John Quincy Adams

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John Quincy Adams

The four years spent in the White House by John Quincy Adams, the nation's sixth president (1825–1829), was a miserable experience for him both politically and personally. Adams, while a man of great personal integrity and intelligence, was completely lacking in the political skills necessary to be even mildly successful as president.

As a political candidate, Adams did not inspire or excite attention and seemed to be above the politicking required for public officeholders. He was elected president in 1824 in one of the most peculiar elections in U.S. history. None of the four candidates—William Crawford of Georgia, Henry Clay of Kentucky, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, and Adams of Massachusetts—received the majority of electoral votes required to be elected president. It was, by the terms of the Constitution, left to the House of Representatives to choose the nation's next president. Clay, then the Speaker of the House, threw his support behind Adams, whom he personally disliked but thought to be the most qualified of the three remaining candidates. Once elected, Adams showed his political ineptitude by nominating Clay to be secretary of state. Supporters of the other two candidates, as well as those of newly elected vice president, John C. Calhoun, spoke and wrote of "corruption and bargain," charging a deal had been struck between Adams and Clay.

Another early example of Adams's political naiveté, yet also of his great character, involved his attempt to set an example of integrity in government by declaring that no employee of the executive branch would lose his job for any reason other than incompetence. He was, in other words, willing to leave political opponents in office, provided they performed competently. Crawford and Jackson refused offers to serve in Adams's cabinet, though Jackson supporter John McLean, originally appointed postmaster general by President Monroe, continued to serve in that capacity in the Adams administration. In that post he actively aided the Jackson coalition through the influence and patronage of his office. When Jackson later became president, he used the first vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court to reward McLean for his efforts.

domestic policy and affairs

Adams's first annual message, delivered to Congress in December 1825 (in written form, as State of the Union speeches were not given at the time), was grandiosely ambitious; it failed to take into consideration the political dynamics of the day. The type of message he gave was suitable for a president who had been elected with a mandate, not one elected against the wishes of nearly two-thirds of the nation. Prior to sending the message to Congress, Adams assembled his cabinet, but he ignored its members' caution about its overambitiousness.

The message, a bold declaration of what the national government could do to advance the wellbeing of the nation, proposed an extensive system of roads, canals, bridges, and highways, known then as internal improvements. Adams called for the founding of a national university and a naval academy, along with the erection of an astronomical observatory. Few of his domestic proposals were ever adopted. For example, his proposal for an observatory was laughed at and then voted down. The proposal for a Naval Academy passed the Senate but not the House, while the national university plan passed neither house. A few ideas in his message of 1825 became reality, mainly infrastructure improvements that passed because congressmen saw a chance to bring money and new projects home to their constituents. Congress defeated virtually everything else that promoted national development through federal funds.

Adams failed to take advantage of an opportunity to get public support for his programs when he opposed lowering the price of public land sold to settlers. He wanted to maintain the price and use the proceeds for internal improvements, such as those proposed in his 1825 message. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri wanted to make obtaining the land easier by either lowering the price or simply giving it away. Benton's proposal failed, with Adams getting most of the blame, which resulted in a further decline in his support in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana.

The midterm congressional elections of 1826 enlarged the anti-Adams faction in Congress, whose primary goal was making life even more difficult for the president. An extremely unfair tariff bill was written in the House Committee on Manufactures. It was quite favorable to farmers, but not so to manufacturers. The tariff had been drafted to make Jackson appear as a free trade advocate in the South and a protectionist in the North. Behind this was a Jacksonian strategy based on the expectation that New England congressmen would defeat the bill so that the Jacksonians could then claim that they had tried to meet the needs of farmers and manufacturers but were blocked by Adams and his supporters. Adams reluctantly signed the bill, recognizing he was being made a scapegoat by his enemies. He gave little if any thought to vetoing the measure, because at that time the veto was rarely used. This bill, the Tariff of 1828, bearing Adams's signature, effectively ended whatever slim hopes he had of reelection.

foreign policy and affairs

John Quincy Adams was one of the greatest diplomats in U.S. history. His exemplary service as a diplomat, along with his eight years of effective service as secretary of state during the Monroe administration, matches the career of any government servant. But not even in foreign affairs could he be successful as president, in part because of a coalition against him of Jackson, Crawford, and even Vice President Calhoun.

In his December 1825 message to Congress, Adams wrote that the United States had accepted an invitation to the Panama Congress. There was much opposition, with Jacksonians and others claiming that Adams was getting involved in the affairs of other nations and arguing that this was contrary to the principle of avoiding unnecessary foreign entanglement put forth in George Washington's farewell address. Congress eventually authorized the necessary funds for the mission, but purposely did so too late for the United States actually to participate.

One foreign policy success during the Adams administration was blocking Colombian and Mexican efforts to seize Puerto Rico and Cuba from Spain, which could have resulted in independence for Cuba. Adams and Clay deemed it in the best interest of the United States to keep Cuba in the hands of Spain. Another foreign policy success was the promotion of free trade. With several countries in Europe as well as Mexico, Adams and Clay negotiated deals giving the United States either most-favored-nation trading status or, at least, reciprocity in trade with those countries.

International trade, however, was also the realm in which the Adams administration made quite possibly its greatest diplomatic blunder. Britain and the United States were in an ongoing dispute about whether the United States should have the same trading rights with the British West Indies as did Britain and its colonies. Clay, however, disagreed with this position, and so Adams sought help from Congress, which provided none with the intent of leaving Adams to dangle by himself. Congress then watched Adams lose a great economic opportunity by "forcing" Britain to close its ports to the United States and then having to reciprocate in kind, again without congressional support. From Jacksonian supporters there then came sarcastic description of the president as "Adams the Great American Diplomat." The entire reason for the action, or inaction, of Congress was the humiliation of the administration and the demonstration of its ineptitude.

native american affairs

Adams's handling of Native American affairs was no more successful than any other area of activity during his presidency. The primary reasons for his failure were lack of support from Congress; the disposition of George Troup, the governor of Georgia, against cooperating with the federal government; and the lack of political savvy or capital on Adams's part to do what he knew was right.

The Treaty of Indian Springs with the Creek Indians was approved by the Senate the day before Adams took office in March 1825. Adams signed the treaty although warned that it had been unethically negotiated. The treaty involved the Creeks leaving their land in return for compensation and a delay in leaving it until Georgia began to survey the land for settlement. As time passed, Adams realized the Creek Nation in Georgia had been cheated by chiefs of other Indian groups and their white allies, led by Troup. An investigation was ordered by Adams, as well as instructions to Georgia on how to proceed, which were ignored. Only through the threat of force could Adams get Troup to cooperate. Had the Treaty of Indian Springs been allowed to remain in effect, it would have resulted in bloodshed, so a new treaty was negotiated in Washington, D.C., and submitted to the Senate, where it lacked sufficient support. Negotiations were reopened, the Treaty of Washington was modified, and the Treaty of Indian Springs was declared void. Conflict continued between Georgia and the Adams administration, with Congress giving only limited, and sometimes no, support to Adams in the matter. In the end, Adams's lack of political skills prevented him from helping the Creeks in any significant way.

a failed administration

The presidency of John Quincy Adams was clearly not a success. All that he wished to accomplish was blocked by an antagonistic Congress. The public perceived the manner of his election to be questionable, and one political blunder after another did nothing but embolden his opponents. Yet while the great majority of the domestic proposals contained in his message to Congress in 1825, as well as the overriding philosophy behind them, seemed grandiose at the time, many were eventually implemented over the course of the next 125 years.