John Quincy Adams

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John Quincy Adams (listen); 1767-1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, advocate, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829.

He served as the eighth US Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825.

Adams served as an ambassador and as a member of the United States Senate and House of Representatives representing Massachusetts during his lengthy diplomatic and political career.

He was John Adams, the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. First Lady Abigail Adams was John Adams.

He started as a Federalist like his father and gained the presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party in the mid-1830s, and became affiliated with the Whig Party in the mid-1830s. Adams, a native of Braintree, Massachusetts, spent a significant portion of his childhood in Europe, where his father served as a diplomat.

Adams, who moved to Boston, has had a fruitful litigation career.

Personal life

Adams and Louisa had three sons and a daughter. Louisa, their daughter, was born in 1811 but died in 1812. After the first president, George Washington Adams (1801–1829) was named in honor of their first son. Adams' mother was alarmed by the decision, as well as his father. Both George and their second son, John (1803-1834), lived a difficult life and died in early adulthood. George, a long-drover, died after going overboard on a steamboat in 1829; it's not clear if he fell or jumped from the boat. In 1834, John, who operated an unprofitable flour and grist mill owned by his father, died of an unknown disease. Charles Francis Adams Sr., Adams' youngest brother, was a leader of the "Conscience Whigs," a Northern, anti-slavery faction of the Whig Party. In the 1848 presidential election, Charles was first elected as the vice presidential nominee of the Free Soil Party and later became a well-known Republican Party figure.

Adams' personality and political convictions were similar to his father's. He always preferred solitude to social engagements, and some of us had been persuaded to continue in public service. Adams suffered from depression for which he sought medical attention in early years, according to historian Paul Nagel. Adams attributed his depression to his father's and mother's constant expectations of him. He felt lonely and socially insecure as a result of his depression throughout his life, and was always worried about his physical appearance. He was closer to his father, with whom he spent more of his early life in other countries, than to his mother. Adams learned from his mother about his father's work and the dangers he took to protect it in his youth. As a result, he acquired a great deal of admiration for his father. Adams, on the other hand, had a turbulent relationship with his mother, due to her high hopes of him and her concern that her children would follow in the footsteps of her brother, who died of alcoholism. Despite Adams' reservations that Johnson, like his mother, had a forceful demeanor, his biographer, Nagel, finds that Louisa Johnson compelled him to marry Johnson in 1797.

Despite wearing a powdered wig in his youth, Adams abandoned this style and became the first president to have a short haircut instead of long hair tied in a queue and wear long trousers instead of knee breeches. According to news, John Quincy Adams had the highest I.Q. The president of the United States is the first to visit the White House. Dean Simonton, a psychology professor at UC Davis, estimated his I.Q. Score at 165. He allegedly spoke eight foreign languages (Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Italian, and Russian).

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Early life, education, and early career

John Quincy Adams was born in 1767, to John and Abigail Adams (née Smith), in a section of Braintree, Massachusetts, which is now Quincy. He was named after his maternal grandfather, Colonel John Quincy, was named after Quincy, Massachusetts, who died two days after Adams' birth. Young Adams was educated by private tutors, including James Thaxter and his father's law clerk, Nathan Rice. He soon demonstrated literary talent, and in 1779, he started a diary that he kept until he died in 1848. Adams grew up on the family farm in Braintree until the age of ten, mainly in the care of his mother. Despite being largely absent due to his service in the American Revolution, John Adams maintained a correspondence with his son, encouraging him to read books by authors like Thucydides and Hugo Grotius. Adams will also translate classical authors such as Virgil, Horace, Plutarch, and Aristotle with his father's help.

Adams and his father departed for Europe in 1778, where John Adams would travel as part of American diplomatic missions in France and the Netherlands. Adams studied law, French, Greek, and Latin, as well as attending numerous colleges, including Leiden University. Adams went to Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he served as the secretary to American diplomat Francis Dana in 1781. In 1783, he returned to the Netherlands and accompanied his father to Great Britain. Although Adams loved Europe, he and his family decided he and his family would return to the United States to complete his education and then begin a political career.

Adams returned to the United States in 1785 and was accepted as a member of Harvard College's junior class the following year. He joined Phi Beta Kappa and excelled academically, finishing second in his class in 1787. He went from Harvard to Boston, Massachusetts, where he studied law with Theophilus Parsons from 1787 to 1789. Adams initially opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution, but he later agreed to accept the paper, and in 1789, his father became the first Vice President of the United States in 1789. Adams began his own law firm in Boston in 1790. Despite early struggles, he was a great lawyer and gained financial independence from his parents.

Early political career (1793–1817)

Adams decided against becoming involved in politics early on and instead concentrated on his legal career. He wrote a series of pseudonymously published essays in 1791 arguing that Britain had a superior government model than France. Two years later, he published another collection of essays criticizing President George Washington's policy of neutrality in the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1794, Washington named Adams as the United States ambassador to the Netherlands. Adams considered resigning, but he ultimately took the position on his father's suggestion. Although abroad, Adams maintained his call for neutrality, arguing that if the United States would prosper financially by remaining out of the ongoing French Revolutionary Wars, the US would prosper economically. His main job as Ambassador to the Netherlands was to obtain and maintain loans that were vital to US finances. On his way to the Netherlands, John Jay spoke with John Jay, who was then negotiating the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. Adams favoured the Jay Treaty, but it was unpopular with many in the United States, contributing to a growing national divide between the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton and the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson.

Adams spent the winter of 1795-1796 in London, where he met Louisa Catherine Johnson, the second daughter of American merchant Joshua Johnson. Louisa accepted Adams' marriage proposal in April 1796. Adams' parents were dissatisfied with his decision to marry a woman who had lived in England, but he told his parents that he did not reconsider his decision. Adams wanted to postpone his marriage to Louisa until he returned to the United States, but the two married in All Hallows-by-the-Tower in July 1797. Joshua Johnson fled England shortly after his wedding to avoid his creditors, but Adams did not receive the dowry that Johnson had promised him, much to Louisa's embarrassment. Adams said in his own diary that he had no regrets about his decision to marry Louisa.

In 1796, Washington named Adams as the US ambassador to Portugal. In the 1796 presidential election, John Adams defeated Jefferson for the second time in the same year. As the elder Adams served as president, he named his son as the US ambassador to Prussia. Despite being concerned that his appointment would be sluggish, Adams accepted the position and traveled to Berlin with his wife and his younger brother Thomas Boylston Adams. Adams was given by the State Department to expand commercial relations with Prussia and Sweden, but President Adams urged his son to regularly discuss European affairs. Adams negotiated a new trade deal between the United States and Prussia in 1799, but he could not reach a deal with Sweden. He often wrote to family members in the United States, and his letters about Silesia, which were published in a book titled Letters from Silesia in 1801. Adams befriended German diplomat and writer Friedrich von Gentz, whose book The Origins and Principles of the American Revolution, in comparison to the French Revolution's Origins and Principles, translates into English in 1800. Jefferson defeated John Adams in the 1800 presidential race, and both Adams and his son left office in early 1801.

Adams re-established a law practice in Boston on his return to the United States, and in April 1802, he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in April 1802. He unsuccessfully ran for the United States House of Representatives in November of this year. Adams was elected to the United States Senate in February 1883 by the Massachusetts legislature in February 1883. Adams joined the Federalist majority in Congress, despite being reluctant to align with any political group. Associate Justice Samuel Chase, an outspoken promoter of the Federalist Party, opposed his impeachment, as did his Federalist colleagues.

Adams had adamantly opposed Jefferson's 1800 presidential candidacy, but he later fell out of the Federalist Party. Adams' dissatisfaction with the party's falling success, internal differences over foreign policy, and his hostility to Timothy Pickering, the Federalist Party leader who Adams described as overly supportive to Britain, was triggered. Adams, unlike other New England Federalists, embraced the Jefferson administration's Louisiana Purchase and expansionist policies. Adams was the only Federalist in Congress to vote for the Nonimportation Act of 1806, which was punishing Britain for its attacks on American shipping during the continuing Napoleonic Wars. Adams became increasingly ill with the unwillingness of other Federalists to condemn British actions, including impressment, as a result of his proximity to the Jefferson administration. Adams resigned from the Senate shortly after Adams announced the Embargo Act of 1807, a Federalist-controlled Massachusetts legislature.

Adams, as a member of the Senate, served as a logic professor at Brown University and as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. Adams' dedication to classical rhetoric influenced his response to public affairs, and he'd be inspired by those rhetorical ideals long after the neo-classicism and deferential politics of the founding generation were largely replaced by the commercial ethos and mass democracy of the Jacksonian Age. Many of Adams' idiosyncratic positions were rooted in his deep commitment to the Ciceronian ideal of the citizen-orator "speaking well" to ensure the polis's flourishing. He was also influenced by British philosopher David Hume's rhetoric of civic eloquence. Adams brought these classical republican ideals of public oratory to the American debate, seeing its multilayered political system as ripe for "the renaissance of Demosthenic eloquence." His lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory (1810) explores ancient oratory's fate, the emergence of liberty for it to flourish, and its importance as a unifying element in a new world of diverse cultures and faiths. In the second decade of the nineteenth century, as civic eloquence lost its swansing in the United Kingdom, in the United States' interest in the United States' interest in the "public spheres of tense oratory" fell in favour of the private sphere.

Adams was ostracized by Massachusetts Federalist politicians after resigning from the Senate, but he refused to run as a candidate because he was not a Democratic-Republican. In 1809, he argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in Fletcher vs. Peck, and the Supreme Court eventually agreed with Adams' argument that the Constitution's Contract Clause barred the state of Georgia from invalidating a land grant to out-of-state businesses. Adams was the first United States Minister to Russia in 1809, and it was later that year. Despite the fact that Adams only recently broken with the Federalist Party, his support of Jefferson's foreign policy had earned him a lot of respect in the Madison Administration. Since his time in Europe and Russia specifically, Adams was well-prepared for the role.

Adams landed in St. Petersburg, Russia's capital, after a lengthy journey across the Baltic Sea, in October 1809. He quickly developed a fruitful working relationship with Russian President Nikolay Rumyantsev and then befriended Tsar Alexander I of Russia. During the Napoleonic War, Adams continued to favor American neutrality between France and Britain. Louisa was initially dissatisfied with the prospect of living in Russia, but she became a well-known figure in the Russian court. Adams recalled the French emper Napoleon's Russian conquest of Russia, which resulted in French defeat for the French. President Madison nominated Adams as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court in February 1811. The nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, but Adams resigned the position in favor of a career in politics and diplomacy, so Joseph Story took the seat instead.

Adams had long feared that the United States would face Britain in a war it did not win against Britain, and by early 1812, he considered such a conflict inevitable due to continued British attacks on American shipping and the British practice of impressment. The United States declared war against Britain in mid-1812, beginning with the War of 1812. Tsar Alexander attempted to mediate the conflict between Britain and the US, and President James A. Bayard named Adams, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, and Federalist Senator James A. Bayard to a delegation charged with negotiating an end to the conflict. In July 1813, Gallatin and Bayard arrived in St. Petersburg, but the British turned down Tsar Alexander's offer of mediation. Adams left Russia in April 1814 and hoped to begin negotiations at a new location. In mid-1814 in Ghent, where Adams, Gallatin, and Bayard were joined by two additional American delegates, Jonathan Russell and former House Speaker Henry Clay. Adams, the nominal head of the delegation, got along with Gallatin, Bayard, and Russell, but he did have a few scrapes with Clay.

The British delegation began treating the US as a defeated power, insisting that an Indian barrier state be established near the Great Lakes. The American delegation has unashamedly turned down this bid, but the American victory in the Battle of Plattsburgh boosted their negotiation position. The government of Lord Liverpool in November 1814 decided to request an end to hostilities with the United States ante bellum. Despite the fact that returning to the status quo would mean the continuation of British imperial art, Adams and his colleagues had hoped for similar terms. The treaty was signed on December 24, 1814. The United States did not gain any concessions from the treaty, but it could boast that it had defeated the world's largest power. Adams travelled to Paris, where he experienced the Hundred Days of Napoleon's restoration first-hand.

Adams discovered in May 1815 that President Madison had appointed him as the United States ambassador to the United Kingdom. Adams negotiated a limited trade deal with Britain with the support of Clay and Gallatin. Following the conclusion of the trade agreement, a large portion of Adams' time as ambassador was spent assisting stranded American sailors and prisoners of war. President James Monroe, the current and popular nominee, has chosen the respected and experienced Adams for the role in the search of national unity. Adams returned to the United States in August 1817 after spending many years in Europe.

Later congressional career (1830–1848)

After his 1828 defeat, Adams considered permanently retired from public life, but he was greatly wounded by George Washington Adams' suicide in 1829. Several aspects of the Jackson administration's behavior, including the adoption of the spoils system and the indictment of Treasury Auditor Tobias Watkins for embezzlement, had him befuddled. Though they had once enjoyed a cordial relationship, Adams and Jackson came to loathe one in the decades after the 1828 election. Adams grew dissatisfied with his retirement and still felt that his service was incomplete, so he ran for and gained a seat in the United States House of Representatives in the 1830 elections. Former presidents should not run for public office, according to his own wife and youngest son's opinion that former presidents should not run for public office. Despite this, he would win election to nine terms from 1831 to 1848. Former Presidents Adams and Andrew Johnson are the only two former presidents to serve in Congress. Adams became a member of the Anti-Masonic Party after winning the election, partly because the National Republican Party's leadership in Massachusetts included several of the former Federalists with whom Adams had clashed with earlier in his career. The Anti-Masonic Party started as a reaction to Freemasonry, but the country's first third party grew into the country's first third party and adopted a broad scheme of anti-elitism.

When Adams returned to Washington at 64 years old, he expected a light workload, but Speaker Andrew Stevenson appointed Adams as chair of the Committee on Commerce and Manufactures. Despite being a member of the Anti-Masonic Party, Congress was largely split between Jackson and Jackson supporters, and Adams tended with the latter group. Even as the Jacksonian majority on the committee stops Adams from receiving any real power, Stevenson, a ally of Jackson, expected that the committee chairmanship would keep Adams busy defending the tariff even though the Jacksonian majority discourages Adams from gaining any real power. Adams, as chair of the committee charged with writing tariffs, became a key player in the Nullification crisis, which largely stems from Southern protests to the high tariffs levied by 1828. Leaders in South Carolina argued that states could nullify federal laws, and they announced that the federal government would not enforce the tariff in their state. Adams aided in the passage of 1832, which cut rates, but not enough to muzzle the South Carolina nullifiers. The crisis came to an end when Clay and Calhoun decided on a new tariff bill, the Tariff of 1833, which raised tariff rates even higher. Adams was appalled by the Nullification Crisis's results, because he believed that the Southern states had unfairly profited from opposing federal law. Adams was convinced that Southerners wielded undue power over the federal government by their overthrowrowning of Jackson's Democratic Party.

The Anti-Masonic Party nominated Adams in a four-way battle between Adams, the Democratic nominee, and a Workman's Party candidate in the 1833 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. John Davis, the National Republican nominee, secured 40% of the vote, while Adams finished second, with 29 percent. The state legislature selected the candidate after no candidate secured a majority of the vote. Adams dropped his name from office in order to run for office by the legislature, and the legislature chose Davis rather than electing Davis. Adams was almost elected to the Senate in 1835 by a alliance of Anti-Masons and National Republicans, but National Republican legislators were so angry about his support for Jackson in a minor foreign policy issue that they withdrew National Republican leaders that they withdrew their vote in favour of him. Adams never ran for office after 1835, putting more emphasis on his service in the House of Representatives.

The Anti-Masonic Party, the National Republicans, and other groups opposing Jackson coalesced into the Whig Party in the mid-1830s. In the 1836 presidential election, Democrats put forward Martin Van Buren, while Whigs fielded multiple presidential candidates. Adams did not vote because he opposed all the major party candidates for president; Van Buren won the election. Nevertheless, Adams became affiliated with the Whig Party in Congress. Adams largely opposed President Van Buren's plans, even though they maintained a cordial public relation.

In the Texas Revolution of 1835–1836, Texas gained independence from Mexico. Despite an 1829 Mexican law that banned slavery, Texas had largely settled by Americans from the Southern United States, and many of those settlers owned slaves. Many in the United States and Texas also supported the admission of Texas into the Union as a slave state. Adams regarded Texas as "a question of much deeper roots and more overshadowing branches than any other agitating branches" and made him one of the country's most prominent congressional opponents of annexation. Adams attempted to buy Texas when he was secretary of state, but he argued that converting Texas from a free territory to a slave state would turn the area from a free territory to a slave state. He also feared that Texas' secession would compel Southern expansionists to seek other potential slave states, including Cuba. During his presidency, Adams' firm may have discouraged Van Buren from calling for Texas's annexation.

In the 1840 presidential election, Whig nominee William Harrison defeated Van Buren, and the Whigs took over both houses of Congress for the first time. Despite his skepticism towards Harrison as a person, Adams was ecstatic about the new Whig government and the demise of the long-serving Federal government's long-established Democratic majority. However, Harrison died in April 1841 and was replaced by Vice President John Tyler, a Southerner who, unlike Adams, Henry Clay, and several other influential Whigs, did not accept the American System. Tyler was viewed as an agent of "the slave-driving, Virginia, Jeffersonian school, principled against all improvement." Whig congressmen barred Tyler from the party after Tyler vetoed a bill to restore the national bank. Adams was named chairman of a special commission investigating impeaching Tyler, but Adams scathingly found Tyler that his conduct warranted an impeachment report. The impeachment process did not progress, though, because the Whigs did not know that the Senate would vote to dismiss Tyler from office.

Tyler made Texas the main foreign policy priority of his administration's later stages. He tried to secure the acceptance of an annexation treaty in 1844, but the Senate denied the treaty, much to Adams' surprise and delight. The annexation of Texas became a focus of the 1844 Democratic National Convention, and Southerners refused to nominate Van Buren due to the latter's resistance to annexation; instead, the party nominated James K. Polk, an acolyte of Andrew Jackson. Adams was extremely dissatisfied that Polk defeated his longtime comrade, Henry Clay, in the 1844 election, despite the fact that he did not participate in the campaign. He attributed a portion of the election to the Liberty Party, a tiny, abolitionist third party that may have siphoned votes from Clay in the vital state of New York. Tyler, whose term will expires in March 1845, has submitted an annexation treaty to Congress for the second time since the campaign. Adams reacted strongly to the treaty, arguing that the taking of Texas would involve the United States in "a war for slavery." Despite Adams' resistance, both houses of Congress accepted the bill, with majority Democrats voting for annexation and the majority Whigs voting against it. In 1845, Texas became a slave state in the United States.

Adams disliked the new president after being seen as another expansionist, pro-slavery Southern Democrat, and he had served with James K. Polk in the House of Representatives. Adams favoured the partition of Oregon County, a volatile area occupied by both the United States and Britain, and was dissatisfied when President Polk signed the Oregon Treaty, partitioning the land between the two claimants at the 49th parallel. Polk's expansionist efforts honed instead on Alta California's Mexican province, where he attempted to purchase the province from Mexico. The Mexican government refused to sell California or acknowledge the state's independence and subsequent American annexation of Texas. Polk used a military detachment led by General Zachary Taylor to back up his assertion that the Rio Grande constituted the Southern boundary of both Texas and the United States. After Taylor's troops clashed with Mexican soldiers north of the Rio Grande, Polk ordered a declaration of war in early 1846, claiming that Mexico had invaded American territory. Although some Whigs doubted that Mexico had launched an aggressive war, both houses of Congress declared war, with the House voting 174-to-14 to accept the declaration. Adams, who said that Polk was attempting to wage a war to expand slavery, was one of the 14 disobeying votes. He embraced Wilmot Proviso, an unsuccessful legislative plan that would have outlawed slavery in any territory ceded by Mexico, starting at the war. Adams was increasingly affected by illness in 1846, but he continued to oppose the Mexican–American War until his death in 1848.

Slavery became a hot topic in the United States in the 1830s. Adams, a long-serving antislavery defender, used his new position in Congress to combat it, and he became the country's most influential national leader opposing slavery. Following one of his reelection victories, he said he must "bring about a day prophesied" when slavery and war will be banned from the face of the Earth.

He wrote in his private journal in 1820:

The House of Representatives imposed a "gag rule" in 1836, partially in reaction to Adams' repeated presentation of citizen petitions requesting the abolishment of slavery in the District of Columbia. Democrats and Southern Whigs favored the system, but Northern Whigs, like Adams, opposed it. Adams began a movement to mock slave owners and the gag rule in late 1836. He has often attempted to present anti-slavery petitions, often in ways that triggered strong reactions from Southern representatives. Though the gag order stayed in force, the discussion sparked by his conduct and the attempts of others to silence him provoked concerns about the right to petition, the right to debate, and slavery's morality. Adams fought adamantly against the gag rule for another seven years, eventually pushing the bill that ended in its repeal in 1844.

Adams joined the case of United States vs. the Amistad in 1841 at the behest of Lewis Tappan and Ellis Gray Loring. Adams appeared before the Supreme Court on behalf of African slaves who had revolted and seized the Spanish ship Amistad. Adams appeared on February 24, 1841, and lasted four hours. His argument was successful: The Africans were released and returned to their homelands.

Adams became a leading force in science promotion. In 1829, British scientist James Smithson died, and he left his fortune for the "increase and dissemination of knowledge." In Smithson's will, he said that if Henry James Hungerford, his nephew, dies without heirs, the Smithson estate will be donated to the Smithson family in the United States to create a "Establishment for the increase and dissemination of Knowledge among men." After the nephew died without heirs in 1835, President Andrew Jackson alerted Congress of the bequest, which amounted to about US$500,000 (US$75 million after inflation). Adams realized that this could help the United States realize its goal of establishing a national institute of science and education. Adams was also the primary supporter of the new Smithsonian Institution in Congress.

The money was invested in unstable state bonds, which then defaulted. Adams argued convincingly in Congress to recover the lost funds with intention after a tense discussion. Adams was able to persuade Congress not to use the funds for an institute of science and education, despite the fact that Congress intended to use the funds for other purposes. The federal government was also debating whether the federal government had the power to honor the donation, but Congress accepted the legacy left to the nation and pledged the United States' trust on July 1, 1836. Congress accepted the Smithsonian Institution in 1846, partly due to Adams' efforts. A nonpolitical board of regents was established to lead the institution, which included a museum, art gallery, library, and laboratory.

The 78-year-old former president died of a partial paralysis in mid-November 1846. After a few months of rest, he made a complete recovery and resumed his duties in Congress. Everybody "stood up and applauded" as Adams entered the House chamber on February 13, 1847.

The House of Representatives was debating honoring United States Army troops who served in the Mexican–American War on February 21, 1848. Adams had been a vehement critic of the war, and as congressmen came out to say, "Aye!" Instead of approving the measure, he yelled, "No!" he yelled in response. He arose to answer a question raised by House Speaker Robert Charles Winthrop. Adams died in a flash immediately after suffering a massive cerebral hemorrhage. He died at 7:20 p.m. on February 23, his wife, at his side in the Speaker's Room inside the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.; his only living child, Charles Francis, did not arrive in time to see his father alive two days later. "This is the last of Earth," Trump said. "I am content." Abraham Lincoln, then a freshman representative from Illinois, was one of those mourning his death.

His initial burial in the public vault at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., was temporary, and he was laid to rest in the family cemetery in Quincy, Massachusetts, across from the (Unitarian) United First Parish Church of Hancock Cemetery. Louisa's father was re-interred in the expanded family crypt in the United First Parish Church across the street, next to John and Abigail. Both tombs are viewable by the public. Adams' original tomb at Hancock Cemetery is still on display, and the word "J.Q." Adams.

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