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I am content" (fig. 15). As arrangements were proposed in the House to escort his body back to Massachusetts, one Southern Member objected. When reproved by a colleague he replied, "what's the use of sending him home? His people think more of his corpse than they do of any man living, and will reelect it, and send it back." As a testament to the respect which even his fiercest critics held for his influence on the floor of the House of Rep- resentatives, it was all that Adams could have wanted. 30 The relationship between Rep. John Quincy Adams and the eight men who served as Speakers of the House of Representatives during his 17-year career in that body highlights the importance of what the for- mer president once referred to as "the tangle of rules of the House, always operating to obstruct, instead of facilitating, business." 31 rough his mastery of these rules, Adams first became a formidable adversary to the administration of his old rival Andrew Jackson, and later a figurehead for the cause of freedom in a country increasingly divided over slavery; Northern petitions against the Gag Rule "flow upon me in torrents" (fig. 16), he once recorded in his diary, while from the South he received "almost daily, letters of insult, profane obscenity, and filth." 32 e veteran congressman from Massachusetts also provided inspiration, or a "bad example" in the view of his many critics, to a younger generation of antislavery politicians. Joshua Giddings recalled fondly how, upon giving his maiden speech against slavery, and with the House "a scene of perfect confusion and uproar," "the venerable ex-President laughed most heartily, and com- ing to my seat, advised me to insist upon my rights, not to be intimidated by the course taken by the South- ern men." His many parliamentary tricks, while often humorous to relate, were remarkably effective, whether that meant whispering to introduce a controversial petition before his enemies could catch on to his intent, or recounting a fantastical tale of a hypothetical legisla- Fig. 15. "Original sketch of Mr. Adams . . . as he lay unconscious in the Rotunda aer suffering a stroke" (1848), by Arthur J. Stansbury (1781–1865) THE CAPITOL DOME 27