Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848)

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)

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Sixth president of the united states

Background. Perhaps no nineteenth-century president was more groomed for the office than John Quincy Adams. The eldest son of John and Abigail Adams, he was born on 11 July 1767 in Braintree, Massachusetts. His earliest formal schooling was in French and Latin in Passy, France, where he had accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission in 1778. In 1779 he attended the Latin School in Amsterdam and eventually matriculated at Leyden University in 1781. After spending time as the secretary to the United States minister to Russia and as secretary to his father as he negotiated the Treaty of Paris in 1783, he entered Harvard and graduated in 1787. After graduation he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1791. Having traveled the world before his twentieth birthday, a modest law career must have been unappealing.

Diplomat and Politician. President George Washington appointed Adams minister to the Netherlands. While in Europe he met Louisa Johnson; they married in London on 26 July 1797. In 1801 he resumed his Boston law practice, won a state senate seat, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress. In 1803 Adams was selected for the United States Senate, where he demonstrated his disregard for party lines by opposing the Louisiana Purchase on constitutional grounds but voting for Thomas Jefferson’s 1807 embargo. He was disavowed by the Federalists, who forced him to resign in 1808. Adams gravitated toward the Democratic-Republicans and was nominated by James Madison as minister to Saint Petersburg. When Britain agreed to negotiate an end to the War of 1812, Adams joined Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin in Ghent as peace commissioners. Though the three frequently fought with each other, they succeeded in securing a peace treaty on 24 December 1814. The treaty ended the war without resolving its causes, and Adams feared that it would end his career, but to his surprise the treaty was well received by the American public.

Secretary of State. Adams probably ranks as the best nineteenth-century secretary of state. During his tenure he negotiated treaties with Great Britain that demilitarized the Great Lakes, fixed the border between the United States and Canada, and agreed to a renewable ten-year joint occupation of the Oregon Territory. When Spain’s American colonies revolted, Adams sympathized with the principles of the revolutionaries but moved with caution so as not to jeopardize the United States’ efforts to secure Florida from Spain. At the same time, Adams supported Gen. Andrew Jackson’s aggressive invasion of Florida, ostensibly to quell the Seminole Indian threat and end British meddling in the Southeast, as evidence of Spain’s inability to police the region. Adams’s maneuvering led Spain to cede Florida to the United States in the Adams-Onís Treaty (1819). When President James Monroe subsequently recognized Spain’s former colonies as independent nations, several European countries threatened to invade the new republics and restore them to Spain. Adams resisted a proposal from Great Britain to issue a joint declaration against foreign interference, which he compared to a United States rowboat following the wake of a British man-ofwar. He instead persuaded the president to act independently; the result was the Monore Doctrine, which rejected any further European colonization in the Western Hemisphere.

Unpopular President. Adams’s election in 1824 was tainted by charges of a “corrupt bargain” with rival candidate Clay that led the House of Representatives to choose Adams over Jackson. Adams’s dourness and coldness contrasted sharply with Jacksons’s formidable popularity, and as president Adams found himself challenged at every turn by a Congress controlled by his opponents. Adams believed in expansive and expansive government, including Clay’s “American System” of internal improvements financed by high protective tariffs. In his inaugural address he outlined an ambitious plan for the construction of roads, canals, and bridges, promotion of arts and sciences, establishment of a national university, and building of astronomical observatories (which he described as “lighthouses in the sky”). His opponents ridiculed his visionary plans, none of which were implemented. Adams’s administration was generally regarded as a complete failure, and he was defeated for reelection by Jackson in 1828.

“Old Man Eloquent.” Adams retired to Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, to read and write history, considering his political career at an end. Instead, he was elected to Congress in 1830 and served in the House for the next seventeen years. He held several committee appointments and eloquently debated many important questions, including nullification, the gag rule, and Texas’s annexation. Adams became one of the most vocal antislavery northerners and risked censure for presenting a satirical petition advocating Northern secession from the slave South. On 19 November 1846 he had a mild stroke and recovered in time to resume his seat in February 1847. On 21 February 1848, after answering a roll call, he had another stroke on the House floor, He was carried to the Speaker’s room (ironically, the same room where Clay had “arranged” for his election twenty-three years earlier) and died there on 23 February without regaining consciousness.

Source

Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life (New York: Knopf, 1997).