John Quincy Adams Facts & Worksheets

Tariff of 1828

• Outraged Southerners named the 1828 tariff the Tariff of Abominations. Residents in the South claimed that the import tax was exorbitant and unfairly targeted their section of the country.
• The Tariff of 1828 was one of several protective tariffs enacted in America. Following the War of 1812, when English manufacturers began flooding the American market with low-cost items that undercut and threatened burgeoning American industry, the Congress responded by imposing a tariff in 1816.
• The 1828 tariff was implemented as part of a complex political scheme intended to produce issues for Adams. Andrew Jackson’s supporters despised Adams after he won the election in 1824.
• The Jackson administration drafted legislation with extremely high tariffs on imports required by the North and South, assuming the law would not pass. The president was expected to be blamed for the tariff bill’s failure to pass. Moreover, this would cost him support in the Northeast.
• The strategy backfired when Congress passed the tariff bill on 11 May 1828. Adams signed it into law. Adams supported the tariff and signed it despite knowing it would cost him politically in the forthcoming 1828 election.

Federal Indian Policy

• The Federal Indian Policy established the relationship between the US government and the Indigenous Nations within its territories. 
• The Nonintercourse Act of 1790 signalled the start of the trade and industrial age. This Act specified that no sales of Indian lands may be undertaken between individuals or states unless the US government authorised the sale.
• Adams aimed for the gradual assimilation of Indigenous people by consensual agreements, a goal embraced by few whites in the 1820s. Adams, however, was firmly committed to the US’ westward expansion. 
• Early in his presidency, Adams suspended the Treaty of Indian Springs after learning that Georgia Governor George Troup had imposed it on the Muscogees. The Muscogee and the US signed the First Treaty of Indian Springs in 1821, ceding their territory east of the Flint River to Georgia. In exchange, the US government paid them $200,000 and took over their debts to the Georgian people.

1828 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION & PRESIDENCY

• The 1828 presidential election was a rerun of the 1824 election, with Adams of the National Republican Party against Jackson of the Democratic Party. Both political parties were new and this was the first time their nominees ran for president.
• Following the 1824 victory, Jackson’s allies immediately began planning a campaign for 1828, and the Democratic-Republican Party split into the National Republican Party and the Democratic Party under Adams’ presidency. The 1828 campaign was characterised by a great deal of negative campaigning, with both parties attacking the personal attributes of the rival party’s candidate. Jackson ruled the South and West, partly helped by the passing of the Tariff of 1828.
• Jackson won the election with 55.5% of the popular vote and 178 electoral votes compared to Adams, who only got 83 electoral votes. The election signalled the start of Jacksonian Democracy. Historians debate the election’s significance, with many claiming that it signalled the birth of modern American politics by removing significant barriers to voter participation and establishing a stable two-party structure.
• By 1828, only two states did not have a popular vote for president, and the 1828 election received three times the amount of votes as the 1824 election. 
• The increase in votes was driven by the recent democratisation, greater interest in elections, and the parties’ rising ability to mobilise voters.
• According to an article published on the CNN website by Thomas Balcerski, Adams was absent during Jackson’s inauguration, making him one of only four presidents in history who finished their terms but skipped the inauguration of their successor.

LATER POLITICAL LIFE

• Despite losing his 1828 reelection bid to competitor Jackson, Adams quickly returned to national politics as a Massachusetts’ Plymouth district representative. Adams served in Congress from 1831 until 1848. 
• During the latter stages of his administration, US President John Tyler made annexing Texas his top foreign policy objective. In 1844, Adams attempted to ratify an annexation pact, but the Senate rejected it, much to his astonishment and relief.
• Following the election, Tyler, whose term would end in March 1845, proposed an annexation treaty to Congress. Adams fiercely opposed the deal, claiming that annexing Texas would involve the US in a war for slavery. Despite Adams’ objections, both houses of Congress approved the treaty, with most Democrats supporting annexation and most Whigs opposing it.
• In connection with Adams’ opposition to the annexation of Texas, he also opposed slavery. He used his new position in Congress to combat it, becoming the most visible national leader fighting slavery.
• In 1836, partly in reaction to Adams’ continuous presenting of citizen petitions urging the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the US House of Representatives enacted a gag order, requiring that any petitions addressing slavery be tabled immediately. Democrats and Southern Whigs supported the rule, while Northern Whigs, including Adams, opposed it.
• In late 1836, Adams launched a campaign mocking enslavers and the gag rule. He repeatedly attempted to bring anti-slavery petitions, sometimes in ways that elicited heated reactions from Southern representatives.
• Though the gag rule remained in effect, the debate sparked by his activities and others’ attempts to silence him addressed issues concerning the right to petition, the right to legislative debate, and the morality of slavery. Adams vigorously opposed the gag rule for another seven years, eventually introducing the resolution that resulted in its removal in 1844.

LATER LIFE

• In 1846, Adams had a stroke that left him partially paralysed. After a few months of rest, he fully recovered and returned to his duties in Congress. On 21 February 1848, Adams collapsed, having suffered a massive cerebral haemorrhage.
• On 23 February 1848, he died at 7.20pm with his wife by his side in the Speaker’s Room of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Their sole living child, Charles Francis, did not arrive in time to see him alive.
• His initial interment was temporary in the public vault in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC. He was later placed in Hancock Cemetery, a family burial spot in Quincy, Massachusetts, across from the United First Parish Church.