John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)/biography

John Quincy Adams (, –, ) was a  , , and the sixth  (,  – , ). His party affiliations were, , , and later and. Adams was the son of, and. He is most famous as a diplomat involved in many international negotiations, and for formulating the. As president he proposed a grand program of modernization and educational advancement, but was unable to get it through Congress. Late in life, as a Congressman, he was a leading opponent of the, arguing that if a civil war ever broke out the president could abolish by using his war powers, a policy followed by  in the  of 1863.

Early life
Adams was born in, , in a part of town which eventually became. The, now part of , is open to the public, as is the nearby that marks the site from which Adams witnessed the  as a seven-year-old boy. He first learned of the Declaration of Independence from the letters his father wrote his mother from Philadelphia. Much of Adams' youth was spent overseas accompanying his father, who served as an American to  from 1778 until 1779 and to the  from 1780 until 1782. During this period, he acquired his early education at institutions such as the. For nearly two years, at the age of only 14, he accompanied on a mission to, to gain recognition of the new republic. He also spent time in, , and.

During these years overseas, Adams gained a mastery of and  and a familiarity with  and other European languages. After returning to America, he had become far more educated and well-travelled than most of his countrymen even twice his age. He entered and graduated in 1788. He was then admitted to the bar in 1791 and began practicing law in.

Early political career
appointed Adams as minister to the Netherlands from 1794 until 1796 and to Portugal in 1796. With George Washington's urging, his father appointed him minister to from 1797 until 1801. While serving abroad, he married, the daughter of an American merchant, in a ceremony at the church of , London.

Adams afterwards returned to Quincy where he lived in the (now a museum). He began his political career in 1802 when he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. Adams was an unsuccessful Federalist candidate for election to the in the same year. He was elected as a Federalist to the, serving from , , until , , when he broke with the Federalists, resigned from his Senate seat in March 1808, and became a Republican. Adams served as minister to from 1809 until 1814, chief negotiator of the U.S. commission for the  in 1814, and minister to the Court of St. James  from 1815 until 1817.

Secretary of State
Adams served as in the Cabinet of President  from 1817 until 1825, a tenure during which he was instrumental in the acquisition of. Typically, his views were concurrent with those espoused by Monroe. As secretary of state, he negotiated the and wrote the, which cautioned European nations against meddling in the affairs of the.

Election of 1824
Adams ran against four other candidates in the. His opponents included,  ,    and. After Crawford suffered a stroke there was no clear favorite. After the elections no one had a majority of either the electoral votes or the popular votes, although was the winner of a plurality of both. The decision went to the. The candidate with the lowest votes,, was dropped from consideration, and Clay gave his support to Adams. Adams won on the first ballot and was named president. Adams then named Clay Secretary of State to the angry complaints of, who alleged a and vowed to run again in 1828.

Presidency 1825–1829
Adams served as the sixth from, , to ,. He was the first President not to be able to claim his politics dated back to the Revolutionary period. John Quincy Adams took the Oath of Office on a book of laws, instead of the more traditional Bible.

Domestic Policies
During his term, he worked on developing the, consisting of a high tariff to support internal improvements such as road-building, and a national bank to encourage productive enterprise and form a national currency. In his first annual message to Congress, Adams presented an ambitious program for modernization that included roads, canals, a national university, an astronomical observatory, and other initiatives. The support for his proposals was limited, even from his own supporters. His critics accused him of unseemly arrogance because of his narrow victory. Most of his initiatives were opposed in Congress by 's supporters, who remained outraged over the 1824 election.

Nevertheless, some of his proposals were adopted, specifically the extension of the into  with surveys for its continuation west to ; the beginning of the ' the construction of the  and the  around the ; the connection of the  to the  in  and ; and the enlargement and rebuilding of the  in.

One of the issues which divided the administration was protective tariffs. was a supporter, but Adams's Vice President was an opponent. The position of Adams was unknown, because his constituency was divided. After Adams lost the control of Congress in 1827, the situation became more complicated. He also signed into law the highly unpopular (also known as the Tariff of Abominations), thereby compromising his chances of getting anything else done during his presidency.

He and Clay set up a new party, the, but it never took root in the states. In the elections of 1827 Adams and his supporters lost the control of Congress. Senator, a future president and follower of Jackson, became one of the leaders of the senate.

Much of Adams' political difficulties were due to his refusal, on principle, to replace members of his administration who supported Jackson (on the grounds that no one should be removed from office except for incompetence.) For example, his, , continued in office through the Adams administration, despite the fact that he was using his powers of patronage to curry favor with Jacksonites.

Adams defended his domestic agenda as simply continuing Monroe's policies. However, Adams did not address public works spending like Monroe did, and had a rationale for government intervention. What was most striking was that Adams addressed congress and asked them to ignore objections to parts of his program that provoked the most opposition of the constitution.

Foreign policies
Adams is regarded as one of the greatest diplomats in American history and during his tenure as he was one of the designers of the. But during his term as president, Adams achieved little of consequence in foreign affairs. A reason for this was the opposition he faced in Congress, where his rivals prevented him from succeeding.

Among the few diplomatic achievements of his administration were treaties of with a number of nations, including, , the , the ,  and. However, thanks to the successes of Adams' diplomacy during his previous eight years as Secretary of State, most of the foreign policy issues he would have faced had been resolved by the time he became President.



States admitted to the Union
None

Departure from Office
John Quincy Adams left office on March 4, 1829 after losing the election of 1828 to. Adams did not attend the inauguration of his successor. He was one of only three Presidents who chose not to attend their respective successor's inauguration, the others were his and.

Election of 1828
After the election of Adams in 1825, Jackson resigned from his senate seat. For four years he worked hard, with help from his supporters in Congress, to defeat Adams in the. The campaign was very much a personal one. Although neither candidate personally campaigned, their political followers organized many campaign events. Both candidates were rhetorically attacked in the press. This reached a low point when Jackson's wife,, was accused of bigamy. She died a few weeks after the elections and Jackson never forgave Adams for this.

In the end, Adams lost the elections in a landslide. He won exactly the same states that his father had won in the : the New England states, New Jersey, Delaware, and Georgia. Jackson won everything else except for New York, which gave 16 of its electoral votes to Adams.

Congressman
Rather than retire, he went on to win election as a National Republican and Whig to the, serving for seventeen years, from 1831 until his death. In Congress, he was chairman of the Committee on Manufactures (for the, , , , , and ), the Committee on Indian Affairs (for the ) and the Committee on Foreign Affairs (also for the 27th Congress). He became an important antislavery voice on congress. During the years 1836-37 Adams presented many petitions for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia and elsewhere to Congress. The prevented discussion of slavery from 1836 to 1844, but he frequently managed to evade it by parliamentary skill. In 1834 he unsuccessfully ran as the  candidate for, losing to. In 1841, Adams represented the Africans in the  and successfully argued that the Africans, who had seized control of a Spanish ship where they were being held as illegal slaves (as the international slave trade had been abolished, although slavery itself had not), should not be taken to  but should be considered free and have the option to remain within the U.S. or return home as free people.

Death
While preparing to address the House of Representatives on February 21, 1848, Adams collapsed, having suffered a. Two days later, on February 23, he died with his wife and children at his side in the Speaker's Room inside the in. His last words were reported to have been, "This is the last of earth. I am content." His interment was in the family burial ground at Quincy, and he was subsequently reinterred after his wife's death in a family crypt in the across the street. His tomb can be viewed today and his parents are also interred there.

Family


Adams's son also pursued a career in diplomacy and politics. In 1870 Charles Francis built the first memorial in the United States, to honor his father John Quincy Adams. The Stone Library includes over 14,000 books written in twelve languages. The library is located in the "Old House" at in.

John Quincy Adams and named one of their sons after George Washington, making Adams the only U.S. President to do so. An infant daughter, born in 1811, died of an illness while the family was in Russia.

The actress is a descendant of John Quincy Adams.

John Adams and John Quincy Adams were the first father and son to both serve as president. Each man served one term. President and President  are also father and son. Other Presidents had a family tie to a previous president. was the grandson of. and were second cousins. and were fifth cousins.

Miscellannea

 * Adams was one of the founders of, in Washington, D.C.
 * Adams was the second president to wear long pants instead of, which had been the fashion up to that time. James Madison was the first.[[Image:John Quincy Adams 1824.jpg|thumb|right|Adams posed for this photograph shortly before his death in 1848--almost twenty years after leaving the White House--when he was serving as a congressman from Massachusetts. He is the earliest president of whom a photograph exists. ]]
 * Though the story may be apocryphal, Adams is supposed to have been the first President to give an interview to a woman. Adams had repeatedly refused requests for an interview with, the first female professional journalist in the U.S., so she took a different approach to accomplish her goal. She learned that Adams liked to skinny-dip in the almost every morning around 5 a.m., so she went to the river, gathered his clothes, and sat on them until he answered all of her questions.
 * On another occasion, while Adams was in the Potomac River, a tramp stole the clothes he had left on the riverbank. Adams remained in the river for nearly an hour, until he saw a young boy walking along the river bank. He called to the boy to "Go up to the White House and ask Mrs. Adams to send down a new set of clothes for the President." Twenty minutes later, the boy returned with a servant from the White House, bearing a new set of clothes for Adams.
 * Adams was the first president to be involved in a railroad accident. He was a passenger on a train that derailed in the meadows near, on , . His coach was the one ahead of the first car to derail. He was uninjured and continued his journey to Washington the following day.
 * , and its county seat, are named after him, along with several
 * The is proposed in Washington, D.C. for John Adams and his family.
 * John Quincy Adams is one of only two presidents to publish verse in his lifetime (The other was ). Dermot MacMurrogh, an epic poem about 's conquest of in which he subtly associated the  with English aggression, was published in 1832. Poems of Religion and Society, a collection of, was published in 1848.
 * The "c" in Adams's middle name "Quincy" is properly pronounced with the z sound, not the s sound, just like the city of Quincy, Massachusetts, and Quincy Market in Boston (names derived from the same family).
 * He is the first of the 8 senators profiled in 's.
 * He was the first president to have his photograph taken, although not until many years after his presidency.
 * According to a study by psychologist Keith Simonton, Adams has the highest estimated IQ of any US president.
 * John Quincy Adams wrote a treatise against Islam.
 * John Quincy Adams was portrayed in the 1997 movie '' played by.