Mr. Adams took his seat in the House as a member of the twenty-second Congress in December, 1831. He had been elected by the National Republican, afterward better known as the Whig party, but one of his first acts was to declare that he would be bound by no partisan connection, but would in every matter act independently. This course he regarded as a "duty imposed upon him by his peculiar position," in that he "had spent the greatest portion of his life in the service of the whole nation and had been honored with their highest trust." Many persons had predicted that he would find himself subjected to embarrassments and perhaps to humiliations by reason of his apparent descent in the scale of political dignities. He notes, however, that he encountered no annoyance on this score, but on the contrary he was rather treated with an especial respect. He was made chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, a laborious as well as an important and honorable position at all times, and especially so at this juncture when the rebellious mutterings of South Carolina against the protective tariff were already to be heard rolling and swelling like portentous thunder from the fiery Southern regions. He would have preferred to exchange this post for a place upon the Committee on Foreign Affairs, for whose business he felt more fitted. But he was told that in the impending crisis his ability, authority, and prestige were all likely to be needed in the place allotted to him to aid in the salvation of the country.
The nullification chapter of our history cannot here be entered upon at length, and Mr. Adams's connection with it must be very shortly stated. At the first meeting of his committee he remarks: "A reduction of the duties upon many of the articles in the tariff was understood by all to be the object to be effected;" and a little later he said that he should be disposed to give such aid as he could to any plan for this reduction which the Treasury Department should devise. "He should certainly not consent to sacrifice the manufacturing interest," he said, "but something of concession would be due from that interest to appease the discontents of the South." He was in a reasonable frame of mind; but unfortunately other people were rapidly ceasing to be reasonable. When Jackson's message of December 4, 1832, was promulgated, showing a disposition to do for South Carolina pretty much all that she demanded, Mr. Adams was bitterly indignant. The message, he said, "recommends a total change in the policy of the Union with reference to the Bank, manufactures, internal improvement, and the public lands. It goes to dissolve the Union into its original elements, and is in substance a complete surrender to the nullifiers of South Carolina." When, somewhat later on, the President lost his temper and flamed out in his famous proclamation to meet the nullification ordinance, he spoke in tones more pleasing to Mr. Adams. But the ultimate compromise which disposed of the temporary dissension without permanently settling the fundamental question of the constitutional right of nullification was extremely distasteful to him. He was utterly opposed to the concessions which were made while South Carolina still remained contumacious. He was for compelling her to retire altogether from her rebellious position and to repeal her unconstitutional enactments wholly and unconditionally, before one jot should be abated from the obnoxious duties. When the bill for the modification of the tariff was under debate, he moved to strike out all but the enacting clause, and supported his motion in a long speech, insisting that no tariff ought to pass until it was known "whether there was any measure by which a State could defeat the laws of the Union." In a minority report from his own committee he strongly censured the policy of the Administration. He was for meeting, fighting out, and determining at this crisis the whole doctrine of state rights and secession. "One particle of compromise," he said, with what truth events have since shown clearly enough, would "directly lead to the final and irretrievable dissolution of the Union." In his usual strong and thorough-going fashion he was for persisting in the vigorous and spirited measures, the mere brief declaration of which, though so quickly receded from, won for Jackson a measure of credit greater than he deserved. Jackson was thrown into a great rage by the threats of South Carolina, and replied to them with the same prompt wrath with which he had sometimes resented insults from individuals. But in his cool inner mind he was in sympathy with the demands which that State preferred, and though undoubtedly he would have fought her, had the dispute been forced to that pass, yet he was quite willing to make concessions, which were in fact in consonance with his own views as well as with hers, in order to avoid that sad conclusion. He was satisfied to have the instant emergency pass over in a manner rendered superficially creditable to himself by his outburst of temper, under cover of which he sacrificed the substantial matter of principle without a qualm. He shook his fist and shouted defiance in the face of the nullifiers, while Mr. Clay smuggled a comfortable concession into their pockets. Jackson, notwithstanding his belligerent attitude, did all he could to help Clay and was well pleased with the result. Mr. Adams was not. He watched the disingenuous game with disgust. It is certain that if he had still been in the White House, the matter would have had a very different ending, bloodier, it may be, and more painful, but much more conclusive.
For the most part Mr. Adams found himself in opposition to President Jackson's Administration. This was not attributable to any sense of personal hostility towards a successful rival, but to an inevitable antipathy towards the measures, methods, and ways adopted by the General so unfortunately transferred to civil life. Few intelligent persons, and none having the statesman habit of mind, befriended the reckless, violent, eminently unstatesmanlike President. His ultimate weakness in the nullification matter, his opposition to internal improvements, his policy of sacrificing the public lands to individual speculators, his warfare against the Bank of the United States conducted by methods the most unjustifiable, the transaction of the removal of the deposits so disreputable and injurious in all its details, the importation of Mrs. Eaton's visiting-list into the politics and government of the country, the dismissal of the oldest and best public servants as a part of the nefarious system of using public offices as rewards for political aid and personal adherence, the formation from base ingredients of the ignoble "Kitchen Cabinet,"—all these doings, together with much more of the like sort, constituted a career which could only seem blundering, undignified, and dishonorable in the eyes of a man like Mr. Adams, who regarded statesmanship with the reverence due to the noblest of human callings.
Right as Mr. Adams was generally in his opposition to Jackson, yet once he deserves credit for the contrary course. This was in the matter of our relations with France. The treaty of 1831 secured to this country an indemnity of $5,000,000, which, however, it had never been possible to collect. This procrastination raised Jackson's ever ready ire, and casting to the winds any further dunning, he resolved either to have the money or to fight for it. He sent a message to Congress, recommending that if France should not promptly settle the account, letters of marque and reprisal against her commerce should be issued. He ordered Edward Livingston, minister at Paris, to demand his passports and cross over to London. These eminently proper and ultimately effectual measures alarmed the large party of the timid; and the General found himself in danger of extensive desertions even on the part of his usual supporters. But as once before in a season of his dire extremity his courage and vigor had brought the potent aid of Mr. Adams to his side, so now again he came under a heavy debt of gratitude to the same champion. Mr. Adams stood by him with generous gallantry, and by a telling speech in the House probably saved him from serious humiliation and even disaster. The President's style of dealing had roused Mr. Adams's spirit, and he spoke with a fire and vehemence which accomplished the unusual feat of changing the predisposed minds of men too familiar with speech-making to be often much influenced by it in the practical matter of voting. He thought at the time that the success of this speech, brilliant as it appeared, was not unlikely to result in his political ruin. Jackson would befriend and reward his thorough-going partisans at any cost to his own conscience or the public welfare; but the exceptional aid, tendered not from a sense of personal fealty to himself, but simply from the motive of aiding the right cause happening in the especial instance to have been espoused by him, never won from him any token of regard. In November, 1837, Mr. Adams, speaking of his personal relations with the President, said:—
"Though I had served him more than any other living man ever did, and though I supported his Administration at the hazard of my own political destruction, and effected for him at a moment when his own friends were deserting him what no other member of Congress ever accomplished for him—an unanimous vote of the House of Representatives to support him in his quarrel with France; though I supported him in other very critical periods of his Administration, my return from him was insult, indignity, and slander."
Antipathy had at last become the definitive condition of these two men—antipathy both political and personal. At one time a singular effort to reconcile them—probably though not certainly undertaken with the knowledge of Jackson—was made by Richard M. Johnson. This occurred shortly before the inauguration of the war conducted by the President against the Bank of the United States; and judging by the rest of Jackson's behavior at this period, there was probably at least as much of calculation in his motives, if in fact he was cognizant of Johnson's approaches, as there was of any real desire to reëstablish the bygone relation of honorable friendship. To the advances thus made Mr. Adams replied a little coldly, not quite repellently, that Jackson, having been responsible for the suspension of personal intercourse, must now be undisguisedly the active party in renewing it. At the same time he professed himself "willing to receive in a spirit of conciliation any advance which in that spirit General Jackson might make." But nothing came of this intrinsically hopeless attempt. On the contrary the two drew rapidly and more widely apart, and entertained concerning each other opinions which grew steadily more unfavorable, and upon Adams's part more contemptuous, as time went on.
Fifteen months later General Jackson made his visit to Boston, and it was proposed that Harvard College should confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. The absurdity of the act, considered simply in itself, was admitted by all. But the argument in its favor was based upon the established usage of the College as towards all other Presidents, so that its omission in this case might seem a personal slight. Mr. Adams, being at the time a member of the Board of Overseers, strongly opposed the proposition, but of course in vain. All that he could do was, for his own individual part, to refuse to be present at the conferring of the degree, giving as the minor reason for his absence, that he could hold no friendly intercourse with the President, but for the major reason that "independent of that, as myself an affectionate child of our Alma Mater, I would not be present to witness her disgrace in conferring her highest literary honors upon a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name." "A Doctorate of Laws," he said, "for which an apology was necessary, was a cheap honor and ... a sycophantic compliment." After the deed was done, he used to amuse himself by speaking of "Doctor Andrew Jackson." This same eastern tour of Jackson's called forth many other expressions of bitter sarcasm from Adams. The President was ill and unable to carry out the programme of entertainment and exhibition prepared for him: whereupon Mr. Adams remarks:—
"I believe much of his debility is politic.... He is one of our tribe of great men who turn disease to commodity, like John Randolph, who for forty years was always dying. Jackson, ever since he became a mark of public attention, has been doing the same thing.... He is now alternately giving out his chronic diarrhœa and making Warren bleed him for a pleurisy, and posting to Cambridge for a doctorate of laws; mounting the monument of Bunker's Hill to hear a fulsome address and receive two cannon balls from Edward Everett," etc. "Four fifths of his sickness is trickery, and the other fifth mere fatigue."
This sounds, it must be confessed, a trifle rancorous; but Adams had great excuse for nourishing rancor towards Jackson.
It is time, however, to return to the House of Representatives. It was not by bearing his share in the ordinary work of that body, important or exciting as that might at one time or another happen to be, that Mr. Adams was to win in Congress that reputation which has been already described as far overshadowing all his previous career. A special task and a peculiar mission were before him. It was a part of his destiny to become the champion of the anti-slavery cause in the national legislature. Almost the first thing which he did after he had taken his seat in Congress was to present "fifteen petitions signed numerously by citizens of Pennsylvania, praying for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia." He simply moved their reference to the Committee on the District of Columbia, declaring that he should not support that part of the petition which prayed for abolition in the District. The time had not yet come when the South felt much anxiety at such manifestations, and these first stones were dropped into the pool without stirring a ripple on the surface. For about four years more we hear little in the Diary concerning slavery. It was not until 1835, when the annexation of Texas began to be mooted, that the North fairly took the alarm, and the irrepressible conflict began to develop. Then at once we find Mr. Adams at the front. That he had always cherished an abhorrence of slavery and a bitter antipathy to slave-holders as a class is sufficiently indicated by many chance remarks scattered through his Diary from early years. Now that a great question, vitally affecting the slave power, divided the country into parties and inaugurated the struggle which never again slept until it was settled forever by the result of the civil war, Mr. Adams at once assumed the function of leader. His position should be clearly understood; for in the vast labor which lay before the abolition party different tasks fell to different men. Mr. Adams assumed to be neither an agitator nor a reformer; by necessity of character, training, fitness, and official position, he was a legislator and statesman. The task which accident or destiny allotted to him was neither to preach among the people a crusade against slavery, nor to devise and keep in action the thousand resources which busy men throughout the country were constantly multiplying for the purpose of spreading and increasing a popular hostility towards the great "institution." Every great cause has need of its fanatics, its vanguard to keep far in advance of what is for the time reasonable and possible; it has not less need of the wiser and cooler heads to discipline and control the great mass which is set in motion by the reckless forerunners, to see to the accomplishment of that which the present circumstances and development of the movement allow to be accomplished. It fell to Mr. Adams to direct the assault against the outworks which were then vulnerable, and to see that the force then possessed by the movement was put to such uses as would insure definite results instead of being wasted in endeavors which as yet were impossible of achievement. Drawing his duty from his situation and surroundings, he left to others, to younger men and more rhetorical natures, outside the walls of Congress, the business of firing the people and stirring popular opinion and sympathy. He was set to do that portion of the work of abolition which was to be done in Congress, to encounter the mighty efforts which were made to stifle the great humanitarian cry in the halls of the national legislature. This was quite as much as one man was equal to; in fact, it is certain that no one then in public life except Mr. Adams could have done it effectually. So obvious is this that one cannot help wondering what would have befallen the cause, had he not been just where he was to forward it in just the way that he did. It is only another among the many instances of the need surely finding the man. His qualifications were unique; his ability, his knowledge, his prestige and authority, his high personal character, his persistence and courage, his combativeness stimulated by an acrimonious temper but checked by a sound judgment, his merciless power of invective, his independence and carelessness of applause or vilification, friendship or enmity, constituted him an opponent fully equal to the enormous odds which the slave-holding interest arrayed against him. A like moral and mental fitness was to be found in no one else. Numbers could not overawe him, nor loneliness dispirit him. He was probably the most formidable fighter in debate of whom parliamentary records preserve the memory. The hostility which he encountered beggars description; the English language was deficient in adequate words of virulence and contempt to express the feelings which were entertained towards him. At home he had not the countenance of that class in society to which he naturally belonged. A second time he found the chief part of the gentlemen of Boston and its vicinity, the leading lawyers, the rich merchants, the successful manufacturers, not only opposed to him, but entertaining towards him sentiments of personal dislike and even vindictiveness. This stratum of the community, having a natural distaste for disquieting agitation and influenced by class feeling,—the gentlemen of the North sympathizing with the "aristocracy" of the South,—could not make common cause with anti-slavery people. Fortunately, however, Mr. Adams was returned by a country district where the old Puritan instincts were still strong. The intelligence and free spirit of New England were at his back, and were fairly represented by him; in spite of high-bred disfavor they carried him gallantly through the long struggle. The people of the Plymouth district sent him back to the House every two years from the time of his first election to the year of his death, and the disgust of the gentlemen of Boston was after all of trifling consequence to him and of no serious influence upon the course of history. The old New England instinct was in him as it was in the mass of the people; that instinct made him the real exponent of New England thought, belief, and feeling, and that same instinct made the great body of voters stand by him with unswerving constancy. When his fellow Representatives, almost to a man, deserted him, he was sustained by many a token of sympathy and admiration coming from among the people at large. Time and the history of the United States have been his potent vindicators. The conservative, conscienceless respectability of wealth was, as is usually the case with it in the annals of the Anglo-Saxon race, quite in the wrong and predestined to well-merited defeat. It adds to the honor due to Mr. Adams that his sense of right was true enough, and that his vision was clear enough, to lead him out of that strong thraldom which class feelings, traditions, and comradeship are wont to exercise.