The Capitol Dome

The Capitol Dome 55.2

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House generally found him to be awkward in man- ner and prone to outbursts of anger "when the top of his head, which is usually white as alabaster, becomes as red as a carnelian." 2 But the more perceptive among them also recognized that his real talent lay in his ability to seize the right moment for maximum effect. And this, in turn, was a product of Adams's incomparable mastery of parliamentary procedure. As a colleague among the Massachusetts delegation explained to his wife: "When Mr. Adams rises, we are on the qui vive [lookout], knowing that something amusing or inter- esting will take place. He is a strange man—full of learning—most ardent in his temperament, with the most perfectly phlegmatic manner you ever saw. His passions seem uncontrou- lable—and yet he always has the most perfect self-com- mand—in one respect. He always knows what he wishes and intends to say—and he always contrives to say what he intends to. No fence can be erected so high, that he cannot and will not overleap it." 3 And yet, as Stanton's reminiscences remind us, there was someone responsible for policing Adams's conduct on the floor: the Speaker. This office was established by the Constitution to facilitate the proceedings of the House of Representatives, and the eight men who filled it between 1831 and 1848 far more oen than not found themselves in opposition to the venerable congressman from Massachusetts. Adams was a Whig during a period when six of the eight Speakers were Democrats, 4 and an outspoken critic of slavery when seven of the eight were either personally slaveholders or Northern men with Southern principles—"doughfaces" as they were derisively labelled by contemporaries, in ref- erence to the game children made of covering their faces in dough and scaring themselves by looking in the mirror. Consequently, a review of Adams's legislative career, and his relations with the successive Speakers along- side whom he served, reveals the significant, and often underappreciated, advantages to be gained from knowledge of the rules of the House. We can learn not solely from what "Old Man Eloquent" said, but also from how he said it. "I am a member elect of the Twenty-Second Con- gress," wrote Adams upon receiving news of his election as a freshman representative in November 1830. "For the discharge of the duties of this particular station I never was eminently qualified, possess- ing no talent for extempora- neous public speaking, and at this time being in the decline of my faculties, both of mind and body." 5 is statement appears extraordinary when considered retrospectively in view of the 17 years he would spend in the House and the many plaudits he would win there. e diary in which it was written is also extraordi- nary; spanning eight decades and 50 volumes in manu- script, it provides an unparalleled record of political life in the early United States and an invaluable source for this article (fig. 2). And yet neither is more extraordi- nary than the life story of the man who authored them. Adams was born in Braintree (now part of Quincy), Massachusetts in 1767, the son of Revolutionar y patriot and future president John Adams. He first trav- eled abroad at the age of 10 when he accompanied his father to France, commenced his famous diary the fol- lowing year, and entered public life at the age of 13 with his appointment as personal secretary to the U.S. minis- ter to Russia. He spent the next three and a half decades in and out of the diplomatic service, along with a brief stint in the Senate, before his elevation to secretary of state in 1817. Eight years later he earned both election Fig. 2. On this page from John Quincy Adams's "Diary in Abridgement" for 16 October 1837, Adams recounts a House debate in which he gets around a House ruling against mentioning certain proceedings by recounting them as if they took place in "a Legislature body elsewhere—any where—in the moon if the Speaker pleased." THE CAPITOL DOME 17

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