John Quincy Adams Read online

  Table of Contents

  BOOKS BY HARLOW GILES UNGER

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Chronology

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1 - A First Son for a Founding Father

  CHAPTER 2 - The Seeds of Statesmanship

  CHAPTER 3 - The Land of Lovely Dames

  CHAPTER 4 - “He Grows . . . Very Fat ”

  CHAPTER 5 - Never Was a Father More Satisfied

  CHAPTER 6 - A Free, Independent, and Powerful Nation

  CHAPTER 7 - A Profile in Courage

  CHAPTER 8 - Diplomatic Exile

  CHAPTER 9 - Restoring Peace to the World

  CHAPTER 10 - Stepladder to the Presidency

  CHAPTER 11 - The Great and Foul Stain

  CHAPTER 12 - The End of the Beginning

  CHAPTER 13 - A New Beginning

  CHAPTER 14 - Freedom Is the Prize

  Notes

  Bibliography and Research Resources

  Index

  Copyright Page

  BOOKS BY HARLOW GILES UNGER

  American Tempest

  Improbable Patriot

  Lion of Liberty

  Last Founding Father

  The Unexpected George Washington

  Lafayette

  John Hancock

  Noah Webster

  America’s Second Revolution

  The French War Against America

  Who but shall learn that freedom is the prize

  That nature’s God commands the slave to rise,

  Roll, years of promise, rapidly roll round,

  Till not a slave shall on this earth be found.

  —JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 1827.1

  Acknowledgments

  My deepest thanks to Sara Georgini, an assistant editor of The Adams Papers, at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, for vetting the finished manuscript of this book. Her encyclopedic knowledge of the life and times of the Adams family saved me weeks, probably months, of research and checking. My thanks, too, to Kelly Cobble, curator, and Patty Smith, museum technician, at the Adams National Historical Park, Quincy, Massachusetts, for their gracious and most generous help in providing illustrations for this book. Also very helpful in obtaining illustrations were Richard Sorenson of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Jessica Blesso, of the Library of Congress duplication services; and Anna J. Cook, assistant reference librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

  I know of no words that can express my gratitude to all the great folks at Da Capo Press and the Perseus Books Group, which published this book—the fourth they’ve published with my byline. If this were a newspaper or magazine, all their names would appear on a masthead. I have no idea why book publishers don’t print mastheads in books, but, to try to thank those responsible for the publication and sale of this volume, I am breaking with tradition and not only displaying a masthead but dedicating this book to all the people listed.

  Da Capo Press

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  John Radziewicz, Publisher, Da Capo Press

  Robert Pigeon, Executive Editor

  Lissa Warren, Vice President, Director of Publicity

  Kevin Hanover, Vice President, Director of Marketing

  Sean Maher, Marketing Manager

  Jonathan Crowe, Editor

  Cisca Schreefel, Project Editor

  Trish Wilkinson, Designer

  Jennifer Kelland, Copy Editor

  Cathy Armer, Proofreader

  Marie Maes, Indexer

  My most sincere thanks to you all and to the entire sales team of the Perseus Books Group.

  NOTE: Spellings, punctuation, and grammar in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century letters, manuscripts, and publications cited in this book have, where appropriate, been modernized without my knowingly altering the intent of the original author. Readers may find the original spellings in the works cited in the notes.

  Chronology

  July 11, 1767—John Quincy Adams (JQA) born in Braintree (later renamed Quincy), Massachusetts, the first son of John and Abigail Adams.

  1775—Sees Battle of Bunker’s Hill from hillside near home across Boston Bay.

  1778—Sails for France with father, the emissary of Congress seeking French financial aid for the Revolutionary War.

  1779–1781—Attends school in Paris, then the University of Leyden.

  1781—Goes to St. Petersburg as secretary for American minister Francis Dana at the Russian court.

  1783—Rejoins father in The Hague, then Paris; resumes studies.

  1785–1787—Returns to the United States; earns degree from Harvard College.

  1787–1790—Studies law; admitted to Massachusetts Bar.

  1791–1793—Practices law in Boston; publishes newspaper articles assailing French Revolution and defending Washington policy of neutrality.

  1794—Appointed U.S. minister to Holland by President George Washington; hones skills as a diplomat and undercover observer of political trends.

  1797—John Adams elected second President of the United States; JQA appointed minister to Prussia; marries Louisa Catherine Johnson.

  1800—Father loses bid for reelection and recalls son from Prussia; JQA’s first child, George Washington Adams, born; resumes law practice.

  1802—Federalists elect JQA to state senate.

  1803—Elected to U.S. Senate; second son, John Adams II, born.

  1804–1808—Abandons Federalist Party; votes as independent representative of “the whole nation”; votes for Louisiana Purchase; third son, Charles Francis, born in 1807; Federalists force him to resign from Senate.

  1809—President James Madison appoints him minister to Russia.

  1811—Refuses appointment to U.S. Supreme Court.

  1813—Appointed head of commission to negotiate end to War of 1812.

  1817—President James Monroe appoints him secretary of state.

  1818—Negotiates historic treaty with Britain, fixing northern boundaries with Canada; declares support for Latin American revolutions against Spain; mother, Abigail Adams, dies.

  1819—Negotiates U.S. acquisition of East and West Florida from Spain; extension of western U.S. border to Pacific Ocean.

  1820—Missouri Compromise; embraces abolition.

  1823—Rejects military alliance with Britain; writes key passage of Monroe Doctrine.

  1824—Runs in presidential election; Electoral College vote is inconclusive.

  1825—House of Representatives elects him sixth President of the United States after Henry Clay shifts votes and is named secretary of state; Andrew Jackson charges “corrupt bargain.”

  1826—John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both die on July 4.

  1828—Loses presidential election to Jackson, after four years of congressional obstructionism.

  1829—Firstborn son, George Washington Adams, dies.

  1830—Massachusetts voters elect him to House of Representatives; rejects party allegiance; renews pledge to represent “the whole nation.”

  1831—Presents petitions from Pennsylvania Quakers for abolition of slavery; debates over tariffs.

  1832—Begins struggle against nullification; snubs Harvard ceremony for Jackson.

  1834—Supports Jackson demands for French compensation; middle son, John Adams II, dies.

  1835–1836—Presents petitions for abolition in Washington, DC; guards Smithson bequest for national scientific institution; leads abolition movement in Congress; House passes Gag Rule to stifle abolition petitions; attacks Gag Rule as unconstitutional.

  1839—House turns to JQA to organize committees.

  1841—Wins Supreme Court decision freeing bla
ck prisoners of the Amistad; becomes first president ever to be photographed.

  1842—Momentous House speech provides basis for Emancipation Proclamation; southern House members charge him with treason and demand censure; wins ban on dueling in Washington, DC.

  1843—Leads unsuccessful struggle to prevent annexation of Texas; promotes construction of astronomical observatories and expanded scientific studies.

  1844—Defeats Gag Rule.

  1846—Suffers stroke; makes startling recovery and returns to House.

  February 23, 1848—Dies in House of Representatives.

  Introduction

  He served under Washington and with Lincoln; he lived with Ben Franklin, lunched with Lafayette, Jefferson, and Wellington; he walked with Russia’s czar and talked with Britain’s king; he dined with Dickens, taught at Harvard, and was American minister to six European countries. He negotiated the peace that ended the War of 1812, freed the African prisoners on the slave ship Amistad, served sixteen years in the House of Representatives, restored free speech in Congress, led the antislavery movement . . .

  . . . and . . .

  He was sixth President of the United States.

  John Quincy Adams was all of these things—and more.

  A towering figure in the formative years of the United States, John Quincy Adams was the only son of a Founding Father and President to become President himself, and he was the first President to serve in Congress after his presidency. The oldest son of John and Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams seemed destined for greatness from birth. His mother’s Quincy forebears had stormed ashore in the Norman landings at Hastings in 1066 and rode to Runnymede in 1215 to force King John to sign the Magna Carta. His father not only served as the nation’s first vice president and second President but helped draft the Declaration of Independence, enlisted George Washington to lead the Continental Army, secured the foreign aid that won the Revolution, and drafted nine of thirteen state constitutions after independence.

  Pushed by his parents to climb the heights of their ambitions for him, John Quincy Adams surpassed their expectations—not, ironically, as President of the United States but as American ambassador to six European nations, a fearless secretary of state, a powerful voice before the Supreme Court, a fighting senator and congressman, and America’s first champion of human rights and foe of injustice. He served the American people for two-thirds of a century under ten Presidents—besides himself.

  Sent to Europe by President James Madison, John Quincy Adams negotiated the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. Later, as President James Monroe’s secretary of state, he engineered the seizure and annexation of Florida and wrote the core provision of the Monroe Doctrine ending foreign colonization in the Americas. An eloquent lawyer, he argued brilliantly before the Supreme Court to prevent Congress from criminalizing political dissent. In another case before the high court, he won freedom for kidnapped Africans on the slave ship Amistad, saving them from a life of bondage. A strong supporter of scientific advances, he was the first American President to have his face and figure impressed for posterity by a startling new process called photography.

  As an independent congressman, John Quincy Adams scorned party affiliations, helped found the Smithsonian Institution, defeated state efforts to nullify federal laws, and forced the House of Representatives to restore free speech and citizens’ right to petition Congress. During his sixteen years in the House, he was argumentative and politically unpredictable but consistent in his fierce and constant defense of justice, human rights, and the individual liberties that his father and other Founding Fathers had fought for and won in the American Revolution. With support from Illinois freshman congressman Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams forced the House of Representatives to repeal the so-called Gag Rule that banned debate over slavery. He then stunned Congress—and the nation—by demanding that Congress extend constitutional liberties to Americans of African descent by abolishing slavery.

  A witness to sixty-five years of critical American history, John Quincy Adams bequeathed to the nation one of its most important literary and historic treasures—his diary. Started when he was only ten, his eyewitness account remains the most complete, personal, day-to-day record of events and life in the New World and Old, from the 1770s to the 1840s—14,000 pages in all, dating from the eve of the Revolutionary War to the eve of the Civil War. A sweeping panorama of American history from the Washington era to the Lincoln era, the story of John Quincy Adams follows one of the greatest, yet least known, figures of the early republic, beginning with a boy’s-eye view of the slaughter on Bunker’s Hill and a precocious teenager’s dinner conversations with Franklin, Jefferson, Lafayette, and other eighteenth-century luminaries. From age ten to his late seventies, Adams describes his adventures crossing the Atlantic through storms and British cannon fire; his travels across Europe; his life as a Harvard student and professor; his early romances; his marriage and warm family life; and his contacts with an incredible number of giants in American and European history: John Hancock, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, the Marquis de Lafayette, James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Napoléon, the Duke of Wellington, Czar Alexander I, King George III, and many others—including his own illustrious father and mother, John and Abigail Adams. His diary reveals the surprising twists in negotiations that ended the War of 1812; the vicious, behind-the-scenes machinations of the “barbarian” Andrew Jackson to undermine the John Quincy Adams presidency; and his tragic loss of two beloved brothers, two sons, and a cherished infant daughter.

  And near the end of his life, John Quincy Adams risked death to lead the antislavery movement in the House of Representatives. With a roar that still echoes under the Capitol dome, he demanded passage of the first federal laws to abolish slavery in the United States. He died on the floor of the House of Representatives, fighting for the rights of man.

  John Quincy Adams was one of the most courageous figures in the history of American government, ranking first among the nine great Americans whom John F. Kennedy singled out in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Profiles in Courage. He will almost certainly rank first in the minds of readers of the pages that follow.

  CHAPTER 1

  A First Son for a Founding Father

  “Mr. Adams!” the old lady shrieked. “You’re embarking under very threatening signs. The heavens frown, the clouds roll, the winds howl, the waves of the sea roar upon the beach.”1

  Ten-year-old John Quincy Adams looked up at his father, who nodded to the lady, smiled and excused himself, then whispered reassurances in his son’s ear: the woman, was “a good lady . . . an Adams with very delicate health . . . much afflicted with hysterical complaints . . . often a little disarranged in her imagination.”2 With that, father, son, and their servant boarded the barge and bounded over the angry waters toward the twenty-four-gun frigate Boston that waited in the bay to take them across the Atlantic to France. All but echoing the lady’s warning, the waves lapped the sides of the barge—slapping passenger faces, stinging John Quincy’s eyes with salty spray, and filling him with fear of impending disaster at sea.

  Several days later, the captain of the Boston confirmed the boy’s fear—shouting to crewmen and pointing to the horizon: three British navy frigates had climbed into view. Heeling over with sails full, the Boston fled and lost sight of two ships, but the third stayed in sight, pursuing the entire day, night, and all next day, intent on capturing the American ship and its famous passenger.

  “Our powder, cartridges and balls were placed by the guns,” John Adams recalled, “and everything made ready to begin the action.”3 As night fell, the enemy “was gaining on us very fast,” and John Quincy knew that if the British captured them, his father faced summary hanging from the yardarm, while the boy himself faced impressment and a life of servitude in the British navy.

  Nightfall only added to their danger as winds picked up and swelled into a hurricane. The Adams
es went below to their cabin, where “it was with the utmost difficulty that my little son and I could hold ourselves in bed with both our hands . . . bracing ourselves with our feet.”

  Then, “a sudden, tremendous report” rocked the ship. Adams and his boy had no way of knowing “whether the British frigate had overtaken us and fired on us or whether our guns had been discharged.”4

  As they waited for the sea to smash through the door and rush into their cabin, John Adams held his frightened little son in his arms, but said nothing, as the last-minute thoughts and regrets of every man facing death raced through his head. Of all his regrets, he rued his decision to take his boy on the Atlantic crossing—a foolhardy decision for an adult, let alone a child, in midwinter. But Adams and his son had been apart for nearly two years; John Quincy needed paternal attention, and John Adams missed the joys of nurturing his oldest son. On learning he would have to go to France, he thought the trip a perfect opportunity for the two to grow close again—and to expose “Johnny” to the glories of French and European culture, with their history, art, music, architecture, and languages. The American Revolution had deprived the boy of most educational and cultural advantages, not to mention his father’s attention. Now the boy and his father faced death together at sea in each other’s arms.

  John Quincy Adams had been born a decade earlier, when the first seeds of the Revolution were sprouting; periodic riots erupted in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other American towns. Britain’s Parliament had raised taxes on goods shipped to the colonies, then it shredded the Magna Carta and ordered admiralty courts in Canada to try American smugglers—without juries of their peers.

  “And this sequence of events,” John Quincy explained, “was to affect the fortunes of no single individual more than those of the infant then lying in his cradle in the little village of Braintree, in the Massachusetts Bay.”5