September 9, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1819, as the Missouri Crisis stirred national debate over slavery and westward expansion, a private conversation between John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun became something much larger. Calhoun defended slavery as a necessary institution. Adams left the conversation deeply shaken and newly committed to abolition. This moment would fuel his work after the presidency, where he became a leading voice against the Gag Rule and argued for the freedom of the Amistad captives. Historians James Traub and Dr. Robert Elder share how a single exchange shaped one of the most important abolitionist legacies in American politics.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, a story about two men that changed American history,
the men slavery firebrand John C. Calhoun and the son
of our second President, John Quincy Adams. Here to tell
(00:31):
the story is James Troub, author of John Quincy Adams
Militant Spirit, Doctor Robert Elder, author of John C. Calhoun
American Heretic. Let's get into the story, take it away.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Robert Calhoun comes onto the political scene during the War
of eighteen twelve. He's one of the small group of
congressmen who really pushed the war legislatively and were responsible
for keeping the war effort together. And so he's instantly
a sort of national figure. And he goes into James
(01:08):
Monroe's cabinet as a Secretary of War, and that's where
he meets John Quincy Adams.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
His father was a man who lived in the nation.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
His father was one of the leaders of the forces
that ultimately rebelled against the British. The loveabies with which
his mother would rock him to sleep glorified poems from
the Irish rebellion against the British glorified sacrifice in the
name of patriotism and principle.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And pretty instantly what they recognize in each other is
they're both very intelligent, very smart. John Quincy Adams writes
in his diary about Calhoun and says, I like this guy.
He's independent, he expresses his arguments really well. He's smart.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
He was the only person in Monroe's cabinet who Adams
regarded as an equal.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
He was a much younger man in Adams.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And it is during the Missouri crisis there is this
amazing meeting that they have.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
This is the first time when the United States faces
the problem of admitting new states as to whether they
will be slave or free.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And they had a debate.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
And afterwards Adams and Calhoun walk away and talk a
great length, and Adams writes in his diary afterwards he
describes his long walk in the conversation he had with Calhoun.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Adam says they talked so long that Calhoun missed his dinner.
And Adams expresses his view that slavery should not expand
beyond where it was, and that the declaration of Independence
should actually be policy, even if it couldn't be fully
realized right away, and Calhoun, in.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Language that Adams found appalling and also probably illogical.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
He says, you have to understand, in the South, we
think about this very differently. Those ideals are very admirable,
but we never, in our wildest imagination thought that Thomas
Jefferson's words in the Declaration applied to slaves. We wouldn't
have joined the Union if we thought it did. And
(03:20):
Calhoun says that in this alarms Adams, I think even more.
Calhoun says, if slavery is threatened, then the South will
secede and ally itself with Great Britain. The United States
had just finished fighting a war with Britain a few
years earlier, and so this is an incredibly shocking admission.
And Adams, when he finally gets back to his own house,
(03:43):
Adams says, this conversation has set off this incredible chain
of thinking for me about the future of the Union.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And he says that he had never understood until then
how slavery corrupts the master as.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Well as debasing slave.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
That for him to listen to Calhoun made him think
that this thing was a disease that was eating.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Away at the vitals of the Republic.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
So that thought was there and then it went away.
The issue didn't present itself, but then it did. This
was the great drama of his later.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Years, This conversation that they have as the beginning of
a rift between Adams and Calhoun. Not immediately, I mean
he goes on to become Adams Vice president, of course,
but John Quincy Adams returns to the House of Representatives,
which is kind of remarkable for an ex president to do,
and he becomes the foremost anti slavery politician in the
(04:50):
Antebellum era.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
He would be putting himself into a solitary position.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Most northern men were quite happy to what the issue
go away, and Adams that fact didn't trouble him in
the least.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
He became the.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Go to guy for petitions because once the South succeeded
in passing a rule that said that petitions on slavery
cannot be presented to the House, other members took that
as a settled question.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Adams knew he had no chance of winning.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
The gag order so called would always be passed, but
Adams would fight it tooth and nail. He would find
some sly way of presenting a petition as if it
were not about slavery, when in fact it was, and
when that became clear, they would be an uproar, a
hubbub And in eighteen forty three they moved to have
him censured, and he beat them. He defeated the censure motion.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
And Adams defends the honistad captives successfully.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
It was an illegal slave ship because slavery had been
the slave trade had been eliminated as of eighteen seventeen.
These were slaves who who had been taken from West Africa,
brought to Cuba, where slavery still existed, rebranded as Cuban
slaves as Cubans, and then sent to the South. The
slave's mutinied, and then they told the captain who was
(06:15):
still around, to let to steer them to Africa, which
he didn't do, and instead he actually wound up steering
them to Long Island, where the ship was sighted and taken.
Then a very complicated set of court cases ensued. Adams
learned about this, wrote to the anti slavery people who
were funding the.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Defense of the slaves, and then they came to him.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
The case had gotten to the Supreme Court, and Adams,
who hadn't appeared before the Supreme Court in thirty years
threw himself into this, and it was a very complicated
case because the slaves were, from the point of view
of slave owners, they were not people, they were things.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
They were merchandise.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
And even though it was clear and admitted that they
had been brought there illegally, they were still being claimed
as merchandise. And the owners of the ship wanted to
be compensated. The slaves were going to be free, they
were going to be compensated, and they kept insisting that
the slaves really were chatting. And so Adams immersed himself
(07:20):
in the precedent of the case. Now today, when you
argue a case before the Supreme Court, you start speaking
and after ten words one of the justices interrupts you.
It didn't work like that in those days. The justices
didn't ask questions. You stood up and you presented the case.
Adams presented a nine hour case over the course of
(07:45):
two days, about the facts and about the.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Law and about the history.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
So here he was a seventy three year old figure,
the last living a wink to the founding fathers, a president,
and the son of a president, and so he addressed
the justices as an equal, and perhaps in certain respects
almost superior of theirs. And so maybe I'll just read
(08:16):
the very end, because it's you get a feeling of
his language. He spoke of all of the figures whom
he had known as a young man, and he said,
where are.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
They all gone? Gone?
Speaker 4 (08:35):
All gone gone from the services which in their day
and generation they faithfully rendered to their country. And now
he's standing in the well of the Supreme Court, and
their tears pouring down his face. There's a gallery that's
sitting there in dead silence, and he says, from the
excellent characters which they sustained in life, so far as
(08:57):
I've had the means of knowing, I humbly hope and
fondly trust that they have gone to receive the rewards
of Blessedness on high. In taking then my final leave
of this bar and of this honorable Court, I can
only ejaculate a fervent petition to Heaven that every member
of it may go to his final account with as
(09:19):
little of earthly frailty to answer.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
For as those illustrious did, and that.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
You may everyone, after the close of a long and
virtuous career in this world, be received at the portals
of the next with the approving sentence, well done, good
and faithful servant, Enter thou into the joy of thy ward.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
That's how he ended.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
And this court, virtually all of whose members were slave owners,
ruled unanimously for the Amistad slaves. It was the greatest
victory of the anti slavery movement. It was galvanizing. It
was an astonishing and thrilling moment.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
And imagine that meeting.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Both are serving in Monroe's cabinet, mister anti slavery and
mister pro slavery north and South. Having that conversation, and
what does Adams walk away with such a profound insight.
Slavery doesn't just debase the slave, it corrupts the master.
And boy did it with John C.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Calhoun.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
The story of a conversation that changed John Quincy Adams's light.
Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, a story about two men that changed American history,
the men slavery firebrand John C. Calhoun and the son
of our second President, John Quincy Adams. Here to tell
(00:31):
the story is James Troub, author of John Quincy Adams
Militant Spirit, Doctor Robert Elder, author of John C. Calhoun
American Heretic. Let's get into the story, take it away.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Robert Calhoun comes onto the political scene during the War
of eighteen twelve. He's one of the small group of
congressmen who really pushed the war legislatively and were responsible
for keeping the war effort together. And so he's instantly
a sort of national figure. And he goes into James
(01:08):
Monroe's cabinet as a Secretary of War, and that's where
he meets John Quincy Adams.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
His father was a man who lived in the nation.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
His father was one of the leaders of the forces
that ultimately rebelled against the British. The loveabies with which
his mother would rock him to sleep glorified poems from
the Irish rebellion against the British glorified sacrifice in the
name of patriotism and principle.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And pretty instantly what they recognize in each other is
they're both very intelligent, very smart. John Quincy Adams writes
in his diary about Calhoun and says, I like this guy.
He's independent, he expresses his arguments really well. He's smart.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
He was the only person in Monroe's cabinet who Adams
regarded as an equal.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
He was a much younger man in Adams.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And it is during the Missouri crisis there is this
amazing meeting that they have.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
This is the first time when the United States faces
the problem of admitting new states as to whether they
will be slave or free.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And they had a debate.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
And afterwards Adams and Calhoun walk away and talk a
great length, and Adams writes in his diary afterwards he
describes his long walk in the conversation he had with Calhoun.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Adam says they talked so long that Calhoun missed his dinner.
And Adams expresses his view that slavery should not expand
beyond where it was, and that the declaration of Independence
should actually be policy, even if it couldn't be fully
realized right away, and Calhoun, in.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Language that Adams found appalling and also probably illogical.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
He says, you have to understand, in the South, we
think about this very differently. Those ideals are very admirable,
but we never, in our wildest imagination thought that Thomas
Jefferson's words in the Declaration applied to slaves. We wouldn't
have joined the Union if we thought it did. And
(03:20):
Calhoun says that in this alarms Adams, I think even more.
Calhoun says, if slavery is threatened, then the South will
secede and ally itself with Great Britain. The United States
had just finished fighting a war with Britain a few
years earlier, and so this is an incredibly shocking admission.
And Adams, when he finally gets back to his own house,
(03:43):
Adams says, this conversation has set off this incredible chain
of thinking for me about the future of the Union.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And he says that he had never understood until then
how slavery corrupts the master as.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Well as debasing slave.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
That for him to listen to Calhoun made him think
that this thing was a disease that was eating.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Away at the vitals of the Republic.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
So that thought was there and then it went away.
The issue didn't present itself, but then it did. This
was the great drama of his later.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Years, This conversation that they have as the beginning of
a rift between Adams and Calhoun. Not immediately, I mean
he goes on to become Adams Vice president, of course,
but John Quincy Adams returns to the House of Representatives,
which is kind of remarkable for an ex president to do,
and he becomes the foremost anti slavery politician in the
(04:50):
Antebellum era.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
He would be putting himself into a solitary position.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Most northern men were quite happy to what the issue
go away, and Adams that fact didn't trouble him in
the least.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
He became the.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Go to guy for petitions because once the South succeeded
in passing a rule that said that petitions on slavery
cannot be presented to the House, other members took that
as a settled question.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Adams knew he had no chance of winning.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
The gag order so called would always be passed, but
Adams would fight it tooth and nail. He would find
some sly way of presenting a petition as if it
were not about slavery, when in fact it was, and
when that became clear, they would be an uproar, a
hubbub And in eighteen forty three they moved to have
him censured, and he beat them. He defeated the censure motion.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
And Adams defends the honistad captives successfully.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
It was an illegal slave ship because slavery had been
the slave trade had been eliminated as of eighteen seventeen.
These were slaves who who had been taken from West Africa,
brought to Cuba, where slavery still existed, rebranded as Cuban
slaves as Cubans, and then sent to the South. The
slave's mutinied, and then they told the captain who was
(06:15):
still around, to let to steer them to Africa, which
he didn't do, and instead he actually wound up steering
them to Long Island, where the ship was sighted and taken.
Then a very complicated set of court cases ensued. Adams
learned about this, wrote to the anti slavery people who
were funding the.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Defense of the slaves, and then they came to him.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
The case had gotten to the Supreme Court, and Adams,
who hadn't appeared before the Supreme Court in thirty years
threw himself into this, and it was a very complicated
case because the slaves were, from the point of view
of slave owners, they were not people, they were things.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
They were merchandise.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
And even though it was clear and admitted that they
had been brought there illegally, they were still being claimed
as merchandise. And the owners of the ship wanted to
be compensated. The slaves were going to be free, they
were going to be compensated, and they kept insisting that
the slaves really were chatting. And so Adams immersed himself
(07:20):
in the precedent of the case. Now today, when you
argue a case before the Supreme Court, you start speaking
and after ten words one of the justices interrupts you.
It didn't work like that in those days. The justices
didn't ask questions. You stood up and you presented the case.
Adams presented a nine hour case over the course of
(07:45):
two days, about the facts and about the.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Law and about the history.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
So here he was a seventy three year old figure,
the last living a wink to the founding fathers, a president,
and the son of a president, and so he addressed
the justices as an equal, and perhaps in certain respects
almost superior of theirs. And so maybe I'll just read
(08:16):
the very end, because it's you get a feeling of
his language. He spoke of all of the figures whom
he had known as a young man, and he said,
where are.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
They all gone? Gone?
Speaker 4 (08:35):
All gone gone from the services which in their day
and generation they faithfully rendered to their country. And now
he's standing in the well of the Supreme Court, and
their tears pouring down his face. There's a gallery that's
sitting there in dead silence, and he says, from the
excellent characters which they sustained in life, so far as
(08:57):
I've had the means of knowing, I humbly hope and
fondly trust that they have gone to receive the rewards
of Blessedness on high. In taking then my final leave
of this bar and of this honorable Court, I can
only ejaculate a fervent petition to Heaven that every member
of it may go to his final account with as
(09:19):
little of earthly frailty to answer.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
For as those illustrious did, and that.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
You may everyone, after the close of a long and
virtuous career in this world, be received at the portals
of the next with the approving sentence, well done, good
and faithful servant, Enter thou into the joy of thy ward.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
That's how he ended.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
And this court, virtually all of whose members were slave owners,
ruled unanimously for the Amistad slaves. It was the greatest
victory of the anti slavery movement. It was galvanizing. It
was an astonishing and thrilling moment.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
And imagine that meeting.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Both are serving in Monroe's cabinet, mister anti slavery and
mister pro slavery north and South. Having that conversation, and
what does Adams walk away with such a profound insight.
Slavery doesn't just debase the slave, it corrupts the master.
And boy did it with John C.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Calhoun.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
The story of a conversation that changed John Quincy Adams's light.
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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