John Quincy Adams

by James Traub

  In the early fall of 1834, the elder Adamses received alarming letters from Louisa’s sister Carolina, who was caring for John. Adams raced to Washington, arriving in only two days. When he burst into John’s house on Lafayette Place at ten in the evening, Carolina begged him not to go into his son’s bedchamber. The distracted father agreed, but then changed his mind, went in, and found his son insensate. He emerged to see Mary, who burst into tears. Adams promised that he would become a father to her and the three children. At four thirty the next morning John died, of causes the family doctor could not diagnose. That morning, Adams wrote to Charles with the news. He asked his son to use his judgment as to when and how to break the tidings to Louisa. After receiving a letter she had written to John that afternoon, he decided to write to her directly, saying that if John could have spoken, he would “join with your disconsolate husband, and remaining son, entreating you to preserve yourself for their sakes.”

  Louisa had been taking opium to quiet her “half-distracted mind.” When she learned of John’s death, she could not bring herself to write to her husband, though she did send a short note to Mary asking her to move up to Quincy with the children. Mary was herself very ill and would not leave the house, which only added to Adams’ anxiety and woe. He wrote a note for Fanny, age four, begging her grandmother to come to Washington with sister Louisa. She did come in mid-November and began nurturing her haggard husband. She wrote to Charles that she was overcome by the sense of John’s presence everywhere in the house. She had hoped to rent a place in Georgetown, but that, her husband had said, was beyond their means.

  Their means, in fact, were now in serious jeopardy. John had left behind him a financial mess far more serious than George had. The Columbia Mills had failed. Since Adams had cosigned the loans, he and John’s estate were now jointly liable for $9,000 in bank debt. John had taken out a $2,200 loan from a friend and $800 from his father’s former servant, Antoine Giusta, and owed another $3,000 to his servants as well as to his tailor, his butcher, his druggist, and virtually everyone else he dealt with. Adams spent his first week in Washington tallying up the sums. Charles worried that the debts would crush his father, spiritually as well as financially. Adams wrote back to say, as his mother once had in the face of economic failure, “I know of no personal sacrifice that I shall not be ready cheerfully to make.”

  Adams could count on only about $1,500 from his congressional pay and the rent of his properties. He badgered a Mr. Sherman of Frederick, Maryland, for dividends from $500 worth of stock John had purchased in the man’s hotel. He went out to the mill, where he found everything in disrepair and disuse. John had leased the operation to a tenant for $500 a year, but the man insisted that John had agreed not to collect the sum. He had neither wheat nor flour. Adams left empty-handed. Taking charge of the household, Adams embarked on a campaign of ruthless economy. He dismissed unnecessary servants, walked rather than rode back and forth to the Capitol, and sold or gave away the family’s horses and cows. He refused to sell the house; Mary would need the income from rent if and when she moved to Quincy. Instead, he put his three houses in Washington on the market (they didn’t even draw an offer) and instructed Charles to sell much of his stock and, if possible, the family house on Hancock Street. By the end of the year, the ever-efficient Charles was able to write to say that he had deposited $10,000 into his father’s account. It was desperate, exhausting, and deeply demoralizing work for a man of sixty-seven. Adams barely slept. “I shall not,” he confessed to his old friend Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, “attempt the deception of attenuating the severity of the calamity which has befallen me.”

  In late November, he brought little Louisa and Fanny to Orphan’s Court, where he became their legal guardian. He had now added John’s family to the ever-growing circle of his dependents.

  ANDREW JACKSON’S UNPRECEDENTED ASSERTION OF EXECUTIVE power had offered the perfect organizing principle to his opponents. Over the last two decades, first the Republicans and then the Democrats had ruled without an organized opposition party; already the Anti-Masons were on the wane. Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, who differed profoundly among themselves on a wide range of issues, had been drawn together by Jackson’s defiance of Congress. Soon after the climactic vote of censure, Clay had given a speech in which he drew an analogy to the Tories and Whigs of Georgian England, the one endorsing an extensive monarchical power, the other seeking to rein it in. The plain implication, of course, was that Andrew Jackson was ruling as an autocratic king. His opponents, defending republicanism, were Whigs. The name proved so popular that it was in widespread use by the summer of 1834, though the Whigs never succeeded in making the Tory label stick to the Democrats.

  That fall, Adams had run, and won, on the Whig and the Anti-Mason tickets. Adams was, of course, a man of no party, as he invariably called himself. He had ended his active involvement with political Anti-Masonry when he concluded that the party could agree on few principles beyond the need to abolish Masonry. He found much the same problem with the Whigs. In early 1835, he wrote to his friend John Bailey that the only principle of Whiggism is “stripping the Executive of his lawful power. . . . It is not and cannot be a principle of Administration.” In fact, Whiggism proved a far more durable political force than Anti-Masonry and ultimately came to be identified with the activist vision of government Adams himself had long championed, as well as with his own deep belief that politics should seek to improve the moral conduct of citizens. In this formative moment, however, Adams stood apart from the Whigs’ campaign to curb Jackson’s power. He allied himself neither with the party in power nor with the opposition. For this reason, Adams could do little to shape legislation during this period. He was often a solitary voice, as he had been so many times before.

  In the 1834 elections Jackson maintained his majority in the House, but the Whigs gained control of the Senate. The party’s leaders, now known as the Triumvirate, looked for an issue they could use to dramatize the Whig critique of an overweening executive. A president like Jackson would never be long in gratifying such a wish: in his annual message, Jackson asked Congress to permit him to “make reprisals upon French property” should the government of France fail to pay 25 million francs, or about $5 million, which the French had agreed to pay in reparations for damage from the Napoleonic wars. Despite signing a treaty to that effect, France had balked for the last two years and seemed to be in no hurry to make good its pledge. That was unacceptable. At the same time, the hot-blooded Jackson appeared to be spoiling for a fight at a time when Americans were enjoying a long era of peace.

  Clay, now the political master of the Senate, introduced a resolution declining to make any demands of France. The resolution passed in mid-January. Adams considered this a terrible mistake—not because he favored aggressive measures against France, but because his spirit rose in the face of any attempt to conciliate European rivals through acts of deference. Adams began calling for the House to take up the issue. In a speech in early February, Adams rallied to the president’s side in a way that must have startled some of his colleagues. Even those who considered Jackson’s request in his message to Congress “imprudent,” he asserted, “must nevertheless applaud its spirit.” The president had told the world “what the interest, the rights, and the honour of the nation would require.” Was the House unwilling to do the same? Would it show to the world, and to France, that the president did not enjoy the support of his own legislative branch? The Senate, he said, had deliberated on the matter—“and their deliberations had concluded in a decision to dodge the question.”

  Speaker John Bell of Tennessee curtly reminded Adams that “it was not permitted to speak disrespectfully of any act of the other branch of the Legislature.” Adams thereafter referred to the Senate with the elaborate circumlocution of a schoolboy forbidden to say a naughty word. He reported gleefully to Charles that his speech had shocked Clay, Webster, and Calhoun and “electrified” the administration. The fact that he was doing seri
ous damage to his Whig bona fides in no way diminished the deep sense of satisfaction Adams felt in forcing the House to take up what he considered a matter of national security.

  In late February the Foreign Affairs Committee issued a report proposing a series of mild-mannered resolutions. Adams wanted stronger language stipulating that the right of American citizens to be indemnified as the treaty stipulated “ought to be in no way sacrificed, abandoned, or impaired.” Adams now proceeded to fight furiously for his language in the face of efforts to water it down. Congress would be adjourning March 3. On the second Adams delivered a long, impassioned speech accusing France of grossly neglecting its treaty obligations. The president, he said, was wrong to have foreclosed the possibility of negotiations. But his own colleagues in the House—he named names—had shown a craven willingness to appease the French, who would respond only to a show of unity and resolution from the United States. (He had said no less in the face of possible war with France almost forty years earlier.)

  The debate raged on, with one proposed resolution after another failing. Finally Adams agreed to accept compromise language stating that the treaty “should be maintained, and its execution insisted on.” After thirteen hours of debate, the measure passed 210–0. Adams was elated. He wrote to many of his friends telling them of his smashing victory and of the applause that rained down from the gallery. To Charles he wrote, “I will not attempt to describe my feelings. You cannot perhaps conceive them. It was one of those moments that compensate for a lifetime of suffering.”

  This was a man who had been secretary of state and president of the United States. Yet he was euphoric over a vote on a resolution that could have only the most marginal effect on events. What moved him so deeply was the applause, the earnest handshakes from colleagues, the sense of having brought his colleagues around. Clay had done as much, he conceded, but never against such odds. Clay was a natural leader of men. Adams was not; he was a solitary man who had learned to pay the terrible price of the lonely stand. Perhaps no one else could have felt such vindication at the discovery that he had the power to bring other men along. Adams’ joy was a measure of the depth of his self-imposed isolation.

  The Triumvirate still had other darts to fire at the Jackson administration. In January 1835, at almost the exact moment when the Senate passed its resolution rebuking Jackson on France, Calhoun proposed that the chamber establish a committee to investigate the administration’s abuse of patronage and propose a remedy for it. This was quite an irony, since Jackson himself had ridden to power in 1828 on a tide of similar allegations against the Adams administration, in which Calhoun of course had served. Patronage, however, was central to the Jacksonian Revolution, with its low regard for the state and its high regard for the ordinary citizen. Jackson’s belief that any man could perform a government job coincided perfectly with the political self-interest of rewarding members of the new Democratic Party with civil service plums.

  Under the guidance of the Triumvirate, the Senate voted to repeal an 1820 law that limited the terms of many federal officers to four years, thus permitting each new administration to fill the ranks with its own men. Adams, who as president had exercised as little patronage as humanly possible, nevertheless believed that the executive had the constitutional right to fill such positions as he wished. He also viewed the legislation as a transparent attempt to clip Jackson’s wings by three men who aspired to replace him. After the bill passed the Senate, in late February, Adams began drawing up a speech that, perhaps fortunately, he did not have the chance to deliver before the session ended. He described the measure as a pernicious encroachment of the legislature on the executive, adding that, far from diminishing patronage, it would open the doors to “every drunkard and driveler in his dotage, and every idler turning his office into a sinecure.” The bill pandered to popular prejudice. It was not President Jackson but his Whig opponents who posed the gravest danger: “The Ark of our God”—the Constitution—“is falling into the hands of the Philistines.”

  By now Adams was utterly disgusted with the Whig leadership and above all with Webster, who, as he saw it, had betrayed his principles out of ambition. To Charles he ridiculed the great orator as “a residuary legatee of the old Federalists, and possessed of no principle less elastic than India rubber.” He had already lost faith in Clay, who had abandoned the American System in his tariff compromise. He had, in fact, weighed all the Whig leaders and found them wanting. In a letter to John Bailey, he declared that not one of them “manifests the slightest attachment to the promotion of the general welfare,” which had been “the great principle of my Administration.” In his Puritan wrath, Adams cast three of the greatest men of his generation into the fiery pit.

  Perhaps had Adams been able to admit to himself that he, too, was an ambitious man, he might not have so bitterly resented ambition in others. A story planted in the pro-Whig Baltimore Patriot suggested that the Whigs hoped to install Adams in a vacant Senate seat and then nominate him as their candidate in 1836. Adams inhaled the fumes of glory as he had in 1832. He believed that Webster was quietly contriving against him, advancing Governor John Davis for the Senate slot. Adams may have been right, at least about the Senate seat. According to an excited letter from one of his lieutenants, Benjamin Hallet, the state senate, which recommended to the assembly candidates for the US Senate, had voted for Adams. Hallet congratulated him on his new position. But it was premature: Whigs in the House went more heavily for Davis, who prevailed in a close vote. A member of the state’s congressional delegation told Adams that Webster had advised his friends to vote for Davis.

  Adams would have welcomed a move to the Senate, not only the more distinguished chamber but the one that in recent years had hosted every great issue and every great debate. But he was enjoying the benefits of his nonpartisan status in the House. He had been chosen by the Jackson administration to deliver a eulogy on General Lafayette, and his address, which lasted almost three hours, had been greeted with widespread acclaim. Adams received as many letters asking for copies of the eulogy as he had for the speech on bank deposits. He had been chosen as well to adjudicate a ticklish border dispute between Ohio and the Michigan Territory. And in the debate over France he had recorded, as he wrote to Charles in all seriousness, “a triumph unparalleled in the history of our country.” An inner voice told him that he should retire now, but he would not listen to it. His string of successes, he thought, “will open to me, a career of action, more conspicuous and more perilous, than any that I have gone through.”

  Charles did not return these volleys, which arrived almost every other day in the first half of April. Finally, at the end of the month, he wrote to say that he had been rereading and pondering the letters, with their fierce passions and their obsessive recounting of legislative drama. He repeated a belief he had long expressed to his father, that the only real motive for public service was self-interest. “I am aware,” he wrote, “that you individually plead for higher motives and feelings than you give credit for to anybody else.” This was a stingingly accurate observation that no one save Charles would have had the courage to fling in the old man’s face. Charles himself could not accept the “self-degradation,” the sacrifice of personal independence, required for a life in politics. He wished neither power nor wealth. Rather, he would master those raging appetites and “say with the poet, ‘My mind a kingdom is’.” Could you, he asked, “say that by the votes of 210?”

  Adams responded with perfect equanimity. He depended on Charles for help and for judgment. He knew, as well, that Charles spoke out of love, even if Adams could never have dreamed of uttering such reproaches to his own father. “If I have misused my time and talents by devoting myself to public service,” he mused, “my career cannot continue much longer for good or evil.” But Adams’ feelings soon rose to the surface. “I have suffered great and grievous wrongs from many,” he wrote, “and it has been my aim to avoid strife and contention whenever it was possible.” Adams’
adversaries, and even his friends, might have gaped at such a claim. More defensibly, he wrote that he had been as honest as any man to have served as president. “For all this I may not obtain credit even from my family,” he added. “It is nevertheless true.”

  Adams no longer wondered about his future. He would fight for his principles so long as he lived and so long as the people of the Plymouth District returned him to office.

  CHAPTER 31

  Am I Gagged?

  (1835–1836)

  ON DECEMBER 18, 1835, AT THE OUTSET OF A NEW LEGISLATIVE session, William Jackson, a representative from Massachusetts, introduced a petition from his constituents asking Congress to prohibit slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. The First Amendment to the Constitution forbade Congress from abridging the right of the people “to petition the Government for a redress of grievance,” and in this era, before the advent of lobbyists and advocacy organizations and orchestrated letter-writing campaigns, citizens routinely submitted petitions to Congress, whether to receive benefits like pensions or the repair of roadways, or to influence the legislative process. The request to end slavery in the district that Jackson offered now, and that Adams had offered when he first took office, represented a nascent trend in public opinion.

  In 1833, abolitionists had founded the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York. Local branches of the society soon sprang up throughout the free states, especially in the northeast. During the summer of 1835, the organization had begun a campaign to flood the South with pamphlets—hundred of thousands of pamphlets—denouncing slavery. The South had reacted with fury. Postmasters refused to deliver the literature; justices of the peace authorized officers of the law to burn the documents and arrest those who sought to distribute them. Representatives of the slave states in Congress no longer viewed the presentation of anti-slavery petitions as a harmless charade. James Henry Hammond of South Carolina proposed that the House refuse to receive Jackson’s petition or any other asking Congress to act on the subject of slavery. Congress had never prohibited petitions on any subject. Yet while Southern planters rose one after another to defend the proposal, free-state representatives remained silent. The South could not dominate public opinion, but thanks to the three-fifths compromise it could, and did, dominate the House of Representatives.