Gag Rule, Antislavery

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GAG RULE, ANTISLAVERY

GAG RULE, ANTISLAVERY. In American politics the term "gag rule" refers to a series of procedural rules adopted by Congress in the 1830s and 1840s to prevent the submission of antislavery petitions. The gag rule emerged as one of the principal tools employed by the Jacksonian Democrats to silence abolitionist agitation and maintain a political coalition with slaveholders.

When the American Anti-Slavery Society formed in 1833, it launched a petition campaign as one means of encouraging opposition to slavery and identifying specific areas in which Congress could act immediately to bring slavery to an eventual end. The petitions most frequently called on Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.

As the number of antislavery petitions increased, Democrats enacted the first gag rule in 1836. It provided that petitions relating to slavery would be laid on the table without being read or referred to committee. Supporters of the gag rule argued that the drafters of the Constitution had intended that the subject of slavery should never be discussed or debated in Congress.

Serving as a Whig representative from Massachusetts, former president John Quincy Adams led the fight against the gag rule. Over nearly a decade he made opposition to and evasion of the rule a principal part of his legislative activities. Adams argued that the Democrats, in deference to the sensibilities of their slaveholding supporters, threatened to deny Americans basic civil rights since the Constitution guaranteed the right of citizens freely to petition their government. Adams's principled assault on the gag rule attracted new converts to the antislavery cause and his skillful evasions made the rule itself ineffective. In 1844 Congress lifted the rule and Adams's victory became one of the celebrated events of the abolitionist movement.