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appointing the committees of the House upon which, as one lawmaker recorded, "the introduction, progress & conclusion of business depend much." 6 e appointing power also provided a potent hold over Members who knew that relegation to an inconsequential committee might injure their chance of re-election. This was enhanced by the offi ce's other responsibilities, which included controlling access to the fl oor through the right of recognition, casting the decisive vote in cases of a tie, resolving disputed questions of parliamentary pro- cedure, and policing the House chamber. According to Ohio's Rep. Joshua R. Giddings (fi g. 4), an ally of Adams in the antislavery cause, by the middle of the nineteenth century the powers of the Speaker were "perhaps, greater than those of any other offi cer of the government. He holds a position in which he wields far more infl uence upon the legislation of Congress, than the President of the United States." 7 e Jacksonian hold on the Twenty-Second Con- gress was such that both candidates for the Speakership professed loyalty to the President, and Adams believed that "there is not the worth of a wisp of straw between their value." He was soon to receive his fi rst lesson in the power of the Speaker, however, when the victor, Andrew Stevenson of Virginia (fi g. 5), announced his committee appointments. Adams's stature as a former president and his diplomatic experience surely entitled him to the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, but the Speaker could hardly entrust such an important post to someone not on cordial terms with the White House. Instead, Adams found himself at the head of the Committee of Manufactures, an assignment "of labor more burdensome than any other in the House; far from the line of occupation in which all my life has been passed, and for which I feel myself not to be well qualifi ed." 8 is appointment was a calculated partisan ploy by Stevenson. e Committee on Manufactures had long been at the center of a bitter struggle between Northern factory-owners seeking enhanced tariff barriers against foreign imports and Southern planters demanding free trade for their cotton and tobacco exports. at struggle had now reached a crisis, with South Carolina's Ordi- nance of Nullifi cation threatening to expel federal cus- toms collectors by force unless Congress renounced its Fig. 4. Joshua Reed Giddings (c. 1855–65), Brady- Handy Photograph Collection Fig. 5. Andrew Stevenson, in a lithograph (c. 1840) by Thomas Fairland (1804–1852) THE CAPITOL DOME 19