buffum, Arnold.
The four persons named came this morning
as committees—
1. Of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting
the Abolition of Slavery;
2. Of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society
with the votes of thanks to me and to the
other members of Congress who, at the
late session of Congress, opposed the influence
of slavery predominant party in that body.
I desired them to return my thanks to the
respective societies for the honor they had done me
by these resolutions, and to assure them of the
grateful sentiments with which I received them.
One of the resolutions contained also an invitation of
attendance at a public meeting—which I declined;
and I gave them a full and candid exposition of my own
principles and view with regard to the institution of domestic
slavery, differing from theirs under a sense of the compact
and compromise in the Constitution of the United States.27
Then he wrote on July 11:
11th. With praise and prayer to God and a solemn sense
of my earthly condition and hopes of a better world,
I enter upon the seventieth year of my pilgrimage.
Benjamin Lundy came this morning, and in a conversation
of about two hours made me acquainted with his
principles, prospects, and purposes relating to slavery.
He was heretofore the editor of the Genius of Universal
Emancipation, and has now the intention of commencing
the publication of a newspaper devoted like that to the
extinguishment of slavery—a cause which within the last
two or three years has fallen into great discouragement….
Benjamin Lundy came at six, and I walked with him to the
house of his friend James Mott, No. 136 North Ninth Street,
where there was a large tea and evening party
of men and women—all of the Society of Friends.
I had free conversation with them till between ten and
eleven o’clock upon slavery, the abolition of slavery,
and other topics; of all which the only exceptionable part
was the undue proportion of talking assumed by me,
and the indiscretion and vanity in which I indulged myself.
Lucretia Mott, the mistress of the house, wife of James Mott,
is a native of the island of Nantucket,
and had heard of my visit there last September.
She is sensible and lively, and an
abolitionist of the most intrepid school.
Benjamin Lundy and another friend came home
with me to Mr. Biddle’s, and Lundy came in
and conversed with me nearly another hour.28
Adams on 26 December 1836 wrote in his Memoirs:
Petitions called for by States.
I presented the petition of Joseph Page and twenty-six
citizens of the town of Silverlake, Susquehanna County,
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, praying for the abolition
of slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia….
Davis of Indiana called up the resolution that he had
offered and which was on the Speaker’s table,
that all petitions which may be offered praying for
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia
or in the Territories shall be laid on the table without
reading or being printed and without debate.
Davis had not the wit to see that his resolution
instigated the very debate that he wanted to suppress.29
On January 3 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
Here is a blank in the record, extending beyond
the remainder of the Twenty-Fourth Congress.
This is to be regretted the more that it passes over
in silence the memorable attempt to censure Mr. Adams
on the 23 of January in the House of Representatives,
consequent upon the presentation by him of twenty-one
petitions, some of them purporting to come from slaves.
This was the first of his great struggles in that cause.30
On 1 September 1837 Representative John Quincy Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
I then went to the Anti-Slavery office, 223 Arch Street;
thence to Samuel Webb’s house and
afterwards to Benjamin Lundy’s office.
I saw and had long conversations with them both
and with two or three others whom I found with them,
of whom was Mr. Buffum who told me he was a hatter.
Lundy returned with me to my lodgings.
He and the abolitionists generally are constantly
urging me to indiscreet movements, which would
ruin me and weaken and not strengthen the cause.
My own family, on the other hand—that is my wife
and son and Mary—exercise all the influence
they possess to restrain and divert me from all
connection with the abolitionists and with their cause.
Between these adverse impulses
my mind is agitated almost to distraction.
The public mind in my own district and State is convulsed
between the slavery and abolition questions, and I walk
on the edge of a precipice in every step that I take.31
Adams on September 26, 28, and 29 wrote in his Memoirs:
26th. H. R. U. S. At ten o’clock A.M. I presented petitions
and memorials for the abolition of slavery;
and multitudes were presented by other members….
28th. H. R. U. S. I presented petitions for the abolition
of slavery in the Territories; for refusing the admission
of any new slave-holding State into the Union;
and for the prohibition of the Inter-State slave-trade.
With the last I asked leave to offer a resolution
calling upon the Secretary of the Treasury to report
at the next session of Congress the number of slaves
exported from and imported into the several ports
of the United States by the coasting trade.
There was what Napoleon would have called a superb No!
returned to my request from the servile side of the House.
29th. H. R. U. S. I reached the House at the instant
of time to present fifty-one petitions and remonstrances
against the order of the House of Representatives of the
18th of January 1837; which was to lay on the table
without printing or further action of the House
upon them, all petitions, resolutions, and
papers in any manner relating to slavery.
Most of these were received by me during the last session;
but the majority of the House, by evading after the
6th of February the reception of all petitions, excluded
the reception of these, and of one hundred and fifty others;
all of which I have now presented,
and they have all been received and laid on the table.
The Deposit Postponement bill coming up,
the first question to be decided was the motion
of Mr. Pickens for reconsideration of
the vote passing the bill to the third reading.
Pickens urged his own amendment as an argument
for reconsideration, and I urged my amendment
to his amendment to the same point.
I noticed particularly an assertion by Waddy Thompson
in a speech the other day, that the natural tendency
of this Government was that all the money
of the nation flowed to the North.
I treated the whole subject with pleasantry much to the
amusement of the House, and with some impression.
Sergeant said to me, as we were
going out of the House at the recess,
that every word I had spoken drew blood.
Waddy Thompson admitted that he had said
all the money of the nation flowed to the North.
Lyon of Alabama and Gholson of Mississippi
made some remarks on my allusions to the
enormous deposits of public moneys in the banks
of their respective States; to which I replied.32
Adams wrote about debates in the House of Representatives
in his Memoirs on December 22, 25, and 26:
22nd. H. R. U. S. On the reading of the journal
I found my motion, yesterday made, to insert
on the journal my answer to the gag resolution.
I moved to amend the journal by inserting that
when my name was called, I rose and said,
“I hold the resolution to be a violation of the Constitution
of the United States 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.”
Boon asked if my motion was debatable.
I said I hoped it was, and that the House
would allow me to debate it.
Boon moved to lay my motion on the table.
I asked for the yeas and nays, but they were refused,
and the motion was laid on the table;
but my answer was entered on the journal.
Patton had come charged with a speech
to prevent the entry upon the journal.
Boon’s motion to lay mine on the table balked him,
and I bantered him upon his resolution, till he said that
if the question ever came to the issue of war, the Southern
people would march into New England and conquer it.
I said I had no doubt they would if they could, and that it
was what they were now struggling for with all their might.
I told him that I entered my resolution on the journal
because I meant his name should go down
to posterity damned to everlasting fame….
25th. Four members from New York—Fillmore, Marvin,
Mitchell, and Peck—came and requested me to draw up
a paper to address to their constituents, assigning
their reasons for voting against the resolution
for laying all abolition petitions on the table.
They said they wished to guard against
the imputation of favoring abolitionism,
but to adhere inflexibly to the right of petition.
I drew up accordingly a sketch of an address to the
people of the State of New York according to their ideas….
26th. H. R. U. S. I gave to Fillmore the paper that I had,
at the request of him and his three colleagues, drawn up,
and told him it was entirely at their disposal to use in
whole or in part or to alter or reject, as they might please.
He said it was rumored to be the intention of the members
from New York who voted for the speech-smothering
resolution to address the people on their side.
I watched the reading of the journal and found
it stated properly the precise words of my answer on
the call of yeas and nays upon the smothering resolution.
My answer therefore stands recorded upon the journal.
The Speaker announced the question upon my
proposed amendment to Howard’s motion to refer
the petition from the New York Peace Society
to the Committee of Foreign Affairs.
My amendment was to instruct the committee
to read, consider, and report thereon.
I now modified the amendment by striking out the word
“read,” and leaving only, “to consider and report thereon.”
Howard made a whole day’s debate
in opposing this instruction.
I had to debate it alone.33
On 15 January 1838 Representative Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
15th. H. R. U. S. Petitions, beginning with Virginia,
going south and west and then back
from Wisconsin through to Maine.
There were a great multitude of abolition and anti-Texas
petitions from all the free States; all laid on the table.
I present nearly fifty myself.34
On January 28 and 28 Adams wrote about petitions in his Memoirs:
28th. I received this day thirty-one petitions and
consumed the whole evening in assorting, filing, endorsing,
and entering them on my list without completing the work.
With these petitions I receive many letters
which I have not time to answer.
Most of them are so flattering and expressed in terms of
such deep sensibility, that I am in imminent danger of being
led by them into presumption and puffed up with vanity.
The abolition newspapers—the Liberator, Emancipator,
Philanthropist, National Enquirer, and New York Evangelist,
all of which are regularly sent to me—contribute to generate
and nourish this delusion, which the treacherous, furious,
filthy, and threatening letters from the South on the
same subject cannot sufficiently counteract.
My duty to defend the free principles and institutions
is clear; but the measures by which they are
to be defended are involved in thick darkness.
The path of right is narrow, and I have need
of a perpetual control over passion.
29th. Much of this morning was consumed in assorting
and filing my anti-slavery petitions, of which I have now
one hundred and twenty on hand.35
On 14 February 1838 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
Henry of Pennsylvania then moved and carried a
suspension of the rules, that the States might be
called for the presentation of petitions.
The call commenced with me, and I presented
three hundred and fifty petitions; of which
one hundred and fifty-eight were for the rescinding
of the Patton gag or resolution of 21st December;
sixty-five for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade
in the District of Columbia; four in the Territories;
seventeen for the prohibition of the internal slave-trade;
two against the admission of any new State whose
Constitution tolerates slavery; and fifty-four
against the annexation of Texas to the Union.36
John Quincy Adams served as a lawyer to 39 Africans
who had taken over the slave-ship Amistad.
He pleaded for habeas corpus and defended them in their trial for mutiny.
In his argument to the United States Supreme Court
on February 24 and March 1 in 1841, he argued:
If these rights in the Declaration are inalienable, they are
incompatible with the rights of the victor to take the life of
his enemy in war, or to spare his life and make him a slave.
If this principle is sound,
it reduces to brute force all the rights of man.
It places all the sacred relations of life
at the power of the strongest.
No man has a right to life or liberty,
if he has an enemy able to take them from him …
but I say that the doctrine of Hobbes,
that War is the natural state of man,
has for ages been exploded, as equally disclaimed …
by the philosopher and the Christian.37
On 29 March 1841 John Quincy Adams wrote in his Memoirs
about his legal defense of Africans on the Amistad:
29th. I completed the assortment and filing of my letters
received since the beginning of this year, and find
myself with a task before me perfectly appalling.
I am yet to revise for publication my argument in the
case of the Amistad Africans; and in merely glancing over
the slave-trade papers lent me by Mr. Fox, I find impulses
of duty upon my own conscience which I cannot resist,
while on the other hand are the magnitude, the danger,
the insurmountable burden of labor to be encountered
in the undertaking to touch upon the slave-trade.
No one else will undertake it; no one but a spirit
unconquerable by man, woman, or fiend
can undertake it but with the heart of martyrdom.
The world, the flesh, and all the devils in hell are arrayed
against any man who now in this North American Union
shall dare to join the standard of Almighty God to
put down the African slave-trade; and what can I,
upon the verge of my seventy-fourth birthday with a
shaking hand, a darkening eye, a drowsy brain,
and with all my faculties dropping from me one by one,
as the teeth are dropping from my head—
what can I do for the cause of God and man,
for the progress of human emancipation,
for the suppression of the African slave-trade?
Yet my conscience presses me on;
let me but die upon the breach.38
John Quincy Adams on 25 January 1843 wrote in his Memoirs:
25th. John Davies, a colored man, came this morning
with a letter from himself to me, asking my advice
in behalf of his wife’s son, named Joseph Clark,
sold some years since by Mrs. Hellen to someone,
who sold him to the Senator Berrien, who sold him
to a Colonel Curry, an agent or sub-agent employed
in the removal of the Cherokee Indians.
Curry took him to the State of Arkansas, employed him
as an interpreter, and promised him his freedom.
Curry afterwards died, and by his will declared
Clark free after three years’ service to his brother.
The rascal brother sold him for nine hundred dollars,
and he is now in irredeemable slavery for life.
The mother of this poor man, “Jenny,” lived some time
with us, and at her instance her husband, Davies,
came to ask my advice what can be done for him.
But he has neither means to sue for his freedom
nor evidence to prove the will.
He is now living with a Dr. Davis
Flint, Cherokee Nation, and acting as interpreter.
Can I not possibly do something for this man?39
Notes
1. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams ed. Charles Francis Adams,
Volume VIII, p. 105-106.
2. Ibid., p. 110.
3. Ibid., p. 124-125.
4. Ibid., p. 128, 129.
5. Ibid., p. 206.
6. Ibid., p. 230.
7. Ibid., p. 239-240.
8. Ibid., p. 241.
9. Ibid., p. 242-243.
10. Ibid., p. 262-263.
11. Ibid., p. 268-270.
12. Ibid., p. 321-322.
13. Ibid., p. 335.
14. Ibid., p. 343-344.
15. Ibid., p. 364-365.
16. John Quincy Adams and the Union by Samuel Flagg Bemis, p. 284.
17. Quoted in John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People
by Randall Woods, p. 568.
18. Ibid., p. 572.
19. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams,
Volume VIII, p. 431.
20. Ibid., p. 433-434.
21. Ibid., p. 436.
22. Ibid., p. 443.
23. Ibid., p. 446-447.
24. Ibid., p. 484-485.
25. Ibid., p. 503.
26. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams,
Volume IX, p. 251-252.
27. Ibid., p. 301-302.
28. Ibid., p. 302-303.
29. Ibid., p. 334, 335.
30. Ibid., p. 343.
31. Ibid., p. 365.
32. Ibid., p. 380, 381-382.
33. Ibid., p. 454-455, 456, 457.
34. Ibid., p. 469.
35. Ibid., p. 479.
36. Ibid., p. 496.
37. Quoted in John Quincy Adams and the Public Virtues of Diplomacy
by Greg Russell, p. 62.
38. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams,
Volume X, p. 453-454.
39. Ibid., p. 300-301.
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