John Quincy Adams
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“HE IS AN OLD ROUÉ WHO ... 1 MUST HAVE SULPHURIC ACID IN HIS TEA.” JOHN QUINCY ADAMS When this ex-President returned to Washington as a mere member of the South-dominated House of Representatives, representing the Plymouth district of Massachusetts, rather than retiring into safe and benign statesmanship, his passionate campaign to repeal the gag rule by which all petitions concerning slavery were being tabled without consideration led him to introduce the topic of disunion. From the floor arose the cry “Expel him! Expel him!” and a resolution was sponsored accusing this former President of the United States of America of — high treason. 1.According to Ralph Waldo Emerson. HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN QUINCY ADAMS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS Our Fearless Leaders NAME BORN INAUGURATED EX OFFICIO DIED GEORGE WASHINGTON 1789 1792 JOHN ADAMS 1796 JULY 4, 1826 THOMAS JEFFERSON APRIL 13, 1743 1800 DITTO 1804 JAMES MADISON 1808 1812 JAMES MONROE 1816 1820 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 1824 ANDREW JACKSON 1828 1832 MARTIN VAN BUREN 1836 WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON 1840 JOHN TYLER 1841 JAMES K. POLK 1844 ZACHARY TAYLOR 1848 FRANKLIN PEIRCE 1852 JAMES BUCHANAN 1856 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1860 1864 HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN QUINCY ADAMS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS Political Parties Then and Now ROUND 1 DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICANS FEDERALISTS Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, 1792 et al. representing the North and commercial interests Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al. representing 1796 the South and landowning interests 1817- James Monroe’s “factionless” era of good feelings, ho ho ho 1824 ROUND 2A DEMOCRATS NATIONAL REPUBLICANS John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, representing the North and the commercial interests, 1828 and in addition the residents of border states ROUND 2B DEMOCRATS WHIGS Andrew Jackson, representing the South John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and landowning interests, plus wannabees such as representing the North and the commercial interests, 1832 our small farmers, backwoods go-getters, the “little and residents of border states, and in addition the anti- guy on the make” in general Jackson Democrats ROUND 3 DEMOCRATS REPUBLICANS Abraham Lincoln, William Henry Seward, representing 1856 Northerners, urbanites, business types, factory workers, and (more or less) the abolitionist movement ROUND 4 DEMOCRATS REPUBLICANS 1932- F.D.R., representing Northeasterners, urbanites, Representing businesspeople, farmers, white-collar 1960 blue-collar workers, Catholics, liberals, and types, Protestants, the “Establishment,” right-to-lifers, assorted ethnics moral majoritarians, and in general, conservatism of the “I’ve got mine, let’s see you try to get yours” stripe. HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN QUINCY ADAMS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 1215 June 15, Monday (Old Style): At Runnymede, John Lackland, King of England found it expedient to place his seal upon one or another predecessor screed to the Magna Carta, promising not democracy but merely increased feudal power to the barons (even this would not become established until 1297). By the bye, this “Magna Carta” thingie actually is a rather disappointing screed to peruse (I have carefully inspected it both in its surviving originals and in fair translated text). There are no ringing declarations of principle or grand pronouncements either in a preamble or at any point in the text and the document contains, at most, 3 clauses which remain a part of our modern legal structure. The existence of such a document does establish, however, that it was becoming permissible to place specific limits upon the powers of the ultimate executive agent of the nation — and then, becoming feasible to enforce said restrictions. The clause which we today would consider most relevant is #39 which offers that “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.” It has been pointed out that that, and a buck and a quarter, will buy you a cup of java anywhere in America today, but it also needs to be pointed out that it wouldn’t even buy you a cup of java in England in 1215. For one little thingie, this right to trial by a jury of one’s peers was provided only to freemen — and 5 guys out of every 6 in England at that time were mere serfs.2 READ THE FULL TEXT NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE JUNE 15TH, 1215 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST). NOBODY ON THAT RUNNY MEDE ON THAT DAY HAD ANY NOTION THAT WHAT WAS BEING SET WAS A PRECEDENT THAT WOULD ENDURE. NOBODY ON THAT RUNNY MEDE ON THAT DAY HAD ANY NOTION THAT WHAT THEY WERE DOING HAD ANYTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH THE COMMON FOLK, SERFS, VILLAINS, THE “PEOPLE,” THE “PUBLIC,” THE BRITISH CITIZEN WITH HIS/HER INALIENABLE RIGHTS. 2. What makes the document most relevant for our present context is how it would figure in the deep background for the La Amistad case at law in 1841. The document would constitute a large portion of the motivation for John Quincy Adams agreeing to present the case before the US Supreme Court (his take not having anything at all to do with slavery but being merely that one of his illustrious personal ancestors had been a signatory to this document — and that the seizure of the vessel by the federal government had been a violation of this principle created by his illustrious personal ancestor). HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN QUINCY ADAMS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 1767 John Quincy Adams was born, 2d of 4 children of Abigail Adams and John Adams. Despite the reputations these folks have acquired in historical imagination, it would be Abigail who would prove to be a stern and disapproving parent while John would prove to be the warmer, more loving parent. Alcoholism and related problems would ravage Abigail’s brothers, and would later ravage her younger son. To ensure that John Quincy, her 1st-born son, would avoid this fate, she would throughout his life belabor him with a steady barrage of admonitions and criticisms. A biographer, Paul C. Nagel, would accuse Abigail of being “a calamity as a mother” who forced her own “ambitions and apprehensions upon her children.”3 Young John Quincy would temporarily escape his mother’s tirades by spending much of his youth in Europe where his father was serving in different diplomatic posts. Europe came to represent to him not only intellectual freedom but also personal freedom from familial expectations and intrusions. However, the almanac which John Quincy kept during his early twenties would describe encounters with prostitutes or lower-class pickups in Boston: “my taste” in erotics, he would explain to himself, “is naturally depraved.” His fiancée Louisa Johnson, be it noted, was schooled in Nantes (where, according to a song, the ladies wear no panties). She wrote poetry and played the harp nicely enough, but those were only a couple of her proclivities. The dynamic duo would not limit themselves to reading Chaucer, Spenser, Scott, and Maria Edgeworth aloud to one another, for the swain would draw his young lady’s attention to the Reverend John Donne’s randy couplet in celebration of pubic hair: “Off with that wyerie Coronet and shew / The haiery Diademe which on you doth grow.” During the second Continental Congress, Abigail Adams entreated her husband John to “remember the ladies” in the new code of laws he was writing. FEMINISM 3. Abigail Adams was a racist with a pronounced case of Negrophobia, who could not witness an American white man playing the role of Othello, in the Shakespeare play, wearing dark body makeup, without reporting that her “whole soul shuddered” as she witnessed “the sooty heretic Moor touch the fair Desdemona.” I don’t think that anyone has to date bothered to evaluate the impact this sort of mindset must have had on her children. (No black American would portray this character until Paul Robeson was cast for the role in 1942, and even then no theater on Broadway in New York City could be found that would book such a production.) HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN QUINCY ADAMS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 1775 April 19, Wednesday: Benjamin Wellingtonwas one of the Lexington militiaman, but was captured by the army while they were still marching toward Lexington, before the gunfire on the town common. He went on to serve at the battle of Saratoga. As a contingent of minutemen passed through Braintree on their way to the Lexington/Concord battle, they were amused by an 8-year-old who came out of a house and performed the manual of arms before them using a musket taller than himself. This boy was John Quincy Adams. Pompy or Pomp Blackman of Braintree and Prince Estabrook were two local black minutemen who took part in the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Estabrook, a slave of Benjamin Wellington, was wounded on Lexington common.4 By his service in the revolution he would receive his manumission. A more general list of participants of color would include the Peter Salem who had been the slave of the Belknaps in Framingham but had been manumitted expressly that he might enlist in the militia, Cato Stedman, Cuff Whittemore, Lemuel Haynes, Cato Wood of Arlington, Prince of Brookline, Caesar Ferritt, and Samuel Craft. 4. Another source informs me that Prince Estabrook had been owned by the third Joseph Estabrook of Concord, and had been inherited by his son Joseph Estabrook. HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN QUINCY ADAMS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 1783 John Quincy Adams visited the British Museum in London to view the seal of his supposed ancestor5 upon the original parchment of 1 of the 4 survivors6 of the 36 or more Magna Carta exemplifications that had been issued at Runnymede over the great seal of John Lackland, King of England.7 5.