John W. Taylor: A Moderate Anti-Slavery Activist

It’s hard to believe that the nation’s fourth-most-populous state (New York — nearly always number one, and in the top five since 1790) has only one native who served in the position of Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Well, technically, there are two, but one of them served 99.82 percent of the pair’s total time in office — to be explained later. The man of the House is John W. Taylor, born in the town of Ballston in 1784.
(In 1791, when Saratoga County was created from Albany County, his birthplace ended up in the town of Charlton.)

Taylor enrolled at Union College in Schenectady at age 15, and graduated in 1803 as a 19-year-old valedictorian. He married Jane Hodge in 1806 (they would have eight children together), began studying law, and was admitted to the bar four years later.

During the next several years, the Taylors lived at Hadley Landing on the Hudson River (today’s Corinth), where he became a partner in a lumber business while serving as postmaster and town clerk.

He was elected to the New York State Legislature in 1811, where strong debating skills won him leadership positions. Against banks seeking power through illegal means, and even against his own party’s recommendations, he stood against corruption and was apparently much-admired by voters.

As a result he was reelected, but before completion of his second term, voters sent Taylor to the House of Representatives in Washington as Democratic-Republican, where he began serving in the spring of 1813.

His upbringing, education, religious ethics, and his father’s public service, helped mold Taylor into a capable, dedicated, and trusted public representative.

For several years he acquitted himself well, was popular at Washington social events (including James Madison administration’s White House functions), and was respected enough by his colleagues to be appointed the second-ever House Whip (then an unofficial but important position in Democratic-Republican organization).

The question of slavery — specifically, the question of whether slavery should be allowed in the new states being formed from the vast 1803 Louisiana Purchase — thrust Taylor into the national spotlight in the years before 1820.

Tallmadge Amendment

“President James Monroe’s Era of Good Feeling [1815-1825], was purported as a time of national unity while the country strove to expand,” according to New York Historical, which holds Taylor’s papers.

“It was James Tallmadge, Jr. and Taylor, both congressmen from New York State, who in 1819 ushered the debate of the abolitionist into the goal of western expansion.”

Beginning in 1816 with Indiana, a new state was being admitted every year: Mississippi in 1817; Illinois in 1818; Alabama in 1819. The Territory of Missouri (which then included Arkansas) was next.

By this time strong anti-slavery advocate and New York Representative James Tallmadge Jr., also a Democratic-Republican, represented the movement to continue the winding-down of the institution of slavery.

In 1808 the “Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves” had been signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson, but it was not well enforced, and did not abolish the domestic slave trade.

“Taylor… fervently promoted and authored amendments aimed at preventing and/or limiting the legally sanctioned institution of slavery into newly created states,” according to New York Historical.

“Using his considerable parliamentarian talents as a tactful, fluent, concise and effective orator, Taylor’s response to southern Secessionists threats was resolute:

” ‘ The honorable gentleman greatly mistakes the people of this country if he supposes this Union, cemented by strong interests, consecrated by glorious achievement, sanctified by the blood of heroes, and endeared by victories won by the exertion and treasure of all … can ever be destroyed or in the least impaired by promoting the cause of humanity and freedom in America’.”

Pro-slavery legislators were outraged when the nascent anti-slavery political movement around Tallmadge (who was from Dutchess County) introduced an amendment to the Missouri statehood bill mandating, among other things, “that the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited” in the new State of Missouri.

Among those who vocally supported the Amendment was John W. Taylor and fellow New York Representative Rufus King (King had owned enslaved people; Taylor may have owned or inherited them).

Speaker of the House Henry Clay of South Carolina argued that the amendment should be withdrawn. Taylor’s response included an uncanny prediction about the terrible war that would follow 40 years later.

He said to continue allow the extension of slavery into the newly organized western states “saves a finger today, but amputates the arm tomorrow.”

Slavery & Compromise 

After proposing the amendment, Tallmadge fell ill, leaving Taylor to fill the void. In doing so, he did not shy from debate. In a 1819 speech before the House, he criticized southern lawmakers who frequently argued that slavery was entrenched and necessary to their existence:

“How often, and how eloquently, have they deplored its existence among them?,” said Taylor, “What willingness… have they not manifested to be relieved from this burden? How have they wept over the unfortunate policy that first introduced slaves into this country! How have they disclaimed the guilt and shame of that original sin, and thrown it back upon their ancestors!”

“Gentlemen have now an opportunity of putting their principles into practice. If they have tried slavery and found it a curse; if they desire to dissipate the gloom with which it covers their land; I call upon them to exclude it from the Territory in question; plant not its seeds in this uncorrupt soil; let not our children, looking back to the proceedings of this day, say… ‘we wish their decision had been different.’”

Southerners, Taylor said, “regretted” slavery, but blamed their ancestors for establishing a dark tradition that powered the South’s economic engine. Unlike northerners, epitomized by elbow grease and a hands-on attitude, southerners considered manual labor demeaning, something best performed by their inferiors.

Reinforcing that concept, said Taylor, was the fact that nearly all public offices in the South were held by slave owners. He even brought that argument to the floor of Congress while noting his own rejection of any system “rendering labor disgraceful.”

“When have we seen a Representative on this floor from that section of our Union who was not a slaveholder?,” he said.

“Who but slaveholders are elected to their State legislatures? Who but they are appointed to fill their executive and judicial offices?” He added that “the selection of a laboring man, however well educated” would be “an extraordinary event.”

Taylor further warned that Missouri’s fate would “decide the destiny of millions” in future states to the north and west. “Our votes this day will determine whether the high destinies of this region, and of these generations, shall be fulfilled, or whether we shall defeat them by permitting slavery, with all its baleful consequences, to inherit the land.”

The Tallmadge Amendment passed in the House but then failed in the Senate.

The outcome was the Missouri Compromise: slavery was allowed in Missouri in 1820, but not in the other new state, Maine in 1821, and was banned in the future from north of the 36°30′ parallel.

In the end, Taylor authored a compromise in the Compromise, which legalized the capture of enslaved people who had escaped to the North.

As Alan Singer has noted “Slavery, when the United States was founded, was a national, not a Southern institution.” Slavery was still legal in New York State until 1827.

Elevation to Speaker, Return to Moderation

In October 1820, after guiding the Missouri Compromise towards passage, Henry Clay resigned as Speaker of the House.

John Taylor, a House veteran of seven years, ran for the office on several issues, including opposition to extending slavery into territories and new states.

His opponent in the speakership race from South Carolina, the popular and pro-slavery William Lowndes, came within one vote of winning during the 22 ballots that were cast, but in the end, Taylor eked out a narrow victory.

The Missouri Compromise exposed the deep and dangerous divisions in the young Union, with one section directly opposing another as if they were enemies.

Taylor’s views on slavery were complicated, wrought by the new nation’s fears that sectionalism, largely driven over the issue of slavery, would destroy the still immature country.

Supporters of the new Speaker weren’t entirely pleased once he took charge. Where party-member Taylor had been persistently active against slavery and served as House Whip, Speaker Taylor was criticized for pursuing impartiality.

Many Southerners distrusted his efforts to moderate the effects slavery had on the country. Many Northerners felt he had abandoned the fight against slavery.

After replacing Clay, Taylor oversaw the period during which Missouri’s state constitution was reviewed. He served until March 1821, when his reelection bid was lost, due in part to Southerners voting against him for having resisted the spread of slavery.

Two years later, Henry Clay returned to the position of Speaker, departing again in 1825. In the interim Taylor had supported Whig John Quincy Adams successful candidacy for presidency. He ran again, and with the support of Adams, was for a second time elected as Clay’s successor, winning by just two votes.

He went on to serve as Speaker until March 1827, when another lost election (by 10 votes) can probably be attributed to his uneven positions on slavery. During that same year, he was elected a vice-president of Union College.

Taylor remained in the House of Representatives until 1833, a 20-year span that included service on important committees like Military Affairs, Foreign Relations, Ways and Means, and Elections.

He returned to practicing law in Ballston Spa, and because of a deep dislike for President Andrew Jackson, joined New York’s Whig Party. For several years he actively supported the party’s candidates, and in 1840, Taylor was a successful Whig candidate for the New York State Senate.

The following year he suffered a stroke, and resigned in 1842. The next 11 years were spent with his daughter in Cleveland, where he died in September 1854. He was buried in Ballston Spa.

Fellow anti-slavery activist Henry Stanton said in reminiscence of Taylor:

“Whoever reads Taylor’s speeches in that troubled period will find them as sound in doctrine, as strong in argument, and as splendid in diction as any of the utterances of the following forty-five years, when the thirteenth amendment [banning slavery] closed the controversy.”

It was an odd tribute, as Alan Singer notes that Stanton’s wife, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was raised in a slave-holding home “and used racist rhetoric in opposition to the 15th Amendment to the Constitution because it empowered ‘degraded, ignorant’ Black men to vote but not educated white women.”

As I mentioned earlier, John Taylor is almost the only New Yorker to serve as Speaker of the House. The other is Theodore M. Pomeroy. The Speaker at the time, Schuyler Colfax, had been elected vice-president on Ulysses S. Grant‘s ticket.

In order to be available for his swearing in at noon on March 4, 1869, Colfax resigned the speakership at 11 am the day before. Within about an hour, Theodore Pomeroy was sworn in. By law, the 40th Congress ended at noon the following day – as did Pomeroy’s term of approximately 24 hours.

Photos: John W. Taylor (Library of Congress); Taylor historical marker in Charlton (Peter Flass, 2016)

A version of this article first appeared on the Adirondack Almanack.