John Quincy Adams

President of the United States (1825–1829)

• Born: July 11, 1767
• Birthplace: Braintree, Massachusetts (now Quincy, Massachusetts)
• Died: February 23, 1848
• Place of death: Washington, D.C.

As diplomat, secretary of state, president, and member of the House of Representatives, in a career spanning the early national period to nearly the time of the Civil War, John Quincy Adams helped to shape the major foreign and domestic policies of the United States, always in the direction of strengthening the nation as a unified whole.

Early Life

John Quincy Adams was the second child and first son of future president John Adams and Abigail (Smith) Adams. At such a time and in such a family, he was a child of both the revolution and the Enlightenment, nurtured as well with a strong Puritan sense of duty and destiny, directed throughout his life toward politics (and its attendant sacrifices), always striving to fulfill the expectations and retain the approbation of his parents, especially the redoubtable Abigail. His unorthodox and irregular education was to produce both a scholar and a nationalist, unswerving in his principles and forever unsatisfied with his performance, always striving to increase his learning and improve his habits, and never able to mingle easily with others or develop satisfying personal relationships.

As a boy, John Quincy imbibed patriotism in the midst of the revolution and then spent a number of years in Europe while his father was engaged in the nation’s diplomatic business; in France, Holland, and Russia he learned languages, associated with important men of the time, studied sporadically, and began what was to be a lifelong diary. Returning to the United States in 1785 (while his father remained as minister to Britain), he became again a schoolboy and was graduated from Harvard in 1787. In his commencement address, he referred to this time as a “critical period.” He then studied law in Newburyport with Theophilus Parsons until his admission to the bar in 1790.

Uninterested in the legal profession yet reluctant to be drawn into the hardships of public service, John Quincy entered the newspaper battles with essays on the French Revolution (against Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, 1791) and the Genêt affair. His arguments in favor of American neutrality won for him the attention of President George Washington and the post of minister resident at the Hague, in 1794. He took up his position at this excellent listening post during the Napoleonic expansion over Europe, reporting in detail to Washington and to the secretary of state on its course, his ideas influencing Washington’s foreign policy statements in the Farewell Address.

John Quincy Adams’s appointment as minister to Portugal was changed before he took it up, and he and his wife, Louisa Adams, whom he had married in 1797, traveled to Berlin, where the new minister plenipotentiary to Prussia negotiated a treaty, saw his wife successfully enter court society, and began a volume of descriptive letters about a visit to Silesia. Recalled by his father, John Adams, who had lost reelection to the presidency, Adams brought his wife and son (George Washington Adams, born April 12, 1801) to an America they had never seen in order to renew an interrupted law practice. Drawn inevitably to public service, Adams was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in April, 1802, and to the U.S. Senate in February, 1803. He immediately demonstrated the qualities that were to characterize and frustrate his political career: commitment to the nation rather than to any party, consistency of principle and attention to detail, and the inability to deal effectively with varied personalities and the social demands of the Washington political scene.

The young senator was five feet, seven inches tall, balding, with rather sharp and expressive features; he had always been careless in his dress, and despite his lifelong habit of exercise frequently suffered from dizziness, insomnia, stomach trouble, and attacks of anxiety and depression. Always introspective and self-critical, he was reserved and humorless; formally a Unitarian, he was well versed in the Bible, classical literature, science, and the humanities.

Although Adams opposed the Republican administration’s acquisition of Louisiana for constitutional reasons, he soon demonstrated his differences from the Federalists on the important issues of the Aaron Burr intrigue, Judge John Pickering’s impeachment, and the Chesapeake incident and embargo policy. His nationalism and independence in supporting Republican policies provoked Federalist hostility in both political and personal relations; he resigned his Senate seat before his Federalist replacement took over, and he experienced problems even in his lectures as Boylston Professor of Oratory and Rhetoric at Harvard. Without consulting Louisa, he accepted President James Madison’s appointment as minister plenipotentiary to Russia; the two older boys remained with their grandparents in Quincy, and Adams, Louisa, and Charles Francis (born August 18, 1807) arrived in St. Petersburg late in 1809.

Despite inadequate funds, both Adamses established themselves with the diplomatic community and at the extravagant court of Czar Alexander I. John Quincy was able to achieve some diplomatic successes with the Russian government, attend to his youngest son, and maintain a correspondence with his older sons filled with stern expectations for their education and achievements—expectations that neither was ever able to fulfill.

As Alexander and Napoleon Bonaparte fell out over the Continental System and the War of 1812 opened, Adams was an obvious choice for the commission to negotiate peace with Great Britain. When its five members met finally in Ghent in 1814, they achieved a satisfactory treaty based on the prewar status quo. Adams then journeyed to Paris to meet Louisa, who had, by herself, wound up their affairs in Russia and traversed Europe with young Charles in the aftermath of war and during the Hundred Days. The Adamses then spent the next two years happily in London, as John Quincy had been appointed by President James Monroe as minister plenipotentiary to Great Britain. It became apparent that Great Britain was willing to negotiate and arbitrate the points still at issue after the Treaty of Ghent .

Adams’s appointment as Monroe’s secretary of state brought the family back to the United States late in 1817 and renewed the pattern of separation (the parents in Washington, the boys educated elsewhere) and family problems. At the age of fifty, Adams reentered domestic politics by becoming embroiled with the new generation of politicians. He was still and always a nationalist and an independent in a time of growing partisanship and sectional controversy, and reserved and scholarly during the development of popular sovereignty and anti-intellectualism. For the rest of his long life, despite personal tragedy and bitter political disappointments, he was to shape much of American domestic and foreign policy.

Life’s Work

Adams became secretary of state as the Era of Good Feelings began to dissolve in personal and partisan contention for the presidency, and at a time when the State Department conducted both foreign and domestic affairs with one chief clerk and seven assistant clerks. Adams organized the department and its papers, did much of the office work himself during long days and nights (even cutting down on his reading), and attended to the census, congressional printing, extraditions, and commissions. He had, early in his career as a Federalist, demonstrated his political independence; he had received his appointments from Republican administrations; as secretary of state and son of John Adams, he was inevitably a presidential candidate. His foreign policy positions therefore developed as much in response to domestic political concerns as to the international situation. Nevertheless, his early principles dominated: He was a nationalist and an expansionist, cautious but determined to develop a hemispheric role for the United States.

Attempting to defend and expand American trade interests, Adams concentrated on the problem of discriminatory British customs duties in the West Indies trade. British interests and disturbed world conditions, however, meant the retention of those duties. Boundary problems with Great Britain and Russia in the Northwest presented less difficulty than those with Spain in Florida. The Treaty of 1818 settled United States-Canadian boundary and fisheries problems and provided for joint United States-British occupation of Oregon for ten years (the northern boundary fixed with Russia at 54 degrees, 40 minutes in the Convention of 1824). When General Andrew Jackson’s sensational raid into Florida threatened an international incident, Adams alone in the cabinet supported the general and used the uncontrolled Florida situation as an effective point in the negotiations that led to the 1819 Adams-Onís (Transcontinental) Treaty.

Acquisition of Florida and the demarcation of a clear southwestern boundary to the Pacific represented major gains for the United States, even though Adams’s opponents then and later attacked him on certain details (in which he had been uncharacteristically careless) and charged him with deliberately giving up Texas. Although he was not directly involved in the Missouri Compromise , Adams was against slavery and fearful that the sectional controversy had the potential to dissolve the Union. Even more immediately threatening was the possibility of European powers acting in the Western Hemisphere to regain newly independent colonies. Adams urged a unilateral American statement and greatly influenced the formulation of the basic policies of nonintervention and noncolonization, and American noninvolvement in Europe, points that President Monroe incorporated into his December, 1823, message, later known as the Monroe Doctrine.

A presidential nominating system still in flux made social events crucial for politics: Protocol for formal calls was subject matter for Senate resolutions and cabinet papers; Louisa Adams’s entertaining was vital for the cold, unsocial, and ambitious John Quincy, who furthermore refused to pursue the nomination actively, preferring it unsought as recognition of his ability and service. Throughout his political career he was to spurn the idea of active campaigning directed at the mass of voters, seeing public service as properly in the hands of the dedicated and qualified rather than the “popular” politicians.

In the election of 1824, Adams received eighty-four electoral votes to Jackson’s ninety-nine, but as there was no majority, the House was to decide between Jackson, Adams, and Henry Clay, the third-place finisher. While Adams actively swayed some Federalists, it was Clay’s influence that turned the tide; “Harry of the West” feared the rash general more than a fellow nationalist, and the two rivals realized their basic agreement on major issues. With Clay’s influence added, the House chose Adams to be president; Adams’s appointment of Clay as secretary of state (and therefore a potential next president) led the Jacksonians to open their presidential campaign almost immediately, based on the charge of “bargain and corruption.” The accusation of an Adams-Clay collusion continued to affect American politics for many years.

A U.S. president like his father, and like his father a single-term executive facing the more popular candidate, Adams was a minority president in a period of great partisan pressures, a nationalist in an era of deepening sectionalism, and an executive with a program at a time of legislative dominance. He never really controlled the National Republicans, nor could he prevent the development of the Democratic-Republican Party. Determined to avoid party considerations in appointments, he kept many in his cabinet and other offices (such as Postmaster General John McLean) who worked actively against him. He proposed large-scale national government action for general improvement in both learning and scientific activity (a national university, national observatories) and in the specifics of the “American System,” usually identified as Clay’s program, but which Adams claimed as his own.

Not surprisingly, Adams considered foreign affairs very important; he had a Jeffersonian view of developing American world trade, with an emphasis on reciprocity and neutral rights. The administration’s diplomatic failures, particularly Great Britain’s closure of West Indies trade, were often a result of domestic politics and sectional interests. The same was true of Adams’s concept of the democratic mission of the United States vis-à-vis Latin America: Any possibility of United States leadership in the Western Hemisphere was broken on the reefs of partisan opposition. The Panama Congress and the sensitive status of Cuba overshadowed negotiations and consultations that often laid the foundations for later administrations’ successes.

Adams delegated much domestic policy to his cabinet and was therefore not deeply involved in the sectional maneuvering that produced the Tariff of Abominations. He strongly supported internal improvements, regarded the public lands as a long-term national resource, and backed off from a confrontation with Georgia over states’ rights stemming from the Indian removal policy. Despite his concept of interdependent sectional interests producing national unity, Adams was usually identified with the economic interests of the Northeast.

A large antiadministration majority in Congress after the 1826 midterm elections left Adams a lame-duck president, depressed, ill, and socially isolated in the White House, mourning his father (who had died on July 4, 1826) and attempting to come to terms with his wife’s depression and illness and the total disappointment of his hopes for his two elder sons, George, a debt-ridden depressive, and John, something of a rake. A developing interest in botany was a diverting hobby, although the live-oak plantation he established in Florida (to benefit naval construction) was abandoned by the next administration. All of Adams’s personal difficulties, combined with his political ineptitude, helped ensure his isolation in the campaign of 1828, one of the most bitter and vicious ever waged.

Adams was politically inept for a variety of reasons. The Adams family considered its members to be different from the general public, more principled and determined and therefore doomed to popular misunderstanding and lack of support. Adams preferred not to respond to public criticism or to explain and justify his actions; he refused to “electioneer,” and his public speeches were scholarly, elaborate, and open to ridicule. His handling of the patronage (a difficult field complicated by factions within the parties) alienated his supporters and gave aid and comfort to his political enemies. He had not been able to rally support for a nonpartisan federal government program of wide-ranging improvements for the national benefit; he could not develop an effective party organization or even meld Federalists and nationalistic Republicans into a politically supportive bloc.

Adams’s administration ignored the developing labor movement and the broadening popular base of voters and played into Jacksonian egalitarian propaganda. The well-organized Jacksonians easily set the cold Yankee aristocrat against the man of the people, concentrating on Jackson’s personal popularity rather than his positions on issues (such as the tariff and internal improvements), which would alienate his disparate supporters.

Like his father before him, Adams felt his defeat deeply, taking it as his country’s repudiation, refusing (also like his father) to attend his successor’s inauguration and moving into regular routines, exercise, and writing in order to make the transition to private life. On April 30, 1829, George Washington Adams jumped or fell from a steamboat and drowned in Long Island Sound, leaving a mass of debts and an illegitimate child. Adams at sixty-one was a failed president with his eldest son dead; nevertheless, mutual guilt brought him and Louisa closer (they had left George with others to rear; they had pushed him too hard) and helped them to concentrate on their two grandchildren and their youngest and favorite son. The latter soon married a wealthy and passive wife and began to produce a large family (Louisa Catherine II, John Quincy II, Charles Francis, Jr., Henry, Arthur, Mary, and Brooks).

Political ambition (which Adams regarded as his chief character flaw) led him to agree (as usual, without consulting his wife) to represent his district in the House of Representatives. In 1831, he was elected by a large popular majority, a victory he regarded as the most satisfying of his entire political career. He missed politics and needed the salary, and for seventeen years and eight elections he carved out another and even more effective position in the service of the nation.

Still short, stout, and bald except for a fringe, Adams, as he had done all of his life, rose early, read his Bible and classical works regularly, swam, and walked; he developed into a connoisseur of wine and mellowed socially. He accepted anti-Masonic support for a presidential nomination in 1832 (which did not eventuate) and lost the election for governor of Massachusetts in 1833 and for Massachusetts (Whig) senator in 1835; none of this lessened his commitment to his House career. The House chamber had bad acoustics, as a result of which Adams at his desk could hear whispers from everywhere; his own high-pitched voice was to become a feared instrument in the coming House debates. After he spoke against Daniel Webster in connection with the “French Question” (of treaty payments) in 1836, he began to be called “Old Man Eloquent.”

In the Nullification Controversy , Adams recognized again the divisive potential of sectionalism, but in the next few years he focused more on the slavery issue as the greatest threat to the Union. He was neither an egalitarian nor an abolitionist per se; while Louisa began to acquaint herself with the problem, associating with the Grimkés and other abolitionists and coming to see the parallels between black slavery and the oppression of women, Adams viewed slavery in terms of principle: as morally reprehensible and politically dangerous to the continued existence of the nation. It was fitting, therefore, that he reacted first to the House’s vote, in May of 1836, to table without reading all petitions dealing with slavery.

The long battle against the “gag rule” invigorated Adams; the issue of the rights of petition and free speech gave him a broad ground on which to stand and aided him in debate when he dealt with slavery as a threat to the Union, a possible provocation of war with Mexico, a politically divisive question, and the source of the denial of basic rights of citizens. In this period also he began to examine the question of slavery in a broader context. Reading his mother’s papers (Abigail Adams had died on October 28, 1818) and reacting to his wife’s growing involvement with feminism, Adams came to support the concept of women’s political rights, although without endorsing specific issues or deflecting his emphasis on the slavery question.

Always a political independent, Adams supported many of the Jackson administration’s policies, disagreeing, however, on bank policy. As an independent and a skilled parliamentarian, he was able in 1839 to effect the necessary organization of the House committees despite paralyzing partisan divisions. Southern members frequently opposed his actions and called for resolutions of censure. Although his early ponderous and erudite Report on Weights and Measures (1821) had never had any direct influence, Adams was able, from 1838 to 1846, to direct the use of the fund that established the Smithsonian Institution.

Despite bitter opposition, Adams maintained his battle in the House on all issues connected with slavery, although he believed that he could only begin what must be a long struggle. He opposed the 1838 attempt to annex Texas for constitutional reasons and because he believed that it would lead to a free-land policy to gain Western political support, thus dissipating a national resource. In 1841, he argued for the defense in the Amistad case before the Supreme Court, never submitting a bill for his legal services. In 1842, demonstrating great intellectual resources and physical stamina, he conducted a six-day, successful defense against a House resolution to censure him. He now received and enjoyed public adulation, and in December of 1844, on his resolution, the House rescinded the gag rule.

Feebler and somewhat absentminded, Adams continued to oppose the Mexican War , being reelected as a Conscience Whig in November of 1846. Nearing eighty, he had had to discontinue his daily early morning swims in the Potomac, and on November 20, 1846, he suffered a stroke but was able to resume his seat in early February, 1847. He spoke only once, in opposition to indemnifying the Amistad owners, and on February 21, 1848, had another stroke in the House. Carried to the Speaker’s room in the Capitol, he died two days later without having regained consciousness. The national mourning ceremonies were like none since Washington’s death. John Quincy Adams was buried in the family plot in Quincy. Louisa remained in Washington, keeping in touch with politics, buying and freeing a woman slave, and for much of the time suffering from ill health; she died on May 15, 1852.

Significance

President of a disintegrating party, politically impotent halfway into his only term, his personal life marred by an unsatisfying relationship with his wife and bitter disappointments with his two elder sons, Adams left—almost fled—the nation’s highest political office, the lifelong goal of his great ambition and dynastic sense of duty and destiny. He seemed to be facing a lifetime in the ebb tide of politics and the treacherous shoals of financial insecurity and family disappointment. Even as his personal tragedy deepened with the death of his eldest son, he entered into a new phase, a time nearly as long as his life until then. He experienced a growing satisfaction, a greater harmony in relationships and decision making within his own family: his remaining son, his growing brood of grandchildren, and his wife, finding her way to her own identity and a political role that could afford her a long-delayed satisfaction in contributing to and participating in the real life of the nation, rather than the confined, ornamental, subservient place expected by contemporary society.

During the course of his “two careers,” John Quincy Adams contributed mightily to the basic elements of American foreign policy, influenced domestic issues, and stood as a beacon in the sectional controversy which, as he foresaw, was to lead the Union into civil war.

Bibliography

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

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

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

Hecht, Marie B. John Quincy Adams: A Personal History of an Independent Man. New York: Macmillan, 1972. Print.

Heffron, Margery M. "'A Fine Romance': The Courtship Correspondence between Louisa Catherine Johnson and John Quincy Adams." New England Quarterly 83.2 (2010): 200–218. Print.

Mattie, Sean. "John Quincy Adams and American Conservatism." Modern Age 45.4 (2003): 305–314. Print.

Morse, John T., Jr. John Quincy Adams. Boston: Houghton, 1882. Print.

Nagel, Paul C. John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life. New York: Random, 1997. Print.

Remini, Robert V. John Quincy Adams. New York: Times, 2002. Print.

Shepherd, Jack. Cannibals of the Heart: A Personal Biography of Louisa Catherine and John Quincy Adams. New York: McGraw, 1980. Print.

Unger, Harlow Giles. John Quincy Adams. Boston: Da Capo, 2012.

Weeks, William Earl. John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1992. Print.