John Quincy Adams

If you saw the mini-series on John Adams you’ll recall that a young John Quincy Adams (age 7) watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from a distance with his mother.  He is the first president not considered one of the Founding Fathers.  Imagine trying to live up the expectations of that Greatest Generation!  His mother was very strict with her children, but especially with Q since he was the oldest son.  Q spent a lot of his youth traveling throughout Europe.  First for 3 years traveling with his father in England and the Netherlands (age 11-14) and then serving as an aide to Francis Dana for almost 3 years on a mission to Russia to gain recognition of the United States.  He also spent time in Denmark, Finland and Sweden.  During these years he mastered French and Dutch and picked up some German.

Many of our presidents had very successful careers prior to achieving the highest elected office in the US.  John Quincy Adams would have to be on this list, with the most international experience of virtually any president.   During his career in international diplomacy, he was the US Minster (Ambassador) to 4 different countries:

• The Netherlands (1794 – 1797), appointed by George Washington
• Prussia (1797 – 1801) appointed by John Adams
• Russia (1809 – 1814) appointed by James Madison
• The United Kingdom (1814 – 1817) appointed by James Madison

He was recalled from his post in Russia to serve as the chief American negotiator for the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812.  During the time that Jefferson was president, Q served one term as a senator from Massachusetts.  At that time, there were pretty bad feelings between Jefferson and John Adams (the father), so Jefferson would not appoint the son to any official post.

Monroe appointed Q to the post of Secretary of State.  It was during this time that the Monroe Doctrine was written (actually just a portion of the State of the Union address).  There is some disagreement over whether Q or Monroe wrote the policy.  While he was Secretary of State, he negotiated the Treaty of Florida, which resolved some border disputes with Spain left over from the Louisiana Purchase, and turned over Florida to the United States.

The Presidential election of 1824 was a real doozy.  Andrew Jackson won a plurality in both the popular vote and the electoral college.  He did not, however, have enough electoral votes to win outright.  Per the Constitution, the contest was thrown into the House of Representatives to be decided (which has only happened twice; 1800 and 1824).  It was a 4 man race; Adams, Jackson, William Crawford and Henry Clay.  The rule stated that the top 3 candidates were eligible at this point.  William Crawford had a stroke during the campaign, rendering him not fit for service.  Henry Clay came in 4th place, thus not being considered.  Clay really did not like Jackson so he threw his support behind Adams and gave Adams the victory.  Shortly thereafter Adams appointed Clay Secretary of State, a deal that Jackson called a “corrupt bargain”.  The uproar over the appointment led Clay to believe that it put a permanent stain on his political career.

By most accounts, John Quincy Adams’ presidency was unremarkable.  He was ineffective due in part to the way that he came to office.  Q pushed for increased federal funding for infrastructure improvements for roads and canals.  A federal observatory was one of the improvements that he championed to no avail (it would be 20 years before a national observatory would be built).  The congress did pass the Tariff of 1828 (or Tariff of Abominations as it was called).  It increased tariffs that he supported, but the Jacksonians amended the bill to include higher taxes on imported raw materials as well (thinking there was no way it would pass).  It did but the bill was very unpopular, especially in South Carolina.

He lost in a landslide to Andrew Jackson in 1828 in one of the ugliest elections  in American history.  Jackson believed that the personal attacks on his wife, Rachel, led to her premature death before he took office.

In 1830, Q won a seat in the House of Representatives from Boston.  During his time in the House he earned the nickname “Old Man Eloquent” for his passionate oratory.  There are two things that stand out during his time in the House; the Amistad case and the repeal of the gag rule.  The Amistad case (as portrayed in the movie by Anthony Hopkins) involved a slave uprising on a ship.  The slaves were then tricked into sailing to New York instead of back to Africa.  Their case made it all of the way to the US Supreme Court where Q. served as a codefendant for the slaves.  His closing argument came down to the fact that the United States by that time had outlawed the international slave trade (even though slavery was still legal) and that the slaves should be set free instead of returned to Spain. He won the case.

The second item involved the gag rule, the rule in place from 1836 – 1844 and barring any discussion of slavery on the House floor.  The House (primarily the Southern contingency) voted to eject him for high treason after he read a petition calling for breaking up the union on the grounds that federal money was being used to support slavery.  He successfully defended himself in the judicial committee.

Q also opposed the Mexican War and in 1848 rose in the House to give a speech opposed to presenting special awards to generals who had fought in that war.  He collapsed (probably due to a stroke) and died in the office of the Speaker of the House in the Capitol building.  This term of Congress also saw a young freshman congressman from Illinois who only served one term, Abraham Lincoln  So in his lifetime, he saw the birth of his nation and met the man who would become president during its greatest crisis.

Try these out the next time you’re at a party:

• Adams became the first President to win without winning the popular vote.  It has only happened 4 times so far: John Q. Adams (1824), Hayes (1876), B. Harrison (1888) and George W. Bush(2000).
• As president, John Quincy Adams would often skinny dip in the Potomac.  One morning, a reporter named Anne Royal took his clothes and wouldn’t give them back until he promised her an interview, which of course he did.
• He was the first president with a middle name.  It was not a common practice to give people middle names in the US until the mid 1800’s.
• Until Martin van Buren failed to be reelected in 1840, J. Q. Adams and his father were the only two presidents not elected to two terms.
• He was the first of 8 future or former US Presidents to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court (J.Q. Adams, Polk, Lincoln, Garfield, Cleveland, Harrison, Taft, Nixon).
• Only former president to serve in the House of Representatives after being president.  He was elected to 9 terms, serving 17 years and dying in the Capital building.
• His wife, Louisa Catherine Johnson, is the only foreign-born first lady.  Her father was an American living in England.
• In 1779 Adams began a diary that he kept until just before he died in 1848.
• When he showed up at the gates of Berlin for his post as minister to Prussia, the guard would not let him through the gates because he had never heard of the United States.
• After his death, his son Charles Francis Adams had the first presidential memorial library built to hold his father’s 14,000 books.  The library is located in Quincy outside Boston.  In Q’s will, he specified that a fireproof structure be built to house his books and papers.