Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The question that has been posed seeks an explanation of how John Quincy Adams’s fight to overturn the “Gag Rule” in Congress relates to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The nature of consent lies at the bottom of both the Declaration and the Constitution. We typically turn to the ratification of the Constitution to identify the moment of consent or even the “social contract” itself. I submit, however, that if we return to the initial formulations of the Declaration, we will discover good reasons to revise our typical approach. Let us begin, therefore, by rereading the key opening passages of the Declaration.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Let us take note of the often-neglected dual character of “consent” animating the Declaration of Independence. This dual character was the focus of John Quincy Adams’s 1837 oration on the Declaration of Independence The focus on Adams’s defiance (and eventual defeat) of the gag rule obscures the full nature of his two-decade fight to turn back the extension of slavery throughout the nation (a campaign he bequeathed to Abraham Lincoln, who completed the effort.) Adams stood four-square on the dual nature of consent resonant in the Declaration, as he elaborated in Oration.

What, then, is the dual nature of consent? Above I have highlighted the critical passages in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration, bolding the references, which, unfolded, reveal the dual nature of consent. Typically, readers turn immediately to the franchise-voting both to establish and sustain a government: to explain consent. It is plain, however, that there is a more fundamental basis for an explanation of consent, and that is conveyed in the necessity for “one people” to declare themselves a “separate” people.

It is fair to say that the Continental Congress merely asserts the existence of a united people. Adams resisted that temptation upon the solid ground of the aspiration thus
expressed, and the empirical reality that the assertion of Congress was universally received by the population in general as expressing their understanding. In that sense, they gave consent to living as one people, a united people. Now, that original, fundamental consent is necessarily prior to the operation of a principle of consent in the formation of a government. That is, the occasion to form a government grows out of an agreement to act in the world as one people.

The idea, therefore, of collective responsibility for free government stands upon the prior accomplishment of peoplehood or statehood that necessitates the establishment of institutions to secure and guide the future of collective independence. The reason voting -and ultimately universal suffrage – becomes important is that preserving and directing free government requires maintaining constraints on government to insure that governing does not intrude upon the natural right of the people – the collective – to determine at any instant whether they choose to remain “one people,” which is to say, whether they continue to consent to existing as a single nation or people.

Consent, therefore, is more than a feature of democracy. It is a moral sine qua non, lacking which there is no just basis for any form of government. Limited government, in other words, is not the initiation of consent but the consequence or outcome of consent. Consent originates legitimate peoplehood and both creates and sustains the institutions that safeguard it. Consent is integral to national identity and instrumental — the means – to national preservation —- hence, its dual character.

Editor of George Washington: A Collection and translator of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (with commentary).) Published (with David Zanotti) Oration: John Quincy Adams Christian America, 2025. Author of scores of scholarly essays and books, including Rethinking Uncle Tom: The Political Philosophy of H. B. Stowe and, most recently, “Three 18th Century Revolutions: British, American and French.”. Taught at Harvey Mudd College, Michigan State University, Villanova University, and University of Colorado-Boulder. l Recipient of the Bradley Prize, Le Prix Montesquieu, numerous fellowships.

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