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.
He answered me and said, This present life is not the end where much glory doth abide; therefore have they prayed for the weak. 43. But the day of doom shall be the end of this time, and the beginning of the immortality for to come, wherein corruption is past 2. Esdras 7.42–43.
This passage of the second Apocryphal book of Esdras carries with it internal evidence of its composition since the advent of Christ.
The influenza, better denominated in the French language La grippe has recently become epidemic in this neigbourhood—and has severely exercised several members of my family— It has the last three days been gradually creeping upon me, and at 10 last night I went to bed with a hoarse voice, and a burning sore throat— About one this morning it had become so intense that I was compelled to request my wife to rise and get for me some hot balm tea which she did and sat up with me the whole night, to the imminent danger of her own health. The severity of the stricture upon the throat passed off before morning day-light, and I rose at half past five I rose much relieved but still hoarse, and with the paretytic shaking of the hands totally disabled for writing— I can yet read, and did read four chapters of the second book of Esdras, and took comfort from the verse which I have made out to extract from it at the top of this page— The hope of a future life is the only solace for the infirmities of age, and for all the ills that flesh is heir to, as I am to the condition of an aspen leaf—
I attended meeting as usual morning and afternoon at the Temple. Mr Lunt
preached in the forenoon from Galatians 5.6 [“]For in Jesus Christ
neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith
which worketh by love”— The whole sum of the Christian Religion is
contained in this text— Circumcision was a religious painful and bloody
operation upon the body of every male child first instituted by Abraham under the express command of God,
for himself and all his descendants but for which no reason was
assigned, except that of distinguish them from all the rest of mankind—
It was emblematic of nothing but submission against the cry of physical
nature itself to the will of God— It is practiced by the posterity of
Abraham to the present day— It was abolished not by express command of
Jesus Christ, but by the substitution of the rite of baptism in its
place, an emblem, of purification from the pollution of nature, and of
washing away every impurity from a body born in the image of God, and
bound in sympathy to all mankind and to hold a Faith working by love— In
the afternoon the Revd. Lemuel Capen
- Capen Rev
dLemuel - Degrand P. P. F.
of South Boston, preached from Romans 15.4. a panegyric upon the
Scriptures of the old Testament. Mr Capen
took tea with us, as also did Mr. Degrand who came out this
afternoon from Boston.