 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||
|
John Q Adams 1767 - 1848 |
||||
John Quincy Adams, (1767-1848), ad'[sch ]mz, 6th President of the
United States. He was the son of John Adams, 2nd
president. Independence and Union were the watchwords of his career; a Union
of the United States of North America to grow by the destiny of Providence
and nature to become a continental republic of free men stretching from
ocean to ocean and from Gulf to Arctic.
"The Second Adams" was the only son of a president to
become president; in fact, his parents actually trained him for highest
office. His mother told the boy that some day the state would rest upon his
shoulder. As he grew up with the new nation, he had during his long lifetime
two notable careers, separated by a strange interlude. The first career was
as an American diplomat who rose to become secretary of state. The second
career was as a member of the House of Representatives and opponent of
slavery. The strange interlude was as president of the United States; for
four years the state did indeed rest, uneasily, upon his shoulder. Never
publicly popular, often reviled by his political enemies, he nevertheless
ended his life in the sunshine of national esteem.
Early Life
John Quincy Adams was born in Braintree, Mass., on July 11, 1767. During
the first years of the American Revolution, he received his education
principally by instruction from his distinguished father and gifted mother,
the incomparable Abigail. As a boy of ten he accompanied his father on
diplomatic missions to Europe. There he learned French fluently in a private
school at Paris; next he studied at the University of Leiden. In 1782-1783
he accompanied Francis Dana, as secretary and interpreter of French (then
the language of the Russian court), on a journey through the German states
to St. Petersburg, returning to Holland by way of Scandinavia and Hannover.
Adams was already extraordinarily well versed in classical languages,
history, and mathematics when he returned to the United States in 1785 to
finish his formal education at Harvard (class of 1787). After studying law
at Newburyport, Mass., under the tutelage of Theophilus Parsons, he settled
down to practice at Boston in 1790.
Diplomatic Career
The young lawyer came particularly to George Washington's
attention because of articles he published in Boston newspapers defending
the president's policy of neutrality against the diplomatic incursions of
Citizen Genet, the new French Republic's minister to the United States. As a
result Washington appointed Adams as U.S. minister to the Netherlands, where
he served from 1794 to 1797. At The Hague, Adams found himself at the
principal listening post of a great cycle of European revolutions and wars,
which he continued to report faithfully to his government both from the
Netherlands and from his later post as minister to Berlin in 1797-1801.
While on a subsidiary mission to England, connected with the exchange of
ratifications of Jay's Treaty, he married on July 26, 1797, Louisa Catherine
Johnson, one of the seven daughters of Joshua Johnson of Maryland, U.S.
consul at London.
President John Adams relieved his son of the post at Berlin
immediately after Jefferson's election in 1801. Returning to Boston, John
Quincy Adams resumed the practice of law but was soon elected in 1803 as a
Federalist to the U.S. Senate. His independent course as a senator dismayed
the Federalist leaders of Massachusetts, particularly the Essex Junto. When
he voted for Jefferson's embargo, they in effect
recalled him by electing a successor two years ahead of time. Adams was then
also serving as Boylston professor of oratory and rhetoric at Harvard
(1806-1809). He had once more turned to the law when President Madison
appointed him as the first minister of the United States to Russia, where he
served from 1809 to 1814.
At the court of Alexander I, Adams again was diplomatic reporter
extraordinary of the great events of Europe, including Napoleon's invasion
of Russia and his subsequent retreat and downfall. Meanwhile the War of 1812
had broken out between Britain and the United States. After Alexander's
abortive attempts at mediation, Adams was called to the peace negotiations
at Ghent, where he was technically chief of the American mission. He next
served as minister of the United States to England from 1815 to 1817.
As a diplomat John Quincy Adams had made very few mistakes,
influenced many people, and made many friends for his country, including
particularly Czar Alexander I. His vast European experience made him a
vigorous supporter of Washington's policy of isolation from the ordinary
vicissitudes and the ordinary combinations and wars of European politics.
Secretary of State
President James Monroe recalled Adams from
England to become secretary of state in 1817. He held the office throughout
Monroe's two administrations, until 1825. As secretary, Adams, under
Monroe's direction and responsibility, pursued the policies and guiding
principles that he had practiced in Europe. More than any other man he
helped to crystallize and perfect the foundations of American foreign
policy, including the Monroe Doctrine, which, however, appropriately bears
the name of the president who assumed official responsibility for it and
proclaimed it to the world.
Adams' greatest diplomatic achievement as secretary of state was
undoubtedly the Transcontinental Treaty with Spain, signed on Feb. 22, 1819
(ratified Feb. 22, 1821). By this treaty Spain acknowledged East Florida and
West Florida to be a part of the United States and agreed to a frontier line
running from the Gulf of Mexico to the Rocky Mountains and thence along the
parallel of 42degrees to the Pacific Ocean. In this negotiation, Adams took
skillful advantage of Andrew Jackson's military incursions into Florida and
of Spain's embarrassment in the revolutions of her American colonies. Over
the opposition of Henry Clay, ambitious speaker of the House of
Representatives, Adams deferred recognition of the independence of the new
states of Spanish America until the Transcontinental Treaty was safely
ratified. Immediately afterward President Monroe recognized Colombia,
Mexico, Chile, the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, and later
Brazil and the Confederation of Central America. Peru remained to be
recognized by Adams as Monroe's successor. The idea of drawing the frontier
line through to the other ocean in the Spanish treaty was Adams' own
inspiration. It has been called "the greatest diplomatic victory ever
won by a single individual in the history of the United States."
At the same time Secretary Adams defended the northeastern frontier
against proposed British "rectifications" and held the line of
49degrees in the Oregon country. Except for an over contentious wrangle on
commercial reciprocity with the British West Indies, his term as secretary
of state, in the aftermath of Waterloo, was marked by unvarying successes,
including the Treaty of 1824 with Russia. He was perhaps the greatest
secretary of state in American history.
Presidency
John Quincy Adams may have been the greatest U.S. secretary of state, but
he was not one of the greatest presidents. He was really a minority
president, chosen by the House of Representatives in preference to Andrew
Jackson and William H. Crawford following the inconclusive one-party Election
of 1824. In the popular contest Jackson had received the greatest number of
votes both at the polls and in the state Electoral College, but lacked a
constitutional majority. Henry Clay, one of the four candidates in 1824,
threw his support to Adams in the House in February 1825, after secret
conferences between the two, thus electing Adams on the first ballot. The
supporters of Jackson and Crawford immediately cried "corrupt
bargain": Clay had put Adams into the White House in order to become
his secretary of state and successor. The judgment of historians is that
there was an implicit bargain but no corruption.
President Adams believed that liberty had already been won--at least
for white people--by the American Revolution and that this liberty was
guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. His policy was to exert
national power to make freedom more fruitful for the people. Accordingly he
called for strong national policies under executive leadership: the Bank of
the United States as an instrument of the national fiscal authority; a
national tariff to protect domestic industries; national administration of
the public lands for their methodical and controlled disposal and
settlement; national protection of the Indian tribes and lands against
encroachments by the states; a broad national program of internal physical
improvements--highways, canals, and railways; and national direction in the
field of education, the development of science, and geographical
discoveries. He preferred the word "national" to
"federal." His outlook anticipated by nearly a century the
"New Nationalism" of Theodore Roosevelt and (by a strange reversal
in Democratic Party policy) of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Adams as president was too far in advance of his times. The loose
democracy of the day wanted the least government possible. And the South
feared that his program of national power for internal improvements,
physical and moral, under a consolidated federal government might pave the
way for the abolition of slavery. He had no real party to back him up. The
opposition, with Andrew Jackson as its figurehead and "bargain and
corruption" as its battle cry, combined to defeat him for reelection in
1828.
Congressman
In November 1830, more than a year and a half after Adams left the White
House, the voters of the 12th (Plymouth) District of Massachusetts elected
him to Congress. He accepted the office of congressman eagerly, feeling
himself not a party man but, as ex-president, a representative of the whole
nation. As a member of Congress the elderly Adams displayed the most
spectacular phase of his lifelong career of public service. He preached a
strong nationalism against the states' rights and pro-slavery dialectics of
John C. Calhoun. Never an outright abolitionist, he considered himself
"bonded" by the Constitution and its political compromises to work
for universal emancipation, always within the framework of that instrument. Single-handed
he frustrated the Southern desire for Texas in 1836-1838. In 1843 he helped
defeat President John Tyler's treaty for the annexation of Texas, only to
see that republic annexed to the United States, by joint resolution of
Congress in 1845, after the election of James K. Polk over Henry Clay in
1844.
Adams tried in 1839 to introduce resolutions in Congress for
constitutional amendments so that no one could be born a slave in the United
States after 1845, but the "gag rule" prevented the discussion of
anything relating to slavery. "Old Man Eloquent," as Adams was
nicknamed, staunchly defended the right of petition and eventually overthrew
the gag in 1844. An abolitionist at heart but not in practice, he tried to
postpone the sectional issue over slavery until the North was strong enough
and sufficiently united in spirit and determination to preserve the Union
and abolish slavery if necessary by martial law.
The Adams Legacy
Personally John Quincy Adams was a man of gruff exterior and coolness of manner--given to ulcerous judgments of his political adversaries, but binding friends to himself with hoops of steel. He was, before Woodrow Wilson, the most illustrious example of the scholar in politics. During all the controversies over slavery, the tariff, Texas, and Mexico, he correctly divined the sentiments of his own constituents. His fellow citizens regularly elected him to Congress from 1830 on, and he died in the House of Representatives on Feb. 23, 1848: "This is the last of earth. I am content."
Of Adams' three sons, only one, the youngest, Charles Francis Adams, minister to Britain during Abraham Lincoln's presidency, survived him. Charles Francis Adams' four sons, including three famous historians (Charles Francis Adams, Henry Adams, Brooks Adams), carried on the traditions of the Adams family.
Recommended readings: (Click on the link to purchase)
|
Title: John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life || Author: Paul Nagel || ISDN: 0-67447-940-8 || Released: April 1999 |
| Too much of Nagel's book reads like a synopsis of irrelevant events and journeys that Adams describes in his diaries. The reader longs for more interpretation, less chronicling. Nagel has nevertheless written the best biography of Adams between two covers. Still, John Quincy Adams has now inspired more biographies than he perhaps warrants, and it's time for historians to give the subject a rest. |
 |
Title: John Quincy Adams || Author: Lynn Hudson Parsons || ISDN: 0-94561-259-1|| Released: March 1999 |
|
After reading this well written biography, I experienced the
sorrows, joys, and accomplishments in the life of one of our
country's greatest statesmen. |
 |
Title: Wants of a Man || Author: John Quincy Adams || ISDN: 1-55709-453-5 || Released: April 1999 |
| The felicitously written book is a difficult read but if read 2 or 3 times, will give you a unique introspective of the thoughts of this great man. |
|
Home
| Historical Events | Important People |
Important Places | Timeline
| Battles
Historical Viewpoints | Songs | Advertising | Contacts | Message Board | Chat
|
