Adams did not deny the humbug of much Northern opposition to slavery but brushed it aside
and concentrated on the main issue: the absolute need to end it as a lawful institution. It was his
view that slavery made Southerners, who had a sense of masterdom that Northerners did not feel,
look down on their fellow-Americans, thus undermining the Union at its very heart. He noted: It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice.' Hence, he concluded,If the union must be dissolved, slavery is
precisely the question on which it ought to break!' Adams was apocalyptic on slavery. He
dismissed the African colonization schemes which Madison and other Southern moderates
favored as contemptible attempts to pass the responsibility for their crimes onto the federal
government-they were, he snarled, ravenous as panthers' to get Congress to fund their guilt- ridden schemes. He noted sardonically that, in another of his heart-to-hearts over slavery with Calhoun, the latter admitted that, if the Union dissolved over the issue, the South would have to form a political, economic, and military alliance with Great Britain.I said that would be
returning to the colonial state. He said Yes, pretty much, but it would be forced upon them.' To
the furiously moral Adams, it was only to be expected that the evil defenders of a wicked
institution should, in order to perpetuate it, ally themselves with the grand depository of
international immorality, the British throne. To him, if the Union could be preserved only at the
price of retaining slavery, it were better it should end, especially since in the break-up slavery
itself would perish:
If slavery be the destined sword in the hands of the destroying angel which is to sever the
ties of this union, the same sword will cut asunder the bonds of slavery itself. A
dissolution of the Union for the cause of slavery would be followed by a servile war in the
slave-holding states, combined with a war between the two severed portions of the Union
... its result must be the extirpation of slavery from this whole continent and, calamitous
and devastating as this course of events must be, so Glorious would be the final issue that,
as God should judge me, I dare not say it is not to be desired.
With high-placed statesmen talking in the exalted and irreconcilable terms that Adams and (to
a lesser extent) Calhoun employed, it is a wonder that the United States did not indeed break up
in the 1820s. And if it had done the South would undoubtedly have survived. It was then beyond
the physical resources of the North to coerce it, as it did in the 1860s. Moreover, Calhoun was
probably right in supposing that Britain, for a variety of reasons, would have come to the rescue
of the South, preferring to deal with America as two weak entities, rather than one strong one.
The course of American history would thus have been totally different, with both North and
South racing each other to the Pacific, recruiting new territory, just as Canada and the United
States did on either side of the 49th parallel. However, it must be noted that Adams came from
Massachusetts and Calhoun from South Carolina, the two extremist states. Many Americans
believed-General Grant was one-that, when Civil War finally came, these two states bore the
chief responsibility for it; that, without them, it could have been avoided. These were, on both
sides of the argument, the ideological states, the upholders of the tradition of fanaticism which
was one part of the American national character, and a very fruitful and creative part in many
ways. But there was the other side to the national character, the moderate, pragmatic, and
statesmanlike side, derived from the old English tradition of the common law and parliament,
which taught that ideological lines should not be pursued to their bitter and usually bloody end,
but that efforts should be made to achieve a compromise always.