Thinking of John Quincy Adams and Abolition

Recently I wrote a post for a Facebook group of doctors in my specialty relating some of my thoughts on racism as a public health problem in the US, and more broadly on the subject of racial justice.

The reaction by - well, the reactionaries in the group - was predictable. My post was denounced as political. It was declared that half of emergency physicians hold views diametrically opposed to mine. I was taken to task for crafting an argument in terms that made it seem morally wrong to disagree with me. (I'm still trying to figure out how that is a legitimate point of criticism, when it is actually evidence of rhetorical cogency.) I was advised that I am much in need of psychiatric help. And, of course, I was spewing "liberal bullshit."

One participant in the thread suggested it is the thinking of people like me that is the real reason for the sorry state of race relations in this country.

This last point brought to mind John Quincy Adams (our sixth president, 1825-1829). The younger Adams served in the United States House of Representatives for many years after his presidency: from 1831 until his death in 1848 at the age of 80. In that phase of his political career he was one of the leaders of the Northern abolitionists.

Abolition of slavery would require amending the Constitution, and a Civil War en route to that. Congress by itself did not have the power to put an end to America's "original sin." But Congress did have jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, for which it served as governing authority. Resolutions to end slavery in the District were introduced in the House of Representatives, repeatedly, by Adams and others.

The First Amendment - that familiar repository of guarantees against infringement by Congress of the rights of free expression, free exercise of religion, and peaceable assembly - also guarantees the right "to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

During the few decades preceding the Civil War, petitions, from the people, demanding an end to slavery were brought before Congress by Adams and other northerners.

Such petitions provoked the ire of southerners in Congress, as did the resolutions to end slavery in the District of Columbia. Every resolution and every petition resulted in the parliamentary maneuver to table, meaning there would be no debate.

Southerners denounced these resolutions and petitions as divisive and declared that it was these, and not the institution of slavery, that constituted the real threat to the Union.

So, when I read the comments denouncing my post - and especially the one saying people who think the way I do are the real cause of America's troubles with racism - I could not help thinking of Congressman Adams.

[For those who love to read history, I recommend the scholarly and beautifully written biography of John Quincy Adams by Samuel Flagg Bemis.]