[ad_1]
EXCLUSIVE: Americans have a low opinion of Congress — that’s not information. At simply 13%, approval of Congress polls about in addition to a colonoscopy and solely barely higher than thermonuclear struggle.
But if Americans are pissed off by a legislature that appears incapable of motion, think about if Congress had forbidden itself from even speaking about our nation’s hardest issues.
That’s what occurred when John Quincy Adams, who was elected to the House of Representatives after his presidency in 1830, tried to debate the difficulty of slavery.
JARED COHEN, BESTSELLING AUTHOR TO RELEASE ‘LIFE AFTER POWER,’ NEW BOOK ON SEVEN FORMER PRESIDENTS
The House had what was often known as the “Gag Rule,” which prohibited members from even elevating the subject. But when Adams introduced it up and his colleagues tried to kick him out of the House and silence him, the previous president fought back. He refused to be canceled and let a culture of censorship hold him from saying what he knew was true.
When John Quincy Adams left the presidency, defeated after one time period, he was the least widespread commander-in-chief since his father.
Beaten by Andrew Jackson in 1828, former President Adams thought his political life was over.
This article is excerpted by particular association from “Life After Power” by Jared Cohen (proven right here) — who reveals how others tried to cancel John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth commander-in-chief, who served in the House of Representatives after he misplaced his re-election bid for the presidency. (Fox News Digital; Jared Cohen/Simon & Schuster)
At 61 years previous, after having served as an envoy, senator, secretary of state and president, there have been no additional heights to which the founding son may climb.
For 18 months, he wallowed at house in Quincy, Massachusetts, studying and attempting his hand at tree farming, solely to discover that he didn’t have a inexperienced thumb.
He might need stayed in Quincy for the remainder of his days. When a buddy prompt to Adams’ spouse Louisa that her husband take into account re-entering politics, she responded, “There are some very silly plans going on here and God only knows in what they will end, but I fear not at all to my taste.”
In a a lot decrease place, Adams discovered a a lot larger calling.
But when the celebration conference nominated him to characterize Plymouth in the twenty second Congress, he gained in a landslide, and President John Quincy Adams turned Rep. John Quincy Adams, the one former commander-in-chief to serve in the House.
With victory in hand, he wrote, “Election as president of the United States was not half so gratifying to my inmost soul.”
AFTER THEY LEAVE THE WHITE HOUSE, WHAT SHOULD AMERICA DO WITH OUR EX-PRESIDENTS?
Adams wasn’t a slaveholder, and he knew slavery was evil, however he didn’t enter Congress as a crusading abolitionist.
He didn’t really know what he wished to do when he arrived on Capitol Hill. Upon seeing his previous buddy back in Washington, Kentucky Sen. Henry Clay jokingly requested how Adams “felt upon turning boy again in the House of Representatives.”
But in a a lot decrease place, Adams discovered a a lot larger calling.
Bestselling creator Cohen (left) writes that with a single query by Adams (proper) in the course of the latter’s post-presidential phrases as a member of the House of Representatives — “Am I gagged or am I not!?” — Adams “inadvertently christened the new edict forbidding debates about slavery: the Gag Rule.” But Adams pushed back arduous. (Fox News Digital; DeAgostini/Getty Images)
With the specter of civil struggle hanging over the capital, Congress had a practice of avoiding the difficulty of slavery altogether — members have been afraid of what would occur in the event that they introduced it up. But that didn’t imply the American individuals, on either side, weren’t vocal.
Adams’ anti-slavery sympathies have been well-known, and greater than 40,000 individuals had signed over 300 petitions on the difficulty addressed straight to him.
The proper to petition is protected by the First Amendment, and Congressman Adams would learn what the petitioners — lots of them girls’s teams or Christian societies — had to say, presenting their petitions on the House flooring, a lot to the chagrin of the slaveholders in Congress. His colleagues have been livid.
CRISIS ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES: WHAT UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS CAN LEARN FROM THE FOUNDING FATHERS
Terrified by Adams’ advocacy and that he was mentioning essentially the most explosive problem in the nation, the slaveholders fought back and handed a decision to forbid the difficulty of slavery from being mentioned in any respect. Shocked, Adams cried out, “Am I gagged or am I not!?”
With that query, he inadvertently christened the brand new edict forbidding debates about slavery: the Gag Rule.
The guidelines didn’t maintain Adams back. He would convey up the difficulty as usually as he may in no matter manner he may, defending the First Amendment proper to petition and hardening in his abolitionism over time.
John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth president, went on to serve for 9 phrases in the House of Representatives, from 1831 till his dying in 1848. He is the one president to be elected to Congress after leaving the presidency. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
In an period of political violence, even duels on the House flooring — and amid threats from one Southern congressman that he would reduce Adams “from ear to ear” — the previous president defied his foes at nice threat.
Upon studying about his exploits, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote admiringly that Adams was “no literary gentleman, but a bruiser … [H]e must have sulfuric acid in his tea.”
Just as a result of the House had handed the Gag Rule didn’t imply Adams was powerless.
He pushed back in his personal methods, calling a pro-slavery try to annex Texas “a war of conquest.”
Just as a result of the House handed the Gag Rule didn’t imply Adams was powerless.
He denounced the reintroduction of slavery to a territory the place it had been beforehand abolished and delayed the admission of one other slave state, which might have tipped the stability of energy in the Senate.
In the Amistad case, he represented enslaved women and men who had escaped their captors earlier than the Supreme Court, profitable them their freedom.
His argument relied on appeals to the courtroom’s reminiscence of the Founding Fathers, and he pointed to a duplicate of the Declaration of Independence hanging on the wall of the chamber, beseeching the justices, “If these rights are inalienable, they are incompatible with the rights of the victor to take the life of his enemy in war, or to spare his life and make him a slave.”
Illustration depicting the start of the Monroe Doctrine. James Monroe is proven standing beside a globe; John Quincy Adams is proven seated at left. From a portray by Clyde O. DeLand. (Getty Images)
Rep. Adams left his mark in different methods, too.
He headed a 13-member choose committee to examine whether or not President John Tyler ought to be impeached — the primary such committee in American historical past.
Adams additionally helped set up the Smithsonian Institution.
By the time Adams acquired the Gag Rule repealed in 1844, he’d finished greater than make historical past as the one former president elected to the House of Representatives. He’d grow to be the main abolitionist in Congress in the primary half of the nineteenth century.
Today’s elected representatives could make a distinction by reminding Americans of our nation’s best traditions.
He’d tied the reason behind abolition to the aim of the American founding, utilizing his authority because the son of a Founding Father and his information and expertise in authorities to grow to be an elder statesman, at the same time as a junior member.
When he died in 1848 at age 80 in the halls of the Capitol, he was described as “a living bond of [connection] between the present and the past.”
Upon his dying, Adams handed the torch of abolition to a younger member of Congress, Abraham Lincoln, with whom he overlapped throughout one time period, and who served on the committee to prepare Adams’ funeral.
Abraham Lincoln, whereas he was nonetheless a younger congressman prior to his election to the presidency, served on the committee to prepare the funeral of John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth president and a longtime member of Congress after that. (Painting by J.L.G. Ferris)
Adams didn’t let his frustrations at defeat in 1828 get the very best of him, and he didn’t let his extra highly effective colleagues silence or cancel him.
Against odds a lot more durable than immediately’s Congress is going through, Adams moved the needle towards the rules of the American founding.
He was revered, however he wasn’t all the time widespread. His pissed off opponents as soon as mentioned of him that he was the “acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed … the Old Man Eloquent, John Quincy Adams.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Today, members of Congress could make a reputation for themselves on tv or on social media, utilizing their positions as platforms and turning into speaking heads quite than legislators.
Or they will make a distinction by standing for first rules and reminding Americans of our nation’s best traditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER
If they do this, perhaps they’ll restore Americans’ religion in our establishments, they usually’ll observe in the footsteps of the good statesmen who got here earlier than them.
Excerpted from “Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House,” © copyright Jared Cohen (Simon & Schuster, Feb. 2024), by particular association. All rights reserved.
Stay tuned for extra excerpts at Fox News Digital from the brand new e book “Life After Power.”
For extra Lifestyle articles, go to www.foxnews.com/life-style.
[ad_2]
Source hyperlink