On March 12, of the same year, he presented ninety-six petitions, nearly all of an anti-slavery character, one of them for "expunging the Declaration of Independence from the Journals."
On December 14, 1838, Mr. Wise, of Virginia, objected to the reception of certain anti-slavery petitions. The Speaker ruled his objection out of order, and from this ruling Wise appealed. The question on the appeal was taken by yeas and nays. When Mr. Adams's name was called, he relates:—
"I rose and said, 'Mr. Speaker, considering all the resolutions introduced by the gentleman from New Hampshire as'—The Speaker roared out, 'The gentleman from Massachusetts must answer Aye or No, and nothing else. Order!' With a reinforced voice—'I refuse to answer, because I consider all the proceedings of the House as unconstitutional'—While in a firm and swelling voice I pronounced distinctly these words, the Speaker and about two thirds of the House cried, 'order! order! order!' till it became a perfect yell. I paused a moment for it to cease and then said, 'a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States.' While speaking these words with loud, distinct, and slow articulation, the bawl of 'order! order!' resounded again from two thirds of the House. The Speaker, with agonizing lungs, screamed, 'I call upon the House to support me in the execution of my duty!' I then coolly resumed my seat. Waddy Thompson, of South Carolina, advancing into one of the aisles with a sarcastic smile and silvery tone of voice, said, 'What aid from the House would the Speaker desire?' The Speaker snarled back, 'The gentleman from South Carolina is out of order!' and a peal of laughter burst forth from all sides of the House."
So that little skirmish ended, much more cheerfully than was often the case.
December 20, 1838, he presented fifty anti-slavery petitions, among which were three praying for the recognition of the Republic of Hayti. Petitions of this latter kind he strenuously insisted should be referred to a select committee, or else to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, accompanied in the latter case with explicit instructions that a report thereon should be brought in. He audaciously stated that he asked for these instructions because so many petitions of a like tenor had been sent to the Foreign Affairs Committee, and had found it a limbo from which they never again emerged, and the chairman had said that this would continue to be the case. The chairman, sitting two rows behind Mr. Adams, said, "that insinuation should not be made against a gentleman!" "I shall make," retorted Mr. Adams, "what insinuation I please. This is not an insinuation, but a direct, positive assertion."
January 7, 1839, he cheerfully records that he presented ninety-five petitions, bearing "directly or indirectly upon the slavery topics," and some of them very exasperating in their language. March 30, 1840, he handed in no less than five hundred and eleven petitions, many of which were not receivable under the "gag" rule adopted on January 28 of that year, which had actually gone the length of refusing so much as a reception to abolition petitions. April 13, 1840, he presented a petition for the repeal of the laws in the District of Columbia, which authorized the whipping of women. Besides this he had a multitude of others, and he only got through the presentation of them "just as the morning hour expired." On January 21, 1841, he found much amusement in puzzling his Southern adversaries by presenting some petitions in which, besides the usual anti-slavery prayers, there was a prayer to refuse to admit to the Union any new State whose constitution should tolerate slavery. The Speaker said that only the latter prayer could be received under the "gag" rule. Connor, of North Carolina, moved to lay on the table so much of the petition as could be received. Mr. Adams tauntingly suggested that in order to do this it would be necessary to mutilate the document by cutting it into two pieces; whereat there was great wrath and confusion, "the House got into a snarl, the Speaker knew not what to do." The Southerners raved and fumed for a while, and finally resorted to their usual expedient, and dropped altogether a matter which so sorely burned their fingers.
A fact, very striking in view of the subsequent course of events, concerning Mr. Adams's relation with the slavery question, seems hitherto to have escaped the attention of those who have dealt with his career. It may as well find a place here as elsewhere in a narrative which it is difficult to make strictly chronological. Apparently he was the first to declare the doctrine, that the abolition of slavery could be lawfully accomplished by the exercise of the war powers of the Government. The earliest expression of this principle is found in a speech made by him in May, 1836, concerning the distribution of rations to fugitives from Indian hostilities in Alabama and Georgia. He then said:—
"From the instant that your slave-holding States become the theatre of war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that instant the war powers of the Constitution extend to interference with the institution of slavery in every way in which it can be interfered with, from a claim of indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, to a cession of the State burdened with slavery to a foreign power."
In June, 1841, he made a speech of which no report exists, but the contents of which may be in part learned from the replies and references to it which are on record. Therein he appears to have declared that slavery could be abolished in the exercise of the treaty-making power, having reference doubtless to a treaty concluding a war.
These views were of course mere abstract expressions of opinion as to the constitutionality of measures the real occurrence of which was anticipated by nobody. But, as the first suggestions of a doctrine in itself most obnoxious to the Southern theory and fundamentally destructive of the great Southern "institution" under perfectly possible circumstances, this enunciation by Mr. Adams gave rise to much indignation. Instead of allowing the imperfectly formulated principle to lose its danger in oblivion, the Southerners assailed it with vehemence. They taunted Mr. Adams with the opinion, as if merely to say that he held it was to damn him to everlasting infamy. The only result was that they induced him to consider the matter more fully, and to express his belief more deliberately. In January, 1842, Mr. Wise attacked him upon this ground, and a month later Marshall followed in the same strain. These assaults were perhaps the direct incentive to what was said soon after by Mr. Adams, on April 14, 1842, in a speech concerning war with England and with Mexico, of which there was then some talk. Giddings, among other resolutions, had introduced one to the effect that the slave States had the exclusive right to be consulted on the subject of slavery. Mr. Adams said that he could not give his assent to this. One of the laws of war, he said, is