I'm Bob Crawford.

This is founding Son John Quincy's America.

Late winter eighteen forty one, William Henry Harrison arrives in downtown Washington, d c aboard a piece of cutting edge technology the train.

A cold wind bears down on the city as Harrison walks to the steps of the US Capitol to be sworn in as the nation's ninth president.

Harrison wants to project a strong image to the nation.

Like Jackson, he was a war hero, having fought against several native tribes in the country's expansion westward.

That day was cold and wet, but Harrison refused to wear an overcoat, hat, or even gloves.

He wanted to distinguish himself from his aristocratic predecessor, Martin Van Buren.

Harrison was a frontiersman from Ohio.

A little cold wouldn't hurt him.

The Harrison administration provided new hope for the nation and John Quincy Adams anti Federalist Democrats had held the reins of power for over a decade.

Now the Whigs, John Quincy's party, had taken over the House, Senate, and presidency in one fell swoop.

A week after the inauguration, President Harrison showed up at Adams's door, telling the ex president he was welcome at the White House anytime, come when you please, as often as you please, or drop me a line, for I shall at any time be happy to take your advice and counsel as that of a brother.

This came at roughly the same time the nation was celebrating Adams for winning the Amistadt case at the Supreme Court.

He was riding one of the highest waves of his life until William Henry Harrison fell ill after his inauguration, first a cold, then pneumonia, and on April fourth, eighteen forty one, he died, serving just thirty one days in office.

Now the man in charge was Vice President John Tyler, who could not have been more different than Harrison.

John Tyler's a slaveholding Virginian.

Matthew carp is an associate professor of history at Princeton University.

He says John Tyler was a member of the same party as William Henry Harrison and John Quincy Adams, but he was also a stalwart supporter of slavery In States rights.

He was one of the few Southern congressmen to sort of support nullification outside of South Carolina.

He's a strong ally of Calhoun.

John Quincy Adams saw President John Tyler as a gathering storm who could ruin the smooth seas he was hoping to sail across for the next four years.

Tyler is a political sectarian of the slave driving Virginian Jeffersonian.

School, principled against all improvement, with all the interests and passions and vices of slavery, rooted in his moral and political constitution, with talents not above mediocrity, and a spirit incapable of expansion to the dimensions of the station upon which he has been cast by the hand of providence, an unseen through the apparent agency of chance.

Can I just pause for a second to point out that sick burn talents not above mediocrity.

That's why I love John Quincy Adams.

Old man eloquent had been thrown a vicious twist of faith.

Tyler's presidency threatened all his hopes of national progress.

But John Quincy Adams had more political capital than ever, and he was ready for a fight, even if it might be his last.

Chapter six The Last of Earth.

After his victory in the Amistad case, John Quincy Adams had some juice.

With the political winds blowing in his favor, Adams readied his harpoon for the biggest whale in his sight, the Gag Rule.

Adams couldn't help but taunt his Southern adversaries and flout the gag rule every chance he got.

But in February of eighteen forty two, he pushed his foes a little too far.

Adams comically, among other things, presents a petition demanding that he John Quincy Adams, be expelled as the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

That's John Quincy Adams.

Biographer James Traub He says there's some debate on whether this petition, said to be from Georgia, was authentic or not.

Some think Adams might have written it himself.

In any case, the call for Adams's expulsion gave him the House floor to defend himself, and once he had the floor, he didn't shut up for days, doing what he did best.

He presents a petition from citizens of Massachusetts saying they seek to dissolve the Union because they can no longer be her to support the South.

Treason.

Southerners cried out, dissolve the Union?

Are you mad?

Bedlam took over the house floor.

Of all the people yelling at Adams to sit down and shut up, one voice screamed louder than all the rest.

From my perspective, his most formidable, or at least his most heated opponent, was Henry Wise of Virginia.

Wise called Adams the acutest, a studist artist, enemy of southern slavery that ever existed.

Wise meant it as an insult.

Adams wore it like a badge of honor.

In the chaos, Adams shouted back, Oh, you think I'm the crazy one.

I'm paraphrasing here.

Adams knew exactly what he was doing.

He had manufactured this whole debate.

His goal shined the national spotlight on the absurdity of the gag rule.

His southern foes had walked right into his trap.

So the old lifted up his voice like a trumpet till slaveholding, slave trading, and slave breeding absolutely quailed and howled under his dissecting knife.

Theodore Weld was so mesmerized by John Quincy's verbal athleticism that he wrote his wife to tell her about it.

A perfect uproar like Babbel would burst forth every two or three minutes is mister A with his bold surgery, would smite his cleaver into the very bone.

Henry Wise and other Southern politicians called to censure Adams for high treason and perjury.

Adams replied, simply good.

The house broke for the day, Adams preparing himself for the fight to come.

That night, Theodore Weld and a few members of the small Abolition Caucus visited Adams's f Street home.

Adams is sitting there in his armchair reading.

You know when they come and they say, we're gonna defend you, you know, we're going to fight this to the end, and Adams says something like, you know, I've never had any company in any of my fights before.

Adams was famously stonefaced and stoic, something he no doubt learned from his father.

But the men saw Adams's lip quiver.

And these men went away and thought, you know, what an astonishing old man, and what a kind of frightening solitude.

At the same time.

The next morning, the House gallery was packed with spectators.

Government officials blew off their duties to watch history unfold before their very eyes.

Thomas Marshall, nephew of late Chief Justice John Marshall took the unenviable task of presenting the case against Adams.

To kick things off, Marshall read a resolution that rocked the House.

The dissolution of the Union necessarily implied the destruction of that instrument, the overthrow of the American Republic, and the extension of our national existence.

Let me break it down for you.

Marshall accused Adams of.

The destruction of our country and the crime of high treason.

The consequence not just censure, expulsion in the eyes of the South.

Adams, the seventy five year old former president, was a trader.

But remember, Adams had set all this in motion.

He dared his opponents to expel him.

I have constituents to go to, and they will have something to say.

If this House expels me.

And all, will it be long before the gentlemen see me here again.

Southerners heeded Adams' warning and stop short of expelling him.

Everything was playing out exactly as he had hoped, and seriously, ma versus Adams not a fair fight.

He would relish every mistake the poor fellow made, and he would say things like, you know, it's really surprising to me to realize that you have been to one of the great law schools of our nation, because I think about this elementary error that you've just committed.

Adams is like a mean girl, saying, how embarrassing for you.

He told Thomas Marshall he should attend some.

Law school, learn a little of the rights these citizens and of these states and the members of this house.

Adams tore the guy to shreds and said, in effect, you should have gone to a better law school.

You don't even know the law.

You don't even know what treason is.

The battle exhilarated Adams.

Friends said they never saw him so happy.

Well found him.

As fresh and elastic as a boy.

He went on for an hour or nearly that, in a voice loud enough to be heard by a large audience.

Wonderful man.

Adams at one point said, I've only just begun.

The house was at a standstill.

All they were doing was this trial, and they suddenly they finally realized if we don't surrender, this guy's going to hold us hostage for forever.

And so they insisted on an early voting, and Adams won the vote overwhelming.

After two weeks of trial, Marshall moved to table the censure resolution, never to be taken up again.

Adams had yet again defeated the slaveocracy.

After the vote, Thomas Marshall was overheard telling another congressman.

I would rather die thousand discs and again encounter that old man.

That was Marshall's last session in Congress.

John Quincy Adams was an unpopular one term president.

Now in Congress, his popularity knew no bounds.

Adams's nobility was almost suicidal.

What's extraordinary is that at the end of his career he finds a cause which is perfectly suited to his solitude.

And it's precisely because he is so solitary and heroic that finally, at the end of his life, he's hero worshiped in a way that he never was before.

Adams couldn't keep up with the unending request for personal appearances.

It seemed like everybody wanted a piece of the ex president.

But then he got an offer he couldn't refuse.

The Cincinnati Astronomical Society invited Adams to lay the cornerstone for a new observatory.

Congress never funded John Quincy's dream of lighthouses in the sky even after he left the White House, but universities and astronomical societies across the country invested in their own telescopes.

The march of scientific progress vindicated him when closed minded politicians had refused.

Adams's trip to Cincinnati was the first time he had ventured west.

If you were to listen to Andrew Jackson, you think the coastal elitist John Quincy would find no love in the heartland.

But Adams's reputation preceded him.

People swarmed him during public appearances.

At a barber shop in Cleveland, John Quincy spent the afternoon shaking hands with hundreds of people who gathered to get a glimpse of America's founding son.

In Cincinnati, he was greeted by a banner which read John Quincy Adams, Defender of the Rights of Man.

In Pittsburgh, the last stop on Adams's Western tour, factories closed for the day, newspapers announced his arrival.

John Quincy Adams was an American celebrity.

Still ahead, Adams and his old rival Andrew Jackson go at it again, a feud that was bitter to the very end.

Literally that's coming up after the break.

John Quincy Adams was riding high then the midterm elections of eighteen forty two happened.

His party took one of the largest electoral drubbings in American history, losing their forty two seat Whig majority.

In its place, Democrats now held a massive majority.

Adams, Gettings and their abolitionist allies all but lost hope of overturning the Gag rule.

But a year later, old Man eloquent made his final stand.

Adams swiftly proposed the elimination of the gag rule.

This time, James Dellitt, a congressman from Alabama, led the attack against Adams.

Dell It used Adams's own words as ammo.

He pulled a quote from a speech Adams gave on his Western tour to a group of free black men and women, a promise that their day of redemption.

Was bound to come and make come and peace, or it may come in blood.

But whether in peace or in blood, let it come.

Repeating the quote for effect, dell Itt told the body that this was the true agenda of anti gag activists, the end of slavery through bloodshed.

Adams shouted from his seat.

I say now let it come.

Dell It repeated himself, feeling vindicated, Adams admits it.

Adams again shouted from his seat.

No, it cost the blood of millions of white men.

Let it come.

Let justice be done though the heavens fall.

John Quincy's outburst rocked the chamber and horrified the slaveholders.

And he finally said, if we have no way of ending this monstrous practice, save by the greatest nightmare, any of us can imagine the dissolution of the Union, he said, then so be it.

Adams had gone all in, basically saying, we must end this gaggrule if we are ever to rid ourselves of slavery, and if we don't, I'm willing to burn this whole American experiment to the ground.

And for a man who had grown up regardless the Union as the most holy of holies, to say that this moral evil is so great that we must be prepared to destroy the Union in order to extirpay it, that's extraordinary.

John Quincy's game of chicken paid off.

On December third, eighteen forty four, the gag rule at long last fell.

Afterwards, he wrote in his diary.

Blessed ever, blessed be the name of God.

John Quincy achieved one of the greatest political accomplishments in Congress.

It had taken the entire congressional session.

It was now the general election of eighteen forty four.

Henry Clay once again tried and failed to capture the presidency, losing to James K.

Polk in the final days of eighteen forty five.

Against the objections of John Quincy Adams, Polk annex Texas, essentially kicking a hornet's nest.

Mexico never recognized the treaty President Santa Anna signed after his routing by General Sam Houston, so Mexico saw Polk's annexation of Texas as an act of aggression, starting the Mexican American War.

It also reignited the old feud between Adams and Andrew Jackson.

This round of the Adams versus Jackson grudge match is a bit complicated, so let me break it down first.

You need to understand that Andrew Jackson had lived a rough life and he was getting pretty old.

It reminds me of that Indiana Jones quote, it's not the years, it's the mileage.

His memory on Texas wasn't the best.

David S.

Brown is professor of history at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

As he got older, he seemed to think that that Texas have been part of the United States in eighteen nineteen when the United States signed a treaty with Spain that did give us Florida but did not give us Texas.

So Jackson and a few others would refer not to the annexation of Texas as in we want Texas annexed.

They would refer to it as the re annexation, kind of selectively remembering the pasture for their benefit.

This takes us back to the Monroe administration when John Quincy was Secretary of State and negotiated the eighteen nineteen treaty with Spain.

Now some twenty plus years later, Jackson said that Texas would have been a part of the deal if it weren't for the underhanded dealings of President Monroe and as Lackey Adams, who hates slavery.

You have to understand that for Jackson, he considered the annexation of all new Southern states part of it domino effect that he started.

Texas was simply the next domino to fall.

In a speech in Boston, Adams attacked Jackson and the annexation of Texas.

He spoke of Jackson's ingratitude.

I defended him against his enemies and Monroe's cabinet, defended him against the remonstrances of ministers of Spain and Great Britain, and here and in Europe, defended him against the strong disappropriation, unanimous in both houses of Congress and throughout the nation.

And for what I could not and did not approve.

A Jackson ally later responded by attacking Adams' entire career.

He gave away half of the American continent.

Lest Braintree should suffer or complain.

All of our present troubles in Texas, in Oregon are bitter fruits of mister Adams's generosity, and attribute of which he is seldom accused.

The navigation of the Mississippi would not be an American possession of mister Adams could have swapped it for Coddfish.

Grocers will make packing paper of his speeches, lectures, letters, and interminable diaries.

When Jackson read what his friend said about Adams, he thought it was hilarious.

It is the severest castigation and withering sarcasm I ever read.

I would not be surprised to hear that he was stricken down by a paralytic stroke.

Damn, things were getting heated, but Jackson's wish to watch Adams die would go unfulfilled.

On a warm June evening in eighteen forty five, Andrew Jackson lay on his deathbed, his heart slowly failing.

He fumbled for his glasses, and when he put them on, he could see the tearful faces of family, friends and the people he enslaved who'd come to see him off to the next world.

Before he passed, he said to those gathered, do not cry.

I hope to meet you all in heaven.

Yes, all in heaven, white and black.

My conversation is for you all.

Christ has no respect for color.

I am in God, and God is in me.

He dwelleth in me, and I dwell in him.

Old Hickory shut his eyes and never opened them again.

He was seventy eight years old, older than the country he had led as president.

America mourned the death of Andrew Jackson.

Even old enemies and Northerners set aside the malice they once felt for him.

Adams, though, was like, if that guy, I don't care if he's dead.

When Jackson dies, Quincy Adams writes in his journal, Jackson was a.

Hero, a murderer, an adulter, and a profoundly pious Presbyterian who, in his last days of his life blied and slandered me before the world.

So this was a time when even Boston was having, you know, condolence parades for the fallen Andrew Jackson.

They didn't love the man, but they recognized that he had played a significant role in America's short history.

But John Quincy Adams was true to himself and would not engage in the false hypocrisy of saying that he was sorry to see Andrew Jackson leave the scene.

He was not.

Adams had outlive Jackson, but age was catching up with him.

In late eighteen forty six, he collapsed while on a walk with a friend in Quincy.

His doctor told him he had a stroke.

By spring of next year, he had recovered enough to return to his seat in Congress.

He was well aware of how little time he had left, writing in his diary.

I date my decease and consider myself, for every useful purpose to myself or to my fellow creatures, dead, And hence I call this and what I may write hereafter a posthumous memoir.

Adams was now eighty years old.

That's a little more common today in politics, but back then he was ancient.

Still, Adams couldn't be kept off the house floor.

Just months after his stroke, he was back in Congress railing against the Mexican American War.

It was shortly after one of these fiery speeches that a court reporter looks.

Over and sees that Adams is trembling.

His right arm is moving on him, his desk and his lips are moving, but he's unable to speak.

And he then rises up and topples over.

A shock rang through the house floor.

Lawmakers jumped to their feet.

People shouted, Adams is dying.

Adams is dying, and they laid him out on a couch in the Speaker's office.

Adams was out of it, but not yet unconscious.

He was overheard whispering, this is.

The last of earth, but I am composed.

Friends and foes gathered to pay their respects.

As he lay unconscious.

Everybody is able to come see him.

Clay stands there, holding his hand and weeping.

Lawmakers rushed to Adam's home to tell Louisa what happened.

She thought he had only fainted, but by the time she arrived at the Capitol, John Quincy was barely conscious.

He did not recognize his partner of fifty years.

Overcome with grief, Louisa was allowed a few private hours with her husband, but as his breathing became more shallow, doctors and members of Congress shuffled her away.

And she is furious.

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

She is absolutely furious.

All she wanted to be was to be the one to pose's eyes.

Why wasn't she permitted?

Oh she's a woman, you know, I was too tender or something too delicate.

I was forced to leave him without even the privilege of indulging the fee which all holds sacred at such moments.

And she was denied that private consolation, and that was very painful to her.

A knife twisted in her broken heart.

Strangers stood between her and her husband.

On February twenty third, at seven to fifteen pm, John Quincy Adams died.

He died of public death, and in some ways that was right, you know, that's a kind of legend.

He literally died with his boots on.

If you will, Sean Wood Lentz, I mean he died, you know, fighting what he thought of as an unjust war, a wicked war, and doing his best to rail against it in public service.

To the very end, John Quincy Adams would make the trip from Washington, d c.

To his home in Quincy, Massachusetts, one last time.

A young cong ersman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln had watched Adam's collapse on the House floor and was now a member of Adams's funeral committee.

This was the beginning of Adams's last term and the beginning of Lincoln's one and only term in Congress.

So I don't believe they met, But in so many ways Adams stretches his hand forward to Lincoln, and in so many ways makes Lincoln possible.

It's been said that John Quincy Adams embodied the national history that Lincoln had read by candlelight as a boy.

John Quincy Adams, with all of his actions in the late eighteen thirties and early eighteen forties, helped bring the slavery issue into the center of politics, from which it could not be removed.

Lincoln made sure that it would stay there So in that sense, Lincoln is very much Adams's successor.

People gathered along the tracks for hundreds of miles to see the train pass.

He is a great hero.

He has a chief popular heroism, if you will, at the end of his life that he can never expected to have enjoyed earlier on.

John Quincy Adams was buried in Quincy, Massachusetts, beside his mother Abigail and his father John.

Four years later, his wife Louisa would join him.

John Quincy Adams continued the legacy of his family name.

He protected and preserved the American democracy of the founding generation.

Indeed, John Quincy fought a different revolution than his father, because as hard as it is to create a democracy, it takes the long suffering skill of perseverance to uphold it.

And now he had passed it to the next generation.

I am blown away by the scope of his life, from the time that he was eight years old seen the Battle of Bunker Hill, to when he died he could see the coming Civil War, was trying desperately to stop it.

He really lived the first epic of American history.

And I think that that is a much more interesting and powerful story than could be crafted in fiction.

John Quincy Adams may not have been an extraordinary president like Washington and Lincoln, but he is our most extraordinary ex president.

He is the bridge between the founding period and the Civil War, the man standing in the breach, a maverick, a public servant, an American hero, America's founding son.

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

For help with this series, we want to thank James Traub, author of John Quincy adams Militant Spirit, Mary Elliott, creator of American Slavery at the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Shaan Willentz, author of the Rise of American Democracy, Jefferson to Lincoln.

Louisa Thomas, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Louisa, The Extraordinary Life of Missus Adams.

David S.

Brown, author of The First Populist, The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson.

Richard Newman, professor of history at Rochester Institute of Technology, Lindsay Shravinsky, author of The Cabinet, George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.

And Matthew Carp Professor of History at Princeton University and author of this Vast Southern Empire Slaveholders at the Helm of American Farm Policy.

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, el 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 Scott Avid, Michael Smerconish, and James Moore.

Show art designed by Darren Shock.

Special thanks to John Higgins, Julia Chriscau, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the National Park Service.

If you enjoyed this 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 a collective bargaining agreement.

I'm your host, Bob Crawford.

Thanks for listening.

This was the last episode of the series and I am composed

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