Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams.

J >> Josiah Quincy >> Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29

[13] The facts above stated are chiefly derived from a speech of
Henry Clay, delivered at Lexington, Kentucky, on the 16th of May,
1829, in which all the topics here touched are forcibly and
eloquently illustrated. It may be found at length in _Niles'
Weekly Register_, vol. XXXVI., pp. 399 to 405.

During the early periods of Jackson's administration, Mr. Adams, though
in retirement, was neither unobserving nor silent concerning its
proceedings. In January, 1830, in the course of a conversation with a
senator from Louisiana on the politics and the intrigues then going on
at Washington in relation to the next presidential election, he said:
"There are three divisions of the administration party: one for General
Jackson, whose friends wish his reelection; one for Mr. Van Buren, and
one for Calhoun. Van Buren sees he cannot eight years longer discharge
the duties of the Department of State; and that he must succeed at the
end of four years, or not at all. His friends insist that Jackson has
given a pledge that he will not serve another term. Calhoun and his
friends are equally impatient, and he is much disposed to declare
himself against the leading measures of the present administration. But
if Mr. Clay was brought forward by his friends as a candidate, it would
close all the cracks of the administration party, and rivet them
together."

In the beginning of February, Mr. Adams remarked: "All the members
of Congress are full of rumors concerning the volcanic state of the
administration. The President has determined to remove Branch, but
was told that if he did the North Carolina senators would join the
opposition, and all his nominations would be rejected. The
administration is split up into a blue and green faction upon a point
of morals; an explosion has been deferred, but is expected."

On the 26th of March, 1830, he again remarked: "There is a controversy
between the _Telegraph_, Calhoun's paper here, and the _New York
Courier_, Van Buren's paper, upon the question whether Jackson is or is
not a candidate for reelection as President,--the _Courier_ insisting
that he is, and the _Telegraph_ declaring that it is premature to ask
the question. Mr. Van Buren has got the start of Calhoun, in the merit
of convincing General Jackson that the salvation of the country depends
on his reelection. This establishes his ascendency in the cabinet, and
reduces Calhoun to the alternative of joining in the shout 'Hurra for
Jackson!' or of being counted in opposition."

On the 28th of March, 1830, the question being still in agitation before
the public whether Jackson, if a candidate, would be successful, Mr.
Adams said: "Jackson will be a candidate, and have a fair chance of
success. His personal popularity, founded solely on the battle of New
Orleans, will carry him through the next election, as it did through the
last. The vices of his administration are not such as affect the popular
feeling. He will lose none of his popularity unless he should do
something to raise a blister upon public sentiment, and of that there is
no prospect. If he lives, therefore, and nothing external should happen
to rouse new parties, he may be reelected not only twice, but thrice."

In June, 1830, he again expressed his views on the policy and prospects
of the administration. He said it was impossible to foresee what would
be the fluctuations of popular opinion. Hitherto there were symptoms of
changes of opinion among members of Congress, but none among the people.
These could be indicated only by the elections. He had great doubts
whether the majorities in the Legislatures of the free states would be
changed by the approaching elections, and was far from certain that the
next Legislature of Kentucky would nominate Mr. Clay in opposition to
the reelection of General Jackson. The whole strength of the present
administration rested on Jackson's personal popularity, founded on his
military services. He had surrendered the Indians to the states within
the bounds of which they are located. This would confirm and strengthen
his popularity in those states, especially as he had burdened the Union
with the expense of removing and indemnifying the Indians. He had taken
practical ground against internal improvements and domestic industry,
which would strengthen him in all the Southern States. He had, as might
have been expected, thrown all his weight into the slaveholding scale;
and that interest is so compact, so consolidated, and so fervent in
action, that there is every prospect it will overpower the discordant
and loosely constructed interest of the free states. The cause of
internal improvement will sink, and that of domestic industry will fall
with or after it. There is at present a great probability that Jackson's
policy will be supported by a majority of the people.

After a conversation with Oliver Wolcott, the successor of Alexander
Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury under Washington, who had been
subsequently Governor of Connecticut, Mr. Adams remarked: "Mr. Wolcott
views the prospects of the Union with great sagacity, and with hopes
more sanguine than mine. He thinks the continuance of the Union will
depend upon the heavy population of Pennsylvania, and that its
gravitation will preserve the Union. He holds the South Carolina
turbulence too much in contempt. The domineering spirit naturally
springs from the institution of slavery; and when, as in South Carolina,
the slaves are more numerous than their masters, the domineering spirit
is wrought up to its highest pitch of intenseness. The South Carolinians
are attempting to govern the Union as they govern their slaves, and
there are too many indications that, abetted as they are by all the
slave-driving interest of the Union, the free portion will cower before
them, and truckle to their insolence. This is my apprehension."

While Jackson's nominations were pending before the Senate, a senator
from New Hampshire said to Mr. Adams that he hoped the whole tribe of
editors of newspapers would be rejected; for he thought it the most
dangerous precedent that could be established, and, if now sanctioned by
the Senate, he despaired of its being controlled hereafter; and added
that he was almost discouraged concerning the permanency of our
institutions. Mr. Adams replied, that his hopes were better, but that
undoubtedly the giving offices to editors of newspapers was of all
species of bribery the most dangerous.

From the time Mr. Adams took his seat in the House of Representatives,
in December, 1831, till the period of his death, few of his
contemporaries equalled and none exceeded him in punctuality of
attendance. He was usually among the first members in his place in the
morning, and the last to leave it. On every question of general interest
he bestowed scrupulous attention, yielding to it the full strength of
his mind, and his extensive knowledge of public affairs. A full history
of the proceedings of Congress during this period alone can do justice
to his devotion to the public service. In this memoir his views and
course will no further be recorded than as they regard topics obviously
nearest his heart, and in which his principles and character are
developed with peculiar ability and power.

In December, 1831, on the distribution of the several parts of the
President's message to committees, Mr. Adams was appointed chairman of
that on manufactures. Against this position he immediately remonstrated,
and solicited the Speaker to relieve him from it. He stated that the
subject of manufactures was connected with details not familiar to him;
that, during the long period of a life devoted to public service, his
thoughts had been directed in a very different line. It was replied,
that he could not be excused without a vote of the House; that the
continuance of the Union might depend on the questions relative to the
tariff; and that it was thought his influence would have great weight in
reconciling the Eastern States to such modifications as he might
sanction. He therefore yielded all personal considerations to the
interests of his country, and accepted the appointment.

In the ensuing March, on being appointed on a committee to investigate
the affairs of the United States Bank, Mr. Adams requested of the House
to be excused from service on the Committee on Manufactures, giving the
same reasons he had previously urged, and others resulting from the
incompatibility of the two offices. An opposition was made by
Cambreling, of New York, Barbour, of Virginia, and Drayton, of South
Carolina, in speeches which were characterized by the newspapers of the
times as "most extraordinary."[14] Cambreling said: "The present
condition of the country and of the public mind demanded the
intelligence, industry, and patriotism, for which Mr. Adams was
distinguished. The authority of his name was of infinite importance."
Mr. Barbour followed in a like strain. "The member from Massachusetts,"
said he, "with whom I have been associated in the Committee on
Manufactures, has not only fulfilled all his duties with eminent
ability, in the committee, but in a spirit and temper that demanded
grateful acknowledgments, and excited the highest admiration." He
concluded with an appeal to Mr. Adams, "as a patriot, a statesman, and
philanthropist, as well as an American, feeling the full force of his
duties, and touched by all their incentives to lofty action, to forbear
his request." Mr. Drayton also, in a voice of eulogy, declared that,
"Amidst all the rancor of political parties with which our country has
been distracted, and from which, unhappily, we are not now exempt, it
has always been admitted that no individual was more eminently endowed
with those intellectual and moral qualities which entitle their
possessor to the respect of the community, and to entire confidence in
the purity of his motives, than Mr. Adams."

[14] _Niles' Weekly Register_, vol. XLII., pp. 86-88.

These politicians were the active and influential members of a party
which had raised General Jackson to the President's chair. When laboring
to displace Mr. Adams from that high station, that party had represented
him as "neither a statesman nor a patriot; without talents; as a mere
professor of rhetoric, capable of making a corrupt bargain for the sake
of power, and of condescending to intrigue for the attainment of place
and office." To hear the leaders of such a party now extolling him for
integrity, diligence, and intelligence, upon whose continuance in office
the hopes of the country and the continuance of the Union might depend,
was a change in opinions and language which might well be attributed to
the awakening of conscience to a sense of justice, and a desire for
reparation of wrong, were it not that leaders of factions have never any
other criterion of truth, or rule in the use of language, than
adaptation to selfish and party purposes.

Equally uninfluenced by adulation and undeterred by abuse, on the 23d of
May, 1832, as chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, by order of a
majority, Mr. Adams reported a bill, which, in presenting it, he
declared was not coincident with the views of that majority, and that
for parts he alone was responsible. After lauding the anticipated
extinction of the public debt, he proceeded to show, by a laborious
research into its history, that such extinction had always been
contemplated, and that the policy of the government, from the earliest
period of its existence, had concurred in the wisdom of this application
of the revenue. He proceeded to expose and deprecate that Southern
policy, which seized on this occasion "to reduce the revenues of the
Union to the lowest point absolutely necessary to defray the ordinary
charges and indispensable expenditures of the government;" a system
which, by inevitable consequence and by avowed design, "left our shores
to take care of themselves, our navy to perish by dry rot upon the
stocks, our manufactures to wither under the blast of foreign
competition;" and he urged, in opposition to these destructive
doctrines, the duty of levying revenue enough for "common defence," and
also to "protect manufactures," and supported his argument by a great
array of facts; severely animadverting upon those politicians who
glorified themselves on the prosperous state of the country, and yet
labored to break down that "system of protection for domestic
manufactures by which this prosperity had been chiefly produced." The
duty of "defensive preparation and internal improvements" he maintained
to be unquestionable, obligations resulting from the language and spirit
of the constitution. The doctrine that the interests of the planter and
the manufacturer were irreconcilable, and that duties for the protection
of domestic industry operate to the injury of the Southern States, he
analyzed, illustrated, and showed to be fallacious, "striking directly
at the heart of the Union, and leading inevitably to its dissolution;" a
result to which more than one distinguished and influential statesman of
the South had affirmed that "his mind was made up." The doctrine that
the interest of the South is identified with the foreign competitor of
the Northern manufacturer, he denounced as in conflict with the whole
history of our Revolutionary War, and a satire on our institutions. If
it should prove true that these interests were so irreconcilable as to
cause a separation, as some Southern statesmen contended, after such
separation the same state of irreconcilable interests would continue,
and "with redoubled aggravation," resulting in an inextinguishable or
exterminating war between the brothers of this severed continent, which
nothing but a foreign umpire could settle or adjust, and this not
according to the interests of either of the parties, but his own. The
consequences of such a state of things he displayed with great power and
eloquence, and concluded with alluding "to that great, comprehensive,
but peculiar Southern interest, which is now protected by the laws of
the United States, but which, in case of severance of the Union, must
produce consequences from which a statesman of either portion of it
cannot but avert his eyes."

Contemporaneously with this report on manufactures, Mr. Adams, as one of
the committee to examine and report on the books and proceedings of the
Bank of the United States, submitted to the House of Representatives a
report, signed only by himself and Mr. Watmough, of Pennsylvania, in
which he declared his dissent from the report of the committee on that
subject. After examining their proceedings with minuteness and searching
severity, he asserted that they were without authority, and in flagrant
violation of the rights of the bank, and of the principles on which the
freedom of this people had been founded.

In February, 1832, Mr. Adams delivered a speech on the ratio of
representation--on the duty of making the constituent body small, and
the representatives numerous; contending that a large representation and
a small constituency was a truly republican principle, and illustrating
it from history, and from its tendency to give the distinguished men of
the different states opportunities to become acquainted with each other.

In July ensuing, a vote censuring a member for words spoken in debate
being on its passage in the House, Mr. Adams, when the roll was called,
and his name announced, rose with characteristic spirit, and delivered
a paper to the clerk, which contained the following words: "I ask to be
excused from voting on the resolution, believing it to be unconstitutional,
inasmuch as it assumes inferences of fact from words spoken by the
member, without giving the words themselves, and the fact not being
warranted, in my judgment, by the words he did use." A majority of the
house, being disposed to put down, and, if possible, disgrace Mr.
Adams, refused to excuse him. On his name being called, he again
declined voting, and stated that he did not refuse to vote from any
contumacy or disrespect to the house, but because he had a right to
decline from conscientious motives, and that he desired to place his
reasons for declining upon the journals of the house. A member observed
that, if they put those reasons on the journal, they would spread on it
their own condemnation; adding that, by going out of the house, Mr.
Adams might easily have avoided voting. The latter replied, "I do not
choose to shrink from my duty by such an expedient. It is not my right
alone, but the rights of all the members, and of the people of the
United States, which are concerned in this question, and I cannot evade
it. I regret the state of things, but I must abide by the consequences,
whatever they may be." A motion made to reconsider the vote refusing to
excuse him was lost--yeas _fifty-nine_, nays _seventy-four_. The
Speaker then read the rule by which every member is required to vote,
and stated that it was the duty of every member to vote on one side or
the other. The question then being repeated, when the clerk called the
name of Mr. Adams, he gave no response, and remained in his seat. A
member then rose, said it was an unprecedented case, and moved two
resolutions. By the one, the facts being first stated, the course
pursued by Mr. Adams was declared "a breach of one of the rules of the
house." By the other, a committee was to be appointed for inquiring and
reporting "what course ought to be adopted in a case so novel and
important." The house then proceeded to pass the original vote of
censure on the member, without repeating the name of Mr. Adams.

The next day the vote for a committee of inquiry on the subject caused a
desultory and warm debate, during which Mr. Adams took occasion to say
that the whole affair was a subject of great mortification to him. The
proposed resolution, after naming him personally, and affirming that he
had been guilty of a breach of the rules of the house, proposed that a
committee of inquiry should be raised, to consider what was to be done
in a case so novel and important. On this resolution, which the mover
seemed to suppose would pass of course, Mr. Adams said, that he trusted
opportunity would be given him to show the reasons which had prevented
him from voting. Mr. Everett, of Massachusetts, then remonstrated with
the majority of the house for attempting thus to censure a man, such as
they knew Mr. Adams to be, than whom he was confident the whole house
would bear him witness that there was not an individual on that floor
more regular, more assiduous, or more laborious, in the discharge of his
public duty. A motion was then made to lay the resolution on the table,
which prevailed--yeas _eighty-nine_, nays _sixty-three_.

Thus ended a debate which severely tested the firmness of the spirit of
Mr. Adams. Neither seduced by the number nor quailing under the threats
and violence of his assailants, he maintained the rights of his public
station, and with silent dignity set at defiance their overbearing
attempts to terrify, until they abandoned their purpose in despair, awed
by the majestic power of principle.

In December, 1832, when the South Carolina state convention was opposing
the revenue laws with great violence, accompanied with threats of
disunion, President Jackson, in his message to Congress, recommended a
reduction of the revenue, and a qualified abandonment of the system of
protection; and also that the public lands be no longer regarded as a
source of revenue, and that they be sold to actual settlers at a price
merely sufficient to reimburse actual expenses and the costs arising
under Indian compacts. "In this message," said Mr. Adams, "Jackson has
cast away all the neutrality he heretofore maintained upon the
conflicting opinions and interests of the different sections of the
country, and surrenders the whole Union to the nullifiers of the South
and the land speculators of the West. This I predicted nearly two years
since, in a letter to Peter B. Porter."

In January, 1833, with regard to a member friendly to modifying the
tariff according to the Southern policy, and who professed himself a
radical, Mr. Adams remarked: "He has all the contracted prejudices of
that political sect; his whole system of government is comprised in the
maxim of leaving money in the pockets of the people. This is always the
high road to popularity, and it is always travelled by those who have
not resolution, intelligence, and energy, to attempt the exploration of
any other."

On January 16th, 1833, President Jackson communicated, in a message, the
ordinance of the convention of South Carolina nullifying the acts of
Congress laying duties on the importation of foreign commodities, with
the counteracting measures he proposed to pursue. On the 4th of
February, on a bill for a modification of the tariff, Mr. Adams moved to
strike out the enacting clause, thereby destroying the bill. In a speech
characterized by the fearless spirit by which he was actuated, he
declared his opinion that neither the bill then in discussion nor any
other on the subject of the tariff ought to pass, until it was "known
whether there was any measure by which a state could defeat the laws of
the Union." The ordinance of South Carolina had been called a "pacific
measure." It was just as much so as placing a pistol at the breast of a
traveller and demanding his money was pacific. Until that weapon was
removed there ought to be no modification of the tariff. Mr. Adams then
entered at large into the duty of government to protect all the great
interests of the citizens. But protection might be extended in different
forms to different interests. The complaint was, that government took
money out of the pockets of one portion of the community, to give it to
another. In extending protection this must always be more or less the
case. But, then, while the rights of one party were protected in this
way, the rights of the other party were protected equally in another
way. This he proceeded to illustrate. In the southern and southwestern
parts of this Union there existed a certain interest, which he need not
more particularly designate, which enjoyed, under the constitution and
laws of the United States, an especial protection peculiar to itself. It
was first protected by representation. There were on that floor upwards
of twenty members who represented what in other states had no
representation at all. It was not three days since a gentleman from
Georgia said that the species of property now alluded to was "the
machinery of the South." Now, that machinery had twenty odd
representatives in that hall; representatives elected, not by that
machinery, but by those who owned it. Was there such representation in
any other portion of the Union? That machinery had ever been to the
South, in fact, the ruling power of this government. Was this not
protection? This very protection had taken millions and millions of
money from the free laboring population of this country, and put it into
the pockets of the owners of Southern machinery. He did not complain of
this. He did not say that it was not all right. What he said was, that
the South possessed a great interest protected by the constitution of
the United States. He was for adhering to the bargain; but he did not
wish to be understood as saying that he would agree to it if the bargain
was now to be made over again.

This interest was protected by another provision in the constitution of
the United States, by which "no person held to service or labor in one
state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in
consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such
service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to
whom such service or labor may be due." What was this but protection to
this machinery of the South? And let it be observed that a provision
like this ran counter to all the tenor of legislation in the free
states. It was contrary to all the notions and feelings of the people of
the North to deliver a man up to any foreign authority, unless he had
been guilty of some crime; and, but for such a clause in the compact, a
Southern gentleman, who had lost an article of his machinery, would
never recover him back from the free states.

The constitution contained another clause guaranteeing protection to the
same interest. It guaranteed to every state in the Union a republican
form of government, protection against invasion, and, on the application
of the Legislature or Executive of any state, furnished them with
protection against domestic violence. Now, everybody knew that where
this machinery existed the state was more liable to domestic violence
than elsewhere, because that machinery sometimes exerted a self-moving
power. The call for this protection had very recently been made, and it
had been answered, and the power of the Union had been exerted to insure
the owners of this machinery from domestic violence.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29