Defending Free Speech and Abolitionist Petitions

Hi, I'm Alyissa Addwarney, and this is NPR's Book of the Day As we continue to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the US, this week, all week on the NPR books pod, we are revisiting some authoring interviews on important topics that speak to US history Today, we have a musician turned author, Bob Crawford of the Avid Brothers Talking about his book, America's foundounding son, John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick Here's NPR's Lela Fodle, introducing the interview he did with Steve Inskepe. Crawford has two careers. One is as the bassist for the Avitt Brothers, a folk rock band that's had a following for more than twenty years. Therein no man't say mein slave me Man, that can change the shape my sol is in. Crawford's other career is history. He's been researching and writing a book in between concerts. I came about this work in the quiet hours of driving eight, nine hours a day filling the time up with reading American history. Crawford wrote a book about one of the less distinguished presidents. John Quincy Adams was defeated for reelection just as his father, President John Adams, had been a generation earlier But Quincy Adams post presidency became something more. He returned to Washington as a member of Congress, and he spent his days tormenting the supporters of slavery. Stehvensky spoke to Bob Craword about his book America's founding son, John Quincy Adams president to political maverick What was Adams' place in American life in that moment as he was leaving office in eighteen twenty nine? He was swept out of office by a populist wave That was led by a guy named Andrew Jackson They elected a war hero, a common man for the common man who they thought was Andrew Jackson. So John Quincy Adams he is the epitome of the establishment, son of a president He had an incredible career as a diplomat And so he was a Washington insider. who got swept out with the tide of a populist wave. Why in the aftermath of that defeat would a former president run for Congress? He was raised to serve this country parents sacrificed so much to establish this country and it was up to his generation to preserve it. And there was some ego I'm sure, and maybe a little wanting to settle some scores.. I thinkink all the above How did he come to present anti slavery petitions in Congress So back in this day, we didn't reach out to our politicians by going on their website and filling out a form Petition the government for a redress of grievances. You literally sent a petition to your congressman And Cgressmen would literally read a petition from a mister Innskepe in my district, but they also came in from abolitionists And so while Adams didn't agree with the abolitionists, and their tactics, he nonetheless felt it was his job as a congressman to read their petitions and have their voices heard. Maybe you should explain why he would not agree with abolitionists when most of us would obviously agree with them today Right, They were radicals. They were a minority group. mostly in the North of a religious bent They were the radical Christians You know, this is eighteen thirty one By eighteen thirty five, these things are arriving at the capapitol by the wagon load. point where Southern congressmen begin to get unnerved by them To raise the issue of slavery was to disrupt the status quo And this could cause a civil war Okay, so Adams did not agree with slavery, but accepted that it existed in some states, that it was constitutionally protected, that it'd be dangerous to be an activist against. And yet he decided it was his duty to read these anti slavery petitions. What was the response? They want to shut them up. They want to stop them because What happens here in these years is you have the Nat Turner uprising. You have these like uprisings of slaves in the south And so they feel like The noise being made by the abolitionists and a very few people in Congress being heard and filtered down to the south and it's creating instability in the slave regime And so they passed this rule in eighteen thirty six called the Gag rule. which essentially says these petitions arrive, they're immediately tabled, which means They don't exist And in some ways, it was an anti John Quincy Adams roule because by this point, he kind of becomes the leader of the offering of these petitions But now, You're not talking about abolition. you're talking about The First Amendment. You're talking about the right to partetition the government, which is protected And so he becomes a defender of the abolitionists notot on necessarily on the grounds of abolition, but on the grounds of free speech So they passed this gag rule that just says No one can talk about slavery in the House of Representatives Essentially, yes. How did John Quincy Adams respond to that? He lost his mind He began to devise these ways. See, the thing about Adams is when he went into Congress He memorized all the rules, like he's a former president. He's a lifelong diplomat. took the gig seriously. so he knows all the parliamentary maneuvers and he begins to use these things as ways to Talk about slavery He would like provoke them. like he would offer a petition that may or may not have been real At one point, he offers this petition and it's from a group of enslaved people And the whole body like loses their mind. like southerners are like, can we burn it? Just burn it on the floor And then he goes on and says But this petition, you didn't let me read on. It says that they want to continue slavery So he would do all these things. He was trolling them He would trolle them and then they would try to censure him. And he'd be like, Well, if you're going to censure me, I need to be able to defend myself And he would take weeks defending himself and then they would give up Did the pro slavery members of Congress ultimately provoke more conversation about slavery and more attention to slavery by trying to censor that discussion Absolutely You can't snuff out an idea. The attempt to snuff it out becomes the story He says, I can do more good for this movement arrguing about freedom of speech But then Stve, he represents there's a slave ship that is mutinied off the coast of Long Island It's called the Amistade. Steven Spielberg made a movie about it The case rises all the way to the Supreme Court And the leaders of the abolitionist movement ask John Quincy Adams to defend these captives before the Supreme Court. and he does, and he wins And it's at that moment that I believe all the hurt and the bitterness of being a one term president He is finally appreciated by his fellow Americans That is when he becomes elevated to kind of an American hero It seems that he was comfortable being hated by large numbers of people He had no problem with that He hated large numbers of people That was Bob Crawford talking to our co host, Stehven Skeee. Crawford is the author of America's Founding Son John Quincy Adams from President to pololitical Maverick