I'm Bob Crawford.

This is founding son John Quincy's America.

In the early eighteen hundreds, the seeds of manifest destiny began to take root.

American settlers spread west at a rapid pace.

By the eighteen twenties, many white Southerners swooped into northern Mexico, bringing the people they enslaved with them, creating a plantation state similar to those in the American South.

In eighteen twenty nine, Mexico pushed back, banning slavery within its borders its territories likely to follow.

The move sent outrage across the country's northern borderlands.

Resentment built among white settlers, and violent skirmishes broke out between them and the Mexican government.

By the fall of eighteen thirty five, and all out war had begun against the Mexican Army.

Texas forces were outnumbered, undisciplined, and scattered, but the Texans knew the territory.

They fortified an old mission at a crucial crossroads and waited to ambush the Mexican Army.

Unbeknownst to the one hundred and fifty or so Texans in the mission, including the soldiers' families, the Mexican army had orders to destroy the rebellion once and for all.

The Mexican army surrounded the mission.

When one of the leaders of the Texans, Jim Bowie, looked over the walls, he saw a sea of Mexican soldiers nearly two thousand against fewer than two hundred Texans.

When the Texans refused to surrender, Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered a red flag to be flown from a nearby church, assigned to those hold up in the mission.

No quarter would be given.

The Battle of the Alamo had begun.

Days into the siege of the Alamo, reinforcements still hadn't arrived.

Booye's co commander, William B.

Travis, penned a letter to his countrymen in all the world.

From within the Alamo walls.

Fellow citizens and compatriots, I'm besieged by a thousand and more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna.

I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for twenty four hours and have not lost a man.

The enemy has demanded a surrender discretion, otherwise the garrison ought to be put to the sword if the fort is taken, I have answered the demand with the cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls.

I shall never surrendt all retreat.

I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible, and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country.

Victory or death.

William Barrett Travis, Lieutenant colonel COMMANDWNT.

Just before the break of dawn on the thirteenth day of fighting, the Mexican Army stormed the mission, sparing only women, children, and enslaved people.

In the slaughter.

Every fighting man met his end with either a bullet or a bayonet.

The message was clear.

The Mexican Army was happy to abide by William Travis's terms victory or death, but they weren't the only ones to receive a message.

Among the dead at the Alamo, former Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett outrage and calls for vengeance rippled across hundreds and hundreds of miles through the plantations of the South northward to Washington, d C.

And the floor of Congress.

US citizens had been killed at the hands of the Mexican Army.

The bloodbath in Texas was a tragedy, quickly becoming a national disaster.

Lawmakers were bombarded with calls to send US troops to Texas.

At the heart of this decision was a giant Texas sized elephant in the room.

What would happen if Northern Mexican territory seized its independence were it join the United States?

And what would happen if a slave state the size of Texas joined the Union.

The outcome of the rebellion had the potential to upset the balance of power in the United States for generations Chapter four, Don't Mess with Tech.

When news of the massacre in Texas reached the US capital, John Quincy Adams took to the House floor.

He spoke out against the US getting involved in a war with Mexico.

But before he or any other lawmaker could even decide whether to send troops to Texas, the direction of the war had shifted dramatically.

Following the Alamo, the Texas Army, a ragtag group of rebels, was on the run, retreating eastward from San Antonio to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Mexican Army, close behind, committed to ending the rebellion.

The former governor of Tennessee and a close friend of Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, led the Texans with their backs against the Gulf of Mexico and the Mexican army bearing down on them.

Houston ordered his men to make a final stand, turn an attack rather than flee.

On April twenty first, eighteen thirty six, just weeks after the Battle of the Alamo, Texans launched an assault against the Mexican army near modern day Houston.

Screaming Remember the Alamo, Houston's troops attacked mercilessly, catching their enemy off guard.

The Mexican army, surprised, scattered.

The battle lasted just eighteen minutes.

At the end, Mexican General Santa Ana stood in shackles.

In exchange for his freedom, he agreed to take his army and leave Texas for good.

The Alamo had been avenged.

The Republic of Texas was now an independent nation.

They say everything is bigger in Texas.

Well.

That was true in eighteen thirty six as well.

With Mexico no longer controlling this vast stretch of borderlands along the American Southwest, a power vacuum had been created.

There's the sense that if Texas is an annex then Great Britain is going to step in or some other European power, and you'll have this big anti slavery borderland in the Southwest.

So slaveholders in their allies really want to get Texas into the American Union, and then maybe they want to create several states to boost their political power on top of that.

This is Richard N.

Newman, Professor of History at Rochester Institute of Technology.

So this is a vital issue for Southerners and their allies, and that makes it an incredibly important issue to the abolitionist movement and to anti slavery congressmen in the North like Adams.

Adams came to believe that the annexation of Texas was being pursued by Southerners in the hopes of upsetting the balance between slave states and free and so here I need to go back a tiny bit in history explain.

That's John Quincy Adams biographer James Traub.

He says, to understand why Texas was such a political hot potato, you have to go back to the eighteen twenties, when Adams was Secretary of State.

The Union was expanding westward, adding more states all the time.

In every new addition to the Union had potential to disrupt the balance of power between free and slave states.

This proved especially challenging when Missouri was becoming a state, because it's pretty central.

Is it a northern state or is it a southern state?

So Congress came up with a solution.

We will draw a line, an east west line, and we will henceforward say that all states north of that line would be free states, and all states below that line would be slave states.

It was actually more of a compromise than a solution.

A line was drawn free states to the north, slave states to the south, Missouri being an exception, a slave state on the wrong side of the line.

Since that threw off the balance between free and slave states, a new free state would have to be admitted.

What we now call the Missouri Compromise, and the compromise ultimately said that we will allow a slave state, Missouri, to come in along with the free state.

Main there was no doubt that Texas would be a slave state, but Southern politicians had grand machinations.

They wanted to annex Texas and carve it up into several slave states, completely destroying the Missouri Compromise and tilting the balance of power in their favor.

Congressman John Quincy caught wind of the scheme and set out to prevent it.

President Andrew Jackson also opposed annexation.

There was just one problem.

His term was coming to an end.

The front runner to replace him was Vice President Martin van Buren, the heir apparent selected by Jackson himself.

As you probably remember from previous episodes, van Buren's coalition was made up of Northerners and Southerners who rallied behind Jacksonian populism.

But the coalition was tenuous, and Van Buren knew it.

As a Northerner, he had to keep Southern politicians happy if he was going to win the presidency.

One thing that would make them very happy, besides annexing Texas would be putting an end to the discussion of slavery and Congress for good.

This is really a loyalty youth.

You have to prove to us how far you're willing to go to support slaveholders in the United States.

If you're willing to gag your own constituents prevent them from speaking about an issue we deem sensitive, then we're going to be your friends forever.

If not, we're gonna have to seriously reconsider the coalition.

And that's that's why Van Buren is doing everything he can to stifle anti slavery petitioners, because this is all about the coalition he has set.

Up Vice President.

Van Buren, eyeing the presidency for himself, had plenty of allies in the Lower Chamber, including Henry Lawrence Pinkney of South Carolina, who shared a paternalistic view of slavery.

He saw it as benign.

As benevolent, as hard as it can be for us to imagine, as good for enslave people as well as for white masters slavery producers wealth.

It also allows enslaved people to gain the Christian Gospel and all these other things that seem absolutely vile to us.

Pinkney set up a committee at the start of eighteen thirty six to figure out what to do with the thousands of anti slavery petitions flooding Congress.

Hardliners wanted to dismiss the petition's outright John Quincy a free reign to read them.

When Pinckney's committee finished its work in May, he offered a series of resolutions, but it was the final one that hit the House floor like a lit stick at dynamite.

Pinckney proposed that all petitions or other correspondence to the House about slavery should quote be laid upon the table and that no further action whatever shall be had thereon.

He's basically saying, we're not just going to ignore all these anti slavery petitions in Congress.

We're gonna ban even mentioning them.

They don't exist.

A wave of anger washed over John Quincy as he sat at his desk.

He jumped to his feet and said, and again, I'm paraphrasing something along the lines of silent petitions.

Have you not read the First Amendment?

Every American citizen has the right to quote petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Adams demanded the motion be withdrawn.

Pinkney and his allies refused.

Adams turned appealed to House Speaker James K.

Polk, He too refused.

Adams shot back, I am aware that there is a slaveholder in the chair.

The House devolved into chaos.

Southern congressmen shouted at Adams, accusing him of violating parliamentary order.

Still Adams persistent, exasperated, and angry.

I imagine him pointing at the Great Seal of the United States, yelling quotes from the Constitution as others shouted at him, pacing demanding to be heard.

Polk refused to let Adams speak.

Adams froze, turned to the speaker and asked, am I gagged or not?

You know?

And the answer was he was.

Adams was in shock as the vote to silence petitions proceeded, his voice now also silenced.

When his name was called, he got in one last jab voting nay.

He added, I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States.

His objections fell on deaf years.

The resolution to ignore anti slavery petitions on the House floor passed.

It would become known as the Gag rule.

The Gag rule was an anti John Quincy Adams rule.

The discussion even mentioned of slavery was now banned in the House of Representatives.

Here's the thing I love about John Quincy Adams.

Though he was an indomitable force and nobody could shut him up when he had something to say.

Still ahead, Adams pulls as trademark political jiu jitsu on the House floor and single handedly turns the tide on the debate over Texas that's coming up after a break.

John Quincy Adams was gagged in the House, but not in the press.

His spirited stands against the expansion of slavery made national headlines.

They also caught the attention of someone who wanted to help.

Benjamin Lundy presents himself to John Quincy Adams as this very sympathetic religious moralist, someone who listens, someone who will take very strong stands against slavery, but he's willing to listen to other sides.

He'll try to push and nudge people rather than yell and.

Scream Newman Again.

What's important about this moment for Benjamin Lundy is, never has a former president, never has a gifted statesman of the stature of John Quincy Adams been at the center of the abolitionist movement in Congress.

And that's why he's going the extra mile to nudge Adams into the anti slavery cause.

And it's doubly important to note that, by temperament and by politics, Adams doesn't want to be in that position.

Lundy begins writing to Adams in awe of his outspoken stand against slavery.

Adams responds, saying he's not an abolitionist.

Lundy agrees, You're not an abolitionist.

You are a prophet.

The eyes of millions, my dear and honored friend, are now turned to thee.

No mortal ever held a part of greater usefulness, more enviable distinction, or higher moral responsibility than is thine at the present moment.

Adams couldn't help but be flattered.

A frendship begins, they write regularly.

Lundy was a Quaker, and so Lundy spoke, you know thou, and put est at the end of all of his words, and so forth.

He was a very pure person.

And he and Adams had lengthy correspondences back and forth.

And I point out that Adam so got into Lundy's own idiom that Adams began writing like a Quaker.

He used the same kind of old fashioned diction when addressing Lunda.

Lundy had traveled all over Texas.

Now he was Adam's man on the inside.

He went to Texas at the time that Texas was rebelling against Mexico and becoming a republic, and Lundee feared that Texas would be annexed by the United States, and it was so big, it would be turned into some huge numbers of states, perhaps as many as fifteen, and they would all be pro slavery, and they'd vote for slavery.

Adams was warming to the abolitionist theology, but his wife, Louisa was torn.

Part of that was because part of her identity was being a sother being a Marylander.

She was a citizen in Maryland before she was a citizen in the US, and her sisters, who are best friends, were slaveholders.

Louisa Thomas is a writer at The New Yorker and author of Louisa, The Extraordinary Life of missus Adams.

She says Louisa and John Quincy were losing friends over his stance against slavery.

Their social ties were fraying.

Louisa was used to the name calling in sideways glances, but things kept getting uglier.

She's scared because he's getting death threats, and she saw anew of the death threats.

She was afraid of the violence against him, and you know, not unwisely, and she wasn't ready to sacrifice him in the fight against slavery.

She wrote in her diary that supporting her husband meant losing the love, the friendship, and the society of my own nearest and dearest connections.

Attacks against prominent abolitionist leaders like Theodore Weld were on the rise.

People regularly threw eggs and rocks at him during his speeches, and things got really ugly when an angry mob murdered an abolitionist publisher in the fall of eighteen thirty seven.

But then a bright spot appeared.

In the spring of eighteen thirty eight, construction finished on the crown jewel of the movement, a grand venue in center City Philadelphia, christened Pennsylvania Hall.

It was like the Capitol building for the abolitionist movement.

It's a safe space for abolitionists.

They've spent a lot of time and money trying to build it and what is dedicated In May of eighteen thirty eight.

People feel like it's going to be this great symbol of freedom in the United States.

But the hope didn't last long.

After three days, it was burned to the ground by angry Philadelphians.

But it's not just that the hall is burned down after three days.

It's that people in Philadelphia blame abolitionists for bringing on the burning down of Pennsylvania Hall.

They said you caused this because you were radicals.

You spoke against slavery.

You didn't listen to all the people who told you to keep quiet and not say anything.

The pressure was mounting from all sides, the silence of the growing abolitionist movement, violence in the streets, a gaggoeder in the US capital.

But this is why John Quincy Adams was such an ally for the movement and a lethal politician.

He knew all the rules.

Possibly more important, he knew how to use the rules against his enemies.

Shortly after the burning of Pennhall, Congress took up debate over the annexation of Texas.

Resolutions poured into the Capitol, arguing both for and a against annexation.

The Foreign Affairs Committee, dominated by slaveholders, refused to even read the resolutions.

This gave Adams an opening.

I'm going to paraphrase again, but this is essentially how it all went down.

Adams asked, have these petitions received even five minutes of consideration?

Peeved?

The chair of the committee addresses him, how dare any member catechise the Committee of its actions, essentially saying, how dare you question our intentions?

Another member blurts out, no, we haven't read the resolutions.

Big deal.

Adams, knowing the rules, pounced.

He knew the committee was required to read the petitions even if they don't address them, and he knew they hadn't read them.

So the committee goes, all right, whatever, let's propose a resolution to take no action on these petitions.

Then, out of nowhere, Adam's favorite Southern foil, Wattie Thompson of you guessed it, South Carolina, doubles down.

He says, you know what, I'd like to propose an amendment to that resolution.

My amendment calls on the President to immediately annex Texas.

Watty shoots a grin over at Adams, thinking he has the upper hand, but he'd actually walked right into John Quincy's trap.

Adams knew Thompson would add some asenine amendment, and he knew that you can amend an amendment.

So Adams makes an amendment.

He says, okay, neither the President or Congress has the power to annex Texas.

This amendment gave Adams complete access to the House floor to talk endlessly.

Waddie unwittingly had ripped the gag off Adams.

Adams was unleashed.

He argued for women's suffrage and equal rights.

He spoke against the annexation of Texas.

He quoted the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

He essentially filibustered for three weeks.

Eventually, a committee member asks Adams if he's ever gonna shut up.

Adams says that if the gentleman wished, he would.

Enter into a full and strict scrutiny of slavery, and so long as God shall give me life and breath and the faculty of speech, he shall have it to his heart's content.

Adams basically says, I can do this all day, every day, and twice on Sunday.

Adams jammed up the House debate.

Over the course of the weeks he had held the floor, newspapers printed his various rants.

Instead of silencing him, his opponents had essentially given him a bull and with this bullhorn, Adams turned up the political pressure on the new President, Martin van Buren, making it nearly impossible to annex Texas.

Eventually, Van Buren relented.

If John Quincy Adams doesn't do his multi week filibuster.

In June and July of eighteen thirty eight, these famous Morning Hour speeches.

It's pretty clear that the slave power might well have succeeded in getting a vote on Texas annexation earlier, and maybe successfully, But John Quincy Adams really turns the entire North against this.

Adams for the win.

The annexation of Texas had stalled, but the fight over slavery was more heated than ever.

Within a year, it would boil over when a group of enslaved Africans revolted and took over a ship destined for Theribbean.

When the Africans were captured off the coast of the United States, a question spread across the nation, what should happen to them?

Like always, John Quincy Adams found himself at the center of it all.

On the next episode of Founding Son, when.

A son says, you know, this could undermine everything you're working for.

But John Quincy Adams thinks the opposite.

But he's not willing to get involved until Lewis Happened shows up in his doorstep.

They urged me so much and represented the case of those unfortunate men as so critical, it being a case of life and death, that I yielded and told them that if by the blessing of God, my health and strength should permit, I would argue the case well the Supreme Court.

Founding Son is a curiosity podcast brought to you by iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans.

For help with this episode, we want to thank James Traub, author of John Quincy Adams Militant Spirit, Richard Newman, professor of history at Rochester Institute of Technology, and Louisa Thomas, staff writer at the New Yorker and author of Louisa The Extraordinary Life of Missus Adams.

Our lead producer, story editor and sound designer is James Morrison.

Our senior producer is Jessica Metzker.

Our production manager is Daisy Church.

Fact checking by Adam Bisno.

This episode was mixed and mastered by George Hicks.

Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, L.

C.

Crowley, and Jason English.

Original music by me Bob Crawford.

Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions.

John Quincy Adams is voiced by Patrick Warburton, Andrew Jackson is voiced by Nick Offerman.

Luisa Adams is voiced by Gray Delisle.

Additional voices in this episode provided by Ben Sawyer and Michael Smerconish.

Show art designed by Darren Shock.

Special thanks to John Higgins from Curiosity Stream, Julia Chris Gaal, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the National Park Service.

We couldn't do this podcast without them.

If you're a fan of the podcast, please give it a five star rating in your podcast app.

You can also check out other Curiosity podcasts to learn about history, pop culture, true crime, and more.

This podcast was recorded under a SAG after collective bargaining Agreement.

I'm your host, Bob Crawford.

Thanks for listening.

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