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with expressions of joy and merriment." A few "giddy and brainless" Southerners insisted on proceeding with their resolution, but the majority "concluded that it was better and safer for their party to let 'the old man eloquent' have his own way. They learned that he had been too long accustomed to public life and too familiar with parliamentary tactics to be entrapped by political tricksters." 22 On other occasions it was Speaker Polk, whose office made him responsible for enforcement of the Gag Rule, who found himself the object of ridicule. Gid- dings recalled "an amusing incident" precipitated by Adams commencing an antislavery speech just as a vote was about to be taken. "is was entirely out of order," and "the Speaker called louder and louder for 'Order! Order! ORDER!' but Mr. Adams continued speaking, as though a perfect silence existed around him." Con- fusion reigned, "and the Speaker, rising from his chair, in great agitation and excitement, with stentorian voice called on the House to assist him in enforcing the rules." Upon seeing this, "Mr. Adams suddenly dropped into his chair, and the uproar instantly ceased, before the Speaker had fully pronounced his desire for assistance. As Mr. Adams sat down, convulsed with laughter, Waddy Thompson, from South Carolina, possessing much ready wit, and being himself willing to raise a laugh at the expense of the Speaker, stepped up to where Mr. Adams sat, and with great shrewdness of manner said, in reply to the Speaker's request: 'I am here, Mr. Speaker; I am ready to help. What shall I do?' e manner and tone of voice in which he spoke were per- fectly inimitable, and threw the whole House into a roar of laughter." 23 e deeper antipathy between Adams and Southern members like ompson over the Gag Rule is illustrated in a contemporary cartoon entitled "Abolition Frowned Down" (fig. 8). Adams also employed his mastery of parliamentary procedure to place antislavery statements on the official journal of the House, thereby demonstrating the futility of Southern efforts to suppress discussion of slavery. For example, when the Gag Rule came up for a vote in the Twenty-Fih Congress, Adams once again refused to answer to the roll call and instead loudly insisted that "I hold the resolution to be a violation of the Constitution, of the right of petition of my constituents, and of the people of the United States, and of my right to freedom of speech as a member of this House." Upon checking the following day, however, he discovered that Speaker Polk had ruled his interjection out of order and there- fore it was not included in the journal. He immediately moved that the record be corrected, and defenders of the Gag Rule rallied to vote him down. But they had rushed into a trap. In order to note the defeat of Adams's motion, the journal had to state its exact wording, and as the author slyly noted in his diary, this "precisely answered my purpose," for "the rejection of the motion as effectu- ally secures the record of the protest as its adoption." It was a trick that Adams would reuse time and again, in spite of Southerners' vain cries that "something should be done to prevent this record of contumacy." 24 Polk retired at the end of the Twenty-Fih Con- gress to run for governor, and his replacement in the next session was the 30-year-old Robert M.T. Hunter (fig. 9). Adams dismissed Hunter as "an amiable, good-hearted, weak-headed young man, prematurely hoisted into a place for which he is not fit, precisely for Fig. 9. Robert M.T. Hunter, in a photograph (c. 1860–65) from Brady's National Photographic Portrait Galleries THE CAPITOL DOME 23