EXCLUSIVE: Individuals have a low opinion of Congress — that’s not information. At simply 13%, approval of Congress polls about in addition to a colonoscopy and solely barely higher than thermonuclear conflict.
But when Individuals are pissed off by a legislature that appears incapable of motion, think about if Congress had forbidden itself from even speaking about our nation’s hardest issues.
That’s what occurred when John Quincy Adams, who was elected to the Home of Representatives after his presidency in 1830, tried to debate the problem of slavery.
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The Home had what was often called the “Gag Rule,” which prohibited members from even elevating the subject. However when Adams introduced it up and his colleagues tried to kick him out of the Home and silence him, the previous president fought again. He refused to be canceled and let a tradition of censorship hold him from saying what he knew was true.
When John Quincy Adams left the presidency, defeated after one time period, he was the least common commander-in-chief since his father.
Overwhelmed by Andrew Jackson in 1828, former President Adams thought his political life was over.
This text is excerpted by particular association from “Life After Power” by Jared Cohen (proven right here) — who reveals how others tried to cancel John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth commander-in-chief, who served within the Home of Representatives after he misplaced his re-election bid for the presidency. (Fox Information Digital; Jared Cohen/Simon & Schuster)
At 61 years previous, after having served as an envoy, senator, secretary of state and president, there have been no additional heights to which the founding son may climb.
For 18 months, he wallowed at dwelling in Quincy, Massachusetts, studying and attempting his hand at tree farming, solely to search out that he didn’t have a inexperienced thumb.
He may need stayed in Quincy for the remainder of his days. When a good friend prompt to Adams’ spouse Louisa that her husband contemplate re-entering politics, she responded, “There are some very foolish plans occurring right here and God only knows in what they are going to finish, however I worry in no way to my style.”
In a a lot decrease place, Adams discovered a a lot greater calling.
However when the celebration conference nominated him to signify Plymouth within the twenty second Congress, he gained in a landslide, and President John Quincy Adams turned Rep. John Quincy Adams, the one former commander-in-chief to serve within the Home.
With victory in hand, he wrote, “Election as president of the United States was not half so gratifying to my inmost soul.”
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Adams wasn’t a slaveholder, and he knew slavery was evil, however he didn’t enter Congress as a crusading abolitionist.
He didn’t really know what he wished to do when he arrived on Capitol Hill. Upon seeing his old friend again in Washington, Kentucky Sen. Henry Clay jokingly requested how Adams “felt upon turning boy again in the House of Representatives.”
However in a a lot decrease place, Adams discovered a a lot greater calling.
Bestselling creator Cohen (left) writes that with a single query by Adams (proper) through the latter’s post-presidential phrases as a member of the Home of Representatives — “Am I gagged or am I not!?” — Adams “inadvertently christened the new edict forbidding debates about slavery: the Gag Rule.” However Adams pushed again arduous. (Fox Information Digital; DeAgostini/Getty Pictures)
With the specter of civil war hanging over the capital, Congress had a practice of avoiding the problem of slavery altogether — members have been afraid of what would occur in the event that they introduced it up. However that didn’t imply the American folks, on either side, weren’t vocal.
Adams’ anti-slavery sympathies have been well-known, and greater than 40,000 folks had signed over 300 petitions on the problem addressed on to him.
The proper to petition is protected by the First Amendment, and Congressman Adams would learn what the petitioners — a lot of them girls’s teams or Christian societies — needed to say, presenting their petitions on the Home flooring, a lot to the chagrin of the slaveholders in Congress. His colleagues have been livid.
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Terrified by Adams’ advocacy and that he was mentioning essentially the most explosive challenge within the nation, the slaveholders fought again and handed a decision to forbid the problem of slavery from being mentioned in any respect. Shocked, Adams cried out, “Am I gagged or am I not!?”
With that query, he inadvertently christened the brand new edict forbidding debates about slavery: the Gag Rule.
The principles didn’t maintain Adams again. He would carry up the problem as typically as he may in no matter manner he may, protecting the First Amendment proper to petition and hardening in his abolitionism over time.
John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth president, went on to serve for 9 phrases within the Home of Representatives, from 1831 till his loss of life in 1848. He’s the one president to be elected to Congress after leaving the presidency. (AP Picture/Carolyn Kaster)
In an period of political violence, even duels on the Home flooring — and amid threats from one Southern congressman that he would minimize Adams “from ear to ear” — the previous president defied his foes at nice threat.
Upon studying about his exploits, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote admiringly that Adams was “no literary gentleman, but a bruiser … [H]e must have sulfuric acid in his tea.”
Simply because the Home had handed the Gag Rule didn’t imply Adams was powerless.
He pushed again in his personal methods, calling a pro-slavery try to annex Texas “a war of conquest.”
Simply because the Home handed the Gag Rule didn’t imply Adams was powerless.
He denounced the reintroduction of slavery to a territory the place it had been beforehand abolished and delayed the admission of one other slave state, which might have tipped the stability of energy within the Senate.
In the Amistad case, he represented enslaved women and men who had escaped their captors earlier than the Supreme Courtroom, successful them their freedom.
His argument relied on appeals to the court docket’s reminiscence of the Founding Fathers, and he pointed to a replica of the Declaration of Independence hanging on the wall of the chamber, beseeching the justices, “If these rights are inalienable, they are incompatible with the rights of the victor to take the life of his enemy in war, or to spare his life and make him a slave.”
Illustration depicting the beginning of the Monroe Doctrine. James Monroe is proven standing beside a globe; John Quincy Adams is proven seated at left. From a portray by Clyde O. DeLand. (Getty Pictures)
Rep. Adams left his mark in different methods, too.
He headed a 13-member choose committee to research whether or not President John Tyler ought to be impeached — the primary such committee in American historical past.
Adams additionally helped set up the Smithsonian Institution.
By the point Adams bought the Gag Rule repealed in 1844, he’d performed greater than make historical past as the one former president elected to the Home of Representatives. He’d grow to be the main abolitionist in Congress within the first half of the nineteenth century.
Immediately’s elected representatives could make a distinction by reminding Individuals of our nation’s best traditions.
He’d tied the cause of abolition to the aim of the American founding, utilizing his authority because the son of a Founding Father and his data and expertise in authorities to grow to be an elder statesman, whilst a junior member.
When he died in 1848 at age 80 within the halls of the Capitol, he was described as “a living bond of [connection] between the present and the past.”
Upon his loss of life, Adams handed the torch of abolition to a younger member of Congress, Abraham Lincoln, with whom he overlapped throughout one time period, and who served on the committee to rearrange Adams’ funeral.
Abraham Lincoln, whereas he was nonetheless a younger congressman previous to his election to the presidency, served on the committee to rearrange the funeral of John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth president and a longtime member of Congress after that. (Portray by J.L.G. Ferris)
Adams didn’t let his frustrations at defeat in 1828 get the perfect of him, and he didn’t let his extra highly effective colleagues silence or cancel him.
Towards odds a lot more durable than as we speak’s Congress is dealing with, Adams moved the needle towards the ideas of the American founding.
He was revered, however he wasn’t all the time common. His pissed off opponents as soon as stated of him that he was the “acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed … the Old Man Eloquent, John Quincy Adams.”
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Immediately, members of Congress could make a reputation for themselves on tv or on social media, utilizing their positions as platforms and turning into speaking heads somewhat than legislators.
Or they will make a distinction by standing for first ideas and reminding Individuals of our nation’s best traditions.
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In the event that they try this, perhaps they’ll restore Individuals’ religion in our establishments, they usually’ll comply with within the footsteps of the good statesmen who got here earlier than them.
Excerpted from “Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House,” © copyright Jared Cohen (Simon & Schuster, Feb. 2024), by particular association. All rights reserved.
Keep tuned for extra excerpts at Fox Information Digital from the brand new guide “Life After Power.”
For more Lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews.com/lifestyle.
