If Americans today know John Quincy Adams, whose 250th birthday we celebrate on July 11, it is probably as Congressman Adams—Anthony Hopkins’ character in the film Amistad. Congressman Adams was Adams at his best. But that was a late development.
For most of his career, indeed the better part of his life, Adams served the republic in the diplomatic corps. From 1781, when the 14-year-old prodigy signed onto the American legation to Russia to his tenure as secretary of state under President Monroe, Adams was primarily a diplomat. The role suited him. So impressed was President Washington with the young Adams that he wrote that “I shall be much mistaken if, in as short a period as can well be expected, he is not found at the head of the diplomatic corps.” Washington was not mistaken. The 1819 Adams-Onis, or Transcontinental Treaty, which secured the American claim to the heart of the North American continent from Florida to Oregon was the capstone of that career. That treaty ensured American independence. The neighborhood was safe for the republic; no European power would break it apart. Only America could do that.
But what was that independence for? European sophisticates were looking across the Atlantic and hoping for, perhaps expecting, the American experiment to fail. They had no desire to see America survive. Thanks in part to Adams’ diplomatic work, that was no longer a major concern. But mere survival was not enough. In 1837, he reflected on the problem:
If the Union was for slavery, it would have been better for the Spanish, the British, and the Natives to hold the territory Adams has secured for the U.S. The ancient republics, of course, had slaves—and often aristocrats and kings, too. America was an effort to do better. Could it? That was the proposition the American experiment was designed to test. For a son of the American Revolution, such as Adams, there could be no higher calling than serving such a republic. For the republic to live, slavery had to die. Yet that did not appear to be happening.
Where had Adams gone wrong? The first part of his career had been remarkably non-political. Adams’ main work had been outside of electoral politics. At the same time, he had been too optimistic. The belief in “progress” fostered a naïve expectation that the end of slavery was already baked into the republican cake. In fact, Adams realized, only eternal vigilance could secure the republic. And such vigilance would require political action. Trying to be non-partisan, even non-political, crippled his efforts.
In his final decades Adams’ work was ruthlessly political, as he became the master of the House, working through the democratic process to serve republican ends. In these years Adams became a popular speaker across the North, and an effective one in the House, earning him the sobriquet “Old Man Eloquent.” His speeches returned, again and again, to the Declaration of Independence as a touchstone. Like Lincoln after him, Adams placed the principles of 1776 at the heart of the American regime, and, again like Lincoln, and also Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, Madison, John Adams and the rest of the gang, he understood that slavery was incompatible with those principles. But he worried America might forget that. So began the lesson.
Political education is a practical art. That explains Adams’ principal battle of these years—his fight against the “Gag Rule.” The Gag Rule was a rule of the House of Representatives that prohibited consideration of petitions to the House regarding slavery. It was an infamous rule. It is one thing for the people’s representatives to declare they do not agree with a given petition. Better would be for congressmen to state their reasons for doing so. But to refuse even to listen to the people was, Adams realized, to attack the republican principle—that the people are in charge, and public officials are their servants.
These ideas did not come to Adams only in his later years. In 1820 Adams noted that immigrants to America should ensure that “their children will cling to the prejudices of this country, and will partake of that proud spirit, not unmingled with disdain” for the ways of Old Europe. What was the source of that pride? To what must immigrants assimilate? “There is one principle which pervades all the institutions of this country. … This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights. Privileges are granted by European sovereigns to particular classes of individuals.” He continued, “the governments are the servants of the people, and are so considered by the people, who place and displace them at their pleasure. … The dependence, in affairs of government, is the reverse of the practice in Europe, instead of the people depending upon their rulers, the rulers, as such, are always dependent upon the good will of the people.” The Gag Rule pointed back to Europe. It reversed the polarities of government, suggesting that the ruling class was in charge, and not the people. That was the ground upon which Adams fought.
How to fight the Gag Rule? In class I sometimes compare Adams to Obi Wan Kenobe, “if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” Adams repeatedly and with great wit found loopholes, or possible loopholes (“does this petition count?). Each time, the debate turned to the Gag Rule, and, implicitly, to the problem of slavery and republican governance. Ultimately, Southern Congressmen tried to censor Adams. The effort failed spectacularly. Each attack made Adams’ ideas more powerful in the North.
One tool Adams exploited was his peculiar status. As a former president and son of a president, Adams was sui generis. According to the South’s honor code, one caned an inferior (as Congressman Brooks would do to Senator Sumner in 1856), and one challenged an equal to a duel. But Adams was a superior. They had to take invective from him that they would take from no other American.
Adams read Southern character well. It was easily provoked. Adams now saw the political implications of Jefferson’s statement that “the whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions. the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. … The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.” The institution of slavery was educative. It shaped the souls of citizens of the South, fostering a pride in ruling that was incompatible with the practice of self-government in the American republic. To be sure, it could shape a ruling class that treated their fellow masters as equals, as in the Roman Republic, but it pointed away from the broader practice of self-government in the American sense. Given the influence of slavery on their characters, slave masters treated petitions critical of slavery as what activists today call “micro-aggressions.” Such petitions challenged their self-image and self-worth. To borrow another hot term today, such petitions “triggered” Southern gentlemen. Adams’ hate speech could even, by provoking slave rebellion, get them killed.
Their reaction drove Adams’ point home better than any speech could have. Slavery was incompatible with self-governance. It created men who, in time, would develop a paternal idea of governance. They would conclude that the common citizen, like the slave, was too dumb to manage his own affairs. He needed his betters to provide him with food, shelter, and medicine. In time, he would be considered too ill informed to vote.
Adams was not surprised when new Southern territories, or would-be territories, made it official. By the time Texas broke away from Mexico, slavery had been abolished. That Texas brought it back was a crime. Republican Texas breathed a different spirit from that of 1776. In a 1842 speech, Adams noted that “The Constitution of the Republic of Texas … virtually repudiates the sublime doctrine of the natural rights of man, by merely saying, ‘All men, when they form a social compact, have equal rights’–and you see how wide a margin this leaves for slavery and the slave trade, in their most hideous and disgusting forms.” Slavery was doing its magic on the human mind, turning would-be Americans away from the principles of 1776. Thwarting such a turn was an effort worthy of a career in politics.
By 1844, Adams had won the Gag Rule fight. The day the Gag rule died in 1844, Adams expressed gratitude toward a greater power: “blessed, forever blessed, be the name of God.” The war against the Gag Rule was over; the war against slavery continued. On February 21, 1848, Adams rose in the House to vote “no” to a measure of commendation for American soldiers in the war with Mexico, and then collapsed. He lingered for two days, on a couch in a chamber in the Capitol, and died on February 23. Did Adams redeem his career? We may say, to simplify, that he made Lincoln possible. That had been his goal. But Adams was never sure. Adams’ life, a great American life, is a life worth celebrating at 250.
