John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

438 Washington Monday 27. February 1843.

27. III— VII. Monday.

Awaked about 3. O’Clock this morning by a fit of coughing, after rising from bed, lighting my lamp and finding what was the hour I returned to bed and lay dosing till 7. I had prepared resolutions to be offered to the house with a view to call the attention of the people of the free States to the disproportion of slave-holding judges on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States—and an acrostic for the album of Miss Mary Jewett Morris— It is one of the grievous miseries of my life to be perpetually beset with albums, and for autographs with a few lines of poetry; with which having complied in a few instances heretofore, it has brought down upon me such a shower, or rather such a waterspout of applications that my ship sinks under them— At the house, the first hours were consumed in chicanery, by Hopkins, pettifogging about the error of the clerk in the count upon John Campbell’s palinodial bill to suspend that is to repeal his own single district section, of the apportionment bill— The Clerk had reported the count 90 to 91— It proved to have been 91 to 91—a tie, by which the bill was still lost— Campbell had already wasted time in a vain struggle to get the decision reversed— Hopkins this morning raked up the rule that in case of a tie the Speaker shall vote—upon which the Speaker said, he had no sort of objection— The chair votes in the negative— Briggs moved to print 3000 copies extra, of a post-Office report. Cave Johnson objected and snarled for half an hour but Briggs finally carried it— Toland moved for leave to the select committee on the removal of Jonathan Roberts to sit, during the Session of the house— W. W. Irwin a subaltern of the corporal’s guard, objected, and then parleyed, and jockeyed him out of the vote— Fillmore moved to go into Committee of the whole on the state of the Union, to take up the civil and diplomatic appropriation Bill— I called for the regular order of the day— The call for Resolutions.— The house decided to go into Committee— I asked leave to present my Resolutions respecting the Slave-holding and free State judges on the bench of the Supreme Court. Multitudes of objections were heard. I asked a suspension of the rules and the yeas and nays— The Speaker said the house had voted to go into Committee, and my Resolutions were returned to me. I gave them to Stansbury to be published in the National Intelligencer.— The day was consumed in debate on the civil and diplomatic appropriation Bill— Fessenden in the chair— The Bill was at last reported by the house with many amendments, one of which introduced at my motion was an appropriation of 3000 dollars for a Commissioner to the Sandwich Islands.— Adjourned about 5 O’Clock. There was a Message received from the President in answer to the call moved by C. J. Ingersoll last week for the correspondence with the British Government relating to the right of visitation— The issue between Captain Tyler and Sir Robert Peel.