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

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

00:55:36.560 and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

00:55:50.240 We'll be right back.

The Glenn Beck Program - July 11, 2026

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

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