FIRST TERM OF MR. MONROE'S ADMINISTRATION.--STATE OF PARTIES.--SEMINOLE
WAR.--TAKING OF PENSACOLA.--NEGOTIATION WITH SPAIN.--PURCHASE OF THE
FLORIDAS.--COLONIZATION SOCIETY.--THE ADMISSION OF MISSOURI INTO THE
UNION.
A tedious voyage of seven weeks was beguiled by Mr. Adams with Bacon's
Novum Organum, the novels of Scott, and the game of chess, which last,
in his estimate, surpassed all other resources when at sea. On the 7th
of August he arrived at New York, with mingled emotions of gratitude for
the past, and anxious forecast of the cares and perils of the scene on
which he was about to enter. After a detention in that city by official
business, on the 18th of August he reached Quincy, Massachusetts, and
enjoyed the inexpressible happiness of again meeting his venerable
father and mother in perfect health, after an absence of eight eventful
years. In September, at Washington, he entered upon the duties of
Secretary of State.
The foreign relations of the United States were, at this period,
peaceful, except that questions concerning spoliations on American
commerce and settlement of boundaries were depending with Spain, and the
sympathy of the United States for her revolted colonies excited her
jealousy and fear, which the seizure of Amelia Island, under the real or
pretended authority of one of them, had tended greatly to increase.
Internally, the political relations of the country were in a transition
state. The chief power, which Virginia had held during three
presidencies, was now about to pass from her hands; there being no
statesman among her sons who could compete, as a candidate for the
successorship to Monroe, with the talents and popularity of rising
aspirants in other states. Her policy therefore was directed to secure,
for the next term of the presidency, a candidate friendly to the
political dogmas she cherished, and to the interests and projects of the
Southern States. The character and principles of Mr. Adams were not
adapted to become subservient to her views, and she saw with little
complacency his elevation to the office of Secretary of State, which was
in popular opinion a proximate step to the President's chair. Yet it
could not be doubted that his appointment had the assent, if not the
approbation, of Jefferson and Madison, without whose concurrence Monroe
would scarcely have ventured to raise a citizen of Massachusetts to that
station.
The prospective change, in the principles and influences of public
affairs, which the close of Mr. Monroe's term of office would effect,
elevated the hopes and awakened the activity of the partisans of
Crawford, of Georgia, Clay, of Kentucky, and De Witt Clinton, of New
York. Crawford, who had been Secretary of the Treasury under Madison,
and who was again placed in that office by Monroe, was understood to be
the favorite candidate of Virginia. Clay, one of the most talented and
popular politicians of the period, had been an active supporter of
Monroe for the presidency. His friends did not conceal their
disappointment that he was not invited to take the office of Secretary
of State; nor did he disguise his dissatisfaction at the appointment of
Mr. Adams. In New York, De Witt Clinton, in his struggles with Van Buren
for ascendency in that state, by one of those mysterious changes to
which political tempests are subject, had been at one moment cast out of
the mayoralty of the city, and at the next into the governor's chair.
His partisans, deeming his position and popularity now favorable to his
elevation to the presidency, which he had long desired and once
attempted to attain, placed him in nomination for that office.
Each of these candidates possessed great personal and local popularity,
spirit and power adapted to success, and adherents watchful and
efficient. To cope with all these rival influences, Mr. Adams had
talents, integrity, fidelity to his country, and devotion to the
fulfilment of official duty, in which he had no superior. Having been
absent eight years in foreign countries in public service, he had no
Southern or Western current in his favor; and that which set from the
North, though generally favorable, being divided, was comparatively
feeble, and rather acquiescent in his elevation than active in promoting
it.
On his appointment as Secretary of State, Mr. Adams remarked: "Whether
it is for my own good is known only to God. As yet I have far more
reason to lament than rejoice at the event; yet I feel not less my
obligation to Mr. Monroe for his confidence in me, and the duty of
personal devotion to the success of his administration which it
imposes." Before the lapse of a year that administration was assailed
in Congress and in the newspapers, and the attacks were concentrated
on Mr. Adams. The calumnies by which his father's administration had
been prostrated five-and-twenty years before were revived, and poured
out with renewed malignity. Duane, in his _Aurora_, published in
Philadelphia, and his coädjutors in other parts of the Union,
represented him as "a royalist," "an enemy to the rights of man;" as
a "friend of oligarchy;" as a "misanthrope, educated in contempt of
his fellow-men;" as "unfit to be the minister of a free and virtuous
people." Privately, and through the press, Mr. Monroe was warned that
he "was full of duplicity;" "an incubus on his prospects for the next
presidency, and on his popularity." When these calumnies were uttered,
as some of them were, in the House of Representatives, they naturally
excited the indignation of Mr. Adams, and the anxiety of his friends.
Being asked by one of them whether it would not be advisable to expose
the conduct and motives of rival statesmen, in the newspapers, he
answered explicitly in the negative, saying: "The execution of my
duties is the only answer I can give to censure. I will do absolutely
nothing to promote any pretensions my friends may think I have to the
presidency." On being told that his rivals would not be so scrupulous,
and that he would not stand on an equal footing with them, he replied:
"That is not my fault. My business is to serve the public to the best
of my abilities in the station assigned to me, and not to intrigue for
my own advancement. I never, by the most distant hint to any one,
expressed a wish for any public office, and I shall not now begin to
ask for that which, of all others, ought to be most freely and
spontaneously bestowed."
Among the difficulties incident to the office of Secretary of State,
that of making appointments was the most annoying and thankless. They
were sought with a bold and rabid pertinacity. Success was attributed to
the favor of the President; ill success, to the influence of the
Secretary. When the applicant was a relative his patronage was naturally
expected; but, with every expression of good-will, he avoided all
recommendation in such cases, saying that such claims must be presented
through other channels.
The attention of the government was early drawn to the proceedings of
the Seminole Indians, who had commenced hostilities with circumstances
of great barbarity. Orders were sent to General Jackson to repair to the
seat of war with such troops as he could collect, and the Georgia
militia, and to reduce the Indians by force, pursuing them into Florida,
if they should retreat for refuge there.
About this time the republic of Buenos Ayres sent an agent urging an
acknowledgment of their independence. Their claim was in unison with the
popular feeling in the South; but elsewhere throughout the nation public
opinion was divided, as were also the members of the President's
cabinet. Mr. Adams declared himself against such recognition, as it
would interfere with a negotiation with Spain for the purchase of the
Floridas. He urged, also, that McGregor, the adventurer, who, under a
pretence of authority from Buenos Ayres, had taken possession of Amelia
Island, should be compelled to withdraw his troops by a naval force sent
for that purpose. On this measure, also, both the nation and the cabinet
were divided. Mr. Clay, in the House of Representatives, took ground in
opposition to the policy of the administration, avowing openly his
intention of bringing forward a motion in favor of recognizing the
independence of Buenos Ayres. To control or overthrow the executive by
the weight of the House of Representatives, was apparently his object.[1]
[1] A committee appointed by the House of Representatives, on
McGregor's possession of Amelia Island, waited on Mr. Adams, and
inquired concerning the proposed proceedings of the executive,
and his powers in that respect. Mr. Adams took occasion to state
and explain to them the effects of "the _secret laws_, as they
were called, and which," he said, "were singular anomalies of our
system, having grown out of that error in our constitution which
confers upon the legislative assemblies the power of declaring
war, which, in the theory of government, according to Montesquieu
and Rousseau, is strictly an executive act. But, as we have made
it legislative, whenever secrecy is necessary for an operation
of the executive involving the question of peace and war, Congress
must pass a _secret_ law to give the President power. Now, secrecy
is contrary to one of the first principles of legislation, but the
absurdity flows from having given to Congress, instead of the
executive, the power of declaring war. Of these secret laws there
are four, and one resolution; and one of the laws, that of the 28th
of June, 1812, is so secret, that to this day it cannot be found
among the rolls of the department. Another consequence has followed
from this clumsy political machinery. The injunction of secrecy was
removed on the 6th of July, 1812, from the laws previously passed
by a vote of the House of Representatives, and yet the laws have
never been published."
In January, 1818, McGregor and his freebooters having been driven, by
the authority of the executive, from Amelia Island by the United States
troops, a question arose whether they should be withdrawn, or possession
of the island retained, subject to future negotiations with Spain. Mr.
Adams and Mr. Calhoun advocated the latter opinion. The President, Mr.
Crowninshield, and Mr. Wirt, were in favor of withdrawing the troops.
After discussion of a message proposed to be sent to Congress avowing
the intention to restore the island to Spain, the subject was left
undetermined, the President being embarrassed concerning the policy to
be pursued, by the division of his constitutional advisers. On which Mr.
Adams remarked: "These cabinet councils open upon me a new scene, and
new views of the political world. Here is a play of passions, opinions,
and characters, different from those in which I have been accustomed
heretofore to move."
About this time the President received information that the Spanish
government were discouraged, and that Onis, the Spanish minister, had
received authority to dispose of the Floridas to the United States on
the best terms possible. This intelligence Mr. Monroe communicated to
Mr. Adams, and requested him to see the Spanish minister, and inquire
what Spain would take for all her possessions east of the Mississippi.
When Mr. Adams obtained an interview with Onis, he waived any direct
answer to the question, and asked what were the intentions of the United
States relative to the occupation of Amelia Island. Mr. Adams replied,
that this was a mere measure of self-defence, and asked what guarantee
Onis could give that the freebooters would not again take possession, to
the annoyance of lawful commerce, if the troops of the United States
were removed. Onis said he could give none, except a promise to write to
the Governor of Havana for troops; but he admitted that, if sufficient
force could there be obtained, six or seven months might elapse before
they could be sent to Amelia Island. A continuance of the present
occupation by the United States was thus rendered unavoidable. The
consideration of the question of restoring it to Spain was postponed in
the cabinet, and the message of the President to Congress was so
modified as to state his intention of keeping possession of it for the
present.
During the remainder of this session Mr. Clay took opposition ground on
all the cardinal points maintained by the President, especially on the
constitutional question concerning internal improvements, and upon South
American affairs. His course was so obviously marked with the design of
rising on the ruins of Mr. Monroe's administration, that one of his own
papers in Kentucky publicly stated that "he had broken ground within
battering distance of the President's message." In a speech made on the
24th of March, 1817, on the general appropriation bill, he moved an
appropriation of eighteen thousand dollars as one year's salary and an
outfit for a minister to the government of Buenos Ayres. This was only a
mode of proposing a formal acknowledgment of that government. The motion
was soon after rejected in the House of Representatives by a great
majority, and his attempt to make manifest the unpopularity of the
administration proved a failure.
In July, 1818, news came that General Jackson had taken Pensacola by
storm,--a measure which excited universal surprise. But one opinion
appeared at first to prevail in the nation,--that Jackson had not only
acted without, but against, his instructions; that he had commenced war
upon Spain, which could not be justified, and in which, if not disavowed
by the administration, they would be abandoned by the country. Every
member of the cabinet, the President included, concurred in these
sentiments, with the exception of Mr. Adams. He maintained that there
was no real, though an apparent violation of his instructions; that his
proceedings were justified by the necessity of the case, and the
misconduct of the Spanish commandant in Florida. Mr. Adams admitted that
the question was embarrassing and complicated, as involving not merely
an actual war with Spain, but also the power of the executive to
authorize hostilities without a declaration of war by Congress. He
averred that there was no doubt that _defensive_ acts of hostility
might be authorized by the executive, and on this ground Jackson had
been authorized to cross the Spanish frontier in pursuit of the Indian
enemy. His argument was, that the question of the constitutional
authority of the executive was in its nature defensive; that all the
rest, even to the taking the fort of Barancas by storm, was incidental,
deriving its character from the object, which was not hostility to
Spain, but the termination of the Indian war. This was the justification
offered by Jackson himself, who alleged that an imaginary air-line of
the thirty-first degree of latitude could not afford protection to our
frontier, while the Indians had a safe refuge in Florida; and that all
his operations had been founded on that consideration.
This state of things embarrassed the negotiation with the Spanish
minister, who was afraid, under these circumstances, to proceed without
receiving instructions. Mr. Adams endeavored, however, to satisfy Onis,
by assuring him that Pensacola had been taken without orders; but he
also stated that no blame would be attached to Jackson, on account of
the strong charges he brought against the Governor of Pensacola, who had
threatened to drive him out of the province by force, if he did not
withdraw. In support of these views, Mr. Adams adduced the opinions of
writers on national law. To the members of the cabinet he admitted that
it was requisite to carry the reasoning on his principles to the utmost
extent they would bear, to come to this conclusion; yet he maintained
that, if the question were dubious, it was better to err on the side of
vigor than of weakness, of our own officer than of our enemy. There was
a large portion of the public who coincided in opinion with Jackson, and
if he were disavowed, his friends would assert that he had been
sacrificed because he was an obnoxious man; that, after having had the
benefit of his services, he was abandoned for the sake of conciliating
the enemies of his country, and his case would be compared to that of
Sir Walter Raleigh.
Mr. Monroe listened with candor to the debates of the cabinet, without
varying from his original opinion. They resulted in a disclaimer of
power in the President to have authorized General Jackson to take
possession of Pensacola. On this determination, Mr. Adams finally gave
up his opposition, and acquiesced in the opinion of every other member
of the cabinet, remarking on this result: "The administration are
placed in a dilemma, from which it is impossible for them to escape
censure by some, and factious crimination by many. If they avow and
approve Jackson's conduct, they incur the double responsibility of
having made a war against Spain, in violation of the constitution,
without the authority of Congress. If they disavow him, they must give
offence to his friends, encounter the shock of his popularity, and have
the appearance of truckling to Spain. For all this I should be
prepared; but the mischief of this determination lies deeper. 1. It is
weakness, and confession of weakness. 2. The disclaimer of power in the
executive is of dangerous example, and of evil consequences. 3. There
is injustice to the officer in disavowing him, when in principle he is
strictly justifiable. These charges will be urged with great vehemence
on one side, while those who would have censured the other course will
not support or defend the administration for taking this. I believe the
other would have been a safer and a bolder course." A wish having been
expressed that it should be stated publicly that the opinion of the
members of the cabinet had been _unanimous_, Mr. Adams said that he had
acquiesced in the ultimate determination, and would cheerfully bear his
share of the responsibility; but that he could not in truth say it had
been conformable to his opinion, for that had been to approve and
justify the conduct of Jackson, whereas it was disavowed, and the place
he had taken was to be unconditionally restored.
At this time Mr. Adams was laboriously collecting evidence in support of
these views, and preparing letters of instruction to George Erving,
dated the 19th of November, in which Jackson's conduct is fully stated,
and the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister and the taking of Pensacola
defended. Mr. Jefferson wrote to President Monroe expressing in the
highest terms his approbation of these letters, and the hope that those
of the 12th of March and the 28th of November to Erving, with, also,
those of Mr. Adams to Onis, would be translated into French, and
communicated to every court in Europe, as a thorough vindication of the
conduct and policy of the American government. Writing about the affairs
of Florida at this time, Mr. Adams observed: "With these concerns,
political, personal, and electioneering intrigues are mingling
themselves, with increasing heat and violence. This government is
assuming daily, more and more, a character of cabal and preparation, not
for the next presidential election, but for the one after, that is
working and counterworking, with many of the worst features of elective
monarchies. Jackson has made for himself a multitude of friends, and
still more enemies."
In the latter part of December, 1818, when General Jackson visited
Washington, a strong party manifested itself disposed to bring him
forward as a candidate for the next Presidency. "His services during the
last campaign," said Mr. Adams, "would have given him great strength,
had he not counteracted these dispositions by several of his actions in
Florida. The partisans of Crawford and De Witt Clinton took the alarm,
and began their attacks upon Jackson for the purpose of running him
down. His conduct is beginning to be arraigned with extreme violence in
every quarter of the Union, and, as I am his official defender against
Spain and England, I shall come in for my share of the obloquy so
liberally bestowed upon him."
Mr. Adams had the satisfaction of receiving from Hyde de Neuville, the
French minister, an assurance of his coincidence of opinion with him,
and that he had written to his own government that the proceedings of
General Jackson had been right, particularly in respect of the two
Englishmen. Although there was a difference of opinion on the subject
among the members of the diplomatic body, he declared that his own was
that such incendiaries and instigators of savage barbarities should be
put to death.
On one occasion, the President expressed to Mr. Adams his astonishment
at the malignancy of the reports which some newspapers were circulating
concerning him, and asked in what motives they could have originated.
Mr. Adams replied, that the motives did not lie very deep; that there
had been a spirit at work, ever since he came to Washington, very
anxious to find or make occasions of censure upon him. That spirit he
could not lay. His only resource was to pursue his course according to
his own sense of right, and abide by the consequences. To which the
President fully assented.
While these events were agitating the political world, Mr. Adams was
called to lament the death of his mother, dear to his heart by every tie
of affection and gratitude. His feelings burst forth, on the occasion,
in eloquent and touching tributes to her memory. "This is one of the
severest afflictions," he exclaimed, "to which human existence is
liable. The silver cord is broken,--the tenderest of natural ties is
dissolved,--life is no longer to me what it was,--my home is no longer
the abode of my mother. While she lived, whenever I returned to the
paternal roof, I felt as if the joys and charms of childhood returned to
make me happy; all was kindness and affection. At once silent and active
as the movement of the orbs of heaven, one of the links which connected
me with former ages is no more. May a merciful Providence spare for many
future years my only remaining parent!"
The policy of the friends and enemies of Mr. Monroe's administration was
developed by the debates in the House of Representatives on the Seminole
war, and the spirit of intrigue began to operate with great publicity.
Some of the Western friends of Mr. Adams proposed to him measures of
counteraction, on which he remarked: "These overtures afford
opportunities and temptations to intrigue, of which there is much in
this government, and without which the prospects of a public man are
desperate. Caballing with members of Congress for future contingency has
become so interwoven with the practical course of our government, and so
inevitably flows from the practice of canvassing by the members to fix
on candidates for President and Vice-President, that to decline it is to
pass a sentence of total exclusion. Be it so! Whatever talents I
possess, that of intrigue is not among them. And instead of toiling for
a future election, as I am recommended to do, my only wisdom is to
prepare myself for voluntary, or unwilling, retirement." On the same
topic, in February, 1819, he thus expressed himself: "The practice which
has grown up under the constitution, but contrary to its spirit, by
which members of Congress meet in caucus and determine by a majority the
candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency to be supported by the
whole meeting, places the President in a state of undue subserviency to
the members of the legislature; which, connected with the other practice
of reëlecting only once the same President, leads to a thousand corrupt
cabals between the members of Congress and heads of departments, who are
thus made, almost necessarily, rival pretenders to the succession. The
only possible chance for a head of a department to attain the Presidency
is by ingratiating himself with the members of Congress; and as many of
them have objects of their own to obtain, the temptation is immense to
corrupt coalitions, and tends to make all the public offices objects of
bargain and sale."
The treaty with Spain, by which the United States acquired the Floridas,
was signed by Onis and Adams on the 22d of December, 1819. To effect
this treaty, so full of difficulty and responsibility, Mr. Adams had
labored ever since he had become Secretary of State. His success was to
him a subject of intense gratification; especially the acknowledgment of
the right of the United States to a definite line of boundary to the
South Sea. This right was not among our claims by the treaty of peace
with Great Britain, nor among our pretensions under the purchase of
Louisiana, for that gave the United States only the range of the
Mississippi and its waters. Mr. Adams regarded the attainment of it as
his own; as he had first proposed it on his own responsibility, and
introduced it in his discussions with Onis and De Neuville. Its final
attainment, under such circumstances, was a just subject of exultation,
which was increased by the change of relations which the treaty produced
with Spain, from the highest state of exasperation and imminent war, to
a fair prospect of tranquillity and secure peace. The treaty was
ratified by the President, with the unanimous advice of the Senate.
In 1819 a committee of the Colonization Society applied to the
President for the purchase of a territory on the coast of Africa, to
which the slaves rescued under the act of Congress, then recently
passed, against piracy and the slave-trade, might be sent. The subject
being referred to Mr. Adams, he stated in reply that it was impossible
that Congress could have intended to authorize the purchase of
territory by that act, for they had only appropriated for its object
_one hundred thousand dollars_, which was a sum utterly inadequate for
the purchase of a territory on the coast of Africa. He declared also
that he had no opinion of the practicability or usefulness of the
objects proposed by the Colonization Society, of establishing in Africa
a colony composed of the free blacks sent from the United States. "The
project," said he, "is professedly formed, 1st, without making use of
any compulsion on the free people of color to go to Africa. 2d. To
encourage the emancipation of slaves by their masters. 3d. To promote
the entire abolition of slavery; and yet, 4th, without in the slightest
degree affecting what they call 'a certain species of property in
slaves.' There are men of all sorts and descriptions concerned in this
Colonization Society: some exceedingly humane, weak-minded men, who
really have no other than the professed objects in view, and who
honestly believe them both useful and attainable; some speculators in
official profits and honors, which a colonial establishment would of
course produce; some speculators in political popularity, who think to
please the abolitionists by their zeal for emancipation, and the
slaveholders by the flattering hope of ridding them of the free colored
people at the public expense; lastly, some cunning slaveholders, who
see that the plan may be carried far enough to produce the effect of
raising the market price of their slaves. But, of all its other
difficulties, the most objectionable is that it obviously includes the
engrafting a colonial establishment upon the constitution of the United
States, and thereby an accession of power to the national government
transcending all its other powers."
The friends of the measure urged in its favor that it had been
recommended by the Legislature of Virginia. They enlarged on the happy
condition of slaves in that state, on the kindness with which they were
treated, and on the attachment subsisting between them and their
masters. They stated that the feeling against slavery was so strong that
shortly after the close of the Revolution many persons had voluntarily
emancipated their slaves. This had introduced a class of very dangerous
people,--the free blacks,--who lived by pilfering, corrupted the slaves,
and produced such pernicious consequences that the Legislature was
obliged to prohibit their further emancipation by law. The important
object now was to remove the free blacks, and provide a place to which
the emancipated slaves might go; in which case, the legal obstacles to
emancipation being withdrawn, Virginia, at least, might in time be
relieved from her black population.
A committee from the Colonial Society also waited on Mr. Adams,
repeating the same topics, and maintaining that the slave-trade act
contained a clear authority to settle a colony in Africa; and that the
purchase of Louisiana, and the settlement at the mouth of Columbia
River, placed beyond all question the right of acquiring territory as
existing in the government of the United States. Mr. Adams, in reply,
successfully maintained that the slave-trade act had no reference to the
settlement of a colony on the coast of Africa; and that the acquisition
of Louisiana, and the settlement at the mouth of Columbia River, being
in territories contiguous to and in continuance of our own, could by no
reason warrant the purchase of countries beyond seas, or the
establishment of a colonial system of government subordinate to and
dependent upon that of the United States.
In July, 1819, Mr. Adams, writing concerning the failure at the
preceding session of Missouri to obtain admission as a state into the
Union, from the restriction, introduced by the House of Representatives,
excluding slavery from its constitution, thus expressed himself: "The
attempt to introduce that restriction produced a violent agitation among
the members from the slaveholding states, and it has been communicated
to the states themselves, and to the territory of Missouri. The
slave-drivers, as usual, whenever this topic is brought up, bluster and
bully, talk of the white slaves of the Eastern States, and the
dissolution of the Union, and of oceans of blood; and the Northern men,
as usual, pocket all this hectoring, sit down in quiet, and submit to
the slave-scourging republicanism of the planters."
Being urged to use his influence that the language and policy of the
government should be as moderate and guarded as possible, from the
consideration that both England and France were profoundly impressed
with the idea that we were an ambitious, encroaching people, Mr. Adams
replied: "I doubt if we should give ourselves any concern about it.
Great Britain, who had been vilifying us for twenty years as a
low-minded nation, with no generous ambition, no God but gold, had now
changed her tune, and was endeavoring to alarm the world at the gigantic
grasp of our ambition. Spain and all Europe were endeavoring to do the
same; being startled at first by our acquisition of Louisiana, and now
by our pretensions to extend to the South Sea. Nothing we can say will
remove this impression until the world shall be familiarized with the
idea of considering the continent of North America to be our proper
dominion. From the time we became an independent people, it was as much
a law of nature that this should become our pretension, as that the
Mississippi should flow to the sea. Spain had pretensions on our
southern, Great Britain on our northern borders. It was impossible that
centuries should elapse without finding them annexed to the United
States; not from any spirit of encroachment or of ambition on our part,
but because it was a physical, and moral, and political absurdity, that
such fragments of territory, with sovereigns fifteen hundred miles
beyond sea, worthless and burdensome to their owners, should exist,
permanently, contiguous to a great, powerful, enterprising, and
rapidly-growing nation. Most of the territories of Spain in our
neighborhood had become ours by fair purchase. This rendered it more
unavoidable that the remainder of the continent should ultimately be
ours. It was but very lately we had seen this ourselves, or that we had
avowed the pretension of extending to the South Sea; and, until Europe
finds it to be a settled geographical element that the United States and
North America are identical, any effort on our part to reason the world
out of the belief that we are an ambitious people will have no other
effect than to convince them that we add to our ambition hypocrisy."
Concerning the discords which arose in the cabinet, on policy to be
pursued, Mr. Adams remarked: "I see them with pain, but they are sown in
the practice which the Virginia Presidents have taken so much pains to
engraft on the constitution of the Union, making it a principle that no
President can be more than twice elected, and whoever is not thrown out
after one term of service must decline being a candidate after the
second. This is not a principle of the constitution, and I am satisfied
it ought not to be. Its inevitable consequence is to make every
administration a scene of continuous and furious electioneering for the
succession to the Presidency. It was so through the whole of Mr.
Madison's administration, and it is so now."
The signature of the treaty for the acquisition of Florida, sanctioned
by the unanimous vote of the Senate, had greatly contributed to the
apparent popularity of Mr. Monroe's administration. But the postponement
of its ratification by Spain soon clouded the prospect; and the question
whether Missouri should be admitted into the Union as a slave or free
state, in which Mr. Adams took a deep interest, immediately rendered the
political atmosphere dark and stormy. "There is now," Mr. Adams
observed, "every appearance that the slave question will be carried by
the superior ability of the slavery party. For this much is certain,
that if institutions are to be judged by their results in the
composition of the councils of the Union, the slaveholders are much more
ably represented than the simple freemen. With the exception of Rufus
King, there is not, in either house of Congress, a member from the free
states able to cope in powers of the mind with William Pinkney and James
Barbour. In the House of Representatives the freemen have none to
contend on equal terms either with John Randolph or Clay. Another
misfortune to the free party is that some of their ablest men are either
on this question with their adversaries, or lukewarm in the cause. The
slave men have indeed a deeper immediate stake in the issue than the
partisans of freedom. Their passions and interests are more profoundly
agitated, and they have stronger impulses to active energy than their
antagonists, whose only individual interest in this case arises from its
bearing on the balance of political power between the North and South."
The debate on this subject commenced in the Senate. In the course of
January and February, 1820, Rufus King, senator from New York, delivered
two of the most well-considered and powerful speeches that this Missouri
question elicited. The remarks they drew forth from Mr. Adams render it
proper that some idea of their general course should be stated, although
it is impossible that any abstract can do justice to them. Disclaiming
all intention to encourage or assent to any measure that would affect
the security of property in slaves, or tend to disturb the political
adjustment which the constitution had established concerning them, he
enters at large into the power of Congress to make and determine
whatever regulations are needful concerning the territories. He
maintained that the power of admitting new states is by the constitution
referred wholly to the discretion of Congress; that the citizens of the
several states have rights and duties, differing from each other in the
respective states; that those concerning slavery are the most
remarkable--it being permitted in some states, and prohibited in others;
that the question concerning slavery in the old states is already
settled. Congress had no power to interfere with or change whatever has
been thus settled. The slave states are free to continue or abolish
slavery. The constitution contains no provision concerning slavery in a
new state; Congress, therefore, may make it a condition of the admission
of a new state that slavery shall forever be prohibited within it.
Mr. King then enters upon the history of the United States relative to
this subject, and to the rights of the citizens of Missouri resulting
from the terms of the cession of Louisiana, and of the act admitting it
into the Union. From this recapitulation and illustration he
demonstrates, beyond refutation, that Congress possesses the power to
exclude slavery from Missouri. The only question now remaining was to
show that it ought to exclude it. In discussing this point, Mr. King
passes over in silence arguments which to some might appear decisive,
but the use of which in the Senate of the United States would call up
feelings that he apprehended might disturb or defeat the impartial
consideration of the subject.
Under this self-restraint he observed that slavery, unhappily, exists
in the United States; that enlightened men in the states where it is
permitted, and everywhere out of them, regret its existence among us,
and seek for the means of limiting and of eradicating it. He then
proceeds to state and reason concerning the difficulties in the
apportionment of taxes among the respective states under the old
confederation, and in the convention for the formation of the
constitution, which resulted in the provision that direct taxes should
be apportioned among the states according to the whole number of free
persons and three fifths of the slaves which they might respectively
contain. The effect of this provision he then analyzes, and shows that,
in consequence of it, _five_ free persons in Virginia have as much
power in the choice of representatives, and in the appointment of
presidential electors, as _seven_ free persons in any of the states in
which slavery does not exist. At the time of the adoption of the
constitution no one anticipated the fact that the whole of the revenue
of the United States would be derived from indirect taxes; but it was
believed that a part of the contribution to the common treasury would
be apportioned among the states, by the rule for the apportionment of
representatives. The states in which slavery is prohibited ultimately,
though with reluctance, acquiesced in the disproportionate number of
representatives and electors that was secured to the slaveholding
states. The concession was at the time believed to be a great one, and
has proved the greatest which was made to secure the adoption of the
constitution. Great as is this concession, it was definite, and its
full extent was comprehended. It was a settlement between the thirteen
states, and not applicable to new states which Congress might be
willing to admit into the Union.
The equality of rights, which includes an equality of burdens, is a
vital principle in our theory of government. The effect of the
constitution has been obvious in the preponderance it has given to the
slave-holding states over the other states. But the extension of this
disproportionate power to the new states would be unjust and odious. The
states whose power would be abridged and whose burdens would be
increased by the measure would not be expected to consent to it. The
existence of slavery impairs the industry and power of a nation. In a
country where manual labor is performed by slaves, that of freemen is
dishonored. In case of foreign war, or domestic insurrection, slaves not
only do not add to, but diminish the faculty of self-defence.
If Missouri, and the states formed to the west of the River Mississippi,
are permitted to introduce and establish slavery, the repose, if not the
security, of the Union, may be endangered. All the states south of the
River Ohio, and west of Pennsylvania and Delaware, will be peopled with
slaves; and the establishment of new states west of the River
Mississippi will serve to extend slavery, instead of freedom, over that
boundless region. But, if slavery be excluded from Missouri and the
other new states which may be formed in that quarter, not only will the
slave-markets be broken up, and the principles of freedom be extended
and strengthened, but an exposed and important frontier will present a
barrier which will check and keep back foreign assailants, who may be as
brave, and, as we hope, as free as ourselves. Surrounded in this manner
by connected bodies of freemen, the states where slavery is allowed will
be made more secure against domestic insurrection, and less liable to be
affected by what may take place in the neighboring colonies.
At the delivery of these speeches Mr. Adams was present, and thus
expressed his opinion in writing: "I heard Mr. King on what is called
the Missouri question. His manner was dignified, grave, earnest, but not
rapid or vehement. There was nothing new in his argument, but he
unravelled with ingenious and subtle analysis many of the sophistical
tissues of slaveholders. He laid down the position of the natural
liberty of man, and its incompatibility with slavery in any shape; he
also questioned the constitutional right of the President and Senate to
make the Louisiana treaty; but he did not dwell upon those points, nor
draw the consequences from them which I should think important. He spoke
on that subject, however, with great power, and the great slaveholders
in the house gnawed their lips and clenched their fists as they heard
him."
"At our evening parties," he adds, "we hear of nothing but the Missouri
question and Mr. King's speeches. The slaveholders cannot hear of them
without being seized with the cramps. They call them seditious and
inflammatory, which was far from being their character. Never, since
human sentiment and human conduct were influenced by human speech, was
there a theme for eloquence like the free side of this question, now
before the Congress of the Union. By what fatality does it happen that
all the most eloquent orators are on its slavish side? There is a great
mass of cool judgment and of plain sense on the side of freedom and
humanity, but the ardent spirits and passions are on the side of
oppression. O! if but one man could arise with a genius capable of
comprehending, a heart capable of supporting, and an utterance capable
of communicating, those eternal truths which belong to the question,--to
lay bare in all its nakedness that outrage upon the goodness of God,
human slavery,--now is the time, and this is the occasion, upon which
such a man would perform the duties of an angel upon earth."
About this time Mr. Calhoun remarked to Mr. Adams, that he did not think
the slave question, then pending in Congress, would produce a
dissolution of the Union, but, if it should, the South would, from
necessity, be compelled to form an alliance, offensive and defensive,
with Great Britain. Mr. Adams asked if that would not be returning to
the old colonial state. Calhoun said, Yes, pretty much, but it would be
forced upon them. Mr. Adams inquired whether he thought, if by the
effect of this alliance, offensive and defensive, the population of the
North should be cut off from its natural outlet upon the ocean, it would
fall back upon its rocks, bound hand and foot, to starve; or whether it
would retain its power of locomotion to move southward by land. Mr.
Calhoun replied, that in the latter event it would be necessary for the
South to make their communities all military. Mr. Adams pressed the
conversation no further, but remarked: "If the dissolution of the Union
should result from the slave question, it is as obvious as anything that
can be foreseen of futurity, that it must shortly afterwards be followed
by an universal emancipation of the slaves. A more remote, but perhaps
not less certain consequence, would be the extirpation of the African
race in this continent, by the gradually bleaching process of
intermixture, where the white is already so predominant, and by the
destructive process of emancipation; which, like all great religious and
political reformations, is terrible in its means, though happy and
glorious in its end. Slavery is the great and foul stain on the American
Union, and it is a contemplation worthy of the most exalted soul,
whether its total abolition is not practicable. This object is vast in
its compass, awful in its prospects, sublime and beautiful in its issue.
A life devoted to it would be nobly spent or sacrificed."
On the 26th of February, Mr. John Randolph spoke on the Missouri
question in the House of Representatives between three and four hours,
on which speech Mr. Adams observed: "As usual, it had neither beginning,
middle, nor end. Egotism, Virginian aristocracy, slave-purging liberty,
religion, literature, science, wit, fancy, generous feelings, and
malignant passions, constitute a chaos in his mind, from which nothing
orderly can ever flow. Clay, the Speaker, twice called him to order;
which proved useless, for he can no more keep order than he can keep
silence." On the 1st of March the Missouri question came to a crisis in
Congress. The majorities in both branches were on opposite sides, and in
each a committee was raised to effect a compromise. This endeavor
resulted in the abandonment by the House of Representatives of the
principle it had inserted, that slavery should be prohibited in the
Missouri constitution, and in annexing a section that slavery should be
prohibited in the remaining parts of the Louisiana cession, north of
latitude thirty-six degrees thirty minutes. This compromise, as it was
called, was finally carried in the House of Representatives, by a vote
of ninety to thirty-seven, after several successive days, and almost
nights, of stormy debate.
On the 3d of March, a member of the house from Massachusetts told Mr.
Adams that John Randolph had made a motion that morning to reconsider
one of the votes of yesterday upon the Missouri bill, and of the
trickery by which his motion was defeated. The Speaker (Mr. Clay)
declared it when first made not in order, the journal of yesterday's
proceedings riot having been then read; and while they were reading the
journal, the clerk of the house carried the bill as passed by the house
to the Senate; so that, when Randolph, after the reading of the journal,
renewed his motion, it was too late, the papers being no longer in the
possession of the house. "And so it is," said Mr. Adams, "that a law
perpetuating slavery in Missouri, and perhaps in North America, has been
smuggled through both houses of Congress. I have been convinced, from
the first starting of this question, that it could not end otherwise.
The fault is in the constitution of the United States, which has
sanctioned a dishonorable compromise with slavery. There is henceforth
no remedy for it but a reörganization of the Union, to effect which a
concert of all the white states is indispensable. Whether that can ever
be accomplished is doubtful. It is a contemplation not very creditable
to human nature that the cement of common interest, produced by slavery,
is stronger and more solid than that of unmingled freedom. In this
instance the slave states have clung together in one unbroken phalanx,
and have been victorious by the means of accomplices and deserters from
the ranks of freedom. Time only can show whether the contest may ever,
with equal advantage, be renewed; but, so polluted are all the streams
of legislation in regions of slavery, that this bill has been obtained
by two as unprincipled artifices as dishonesty ever devised. One, by
coupling it as an appendage to the bill for admitting Maine into the
Union; the other, by the perpetrating this outrage by the Speaker on the
rules of the house."
Mr. Calhoun, after a debate in the cabinet on the Missouri question,
said to Mr. Adams that the principles avowed by him were just and noble,
but in the Southern country, whenever they were mentioned, they were
always understood as applying to white men. Domestic labor was confined
to the blacks; and such was the prejudice that, if he were to keep a
white servant in his house, although he was the most popular man in his
district, his character and reputation would be irretrievably ruined.
Mr. Adams replied that this confounding the ideas of servitude and labor
was one of the bad effects of slavery. Mr. Calhoun thought it was
attended with many excellent consequences. It did not apply to all sorts
of labor; not, for example, to farming. He, himself, had often held the
plough. So had his father. Manufacturing and mechanical labor was not
degrading. It was only menial labor, the proper work of slaves. No white
person could descend to that. And it was the best guarantee of equality
among the whites. It produced an unvarying level among them. It not only
did not excite, but did not admit of inequalities, by which one white
man could domineer over another.
Mr. Adams replied, that he could not see things in the same light. "It
is in truth all perverted sentiment; mistaking labor for slavery, and
dominion for freedom. The discussion of this Missouri question has
betrayed the secret of their souls. In the abstract they admit slavery
to be an evil. They disclaim all participation in the introduction of
it, and cast it all on the shoulders of 'old grandame Great Britain.'
But, when probed to the quick upon it, they show at the bottom of their
souls pride and vain-glory in their very condition of masterdom. They
fancy themselves more generous and noble-hearted than the plain freemen,
who labor for subsistence. They look down on the simplicity of Yankee
manners, because they have no habits of overbearing like theirs, and
cannot treat negroes like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery that it
taints the very source of moral principle. It establishes false
estimates of virtue and vice; for what can be more false and heartless
than this doctrine, which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity
to depend on the color of the skin? It perverts human reason, and
reduces man endowed with logical powers to maintain that slavery is
sanctioned by the Christian religion; that slaves are happy and
contented in their condition; that between the master and slave there
are ties of mutual attachment and affection; that the virtues of the
master are refined and exalted by the degradation of the slave; while,
at the same time, they vent execrations on the slave-trade, curse Great
Britain for having given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes
convicted of crimes for the terror of the example, and writhe in agonies
of fear at the very mention of human rights as applicable to men of
color."
"The impression produced on my mind," continued Mr. Adams, "by the
progress of this discussion, is, that the bargain between freedom and
slavery contained in the constitution of the United States is morally
and politically vicious; inconsistent with the principles on which alone
our Revolution can be justified; cruel and oppressive, by riveting the
chains of slavery, by pledging the faith of freedom to maintain and
perpetuate the tyranny of the master; and grossly unequal and impolitic,
by admitting that slaves are at once enemies to be kept in subjection,
property to be secured and returned to their owners, and persons not to
be represented themselves, but for whom their masters are privileged
with nearly a double share of representation. The consequence has been
that this slave representation has governed the Union. Benjamin's
portion above his brethren has ravined as a wolf. In the morning he has
devoured the prey, and in the evening has divided the spoil. It would be
no difficult matter to prove, by reviewing the history of the Union
under this constitution, that almost everything which has contributed to
the honor and welfare of this nation has been accomplished in despite of
them, or forced upon them; and that everything unpropitious and
dishonorable, including the blunders of their adversaries, may be traced
to them. I have favored this Missouri compromise, believing it to be all
that could be effected under the present constitution, and from extreme
unwillingness to put the Union at hazard. But perhaps it would have been
a wiser and bolder course to have persisted in the restriction on
Missouri, until it should have terminated in a convention of the states
to revise and amend the constitution. This would have produced a new
Union of thirteen or fourteen states unpolluted with slavery, with a
great and glorious object, that of rallying to their standard the other
states, by the universal emancipation of their slaves. If the Union must
be dissolved, slavery is precisely the question upon which it ought to
break. For the present, however, this contest is laid asleep."
Again he says: "Mr. King is deeply mortified at the issue of the
Missouri question, and very naturally feels resentful at the imputations
of the slaveholders, that his motives on this occasion have been merely
personal aggrandizement,--'close ambition varnished o'er with zeal.' The
imputation of bad motives is one of the most convenient weapons of
political, and indeed of every sort of controversy. It came originally
from the devil.--'Doth Job serve God for naught?' The selfish and the
social passions are intermingled in the conduct of every man acting in a
public capacity. It is right that they should be so. And it is no just
cause of reproach to any man, that, in promoting to the utmost of his
power the public good, he is desirous; at the same time, of promoting
his own. There are, no doubt, hypocrites of humanity as well as of
religion; men with cold hearts and warm professions, trading upon
benevolence, and using justice and virtue only as stakes upon the turn
of a card or the cast of a die. But this sort of profligacy belongs to a
state of society more deeply corrupted than ours. Such characters are
rare among us. Many of our public men have principles too pliable to
popular impulse, but few are deliberately dishonest; and there is not a
man in the Union of purer integrity than Rufus King.
"The most remarkable circumstance in the history of the final decision
of the Missouri question is that it was ultimately carried against the
opinions, wishes, and interests, of the free states, by the votes of
their own members. They had a decided majority in both houses of
Congress, but lost the vote by disunion among themselves. The
slaveholders clung together, without losing one vote. Many of them, and
almost all the Virginians, held out to the last, even against
compromise. The cause of the closer union on the slave side is that the
question affected the individual interest of every slaveholding member,
and of almost every one of his constituents. On the other side,
individual interests were not implicated in the decision at all. The
impulses were purely republican principle and the rights of human
nature. The struggle for political power, and geographical jealousy, may
fairly be supposed to have operated equally on both sides. The result
affords an illustration of the remark, how much more keen and powerful
the impulse is of personal interest than is that of any general
consideration of benevolence and humanity."
The compromise, by which Missouri was admitted into the Union, did not
finally settle the question in. Congress. At the next session it
reappeared, in consequence of the insertion into the constitution of
Missouri of an article declaring it to be the duty of the Legislature to
pass laws prohibiting free negroes and persons of color from coming into
Missouri; which declaration was directly repugnant to that article in
the constitution of the United States which provides that the citizens
of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens of the other states. The only mode of getting out of this
difficulty, said Mr. Adams, was "for Congress to pass a resolution
declaring the State of Missouri to be admitted from and after the time
when the article repugnant to the constitution of the United States
should be expunged from its constitution. This question was much more
clear against Missouri than was that of their first admission into the
Union; but the people of the North, like many of their representatives
in Congress, began to give indications of a disposition to flinch from
the consequences of this question, and to be unwilling to bear their
leaders out."
Mr. Adams, in conversation with one of the senators of the South,
observed, that "the article in the Missouri constitution is directly
repugnant to the rights reserved to every citizen in the Union in the
constitution of the United States. Its purport is to disfranchise all
the people of color who were citizens of the free states. The
Legislatures of those states are bound in duty to protect the rights of
their own citizens; and if Congress, by the admission of Missouri with
that clause in her constitution, should sanction this outrage upon
those rights, the states a portion of whose citizens should be thus
cast out of the pale of the Union would be bound to vindicate them by
retaliation. If I were a member of the Legislature of one of these
states, I would move for a declaratory act, that so long as the article
in the constitution of Missouri, depriving the colored citizens of the
state (say) of Massachusetts of their rights as citizens of the United
States within the State of Missouri, should subsist, so long the white
citizens of Missouri should be held as aliens within the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, and not entitled to claim or enjoy, within the same,
any right or privilege of a citizen of the United States." And Mr.
Adams said he would go further, and declare that Congress, by their
sanction of the Missouri constitution, by admitting that state into the
Union without excepting against that article which disfranchised a
portion of the citizens of Massachusetts, had violated the constitution
of the United States. Therefore, until that portion of the citizens of
Massachusetts whose rights were violated by the article in the Missouri
compromise should be reintegrated in the full enjoyment and possession
of those rights, no clause or article of the constitution of the United
States should, within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, be so
understood as to authorize any person whatsoever to claim the property
or possession of a human being as a slave; and he would prohibit by law
the delivery of any fugitive upon the claim of his master. All which,
he said, should be done, not to violate, but to redeem from violation,
the constitution of the United States. It was indeed to be expected
that such laws would again be met by retaliatory laws of Missouri and
the other slaveholding states, and the consequences would be a
dissolution _de facto_ of the Union; but that dissolution would be
commenced by the article in the Missouri constitution. "That article,"
declared Mr. Adams, "is itself a dissolution of the Union. If
acquiesced in, it will change the terms of the federal compact--change
its terms by robbing thousands of citizens of their rights. And what
citizens? The poor, the unfortunate, the helpless, already cursed by
the mere color of their skin; already doomed by their complexion to
drudge in the lowest offices of society; excluded by their color from
all the refined enjoyments of life accessible to others; excluded from
the benefits of a liberal education,--from the bed, the table, and all
the social comforts, of domestic life. This barbarous article deprives
them of the little remnant of right yet left them--their rights as
citizens and as men. Weak and defenceless as they are, so much the more
sacred the obligation of the Legislatures of the states to which they
belong to defend their lawful rights. I would defend them, should the
dissolution of the Union be the consequence; for it would be, not to
the defence, but to the violation of their rights, to which all the
consequences would be imputable; and, if the dissolution of the Union
must come, let it come from no other cause but this. If slavery be the
destined sword, in the hand of the destroying angel, which is to sever
the ties of this Union, the same sword will cut asunder the bonds of
slavery itself."
"In the House of Representatives, on the 4th of December," writes Mr.
Adams, "Mr. Eustis, of Massachusetts, made a speech against the
resolution for admitting Missouri into the Union without condition, and
it was rejected, _ninety-three_ to _seventy-nine_. On the 19th of
December he offered a resolution admitting Missouri into the Union
conditionally; namely, 'from and after the time when they shall have
expunged from their constitution the article repugnant to the
constitution of the United States.' On the 24th of January, 1821, this
resolution was rejected by a vote of one hundred and forty-six to six.
It satisfies neither party. It is too strong for the slave party, and
not strong enough for the free party." In December and January the
subject was ardently debated in the House of Representatives, and,
after commitment and various attempts at amendment, on the 13th of
February the report of a committee of the House of Representatives in
favor of admitting Missouri into the Union, in conformity with the
resolution which had passed the Senate, was rejected, eighty-five to
eighty.
The proceedings of the House of Representatives, in counting the votes
for President and Vice-President, are thus stated by Mr. Adams: "On
the 14th of February, while the electoral votes for President and
Vice-President were counting, those of Missouri were objected to
because Missouri was not a state of the Union--on which a tumultuous
scene arose. A Southern member moved, in face of the rejection by a
majority of the House, that Missouri _is_ one of the states of this
Union, and that her votes ought to be counted. Mr. Clay avoided the
question by moving that it should lie on the table, and then that a
message should be sent to the Senate informing them that the House were
_now_ ready to proceed in continuing the enumeration of the electoral
votes, according to the joint resolution; which was ordered. The Senate
accordingly proceeded to open the votes of Missouri, and they were
counted. The result was declared by the President of the Senate, in the
alternative that if the votes of Missouri were counted there were two
hundred and thirty-one votes for James Monroe as President, and two
hundred and eighteen votes for Daniel D. Tompkins as Vice-President;
and if not counted, there would be two hundred and twenty-eight votes
for James Monroe as President, and two hundred and fifteen for Daniel
D. Tompkins as Vice-President; but, in either event, both were elected
to their respective offices. He therefore declared them to be so
elected.
"After the two houses had separated, Mr. Randolph moved two resolutions:
one, that the electoral votes of the State of Missouri had been counted,
and formed part of the majorities by which the President and
Vice-President had been elected; and the other, that the result of the
election had not been declared by the presiding officer conformably to
the constitution and the law, and therefore the whole proceedings had
been irregular and illegal. This motion, after a very disorderly debate,
was disposed of by adjournment. Mr. Randolph was for bringing Missouri
into the Union by storm, and by bullying a majority of the House into a
minority. The only result was disorder and tumult.
"On the 23d of February, the Missouri question being still undecided, on
a motion of Mr. Clay, the House of Representatives chose by ballot a
committee of twenty-three members, who were joined by a committee of
seven from the Senate. Their object was a last attempt to devise a plan
for admitting Missouri into the Union. On the 26th, the committee
proposed a _conditional_ admission, upon terms more humiliating to
the people of Missouri than it would have been to require that they
should expunge the exceptionable article from their constitution; for
they declared it a fundamental condition of their admission that the
article should never be construed to authorize the passage of any law by
which any citizen of the states of this Union should be excluded from
his privileges under the constitution of the United States; and they
required that the Legislature of the state, by a solemn public act,
should declare the assent of the state to this condition, and transmit a
copy of the act, by the first Monday of November ensuing, to the
President of the United States. But, in substance, this condition bound
them to nothing. The resolution was, however, taken up this day in the
House of Representatives, read three times, and passed by a vote of
eighty-seven to eighty-one. On the 28th of February, the Senate, by a
vote of twenty-eight to fourteen, adopted the resolution.
"This second Missouri question was compromised like the first. The
majority against the unconditional admission into the Union was small,
but very decided. The problem for the slave representation to solve was
the precise extent of concession necessary for them to detach from the
opposite party a number of antiservile votes just sufficient to turn the
majority. Mr. Clay found, at last, this expedient, which the slave
voters would not have accepted from any one not of their own party, and
to which his greatest difficulty was to obtain the assent of his own
friends. The timid and the weak-minded dropped off, one by one, from the
free side of the question, until a majority was formed for the
compromise, of which the servile have the substance, and the liberals
the shadow.
"In the progress of this affair the distinctive character of the
inhabitants of the several great divisions of this Union has been shown
more in relief than perhaps in any national transaction since the
establishment of the constitution. It is, perhaps, accidental that the
combination of talent and influence has been the greatest on the slave
side. The importance of the question has been much greater to them than
to the other side. Their union of exertion has been consequently closer
and more unshakable. They have threatened and entreated, bullied and
wheedled, until their more simple adversaries have been half coaxed,
half frightened into a surrender of their principles for a bauble of
insignificant promises. The champions of the North did not judiciously
select their position for this contest. There must be, some time, a
conflict on this very question between slave and free representation.
This, however, was not the proper occasion for contesting it."
At this period Mr. Adams considered that the greatest danger of the
Union was in the overgrown extent of its territory, combining with the
slavery question. The want of slaves was not in the lands, but in their
inhabitants. Slavery had become in the South and South-western states a
condition of existence. On the falling off of the revenue, which
occurred about this time, he observed that "it stirs up the spirit of
economy and retrenchment; and, as the expenditures of the war department
are those on which the most considerable saving can be made, at them the
economists level their first and principal batteries. Individual,
personal jealousies, envyings, and resentments, partisan ambition, and
private interests and hopes, mingle in the motives which prompt this
policy. About one half of the members of Congress are seekers of office
at the nomination of the President. Of the remainder, at least one half
have some appointment or favor to ask for their relatives. But there are
two modes of obtaining their ends: the one, by subserviency; the other,
by opposition. These may be called the cringing canvass and the flouting
canvass. As the public opinion is most watchful of the cringing canvass,
the flouters are the most numerous party."