The Lost Founding Father by William J. Cooper

Author:William J. Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2017-02-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

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“The First and Holiest Rights of Humanity”

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WOULD BECOME A LUMINARY IN CONGRESS during the middle and late 1830s. As the first former president to join the nation’s lawmakers, he automatically received more attention that the average representative. But his rise to prominence in the House coincided with the advent of a fierce slavery-related politics. Since the ratification of the Constitution, the country had previously experienced such a contest only once, the crisis over the admission of Missouri as a state. That wrath passed, however, with the passage of the Missouri Compromise in 1820, a quick and seemingly final solution. But the 1830s did not witness such a quick end to its furor. Although the particulars, actors and issues, might and did change, sectional rancor remained a potent force—a force that never really dissipated. Adams consciously took a leading part in maintaining, and even invigorating, the tension.

From middecade national politicians attempted to utilize political parties as a barrier against sectional battles. Both the Democratic party and the Whig party, which by 1835 had become the chief rival of the Democrats, operated nationally. Thus political success required finding ways to preclude sectional disharmony. This goal provided a cement for the barrier that could at times hold back the sectional tide. But it never ebbed for very long.

With just a tenuous partisan allegiance and in a secure congressional district, Adams had considerable freedom of action. During these years his animosity toward those like Jackson and Calhoun who he judged had unfairly driven him from the presidency meshed with his growing concern about southern influence in the nation. He saw southerners prevailing in his nemesis the Democratic party, which dominated the national government. This especially distressed him because it permitted the southerners to protect the evil of slavery.

He would stand, and fight, for what he defined as the moral purpose and grandeur of his beloved country. Embroiled in that struggle, he became more and more convinced that the nation created by the Founders could not survive without wrenching change. Thus the nationalism of the Founders that he had so cherished and for decades had propounded would perhaps have to be redefined. And he as their lineal disciple would have to lead the way. Congressman Adams was present when the first session of the Twenty-Third Congress convened in early December 1833. The partisanship of pro- and anti-Jackson adherents continued to dominate politics, though with shifting boundaries. Adams still held on to some Antimason affiliations, but that party no longer flourished, for following the election of 1832, Antimasonic leaders in critical states like New York and Pennsylvania realized that their party by itself could no longer seriously contend for statewide office, much less compete nationally.1

The demise of Antimasonry signaled the coalescing of partisans into two parties, the Democratic and the National Republican. Yet that lineup lacked stability. Because Jackson’s personality and policies generated such vigorous opposition as well as staunch loyalty, major anti-Jackson chieftains, led by Henry Clay, worked to create a

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