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.
r Shoemaker, a clerk in the
Post-Office; a man upwards of 60 years of age, who last evening between
5 and 6 O’Clock, went in to bathe with four other persons— That he was
drowned in full sight of them, and without a suspicion by them that he
was even in any danger— They had observed him struggling in the water,
but as he was an excellent swimmer had supposed he was merely diving;
until after coming out they found he was missing— They then commenced an
ineffectual search for him which was continued late into the night— The
man said to me that he had never seen a more distressed person 880than Mrs Shoemaker last Evening—
While the two mast boat was dropping down the stream and the other boat
was preparing to go out with the drag, I stripped and went in to the
river; I had been not more than ten minutes swimming when the drag boat
started, and they were not five minutes from the shore when the body
floated immediately opposite the rock; less than one hundred yards from
the shore, at the very edge of the channel and where there were could
not be seven foot deep of water— I returned immediately to the shore and
dressed— a rope was tied round one of the arms; and the boat remained at
the spot, till a blanket had been sent for, which was spread under the
tree; the boat then returned to the shore drawing the body through the
water, and it was lifted from the water and brought and laid upon the
blanket and covered up. The only part of the body which had the
appearance of stiffness was the arms, both of which were raised at the
shoulder joints and crooked towards each other at the elbows; as if they
had been fixed by a spasm at the very moment when they were to expand to
keep the head above water— There was a dark flush of settled blood over
the face, like one excessively heated, and a few drops of thin blood and
water issued from one ear— There was nothing terrible or offensive in
the sight; but I returned home musing in sympathy with the distressed
Lady; and enquiring uncertainly whether I ought to renounce altogether
my practice of swimming in the river— My conclusion was that I ought
not—deeming it in this climate indispensable to my health—so that
whatever danger there may be in the exercise, and that there is much
danger, this incident offers melancholy and cumulative proof—there would
be yet greater danger in abstaining from it, or in substituting any
other effective exercise in its place— We are and always must be in the
hands of God, and to him are indebted for every breath we draw.
- Read— Captain with
- Polk—
Barbour— S.W. has despatched the
Letters to Genl. Gaines and to Governor Troup of Georgia, interdicting the survey of the
Indian Lands— He returned me Troup’s last Letter with its enclosures;
and with a very decided opinion that I ought not to answer it— He
afterwards sent me back the two Letters of Wade Hampton and T.
Cooper. He proposed to write to T. P. Andrews, expressing disapprobation at his letter to
Crowell suspending him from
the Agency, because it contained an unnecessary censure upon the
proceedings of the Legislature of Georgia—which I agreed to, and said I
had already thought of mentioning to him— Mr
Barbour proposes to take another leave of absence, unable to endure the
heat of this place.
He will go to-morrow—
Captain Read came again and introduced a young Mr
Hartley, an Officer on the British establishment in
Canada; grandson to a
brother of David
Hartley the British Plenipotentiary at the Peace of 1783.
and Coll Hartley, Member of Parliament for
Berkshire, whom I saw in London in the winter of that same year.
Southard— S.N.T. came and
introduced to me, Mr King the Navy Agent at Norfolk, Virginia.
Hawley—Revd.
Mr came with Mr Allen,
Minister of the Episcopal Church at the Navy-Yard, who applied for the
appointment of his brother, a
graduate of the Middlebury College in Vermont, as a Chaplain to go out
in the frigate Brandywine.
The excessive heat which has continued many days was this day first shortly tempered by a thunder gust about the middle of the day, which lasted two or three hours, and then cleared off with a dead calm and the thermometer about 85—
I have never experienced such a Summer