In the results that followed the mobbing of Abolitionists in the North, from 1834 to 1836, is to be found another lesson for those voters of this day who can profit by the teachings of history. The violent assaults on the Abolitionists by the friends of the Constitution and the Union constituted an epoch in the lives of these people. It gave them a footing and a hearing and many converts.
We have already noted some wonderful and instructive changes in the tide of events set in motion by the radical teachings of the New Abolitionists. The churches, as has been shown, to save the country, North and South, changed their attitude on slavery itself. Dr. Channing, who had opposed the methods of the Abolitionists, became, as many others did with him, when mobs had assailed these people, their defender and eulogist, because they were martyrs for the sake of free speech; and now we are to see in John Quincy Adams another change, equally notable, a change that was to make Mr. Adams thenceforward the most momentous figure, at least during its earlier stages, in the tragic drama that is the subject of our story.
Elected to the House of Representatives after the expiration of his term as President, Mr. Adams was not in sympathy with the methods of the Abolitionists. Indeed, prior to December 31, 1831, he had shown as little interest in slavery as he did when on that day in presenting to the House fifteen petitions against slavery he "deprecated a discussion which would lead to ill-will, to heart-burning, to mutual hatred ... without accomplishing anything else."[35]
The petitions presented by Mr. Adams were referred to a committee.
The Southerners had not then become so exasperated as to insist on Congress refusing to receive Abolition petitions. But multiplying these petitions was a ready means of provoking the slave-holders, and soon petitions poured in from many quarters, couched, most of them, in language, not disrespectful to Congress but provoking to slave-holders.
Unfortunately, the lower house of Congress on May 26, 1836, which was while mobs in the North were still trying to put down the Abolitionists, passed a resolution that all such petitions, etc., should thereafter be laid upon the table, without further action. Adams voted against it as "a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States." The Constitution forbids any law "abridging the freedom of speech ... or the right ... to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The resolution to lay all anti-slavery petitions on the table without further action was passed, "with the hope that it might put a stop to the agitation that seemed to endanger the existence of the Union." But it had the opposite effect. It soon became known as the "gag resolution," and was, for years, the centre of the most aggravating discussions that had, up to that time, ever occurred in Congress. Mr. Adams in these debates became, without, it seems, ever having been in full sympathy with the agitators, thenceforward their champion in Congress, and so continued until the day of his death in 1848.
The Abolitionists were happy. They were succeeding in their programme—making the Southern slave-holder odious by exasperating him into offending Northern sentiment.