John Quincy Adams’s (JQA) diary, which was inspired by his father John Adams (JA) and started as a travel journal, initiated a lifelong writing obsession. In 1779, twelve-year-old JQA made his second trip abroad to accompany his father’s diplomatic mission. While in Europe, he attended various schools and traveled to St. Petersburg as an interpreter during Francis Dana’s mission to Russia. He subsequently served as JA’s secretary at Paris during the final months before the Anglo-American Definitive Peace Treaty was signed in September 1783. Two years later, JQA returned to the US. After graduating from Harvard College in 1787, he moved to Newburyport to read law under Theophilus Parsons and in 1790 he established a legal practice in Boston. JQA’s skill as a writer brought him public acclaim, and in 1794 President George Washington nominated him as US minister resident to the Netherlands.
John Quincy Adams (JQA) entered diplomatic service in September 1794 as US minister resident to the Netherlands. He married Louisa Catherine Johnson (LCA) in July 1797 after a fourteen-month engagement, and their three sons were born in this period. During his father John Adams’s (JA) presidency they moved to Berlin where, as US minister plenipotentiary, JQA signed a new Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce. JQA returned to the US in 1801 and entered politics, elected first to the Massachusetts senate in 1802 and then to the US Senate in 1803. His contentious relationship with fellow Federalist members over his support of some Democratic-Republican policies led to his removal from office. In May 1808 the Federalist-controlled Massachusetts legislature voted to replace him at the end of his term, prompting JQA’s resignation in June. Between 1806 and 1809 he also served as the first Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.
John Quincy Adams (JQA) returned to diplomatic service in August 1809 as the US’s first minister plenipotentiary to Russia. In St. Petersburg JQA was well-liked by Emperor Alexander I and closely followed the battles of the Napoleonic Wars then raging across Europe. When the US declared war on Great Britain in 1812, Adams watched from afar as the conflict dragged on for two years. In April 1814, he traveled to Ghent, Belgium, as part of the US delegation to negotiate an end to the war with England; the Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve. Subsequently appointed US minister to the Court of St. James’s in May 1815, JQA served in London for the next two years.
John Quincy Adams (JQA) served as the US secretary of state during James Monroe’s presidency. Adams’s duties included organizing and responding to all State Department correspondence and negotiating agreements beneficial to the US. His achievements as secretary of state include the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, which established the US border with Canada along the 49th parallel, and the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 (Transcontinental Treaty), which resulted in the US acquisition of Florida. JQA also formulated the policy that became known as the Monroe Doctrine, in which the US called for European non-intervention in the western hemisphere, specifically in the affairs of newly independent Latin American nations. As Monroe’s presidency came to an end, JQA was among the top candidates in the 1824 presidential election. When no candidate earned the necessary majority, the House of Representatives decided the election in JQA’s favor in February 1825.
John Quincy Adams (JQA) was inaugurated as the sixth president of the US on 4 March 1825 and began his administration with an ambitious agenda of improvements for American society. His presidency was embattled. Supporters of Andrew Jackson, who believed their candidate had unfairly lost the 1824 election, worked ceaselessly to foil JQA’s plans. Domestically, JQA refused to replace civil servants with partisan supporters, and his administration became involved in disputes between the Creek Nation and the state of Georgia. JQA’s foreign policy also suffered, as partisan bickering in Congress failed to provide timely funding for US delegates to attend the 1826 Congress of Panama. Political mudslinging in advance of the 1828 presidential election was particularly fierce, and by mid-1827 JQA knew he would not be reelected.
In 1831 John Quincy Adams (JQA) became the only former president to subsequently serve in the US House of Representatives. As the chairman of the House Committee on Manufactures, he helped compose the compromise tariff bill of 1832. He traveled to Philadelphia as part of a committee that investigated the Bank of the United States, drafting a minority report in support of rechartering the bank after disagreeing with the committee’s majority report. JQA regularly presented the antislavery petitions he received from across the country, and he vehemently opposed the passage of the Gag Rule in 1836 that prevented House discussion of petitions related to slavery. He opposed the annexation of Texas, and in 1838 he delivered a marathon speech condemning the evils of slavery. JQA also chaired the committee that oversaw the bequest of James Smithson, which was used to establish the Smithsonian Institution.
During his final years of service in the US House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams (JQA) continued to oppose the Gag Rule that prevented House discussion of petitions related to slavery. In 1839 he joined the defense team for the Africans who revolted aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad. The Supreme Court declared the Amistad Africans free on 9 March 1841 after JQA delivered oral arguments in their favor. In 1842 JQA faced a censure hearing and ably defended himself against charges from southern congressmen. He introduced a successful resolution that finally led to the repeal of the Gag Rule in 1844. JQA voted against both the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the US declaration of war with Mexico in 1846. He collapsed on the floor of the House on 21 February 1848 and died two days later.
- Jackson Francis
- Loring Ellis Gray
- Bancroft George
- Smith
- Smith
- Lunt Rev
d.W. P - M
rsLunt - Greenleaf E. Price
The weight of years presses me down with constantly growing aggravation,
and trifling causes of excitement multiply upon me, which in the prime
of life I should not even have felt— Worn out with fatigue by two
successive almost sleepless Nights, I took to my bed last Evening before
the stroke of the Curfew bell— There was then a feeble radiation of
Northern light— About midnight I awoke and looking out at the Eastern
window in front of my bed saw a light surpassing that of a full moon,
and which I took first for the morning dawn within a quarter of an hour
of the Sun’s rising— But I slept again till a quarter past three, when
Sirius, was half an hour risen— I brought out Bode’s Uranographia from my closet, laid him on my bed
and found the position of Procyon which I had forgotten— Renewed also my
acquaintance with Betelgeuse, Bellatrix and Rigel, the three brightest
stars of Orion— Then dressed—visited my plantations; finished my Letter
to William Ladd, and made up some
documents for the Post-Office— Charles went to Boston, and returned home to dine— His
house in Boston was broken open, and rifled on Tuesday Night, as that of
Edward Miller had been a few
Nights before— The same treatment has been experienced by about twenty
houses within the last Month and the City authorities slumber over it as
quietly as if no such thing had happened— Soon after dinner I had visits
from Mr
Francis Jackson and Mr Ellis Gray Loring, whose
special object was to have a Portrait of me taken, for a company of
Gentlemen in Boston—and they requested me to sit for that purpose, to a
young promising Portrait Painter from New-York named Page; to which I consented— Mr Loring is to give me notice of the time
and place, which is proposed to be next week at some house in Boston—
They were succeeded by Mr Bancroft the Collector of
the Customs at Boston, with two young men by the name
of Smith, who came to take me by storm for a Lecture to
the Lyceum.— Bancroft always an egregious flatterer so beplastered me
with praise, and the intense desire there was to see and hear me in
Boston, that I scarcely knew how either to keep my temper, or to resist
his importunities. I finally made a sort of conditional promise to
attend a meeting of the Lyceum, some day in October— I understand this
anxious desire to see and hear me, is something like the Passion of a
crowd, to see an Execution— There is no good will to me in any party at
Boston— I
602I am obnoxious to them all; and to the last gasp
of my life am doomed to hold my course in opposition to them all— These
gentlemen all took tea here. And we had evening visits from Mr and
Mrs Lunt and from E. Price Greenleaf— Mrs
Smith and Mary dined
with Abby, and they all spent
the Evening at Mrs
T. B. Adams’s— My tongue, mouth and throat continue
ulcerated, and my taste nearly gone—