John Quincy Adams was the first son of a former chief executive to also be elected president. Like John Adams, his father and the second U.S. president, John Quincy Adams served only one term and was neither a popular nor an effective chief executive.
Background
Born on July 11, 1767, to John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams (née Smith) in a part of Braintree, Massachusetts that is now Quincy. His family ancestry stretched back several generations in New England. Adams was the second child born to John Adams. Adams’s early childhood was spent between homes In Boston and Braintree, where the Quincy clan owned a large seaside estate called Mount Wollaston, which later inherited. The parcel, in the family since 1633, had originally been known as Merrie Mount and was Setded by fun-loving dissidents who were a thorn in the Slde of the Puritan establishment. The colonial city of Boston, where John Adams practiced law, was a thriving and increasingly rebellious port town at the start of the American Revolution in 1775, when John Quincy Adams was seven. In 1778, when Adams was eleven years old, his father was named the U.S. minister to France, and took his son along with him to Paris. On a return trip to Europe, the elder Adams again served as a diplomat and again took his son. During this time, John Quincy studied at Holland’s University of Leyden, although he was not yet fourteen. Later that year, Francis Dana, the first American envoy to Russia, requested that the teenager serve as his secretary, and he spent the next fourteen months at St. Petersburg.
Education
John Quincy Adams did not attend school, but was tutored by his cousin James Thax and his father's law clerk, Nathan Rice. Also he was educated in Paris and Amsterdam, studying fencing, music, dance, and art, along with the classics, and by the time he went back to America at the age of eighteen, he spoke French, Latin, Greek, and Dutch fluently, and he could carry on a conversation in Spanish as well.
Adams failed his first oral entrance examination to Harvard College. But when he graduated from Harvard in 1787, second in his class, he was class orator—the most skilled public speaker among his fellow graduates also he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
Career
After graduating from Harvard College, he became a lawyer. At age 26 he was appointed Minister to the Netherlands, then promoted to the Berlin Legation. In 1802 he was elected to the United States Senate. Six years later President Madison appointed him Minister to Russia.
Serving under President Monroe, Adams was one of America's great Secretaries of State, arranging with England for the joint occupation of the Oregon country, obtaining from Spain the cession of the Floridas, and formulating with the President the Monroe Doctrine.
In the political tradition of the early 19th century, Adams as Secretary of State was considered the political heir to the Presidency. But the old ways of choosing a President were giving way in 1824 before the clamor for a popular choice.
Within the one and only party--the Republican--sectionalism and factionalism were developing, and each section put up its own candidate for the Presidency. Adams, the candidate of the North, fell behind Gen. Andrew Jackson in both popular and electoral votes, but received more than William H. Crawford and Henry Clay. Since no candidate had a majority of electoral votes, the election was decided among the top three by the House of Representatives. Clay, who favored a program similar to that of Adams, threw his crucial support in the House to the New Englander.
Upon becoming President, Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State. Jackson and his angry followers charged that a "corrupt bargain" had taken place and immediately began their campaign to wrest the Presidency from Adams in 1828.
Well aware that he would face hostility in Congress, Adams nevertheless proclaimed in his first Annual Message a spectacular national program. He proposed that the Federal Government bring the sections together with a network of highways and canals, and that it develop and conserve the public domain, using funds from the sale of public lands. In 1828, he broke ground for the 185-mile C & 0 Canal.
Adams also urged the United States to take a lead in the development of the arts and sciences through the establishment of a national university, the financing of scientific expeditions, and the erection of an observatory. His critics declared such measures transcended constitutional limitations.
The campaign of 1828, in which his Jacksonian opponents charged him with corruption and public plunder, was an ordeal Adams did not easily bear. After his defeat he returned to Massachusetts, expecting to spend the remainder of his life enjoying his farm and his books.
Unexpectedly, in 1830, the Plymouth district elected him to the House of Representatives, and there for the remainder of his life he served as a powerful leader. Above all, he fought against circumscription of civil liberties.
In 1836 southern Congressmen passed a "gag rule" providing that the House automatically table petitions against slavery. Adams tirelessly fought the rule for eight years until finally he obtained its repeal.
In 1848, he collapsed on the floor of the House from a stroke and was carried to the Speaker's Room, where two days later he died. He was buried--as were his father, mother, and wife--at First Parish Church in Quincy. To the end, "Old Man Eloquent" had fought for what he considered right.
Politics
Political affiliations:
- Federalist (Before 1808)
- Democratic-Republican (1808–1830)
- National Republican (1830–1834)
- Anti-Masonic (1834–1838)
Views
Adams' devotion to classical rhetoric shaped his response to public issues. He remained inspired by classical rhetorical ideals long after the neo-classicalism and deferential politics of the founding generation had been eclipsed by the commercial ethos and mass democracy of the Jacksonian Era. Many of Adams' idiosyncratic positions were rooted in his abiding devotion to the Ciceronian ideal of the citizen-orator "speaking well" to promote the welfare of the polis. Adams was influenced by the classical republican ideal of civic eloquence espoused by British philosopher David Hume. Adams adapted these classical republican ideals of public oratory to America, viewing the multilevel political structure as ripe for "the renaissance of Demosthenic eloquence."
Quotations:
In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.
Membership
Whig
,
United States
1838 - 1848
Connections
John Quincy Adams and Louisa Catherine Adams had three sons and a daughter. Their daughter, Louisa, was born in 1811 but died in 1812 while the family was in Russia. They named their first son George Washington Adams (1801–1829) after the first president. Both George and their second son, John (1803–1834), led troubled lives and died in early adulthood.(George committed suicide and John was expelled from Harvard before his 1823 graduation.). Adams' youngest son, Charles Francis Adams (who named his own son John Quincy), also pursued a career in diplomacy and politics.