John Quincy Adams Defended The Due Process Rights of Non-Citizens

President Trump’s denial of due process for non-citizens is not without precedent.  The same thing was attempted by President Van Buren in the mid-nineteenth century.  In that case, a group of about forty slaves were being transported from Cuba when they rebelled against the ship’s company and attempted to sail back to Africa.  The former slaves strayed into American waters where they were captured and taken ashore.  Van Buren attempted to circumvent the courts and send the escaped slaves back to Spanish Cuba without trial.  His plans were foiled, and John Quincy Adams defended the rights of the former slaves before the Supreme Court.  The arguments made by Adams have direct bearing on President Trump’s current immigration policies, and I’ve compiled the following excerpts from a speech that was more than eight hours in length.

"In rising to address this Court as one of its attorneys and counsellors ... I derive consolation from the thought that this Court is a Court of JUSTICE ... And in a Court of Justice, where there are two parties present, justice demands that the rights of each party should be allowed to himself, as well as that each party has a right, to be secured and protected by the Court ... If the government and people of the United States ... intervened at all between them, the duty incumbent upon this intervention was not of favor, but of impartiality--not of sympathy, but of JUSTICE, dispensing to every individual his own right."
 
"The Africans were in possession ... the ship was theirs, and being in immediate communication with the shore, was in the territory of the State of New York; or, if not, at least half the number were actually on the soil of New York, and entitled to all the provisions of the law of nations, and the protection and comfort which the laws of that State secure to every human being within its limits."
 
“This is what the Spanish minister demanded, that the vessel should be set at liberty, and the negroes sent to Cuba to be tried … Of course, he does not demand that the "incompetent tribunal" in Connecticut, before which the suit was brought, should declare this, but that the President of the United States should issue a proclamation, declaring that no court in this country could hold cognizance of the case … Was ever such a demand made upon any government? He must seize these people and keep them safely, and carry them, at the expense of the United States, to another country to be tried for their lives! Where in the law of nations is there a warrant for such a demand?"
 
"One of the grievous charges brought against George III. was, that he had made laws for sending men beyond seas for trial. That was one of the most odious of those acts of tyranny which occasioned the American revolution. The whole of the reasoning is not applicable to this case, but I submit to your Honors that, if the President has the power to do it in the case of Africans, and send them beyond seas for trial, he could do it by the same authority in the case of American citizens. By a simple order to the marshal of the district, he could just as well seize forty citizens of the United States, on the demand of a foreign minister, and send them beyond seas for trial before a foreign court."
 
"Has the President of the United States any such powers? Can the American Executive do such things?"
 
"Such a demand was treating the President of the United States, not as the head of a nation, but as a constable, a catchpole--a character that it is not possible to express in gentlemanly language. That is what this demand makes of the President of the United States."
 
"Is it possible to speak of this demand in language of decency and moderation? Is there a law of Habeas Corpus in the land? Has the expunging process of black lines passed upon these two Declarations of Independence in their gilded frames? Has the 4th of July, '76, become a day of ignominy and reproach?"
 
"This is followed by an idea so novel and ingenious that it is necessary to repeat the whole of it. After complaining that negroes should be allowed to be complainants, he goes on to argue that they ought to be considered, "morally and legally, as not being in the United States," and of course, if they should be delivered up physically, I suppose it was to be inferred that the Executive would not incur any responsibility. 'They are morally and legally not in the United States, because the court of Connecticut has not declared whether or not it is competent to try them. If it should declare itself incompetent, it declares that they are under the cover of the Spanish flag; and, in that case, they are physically under the protection of a friendly government, but morally and legally out of the territory and jurisdiction of the United States; and, so long as a doubt remains on this subject, no judge can admit the complaint.'  This on the ground, that my clients, although personally imprisoned for eighteen months by the U.S. Marshal, under order of the U. S. Court, yet are 'not morally and legally in the United States.'"
 
"Here is ... an application to the President of the United States to transport forty individuals beyond the seas, to be tried for their lives. Is there a member of this Honorable Court that ever heard of such a demand made by a foreign minister on any government? Is there in the whole history of Europe an instance of such a demand made upon an independent government? I have never in the whole course of my life, in modern or ancient history, met with such a demand by one government on another.”
 
"What was this demand? It was that the Executive of the United States, on his own authority, without evidence, without warrant of law, should seize, put on board a national armed ship, and send beyond seas, forty men, to be tried for their lives. I ask the learned Attorney General in his argument on this point of the case, to show what is to be the bearing of this proceeding on the liberties of the people. I ask him to tell us what authority there is for such an exercise of power by the Executive. I ask him if there is any authority for such a proceeding in the case of these unfortunate Africans, which would not be equally available, if any President thought proper to exercise it, to seize and send off forty citizens of the United States."
 
"That is the opinion, which the Secretary of State told the Spanish minister the American Cabinet had adopted! That these MEN, being at that time in judicial custody of the Court of the United States, should be taken out of that custody, under an order of the President, and sent beyond seas by his sole authority! The Cabinet adopted that opinion; why, then, did they not act upon it? Why did not the President send his order to the Marshal to seize these men, and ship them to Cuba, or deliver them to the order of the Spanish Minister? I am ashamed! I am ashamed that such an opinion should ever have been delivered by any public officer of this country, executive or judicial. I am ashamed to stand up before the nations of the earth, with such an opinion recorded as official, and what is worse, as having been adopted by the government:--an opinion sanctioning a particular course of proceeding, unprecedented among civilized countries, which was thus officially sanctioned, and yet the government did not dare to do it. Why did they not do it? If this opinion had been carried into effect, it would have settled the matter at once, so far as it related to these unfortunate men. They would have been wrested from that protection, which above all things was their due after they had been taken into custody by order of the Court, and would have been put into the power of "public vengeance" at Havana. Yet there was not enough. There seems to have been an impression that to serve an order like that would require the aid of a body of troops.--The people of Connecticut never would, never ought to have suffered it to be executed on their soil, but by main force. So the Spanish minister says his government has no ship to receive these people, and the President must therefore go further, and as he is responsible for the safe-keeping and delivery of the men, he must not only deliver them up, but ship them off in a national vessel, so that there may be no Habeas Corpus from the State Courts coming to the rescue as soon as they are out of the control of the judiciary. The suggestion, which first came from the District Attorney, that the Court would undoubtedly place the Africans at the mercy of the Executive, is carried out by an announcement from the Secretary of State."
 
"I put it to your Honors to say what sort of regard is here exhibited for human life and for the liberties of these people. Did not the President know, when he signed that order for the delivery of MEN to the control of an officer of the navy to be carried beyond seas, he was assuming a power that no President had ever assumed before? It is questionable whether such a power could have been exercised by the most despotic government of Europe. Yet this business was coolly dispatched by a mere informal order."
 
"The Government then confidently 'anticipated' that the negroes would be delivered up; and the Attorney was directed not to allow them a moment of time to enter an appeal. They were to be ... deprived, if possible, of the privilege of appealing to the higher Courts. Was this JUSTICE?"
 
"Such was the disposal intended, deliberately intended, by a President of the United States to be made, of the lives and liberty of thirty-six human beings!--The Attorney General of the United States, at once an Executive and a judicial officer of the American people, bound in more than official duty to respect the right of personal liberty and the authority of the Judiciary Department had given a written opinion, that, at the instigation of a foreign minister, the President of the United States should issue his order, directed to the marshal to whose custody these persons had been committed, by order of the judge, as prisoners and witnesses, and commanding that marshal to wrest them from the hands of justice, and deliver them to such persons as should be designated by that same foreign minister to receive them. Will this Court please to consider for one moment, the essential principle of that opinion? Will this Court inquire, what, if that opinion had been successfully carried into execution, would have been the tenure by which every human being in this Union, man, woman, or child, would have held the blessing of personal freedom? Would it not have been by the tenure of Executive discretion, caprice or tyranny? Had the precedent once been set and submitted to, of a nameless mass of judicial prisoners and witnesses, snatched by Executive grasp from the protective guardianship of the Supreme Judges of the land, (gubernativamente,) at the dictate of a foreign minister, would it not have disabled forever the effective power of the Habeas Corpus?"
 
"Is it possible that a President of the United States should be ignorant that the right of personal liberty is individual. That the right to it of every one, is his own--JUS SUUM; and that no greater violation of his official oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, could be committed, than by an order to seize and deliver up at a foreign minister's demand, thirty-six persons, in a mass, under the general denomination of all, the negroes, late of the Amistad. That he was ignorant, profoundly ignorant of this self-evident truth, inextinguishable till yonder gilt framed Declarations of Independence shall perish in the general conflagration of the great globe itself. I am constrained to believe--for to that ignorance, the only alternative to account for this order to the Marshal of the District of Connecticut, is willful and corrupt perjury to his official presidential oath."
 
"This review of all the proceedings of the Executive I have made with the utmost, pain, because it was necessary to bring it fully before your Honors, to show that the course of that department had been dictated, throughout, not by justice but by sympathy--and a sympathy the most partial and unjust. And this sympathy prevailed to such a degree, among all the persons concerned in this business, as to have perverted their minds with regard to all the most sacred principles of law and right, on which the liberties of the people of the United States are founded; and a course was pursued, from the beginning to the end, which was not only an outrage upon the persons whose lives and liberties were at stake, but hostile to the power and independence of the judiciary itself."
 
"The moment you come, to the Declaration of Independence, that every man has a right to life and liberty, an inalienable right, this case is decided. I ask nothing more in behalf of these unfortunate men, than this Declaration ... I said, when I began this plea, that my final reliance for success in this case was on this Court as a court of JUSTICE; and in the confidence this fact inspired, that, in the administration of justice, in a case of no less importance than the liberty and the life of a large number of persons, this Court would not decide but on a due consideration of all the rights, both natural and social, of every one of these individuals."

Click here to read the full speech from John Quincy Adams.