Adams, John Quincy

Adams, John Quincy. (b. Braintree [now Quincy], Mass., 11 July 1767; d. Washington, D.C., 21 Feb. 1848), lawyer, president of the United States, 1825–1829. The son of John and Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1787, read law with Theophilus Parsons, and passed the bar in July 1790. In mid‐1794, President George Washington commissioned him minister to Holland. In 1803, the Massachusetts legislature sent him to the United States Senate; a year later, he was admitted to the Supreme Court bar. After arguing for the defendant in Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Adams accepted an ill‐paid post as ambassador to Russia; shortly afterward, he turned down President James Madison's more lucrative appointment as associate justice of the Supreme Court. In 1817, Adams became secretary of state; in 1824 he was elected president of the United States.

Following Andrew Jackson's victory in 1828, Adams was elected to the House of Representatives, where he opposed nullification, the imposition of a gag rule, and annexation of Texas. In 1841, abolitionists persuaded him to defend the right to freedom of fifty‐three Africans before the Supreme Court in United States v. The Amistad (1841). Justice Joseph Story termed Adams's argument “extraordinary, for its power [and] bitter sarcasm.” After resuming his House seat, Adams doggedly pressed the antislavery cause; in 1842, he introduced a bogus petition advocating the dissolution of the union to cordon off slavery, for which he was rewarded with threats of expulsion from the House. On 21 February 1848, during the House roll call, Adams suffered a cataclysmic stroke. He died two days later.

Sandra F. Van Burkleo