April 20, 2023 • 33 mins
Warning: This episode contains a brief description of violence.
Andrew Jackson ascends to the presidency after defeating John Quincy Adams in an 1828 rematch. But Jackson is tested by another rival: his own vice president. Meanwhile, Adams arrives in Congress and finds himself in the middle of the slavery debate.
Founding Son is a Curiosity Podcast and is a co-production of iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, listeners, Bob here just a warning that this episode
contains a brief description of racial violence. If you've got
kids listening, or you would rather not listen to that,
you can jump ahead five minutes in the episode. I'm
(00:31):
Bob Crawford. This is Founding Sun John Quincy's America. The
sky turned an odd, bluish green that day in late
(00:52):
August eighteen thirty one, people up and down the Atlantic
coast stared at the heavens, wondering what it all meant.
One Virginia preacher had been expecting this sign from God.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
He began having sort of visions, apocalyptic visions which commanded
him to sort of bring about transformational apocalyptic change.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Matthew Karp is a professor of history at Princeton University
an author of This Vast Southern Empire, Slaveholders at the
Helm of American Foreign Policy. He says the preacher had
been seeing visions for years, recording them in his diary,
things like.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
While laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood
on the corn, representing the figures I'd seen before in
the heavens.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
The eerie, blue green sky was the final sign that
the time had come, time for the preacher to set
his plan in motion, and when the last strands of
the fantastical colors faded from the night sky, he got
to work. He gathered six other men and crept through
(02:04):
the swamps of Southampton County, Virginia, stealing horses, knives, hatchets,
and axes. Within two days, a group of more than
seventy had joined the preacher's movement. They went house to house,
slaughtering every white enslaver they came across, freeing the enslaved
(02:24):
people as they went. Nat Turner's rebellion had begun. By
the end of the rebellion, Nat Turner and the other
enslaved African Americans who joined him had killed some sixty
white people, including women and children. The backlash was immediate
(02:45):
and severe. A mob of three thousand white people tracked
down the rebels just outside of the town of Jerusalem.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
The one thing I want to say about Nat Turner
is not only did they kill him, they mutilated his body,
mutilated it.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Mary Elliott is Curator of American Slavery at the Smithsonian
National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Just like this idea that if he has one hand
attached to one arm attached to his body. Somehow it's
going to rise up and you know, kill more white
people and end slavery in the nation. And we have
to tear that body up so that it doesn't come
back and fight another day.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
In the hysteria that followed Nat Turner's rebellion, paranoia seized
the South. White Southerners murdered dozens of black men and
women across the region, most having no connection to the rebellion.
Enslavers had long feared violent uprisings by the people they enslaved,
and now their fears had come true.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
Bear in mind that the Nat Turner uprising was one
of a series of events.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
James Traub is the author of the biography The John
Quincy Adams Militant Spirit.
Speaker 5 (04:08):
And you have to go all the way back to
Hades's rebellion against the French. This was a slave rebellion
which had succeeded against the world's greatest nation and driven
them out, and so people were terrified. Then there's the
Denmark Visi uprising in Charleston in eighteen twenty two. So
(04:32):
all of these things say to the South, our institution
is under attack.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
A few months after Nat Turner's uprising, sixty four year
old John Quincy Adams was sworn into office as a
member of the House of Representatives. Adams reluctantly ran for
Congress to fix roads, build schools, and protect manufacturing jobs
for his New England constituents. But he would soon see
(05:01):
all of his goals upended by the intense response to
these slaves rebellions and be forced to either come out
fully against slavery or accept its evils. Chapter three Our
Federal Union, it must be preserved. In the years leading
(05:33):
up to Nat Turner's rebellion, the abolitionist movement was gaining momentum.
Speaker 6 (05:38):
It was a very gradualist and moderate movement until the
eighteen thirties.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Richard Newman is a professor of history at Rochester Institute
of Technology. He says black abolitionists like David Walker led
a new charge for abolition going into the eighteen twenties
and thirties.
Speaker 6 (05:56):
David Walker is without a doubt, the most important abolitionist
figure before Frederick Douglass in the coming of the Civil
War era, because he rips apart the anti slavery notion
that you can be a gradual abolitionist and still make
an impact on the slavery ish in the United States.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Walker's message was simple. The only remedy for slavery immediate
abolition and full equality for African Americans.
Speaker 6 (06:28):
The way that I discuss his importance is that he
represents all of those African American musicians in the nineteen
forties and fifties and sixties who influenced all of those
white rock and rollers, you know, including Elvis Presley. You
can't look at the rise of rock and roll without
looking at black musicians. You can't look at the rise
(06:49):
of all these white abolitionists, politicians, and activists in the
eighteen thirties and forties without looking at the influence of
David Walker.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
The momentum of the abolitionist movement and the growing frequency
of slave rebellions set off a frenzy of political action
in the South. Southern enslavers took the reins of state
and local governments, writing oppressive laws to prevent the education,
movement or assembly of enslaved people. In the North, the
pendulum swung even further in the opposite direction. These draconian
(07:21):
Southern laws pushed more Northerners from the sidelines and into
the fight against slavery.
Speaker 7 (07:27):
By the eighteen thirties, the anti slavery movement has taken
a new turn. It's become something of a mass movement.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
That's Sean Wood Lentz, professor of history at Princeton University
and author of the Rise of American Democracy, Jefferson to Lincoln.
Speaker 7 (07:41):
One of the things that undertakes is a series of
petitions to flood the Congress with petitions.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Anti slavery petitions poured into Congress. I can imagine Southern
lawmakers using them as fuel for the fireplace or to
light a cigar. Enter John Quincy Adams stage left. His
desk is likely covered in anti slavery petitions on his
first day in office. To be clear, he hated slavery,
(08:11):
but he didn't consider himself an abolitionist, and he didn't
believe Congress had the power.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
To abolish slavery.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Still, it didn't matter to Adams what was in the petitions.
He saw it as his duty to give voice to
them on the House floor, whether he agreed with them
or not. So during his first session, John Quincy cleared
his throat, stood up from his desk, and read one
(08:39):
abolitionist petition after another.
Speaker 8 (08:42):
I presented fifteen petitions signed numerously by citizens of Pennsylvania
praying for the abolition of slavery in the slave trade
in the District of Columbia. I moved that one of
the petitions presented by me be read, may be in
all the same ten and very short. It was a
quarterly read. I made very few remarks, chiefly to declare
(09:02):
that I should not support the part of the petition
which pray paid for the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
John Quincy soon found that slavery permeated every nook and
cranny of the capital. Southern lawmakers seeking every opportunity to
solidify the institution into the bedrock of the Republic. Adams
was chair of the Committee on Manufacturers. While manufacturing might
(09:30):
not sound like an overtly political issue, it was actually
at the heart of one of the day's biggest issues,
something that deeply divided Northern and Southern lawmakers.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Tariffs.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
It was the one place that the federal government made
its money. It didn't have an income tax to work
off of the bates money off of tariffs.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Just like today, tariffs protect American manufacturers from being undersold
by foreign goods. But most of this manufacturing was done
in northern cities, so tariffs helped create jobs for Northerners
but made foreign imports more expensive for Southerners. However, Sean
(10:10):
wood Lenz says, the cost of goods wasn't really the issue.
Speaker 7 (10:15):
But it was made into a big deal politically. That
was a cover. The tariff issue was always kind of
a cover for the issue of slavery.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
President Jackson was in favor of tariffs. He saw them
as a way to bring in money and reduce the
federal debt, one of his campaign promises. John Quincy also
supported tariffs. It was the one issue that cut through
the bitterness Adams felt for Jackson and vice versa. But
it created new enemies.
Speaker 7 (10:46):
Everybody's complicated, but John C. Calhoun is, you know, about
as evil as it gets in American politics.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
John C. Calhoun was not only Andrew Jackson's vice president,
he was also John Quincy's vice president. Always a bridesmaid,
never a bride am I right. Calhoun and John Quincy
had been colleagues in the eighteen twenties, each holding a
high office in President James Munroe's administration.
Speaker 7 (11:13):
It begins politics actually very close friends in the cabinet
with John Quincy Adams. Adams as a Secretary of State.
He's the secretary of War under Monroe, and they like
each other. They respect each other.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Back then, Adams and Calhoun had pretty similar politics.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
They were both nationalists.
Speaker 7 (11:32):
They believed in the federal government of taking an active
role in developing the country at every level, economically, even culturally,
although Adams is more of a culturalists.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
But as the eighteen twenties dragged on, Calhoun started rethinking
his support for federal authority. Tariffs were wildly unpopular in
his home state of South Carolina. They were seen as
more than just a tax on imports, they were a
blatant power grab by the federal government and northern states.
Speaker 7 (12:03):
Calhoun in the eighteen twenties shifts away from his nationalists
position to become much more of a Southern sectionalist and
then eventually becoming the great defender of slavery. It's sort
of a metaphor for what happens to the country. One
area of the country has to become much more devoted
to slavery, the south, and the North becomes much more
(12:23):
anti slavery.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
John C. Calhoun and Southern lawmakers champion states rights, a
battle over where power should lie that was as old
as the Constitution with the states or with the federal government,
and tariffs became the centerpiece of that power struggle.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
South Carolina then holds a political convention which is presided
over by John Calhoun, the vice president, and they declare
that they will not honor the tariff.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
I want to pause here because this is important. Southern
politicians have this aha moment, they say, we don't have
to honor under the tariff. States have the power of nullification.
Speaker 5 (13:11):
The word nullification was used to mean the right of
a state to supersede federal law with state law, and
the issue arose during Adams's presidency because a constant source
of political conflict at that time was the passing of tariffs.
Because a tariff, by its nature helps some people and
(13:33):
hurts other people.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
In theory, nullification gave states the ability to say, no,
we don't like that federal law.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
We're not going to follow it. It's null and void.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
That's very important when we come to the Civil War,
because the premise of nullification is that the Constitution is
not a packed among voters, it's a packed among states.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
You've probably heard the phrase institutional crisis. That's pretty much
what this was. I mean, what power do the constitution
and the federal government have if states don't listen. It's
like if my son could nullify my no screens at
the dinner table, rule, who's the boss in that situation.
The idea of nullification swept like wildfire through the South.
(14:27):
President Jackson was not a fan. See he was a
Southerner and a big supporter of states rights. But he
was also President of the United States. He was the
head of the federal government charged with preserving the Union
and protecting the Constitution. So all this nullification nonsense, he
(14:47):
wasn't having it, and that exposed a rift between Jackson
and his vice President Calhoun. A bitterness simmered silently between
the two, and like any couple with unresolved issues, they
tend to boil over at the worst possible and most
public moment. Welcome to the Jefferson Day Dinner eighteen thirty
(15:11):
polished stemware, crystal goblets, fancy attire.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
It's a regular who's who.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Of Washington's elite political players, and this year's noted guests,
President Andrew Jackson and his vice President John C.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Calhoun.
Speaker 7 (15:27):
The celebration was dominated by Calhoun's friends, a bunch of
people who are sympathetic to the Southern rights point of view.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
During these dinners, every man in the room would stand
up and make a toast to this or to that,
and then they'd give more toasts. By some accounts, more
than one hundred toasts could be given at one of
these dinners.
Speaker 7 (15:47):
They get very drunk slowly because they take all these toasts,
and every time they did a toast, they'd knock something bad,
usually something very stifferent.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
President Jackson could probably feel the tension in the room.
His fervent opposition to nullification put him at odds with
almost everyone there. Hateful eyes likely weighed heavily on him,
like daggers being sharpened all around.
Speaker 7 (16:12):
And Jackson is loaded for bear. He's gonna be asked
to give a toast, and he has a toast already,
and has a toast that he knows he's gonna sing
at John C.
Speaker 9 (16:20):
Calhoun.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Jackson raised his glass sneered over at his vice president.
Speaker 7 (16:27):
He's just standing tall. He's looking right at him. There's
no question what he's doing. He's staring Calhoun down.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Jackson let out a hint of a grin and let it.
Speaker 10 (16:37):
Rip our federal Union. It must be preserved.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
The words hit Calhoun like a slap in the face.
Speaker 7 (16:46):
And Calhoun, is her point to have been very flustered
at this. He just can't believe what just happened.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Not to be outdone, Calhoun immediately pushes back his chair
and rises to his feet, raises his glass high in
the air, locks eyes with Jackson, and bellows for the crowd.
Speaker 9 (17:06):
The Union next to our liberty the most dear. May
we all remember that it can only be preserved by
respecting the rights of the states and distributing equally the
benefit and burden of the Union.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
If they had microphones in eighteen thirty, Calhoun would have
dropped his The crowd of Calhoun cronies burst into applause.
Missouri Senator and Jackson allyed. Thomas Hart Benton was at
the dinner. He told a friend later that the whole
thing was a setup.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
It was prepared for the express purpose of inaugurating the
treasonable doctrine of nullification.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Following the notorious Jefferson Day Dinner, support for nullification and
defiance of federal law only grew stronger.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
In the South.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Just two years later, in eighteen thirty two, Calhoun put
nullification to the test. He pushed his state of South
Carolina to ignore the federal tariff.
Speaker 7 (18:16):
And Jackson will have none of it. Jackson threatens to
send the army down, and he's going to take military
action and make sure that the tariff is duly collected,
and the ports of South Carolina above all Charleston.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Now Calhoun was engaged in a duel of sorts with Jackson,
but this time Jackson was armed with the US military,
not a pistol. Jackson issued a proclamation to the state
of South Carolina in late eighteen thirty two.
Speaker 10 (18:46):
You are free members of a flourishing and happy union.
There is no settled design to oppress you. The power
to annull a law of the United States assumed by
one state is incompatible with the existence of the Union.
Contradiction did expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized
(19:09):
by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it
was founded, and destructive of the great object for which
it was formed.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Jackson made crystal clear to the South Carolinians the repercussions.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Of their actions.
Speaker 10 (19:23):
Disunion by armed force is treason.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Shortly after Jackson's proclamation, John Quincy Adams took to the
House floor, waving a copy of the Constitution above his head.
He said, the South has a great protected interest. The
looms and factories have no representative in Congress. Why should
not they reason as South Carolina does, why shouldn't Massachusetts
(19:48):
nullify whatever measures it found animical? Roan's and booze erupted
from the South Carolina delegation as John Quincy used their
words against them. One congressman interrupted, shouting, Adams has thrown
a firebrand into the hall. Calhoun could feel the pressure mounting.
He had no idea how far Jackson would go in
(20:10):
the stalemate, and had none of the seasoned veterans steely resolve.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
Calhounion effect backs down. He's not a radical in all
of this. He's more of a moderate, but he is
certainly pushing nullification.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Jackson had won the duel over nullification, and Calhoun resigned
the vice presidency.
Speaker 7 (20:34):
Nullification is undone, and it's actually an important moment in
American political history because it is a premonition of the
Civil War. Civil War's not gonna be fought over nullifications,
gonna be fought over secession, but secession was kind of
the ultimate step beyond nullification.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
The nullification crisis had been averted, but it gave Americans
a glimpse at the potential for a much larger conflict
to come. Jackson said in May of eighteen thirty three.
Speaker 10 (21:00):
The tariff was only a pretext, and disunion Southern Confederacy
the real object. The next pretext will be the slavery question.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Jackson and Enslaver had held the slave powers in check,
but it was just a matter of time.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Before things got out of control.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
We'll have more after a break. By the mid eighteen thirties,
the abolitionist movement became organized. Abolitionist newspapers were spreading anti
(21:46):
slavery petitions, flooded the US Capitol at a furious pace.
At the heart of it all was a white abolitionist
named Theodore Weld.
Speaker 6 (21:55):
Theodor Dwight Weld gains a reputation as not just a
great organizer, not just a great speaker, but as someone who,
within a lot of institution educational religious can spur anti
slavery debate in really meaningful ways.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Weld and other abolitionists created an anti slavery juggernaut in
the eighteen thirties, traveling from town to town giving lectures
and circulating ready to sign anti slavery petitions.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
Weld is part of an incredible network of anti slavery
activists who've been working on abolishments petitions. He's got a
lot of help from anti slavery women and other activists.
In fact, the majority of the people who sign these
petitions are women. In the North.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
The pressure in Congress to do something about these petitions
was ratcheting up, but John Quincy Adams was dealing with
another issue. In the fall of eighteen thirty four, Adams
received a letter saying that his son, John Adamson was
extremely ill. The author urged John Quincy to come immediately.
(23:03):
The news was shocking, but not surprising. Young John was
John Quincy and Louisa's middle son. Like it did for
his older brother George, the Adam's name hung like an
albatross around his neck. To cope with the pressure, he
self medicated with alcohol. Louisa believed if only John and
(23:26):
his family came to stay with her, she could save him.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
She pleaded, I.
Speaker 11 (23:32):
Shall be perfectly miserable until I hear that you have
left the city. As the health of yourself, your wife
and Fanny make it essential, and the season leaves no
time for deliberation.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Desperate, she recommended he sell her silver bread basket to
cover travel expenses.
Speaker 12 (23:49):
Do not hesitate to take this step, as they are
my own, and if they can prove serviceable, they will
yield me more pleasure and more solid wealth than they
ever have since I've owned them.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
But young John was too sick to travel, so his
father came to him.
Speaker 8 (24:07):
I went to his bedside twice, song heard him. You
had no consciousness of anything on earth.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Helpless John Quincy watched the life fade from his son's body.
He bent down and kissed his boil on his sweaty brow.
He had outlived another one of his children.
Speaker 13 (24:34):
I was never like a huge John man. And then
when I wrote his theft scene, I remember so well
was one of the most of the dead experiences I
had writing the biography. I remember writing it and thinking, ah,
I feel kind of like hot, and then I just
started sobbing.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
This is Luisa Thomas, staff writer at the New Yorker
and author of Louisa The Extraordinary Life of Missus Adams.
She says John Quincy and Luisa's life was filled with
sorrow and grief, and for all their love and caring,
they couldn't help but feel like they had failed their children.
Speaker 13 (25:14):
These are human beings in some ways that you can
never know, but you see them there's some sort of
window at a distance, and you come to care about them,
for all their faults, and also just see the ways
of which the world let them down, as it lets
down many people, and the ways of which they let
down each other sometimes too.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
When Luisa Adams learned of her son's death, she was
incapacitated by grief. She crumbled into a deep depression. Her
son Charles Francis wrote.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
She lay in a state of stupor for some time,
followed by violent and indefinite emotion.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
I can imagine her at Peacefield, staring out of her
window at the yellow wood tree. It's still there today.
It's one Luisa had planted when her other son, George,
had died just five years earlier. It's yellowing leaves floating
to the ground in the cool autumn air. It was
(26:19):
a reminder of the seasons she had spent without him.
Down in Washington. John Quincy grieved, as he always had.
He threw himself into his work in the House of Representatives.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
In the waning days.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Of eighteen thirty five, abolitionist petitions continued to flood the
US Capitol.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
In the eighteen thirties, one faction of abolitionists becomes much
more radical and immediate, demands the end of slavery right
now and takes direct action.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Abolitionists didn't just send petitions to the Capitol. They started
mailing anti slavery petitions directly to voters in the South.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
What the South, he starts to do is intercept the
mail and search the mail for any anti slavery materials,
and then prevent it from being delivered.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Southern politicians seethe as the anti slavery literature took center
stage in Congress.
Speaker 6 (27:19):
So they say, you know, you have to prevent the
discussion of abolitionist petitions when they're brought in. You say,
we cannot talk about these. It's an actual congressional mandate.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Southern lawmakers tested this new tact on one of Adams's
fellow representatives from Massachusetts when he began to read a
petition on the House floor. A congressman from South Carolina
stopped him, saying the petitions should be rejected out of hand.
The lawmaker got flustered, caved into the southerners demands and
sat down without reading the petition. John Quincy was furious.
(27:58):
He later wrote in his diary.
Speaker 8 (28:00):
This proposition, which was wholly unexpected to polk speaker. This
concerted him and he blundered in the tangles of the rules.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Southern politicians then took to the House floor for three days,
bloviating about why Congress must reject all these anti slavery petitions,
like listening to your drunken uncle drone on and on
about his insane politics. At the Thanksgiving dinner table, Adams's
(28:33):
irritation built and built and built, and then he had
had enough. He sprung from his desk and spoke directly
to the Southern delegation.
Speaker 8 (28:47):
You introduce a resolution that the members of this House
shall not speak a word in derogation of the sublime
merits of slavery. Well, sir, you begin with suppressing the
right of petition. You must next suppress the right of
speech in this house. You suppress the right of petition,
You suppressed the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press,
(29:09):
and the freedom of religion.
Speaker 5 (29:11):
For in the.
Speaker 8 (29:12):
Minds of many worthy honest and honorable men. Fanatics, if
you so please to call them. This is a religious
question in which they act under what they believe to
be a sense of duty to their God.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
When Theodore Weld read about John Quincy's speech on the
House floor, he had a thought, what if Adams could
be a voice for the anti slavery movement in Congress.
John Quincy's support for freedom of speech had put him
on an ideological collision course within slavers and made him
(29:51):
a hero in the eyes of abolitionists. Adams wanted to
stay neutral when it came to slavery, but the ground
was shifting all around him. And then war came to
the Southern border and it changed everything. On the next
(30:27):
episode of Founding Son.
Speaker 14 (30:29):
I shall never surrender, all retreat. I am determined to
sustain myself as long as possible and die like a
soldier who never forgets what is due to his own
honor and that of his country, victory or death.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
There's a sense that if Texas is an annex then
Great Britain is going to step in or some other
European power, and you'll have this big anti slavery borderland
in the Southwest.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Founding Son is a curiosity podcast brought to you by
iHeart Podcasts in School of Humans. For help with this episode,
we want to thank James Traub, author of John Quincy
Adams Militant Spirit, Mary Elliott, Curator of American Slavery at
the Smithsonians National Museum of African American.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
History and Culture.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Richard Newman, professor of history at Rochester Institute of Technology,
Luisa Thomas, staff writer at the New Yorker and author
of Louisa, The Extraordinary Life of missus Adams. Sean will Lentz,
author of the Rise of American Democracy, Jefferson to Lincoln.
Matthew Carp, professor of history at Princeton University and author
(31:39):
of This Vast Southern Empire Slaveholders at the Helm of
American Foreign Policy. Our lead producer, story editor, and sound
designer is James Morrison. Our senior producer is Jessica Metzger.
Our production manager is Daisy Church. Fact checking by Adam Bisno.
Jesse Niswanger mixed and mastered this episode. Executive producers are
(32:02):
Virginia Prescott, Brandon barr, El C. Crowley, and Jason English.
Original music by me Bob Crawford. Additional scoring by Blue
Dot Sessions. John Quincy Adams is voiced by Patrick Warburton,
Andrew Jackson is voiced by Nick Offerman. Luisa Adams is
voiced by Gray Delisle. Additional voices in this episode provided
(32:26):
by Scott Davitt, Jay Jones, and James Morrison. Show art
designed by Darren Shock. Special thanks to John Higgins, Julia
chris Gow, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the National Park Service.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a five
star rating in your podcast app. You can also check
(32:48):
out other Curiosity podcasts to learn about history, pop culture,
true crime, and more. This podcast was recorded under a
SAG after a collective bargaining agreement. I'm your host, Bob Crawford,
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 9 (33:05):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
School of Humans
Hey, listeners, Bob here just a warning that this episode
contains a brief description of racial violence. If you've got
kids listening, or you would rather not listen to that,
you can jump ahead five minutes in the episode. I'm
(00:31):
Bob Crawford. This is Founding Sun John Quincy's America. The
sky turned an odd, bluish green that day in late
(00:52):
August eighteen thirty one, people up and down the Atlantic
coast stared at the heavens, wondering what it all meant.
One Virginia preacher had been expecting this sign from God.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
He began having sort of visions, apocalyptic visions which commanded
him to sort of bring about transformational apocalyptic change.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Matthew Karp is a professor of history at Princeton University
an author of This Vast Southern Empire, Slaveholders at the
Helm of American Foreign Policy. He says the preacher had
been seeing visions for years, recording them in his diary,
things like.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
While laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood
on the corn, representing the figures I'd seen before in
the heavens.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
The eerie, blue green sky was the final sign that
the time had come, time for the preacher to set
his plan in motion, and when the last strands of
the fantastical colors faded from the night sky, he got
to work. He gathered six other men and crept through
(02:04):
the swamps of Southampton County, Virginia, stealing horses, knives, hatchets,
and axes. Within two days, a group of more than
seventy had joined the preacher's movement. They went house to house,
slaughtering every white enslaver they came across, freeing the enslaved
(02:24):
people as they went. Nat Turner's rebellion had begun. By
the end of the rebellion, Nat Turner and the other
enslaved African Americans who joined him had killed some sixty
white people, including women and children. The backlash was immediate
(02:45):
and severe. A mob of three thousand white people tracked
down the rebels just outside of the town of Jerusalem.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
The one thing I want to say about Nat Turner
is not only did they kill him, they mutilated his body,
mutilated it.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Mary Elliott is Curator of American Slavery at the Smithsonian
National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Just like this idea that if he has one hand
attached to one arm attached to his body. Somehow it's
going to rise up and you know, kill more white
people and end slavery in the nation. And we have
to tear that body up so that it doesn't come
back and fight another day.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
In the hysteria that followed Nat Turner's rebellion, paranoia seized
the South. White Southerners murdered dozens of black men and
women across the region, most having no connection to the rebellion.
Enslavers had long feared violent uprisings by the people they enslaved,
and now their fears had come true.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
Bear in mind that the Nat Turner uprising was one
of a series of events.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
James Traub is the author of the biography The John
Quincy Adams Militant Spirit.
Speaker 5 (04:08):
And you have to go all the way back to
Hades's rebellion against the French. This was a slave rebellion
which had succeeded against the world's greatest nation and driven
them out, and so people were terrified. Then there's the
Denmark Visi uprising in Charleston in eighteen twenty two. So
(04:32):
all of these things say to the South, our institution
is under attack.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
A few months after Nat Turner's uprising, sixty four year
old John Quincy Adams was sworn into office as a
member of the House of Representatives. Adams reluctantly ran for
Congress to fix roads, build schools, and protect manufacturing jobs
for his New England constituents. But he would soon see
(05:01):
all of his goals upended by the intense response to
these slaves rebellions and be forced to either come out
fully against slavery or accept its evils. Chapter three Our
Federal Union, it must be preserved. In the years leading
(05:33):
up to Nat Turner's rebellion, the abolitionist movement was gaining momentum.
Speaker 6 (05:38):
It was a very gradualist and moderate movement until the
eighteen thirties.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Richard Newman is a professor of history at Rochester Institute
of Technology. He says black abolitionists like David Walker led
a new charge for abolition going into the eighteen twenties
and thirties.
Speaker 6 (05:56):
David Walker is without a doubt, the most important abolitionist
figure before Frederick Douglass in the coming of the Civil
War era, because he rips apart the anti slavery notion
that you can be a gradual abolitionist and still make
an impact on the slavery ish in the United States.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Walker's message was simple. The only remedy for slavery immediate
abolition and full equality for African Americans.
Speaker 6 (06:28):
The way that I discuss his importance is that he
represents all of those African American musicians in the nineteen
forties and fifties and sixties who influenced all of those
white rock and rollers, you know, including Elvis Presley. You
can't look at the rise of rock and roll without
looking at black musicians. You can't look at the rise
(06:49):
of all these white abolitionists, politicians, and activists in the
eighteen thirties and forties without looking at the influence of
David Walker.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
The momentum of the abolitionist movement and the growing frequency
of slave rebellions set off a frenzy of political action
in the South. Southern enslavers took the reins of state
and local governments, writing oppressive laws to prevent the education,
movement or assembly of enslaved people. In the North, the
pendulum swung even further in the opposite direction. These draconian
(07:21):
Southern laws pushed more Northerners from the sidelines and into
the fight against slavery.
Speaker 7 (07:27):
By the eighteen thirties, the anti slavery movement has taken
a new turn. It's become something of a mass movement.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
That's Sean Wood Lentz, professor of history at Princeton University
and author of the Rise of American Democracy, Jefferson to Lincoln.
Speaker 7 (07:41):
One of the things that undertakes is a series of
petitions to flood the Congress with petitions.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Anti slavery petitions poured into Congress. I can imagine Southern
lawmakers using them as fuel for the fireplace or to
light a cigar. Enter John Quincy Adams stage left. His
desk is likely covered in anti slavery petitions on his
first day in office. To be clear, he hated slavery,
(08:11):
but he didn't consider himself an abolitionist, and he didn't
believe Congress had the power.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
To abolish slavery.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Still, it didn't matter to Adams what was in the petitions.
He saw it as his duty to give voice to
them on the House floor, whether he agreed with them
or not. So during his first session, John Quincy cleared
his throat, stood up from his desk, and read one
(08:39):
abolitionist petition after another.
Speaker 8 (08:42):
I presented fifteen petitions signed numerously by citizens of Pennsylvania
praying for the abolition of slavery in the slave trade
in the District of Columbia. I moved that one of
the petitions presented by me be read, may be in
all the same ten and very short. It was a
quarterly read. I made very few remarks, chiefly to declare
(09:02):
that I should not support the part of the petition
which pray paid for the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
John Quincy soon found that slavery permeated every nook and
cranny of the capital. Southern lawmakers seeking every opportunity to
solidify the institution into the bedrock of the Republic. Adams
was chair of the Committee on Manufacturers. While manufacturing might
(09:30):
not sound like an overtly political issue, it was actually
at the heart of one of the day's biggest issues,
something that deeply divided Northern and Southern lawmakers.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Tariffs.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
It was the one place that the federal government made
its money. It didn't have an income tax to work
off of the bates money off of tariffs.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Just like today, tariffs protect American manufacturers from being undersold
by foreign goods. But most of this manufacturing was done
in northern cities, so tariffs helped create jobs for Northerners
but made foreign imports more expensive for Southerners. However, Sean
(10:10):
wood Lenz says, the cost of goods wasn't really the issue.
Speaker 7 (10:15):
But it was made into a big deal politically. That
was a cover. The tariff issue was always kind of
a cover for the issue of slavery.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
President Jackson was in favor of tariffs. He saw them
as a way to bring in money and reduce the
federal debt, one of his campaign promises. John Quincy also
supported tariffs. It was the one issue that cut through
the bitterness Adams felt for Jackson and vice versa. But
it created new enemies.
Speaker 7 (10:46):
Everybody's complicated, but John C. Calhoun is, you know, about
as evil as it gets in American politics.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
John C. Calhoun was not only Andrew Jackson's vice president,
he was also John Quincy's vice president. Always a bridesmaid,
never a bride am I right. Calhoun and John Quincy
had been colleagues in the eighteen twenties, each holding a
high office in President James Munroe's administration.
Speaker 7 (11:13):
It begins politics actually very close friends in the cabinet
with John Quincy Adams. Adams as a Secretary of State.
He's the secretary of War under Monroe, and they like
each other. They respect each other.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Back then, Adams and Calhoun had pretty similar politics.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
They were both nationalists.
Speaker 7 (11:32):
They believed in the federal government of taking an active
role in developing the country at every level, economically, even culturally,
although Adams is more of a culturalists.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
But as the eighteen twenties dragged on, Calhoun started rethinking
his support for federal authority. Tariffs were wildly unpopular in
his home state of South Carolina. They were seen as
more than just a tax on imports, they were a
blatant power grab by the federal government and northern states.
Speaker 7 (12:03):
Calhoun in the eighteen twenties shifts away from his nationalists
position to become much more of a Southern sectionalist and
then eventually becoming the great defender of slavery. It's sort
of a metaphor for what happens to the country. One
area of the country has to become much more devoted
to slavery, the south, and the North becomes much more
(12:23):
anti slavery.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
John C. Calhoun and Southern lawmakers champion states rights, a
battle over where power should lie that was as old
as the Constitution with the states or with the federal government,
and tariffs became the centerpiece of that power struggle.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
South Carolina then holds a political convention which is presided
over by John Calhoun, the vice president, and they declare
that they will not honor the tariff.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
I want to pause here because this is important. Southern
politicians have this aha moment, they say, we don't have
to honor under the tariff. States have the power of nullification.
Speaker 5 (13:11):
The word nullification was used to mean the right of
a state to supersede federal law with state law, and
the issue arose during Adams's presidency because a constant source
of political conflict at that time was the passing of tariffs.
Because a tariff, by its nature helps some people and
(13:33):
hurts other people.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
In theory, nullification gave states the ability to say, no,
we don't like that federal law.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
We're not going to follow it. It's null and void.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
That's very important when we come to the Civil War,
because the premise of nullification is that the Constitution is
not a packed among voters, it's a packed among states.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
You've probably heard the phrase institutional crisis. That's pretty much
what this was. I mean, what power do the constitution
and the federal government have if states don't listen. It's
like if my son could nullify my no screens at
the dinner table, rule, who's the boss in that situation.
The idea of nullification swept like wildfire through the South.
(14:27):
President Jackson was not a fan. See he was a
Southerner and a big supporter of states rights. But he
was also President of the United States. He was the
head of the federal government charged with preserving the Union
and protecting the Constitution. So all this nullification nonsense, he
(14:47):
wasn't having it, and that exposed a rift between Jackson
and his vice President Calhoun. A bitterness simmered silently between
the two, and like any couple with unresolved issues, they
tend to boil over at the worst possible and most
public moment. Welcome to the Jefferson Day Dinner eighteen thirty
(15:11):
polished stemware, crystal goblets, fancy attire.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
It's a regular who's who.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Of Washington's elite political players, and this year's noted guests,
President Andrew Jackson and his vice President John C.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Calhoun.
Speaker 7 (15:27):
The celebration was dominated by Calhoun's friends, a bunch of
people who are sympathetic to the Southern rights point of view.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
During these dinners, every man in the room would stand
up and make a toast to this or to that,
and then they'd give more toasts. By some accounts, more
than one hundred toasts could be given at one of
these dinners.
Speaker 7 (15:47):
They get very drunk slowly because they take all these toasts,
and every time they did a toast, they'd knock something bad,
usually something very stifferent.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
President Jackson could probably feel the tension in the room.
His fervent opposition to nullification put him at odds with
almost everyone there. Hateful eyes likely weighed heavily on him,
like daggers being sharpened all around.
Speaker 7 (16:12):
And Jackson is loaded for bear. He's gonna be asked
to give a toast, and he has a toast already,
and has a toast that he knows he's gonna sing
at John C.
Speaker 9 (16:20):
Calhoun.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Jackson raised his glass sneered over at his vice president.
Speaker 7 (16:27):
He's just standing tall. He's looking right at him. There's
no question what he's doing. He's staring Calhoun down.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Jackson let out a hint of a grin and let it.
Speaker 10 (16:37):
Rip our federal Union. It must be preserved.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
The words hit Calhoun like a slap in the face.
Speaker 7 (16:46):
And Calhoun, is her point to have been very flustered
at this. He just can't believe what just happened.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Not to be outdone, Calhoun immediately pushes back his chair
and rises to his feet, raises his glass high in
the air, locks eyes with Jackson, and bellows for the crowd.
Speaker 9 (17:06):
The Union next to our liberty the most dear. May
we all remember that it can only be preserved by
respecting the rights of the states and distributing equally the
benefit and burden of the Union.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
If they had microphones in eighteen thirty, Calhoun would have
dropped his The crowd of Calhoun cronies burst into applause.
Missouri Senator and Jackson allyed. Thomas Hart Benton was at
the dinner. He told a friend later that the whole
thing was a setup.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
It was prepared for the express purpose of inaugurating the
treasonable doctrine of nullification.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Following the notorious Jefferson Day Dinner, support for nullification and
defiance of federal law only grew stronger.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
In the South.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Just two years later, in eighteen thirty two, Calhoun put
nullification to the test. He pushed his state of South
Carolina to ignore the federal tariff.
Speaker 7 (18:16):
And Jackson will have none of it. Jackson threatens to
send the army down, and he's going to take military
action and make sure that the tariff is duly collected,
and the ports of South Carolina above all Charleston.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Now Calhoun was engaged in a duel of sorts with Jackson,
but this time Jackson was armed with the US military,
not a pistol. Jackson issued a proclamation to the state
of South Carolina in late eighteen thirty two.
Speaker 10 (18:46):
You are free members of a flourishing and happy union.
There is no settled design to oppress you. The power
to annull a law of the United States assumed by
one state is incompatible with the existence of the Union.
Contradiction did expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized
(19:09):
by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it
was founded, and destructive of the great object for which
it was formed.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Jackson made crystal clear to the South Carolinians the repercussions.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Of their actions.
Speaker 10 (19:23):
Disunion by armed force is treason.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Shortly after Jackson's proclamation, John Quincy Adams took to the
House floor, waving a copy of the Constitution above his head.
He said, the South has a great protected interest. The
looms and factories have no representative in Congress. Why should
not they reason as South Carolina does, why shouldn't Massachusetts
(19:48):
nullify whatever measures it found animical? Roan's and booze erupted
from the South Carolina delegation as John Quincy used their
words against them. One congressman interrupted, shouting, Adams has thrown
a firebrand into the hall. Calhoun could feel the pressure mounting.
He had no idea how far Jackson would go in
(20:10):
the stalemate, and had none of the seasoned veterans steely resolve.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
Calhounion effect backs down. He's not a radical in all
of this. He's more of a moderate, but he is
certainly pushing nullification.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Jackson had won the duel over nullification, and Calhoun resigned
the vice presidency.
Speaker 7 (20:34):
Nullification is undone, and it's actually an important moment in
American political history because it is a premonition of the
Civil War. Civil War's not gonna be fought over nullifications,
gonna be fought over secession, but secession was kind of
the ultimate step beyond nullification.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
The nullification crisis had been averted, but it gave Americans
a glimpse at the potential for a much larger conflict
to come. Jackson said in May of eighteen thirty three.
Speaker 10 (21:00):
The tariff was only a pretext, and disunion Southern Confederacy
the real object. The next pretext will be the slavery question.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Jackson and Enslaver had held the slave powers in check,
but it was just a matter of time.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Before things got out of control.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
We'll have more after a break. By the mid eighteen thirties,
the abolitionist movement became organized. Abolitionist newspapers were spreading anti
(21:46):
slavery petitions, flooded the US Capitol at a furious pace.
At the heart of it all was a white abolitionist
named Theodore Weld.
Speaker 6 (21:55):
Theodor Dwight Weld gains a reputation as not just a
great organizer, not just a great speaker, but as someone who,
within a lot of institution educational religious can spur anti
slavery debate in really meaningful ways.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Weld and other abolitionists created an anti slavery juggernaut in
the eighteen thirties, traveling from town to town giving lectures
and circulating ready to sign anti slavery petitions.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
Weld is part of an incredible network of anti slavery
activists who've been working on abolishments petitions. He's got a
lot of help from anti slavery women and other activists.
In fact, the majority of the people who sign these
petitions are women. In the North.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
The pressure in Congress to do something about these petitions
was ratcheting up, but John Quincy Adams was dealing with
another issue. In the fall of eighteen thirty four, Adams
received a letter saying that his son, John Adamson was
extremely ill. The author urged John Quincy to come immediately.
(23:03):
The news was shocking, but not surprising. Young John was
John Quincy and Louisa's middle son. Like it did for
his older brother George, the Adam's name hung like an
albatross around his neck. To cope with the pressure, he
self medicated with alcohol. Louisa believed if only John and
(23:26):
his family came to stay with her, she could save him.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
She pleaded, I.
Speaker 11 (23:32):
Shall be perfectly miserable until I hear that you have
left the city. As the health of yourself, your wife
and Fanny make it essential, and the season leaves no
time for deliberation.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Desperate, she recommended he sell her silver bread basket to
cover travel expenses.
Speaker 12 (23:49):
Do not hesitate to take this step, as they are
my own, and if they can prove serviceable, they will
yield me more pleasure and more solid wealth than they
ever have since I've owned them.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
But young John was too sick to travel, so his
father came to him.
Speaker 8 (24:07):
I went to his bedside twice, song heard him. You
had no consciousness of anything on earth.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Helpless John Quincy watched the life fade from his son's body.
He bent down and kissed his boil on his sweaty brow.
He had outlived another one of his children.
Speaker 13 (24:34):
I was never like a huge John man. And then
when I wrote his theft scene, I remember so well
was one of the most of the dead experiences I
had writing the biography. I remember writing it and thinking, ah,
I feel kind of like hot, and then I just
started sobbing.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
This is Luisa Thomas, staff writer at the New Yorker
and author of Louisa The Extraordinary Life of Missus Adams.
She says John Quincy and Luisa's life was filled with
sorrow and grief, and for all their love and caring,
they couldn't help but feel like they had failed their children.
Speaker 13 (25:14):
These are human beings in some ways that you can
never know, but you see them there's some sort of
window at a distance, and you come to care about them,
for all their faults, and also just see the ways
of which the world let them down, as it lets
down many people, and the ways of which they let
down each other sometimes too.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
When Luisa Adams learned of her son's death, she was
incapacitated by grief. She crumbled into a deep depression. Her
son Charles Francis wrote.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
She lay in a state of stupor for some time,
followed by violent and indefinite emotion.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
I can imagine her at Peacefield, staring out of her
window at the yellow wood tree. It's still there today.
It's one Luisa had planted when her other son, George,
had died just five years earlier. It's yellowing leaves floating
to the ground in the cool autumn air. It was
(26:19):
a reminder of the seasons she had spent without him.
Down in Washington. John Quincy grieved, as he always had.
He threw himself into his work in the House of Representatives.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
In the waning days.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Of eighteen thirty five, abolitionist petitions continued to flood the
US Capitol.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
In the eighteen thirties, one faction of abolitionists becomes much
more radical and immediate, demands the end of slavery right
now and takes direct action.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Abolitionists didn't just send petitions to the Capitol. They started
mailing anti slavery petitions directly to voters in the South.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
What the South, he starts to do is intercept the
mail and search the mail for any anti slavery materials,
and then prevent it from being delivered.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Southern politicians seethe as the anti slavery literature took center
stage in Congress.
Speaker 6 (27:19):
So they say, you know, you have to prevent the
discussion of abolitionist petitions when they're brought in. You say,
we cannot talk about these. It's an actual congressional mandate.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Southern lawmakers tested this new tact on one of Adams's
fellow representatives from Massachusetts when he began to read a
petition on the House floor. A congressman from South Carolina
stopped him, saying the petitions should be rejected out of hand.
The lawmaker got flustered, caved into the southerners demands and
sat down without reading the petition. John Quincy was furious.
(27:58):
He later wrote in his diary.
Speaker 8 (28:00):
This proposition, which was wholly unexpected to polk speaker. This
concerted him and he blundered in the tangles of the rules.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Southern politicians then took to the House floor for three days,
bloviating about why Congress must reject all these anti slavery petitions,
like listening to your drunken uncle drone on and on
about his insane politics. At the Thanksgiving dinner table, Adams's
(28:33):
irritation built and built and built, and then he had
had enough. He sprung from his desk and spoke directly
to the Southern delegation.
Speaker 8 (28:47):
You introduce a resolution that the members of this House
shall not speak a word in derogation of the sublime
merits of slavery. Well, sir, you begin with suppressing the
right of petition. You must next suppress the right of
speech in this house. You suppress the right of petition,
You suppressed the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press,
(29:09):
and the freedom of religion.
Speaker 5 (29:11):
For in the.
Speaker 8 (29:12):
Minds of many worthy honest and honorable men. Fanatics, if
you so please to call them. This is a religious
question in which they act under what they believe to
be a sense of duty to their God.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
When Theodore Weld read about John Quincy's speech on the
House floor, he had a thought, what if Adams could
be a voice for the anti slavery movement in Congress.
John Quincy's support for freedom of speech had put him
on an ideological collision course within slavers and made him
(29:51):
a hero in the eyes of abolitionists. Adams wanted to
stay neutral when it came to slavery, but the ground
was shifting all around him. And then war came to
the Southern border and it changed everything. On the next
(30:27):
episode of Founding Son.
Speaker 14 (30:29):
I shall never surrender, all retreat. I am determined to
sustain myself as long as possible and die like a
soldier who never forgets what is due to his own
honor and that of his country, victory or death.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
There's a sense that if Texas is an annex then
Great Britain is going to step in or some other
European power, and you'll have this big anti slavery borderland
in the Southwest.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Founding Son is a curiosity podcast brought to you by
iHeart Podcasts in School of Humans. For help with this episode,
we want to thank James Traub, author of John Quincy
Adams Militant Spirit, Mary Elliott, Curator of American Slavery at
the Smithsonians National Museum of African American.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
History and Culture.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Richard Newman, professor of history at Rochester Institute of Technology,
Luisa Thomas, staff writer at the New Yorker and author
of Louisa, The Extraordinary Life of missus Adams. Sean will Lentz,
author of the Rise of American Democracy, Jefferson to Lincoln.
Matthew Carp, professor of history at Princeton University and author
(31:39):
of This Vast Southern Empire Slaveholders at the Helm of
American Foreign Policy. Our lead producer, story editor, and sound
designer is James Morrison. Our senior producer is Jessica Metzger.
Our production manager is Daisy Church. Fact checking by Adam Bisno.
Jesse Niswanger mixed and mastered this episode. Executive producers are
(32:02):
Virginia Prescott, Brandon barr, El C. Crowley, and Jason English.
Original music by me Bob Crawford. Additional scoring by Blue
Dot Sessions. John Quincy Adams is voiced by Patrick Warburton,
Andrew Jackson is voiced by Nick Offerman. Luisa Adams is
voiced by Gray Delisle. Additional voices in this episode provided
(32:26):
by Scott Davitt, Jay Jones, and James Morrison. Show art
designed by Darren Shock. Special thanks to John Higgins, Julia
chris Gow, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the National Park Service.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a five
star rating in your podcast app. You can also check
(32:48):
out other Curiosity podcasts to learn about history, pop culture,
true crime, and more. This podcast was recorded under a
SAG after a collective bargaining agreement. I'm your host, Bob Crawford,
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 9 (33:05):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
School of Humans
Host
Bob Crawford
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.