H. OF R.] Censure of Mr. Adams. [FEBRUARY, 1837. "Resolved, That JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, a Repre- | with prudence, and he would say that the mere sentative from the State of Massachusetts, has ren- circuinstance of a petition being from slaves dered himself justly liable to the severest censure of would not prevent him from presenting it; and this House, and is censured accordingly, for having if he should have incurred the censure of the attempted to present to this House the petition of House for so doing, he was ready to receive it. slaves." Mr. JENIFER, who was entitled to the floor, begged leave to propound an inquiry to the venerable member from Massachusetts, (Mr. ADAMS.) He read the following proceedings from the Globe of this morning, and he would respectfully ask that gentleman if that report was correct: Mr. ADAMS said it must be perfectly within the recollection of the Speaker, that what was there stated in the Globe was correct. He did not present the petition, but kept it in his possession. He had stated to the Speaker that he had in his possession a paper purporting to be from twenty-two slaves, and he had asked the Speaker whether a petition of this kind would come under the rule of the 18th of January last; and the Speaker said, as it was a novel question, he would take the sense of the House upon it. He had also stated, before he commenced presenting his petitions, that he had some in his possession which it had occurred to him were impositions; as, by the order of the 18th of January, members who had an attachment to the right of petition were liable to imposition. He had stated that, among the petitions which were in his possession, he had the suspicion that some of them were not genuine; and he would appeal to members to say whether he had not given this statement when he presented several of his petitions. He had given this statement when he stated he had in his possession the petition purporting to be from slaves; but he did not say, and no member of the House had the right to infer, that this paper was for the abolition of slavery. It was impossible for him to have said any such thing; for if the House had received the petition, and it had been read, they would instantly have seen that he made a false statement. He would, furthermore, say that if it had been a petition of slaves for the abolition of slavery, he should at least have paused before he brought the subject before the House in any form. However sacred he might hold the right of petition, he would still exercise a discretionary power in bringing before the House petitions which it was his opinion ought not to be presented; that discretionary power, however, he would use As he had before said, however, he had not presented this petition to the House, and he was yet waiting the Speaker's decision before he could determine whether he would present it. If the House should decide that it was not a paper which came under the order of the 18th not present it at all. He would take this op of January, and was not admissible, he should portunity of saying to the House, that however much he might have been misunderstood by gentlemen, there was nothing further from his intention than to trifle with the House on this occasion; and never in the course of his life had he intended to pay a greater respect to the rules of the House and the rights and privileges of members. Had he consulted his own feelings, he would have presented the paper to the House; but, from the respect he paid to the rules of the House, he had asked the decision of the Chair before he presented the paper. Mr. DROMGOOLE said he preferred action on a question of this character rather than debate, and he had risen only for the purpose of requesting the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. THOMPSON) to accept a modification he would send to the Clerk's table: The modification was read, as follows: 1. Resolved, That the honorable JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, a member of this House, by stating in his place that he had in his possession a paper purport ing to be a petition from slaves, and inquiring if it came within the meaning of a resolution heretofore adopted, (as preliminary to its presentation,) has given color to the idea that slaves have the right of petition, and of his readiness to be their that for the same he deserves the censure of this House. organ; and 2. Resolved, That the aforesaid JOHN Q. ADAMS receive a censure from the Speaker, in the presence of the House of Representatives. Mr. THOMPSON accepted the above as a substitute for his own resolutions. Mr. ELMORE trusted there was no intention of arguing this subject, but that the South would present united action, and an undivided front, and suffer all minor differences of opinion to subside. Mr. LAWLER then took the floor, and insisted, at some length, that the explanation of the member from Massachusetts was any thing but satisfactory, and he made an earnest appeal to him to retract what he had done. Mr. ROBERTSON said: I have taken no part, Mr. Speaker, in the stormy debate which the extraordinary conduct of the gentleman from Massachusetts has elicited. I was, sir, I confess, unwilling to trust to the emotions which that conduct could not fail to excite in the bosom of every Southern man. danger the first impulse might hurry us too far; for it is ever in moments of high excite There was FEBRUARY, 1837.] Censure of Mr. Adams. [H. OF R. on that subject. But whatever may be my opinion, or that of the House, of the absurdity or impropriety of raising such a question here, it by no means follows that we can make it the ground of a penal proceeding. Mr. ALFORD addressed the House as follows: Mr. Speaker, the member from Massachusetts would screen himself from the censure of this House, because he has not sent his petition from slaves to your table. Sir, he has sent the petition from the free negroes of Fredericks as if it were from slaves. The Constitution of these United States no more allows the one than the other, and both are equally insulting. Moreover, the member has said he would not refuse to present a petition from slaves, if the House did not object. The member from Massachusetts says he would not offer an indignity to this House; the fact speaks for itself, and is more conclusive to my mind than all his professions. ment, of exasperation, such as we have just witnessed, that the most fatal precedents are established, and that, too, often under the influence of high and honorable motives. It is due, therefore, to ourselves, to the member implicated, and to the country, now that some degree of calmness is restored, to weigh well the consequences of the measure proposed under such circumstances for our adoption. To drag a member to the bar of this House, and cause him to be publicly censured by the Speaker, must be regarded by him and by all as a heavy punish-burg, and that is as wrong and insulting to us ment, and we ought to be able to give satisfactory reasons for inflicting it. Let us look to the resolution which professes to assign them. It declares that the member in question, by stating that he had a petition purporting to be from slaves, and inquiring whether it came within the meaning of a certain resolution, as preliminary to its presentation, has given color to the idea that slaves have the right of petition, and of his readiness to be their organ. Yes, sir; we charge that by stating a fact, and Sir, there seems to be some difference of making an inquiry, he has given color to an opinion amongst our friends here, as to what offensive idea; and it is for the crime of inti- course we ought to pursue in this awful crisis mating that idea we demand his punishment. of our beloved country. Some of our friends, I cannot go this length. So long as I have the as patriotic as any, have urged, in this debate, honor of a seat here I will never consent, be that we ought not to sit here and submit to this the consequences to myself personally what outrageous course of things; that if it does not they may, to censure or expel any member for cease, we should go home. No, sir; no, sir; the utmost latitude of inquiry or remark in this must not be; we will neither submit nor which he may indulge, whilst acting in what retire. If they prosecute this measure in this he may regard, however erroneously, as the dis- House, by attempts at legislating us out of our charge of his duty, and keeping within the lim- rights, we will resist it here by legislative acts its of parliamentary order. Let me not be un- as long as we can; and if at last they prove too derstood as approving the conduct of the gen- strong for us, and succeed in passing unconstitleman from Massachusetts. Far from it; no tutional laws, to rob us of our property, to one more strongly condemns it. I concur with murder our wives and children, still we will those who think that he has trifled with the not submit; they must change the constitution patience of the House, to the great delay of its before they can bind us by any laws of abolibusiness, and wantonly tortured the feelings of tion; this they never can do, if the South is a large portion of its members, by the minute- true to itself. And true we shall be, I hope in ness with which he has dwelt upon the contents God, to our constitution, our wives, our chilof offensive petitions, and the names and char-dren, and our country. If still they pursue us acters of those who signed them. I cannot hold him guiltless in unnecessarily introducing and enlarging upon this irritating topic of abolition; especially he seems to me much to blame for leaving the House so long under an evident and painful mistake in relation to the petition in his possession, by suppressing information of its contents. Nor do I believe that he has succeeded, by the explanation he has offered, in convincing one human being, except himself, of the propriety of his course. Indeed, in one respect that explanation must rather be regarded in the light of an aggravation, reiterating, as it did, the offensive doctrine that slaves have a right to send their petitions into this hall. That gentleman is too intelligent to assert, in his calmer moments, the preposterous position, that those who under the constitution are recognized as property, who constitute no part of the body politic, can exercise political rights. He ought to have foreseen the consequences which have ensued from suggesting a doubt up to the last, and attempt to do by force what they never can do by law, we will not be found wanting; we will not desert this Capitol nor this country. This is the Old Dominion; this land is ours as well as theirs; it was ceded by Virginia and Maryland, where slavery is tolerated by law. Shall we leave it, then, to the dominion of force, and that, too, inflicted by the unhallowed arm of the wild and worse than savage fanatic? No, never! I apprehend, Mr. Speaker, that the South is not well understood upon this subject. Party purposes and party policy may have prevented a fair and full expression of the feelings and opinions of people of all parties at the South upon this floor. The spirit of the South has not been felt here as it should have been. Let me tell gentlemen, it is a firm and unconquerable resolution never to surrender one jot or tittle of our constitutional rights upon this subject. We have a common interest in this Government, a common title in this capital; it H. OF R.] Censure of Mr. Adams. [FEBRUARY, 1837. bears the name of the immortal Washington, | bers, by raising the implication of an erroneous and he was a Southern man. Shall we, then, ever surrender the one or desert the other? No, never! Never, until this fair city is a field of Waterloo, and this beautiful Potomac a river of blood. Mr. CUSHING said that the House, during the whole of yesterday and to-day, had been the scene of a most excited and very discursive debate, branching out into a great variety of incidental topics, many of which were but remotely connected with the main question. There was, in truth, only one thing for the House to determine. Did the venerable member from Massachusetts, by the inquiry he propounded to the Chair, violate any law of the land, or any known parliamentary rule, so as to render him liable to the indignant censure of the House? This was the real point in issue, on the precise merits of the resolution moved or adopted by the gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. THOMPSON.) idea. Whither is this precedent to lead? Is it not utterly subversive of the freedom of debate? A member is not to utter an opinion, or by words of inquiry insinuate an opinion, obnoxious to the rest of the House? I must express my surprise-I will not say my indignation, because that would infer reproach-that gentlemen, who continually themselves exercise the privilege of debate in its widest latitude-who stretch it to the farthest verge-who do this in the utterance of opinions offensive to a majority of the House-my profound astonishment that such gentlemen should urge the arbitrary punishment of my colleague for a pretended abuse of the right of debate. Or do members from the South conceive they are to have the privilege of speech exclusively to themselves? If so, it is time they should awake from their self-delusion. Relying, however, very little on the merits of the question, gentlemen seek to justify their purpose by other considerations. To begin, they denounce, in no measured terms, the distinguishing opinions of Massachusetts on the incidental to the resolution before us. They err most egregiously, if they believe that such opinions are exclusively peculiar to Massachu setts or to New England. Those opinions prevail quite as extensively in the great States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, for exam deed, opinions of elemental right, lying at the very bottom of all the political institutions of the country. It may be that such opinions are more strongly held, and more universally understood, in New England, than elsewhere in the United States. I may not deny it. Deny it? I glory in the fact. It is the proof and the result of our old and persevering dedication to liberty. I have not risen (said Mr. C.) to analyze or discuss that resolution. There is no need of it. My honorable colleague near me (Mr. LINCOLN) has ably discharged this duty. He has demon-subject of this great question of public liberty, strated, temperately but manfully, the untenableness of all the grounds on which the resolution had been made to rest. The sentiments expressed by him do honor alike to his head and his heart. I declare my cordial concurrence in every word he has uttered on this occasion. And, after this declaration, it is but a neces-ple, as they do in New England. They are, insary consequence to say that to no resolution of censure, based on the matters now before us, to no rebuke, expressed or implied, to no action of the House that shall touch that individual (Mr. ADAMS) with so much as the uttermost edge of the shadow of indignity, will I give my assent. If, in the present contingency, any thing had transpired of itself tending to justify the resolution of censure, I could not fail to remember that he, who is the object of it, has presided over the destinies of my country; that he is at this moment a representative, in common with myself, of the State of Massachusetts; that, eminent as he is by reason of his long public services, and the exalted stations he has held, he is yet more eminent for his intellectual superiority; that his character no longer belongs to his State or his country, but to the history of civilization and of liberty; and I would have members ponder well the case, before they proceed, whether to gratify friends or appease foes, to record their votes in censure of such a man. Gentlemen talk to us of these our great fundamental rights-as the freedom of speech, of opinion, of petition-as if they were derived from the Constitution of the United States. I scout such a doctrine. If there were a drop in my veins that did not rebel against the sentiment, it would be bastard blood. Sir, I claim to be descended from the king-killing Roundheads of the reign of Charles the First; through a race of men not unremembered in peace or war; never backward in the struggles of liberty; a family, upon the head of a member of which the first price of blood was set by Great Britain, in revenge of his early devotion to the cause of independence. I venerate their character and This House is called upon to punish my col- their principles. I am ready to do as they did league, for the alleged offence of speaking words to abandon all the advantages of country, in his place, and in the execution of his duty, home, fortune, station-to fly to some western which give color to the idea that slaves possess wilderness-and to live upon a handful of parelthe right of petition. Was it an offence? And ed corn and a cup of cold water, with God's if so, in what text is the offence defined and the blessing on honest independence sooner than punishment prescribed? There is no such text. I will surrender one jot or tittle of those great The proposition is, to censure my colleague at principles of liberty which I have sucked in the mere will of the House, its arbitrary will, with my mother's milk. I disdain to hold these for an act which offends a portion of its mem-rights by any parchment title. The people of FEBRUARY, 1837.] Censure of Mr. Adams. [H. OF R. the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the people | condemn and punish opinion is that which gave of every State of this Union, came into it in the birth to the protestant reformation, and which full possession and fruition of all these rights. has rendered the inquisition a by-word of odium We did not constitute this Government as the and reproach. It is that self-same thing from means of acquiring new rights, but for the pro- which our fathers fled-the Puritans, the Cathtection of old ones, which nature had conferred olics, the Quakers, the Huguenots-when they upon us; which the constitution rightly regards | left their native Europe to found an asylum for as pre-existing rights; and, as to which, all the conscience in this New World. It is that which constitution does is to provide that these rights has nerved the arm and edged the sword, in neither you, nor any power on earth, shall every contest of liberty, which lightens along alter, abrogate, or abridge. They are rights of the history of civilized man. Heaven's own giving. We hold them by the supreme tenure of revolution. We hold them by the dread arbitrament of battle. We hold them by the concession of a higher and broader charter than all the constitutions in the landthe free donation of the eternal God, when he made us to be men. These, the cardinal principles of human freedom, he has implanted in us, and placed them before and behind and around us, for our guard and guidance, like the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, which led the Israelites through the desert. It is a liberty, native, inborn, original, underived, imprescriptible; and acknowledged in the constitution itself, as pre-eminently before and above the constitution. Now, in their denunciations of the North, it is these, the very primordial rights of the universal people of the United States, that gentlemen from the South assail. They strike at the freedom of opinion, of the press, and of speech, out of doors-and the right of petition and debate in this House. It seems to be imputed as a crime, to a portion of the inhabitants of the non-slaveholding States, that they entertain sentiments condemned by a majority of this nation. But can it be a crime? I appeal once again to that portion of the members from the South who are foremost in this debate-I mean the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. THOMPSON) and his friends who on certain subjects differ in opinion with a great majority of their countrymen; and I ask them whether they stand prepared to abide by and sustain the doctrine that opinions, unacceptable to the majority, are a moral or political crime? Will they apply to themselves the rule of judgment which they urge so vehemently against the people of the North? Will they deliberately sanction such an odious doctrine? I know they cannot. They must perceive that it is impossible by any act of the will to control the conclusions of the mind. It is our duty, in all the contingencies of life, to weigh well the facts and the reasonings upon which our judgments are to be formed; to apply to every question a conscientious desire to arrive at the truth; to spare no means to inform ourselves rightly as to the matters which the mind is to judge. But the result is not a thing within the scope of the will. And it is monstrous, therefore, to bring opinions to the bar of legal censure. It is a violation of the interior sanctuary of a man's own soul. It is the very acme of tyranny. The arbitrary power to As to speech and the press-I admit that here there is more difficulty than in the case of opinion. It is a practical problem, extremely difficult of solution, to determine always how much of liberty in this respect is possible to be maintained, without degenerating into licentiousness. And it is a practical question, greatly dependent on times and circumstances. I shall not seek, in these cursory remarks, to solve the problem. It suffices for my present purpose to suggest the idea, that the suppression of political inquiry, while it is a thing hostile to the general spirit of our institutions, is hard of accomplishment, and apt enough to end in aggravating the evil it is designed to remedy. I had occasion, the last winter, to express my views on the general subject of the right of petition. They remain without change. And I can but repeat my conviction, that this, like the liberty of conscience and the press, is not a right given by the constitution, but an original right of the constituent people of the United States, and one which they never parted with, but in their compacts of political fellowship expressly saved from all abridgment and limitation forever. The right of the people to petition for a redress of grievances, and the duty of Congress to receive and consider such petitions, are in my estimation the correlative conditions of the right. A petition is the formal mode in which the people bring their wants or opinions to the direct notice of Congress. It is an essential ingredient of representative institutions. To forbid the citizen to prefer his wishes to Congress by petition would be to lop off one of the chief democratic features of our Government, and to convert it into an aristocracy of elective despotism. It would be a curtailment of the constitutional liberties of the people of the United States, to which they could not and should not submit. Mr. Speaker, such are my sentiments in regard to these great fundamental rights of my fellow-citizens. I think they are, in the substance and the general outline, the sentiments of the bulk of the people of the North; and I had fondly imagined, until very recently, that they were sentiments co-extensive in prevalence with the jurisdiction of the republic. Entertaining this belief, I have deeply regretted to see the dangerous topic of slavery mixed up with other questions, wholly foreign to it in principle. Sir, I put it to gentlemen, in all directness and sincerity, do they suppose that angry attacks H. OF R.] Election of President and Vice President-Counting the Electoral Votes. [FEBRUARY, 1837. not infringe the legal rights of the master without becoming amenable to the law of the land; nay, to a higher forum, since I should be doing an act immoral and dishonorable as well as illegal. He is in the eye of the law the property of his master. But is he not also a human be ing? Does not the Constitution of the United States expressly call him a person, while making him an integral part of the basis of representation? Can he prefer no petition, no request, no prayer, in any circumstances? If I see him drowning in the canal, or about to be struck down by a stranger, and he cries to me for succor, may I not listen to him? Suppose a memorial to come to me from a slave, setting forth by well-authenticated statements, that he is in a foreign land, oppressed and wronged, and his master, a citizen of this country, does not know it, or cannot be found; may I not bring the matter before the Government, whe ther it be Congress or the Executive, whichever has the power to afford redress? What I mean to say is, that, in matters having nothing to do with abolition, and not affecting in any other respect the legal rights of the master, it might be proper and reasonable to lend an ear to the petition of a slave. These, I know, are extreme cases; and they are suggested only as illustrations of my idea; for I would no more present a petition from slaves, in derogation of any of the constitutional rights of the South, than I would offer a deliberate insult to the Chair or to the House. on the freedom of opinion, of speech, of the press, of petition, of debate, are likely to check the spread in the United States of that disapprobation of slavery, which is but another form, conversely considered, of the love of liberty? Do they deem it possible to smother the opinions and stifle the petitions of the free men of the United States? Ay, and of the free women too? For I confess it seems to me a strange idea to uphold, in this enlightened age, that woman, refined, educated, intellectual woman, is to have no opinion, or no right to express that opinion. Do gentlemen soberly think their cause can be strengthened in the country, by bringing to the bar of the House for contempt, by subjecting to censure, by expelling, a Representative of one of the free States, because he may have given color to the idea that slaves can petition Congress? The resolution before the House proposes to censure my colleague for the act of stating that he held a paper purporting to be a petition from slaves, and asking of the Speaker whether such a paper falls within a certain order of the House. Now, as I have already said, I hold the right of petition to be an original and unalienated right of the people of the United States, secared to them by the constitution, but not derived from it. I hold that the right appertains, not to the subject matter of the petition, but to the person of the petitioner. I hold, also, that the obligation to receive a petition corresponds to the right of petitioning; since the right, Having been at all times a strenuous advocate without the duty, is a mere name, and not a of the freedom of opinion, of the press, and of substance. And there may be a power to re- petition, I consider it my duty to state thus ceive a petition, without any obligation to re-explicitly my views of the existing constituceive it, or any right to insist upon its reception as a corresponding duty. For instance, Congress has the power to receive a petition of a foreigner; and yet Congress lies under no obligation to receive it; because the right of petition is guaranteed only to the people of the United States. Is it not, as a matter of constitutional law, just so in the case of a slave? The constitution guarantees to the constituent people of the United States their natural rights of opinion, discussion, assembly, and petition, against all abridgment. Are slaves embraced within these guarantees of the constitution? I think not. As to the natural right of the slave in these particulars, that, like his natural right of personal freedom, not being assured to him by the constitutional compact, is not a question within the constitutional competency of Congress. But the inquiry whether Congress may receive the petition of a slave depends on other considerations. It is a question, not of the right of the petitioner, but of the discretion or power of the petitioned. And this appears to me to be just such a matter-of-fact question of common sense as might occur in the relations of private life. There is a multitude of supposable cases in which I could receive and grant the request-that is, the petition-of a slave. I can tional limitation of these immunities. It were unbecoming to be a stickler for the rights of one part of the country, and blind to the rights of another part. I resist the attempt to punish my colleague by a sort of ex post facto law, which in its tendency extinguishes the freedom of debate, and subjects every member to the arbitrary will of a majority. I defend the particular opinions of the North. I assert the freedom of opinion, speech, the press, petition, inherent in the people of the United States, and secured to them by the constitution. But while I maintain the sanctity, the inviolability of these rights, as it befits a representative of Massachusetts to do, I will not practise here, nor countenance elsewhere, any encroachments on the constitutional rights of the South. WEDNESDAY, February 8. This being the day especially set apart by a joint resolution for the two Houses to convene in joint meeting, for the purpose of opening and counting the electoral votes given by the several States for President and Vice President of the United States |