The Glenn Beck Program - July 11, 2026


Andrew Jackson vs. John Quincy Adams： The Birth of American Political Warfare ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 13

Topics
Indian Removal Act
Hosted by
Glenn Beck
Mentioned
Andrew Jackson John Adams Rachel Jackson Henry Clay Charles Dickens Martin Van Buren George Washington Russell Jarvis Africans Alfred James Monroe John C. Calhoun Amos Kendall Stanberry Thomas Jefferson Abigail Adams David Barton Roger Taney Tim Burton Montez and 23 more
Mamdani’s Nefarious Strategy to Undermine the Republic ｜ Guest： Jack Posobiec ｜ 7⧸10⧸26 Is the Strait of Hormuz Open or Shut？! Glenn Breaks Down the Confusion ｜ Guest： Vickie Paladino ｜ 7⧸13⧸26

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Length

56 minutes

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138.52

Word count

7,804

Sentence count

529

Harmful content

Toxicity

17

sentences flagged

Hate speech

30

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Born in 1767, John Quincy Adams was a man of many talents. He was a statesman, a lawyer, a diplomat, a philosopher, a writer, and an orator. But in 1836, he was also the victim of one of the most famous duelists of all time, Andrew Jackson.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:00.000 By 1806, John Quincy Adams had already served under George Washington
00:00:10.100 as ambassador to Holland, then under his own father as ambassador to Prussia.
00:00:16.200 Now elected by the Massachusetts State Legislature, he's a U.S. senator.
00:00:21.460 And just to keep things interesting, he's taken on a new gig
00:00:25.040 as a professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard.
00:00:30.000 Adams is 39 years old. He finds himself in somewhat of a transition phase in his already
00:00:35.580 prolific career. He can see the writing on the wall. He's way too independent-minded for his
00:00:42.420 own good. Federalists put him in the U.S. Senate, but he backs many of President Jefferson's policies,
00:00:48.800 even when they clash with his party's line. Massachusetts is about to vote him out,
00:00:54.580 but John Quincy Adams is all about principles over politics,
00:00:59.360 constitution over convenience.
00:01:01.940 He's really never been much of a party man.
00:01:05.020 His life as a senator and professor could hardly contrast more
00:01:08.540 with the life of Andrew Jackson,
00:01:10.580 who at the very same time, 1,100 miles west in Kentucky,
00:01:15.400 is getting ready to shoot a man.
00:01:19.340 The frontier had its own code of honor. 0.95
00:01:23.220 Words carry weight and are often answered with bullets.
00:01:27.940 Jackson has been publicly insulted by a man named Charles Dickinson,
00:01:31.880 who accused him of going back on a horse racing bet.
00:01:36.240 It escalates when Dickinson insults Jackson's wife, Rachel,
00:01:40.960 questioning her honor in ways that hit too close to home.
00:01:45.600 Jackson, ever the hothead, demands a duel.
00:01:49.060 When whispers reach him that Dickinson might skip town,
00:01:51.820 Jackson snarls to a friend it will be in vain for I'll follow him over land and
00:01:58.480 sea 7 o'clock in the morning May 30th 1806 Jackson and Dickinson face each
00:02:06.920 other 24 feet apart pistols loaded Jackson playing it cool or maybe
00:02:14.980 strategic let's Dickinson fire first the shot cracks the air slamming into
00:02:20.980 Jackson's chest lodging near his heart. Blood begins to soak his shirt running down into his boot.
00:02:27.820 But Jackson steadies himself, levels his pistol, click.
00:02:33.280 The hammer catches halfway.
00:02:35.660 Re-cocks, aims again, and fires.
00:02:40.420 Dickinson is struck in the abdomen and crumples to the ground.
00:02:45.280 By sundown, he's dead.
00:02:48.580 Jackson walks away.
00:02:50.980 That bullet remained buried in his chest for the rest of his life.
00:02:56.000 Later, he boasts to a friend, 0.99
00:02:58.020 If he had shot me through the brain, sir, I should still have killed him. 0.97
00:03:02.740 It would not be Jackson's last duel, nor the last time he would take a bullet in one. 0.98
00:03:08.620 Violence shadowed his entire life.
00:03:11.740 The statesman John Quincy Adams and the duelist Andrew Jackson, both born in the same year, 1767.
00:03:19.000 Two sides of the same wild American coin, one modeled by books and diplomacy, the other by war and frontier grit.
00:03:28.960 These two men are on a collision course, moving slowly but inevitably toward an election that will redefine power, politics, and the presidency itself.
00:03:40.000 itself. This is the American story, The Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same title
00:03:49.620 by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 13, The Birth of American Political Warfare.
00:04:02.680 John Quincy Adams grew up with the weight of the republic pressing on his small shoulders
00:04:08.020 when his father was sent to Europe as a diplomat during the Revolutionary War,
00:04:12.260 10-year-old John Quincy went with him and served as his father's secretary.
00:04:18.200 There he learned diplomacy before he learned how to shave.
00:04:22.080 He didn't really have a typical childhood.
00:04:25.020 Expectations were very high.
00:04:27.100 In a letter from his mother Abigail written to him when he first went to Europe with his dad, she wrote,
00:04:32.540 You have constantly been upon my heart and mind.
00:04:36.300 Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them,
00:04:40.940 will be of little value and small estimation
00:04:43.440 unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them.
00:04:49.520 Adhere to those religious sentiments and principles
00:04:52.120 which were early instilled into your mind,
00:04:54.960 and remember that you are accountable to your Maker
00:04:57.960 for all your words and actions.
00:05:01.140 Young Adams became something of a prodigy.
00:05:04.240 By his teenage years, he spoke eight languages and translated for diplomats.
00:05:10.520 By adulthood, he had studied across Europe and then at Harvard, where he graduated second in his class.
00:05:17.200 He trained as a lawyer.
00:05:18.600 He served in diplomatic post under George Washington, who said this about him.
00:05:23.580 I give it as my decided opinion that Mr. Adams is the most valuable public character we have abroad,
00:05:30.420 and that there remains no doubt in my mind that he will prove himself to be the ablest of all
00:05:36.180 our diplomatic corps. Years later, when President Madison appointed John Quincy as America's
00:05:42.860 diplomat to Russia, Adams and his wife Louisa moved there without their sons who were left
00:05:49.040 behind with their grandparents, John and Abigail Adams. John Quincy wrote to his nine-year-old son
00:05:55.900 George, in a way reminiscent of how his mother wrote to him at a similar age.
00:06:02.100 I have myself for many years made it a practice to read the Bible once every year.
00:06:08.200 My custom is to read four or five chapters every morning, immediately after rising from my bed.
00:06:14.920 It employs about an hour of my time and seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day.
00:06:20.600 So great is my veneration for the Bible, and so strong my belief that when duly read and
00:06:27.580 meditated on, it is of all books in the world that which contributes most to make men good,
00:06:33.880 wise, and happy, that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more steadily they pursue
00:06:39.760 the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the more lively and confident will be my hopes
00:06:45.480 that they will prove useful citizens to their country,
00:06:49.120 respectable members of society,
00:06:51.260 and a real blessing to their parents.
00:06:55.140 John Quincy Adams was raised in and for public service.
00:07:01.080 His parents took it seriously as a high and vital calling,
00:07:04.920 and so did he.
00:07:06.860 Now, on the opposite spectrum in the late 1700s of America
00:07:10.440 was Andrew Jackson.
00:07:12.480 He was the youngest of three boys,
00:07:14.960 His parents immigrated from Ireland, his father died days before Andrew's birth,
00:07:19.520 and Andrew was the only one in his family born in America. He grew up poor, angry, and tough. 0.61
00:07:27.040 He became the first president who was the son of an immigrant. He was born in a remote Scottish-Irish
00:07:33.440 settlement near the border of South and North Carolina. Even the people who lived there didn't 0.94
00:07:38.880 know which state they were technically in. His mother and two brothers died during the
00:07:44.080 Revolutionary War. At 14, Andrew was an orphan, passed around to live with various relatives.
00:07:51.600 One family member later recalled, he once said he never remembered receiving a gift as a child
00:07:57.260 and that after his mother's death, no kind encouraging words ever greeted his ear.
00:08:03.600 at 17 he began studying law in salisbury north carolina but he was far from the bookish type
00:08:12.780 one person who knew him at the time remembered
00:08:15.200 andrew jackson was the most roaring rollicking game cocking horse racing card playing mischievous
00:08:24.080 fellow that ever lived in salisbury yet against all the odds he rose and he rose fast he became
00:08:32.340 Tennessee's first U.S. representative while George Washington was still president. Shortly after,
00:08:37.960 he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Thomas Jefferson, who presided over the Senate at the time
00:08:42.660 as vice president, watched Jackson often boil over in debate. Jefferson later wrote,
00:08:48.560 His passions are terrible. When I was president of the Senate, he was senator,
00:08:54.660 and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him
00:08:59.720 attempt it repeatedly and is often choke with rage. Then, Andrew Jackson fell hard in love.
00:09:11.180 Her name was Rachel, and to Jackson she was perfect in every way, except for one tiny
00:09:17.740 inconvenient problem. She was already married to Louis Robards. That was a really rocky marriage,
00:09:24.920 and she fled back home to Nashville at one point, which is when the sparks flew between
00:09:29.500 she and Jackson. Robarts eventually filed for a divorce from Rachel, and then she married Jackson,
00:09:36.440 only to be shocked three years later to find out that her divorce had not legally been finalized.
00:09:42.640 Once Robarts finally obtained the official divorce, Jackson and Rachel tied the knot again
00:09:48.300 to demonstrate their commitment to keeping things proper and legal. At least, that was the version
00:09:54.580 of the story that Jackson insisted on as he entered politics, but evidence points to Jackson
00:10:00.100 and Rachel living together as husband and wife way before Robarts filed for divorce. There were
00:10:06.240 references to Rachel being called Mrs. Jackson in late 1790 and early 1791. That scandal never
00:10:14.280 left them, and it would later be weaponized. When James Monroe became the fifth president,
00:10:22.560 He selected John Quincy Adams as the Secretary of State. Adams became the chief architect of
00:10:28.640 American diplomacy. The Monroe Doctrine? Yeah, mostly designed by Adams. In December 1817,
00:10:36.880 Secretary of War John Calhoun authorized Andrew Jackson to pursue Seminole raiders
00:10:42.340 into Spanish Florida. But Calhoun strictly told him not to attack Spanish forts.
00:10:49.260 The U.S. didn't want to jeopardize its negotiations with Spain to acquire Florida.
00:10:54.140 Jackson ignored the restraint.
00:10:56.220 He stormed into Spanish territory, rolled over the Seminoles, and seized Pensacola.
00:11:01.600 He effectively took control of West Florida.
00:11:04.840 He claimed Monroe had authorized it, but no such evidence ever surfaced.
00:11:12.840 Speaker of the House Henry Clay viewed Jackson as dangerous.
00:11:16.720 Clay pushed for a congressional investigation into Jackson's Florida campaign.
00:11:22.020 The hearings, they dragged on for weeks, and in the end, Jackson was cleared.
00:11:26.500 But the attention boosted his political profile all across the small nation.
00:11:31.800 Not long after, Florida officially passed into American hands through the Adams-Onus Treaty of 1819.
00:11:39.020 It was negotiated by John Quincy.
00:11:41.720 The statesman and the duelist.
00:11:44.240 Jackson took Florida by force.
00:11:46.860 Adams took it by diplomacy.
00:11:49.760 These two sides of America finally collided in 1824 in the presidential election.
00:11:56.000 There were four candidates, Adams, Jackson, William Crawford, and Henry Clay.
00:12:02.020 Newspapers were already in love with Jackson.
00:12:04.500 He was the hero of the Battle of New Orleans.
00:12:07.800 They compared him to George Washington.
00:12:10.160 Jackson was the first candidate to run against the Washington, D.C. establishment,
00:12:14.100 and he framed himself as the enemy of elites and political insiders.
00:12:19.480 It is now a contest between a few demagogues and the people.
00:12:24.660 Jackson won. The most electoral votes, but not the majority.
00:12:29.540 The final tally, Jackson with 99, Adams with 84, Crawford 41, Clay 37.
00:12:37.300 That meant, according to the Constitution's 12th Amendment,
00:12:40.420 the election went to the House of Representatives and each state got one vote, determined by a vote
00:12:47.280 taken among all the congressmen from that state. Only the top three candidates were on the House
00:12:53.320 ballot, so Henry Clay was eliminated. Since Clay despised Jackson, he threw his support behind
00:13:00.760 Adams. The two had worked together before, including being on the team in Belgium that
00:13:05.200 negotiated the treaty ending the War of 1812. Adams and Clay held a private meeting before
00:13:12.220 the House vote, though there's no evidence that any specific deal was made. Two of Jackson's
00:13:18.420 men cornered the lone representative from Illinois in a hotel room, pressing him to
00:13:23.520 vote against Adams. They promised to ruin him if he didn't. Finally, the House voted.
00:13:32.400 On the first ballot, seven states chose Jackson, four went to Crawford, 13 chose Adams.
00:13:38.880 It was over. Adams became the sixth president of the United States.
00:13:44.040 A friend sprinted from the Capitol to Adams' home on F Street with the news.
00:13:48.400 When Adams then chose Henry Clay as Secretary of State, Jackson and his camp exploded.
00:13:54.920 They labeled it a corrupt bargain.
00:13:56.880 They insisted the presidency had been stolen, even though Adams was chosen in strict compliance
00:14:03.680 with the provisions in the Constitution. Adams, however, asked Jackson to serve as the Secretary
00:14:10.180 of War. But Jackson refused. There was no way he would serve the man he thought had cheated him
00:14:16.980 out of the presidency. Jackson left Washington enraged, but determined. From that moment forward,
00:14:25.040 He declared political war on John Quincy Adams.
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00:16:23.960 From day one of John Quincy Adams' presidency,
00:16:30.900 Andrew Jackson's supporters launched an all-out assault.
00:16:35.220 They repeated the wild charge that Adams' win was a corrupt bargain with Henry Clay,
00:16:40.140 stealing the election from the people's hero, Jackson.
00:16:43.440 It was a full-blown campaign of character assassination,
00:16:47.340 and over the next four years, the attacks were unrelenting.
00:16:51.480 Jackson's crew formed a central corresponding committee in Nashville to crank out this propaganda.
00:16:57.960 Similar committees popped up all across the South and the West,
00:17:01.420 coordinating smears on Adams and rallying the Jackson base.
00:17:06.560 Meanwhile, President Adams ran the White House like it was still the 1700s.
00:17:11.700 He had his cabinet, of course, but he had no personal staff other than his middle son, John,
00:17:17.180 who worked as his secretary and ran errands.
00:17:19.840 Jackson supporters accused Adams of filling the government with his allies.
00:17:25.020 But the irony was, he didn't use patronage at all.
00:17:28.340 In fact, his own supporters were furious with him for failing to do so.
00:17:32.780 It drove Henry Clay out of his mind.
00:17:36.120 Adams' vision for America was expansive and optimistic.
00:17:40.340 He promoted domestic improvements, highways, canals,
00:17:44.060 the Department of the Interior to oversee the development.
00:17:46.680 He called for a National Astronomical Observatory, scientific expeditions, a national university, and a naval academy.
00:17:56.320 This whole agenda became known as the American System.
00:17:59.840 It was a grand plan to knit the nation together with infrastructure and innovation.
00:18:06.340 At first, Adams supporters had a majority in the House of Representatives, though not in the Senate.
00:18:12.900 Adams could have pushed his American system plans,
00:18:15.820 but he didn't think it was the proper role for a president to lobby for legislation.
00:18:20.540 He missed his small window.
00:18:22.940 Because after the 1826 midterm election, for the first time in U.S. history,
00:18:27.880 a president faced a Congress entirely controlled by the opposition.
00:18:33.620 Congress froze him out.
00:18:36.900 By the time the 1828 election approached, Jackson's supporters had already been campaigning
00:18:42.160 against Adams for four straight years. They introduced tactics that would define modern
00:18:48.100 political warfare, focus on personalities, not policies. Team Jackson weaponized the press
00:18:54.820 nationwide to amplify those claims. And at the center of this machine stood Amos Kendall,
00:19:01.680 a brilliant but ruthless strategist. Adams described Jackson as the tool of Amos Kendall,
00:19:08.580 the ruling mind of their dominion.
00:19:11.180 Then the campaign turned physical.
00:19:14.820 In 1828, April of that year, Adam sent his son John
00:19:18.580 to deliver military nomination documents to Congress.
00:19:22.440 As John passed through the Capitol Rotunda,
00:19:25.040 Russell Jarvis, a reporter for a pro-Jackson newspaper,
00:19:28.960 lunged from behind a pillar and punched him in the face.
00:19:33.120 John chased after Jarvis until guards finally separated them.
00:19:37.780 Weeks earlier, Jarvis had crashed a White House event
00:19:40.860 where the young John had loudly called him out for insulting the president.
00:19:45.520 President Adams was inclined to move on from the incident,
00:19:48.860 but his cabinet insisted that he take action.
00:19:51.880 So Adams sent a letter to the House of Representatives,
00:19:55.260 which put together an investigative committee stacked with Jackson supporters.
00:20:00.120 In the committee hearings, John Jr. ended up being questioned
00:20:03.420 by the editor of the very newspaper that his attacker worked for. Jarvis, of course, walked
00:20:09.700 free. Zero punishment for assaulting the president's son. Adams then realized his enemies had free
00:20:17.220 reign when it came to he and his family. In a letter to his youngest son, Charles, he vented
00:20:22.780 that Congress was, united by a spirit of bitter, unrelenting, persecuting malice against me
00:20:29.680 individually and against the administration, which they conspired to overthrow. By this point,
00:20:37.300 Adams supporters had begun to fight dirty as well. They launched attacks on Jackson's personal life,
00:20:43.760 claiming his wife Rachel was an adulteress and a bigamist, digging into her messy first marriage
00:20:49.460 and a quick remarriage to Jackson. This marked the very first time a woman became the central
00:20:55.960 target in a presidential campaign. The public cruelty had a devastating effect on Rachel
00:21:02.160 Jackson. She said, the enemies of the general have dipped their arrows in wormwood and gall
00:21:07.520 and sped them at me. Almighty God, was there ever anything equal to it? Well, Jackson boiled with
00:21:15.140 rage. He wasn't used to being unable to retaliate physically. He told a close friend, how hard it
00:21:23.040 is to keep the cowhide from some of these villains. I have made many sacrifices for the good of my
00:21:29.300 country, but the present being placed in a situation that I cannot act and punish those 1.00
00:21:35.480 slanderers, not only of me, but Mrs. J, is a sacrifice too great to be well endured, yet I must
00:21:44.100 bear with it. Andrew Jackson won in a landslide, 178 to 83 in the Electoral College.
00:21:53.040 with 56% of the popular vote.
00:21:56.040 His supporters across the nation were ecstatic.
00:21:59.040 But Rachel Jackson said...
00:22:02.040 Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake, I am glad.
00:22:05.040 For my own part, I never wished it.
00:22:09.040 At that point in our nation's history, Adams and his father
00:22:13.040 were the only two presidents to be denied a second term.
00:22:17.040 Adams thought his life in public service was over,
00:22:20.040 writing in his journal...
00:22:22.040 The sun of my political career sets in deepest gloom,
00:22:25.640 but that of the country shines unclouded.
00:22:30.520 On December 17th, 1828, just weeks after the election,
00:22:35.100 the Jacksons were at the Hermitage,
00:22:37.380 their plantation outside of Nashville, Tennessee,
00:22:39.900 and Rachel suddenly collapsed in pain.
00:22:43.560 Five days later, she died of a heart attack.
00:22:47.380 She was 61 years old.
00:22:48.780 Jackson was devastated and furious.
00:22:52.920 He blamed the campaign attacks for her death.
00:22:56.280 On her tombstone, he had these words inscribed.
00:23:00.360 A being so gentle and so virtuous,
00:23:03.580 slander might wound but could not dishonor.
00:23:08.260 Adams knew that Jackson burned with fury,
00:23:11.560 blaming him for the campaign attack.
00:23:13.340 So he opted not to attend Jackson's inauguration
00:23:16.840 and moved out of the White House the night before the ceremony.
00:23:21.480 Jackson's inauguration party turned into total chaos.
00:23:26.280 A mob crashed the White House, trashing the place,
00:23:29.620 spilling food and punch and breaking furniture.
00:23:32.520 Stewards tried to lure the crowd outside with tubs of whiskey
00:23:36.280 while Jackson fled to a hotel.
00:23:39.000 The party chaos was an indicator that Jackson's presidency
00:23:42.540 would be unlike any other previous version.
00:23:46.840 His administration became an insider's game.
00:23:50.200 From Washington's presidency to the start of Jackson's,
00:23:53.040 only 74 officials had been removed from civil service.
00:23:57.200 But within the first year in office,
00:23:59.840 Jackson had removed almost 1,000 and replaced them with his allies.
00:24:05.560 Amos Kendall brought Francis Preston Blair to D.C.
00:24:09.500 to run the Washington Globe newspaper as a total mouthpiece for the administration.
00:24:15.120 In short order, Jackson essentially controlled the executive branch, Congress, and the press.
00:24:23.680 Jackson also had a long, tangled history with Native Americans.
00:24:30.400 He had fought alongside them, and mostly against them, in countless battles.
00:24:36.080 The bottom line for him was that Indians were simply not compatible with white American interests. 0.66
00:24:41.600 One of his top policy priorities was seeing Indians removed to designated territory west
00:24:48.560 of the Mississippi River. He first said it would be a voluntary move, but it was never going to be.
00:24:55.200 Congress obliged his passion with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. New Jersey Senator Theodore
00:25:01.800 Freeling Heisen, a devout Christian, was one of the very few leaders to argue for the Indians.
00:25:08.920 During the debates about passage of the Indian Removal Bill, he said this. 0.97
00:25:14.120 Where the Indian always has been, he enjoys an absolute right still to be
00:25:19.560 in the free exercise of his own modes of thought, government, and conduct. 1.00
00:25:24.860 Do the obligations of justice change with the color of the skin?
00:25:28.920 Is it one of the prerogatives of the white man that he may disregard the dictates of moral principles
00:25:33.860 when an Indian shall be concerned?
00:25:36.440 No. 0.97
00:25:37.920 But Jackson argued removal was vital for making America safe.
00:25:42.620 In his letter to the Creek Indians, he wrote,
00:25:45.140 Friends and brothers, listen.
00:25:48.300 Where you now are, you and my white children are too near to each other to live in harmony and peace. 0.63
00:25:57.320 Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part of your nation has gone,
00:26:02.280 your father has provided a country large enough for all of you.
00:26:06.380 and he advises you to remove to it. 0.99
00:26:10.840 There your white brothers will not trouble you. 0.98
00:26:14.460 They will have no claim to the land 0.71
00:26:16.920 and you can live upon it, you and all your children,
00:26:21.260 as long as the grass grows or the water runs
00:26:24.440 in peace and plenty.
00:26:27.240 It will be yours forever.
00:26:32.760 The Cherokee wondered what more they had to do
00:26:35.520 to keep their land in the South.
00:26:37.600 They had developed an alphabet for their language.
00:26:40.560 Written a constitution, published a newspaper, became farmers. 0.57
00:26:44.440 It was much closer to assimilation than most tribes even attempted,
00:26:48.480 yet they were still forced out.
00:26:51.640 Even an 1832 Supreme Court decision in favor of Cherokee rights 0.74
00:26:56.240 couldn't save them.
00:26:58.100 That decision ordered the release of Christian missionaries 0.89
00:27:01.260 who had been jailed for working with the Cherokee in Georgia.
00:27:04.500 But the state of Georgia and President Jackson refused to enforce the court's order.
00:27:10.160 Jackson hated how those, quote, religious enthusiasts, as he called them,
00:27:15.140 interfered with his Indian removal plan.
00:27:17.840 But they could not stop it with Jackson at the helm.
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00:29:49.860 location at byrna.com slash glenn. After losing the 1828 presidential race, Adams returned to
00:30:03.100 his farm in Massachusetts, planning on a quiet life of books and nature, far from the political
00:30:08.500 grind of Washington, D.C. But the country, or at least Massachusetts, did not let him go so easily.
00:30:16.100 In 1830, without him even campaigning,
00:30:19.360 his neighbors elected him as Plymouth's representative in Congress.
00:30:23.960 No president before or since has ever gone on to serve in the House.
00:30:29.460 But Adams was old school,
00:30:31.040 believing that if your community called you to serve, you had to go.
00:30:35.120 But secretly, he relished the challenge.
00:30:38.340 In his journal, he confessed,
00:30:40.880 My election as president of the United States
00:30:43.280 was not half so gratifying to my inmost soul.
00:30:47.540 No election or appointment conferred upon me
00:30:50.380 ever gave me so much pleasure.
00:30:53.220 Once in the House, Adams morphed into the ultimate defender
00:30:57.540 of the people's voice.
00:30:59.500 He became the nation's go-to champion
00:31:01.760 for the right to petition the government.
00:31:04.160 He received stacks of these petitions from every corner of the nation,
00:31:07.780 and he introduced every single one of them.
00:31:11.520 Every other Monday, the House would set aside time for petitions,
00:31:15.400 and Adams would unleash his hall.
00:31:18.440 More and more, though, these pleas zeroed in on one explosive issue,
00:31:24.220 the abolishing of slavery.
00:31:27.240 Well, the tension built like a storm cloud gathering over the Capitol.
00:31:30.980 Adams had been growing increasingly bold in his anti-slavery stance for years.
00:31:37.200 Flashback to the tail end of James Monroe's administration.
00:31:40.680 During a heated cabinet debate where everybody except Adams was a southern slaveholder,
00:31:46.420 Treasury Secretary William Crawford argued that a state could sneak in slavery
00:31:51.500 after joining the Union as a free state.
00:31:55.020 Adams recorded his response to Crawford in his journal.
00:31:58.160 I said that whatever a state legislature might do in point of fact,
00:32:03.040 they could not by any rightful exercise of power establish slavery.
00:32:07.980 The Declaration of Independence not only asserts the natural equality of all men
00:32:13.340 and their unalienable right to liberty,
00:32:16.600 but that the only just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.
00:32:22.780 A power for one part of the people to make slaves of the other
00:32:26.420 can never be derived from the consent and is therefore not a just power.
00:32:31.560 as Adams waged this lonely fight in the house Andrew Jackson was gearing up for re-election
00:32:42.080 in 1832 his supporters embraced a new label the Democratic Party Jackson was the face of that
00:32:51.260 party but Martin Van Buren was the architect of the organized apparatus that stretched out
00:32:57.400 through the states coordinating the newspapers, the committees, and turnout. For the campaign,
00:33:03.540 Jackson embarked on the first major personal presidential tour, barnstorming from his Tennessee
00:33:08.880 home all the way to Washington, D.C. His team was a well-oiled machine by now, and Jackson cruised to
00:33:16.780 victory. Just weeks after Jackson's re-election, a crisis erupted in which had been slow-boiling for
00:33:24.980 years. In 1828 and 1832, Congress had passed sweeping tariff bills which hammered the South's
00:33:34.060 export-heavy economy. Southerners felt targeted by Northern interests, suspected the terrorists
00:33:40.280 were the opening act in a campaign against slavery itself. South Carolina nullified the
00:33:46.660 tariff of 1832. Nullification was the theory that a state could void a federal law that it didn't
00:33:53.380 like. It made Jackson nuts and furious, and despite being a Southern slave owner himself,
00:34:00.200 Jackson was adamantly pro-union. Both sides took stock of their arms. Jackson shipped rifles to
00:34:08.880 loyalists in South Carolina, and the crisis hurled toward armed conflict. In December,
00:34:15.760 Jackson unleashed a blistering public message to South Carolina.
00:34:19.800 Nullification is incompatible with the existence of the Union,
00:34:24.800 contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution,
00:34:28.800 unauthorized by its spirit,
00:34:31.800 inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded
00:34:35.800 and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.
00:34:39.800 Disunion by armed force is treason.
00:34:44.800 Are you really ready to incur its guilt?
00:34:49.800 Jackson's vice president, John Calhoun, was a nullification hawk.
00:34:54.760 He resigned in the middle of the crisis, accepting a U.S. Senate seat from South Carolina's legislature.
00:35:01.500 Well, Jackson refused to blink as the crisis dragged on into March 1833.
00:35:06.840 And his old nemesis, Henry Clay, swooped in with a compromise tariff that appeased the nullifiers.
00:35:15.440 Jackson signed the bill, and South Carolina finally backed down from their secession threat.
00:35:21.840 Jackson was perceptive about the crisis and what it meant for America's future, writing,
00:35:26.320 The tariff was only the pretext, and disunion and southern confederacy the real object.
00:35:33.980 The next pretext will be the Negro or slavery question.
00:35:39.900 Jackson's next battlefront was money.
00:35:43.340 Since he took office, he had always been hostile to the second bank of the United States.
00:35:48.460 He believed the bank was an unaccountable engine of privilege.
00:35:52.500 The bank's president, Nicholas Biddle, knew the bank was vulnerable because of Jackson's opposition.
00:35:58.380 So he decided to get the bank's charter renewed well ahead of when it was officially set to expire by law in 1836.
00:36:07.160 He thought an early vote to renew would lock in stability.
00:36:11.260 Well, Jackson, as he did with most things, took it personally.
00:36:15.620 He told his new vice president, Martin Van Buren, 0.99
00:36:18.900 The bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me, but I will kill it. 0.71
00:36:27.460 Shortly into Jackson's second term, Congress approved the bank's recharter, 0.97
00:36:32.500 surprising given that it supported the president on most other issues.
00:36:36.840 But Jackson promptly vetoed the bill.
00:36:39.420 It was a bold and unusual move since all previous presidents had only used the veto to block bills
00:36:46.120 they considered unconstitutional. Jackson now claimed a broader mandate. He believed Congress
00:36:53.600 should consult him on legislation. It was the opposite of John Quincy Adams and his philosophy.
00:37:00.780 But then Jackson went even further. He planned to remove federal deposits from the bank and
00:37:06.240 disperse them to hand-picked state banks. His cabinet disapproved. His treasury secretary even
00:37:12.320 refused to pull the trigger. So Jackson replaced him with a loyalist, Roger Taney. Then while
00:37:18.540 Congress was out of session, Taney just moved all the deposits. During this controversy is when the
00:37:24.580 donkey became the symbol of the Democratic Party. Jackson's critics had called him Andrew Jackass
00:37:30.720 for his stubbornness. And in 1833, there was an editorial cartoon that showed a donkey with
00:37:36.640 Jackson's face as federal funds moved from the National Bank to state banks. The donkey stuck.
00:37:43.700 And that's how we have the Democratic symbol.
00:37:50.240 The U.S. Senate soon delivered a major rebuke. In March 1834, spearheaded by Henry Clay,
00:37:56.560 it passed the first-ever censure of a president
00:37:59.460 for Jackson's removal of the federal deposits.
00:38:02.920 Resolved that the president in the late executive proceedings
00:38:06.120 in relation to the public revenue
00:38:07.960 has assumed upon himself authority and power
00:38:10.780 not conferred by the Constitution and laws,
00:38:13.840 but in derogation of both.
00:38:16.300 Jackson's contempt for Clay just boiled over, saying, 0.99
00:38:20.060 He is certainly the basest, meanest scoundrel 0.99
00:38:23.840 that ever disgraced the image of his God. 0.99
00:38:30.760 Meanwhile in the House, Adams continued confronting what he called slavocracy. 0.60
00:38:36.620 From its very beginning, the Democratic Party fiercely protected slavery.
00:38:42.200 Because Adams continued presenting anti-slavery petitions,
00:38:45.540 Democrats implemented a House rule forbidding any anti-slavery petition
00:38:49.560 from being received, considered, discussed, or acted on.
00:38:52.920 It actually became known as the John Quincy Adams gag rule, but Adams just kept presenting
00:38:59.620 petitions anyway, and because of it, he received a steady stream of death threats.
00:39:05.700 One promised, 1.00
00:39:07.180 You will, when least expected, be shot down in the street, or your damned guts will be 1.00
00:39:15.080 cut out in the dark. 1.00
00:39:17.540 Adams wrote,
00:39:18.220 The best actions of my life make me nothing but enemies.
00:39:22.920 The threat of political violence was growing now in American life.
00:39:28.760 In January 1835, President Jackson was leaving the Capitol after attending a funeral
00:39:33.220 when an assassin stepped in his path, pulled out a pistol, and squeezed the trigger.
00:39:38.760 Luckily, it failed to fire.
00:39:41.240 The assassin dropped the pistol and immediately pulled out another,
00:39:44.360 again pulling the trigger at point-blank range.
00:39:47.480 The second pistol also misfired.
00:39:50.820 The odds of two guns in a row misfiring like that were later calculated at 125,000 to one.
00:39:58.640 The would-be assassin, Richard Lawrence, was found not guilty by reason of insanity
00:40:04.080 and spent the rest of his life in a mental institution.
00:40:12.360 The deadline for the final removal of the Cherokees was 1838, the year after Jackson left the White House.
00:40:19.180 When the time came, most Cherokees had not left their lands, so the forced removal began.
00:40:27.300 U.S. soldiers escorted families west.
00:40:31.180 The march was brutal.
00:40:33.540 Of the 16,000 Cherokees forced out, 4,000 died along what became known as the Trail of Tears.
00:40:42.080 Years later, a Georgia soldier said,
00:40:43.980 I fought through the Civil War and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands.
00:40:50.400 But the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew.
00:40:56.920 During the final removal, Martin Van Buren was president.
00:41:01.140 But the policy that led to the deaths was 100% Andrew Jackson's.
00:41:06.720 In Jackson's farewell address in March 1837, he somehow claimed benevolence in this policy. 0.96
00:41:13.980 The philanthropist will rejoice that the remnant of that ill-fated race 0.94
00:41:19.460 has been at length placed beyond the reach of injury or oppression 1.00
00:41:23.680 and that the paternal care of the general government
00:41:27.120 will hereafter watch over them and protect them.
00:41:31.180 The words rang hollow against the miles of Cherokee graves.
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00:43:26.380 It's 1839.
00:43:28.380 A small ship sails through the night off the coast of Cuba. 1.00
00:43:31.480 In the bleak darkness of the ship's hold, a group of Africans pick at the locks of their chains. 0.93
00:43:38.400 There are 53 of them, mostly men, and a few young women. 1.00
00:43:42.880 They're all crammed together in this tiny space, seasick and terrified.
00:43:48.840 Several of the men manage to wriggle free from the chains and find sugarcane knives in the hold.
00:43:55.240 They're desperate. There's no time to deliberate.
00:43:58.460 This may be their only chance.
00:44:01.100 Suddenly, the men surge onto the deck.
00:44:03.900 In a burst of chaos, their blades flash in the moonlight and shouts split the air.
00:44:08.980 Two crew members are quickly bludgeoned and stabbed to death.
00:44:12.300 The ship's captain kills two of the Africans with his dagger before he meets the same fate.
00:44:17.340 Blood mixes with the salt water on the boards of the ship,
00:44:20.540 and the Africans tie up the few surviving crew members, including Ruiz and Montez, two Spanish slave owners. 0.87
00:44:30.180 The Africans demand that the Spaniards set a course for their home, 0.69
00:44:34.060 which is Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa. 1.00
00:44:38.820 The Africans, most of them from the Mende tribe,
00:44:43.160 were kidnapped by Portuguese slave hunters and shipped in horrific conditions to Cuba.
00:44:49.820 Cuba, a Spanish-speaking colony, had become a thriving black market hub of the international slave trade,
00:44:56.340 even though Spain itself had outlawed the practice.
00:45:01.140 When the ship reached Cuba, the Africans were marched into holding pens
00:45:05.940 and sold as property in open defiance of Spanish law.
00:45:11.000 Two Spanish plantation owners, Ruiz and Montes, purchased 53 of them.
00:45:17.120 They herded the Africans aboard a small schooner named La Amistad, friendship in Spanish.
00:45:23.120 The plan was to move them to plantations elsewhere in the Caribbean for a lifetime of endless slave labor.
00:45:31.540 After the Africans took control of the Amistad, Ruiz and Montez led them to believe they were sailing towards Africa. 0.60
00:45:38.900 During the day, the Spaniards turned the ship eastward, letting the Africans believe the horizon pointed back to freedom.
00:45:47.240 But at night, they quietly angled the ship north and west, steering it towards the United States.
00:45:54.760 Well, days bled into weeks, and the captives began to realize something was wrong.
00:46:01.220 The air grew cooler, with little to drink on board, dehydration set in,
00:46:06.020 and the Amistad finally drifted near Long Island, where it was intercepted by an American Navy vessel.
00:46:16.440 The U.S. officers boarded, the Spanish slave owners rushed forward, pleading for protection.
00:46:22.400 They claimed the Africans were criminals, murderers, and mutineers guilty of capital crimes,
00:46:28.320 and they painted themselves as poor victims. While the Americans took control of the ship 0.97
00:46:33.620 and released the Spaniards, the Africans were chained and thrown into a dank jail in Connecticut.
00:46:40.240 Their revolt, their desperate fight for freedom, was now being described in legal terms.
00:46:46.440 mutiny, murder, crimes punishable by death. The Spaniard government demanded that the Africans
00:46:53.800 be returned as Spanish property under treaty obligations. President Martin Van Buren agreed 0.99
00:46:59.820 with Spain. He didn't want to offend a foreign power or anger the slave-holding South. To him,
00:47:05.380 this was all about diplomacy. To the captives, all signs pointed towards a death sentence.
00:47:11.660 but a small group of christian abolitionists refused to let the story end there they recruited
00:47:21.020 lawyers and raised money now the language barrier was a huge obstacle so a local professor combed
00:47:28.220 the docks of new york in hopes of finding somebody who could speak mende after days of searching he
00:47:34.500 found a former slave from west africa who is now a british sailor the man understood enough mende
00:47:40.440 to serve as translator for the imprisoned Africans.
00:47:44.020 At last, they could tell their story.
00:47:47.420 Students and professors from nearby Yale University
00:47:50.560 helped teach the African prisoners English.
00:47:54.040 Abolitionists brought them food and clothing
00:47:56.100 and read the Bible to them.
00:47:58.540 The Amistad case went to a federal district court
00:48:01.680 where the defense argued that these men were not slaves.
00:48:04.680 They were kidnapped free men.
00:48:07.420 Their uprising was pure self-defense against pirates.
00:48:11.280 The district court judge agreed, ruling the Africans were free.
00:48:16.600 But President Van Buren's U.S. attorney refused to accept the ruling
00:48:20.700 and immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:48:24.840 Meanwhile, in Washington, the silver-haired John Quincy Adams
00:48:28.780 continued waging his lonely war against slavery in the House of Representatives.
00:48:34.020 Southern Congressman Henry Wise declared Adams was
00:48:37.260 The acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed.
00:48:43.860 In 1839, Adams introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery outright.
00:48:50.380 The House's infamous gag rule smothered it before it could even be debated, but Adams pushed on anyway.
00:48:57.060 He pushed so relentlessly that colleagues nicknamed him the Hellhound of Abolition.
00:49:02.760 For the upcoming Supreme Court battle, the Africans' abolitionist supporters decided 0.77
00:49:07.320 they needed more legal firepower. So, they approached Adams. By this time, he was 73 years
00:49:14.440 old. His hands trembled, his eyesight was failing, but he had argued before the Supreme Court decades
00:49:20.840 earlier as a U.S. Senator, and he agreed to make the case before the court again,
00:49:25.720 this time for a group of kidnapped Africans.
00:49:32.840 Seven of the nine justices who would hear the Amistad case
00:49:36.720 had been appointed by Andrew Jackson,
00:49:40.260 including Chief Justice Roger Taney.
00:49:43.480 Five of the judges were Southern slave owners.
00:49:46.840 This was not a friendly room for a case about black men claiming freedom.
00:49:51.060 Adams addressed the court for nine hours over three days.
00:49:55.720 He ranged across law, treaties, history, and conscience.
00:50:01.100 And at the heart of it, he insisted on something older than any statute.
00:50:06.280 I know of no other law that reaches the case of my clients,
00:50:09.800 but the law of nature and of nature's God,
00:50:12.780 on which our fathers placed our own national existence.
00:50:17.040 When Adams had made his argument, he waited, nervously.
00:50:21.420 The court took an unexpected two-day recess when Justice Philip Barber died in his sleep.
00:50:28.820 Now, only eight justices would decide the African's fate.
00:50:33.400 On March 9, 1841, Adams was in the courtroom when the decision was announced.
00:50:41.140 The government's appeal was dismissed by a vote of 7 to 1.
00:50:47.400 Justice Joseph Story delivered the opinion. 0.99
00:50:50.180 There does not seem to us to be any ground for doubt that these Negroes ought to be deemed free
00:50:55.960 and that the Spanish treaty interposes no obstacle to the just assertion of their rights.
00:51:02.320 The captives were ordered released.
00:51:05.080 Adams' arguments were widely printed, fueling the abolitionist cause.
00:51:09.580 The founder of the Amistad Committee wrote him a formal letter of thanks,
00:51:14.420 noting that he had refused any payment for his work.
00:51:17.660 While more money was raised to send the Africans home, of the original 53, 35 survived.
00:51:25.600 The others had died along the way, in prison or at sea.
00:51:30.240 After two years of captivity in courtrooms, the survivors were finally going home.
00:51:40.100 Now let's zoom out from that courtroom triumph.
00:51:43.860 Contrast is jarring. 1.00
00:51:46.460 While those 35 Africans sailed homeward,
00:51:48.820 Andrew Jackson held over 150 slaves at the hermitage his spread in Tennessee.
00:51:54.220 He freed none of them in his will.
00:51:57.320 In an 1804 advertisement for a runaway slave,
00:52:00.460 Jackson offered a $50 reward for the man's return and, quote,
00:52:04.000 $10 extra for every 100 lashes any person will give him, in the amount of $300.
00:52:10.120 In his biography of Jackson, historian John Meacham
00:52:16.560 includes an exchange between one of Jackson's slaves named Alfred
00:52:20.660 and a white tutor at the hermitage.
00:52:24.040 The tutor wrote, quote,
00:52:26.600 You white folks have easy times, don't you? asked Alfred.
00:52:31.320 Why so, Alfred? I asked.
00:52:33.880 You have liberty come and go as you will, he replied.
00:52:38.160 I soon found that he was full of discontent with his lot.
00:52:42.500 I thought it wise to turn his attention to the brighter side.
00:52:46.100 I showed him how freedom had its burdens as well as slavery,
00:52:49.740 that God had so constituted human life that everyone in every station had a load to carry,
00:52:55.300 and that he was the wisest and happiest who contentedly did his duty
00:53:00.300 and looked to a world beyond where all inequalities would be made even.
00:53:05.100 Alfred didn't seem disposed to argue the question with me or combat my logic.
00:53:10.240 He just quietly looked into my face and popped this question at me.
00:53:14.540 How would you like to be a slave?
00:53:18.680 It is needless to say I backed out as gracefully as I could,
00:53:22.680 but I have never yet found an answer to the argument embodied in that question.
00:53:27.620 End quote.
00:53:28.860 The freeing of the Amistad Africans and the bondage of the people at the Hermitage 0.82
00:53:32.960 existed at the same moment in the same nation, liberty and chains, law and cruelty, two realities
00:53:41.980 moving side by side, often pretending not to see each other. By then, America had carried those two
00:53:48.600 contradictions for over two centuries, but the Amistad case had cracked the facade just enough
00:53:56.260 to let the truth shine through.
00:53:59.460 A collision was coming.
00:54:01.940 But that was still on the horizon
00:54:03.360 with plenty of twists and turns on the American journey,
00:54:07.220 including further expansion
00:54:09.180 and a strange war between neighbors.
00:54:15.060 Coming up on the American story, The Beginnings.
00:54:19.500 Houston is walking back to his hotel
00:54:21.320 with a couple of senator buddies,
00:54:23.680 likely a few drinks deep.
00:54:25.380 when he spots a large figure crossing the street just ahead.
00:54:30.420 Houston rushes toward the man, calling out in a booming voice,
00:54:33.660 Are you Mr. Stanberry?
00:54:35.200 The startled congressman turns towards him.
00:54:38.220 Yes, sir. 1.00
00:54:39.540 Then you are a damned rascal. 1.00
00:54:43.120 Well, out comes the hickory cane that Houston whittled himself from a tree at Andrew Jackson's hermitage. 1.00
00:54:49.420 Houston unloads on Stanberry, cracking him across the head, shoulders, and the back.
00:54:53.760 Well, Stanberry staggers and tries to run, but Huston leaps on him like a wild egg, slamming
00:54:59.720 the big man to the ground.
00:55:01.220 They wrestle in the dirt, but horrified witnesses freeze.
00:55:06.080 Stanberry manages to pull a pistol out.
00:55:08.460 He jams the barrel against Huston's chest and pulls the trigger.
00:55:14.120 Misfire.
00:55:15.120 Huston, shocked that he's still alive, rips away the pistol.
00:55:20.240 He jumps to his feet and aims more cane blows between Stansberry's legs.
00:55:32.300 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast
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00:55:50.240 We'll be right back.