Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1100404
principle of majority rule which placed them in the chair. To Adams, who spent most of his congressional career in the minority, it was an indispensable weapon that might delay or even defeat bad legislation, and having grasped its potential he wielded it whenever the cause was important enough to convince sufficient of his colleagues to join him. e disappearing quorum, he recorded in his diary, was "the secret of the defensive strength of the minority—a strength the more impreg- nable as it consists in silence and precludes all disorder. e rage of the majority at this discovery was unbounded; but it was impotent." 15 Not until 1890, when Speaker omas "Czar" Reed boldly broke with a century of tradition to count as present Members who refused to answer to the roll call from their seats, was the power of the disappearing quorum broken. Even then, Reed's decision proved incredibly controversial, though it was eminently sensible; when one non-voting representa- tive angrily challenged the Speaker's authority to count him as present, Reed innocently replied, "the Chair is making a statement of fact that the gentleman from Kentucky is present. Does he deny it?" 16 In June 1834 Stevenson resigned the Speakership, having finally received the nomination as minister to Britain that he had long been suspected of seeking. Adams was not sorry to see him go, convinced that he too oen acted "for the mere wantonness of party spirit." e new Speaker chosen to see out the remainder of the Twenty-Third Congress was John Bell of Ten- nessee (fig. 6), a dissident Jacksonian elected by opposition votes over the regular Democratic candidate and future president, James K. Polk—also of Tennessee (fig. 7). When Jackson heard of his favorite's defeat, he reportedly canceled the party he had planned for that evening and retired to his room in a sulk. Bell was on the verge of defecting to the emerging Whig Party, and Adams considered him to be "on the whole, a good Speaker, and impartial as far as he dares, though occa- sionally subservient from timidity." He did grumble, nonetheless, that Bell had appointed him "Chairman of the committee on the bill from the Senate fixing the northern boundary line of the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—a service which it was impossible for me honestly to perform without indisposing bitterly against me three whole States of the Union and twenty-nine members their Representatives in the House. is has accordingly been the result." 17 e opening of the Twenty-Fourth Congress in December 1835 saw Polk gain his revenge over Bell in a Fig. 6. John Bell, in a photograph (c. 1860–65) by Mathew Brady Fig. 7. James K. Polk, print from a life portrait (1838) by Charles Fenderich (1805–1877) THE CAPITOL DOME 21