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policy of protection. It was this committee that would be responsible for presenting new legislation to avert the alarming possibility of civil war. ere appeared little possibility that all sides could be successfully appeased, and so the Speaker placed the former president in the chair, hoping to make him rather than the cur- rent occupant of the White House the principal target of popular dissatisfaction. When Adams pleaded with Stevenson to exchange him for a willing colleague on Foreign Relations, the Virginian refused, disingenuously claiming "that he had no power over the arrangement of the committees aer the appointments were made; that the House alone could excuse me." "e humiliation of asking to be excused by the House I cannot yet endure," Adams recorded glumly in his diary, "and I shall submit to my fate." 9 Yet Adams did more than meekly submit, he actually turned the Speaker's partisan trick to his advantage. He employed his chairmanship, which gave him significant latitude in draing the details of the legislation, as an independent base from which to forge a compromise between the Jackson Administration, which was inclined to concede almost everything to the slaveholders, and the opposition in Congress led by Sen. Henry Clay, who drunkenly boasted that "to preserve, maintain, and strengthen the American system [of protective tariffs] he would defy the South, the President, and the devil." e resulting Tariff of 1832 won widespread approval; "all parties are claiming it exclusively as their own," Adams proudly informed his wife aer its passage. 11 Chairman- ship also carried with it the prerogative to accompany any bill proposed to the House with a report in its favor, and Adams seized this opportunity to advocate for his pet project of federally-funded roads and canals, on the specious reasoning that this was a legitimate end to which the proceeds of customs collections might be employed and therefore within the remit of his com- mittee. All this, as he well knew, was anathema to the Speaker, who considered congressional sponsorship of internal improvements to be unconstitutional, and Adams's report provoked Stevenson into a public rejoinder in the press, which many commentators considered beneath the dignity of his office. But Adams was not through with Stevenson yet, for it was around the same time that he also pioneered the use of a parliamentary ruse that would, over several decades, become the most serious obstacle to business that the House ever faced. One of the earliest rules passed by the First Congress compelled Members to vote upon every question for which they were present. On 11 July 1832, however, Adams refused to vote on a resolution of censure against one of his colleagues who had charged the Speaker with having "shaped his course to suit the Executive will, with a view to getting an appointment to a high office abroad." 12 e House declined to excuse Adams from voting, but when called upon by Steven- son he repeatedly refused, nor would he leave his seat to relieve himself of the obligation. is provoked another congressman to charge him with wilfully violating the rules, a serious crime but one that Adams reduced to a farce by pointing out that many other rules frequently went unobserved, and indeed his accuser had himself violated one by rising to make his charge from some- one else's seat. His critics were frustrated, and Adams reassured his wife that while the Jacksonian majority had been "in a towering passion with me," the following morning "the House cooled down wonderfully" and the matter was conveniently forgotten. 13 Yet Adams's refusal to vote harbored far-reaching repercussions, as perceptive Members quickly realized. "Should this breach be passed over in silence," one con- gressman warned, "it might hereaer be in the power of a minority to defeat the legislative functions of this body, by combining together in a similar refusal." 14 is was the so-called "disappearing quorum." e House of Representatives, like many legislative bodies, requires a majority of Members to be present and voting in order to make a quorum—that is, to do business. is sen- sible rule prevents a mere minority from hijacking the lawmaking power. But it also holds out the possibility for mischief-making. Imagine a small legislature with ten seats. e blue party has six members and the red party has four, but on a particular day two from each party are absent. A bill comes to a vote, and the four blue partisans cast their ballots in favor. If the two red legislators vote against the bill then it will pass regard- less, four votes to two. But if they simply refuse to vote then the bill will fail for lack of a quorum, because only four ballots out of a possible ten will have been cast, and therefore only a minority of members have participated. is loophole effectively gis the smaller party a veto whenever the larger party is unable to keep sufficient of its own representatives in their seats to make a majority independently. To successive Speakers, the disappearing quorum— so-called because Members are counted as present right up until the moment they "disappear" on refusing to vote—was an indefensible contravention of the very THE CAPITOL DOME 20