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| Old Man Eloquent |
Most people know Adams as the sixth President and son of Founding Father John Adams. But Quincy Adams' presidency was a blip in his career of public service. He was a diplomat, minister, Secretary of State, Senator, and a member of the House of Representatives, where he was elected to nine terms.
One of the most overlooked aspect of Adams' career was his fight against slavery. In this fight, he never wavered. He fought against the 1836 'gag rule' that prohibited any discussion of slavery in Congress, using various parliamentary and procedural methods to get around the ban. Quincy Adams' colleagues even attempted to censure him, but he turned this, too, to his advantage, using the censure motion to debate the evils of slavery and eventually winning out against the censure.
Quincy Adams died before the Civil War began, but he had predicted it years earlier:
“If slavery be the destined sword of the hand of the destroying angel which is to sever the ties of this Union, the same sword will cut in sunder the bonds of slavery itself. A dissolution of the Union for the cause of slavery would be followed by a servile war in the slave-holding States, combined with a war between the two severed portions of the Union. It seems to me that its result might be the extirpation of slavery from this whole continent; and, calamitous and desolating as this course of events in its progress must be, so glorious would be its final issue, that, as God shall judge me, I dare not say that it is not to be desired.” (Memoirs of John Quincy Adams)
If you're interested in learning more about the sixth President, here are a few good sources to begin with:
John Quincy Adams by Harlow Giles Unger
The Education of Henry Adams
What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America
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