Andrew Jackson vs. John Quincy Adams： The Birth of American Political Warfare ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 13
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Summary
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
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By 1806, John Quincy Adams had already served under George Washington
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as ambassador to Holland, then under his own father as ambassador to Prussia.
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Now elected by the Massachusetts State Legislature, he's a U.S. senator.
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And just to keep things interesting, he's taken on a new gig
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as a professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard.
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Adams is 39 years old. He finds himself in somewhat of a transition phase in his already
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prolific career. He can see the writing on the wall. He's way too independent-minded for his
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own good. Federalists put him in the U.S. Senate, but he backs many of President Jefferson's policies,
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even when they clash with his party's line. Massachusetts is about to vote him out,
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but John Quincy Adams is all about principles over politics,
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His life as a senator and professor could hardly contrast more
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who at the very same time, 1,100 miles west in Kentucky,
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Words carry weight and are often answered with bullets.
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Jackson has been publicly insulted by a man named Charles Dickinson,
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who accused him of going back on a horse racing bet.
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It escalates when Dickinson insults Jackson's wife, Rachel,
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questioning her honor in ways that hit too close to home.
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When whispers reach him that Dickinson might skip town,
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Jackson snarls to a friend it will be in vain for I'll follow him over land and
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sea 7 o'clock in the morning May 30th 1806 Jackson and Dickinson face each
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other 24 feet apart pistols loaded Jackson playing it cool or maybe
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strategic let's Dickinson fire first the shot cracks the air slamming into
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Jackson's chest lodging near his heart. Blood begins to soak his shirt running down into his boot.
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But Jackson steadies himself, levels his pistol, click.
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Dickinson is struck in the abdomen and crumples to the ground.
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That bullet remained buried in his chest for the rest of his life.
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If he had shot me through the brain, sir, I should still have killed him.
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It would not be Jackson's last duel, nor the last time he would take a bullet in one.
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The statesman John Quincy Adams and the duelist Andrew Jackson, both born in the same year, 1767.
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Two sides of the same wild American coin, one modeled by books and diplomacy, the other by war and frontier grit.
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These two men are on a collision course, moving slowly but inevitably toward an election that will redefine power, politics, and the presidency itself.
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itself. This is the American story, The Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same title
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by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 13, The Birth of American Political Warfare.
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John Quincy Adams grew up with the weight of the republic pressing on his small shoulders
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when his father was sent to Europe as a diplomat during the Revolutionary War,
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10-year-old John Quincy went with him and served as his father's secretary.
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There he learned diplomacy before he learned how to shave.
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In a letter from his mother Abigail written to him when he first went to Europe with his dad, she wrote,
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You have constantly been upon my heart and mind.
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Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them,
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unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them.
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Adhere to those religious sentiments and principles
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and remember that you are accountable to your Maker
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By his teenage years, he spoke eight languages and translated for diplomats.
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By adulthood, he had studied across Europe and then at Harvard, where he graduated second in his class.
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He served in diplomatic post under George Washington, who said this about him.
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I give it as my decided opinion that Mr. Adams is the most valuable public character we have abroad,
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and that there remains no doubt in my mind that he will prove himself to be the ablest of all
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our diplomatic corps. Years later, when President Madison appointed John Quincy as America's
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diplomat to Russia, Adams and his wife Louisa moved there without their sons who were left
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behind with their grandparents, John and Abigail Adams. John Quincy wrote to his nine-year-old son
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George, in a way reminiscent of how his mother wrote to him at a similar age.
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I have myself for many years made it a practice to read the Bible once every year.
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My custom is to read four or five chapters every morning, immediately after rising from my bed.
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It employs about an hour of my time and seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day.
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So great is my veneration for the Bible, and so strong my belief that when duly read and
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meditated on, it is of all books in the world that which contributes most to make men good,
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wise, and happy, that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more steadily they pursue
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the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the more lively and confident will be my hopes
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that they will prove useful citizens to their country,
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John Quincy Adams was raised in and for public service.
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His parents took it seriously as a high and vital calling,
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Now, on the opposite spectrum in the late 1700s of America
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His parents immigrated from Ireland, his father died days before Andrew's birth,
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and Andrew was the only one in his family born in America. He grew up poor, angry, and tough.
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He became the first president who was the son of an immigrant. He was born in a remote Scottish-Irish
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settlement near the border of South and North Carolina. Even the people who lived there didn't
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know which state they were technically in. His mother and two brothers died during the
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Revolutionary War. At 14, Andrew was an orphan, passed around to live with various relatives.
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One family member later recalled, he once said he never remembered receiving a gift as a child
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and that after his mother's death, no kind encouraging words ever greeted his ear.
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at 17 he began studying law in salisbury north carolina but he was far from the bookish type
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andrew jackson was the most roaring rollicking game cocking horse racing card playing mischievous
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fellow that ever lived in salisbury yet against all the odds he rose and he rose fast he became
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Tennessee's first U.S. representative while George Washington was still president. Shortly after,
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he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Thomas Jefferson, who presided over the Senate at the time
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as vice president, watched Jackson often boil over in debate. Jefferson later wrote,
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His passions are terrible. When I was president of the Senate, he was senator,
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and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him
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attempt it repeatedly and is often choke with rage. Then, Andrew Jackson fell hard in love.
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Her name was Rachel, and to Jackson she was perfect in every way, except for one tiny
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inconvenient problem. She was already married to Louis Robards. That was a really rocky marriage,
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and she fled back home to Nashville at one point, which is when the sparks flew between
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she and Jackson. Robarts eventually filed for a divorce from Rachel, and then she married Jackson,
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only to be shocked three years later to find out that her divorce had not legally been finalized.
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Once Robarts finally obtained the official divorce, Jackson and Rachel tied the knot again
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to demonstrate their commitment to keeping things proper and legal. At least, that was the version
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of the story that Jackson insisted on as he entered politics, but evidence points to Jackson
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and Rachel living together as husband and wife way before Robarts filed for divorce. There were
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references to Rachel being called Mrs. Jackson in late 1790 and early 1791. That scandal never
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left them, and it would later be weaponized. When James Monroe became the fifth president,
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He selected John Quincy Adams as the Secretary of State. Adams became the chief architect of
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American diplomacy. The Monroe Doctrine? Yeah, mostly designed by Adams. In December 1817,
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Secretary of War John Calhoun authorized Andrew Jackson to pursue Seminole raiders
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into Spanish Florida. But Calhoun strictly told him not to attack Spanish forts.
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The U.S. didn't want to jeopardize its negotiations with Spain to acquire Florida.
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He stormed into Spanish territory, rolled over the Seminoles, and seized Pensacola.
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He claimed Monroe had authorized it, but no such evidence ever surfaced.
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Speaker of the House Henry Clay viewed Jackson as dangerous.
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Clay pushed for a congressional investigation into Jackson's Florida campaign.
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The hearings, they dragged on for weeks, and in the end, Jackson was cleared.
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But the attention boosted his political profile all across the small nation.
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Not long after, Florida officially passed into American hands through the Adams-Onus Treaty of 1819.
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These two sides of America finally collided in 1824 in the presidential election.
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There were four candidates, Adams, Jackson, William Crawford, and Henry Clay.
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Jackson was the first candidate to run against the Washington, D.C. establishment,
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and he framed himself as the enemy of elites and political insiders.
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It is now a contest between a few demagogues and the people.
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Jackson won. The most electoral votes, but not the majority.
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The final tally, Jackson with 99, Adams with 84, Crawford 41, Clay 37.
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That meant, according to the Constitution's 12th Amendment,
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the election went to the House of Representatives and each state got one vote, determined by a vote
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taken among all the congressmen from that state. Only the top three candidates were on the House
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ballot, so Henry Clay was eliminated. Since Clay despised Jackson, he threw his support behind
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Adams. The two had worked together before, including being on the team in Belgium that
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negotiated the treaty ending the War of 1812. Adams and Clay held a private meeting before
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the House vote, though there's no evidence that any specific deal was made. Two of Jackson's
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men cornered the lone representative from Illinois in a hotel room, pressing him to
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vote against Adams. They promised to ruin him if he didn't. Finally, the House voted.
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On the first ballot, seven states chose Jackson, four went to Crawford, 13 chose Adams.
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It was over. Adams became the sixth president of the United States.
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A friend sprinted from the Capitol to Adams' home on F Street with the news.
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When Adams then chose Henry Clay as Secretary of State, Jackson and his camp exploded.
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They insisted the presidency had been stolen, even though Adams was chosen in strict compliance
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with the provisions in the Constitution. Adams, however, asked Jackson to serve as the Secretary
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of War. But Jackson refused. There was no way he would serve the man he thought had cheated him
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out of the presidency. Jackson left Washington enraged, but determined. From that moment forward,
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He declared political war on John Quincy Adams.
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Andrew Jackson's supporters launched an all-out assault.
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They repeated the wild charge that Adams' win was a corrupt bargain with Henry Clay,
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stealing the election from the people's hero, Jackson.
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It was a full-blown campaign of character assassination,
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and over the next four years, the attacks were unrelenting.
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Jackson's crew formed a central corresponding committee in Nashville to crank out this propaganda.
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Similar committees popped up all across the South and the West,
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coordinating smears on Adams and rallying the Jackson base.
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Meanwhile, President Adams ran the White House like it was still the 1700s.
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He had his cabinet, of course, but he had no personal staff other than his middle son, John,
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Jackson supporters accused Adams of filling the government with his allies.
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But the irony was, he didn't use patronage at all.
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In fact, his own supporters were furious with him for failing to do so.
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Adams' vision for America was expansive and optimistic.
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He promoted domestic improvements, highways, canals,
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the Department of the Interior to oversee the development.
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He called for a National Astronomical Observatory, scientific expeditions, a national university, and a naval academy.
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This whole agenda became known as the American System.
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It was a grand plan to knit the nation together with infrastructure and innovation.
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At first, Adams supporters had a majority in the House of Representatives, though not in the Senate.
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Adams could have pushed his American system plans,
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but he didn't think it was the proper role for a president to lobby for legislation.
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Because after the 1826 midterm election, for the first time in U.S. history,
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a president faced a Congress entirely controlled by the opposition.
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By the time the 1828 election approached, Jackson's supporters had already been campaigning
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against Adams for four straight years. They introduced tactics that would define modern
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political warfare, focus on personalities, not policies. Team Jackson weaponized the press
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nationwide to amplify those claims. And at the center of this machine stood Amos Kendall,
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a brilliant but ruthless strategist. Adams described Jackson as the tool of Amos Kendall,
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In 1828, April of that year, Adam sent his son John
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to deliver military nomination documents to Congress.
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Russell Jarvis, a reporter for a pro-Jackson newspaper,
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lunged from behind a pillar and punched him in the face.
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John chased after Jarvis until guards finally separated them.
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Weeks earlier, Jarvis had crashed a White House event
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where the young John had loudly called him out for insulting the president.
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President Adams was inclined to move on from the incident,
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So Adams sent a letter to the House of Representatives,
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which put together an investigative committee stacked with Jackson supporters.
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In the committee hearings, John Jr. ended up being questioned
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by the editor of the very newspaper that his attacker worked for. Jarvis, of course, walked
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free. Zero punishment for assaulting the president's son. Adams then realized his enemies had free
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reign when it came to he and his family. In a letter to his youngest son, Charles, he vented
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that Congress was, united by a spirit of bitter, unrelenting, persecuting malice against me
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individually and against the administration, which they conspired to overthrow. By this point,
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Adams supporters had begun to fight dirty as well. They launched attacks on Jackson's personal life,
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claiming his wife Rachel was an adulteress and a bigamist, digging into her messy first marriage
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and a quick remarriage to Jackson. This marked the very first time a woman became the central
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target in a presidential campaign. The public cruelty had a devastating effect on Rachel
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Jackson. She said, the enemies of the general have dipped their arrows in wormwood and gall
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and sped them at me. Almighty God, was there ever anything equal to it? Well, Jackson boiled with
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rage. He wasn't used to being unable to retaliate physically. He told a close friend, how hard it
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is to keep the cowhide from some of these villains. I have made many sacrifices for the good of my
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country, but the present being placed in a situation that I cannot act and punish those
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slanderers, not only of me, but Mrs. J, is a sacrifice too great to be well endured, yet I must
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bear with it. Andrew Jackson won in a landslide, 178 to 83 in the Electoral College.
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His supporters across the nation were ecstatic.
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At that point in our nation's history, Adams and his father
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were the only two presidents to be denied a second term.
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Adams thought his life in public service was over,
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The sun of my political career sets in deepest gloom,
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On December 17th, 1828, just weeks after the election,
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their plantation outside of Nashville, Tennessee,
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On her tombstone, he had these words inscribed.
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So he opted not to attend Jackson's inauguration
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and moved out of the White House the night before the ceremony.
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Jackson's inauguration party turned into total chaos.
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A mob crashed the White House, trashing the place,
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spilling food and punch and breaking furniture.
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Stewards tried to lure the crowd outside with tubs of whiskey
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The party chaos was an indicator that Jackson's presidency
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From Washington's presidency to the start of Jackson's,
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only 74 officials had been removed from civil service.
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Jackson had removed almost 1,000 and replaced them with his allies.
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Amos Kendall brought Francis Preston Blair to D.C.
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to run the Washington Globe newspaper as a total mouthpiece for the administration.
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In short order, Jackson essentially controlled the executive branch, Congress, and the press.
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Jackson also had a long, tangled history with Native Americans.
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He had fought alongside them, and mostly against them, in countless battles.
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The bottom line for him was that Indians were simply not compatible with white American interests.
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One of his top policy priorities was seeing Indians removed to designated territory west
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of the Mississippi River. He first said it would be a voluntary move, but it was never going to be.
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Congress obliged his passion with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. New Jersey Senator Theodore
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Freeling Heisen, a devout Christian, was one of the very few leaders to argue for the Indians.
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During the debates about passage of the Indian Removal Bill, he said this.
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Where the Indian always has been, he enjoys an absolute right still to be
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in the free exercise of his own modes of thought, government, and conduct.
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Do the obligations of justice change with the color of the skin?
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Is it one of the prerogatives of the white man that he may disregard the dictates of moral principles
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But Jackson argued removal was vital for making America safe.
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Where you now are, you and my white children are too near to each other to live in harmony and peace.
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Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part of your nation has gone,
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your father has provided a country large enough for all of you.
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There your white brothers will not trouble you.
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and you can live upon it, you and all your children,
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They had developed an alphabet for their language.
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Written a constitution, published a newspaper, became farmers.
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It was much closer to assimilation than most tribes even attempted,
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Even an 1832 Supreme Court decision in favor of Cherokee rights
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That decision ordered the release of Christian missionaries
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who had been jailed for working with the Cherokee in Georgia.
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But the state of Georgia and President Jackson refused to enforce the court's order.
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Jackson hated how those, quote, religious enthusiasts, as he called them,
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But they could not stop it with Jackson at the helm.
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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
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grind of Washington, D.C. But the country, or at least Massachusetts, did not let him go so easily.
00:30:19.360
his neighbors elected him as Plymouth's representative in Congress.
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No president before or since has ever gone on to serve in the House.
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believing that if your community called you to serve, you had to go.
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Once in the House, Adams morphed into the ultimate defender
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He received stacks of these petitions from every corner of the nation,
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Every other Monday, the House would set aside time for petitions,
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More and more, though, these pleas zeroed in on one explosive issue,
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Well, the tension built like a storm cloud gathering over the Capitol.
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Adams had been growing increasingly bold in his anti-slavery stance for years.
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Flashback to the tail end of James Monroe's administration.
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During a heated cabinet debate where everybody except Adams was a southern slaveholder,
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Treasury Secretary William Crawford argued that a state could sneak in slavery
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Adams recorded his response to Crawford in his journal.
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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
00:32:16.600
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,
00:34:31.800
inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded
00:34:35.800
and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.
00:34:49.800
Jackson's vice president, John Calhoun, was a nullification hawk.
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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.
00:35:43.340
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,
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The bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me, but I will kill it.
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Shortly into Jackson's second term, Congress approved the bank's recharter,
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surprising given that it supported the president on most other issues.
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.
00:37:50.240
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
00:38:02.920
Resolved that the president in the late executive proceedings
00:38:16.300
Jackson's contempt for Clay just boiled over, saying,
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He is certainly the basest, meanest scoundrel
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Meanwhile in the House, Adams continued confronting what he called slavocracy.
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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.
00:39:07.180
You will, when least expected, be shot down in the street, or your damned guts will be
1.00
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.
00:39:41.240
The assassin dropped the pistol and immediately pulled out another,
00:39:44.360
again pulling the trigger at point-blank range.
00:39:50.820
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.
00:40:33.540
Of the 16,000 Cherokees forced out, 4,000 died along what became known as the Trail of Tears.
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.
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The philanthropist will rejoice that the remnant of that ill-fated race
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has been at length placed beyond the reach of injury or oppression
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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.
00:41:37.460
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For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read The American Story, The Beginnings, by David Barton and Tim Barton.
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.
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There are 53 of them, mostly men, and a few young women.
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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.
00:44:03.900
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.
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The Africans demand that the Spaniards set a course for their home,
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
00:47:47.420
Students and professors from nearby Yale University
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.
00:48:07.420
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
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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,
00:49:32.840
Seven of the nine justices who would hear the Amistad case
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,
00:50:12.780
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.
00:51:05.080
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.
00:51:48.820
Andrew Jackson held over 150 slaves at the hermitage his spread in Tennessee.
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
00:52:26.600
You white folks have easy times, don't you? asked Alfred.
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.
00:53:18.680
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.
00:53:28.860
The freeing of the Amistad Africans and the bondage of the people at the Hermitage
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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
00:54:03.360
with plenty of twists and turns on the American journey,
00:54:15.060
Coming up on the American story, The Beginnings.
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,
00:54:43.120
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
00:55:01.220
They wrestle in the dirt, but horrified witnesses freeze.
00:55:08.460
He jams the barrel against Huston's chest and pulls the trigger.
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.