Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams Part 7

A more full, direct, and conclusive contradiction of every fact a.s.serted by General Jackson is impossible. Yet it had no effect upon his prospects or policy. His partisans continued to propagate the calumny, and profess their belief in it; and he gave encouragement to this course by maintaining a scrupulous silence on Mr. Buchanan's contradiction. Mr.

Clay, speaking on this point, observed: "After Mr. Buchanan's statement appeared, there were many persons who believed that General Jackson's magnanimity would immediately prompt him to retract his charge. I did not partic.i.p.ate in that just expectation, and therefore felt no disappointment that it was not realized."[8]

[8] _Niles' Register_, vol. x.x.xIII., p. 297.

The calumny had done its work. It had been, for more than two years, cankering the public mind. General Jackson realized that it was an efficient means of victory, and was not disposed to diminish its power.

His partisans, as Mr. Adams antic.i.p.ated, had "surrendered themselves to their pa.s.sions, and believed, without evidence and against evidence, as suited their own wishes."

The inveteracy of opposition to the administration of Mr. Adams was systematic, violent, and unprincipled. Party spirit determined that it should be prostrated. It was stated publicly that "a highly-respected member of Congress, of General Jackson's party, had declared that it was to be put down though it be as pure as the angels which stand at the right hand of the throne of G.o.d." No respect was paid, no regard had, for either faithful services or acknowledged integrity. An administration conducted on the most elevated and consistent principles, as far above party and selfish motives as it is possible for human beings to attain, was destined to be sacrificed. General Jackson entered upon his civil career in the spirit of a military chieftain. He knew well how to collect round his standard those intriguers in the free states who were content to adopt his badge, and ride into power in his train. Of the slave states he was sure, from both affinity and policy.

Mr. Clay, in his address to the public in December, 1827, thus represents the spirit of General Jackson's party at that period:[9] "The rancor of party spirit spares nothing. It penetrates and pervades everywhere. It does not scruple to violate the sanct.i.ty of social and private intercourse. It subst.i.tutes for facts dark surmises and malevolent insinuations. It misrepresents, and holds up in false and insidious lights, incidents perfectly harmless in themselves, of ordinary occurrence, or of mere common civility."

[9] _Niles' Register_, vol. x.x.xIII., p. 303.

During these agitations Mr. Adams was diligently watching over the great interests of the country, and a.s.siduously fulfilling the duties of his station, and no further interesting himself in the struggles of party than when compelled to notice them by their virulence, or by the earnestness of political friends. A member of the Senate having asked him how the interdiction of commerce by our vessels with the British colonies could be counteracted, "My opinion is," he replied, "that there should be an act of Congress totally interdicting the trade with all her colonies, both in the West Indies and North America; but the same act should provide for reopening the trade, upon terms of reciprocity, whenever Great Britain should be disposed to a.s.sent to them."

Early in 1828 Mr. Adams was informed that the question of Free-masonry was the conclusive criterion on which the elections in the western parts of the State of New York would turn; and that it was industriously circulated that he was a Free-mason. If the a.s.sertion was denied, offers had been made to produce extracts from the books of the lodge to which he belonged. He was, therefore, requested publicly to deny being a Mason. He replied, that he was not, and never had been, a Free-mason; but that, if he should publicly deny it, he would not be surprised if a forged extract from some imaginary lodge should be produced to counteract his statement. Such are the morals of electioneering!

On the subject of the Indians in the State of Georgia Mr. Adams said: "Our engagements with them and among ourselves, in relation to the lands lying within that state, are inconsistent. We have contracted with the State of Georgia to extinguish the t.i.tle to the Indian lands lying within that state, and at the same time have stipulated with the Creeks and Cherokees that they should hold their lands forever. We have talked about benevolence and humanity, and preached them into civilization; but none of this benevolence is felt when the rights of the Indians come into collision with the interests of the white man.

The Cherokees have now been making a written const.i.tution; but this _imperium in imperio_ is impracticable; and, in the instance of the New York Indians removed to Green Bay, and of the Cherokees removed to the Territory of Arkansas, we have scarce given them time to build their wigwams before we are called upon by our own people to drive them out again. My own opinion is that the most benevolent course towards them would be to give them the rights and subject them to the duties of citizens, as a part of our own people. But even this the people of the states within which they are situated would not permit."

In January, 1828, Mr. Adams received a letter from his friends in Pennsylvania, proposing a subscription for the purchase and setting up a German newspaper in support of the administration, and inquiring if he would permit his son, John Adams, to contribute to that object. He replied that, on full consideration of the transaction, he deemed it his duty to decline; that how far the employment of money to promote the success of the election might be proper in others, it was not for him to determine; he could only lament the necessity, if it existed; but to apply money himself for the promotion of his own election he thought incorrect in principle, and had invariably avoided it. He knew that others were less scrupulous, and that it had been done by one individual to the pecuniary embarra.s.sment of his whole life. He had been solicited to adopt a like course, but had uniformly declined, not from pecuniary considerations, but because he could not approve of the thing.

In January, 1828, Mr. Floyd, of Virginia, who had taken upon himself the inglorious office of hunting up and disseminating malign aspersions against President Adams, brought before the House of Representatives statements concerning his accounts, which had been long before settled at the treasury of the United States; and, after recapitulating the number of the public offices he had held, and swelling to the utmost the amount he had received out of the public treasury, terminated his censorious attack with the mean sneer that he did not complain, since every man should make his own living, if he can. To this, Mr. Everett, of Ma.s.sachusetts, replied, with truth and dignity, that whatever Mr.

Adams had received, be it great or small, was sanctioned by other administrations, with which Mr. Adams had nothing to do, either in establis.h.i.+ng the office fixing the compensations, or seeking the employment. For a third of a century pa.s.sed in the service of his country, neither he, nor his friends for him, with his knowledge nor without his knowledge, ever solicited any public office or employment; and that, taking into consideration the number of years pa.s.sed by him in the public service, and the variety and importance of the missions with which he had been intrusted in whole or in part, no foreign minister had ever received less than Mr. Adams, while many have received more. These statements he supported by many minute, accurate, and unanswerable details. In a like spirit Mr. Sargent, of Philadelphia, reprobated and refuted the calumnies uttered against the administration relative to these accounts.

In January, 1828, Mr. Chilton, of Kentucky, introduced a resolution into the House of Representatives, declaring the necessity of retrenchments, to save money and pay off the national debt; and proposing reductions not only in executive contingencies, but also in those of the two houses. This movement disconcerted the party to which Mr. Chilton belonged. They were disposed to point the battery against the administration, but charges of abusive applications of the public moneys by the past as well as the present administration, and both houses of Congress, did not suit party purposes. Randolph, of Virginia, Ingham, of Pennsylvania, and McDuffie, of South Carolina, accordingly strove, by amendments, to narrow down the discussion so as to make it bear upon Mr.

Adams or Mr. Clay, and to give countenance to every slander with which the newspapers were teeming against them, but deprecating all general investigations.

Being repeatedly asked concerning his rule of conduct relative to appointments to office, Mr. Adams answered: "My system has been, and continues to be, to nominate for reappointment all officers, for a term of years, whose commissions expire, unless official or moral misconduct is charged and substantiated against them. This does not suit the Falstaff friends 'who follow for the reward;' and I am importuned to serve my friends, and reproached for neglecting them, because I will not dismiss, or drop from executive favor, officers faithful and able, because they are my political opponents, to provide for my own partisans. This I will not do."

In February, 1828, Mr. Wright, of Ohio, defended Mr. Adams and his administration, on the subject of his votes in the Senate on the acquisition of Louisiana, on the Mississippi and fishery question at Ghent, on an expression in his message to Congress in December, 1825, and other charges and falsehoods which the friends of General Jackson were publis.h.i.+ng against him in newspapers, handbills, and stump speeches, throughout the Union.

Mr. Adams was earnestly entreated by his friends to reply to a pamphlet by Samuel D. Ingham, of which many thousands had been franked by members of Congress to their const.i.tuents. He refused to do it, saying, "The slanders and falsehoods of that pamphlet have already been abundantly refuted in the speeches of Jonathan Roberts, Edward Everett, and John C.

Wright."

In the committee on retrenchments, Mr. Wickliffe and Mr. Ingham were extremely busy in search of charges against the administration, and a.s.serted that there was a large item of secret services, vouched only by the certificate of Mr. Adams. A member of Congress informed him of their proceedings, and asked, if there should be any clamorers on that subject, whether he would have any objection to make a communication with regard to it. Mr. Adams replied: "Certainly. The secret was enjoined on me by the const.i.tution and the law, and I shall not divulge it. It might be alleged as probable--and such was the fact--that, although the accounts had been but lately settled, the expenditures had been incurred and the payment authorized by the direction of the late President Monroe."

As the electioneering struggle was progressing, Mr. Adams, being asked to advance money in aid of his own election, replied: "The Presidency of the United States is not an office to be either sought or declined. To pay money for securing it is, in my opinion, incorrect in principle. The practices of all parties are tending to render elections altogether venal, and I am not disposed to countenance them."

On the subject of personal interviews with the President, he thus expressed himself: "I have never denied access to me as President to any one, of any color; and, in my opinion of the duties of that office, it never ought to be denied. Place-hunters are not pleasant visitors, or correspondents, and they consume an enormous disproportion of time. To this personal importunity the President ought not to be subjected; but it is, perhaps, not possible to relieve him from it, without excluding him from interviews with the people more, perhaps, than comports with the nature of our inst.i.tutions."

In Kentucky the Senate of the state const.i.tuted itself into an inquisition on a charge against Mr. Adams of corruption, sent for persons and papers, and invited _ex parte_ depositions and garbled statements, where the parties inculpated had no opportunity of being heard, and where the testimony given and the testimony suppressed were alike adapted to promote groundless slanders.

In South Carolina movements were made towards civil war and the dissolution of the Union, for the purpose of carrying the election by intimidation, or, if they should fail in that, of laying the foundation of a future forcible resistance, to break down or overawe the administration after the event.

Evidences of the vehement party war stimulated and personally waged by General Jackson against Mr. Adams might be easily multiplied; but enough has been stated to vindicate the character of his administration and the judgment of Henry Clay. By daring to exercise his const.i.tutional rights, by taking the responsibility of preferring Mr. Adams to General Jackson, Mr. Clay postponed for four years an administration characteristic of its leader, violent, intriguing, headstrong, and corrupt. After the pa.s.sions and interests of the present day have pa.s.sed away, his vote on that occasion will be regarded by posterity as his choicest and purest t.i.tle to their remembrance.

To aid the adversaries of Mr. Adams, and to awaken against him in the Northern States, where his strength lay, the dormant pa.s.sions of former times, the name and influence of Mr. Jefferson were brought into the field. In December, 1825, a letter had been drawn from him, by William B. Giles, a devoted partisan of Jackson, and given to the public with appropriate commentaries and asperities. In this letter Mr. Jefferson, after acknowledging that "his memory was so broken, or gone, as to be almost a blank," undertook to relate a conversation he had with Mr.

Adams in 1808, and connected it with facts with which it had no relation, and which occurred several years afterwards, while Mr. Adams was in Europe. These mistakes, in the opinion of Mr. Adams, required explanations. He, therefore, gave a full statement of the facts, so far as he was concerned, and of the communications he had made in 1808 to Mr. Jefferson. These explanations had the tendency which Mr. Giles and the authors of the scheme intended; but the controversies which ensued are not within the scope of this memoir. Feelings and pa.s.sions, which had slept for almost twenty years, were awakened. Correspondences ensued, in which the policy and events of a former period were discussed with earnestness and warmth. But the ultimate object, for which the broken and incoherent recollections of Mr. Jefferson's old age were brought before the public, was not attained. Those who differed from the opinions of Mr. Adams, and had condemned his political course in former times, although their sentiments remained unchanged, were satisfied with the principles and ability he evinced in his present high station, and indicated no inclination to aid the projects of his opponents. The embers of former animosity were indeed uncovered, but in the Eastern States, where the friends of Mr. Adams were most numerous, no disposition was evinced to favor the elevation of General Jackson to the Presidency.

In other sections of the Union a combination of influences tended to defeat the reelection of Mr. Adams. In Virginia William B. Giles engaged in giving publicity to violent and inflammatory papers against his administration; Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri, strenuously endeavored to destroy his popularity in the West; while Martin Van Buren, the leader of the party which then controlled New York, also devoted his efforts to secure Jackson's ascendency.

When Mr. Adams was informed that Mr. Clay's final and full vindication of himself against the aspersions of General Jackson had appeared from the press, he said: "It is unnecessary. Enough has already been said to put down that infamous slander, which has been more than once publicly branded as falsehood. The conspiracy will, however, probably succeed.

When suspicions have been kindled into popular delusion, truth, reason, and justice, speak to the ears of adders. The sacrifice must be consummated. There will then be a reaction in public opinion. It may not be rapid, but it will be certain."

By one of those party arrangements which ever have shaped, and to human view forever will decide, the destinies of this republic,--a coalition being effected between the leading influences of the slave states and those of New York and Pennsylvania,--Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun, both slaveholders, were respectively elected President and Vice-President of the United States.

CHAPTER VIII.

PURSUITS OF MR. ADAMS IN RETIREMENT.--ELECTED TO CONGRESS.--PARTIES AND THEIR PROCEEDINGS.--HIS COURSE IN RESPECT OF THEM.--HIS OWN ADMINISTRATION AND THAT OF HIS SUCCESSOR COMPARED.--REPORT ON MANUFACTURES AND THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.--REFUSAL TO VOTE, AND CONSEQUENT PROCEEDINGS.--SPEECH AND REPORT ON THE MODIFICATION OF THE TARIFF AND SOUTH CAROLINA NULLIFICATION.

On the 4th of March, 1829, Andrew Jackson was inaugurated President of the United States, and Mr. Adams retired, as he then thought forever, from public life. His active, energetic spirit required neither indulgence nor rest, and he immediately directed his attention to those philosophical, literary, and religious researches, in which he took unceasing delight. The works of Cicero became the object of study, a.n.a.lysis, and criticism. Commentaries on that master-mind of antiquity were among his daily labors. The translation of the Psalms of David into English verse was a frequent exercise; and his study of the Scriptures was accompanied by critical remarks, pursued in the spirit of free inquiry, chastened by a solemn reference to their origin, and influence on the conduct and hopes of human life. His favorite science, astronomy, led to the frequent observation of the planets and stars; and his attention was also turned to agriculture and horticulture. He collected and planted the seeds of forest trees, and kept a record of their development, and, in the summer season, labored two or three hours daily in his garden. With these pursuits were combined sketches preparatory to a full biography of his father, which he then contemplated as one of his chief future employments.

From the subjects to which the labors of his life had been princ.i.p.ally devoted his thoughts could not be wholly withdrawn. As early as the 27th of April, 1829, a citizen of Was.h.i.+ngton spoke to him with great severity on the condition of public affairs, and of the scandals in circulation concerning them; stating that removals from office were continuing with great perseverance; that the custom-houses in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Portsmouth in New Hamps.h.i.+re, and New Orleans, had been swept clear; that violent partisans of Jackson were exclusively appointed, and that every editor of a scurrilous newspaper had been provided for.

Again, in June of the same year Mr. Adams wrote: "Mr. Van Buren is now Secretary of State. He is the manager by whom the present administration has been brought into power. He has played over again the game of Aaron Burr in 1800, with the addition of political inconsistency, in transferring his allegiance from Crawford to Jackson. He sold the State of New York to them both. The first bargain failed by the result of the choice of electors in the Legislature. The second was barely accomplished by the system of party management established in that state; and Van Buren is now enjoying his reward."

On the abolition of slavery, Mr. Adams observed: "It is the only part of European democracy which will find no favor in the United States. It may aggravate the condition of slaves in the South, but the result of the Missouri question, and the att.i.tude of parties, have silenced most of the declaimers on that subject. This state of things is not to continue forever. It is possible that the danger of the abolition doctrines, when brought home to Southern statesmen, may teach them the value of the Union, as the only thing which can maintain their system of slavery."

On the course and feelings of Mr. Jefferson on this subject, Mr. Adams thus expressed himself: "His love of liberty was sincere and ardent, but confined to himself, like that of most of his fellow-slaveholders. He was above that execrable sophistry of the South Carolina nullifiers, which would make of slavery the corner-stone of the temple of liberty.

He saw the gross inconsistency between the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the fact of negro slavery; and he could not, or would not, prost.i.tute the faculties of his mind to the vindication of that slavery, which, from his soul, he abhorred. But Jefferson had not the spirit of martyrdom. He would have introduced a flaming denunciation of slavery into the Declaration of Independence, but the discretion of his colleagues struck it out. He did insert a most eloquent and impa.s.sioned argument against it in his Notes on Virginia; but, on that very account, the book was published almost against his will. He projected a plan of a general emanc.i.p.ation, in his revision of the Virginia laws, but finally presented a plan leaving slavery precisely where it was; and, in his Memoir, he leaves a posthumous warning to the planters that they must, at no distant day, emanc.i.p.ate their slaves, or that worse will follow; but he withheld the publication of his prophecy till he should himself be in the grave."

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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Ma.s.sachusetts.

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 Was.h.i.+ngton. By extending the laws of Georgia over the country and people of the Cherokees, the const.i.tution, 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 pa.s.s resolutions that they will not appear to answer before the Supreme Court of the United States. The const.i.tution, 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 ill.u.s.trate, and thus to apply: "This political sophism of ident.i.ty 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 unconst.i.tutional.

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 const.i.tuents 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 grat.i.tude, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pet.i.tions 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 Const.i.tuents, 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 doc.u.ments 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 friends.h.i.+p 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.