March 1. John Quincy Adams. Adams was a man of integrity with his mind made up to use whatever skills and talents he had to serve the country that loved.
One evening early in 1821, a certain politician visited Adams and let him know that he was being considered as a candidate for the presidency.
“To one thing, however, I had made up my mind,” Adams said. “I would take no one step to advance or promote pretensions to the Presidency—If that office was to be the prize of cabal and intrigue, of purchasing Newspapers, bribing by appointments or bargaining for foreign Missions, I had no ticket in that Lottery. … I will devote none of my time to devising laws to increase my own patronage, and multiply canvassers in my favour. …”
Of course, he did become the sixth President of the United States. And that prestigious office didn’t change him. He refused to play politics and make deals. Today’s story tells how that went. On this date in 1841, twelve years after he left the presidency, Adams persuaded the US Supreme Court to free wrongly-imprisoned men, men who had been kidnapped and were to be forced into slavery.
Even when we’re defeated, God has a plan.
When Adams was elected President of the United States, he believed he had reached the pinnacle of his career because his single-minded goal had always been to serve his country. And what better opportunity could there be?
But on every proposal, he battled Congress. They refused to support anything he wanted to do, and they brought the government to a halt. His term ended, and when he ran for re-election the voters trounced him. He wrote: “The sun of my political life sets in the deepest gloom.” He had set out to serve his country, to use his skills for the good of the people, and he had failed.
But soon, some men asked Adams to run for Congress. His wife and his son were mortified; they wanted no more public humiliation. But Adams saw only an opportunity to serve his nation.
He accepted the call on two conditions: he would not affiliate with any political party, and he would run without campaigning. If the people wanted him to serve, they would elect him.
And they did.
Nine consecutive times. Eighteen years in the House of Representatives.
“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28 NASB).
Adams detested slavery and what it did to human beings, and he wanted it abolished. This caused his Southern colleagues to disdain him.
Instead of assigning him to Foreign Affairs, in which he had extensive experience, they put him on the Committee of Manufactures—a sphere he knew nothing about. To keep him from bringing up slavery on the House floor, they instituted the “Gag Rule” and forbid the mention of the word slavery in House proceedings.
But Adams had purposed to serve his country, and he wasn’t going to let his opponents stop him. He learned House rules and circumvented the Gag Rule. Into the House record, he read citizens’ petitions for abolition. He read them constantly. And he read them loudly—over his opponents’ loud protests.
Adams investigated manufacturing issues until he discovered the economic tie between cotton manufacturing and slavery, and he used that to strike a major blow against slavery.
After years of battling slavery, seventy-four-year-old Adams argued before the Supreme Court for the acquittal and freedom of kidnapped Africans, who had mutinied aboard the ship Amistad.
Summoning all his mastery of language and law, combined with his firm belief that slavery was “a sin before the sight of God,” his impassioned speech persuaded the Justices, a majority of whom were slaveholders themselves, to his point of view. The Africans were returned to their native land, free.
In the Amistad case, Adams told the Justices his hope for each of them was that they would “be received at the portals of the next life with the approving sentence, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of the Lord.’”
Have you ever seen a defeat turned to greater opportunities for you to serve and glorify God? Even when we’re defeated, God has a plan.
Unger, Harlow Giles. John Quincy Adams. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2012, p. 256.
Hogan, Margaret A. “John Quincy Adams.” Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia. Accessed September 26, 2018. https://millercenter.org/president/jqadams.
Story read by Chuck Stecker
Would You Like to Learn More About This Man?
See The Diaries of John Quincy Adams https://www.amazon.com/Diaries-John-Quincy-Adams-1779–1848/dp/1598535218/ref=sr_1_1?_ie=UTF8&qid=1538080723&sr=8–1&keywords=john+quincy+adams.