[Published in Essay 10-B: John Quincy Adams and the Fight Against The Gag Rule - Constituting America]
John Quincy Adams was America’s most impactful former President. His most important accomplishment was risking scorn and even death to defend free speech and constitutional liberties.
Adams was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1830, the only former President to serve in that chamber. He would win election to nine terms, serving from 1831 until his death in 1848.
After one reelection victory, Adams said that he must “bring about a day prophesied when slavery and war shall be banished from the face of the Earth”.
As the abolitionist movement grew, the American Anti-Slavery Society filed over 1,000 petitions, with 130,000 signatures, focused on abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia since it was under federal jurisdiction. In 1836, in response to Adams’s consistent presentation of these citizen petitions, Southern Democrats imposed a Gag Rule that immediately tabled any petitions about slavery.
The Gag Rule prohibited anti-slavery petitions from “being printed, read, discussed, or voted on, stating that the effect of these petitions was to create much irritation and ill feeling between different parts of the Union”.
Prior to the Rule’s vote, Adams rose from his seat to protest. When House Speaker, James Polk, refused to recognize him, Adams yelled, “Am I gagged?” He argued that the Gag Rule was a “direct violation of the Constitution of the United States, the rules of this House, and the rights of my constituents.” He declared it a threat to free, deliberative government: “The freedom of debate has been stifled in this House to a degree far beyond anything that ever has happened since the existence of the Constitution.”
This was the beginning of Adams’s relentless campaign to overturn the Gag Rule, waged in an increasingly dangerous political environment:
Joanne B. Freeman’s book, The Field of Blood; Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War, documents the deterioration of representative government and civil discourse. As she writes, “Between 1830 and 1860, there were more than seventy violent incidents between Congressmen in the House and Senate Chambers or on nearby street…armed groups of Northern and Southern Congressmen engaged in hand-to-hand combat on the House Floor….fighting became endemic and Congressmen strapped on knives and guns before heading to the Capitol every morning.”
A core of members of Congress from slaveholding states countered Adams’s increasingly creative parliamentary maneuvers with physical threats. Rep. Thomas Arnold (Whig-Wisconsin) defense of Adams provoked Rep. John Dawson (D-Louisiana) to brandish a large knife and threaten to cut his throat. Once, when Adams’s remarks “put slaveholders in blaze”, scores of slaveholders “shouted points of order, every now and then screaming at the top of their voices”. This was followed by a gang of Southern members surrounding Adams, threatening physical violence. Adams rose to his feet and shouted, “I see where the shoe pinches, Mr. Speaker, it will pinch more yet!”
Adams led the ban of dueling to stop Southerner members using deadly force (the assassination of abolitionist Rep. Jonathan Cilley by Southern Rep. Willam Graves occurred on February 24, 1838 was orchestrated and covered-up as a duel).
Adams asserted the dueling ban “goes to the independence of this House; it goes to the independence of every individual Member of this House; it goes to the right of speech and the freedom of debate in this House.”
Adams continued to present hundreds of petitions with the signatures of citizens opposed to slavery, only to be shouted down. He then avoided the word “petition”, saying instead that he was introducing a “prayer” that all would enjoy their God-given rights. “Petition was prayer,” he argued. “It was the cry of the suffering for relief; of the oppressed for mercy.”
Adams received numerous death threats. “I promise to cut your throat from ear to ear,” read one. Another had a picture of a large Bowie knife and threatened “Vengeance is mine, say the South!” Adams confided to his diary, “I walk on the edge of a precipice in every step that I take.”
Adams introduced thousands of petitions, including 511 on March 30, 1840, alone. All were tabled without debate. Proslavery representatives then instituted a harsher gag rule to shut Adams up. The House agreed it would not receive any petitions. Adams saw a “conspiracy in and out of Congress to crush the liberties of a free people of the Union.”
In a bold act of defiance, Adams had the clerk of the House read the Declaration of Independence aloud to his fellow representatives, stating, “I rest that petition on the Declaration of Independence.”
Adams’s crusade drew increased media coverage of the Gag Rule and congressional violence, which “exposed the tyrannical force of the Slave Power for all to see”. In 1842, Southern members overplayed their hand by censuring Rep. Joshua Giddings over his resolution congratulating Adams winning the freedom of the Amistad ship slaves in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Media coverage raised American awareness of, and opposition to, the Gag Rule. Northern voters increasingly supported candidates who demanded the right of representation, petition, and free speech. This new generation of Northern Democrats were unwilling to embrace Southern intimidation tactics.
After these election reversals, Rep. Henry Wise (D-Virginia), the leading Gag Rule supporter and Adams’s nemesis, announced to reporters that he “ceased to contend in the war which is being carried on in the House by certain men against the South”. Wise ceded that the Gag Rule “roused Northern fury over violated rights”.
The Gag Rule was finally rescinded on December 3, 1844, by a vote of 108–80, with all Northern and four Southern Whigs voting for repeal, along with 78% of Northern Democrats.
Congress never again attempted to silence dissent among its members.
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