John Quincy Adams and abolitionism

He never joined the movement called "abolitionist" by historians—the one led by William Lloyd Garrison—because it demanded the immediate abolition of slavery and insisted it was a sin to enslave people.[6] Remini notes that Adams feared that the end of slavery could only come through civil war or the consent of the slave South, and not quickly and painlessly as the abolitionists wanted.The union issue became hotly contested under his successor, Andrew Jackson, when South Carolina threatened to secede, partly due to the tariff.Adams vilified slavery as a bad policy while Calhoun countered that the right to own slaves had to be protected from interference from the federal government to keep the nation alive.[11] The speech was directed not only at the justices of this Supreme Court hearing the case, but also to the broad national audience he instructed in the evils of slavery.[21] In the wake of the coinciding slavery and free speech debates surrounding the increasingly present abolitionist literature, the number of petitions brought to the house floor concerning the matter was multiplying rapidly.[22] The southern congressmen, led by James Henry Hammond of South Carolina, moved to eliminate any discussion of the issue from the House floor.Aside from the blow this action dealt to the expanding abolitionist movement, the gag rule also prompted questions of free speech and its role and limitations in the proceedings of the House of Representatives.Adams used his formal legal training to mount an involved attack against the gag rule and against the movement to limit the congressional discussion of the contentious issue of slavery.In William Lee Miller’s book, Arguing about Slavery, the author chronicles much of John Quincy Adams's fight against this censorship of speech on the House floor.Figuring that the gag rule could not pertain to items brought to the attention of the chair prior to its existence, Adams suggested the presentation of those petitions.On that day, John Quincy Adams stirred up the debate in the House with conniving adeptness by further challenges to the gag rule specifically as it concerned petitions.According to Miller, Adams took issue with the following: "The resolution charged him with attempting to present a petition from slaves asking for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.He informed the House that the petition was actually not asking for the members to consider abolishing slavery, but in fact was supplicating in favor of the opposite view.Whatever the origin of the petition, Adams took advantage of his right to defend himself in front of the members to deliver days of prepared and impromptu remarks against slavery and in favor of abolition.Adams had cleverly lifted the gag rule by debating slavery on the House floor in the moments he was allowed to rise in his defense against the threat of censure.He forced his colleagues to consider the precedent they were setting for the legislative arm of the United States government if members could be censured for speech on the House floor.The two resolutions passed at the end of this period of debate follow: Resolved, that this House cannot receive the said petition without disregarding its own dignity, the rights of a large class of citizens of the South and West, and the constitution of the United States.