John Quincy Adams

10 Key excerpts on "John Quincy Adams"

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  A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 2, part 2

  John Quincy Adams

  • (Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  John Quincy Adams

  March 4, 1828, to March 4, 1829

  John Quincy Adams

  John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, eldest son of John Adams, second President, was born at Braintree, Mass., July 11, 1767. He enjoyed peculiar and rare advantages for education. In childhood he was instructed by his mother, a granddaughter of Colonel John Quincy, and a woman of superior talents. In 1778, when only 11 years old, he accompanied his father to France; attended a school in Paris, and returned home in August, 1779. Having been taken again to Europe by his father in 1780, he pursued his studies at the University of Leyden, where he learned Latin and Greek. In July, 1781, at the age of 14, he was appointed private secretary to Francis Dana, minister to Russia. He remained at St. Petersburg until October, 1782, after which he resumed his studies at The Hague. Was present at the signing of the definitive treaty of peace in Paris, September 3, 1783. He passed some months with his father in London, and returned to the United States to complete his education, entering Harvard College in 1786 and graduating in 1788. He studied law with the celebrated Theophilus Parsons, of Newburyport; was admitted to the bar in 1791, and began to practice in Boston. In 1791 he published in the Boston Centinel, under the signature of "Publicola," a series of able essays, in which he exposed the fallacies and vagaries of the French political reformers. These papers attracted much attention in Europe and the United States. Under the signature of "Marcellus" he wrote, in 1793, several articles, in which he argued that the United States should observe strict neutrality in the war between the French and the British. These writings commended him to the favor of Washington, and he was appointed minister to Holland in May, 1794. In July, 1797, he married Louisa Catherine Johnson, a daughter of Joshua Johnson, of Maryland, who was then American consul at London. In a letter dated February 20, 1797, Washington commended him highly to the elder Adams, and advised the President elect not to withhold promotion from him because he was his son. He was accordingly appointed minister to Berlin in 1797. He negotiated a treaty of amity and commerce with the Prussian Government, and was recalled about February, 1801. He was elected a Senator of the United States by the Federalists of Massachusetts for the term beginning March, 1803. In 1805 he was appointed professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres at Harvard College, and accepted on condition that he should be permitted to attend to his Senatorial duties. He offended the Federalists by supporting Jefferson's embargo act, which was passed in December, 1807, and thus became connected with the Democratic party. He resigned his seat in the Senate in March, 1808, declining to serve for the remainder of the term rather than obey the instructions of the Federalists. In March, 1809, he was appointed by President Madison minister to Russia. During his residence in that country he was nominated to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and confirmed February, 1811; but he declined the appointment. In 1813 Adams, Bayard, Clay, Russell, and Gallatin were appointed commissioners to negotiate a treaty of peace with Great Britain. They met the British diplomatists at Ghent, and after a protracted negotiation of six months signed a treaty of peace December 24, 1814. In the spring of 1815 he was appointed minister to the Court of St. James, remaining there until he was appointed by Mr. Monroe Secretary of State in 1817. In 1824 Adams, Jackson, Crawford, and Clay were candidates for the Presidency. Neither of the candidates having received a majority in the electoral colleges, the election devolved on the House of Representatives. Aided by the influence of Henry Clay, Mr. Adams received the votes of thirteen States, and was elected. He was defeated for reelection in 1828 by General Andrew Jackson. On the 4th of March, 1829, he retired to his estate at Quincy. In 1830 he was elected to Congress, and took his seat in December, 1831. He continued to represent his native district for seventeen years, during which time he was constantly at his post. On the 21st of February, 1848, while in his seat at the Capitol, he was stricken with paralysis, and died on the 23d of that month. He was buried at Quincy, Mass.

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  Profiles In Courage

  • President John F. Kennedy(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Golden Springs Publishing

    (Publisher)

  A Federalist! Adams mused bitterly over the word. Was he not the son of the last Federalist President? Had he not served Federalist administrations in the diplomatic service abroad? Had he not been elected as a Federalist to the Massachusetts Legislature and then to the United States Senate? Now, simply because he had placed national interest before party and section, the Federalists had deserted him. Yes, he thought, I did not desert them, as they charge—it is they who have deserted me.

  “My political prospects are declining [he wrote in his diary that night] and as my term of service draws near its close, I am constantly approaching to the certainty of being restored to the situation of a private citizen. For this event, however, I hope to have my mind sufficiently prepared. In the meantime, I implore that Spirit from whom every good and perfect gift descends to enable me to render essential service to my country, and that I may never be governed in my public conduct by any consideration other than that of my duty.”

  These are not merely the sentiments of a courageous Senator, they are also the words of a Puritan statesman. For John Quincy Adams was one of the great representatives of that extraordinary breed who have left a memorable imprint upon our Government and our way of life. Harsh and intractable, like the rocky New England countryside which colored his attitude toward die world at large, the Puritan gave meaning, consistency and character to the early days of the American Republic. His somber sense of responsibility toward his Creator he carried into every phase of his daily life. He believed that man was made in the image of God, and thus he believed him equal to the extraordinary demands of self-government. The Puritan loved liberty and he loved the law; he had a genius for determining the precise point where the rights of die state and the rights of the individual could be reconciled. The intellect of the Puritan—of John Quincy Adams and his forebears—was, as George Frisbie Hoar has said:

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  Reader's Guide to American History

  • Peter J. Parish(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The two best general treatments of Adams's presidency are Kurtz and Brown. Despite its age, KURTZ remains a reliable and readable study which portrays the second president as a man of integrity and principle, who sacrificed his political career to avoid war with France. BROWN draws heavily on existing scholarship to give the general reader what is primarily, but not exclusively, a work of synthesis. It is sympathetic to Adams, who is portrayed as a strong executive who worked sacrificially to serve the public good. The volume treats Adams's foreign policy more fully than other aspects of his presidency.

  ELLIS focuses on Adams's life and work after his retirement in 1801. In a perceptive and well-written study, he argues convincingly that, despite the long-held view that the staid New Englander's abstract political theories were irrelevant to democratic America, his political ideas are indeed relevant to the contemporary United States. This is an excellent, readable analysis of the Adams legacy suitable for the general reader as well as the specialist.

  CHARLES D. LOWERY

  Adams, John Quincy 1767–1848

  Secretary of State and 6th President of the United States

  Bemis, Samuel Flagg, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy , New York: Knopf, 1949

  Bemis, Samuel Flagg, John Quincy Adams and the Union , New York: Knopf, 1956

  Hargreaves, Mary W.M., The Presidency of John Quincy Adams , Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985

  Howe, Daniel Walker, The Political Culture of the American Whigs , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979

  Ketcham, Ralph, Presidents above Party: The First American Presidency, 1789–1829 , Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984

  May, Ernest R., The Making of the Monroe Doctrine , Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975

  Parsons, Lynn H., John Quincy Adams: A Bibliography , Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993

  Perkins, Bradford, Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812–1823 , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964

  Richards, Leonard L., The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams , New York: Oxford University Press, 1986

  Russell, Greg, John Quincy Adams and the Public Virtues of Diplomacy

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  John Randolph

  • Guy B Adams, Robert McColley(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The choice of Jackson over John Quincy Adams was alone enough to disprove the virtue of democracy. And yet the Adams family continued to play a major part in the nation's democratic politics. To some degree Henry Adams's writings on the early national period are a running defense of the positions John Quincy Adams took, from his youthful support of his father in the 1790s through his largely failed presidency, which ended March 4, 1829. That defense of John Quincy Adams was considerably easier in John Randolph than in the nine-volume History, where the enormous scale of his treatment required minute inspection of the issues and the positions on them taken by particular statesmen. Briefly, the problem was this: recalled from a diplomatic sinecure in Germany by his father after the Federalists had lost the election of 1800, John Quincy Adams soon returned to Congress as one of two Federalist senators from Massachusetts. In 1807–8, however, he disagreed with both the other senator, Timothy Pickering, and the Massachusetts legislature by supporting President Jefferson's Embargo, and resigned his seat. In effect, John Quincy Adams switched parties, and was soon rewarded with a series of diplomatic appointments far more important than Washington and Adams had given him in his fledgling years. He was one of five United States diplomats to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. On the one hand, Henry Adams could and did make a strong if low-keyed case for the political course followed by his illustrious grandfather; on the other, he nevertheless strongly disapproved of most of Jefferson and Madison's actions

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  Addressing America

  George Washington's Farewell and the Making of National Culture, Politics, and Diplomacy, 1796-1852

  • Jeffrey Malanson(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • The Kent State University Press

    (Publisher)

  1 If Americans were to defend their principles abroad, they would jeopardize those principles at home, and that was a cost too steep to pay. While Adams never mentioned Washington by name, his 1821 Fourth of July speech was a forceful and eloquent discourse on the wisdom of Washington’s principles in fostering America’s rapid growth and rising glory. It presented a strong defense of neutrality and a foreign policy defined by the protection of America’s fundamental interests. In short, the speech upheld the principles outlined in the Farewell Address as Washington originally intended them: as guiding maxims of American diplomacy.

  Next to Washington, John Quincy Adams was the most influential individual for anyone seeking to trace the history of the principles of the Farewell Address. At a time when most other statesmen were guided by the isolationist tendencies embodied in “entangling alliances with none,” Adams forcefully demonstrated the wisdom of the more flexible and evolutionary approach Washington had actually advocated in his Address. Nowhere was this more clearly seen than in Adams’s most impressive—but also most misunderstood—accomplishment: the Monroe Doctrine. The Doctrine was the ultimate restatement of Washington’s principles to meet the new global challenges posed by a (largely) united Europe and an independent Latin America. While the Monroe Doctrine was initially hailed as a bold defense of U.S. rights and principles, Americans adhering to Jefferson’s reconceptualization of the Farewell Address quickly began to question whether it violated Washington’s teachings.

  The Education of John Quincy Adams

  John Quincy Adams, born in 1767 to John and Abigail Adams, was expected to accomplish great things. Too young to take up pen or arms during the American Revolution, he contributed in a way denied other American adolescents, traveling to Paris in 1778 with his father, John Adams, as the latter negotiated the treaty of alliance that brought France into the war. After serving the elder Adams at postings in Spain and the Netherlands, in 1781 John Quincy became Francis Dana’s secretary on a mission to Russia. By the time the younger Adams returned to the United States in 1785, to enroll at Harvard University, he had already seen more of the world than most Americans did during their entire lives. Adams graduated second in his class two years later, trained to become a lawyer, and in 1790 opened his own law practice in Boston, Massachusetts. Adams had no designs on political office during his first years in Boston, but this did not stop him from taking an interest in political events. One of the earliest events to draw his attention was the publication in 1791 of Thomas Paine’s defense of the French Revolution, The Rights of Man, and the controversy caused by Thomas Jefferson’s introductory note to the American edition. In what was intended as a private letter, Jefferson lauded Paine’s work and criticized the “political heresies which have sprung up among us,” a phrase many readers interpreted to be a condemnation of the Federalists and of Vice President John Adams in particular. Feeling the need to defend his father and his own political views, John Quincy Adams published a series of eleven articles in the Boston Columbian Centinel, under the pseudonym “Publicola,” that were highly critical of both Paine and Jefferson.2

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  John Quincy Adams

  American Statesmen Series

  • Morse, John T., Jr. (John Torrey)(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  JOHN T. MORSE, JR. July, 1898.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I. Youth and Diplomacy CHAPTER II. Secretary of State and President CHAPTER III. In the House of Representatives Index

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  John Quincy Adams From the original painting by John Singleton Copley, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.

  The vignette of Mr. Adams's home in Quincy is from a photograph.

  William H. Crawford From the painting by Henry Ulke, in the Treasury Department at Washington. Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.

  Stratford Canning After a drawing (1853) by George Richmond. Autograph from "Life of Stratford Canning."

  Henry A. Wise From a photograph by Brady, in the Library of the State Department at Washington. Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.

  John Quincy Adams

  CHAPTER I

  YOUTH AND DIPLOMACY

  On July 11, 1767, in the North Parish of Braintree, since set off as the town of Quincy, in Massachusetts, was born John Quincy Adams. Two streams of as good blood as flowed in the colony mingled in the veins of the infant. If heredity counts for anything he began life with an excellent chance of becoming famous—non sine dîs animosus infans. He was called after his great-grandfather on the mother's side, John Quincy, a man of local note who had borne in his day a distinguished part in provincial affairs. Such a naming was a simple and natural occurrence enough, but Mr. Adams afterward moralized upon it in his characteristic way:—

  "The incident which gave rise to this circumstance is not without its moral to my heart. He was dying when I was baptized; and his daughter, my grandmother, present at my birth, requested that I might receive his name. The fact, recorded by my father at the time, has connected with that portion of my name a charm of mingled sensibility and devotion. It was filial tenderness that gave the name. It was the name of one passing from earth to immortality. These have been among the strongest links of my attachment to the name of Quincy, and have been to me through life a perpetual admonition to do nothing unworthy of it."

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  Miller Center Studies on the Presidency

  Leadership and Decision Making in the Adams, Grant, and Taft Administrations

  • Stephen J. Rockwell(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • University of Virginia Press

    (Publisher)

  2

  President John Quincy Adams and the American State in the 1820s

  The first thirty or forty pages of volume 8 of Charles Francis Adams’s printed edition of John Quincy Adams’s diary, covering the first six months of 1828, provide a brief, eye-opening introduction to the scope of state activity and presidential decision making in the John Quincy Adams era. In these pages, President Adams was called upon to resolve longstanding disputes over command of the U.S. military; to lead treatymaking with Winnebago, Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Seneca leaders from places as far-flung and diverse as New York, Mississippi, Florida, Michigan, Indiana, and Arkansas; to plan the Pacific expedition with Secretary of the Navy Samuel Southard; to respond to New England insurers who requested better naval protection for commercial ships in the Mediterranean; to work with Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush to fill in details and resolve contradictions of social policy and benefits programs left ambiguous in congressional acts; to interpret conflicts of interest in the position of attorney general at a time when that office still allowed its occupant to practice law privately; to oversee the construction of a diverse, ongoing array of internal improvements, ranging from harbor development to canal construction and the building of fortifications; to sign off on a million-dollar investment by the United States in stock offerings of the fledgling Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, just authorized by Congress after years of lobbying; to retool his cabinet just months before the 1828 election; and to protect himself from dangerous horses and would-be assassins.1

  It was a whirlwind of activity, indicating in a few pages the broad range and widespread impact of presidential decision making. The American state was already broadly engaged, and Adams both led the administrative bureaucracy and made a host of complicated decisions on long-term policy issues and sudden, immediate events.

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  The American President

  A Complete History

  • Kathryn Moore, Kathryn Moore(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Union Square & Co.

    (Publisher)

  J OHN Q UINCY A DAMS ★ ★ ★ SIXTH PRESIDENT ★ ★ ★

  LIFE SPAN •   Born: July 11, 1767, in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts •   Died: February 23, 1848, in Washington, D.C. RELIGION •   Unitarian HIGHER EDUCATION •   Harvard, 1787 PROFESSION •   Lawyer MILITARY SERVICE •   None FAMILY

  •   Father: John Adams (1735–1826)

  •   Mother: Abigail Smith Adams (1744–1818)

  •   Wife: Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams (1775–1852); wed July 26, 1797, in London, England

  •   Children: George Washington Adams (1801–1829); John Adams II (1803–1834); Charles Francis Adams (1807–1886); Louisa Catherine (1811–1812)

  POLITICAL LIFE •   Minister to the Netherlands (1794–1797) •   Minister to Prussia (1797–1801) •   Massachusetts state senator (1802) •   US senator (1803–1808) •   Minister to Russia (1809–1814) •   Head negotiator of Treaty of Ghent (1814) •   Minister to Great Britain (1815–1817) •   Secretary of state (1817–1825) PRESIDENCY •   One term: March 4, 1825–March 4, 1829 •   Democratic-Republican

  •   Reason for leaving office: lost election to Andrew Jackson in 1828

  •   Vice president: John C. Calhoun (1825–1829)

  ELECTION OF 1824

  •   Electoral vote: Jackson 99; Adams 84; William Crawford 4; Henry Clay 37

  •   Popular vote: Jackson 153,544; Adams 108,740; Crawford 46,618; Clay 47,136

  •   Due to lack of a majority, election decided by House of Representatives, who voted for Adams

  The first American political dynasty was that of John and John Quincy Adams. Both men became president, but to their chagrin, each only served one term. Father and son were close and shared a similar temperament, and in later years, John Quincy Adams described himself: “I never was and never shall be what is commonly termed a popular man . . . . I have no powers of fascination; none of the honey which the profligate proverb says is the true fly-catcher.”1

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  America's First Dynasty

  The Adamses, 1735-1918

  • Richard Brookhiser(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Free Press

    (Publisher)

  13 Unable to be so frank, John Quincy dissembled whenever the subject loomed, or said nothing at all. His elevation to the Senate was not automatic, for his father's old enemy, Timothy Pickering, also wanted to go to Washington, and pro- and anti-Adams factions in the Federalist party had to strike a bargain that gave John Quincy the senior seat and Pickering the junior one. But John Quincy's diary is silent on these maneuvers—the first of several such omissions.

  Another feature of his political career seemed to recall his father. John Adams had been a man above parties. Republicans and Federalists, he said of his blighted term, each had a party, “but the commonwealth had none.” In his own mind, John Adams supplied the lack. John Quincy entered politics proclaiming the same doctrine. “A politician in this country,” he wrote his brother Thomas, “must be a man of a party.” But “I would fain be the man of my whole country.”14

  The party situation in the country at the start of the new century was both confused and acrid. The Federalists, who had defined themselves as the friends of government when Washington and John Adams ran it, had to decide how to conduct themselves now that they were out of power. Federalism in the south and middle states, except for a few pockets, withered away, leaving a New England base. The party wanted a strong military establishment, and the taxes necessary to pay for it, and it continued to fear the ambitions of France. These were real. Though Napoleon Bonaparte had declared that the Revolution was complete, he was extending France's power farther than his radical predecessors. The most alarming example of his reach, to Americans, was his acquisition of Louisiana—the inner third of the continent, including New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River, its economic spigot. The nation's rejection of the policies and fears of the Federalists filled them with gloom. America, wrote one, was “infamous and contented.”15

  The leading Federalist in New England became Timothy Pickering, the former secretary of state whom John Adams had fired. Pickering's rise to national power had been a function of the reluctance of better men to hold office: He had been Washington's seventh choice as secretary of state. Nevertheless, there were many in New England who admired him for his upright manner and firm principle. When he was an old man, sharing a stagecoach to Washington with Elbridge Gerry, he loaned Gerry his cloak. “The mantle of Timothy the prophet hath fallen upon me,” Gerry joked. “The mantle of charity, rather,” Pickering replied, “‘for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.’ ”16

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  Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams

  Sixth President of the Unied States; With the Eulogy Delivered Before the Legislature of New York

  • William Henry Seward(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  The kindly feelings expressed by the King, were, however, comparatively, only the language of ceremony, for the British Ministry, and the British people, did not regard the new republic with favor. But they could not withhold the exhibition of reluctant respect.

  It was at such a time as this, and in such circumstances, that John Quincy Adams surveyed, from a new position, the colossal structure of British power, and the workings of its combined systems of conservative aristocracy, and progressive democracy. It was here that he imbibed new veneration for Russell, Sidney, Hampden, and Milton, its republican patriots; for Shakspeare, Dryden, and Pope, its immortal poets; and for Addison and Johnson, its moralists; here he learned from Wilberforce the principles of political philanthropy, as well as the patience and perseverance to defend them, and studied eloquence by the living models of Pitt, Fox, Erskine, Burke, and Sheridan.

  This, indeed, was a fitting conclusion to a precocious education by the patriots and philosophers of his own country, with practical observations in the courts of Spain and the Netherlands, of the weak but amiable Louis XVI., and the accomplished, but depraved, Catharine II.

  John Quincy Adams now became fearful that the duties of manhood would devolve upon him without his having completed the necessary academic studies. He therefore obtained leave to return home in 1785, at the age of eighteen years, and entered Cambridge University, at an advanced standing, in 1786. He graduated in 1788 with deserved honors.

  CHAPTER II.

  John Quincy Adams STUDIES LAW—HIS PRACTICE—ENGAGES IN PUBLIC LIFE—APPOINTED MINISTER TO THE HAGUE.

  After leaving the University, young Adams entered the office of Theophilus Parsons, who was then in the practice of law at Newburyport, and who afterwards for so many years filled with dignity and ability the office of Chief Justice of Massachusetts.

  Adams completed the usual term of professional study, and then commenced the practice of the law in Boston. It may encourage some who are oppressed by the difficulties attending initiation in the profession, to know, that during the first and only four years of John Quincy Adams' practice, he had occasion for despondency.

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