Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams.

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Mr. Adams was not long permitted to remain in retirement. In October,
1830, he was nominated, in the newspapers, to represent in Congress the
district of Massachusetts in which he resided. When asked if he would
consent to be a candidate, he replied, in the spirit which had governed
his whole life, never to seek and never to decline public service: "It
must first be seen whether the people of the district will invite me to
represent them. I shall not ask their votes. I wish them to act their
pleasure." In the ensuing November he was elected Representative of the
twelfth Congressional district of Massachusetts.

On the 3d of January, 1831, Mr. Adams thus remarked on the resolutions
of the Legislature of Georgia setting at defiance the Supreme Court of
the United States: "They are published and approved in the _Telegraph_,
the administration newspaper at Washington. 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 applies to a chief justice of the Court of the
United States, who issues an injunction to the Governor and executive
officers of Georgia, upon the appeal to the laws and treaties of the
United States. The Governor of Georgia refuses obedience to the
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 State of Georgia is in league with the
Executive of the United States, who will not take care that the laws
be faithfully executed. A majority of both houses of Congress sustain
this neglect and violation of 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, more probably the public lands. As the
Executive and Legislature now fail to sustain the Judiciary, it is not
improbable cases may arise in which the Judiciary may fail 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 evils they cannot avert."

On the 4th of July, 1831, Mr. Adams delivered an oration before the
inhabitants of the town of Quincy, in which he controverted the
doctrine of Blackstone, the great commentator upon the laws of England,
who maintained "that there is, and must be, in all forms of government,
however they began, and by what right soever they subsist, a supreme,
irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority, in which the _jura
summi imperii_, or _the rights of sovereignty_, reside." "It is not
true," Mr. Adams remarks, "that there _must_ reside in all governments
an absolute, uncontrolled, irresistible, and despotic power; nor is
such a power absolutely essential to sovereignty. The direct converse
of the proposition is true. Uncontrollable power exists in no
government upon earth. The sternest despotisms, in every region and
every age of the world, _are and have been_ under perpetual control;
compelled, as Burke expresses it, to truckle and huckster. Unlimited
power belongs not to the nature of man, and rotten will be the
foundation of every government leaning upon such a maxim for its
support. Least of all can it be predicated of any government professing
to be founded upon an original compact. The pretence of an absolute,
irresistible, despotic power, existing in every government _somewhere_,
is incompatible with the first principle of natural right."

This proposition Mr. Adams proceeds fully to illustrate, and thus to
apply: "This political sophism of identity between _sovereign_ and
_despotic_ power has led, and continues to lead, into many vagaries,
some of the statists of this our happy but disputatious Union. It
seizes upon the brain of a heated politician, sometimes in one state,
sometimes in another, and its natural offspring is the doctrine of
nullification; that is, the _sovereign_ power of any one state of the
confederacy to nullify any act of the whole twenty-four states which
the _sovereign_ state shall please to consider as unconstitutional.
Stripped of the sophistical argumentation in which this doctrine has
been habited, its naked nature is an effort to organize insurrection
against the laws of the United States; to interpose the arm of state
sovereignty between rebellion and the halter, and to rescue the traitor
from the gibbet. Although conducted under the auspices of state
sovereignty, it would not the less be levying war against the Union;
but, as a state cannot be punished for treason, nullification cases
herself in the complete steel of sovereign power." "The citizen of the
nullifying state becomes a traitor to his country by obedience to the
law of his state,--a traitor to his state by obedience to the law of
his country. The scaffold and the battle-field stream alternately with
the blood of their victims. The event of a conflict in arms between the
Union and one of its members, whether terminating in victory or defeat,
would be but an alternative of calamity to all."

Mr. Adams took his seat in the House of Representatives in December,
1831, and immediately announced to his constituents that he should hold
himself bound in allegiance to no party, whether sectional or political.
Ten years afterwards he had occasion to explain to his fellow-citizens
his policy and feelings at this period. "I thought this independence of
party was a duty imposed upon me by my peculiar position. I had spent
the greatest part of my life in the service of the whole nation, and had
been honored by their highest trust; my duty of fidelity, of affection,
and of gratitude, to the whole, was not merely inseparable from, but
identical with, that which was due from me to my own commonwealth. The
internal conflict between slavery and freedom had been, and still was,
scarcely perceptible in the national councils. The Missouri compromise
had laid it asleep, it was hoped, forever. The development of the moral
principle which pronounced slavery _a crime_ of man against his
brother-man had not yet reached the conscience of Christendom. England,
earnestly and zealously occupied in rallying the physical, moral, and
intellectual energies of the civilized world against the African
slave-trade, had scarcely yet discovered that it was but an instrument,
and in truth a mitigation, of the great, irremissible wrong of slavery.
Her final policy, the extinction of slavery throughout the earth, was
not yet disclosed. The Jackson project of dismembering Mexico for the
acquisition of Texas, already organized and in full operation, was yet
profoundly a secret. I entered Congress without one sentiment of
discrimination between the interests of the North and the South; and my
first act, as a member of the House, was, on presenting fifteen
petitions from Pennsylvania for the abolition of slavery within the
District of Columbia, to declare, while moving their reference to the
committee of the District, that I was not prepared to support the
measure myself, and that I should not. I was not then a sectional
partisan, and I never have been."[1]

[1] Address of John Quincy Adams to his Constituents, at
Braintree, September 17, 1842, p. 27.

When Mr. Adams was entering this new field of labor, Mr. Clay asked him
how he felt at turning boy again, and going into the House of
Representatives; and observed that he would find his situation extremely
laborious. Mr. Adams replied: "I well know this; but labor I shall not
refuse so long as my hands, my eyes, and my brain, do not desert me."

To understand the position in which Mr. Adams was placed, on his taking
his seat in the House of Representatives, it is important that some of
the events which had occurred during his absence from public life should
be briefly recapitulated. General Jackson had been two years President
of the United States. The alliance which he had entered into with Mr.
Van Buren for their mutual advancement, to which allusion has been made
in a former chapter, had not resulted immediately as the high
contracting parties probably intended. An obstacle to the advancement of
Mr. Van Buren to the Vice-Presidency presented itself which was
insurmountable. John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, possessed an
influence in the slave states which it was important to conciliate, and
imprudent to set at defiance. The allies were, consequently, compelled
to accede to his nomination as Vice-President, and Van Buren was forced
to be content with the prospect of being appointed Secretary of State.

The elevation of Calhoun to the Vice-Presidency, there is reason to
believe, could not have been acceptable to Jackson. It appears, by the
documents published by Calhoun in connection with his account of his
controversy with Jackson, that William H. Crawford had, as early as
December, 1827, taken direct measures to render the friendship of
Calhoun suspected by Jackson. On the 14th of that month he wrote a
letter to Alfred Balch, at Nashville, with the express purpose of its
being shown to Jackson, containing the following statement: "My
opinions upon the next presidential election" (against Adams and in
favor of Jackson) "are generally known. When Mr. Van Buren and Mr.
Cambreling made me a visit, last April, I authorized them, upon every
proper occasion, to make these opinions known. The vote of the State of
Georgia will, as certainly as that of Tennessee, be given to General
Jackson, in opposition to Mr. Adams. The only difficulty that this
state has upon that subject is, that, if Jackson should be elected,
Calhoun will come into power. I confess I am not apprehensive of such a
result. For ---- ---- writes to me, Jackson ought to know, and if he
does not he shall know, that, at the Calhoun caucus in Columbia, the
term _military chieftain_ was bandied about even more flippantly than
it had been by Henry Clay, and that the family friends of Mr. Calhoun
were most active in giving it currency; and I know, personally, that
Calhoun favored Mr. Adams' pretensions until Mr. Clay declared for him.
He well knew that Clay would not have declared for Adams without it was
well understood that he, Calhoun, was to be put down if Adams could
effect it. If he was not friendly to his election, why did he suffer
his paper to be purchased up by Adams' printers, without making some
stipulation in favor of Jackson? If you can ascertain that Calhoun will
not be benefited by Jackson's election, you will do him a service by
communicating the information to me. Make what use you please of this
letter, and show it to whom you please."[2]

[2] See, for Crawford's letter and Calhoun's address, _Niles'
Weekly Register_, vol. XL., p. 12.

That these opinions of Crawford concerning Calhoun were communicated to
Van Buren and Cambreling when they visited him, as he states, on their
electioneering tour, in April, 1827, cannot be reasonably questioned:
and that Crawford's letter to Balch was also communicated to Jackson can
as little be doubted. That at this period Calhoun's want of political
sympathy with Jackson was publicly known and talked about at Nashville,
is apparent from Calhoun's address to the people of the United States in
his controversy with Jackson, in which he bitterly complains: "I
remained ignorant and unsuspicious of these secret movements against me
till the spring of 1828, when vague rumors reached me that some attempts
were making at Nashville to injure me."

Why statements made by such a high authority as Crawford, so well
adapted to kindle the inflammatory temperament of Jackson, and at once
so auspicious to the hopes of Van Buren and so ominous to those of
Calhoun, were not immediately made the subject of action, can only be
accounted for by the fact that Calhoun was at that time too strong in
the affections of the South for them then to commence hostilities; for,
in that case he would, as Crawford intimated, have "favored the
pretensions of Adams," and possibly have defeated the plans of the
alliance. Jackson, therefore, yielded, and allowed Calhoun to be run as
a candidate for the Vice-Presidency on the same ticket with himself, and
postponed any attempt to deprive him of his chance of succession until a
more convenient opportunity. To this arrangement Van Buren also was
compelled to submit, and, after Adams was superseded, and Jackson
inaugurated President, he was appointed Secretary of State.[3]

[3] Jackson's cabinet were, Martin Van Buren, Secretary of State;
Samuel D. Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury; John H. Eaton,
Secretary of War; John Branch, Secretary of the Navy; John M'P.
Berrien, Attorney-General; William T. Barry, Postmaster-General.

In April, 1830, when the Legislatures of New York and Pennsylvania took
incipient measures to nominate Jackson for a second term of office, the
favorable moment arrived to bring his artillery to bear upon Calhoun.
At this time two letters of Crawford were brought to the mind of
General Jackson,--the one to Alfred Balch, already referred to; the
other to John Forsyth, dated the 30th of April, 1830,[4]--in which
Crawford expressly stated that "Mr. Calhoun had made a proposition to
the cabinet of Monroe for _punishing_ him for his conduct in the
Seminole war." Jackson, greatly excited, immediately, on the 12th of
May, 1830, addressed a letter to Mr. Calhoun, declaring his great
surprise at the information those letters contained, and inquiring
whether he had moved or sustained any attempt seriously to affect him
in Monroe's cabinet council. Calhoun replied, that he "could not
recognize the right of General Jackson to call in question his conduct
in the discharge of a high official duty, and under responsibility to
his conscience and his country only." The anger of Jackson was not in
the least assuaged by this reply, nor by the explanations which
accompanied it. A correspondence ensued, which, with collateral and
documentary evidence, occupied fifty-two pages of an octavo pamphlet;
resulting in Jackson's declaration of his poignant mortification to see
in Calhoun's letter, instead of a negative, an admission of the truth
of Crawford's allegations. An irreconcilable alienation between Jackson
and Calhoun was evinced in this correspondence; a state of feeling
which for the time was concealed from the public, but was well known to
their respective partisans, who understood that at the approaching
election the influence of the former would be thrown into the scale of
Van Buren. Jackson's intention of standing for the Presidency a second
time was kept a profound secret until January, 1831. Under the
supposition that he might decline, the partisans of Calhoun, Clay, and
Van Buren, engaged in active measures to put them respectively into the
field.

[4] For which see _Niles' Weekly Register_, vol. XL., pp. 12,
13.

From the party movements during this uncertainty it was clearly
perceived that, if Jackson was not again a candidate, a contest between
Van Buren and Calhoun for the Presidency was unavoidable. Calhoun's
chance of success was preeminent, for he would unite in his favor all
the votes and influence of the South,--Van Buren not having then had an
opportunity to evince his entire subserviency to the slaveholding power.
Jackson, into whose heart Van Buren had wound himself, looked with
little complacency on the probable success of Calhoun. Under these
circumstances, he resolved to enter the lists himself as a candidate for
the Presidency, and, by taking Van Buren with him for the
Vice-Presidency, put him at once in the best position to become his
successor. Van Buren coincided in these views, and acquiesced in, if he
did not originate, this measure. He foresaw that the popularity of
Jackson would throw Calhoun out of the field, whether he was a candidate
at the next ensuing election for the Presidency or Vice-Presidency. The
time had now come to put an end to the hopes of Calhoun for the
attainment of either of those high stations, by making public the
animosity of Jackson; but this could not be done without a struggle.
Branch, Ingham, and Berrien, all members of Jackson's cabinet, were
known friends to Calhoun, and far from being well disposed to Van Buren.
Under these circumstances, Jackson resolved to dissolve his cabinet, in
which Van Buren himself held a place, and form another, better adapted
to their united views. As a violent contest with the friends of Calhoun
was anticipated, Van Buren, if he should continue Secretary of State,
would be considered responsible for all Jackson's proceedings to
frustrate Calhoun's aspirations for the Presidency, which might
injuriously affect his popularity in the Southern States. Van Buren
therefore retired upon a mission to England.

Such were the general views and policy of these allied aspirants to the
two highest offices of state, which public documents now make apparent,
when, in April, 1831, say the newspapers of the period, "an explosion
took place in the cabinet at Washington, the announcement of which came
upon the public like a clap of thunder in a cloudless day."[5] On the
7th of April, the Secretary of War, General Eaton, resigned, without
giving any other reason than his own inclination, and that he deemed the
moment favorable, as General Jackson's "course of policy had been
advantageously commenced." On the 11th of April, Van Buren resigned the
office of Secretary of State. So far as his motive could be discerned
through the haze of ambiguous and diplomatic language, it was that his
name had been connected with that distracting topic, the question of
successorship, which rendered his continuance in the cabinet
embarrassing, and might be injurious to the public service. The two
other secretaries, Ingham and Branch, were kept in ignorance of these
resignations until the 19th of April, when Jackson informed them that,
to command public confidence and satisfy public opinion, he deemed it
proper to select a cabinet of entirely new materials,[6] and therefore
requested them to resign their respective offices. They accordingly
tendered their resignations, which were accepted by the President, in a
letter to each, couched in language perfectly identical, in which he
admits that the dismissed officers had faithfully performed their
respective official duties, but intimates that the want of harmony in
the cabinet "made its entire renovation requisite."[7] Branch and Ingham
both denied any want of harmony in the cabinet, and the latter declared
that "it had never been interrupted for a moment, nor been divided in a
single instance by difference of opinion as to the measures of the
government."[8] These contradictions, thus openly made, created intense
curiosity, and public clamor for a full development of facts. Branch, in
a letter dated May 31st, 1831, addressed to certain citizens of Bertie
County, North Carolina, declared that "discord had been introduced into
the ranks of the administration by the intrigues of selfish
politicians."[9]

[5] See _Niles' Weekly Register_, vol. XL., pp. 129-145.

[6] Ibid., pp. 152-3.

[7] _Niles' Register_, vol. XL., p. 201.

[8] Ibid., p. 220.

[9] Ibid., p. 253.

The Attorney-General, Mr. Berrien, did not resign until the 15th of June
ensuing, nor until he also had been invited to do so by Jackson. He then
declared that he resigned "simply on account of the President's will,"
and that he knew of no want of harmony in the cabinet which either had
or ought to have impeded the operations of the administration.[10] In
July, Mr. Ingham, on returning home, was received by a great cavalcade
of his fellow-citizens, and was called upon for an explanation of "the
extraordinary measure, the dissolution of the cabinet, which had shocked
the public mind." He replied, that it was exclusively the act of the
President, who alone could perfectly explain his own motives, and he
deemed it improper for him to anticipate the explanation which the
President must deem it his duty to make.[11] As Jackson made no
explanation, Mr. Branch, after being repeatedly called upon in the
public papers, authorized the publication of a letter he had addressed
to Edmund B. Freeman, dated the 22d of August, 1831,[12] in which he gave
a full statement of the overbearing language and conduct of Jackson, and
unequivocally declared that the contemporaneous resignation of Eaton and
Van Buren was a measure adopted for the purpose of getting rid of the
three offensive members of the cabinet; that "their dismission had been
stipulated for, and the reason was that Van Buren, having discovered
that the three members of the cabinet (afterwards ejected) disdained to
become tools to subserve his ambitious aspirings, had determined to
leave them as little power to defeat his machinations as possible; and
that he had become latterly almost the sole confidant and adviser of the
President."

[10] Ibid., p. 304.

[11] _Niles' Weekly Register_, vol. XL., p. 331.

[12] Ibid., vol. XLI., pp. 5, 6.

The details of this controversy belong to general history, and will be
found in the documents of the period. Enough has been given to indicate
the great influence Van Buren had acquired, for his own political
advancement, by an unscrupulous subserviency to the overbearing violence
of the President.

On this subject Mr. Adams observed: "Van Buren outwits Calhoun in the
favor of Jackson. He brought the administration into power, and now
enjoys the reward of his intrigues. Jackson rides rough-shod over the
Senate, in relation to appointments; but they dare not oppose him." It
was impossible, in view of these scenes of discord and mutual
crimination, for Mr. Adams not to feel self-congratulation when he
recollected the uninterrupted harmony which, during four years, had
prevailed in his own cabinet. From without it had been assailed with
calumny and malignant passions; but within was peace, quiet, mutual
assistance and support. No jealousies disturbed the tranquillity of
their meetings. No ambitious spirit had shaped measures to purposes of
his own aggrandizement. Though silent, he could not fail, while
contemplating the comparison, to realize the triumph history was
preparing for himself and his administration. The contrast presented by
its principles, when compared with those of his successor, must have
been also a natural source of intense self-congratulation.
Notwithstanding the warning voice of Henry Clay, a military chieftain
had been placed in the chair of state. He entered it with the spirit of
a conqueror, and conducted in it in the spirit of the camp. The
gratification of his feelings, and the reward of his partisans, were
apparently his chief objects. He dismissed from office, without trial,
without charge, and without fault, faithful and able men. During the
whole period of Mr. Adams' administration not an officer of the
government, from Maine to Louisiana, was dismissed on account of his
political opinions. Many well known to him as opposed to his
reelection, and actively employed in behalf of his competitor, were
permitted to hold their places, though subject to his power of
dismission. Not one was discharged from that cause. In the early part
of his administration appointments were promiscuously made from all the
parties in the previous canvass. This course was pursued until an
opposition was organized which denounced all appointments from its
ranks as being made for party purposes. Of _eighty_ newspapers employed
in publishing the laws during the four years of his Presidency, only
_twelve_ or _fifteen_ were changed, some for geographical, others for
local considerations. Some papers among the most influential in the
opposition, but otherwise conducted with decorum, were retained. Of the
entire number of changes, not more than four or five were made on
account of their scurrilous character. During the same period _not more
than five_ members of Congress received official appointments to any
office. Even these shocked General Jackson's patriotism, from their
mischievous bearing on the purity of the national legislature, and the
permanency of our republican institutions. Being then a candidate for
the Presidency, in opposition to Mr. Adams, he deliberately declared to
the Legislature of Tennessee his firm conviction that no member of
Congress ought to be appointed to any office except a seat on the
bench; and he added that he himself would conform to that rule.
Notwithstanding this pledge, he appointed _eight_ or _ten_ members of
Congress to office in the first four weeks of his Presidency. Mr. Clay
publicly asserted his belief that within two months after Jackson had
attained that high station more members of Congress had offices
conferred on them "than were appointed by any one of his predecessors
during their whole period of four or eight years." His proceedings
evidenced that among this favorite class no office is too high or too
low for desire and acceptance, from the head of a department to the
most subordinate office under a collector. On editors of newspapers he
bestowed unexampled patronage. Fifteen or twenty of those who had been
most active in his favor during the preceding canvass,--the most
abusive of his opponents, and the most fulsome in his own praise,--were
immediately rewarded with place. Of all attempts, his were the boldest
and the most successful ever made to render the press venal, and to
corrupt this palladium of liberty.[13] Happily the times were not
propitious to give immediate development to these principles of
permanent power. But the degree of success of this first attempt of one
man to constitute "_himself the state_" contains a solemn foreboding as
to the possible future fate of our republic. For, although at this time
the ambition of the individual was not fully gratified, enough was
effected to encourage the reckless and aspiring. The seeds of
corruption were thickly scattered. In that Presidency the doctrine was
first promulgated, "_To the victors belong the spoils_." From that day,
subserviency to the chief of the prevailing party became the condition
on which station and place were given or holden. In his hands was
lodged the power of reward and punishment, to be exercised ruthlessly
for party support and perpetuation; resulting, in the higher
departments, in tame submission to the will of the chief, and, in the
lower, in the adoption of the detestable maxim that _all is fair in
politics_. The consequences are daily seen in the servility of
office-holders and office-seekers; in forced contributions, during
pending elections, for the continuance of the prevailing power, and
afterwards in a heartless proscription of all not acceptable to the
successful dynasty; in the excluding every one from office who has not
the spirit to be a slave, and filling the heart of every true lover of
his country with ominous conjectures concerning the fate of our
institutions.

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