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.
- Leman Daniel
- M
rsLeman - Adams Isaac Hull
- Elizabeth C. Adams
- Copeland Samuel
Charles went to Boston, and
returned to dine. Mr and Mrs.
Leman were here this morning before 7 O’Clock; and they
breakfasted with us— Mr Leman is 70 years of
age and I perceived he was labouring under great agitation— He had taken
from Mr
Curtis and Mrs Alicia Boylston, a Lease of
a lot of land in Charlestown, for five years to expire in Novr. 1844. upon which he has erected a
building to serve at once for a dwelling house and a Carpenter’s shop.
But he gave me a mortgage of the house as security for the timber and
planks of which it was built, and now the mortgagees, are making
demonstrations and preparations for removing the house, and he is in
fear of being turned out of house and home— He has flattered himself
with the hope that the house having become a fixture to the soil was
real estate and could not be removed without previous process of law;
and I countenanced him at first with in that opinion. but recollecting
afterwards that a Statute of the Commonwealth gives to the tradesmen
working on a building, a lien upon the materials of which it is built, I
feared he was leaning upon a broken reed, and advised him to consult
with Mr Curtis, and Mr A. C.
Spooner—my Son’s associate in the office. N. 23. Court
Street to devise some means of extricating him from his perplexity—
After Breakfast he wandered with me round the garden and Nursery and
took sundry twigs of trees for keepsakes; and took leave My Son gave me
a check on the Merchants Bank for 700 dollars, which I deposited in the
Quincy Stone bank here, and I settled 2 bills of Samuel Copeland— Isaac Hull Adams and his sister Elizabeth were here— There was a
Letter from Mrs Charles F. Adams to her son Henry, from Utica; doubtful whether she
would leave that city as she had intended yesterday.— I received also a
Letter from C. Oscanyan
dated 31. May at Constantinople. He is a native of that city; whence, I
know not how, he came to this Country; resided here several years, and
married an American woman in
New-York— The object of the Letter is to solicit the appointment of
Dragoman to the American Legation at the Ottoman Porte— A Sinecure
vacated by the decease some months since of Commodore David Porter— Oscanyan was an acquaintance of
some of the younger members of my family, and used to visit occasionally
at my house, but he is sadly out of his reckoning in applying to me for
influence to obtain for him a diplomatic appointment— We had this day
two or three thunder showers so that I was much confined to the house,
and the contrast between the perpetual motion, the ever gathering crowds
of people—the greetings and salutations, and huzzas of the multitudes,
with the rapid travelling alternately by Stage, Steamer and railway, and
the dark and sullen quietude of my own house thus confuses me and keeps
an unseizable