John Quincy Adams - 6th President of the United States Documentary

The man known to history as John Quincy Adams was born on the 11th of July 1767 on his parents’ family farm in the village of Braintree, later renamed Quincy, in the British colony of Massachusetts in North America. His father John Adams was a lawyer who came to prominence in the mid-1760s during the first stirrings of trouble between Great Britain and its North American colonies, at around the same time he married his wife. Adams was born into one of the most distinguished families in Massachus

etts, and the family would become even more prominent after the United States of America declared independence in 1776. Following the outbreak of war between Britain and thirteen rebellious colonies in 1775, John Adams nominated George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and in 1776 he assisted Thomas Jefferson of Virginia in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Following the ratification of the Constitution of the United States i

n 1789, Adams would serve as the first vice president of the United States and succeeded Washington as the second president in 1797. John’s mother was Abigail Adams, the daughter of Reverend William Smith and the granddaughter of Colonel John Quincy, a soldier and politician who served as Speaker of the Massachusetts colonial legislature for over a decade. Although as a woman Abigail did not receive a formal education, she taught herself with books from her father’s library and would become a cl

ose advisor to her husband during his political career. Abigail and John Adams would have six children, four of whom survived childhood. John Quincy Adams, named after his great-grandfather who died two days after his birth, was the couple’s second child and first son. John Quincy Adams came of age during a time when the Thirteen Colonies gradually began to distance themselves from Britain over disagreements about taxation and American colonists’ rights as British subjects. Following the passage

of the Stamp Act in 1765, John Adams and his cousin Samuel were among the leading voices denying the right of the British Parliament to tax the Americans colonies while they had no representation in Parliament. In 1770, a couple of years after Adams and his family moved to the colonial capital of Boston, a protest against British policies led to the killing of four Americans by British troops, an incident that came to be known as the “Boston Massacre.” After a request from the royal governor to

defend the soldiers, Adams secured their acquittal and gained recognition on both sides of the Atlantic as a result. Tensions between Britain and the colonies remained beneath the surface, but in December 1773 the Boston branch of the revolutionary group called the Sons of Liberty staged the Boston Tea Party, throwing a cargo of British East India Company tea into the harbour as a protest against duties on tea. In response, the British authorities closed Boston Harbour and abolished Massachuset

ts’ charter, which to American colonists appeared to demonstrate that the British Parliament was willing to sacrifice colonists’ rights for the sake of imperial monopolies, such as the East India Company. After ensuring the safety of his family by sending them back to Braintree, John Adams left for Philadelphia to take part in the Continental Congress which had been convened to coordinate a united response among the colonists to their disputes with the British Parliament. The War of the American

Revolution broke out in April 1775 following the battles of Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts. On the 17th of June, while his father was away in Philadelphia, the seven-year-old John Quincy Adams witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill, during which the British army captured the Charlestown peninsula in Boston but suffered twice as many casualties as the American militiamen. With her husband away on his political duties, Abigail took charge of her son’s education by encouraging him to read fro

m his father’s library while engaging the services of her cousin John Thaxter as his tutor in mathematics and science. From Philadelphia, the elder Adams would write to his wife about his ideas for John Quincy’s education. He insisted that his son study Classical Greek in order to read the original text of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. Adams also encouraged John Quincy to read newspapers and to be up to date on the developments of the war. Indeed, the eight-year-old John Quincy

would do his part for the Continental cause by riding the eleven miles between Braintree and Boston past British camps carrying family news. After the British evacuated Boston on the 17th of March 1776, Abigail and her children moved back into the city. The Continental Army, now commanded by George Washington, fought the first two years of the war without any allies. However, as independence became the focus of the colonies, the Continental Congress began searching for allies, particularly Europ

ean allies, to help them win the war. In November 1777 John Adams was asked to join Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee as part of the American diplomatic mission to France. In mid-February 1778, John Quincy Adams accompanied his father on a transatlantic voyage to France on the frigate Boston. The crossing was perilous, as the ship not only survived a violent storm but evaded capture by several British ships while capturing one in the process. After arriving in Bordeaux in late March, Adams learne

d that France had already signed an alliance with the United States on the 6th of February. While in Paris, John Quincy attended a private boarding school where he studied Latin and French as well as music, dancing, and drawing. Urged on by his father, John Quincy began a diary which he continued to write for almost another seventy years. While Franklin dedicated most of his time to social events, it was up to Adams to organise the diplomatic correspondence and report back to Congress. In March

1779, father and son left Paris to return to the United States, but they would not set sail until June, arriving home at the beginning of August. Just over two months later they were on their way back to France following John Adams appointment as a peace treaty commissioner to negotiate a peace settlement with Britain that would recognise American independence. This time, John Quincy was accompanied by his younger brother Charles, their tutor John Thaxter, and the Boston lawyer Francis Dana. In

another dangerous Atlantic crossing, their ship was damaged in a storm and began taking on water, forcing its captain to make landfall in northern Spain in early December. Crossing the Pyrenees Mountains to France, the Adamses arrived in Paris on the 9th of February 1780. However, when the French Foreign Minister Vergennes signalled that he was not interested in making any peace settlement until France could reconquer Canada from the British, Adams went to Amsterdam seeking a loan from the Dutch

government to reduce American dependence on the French alliance. In the Netherlands, Thaxter took the boys to lectures at the University of Leiden, and before long the young boys were able to enroll as full-time students. John Quincy’s abilities were such that when Francis Dana was appointed minister to the court of Russian Empress Catherine the Great in St Petersburg in 1781, he employed the fourteen-year-old boy as his secretary and interpreter. After leaving the Netherlands in early July, Da

na and his teenage secretary arrived in St Petersburg at the end of August. Although the city was less than one hundred years old, John Quincy was impressed and in a letter to Thaxter he described the Russian imperial capital as “far superior to Paris.” As magnificent as the city may have been, the Russians refused to acknowledge Dana’s diplomatic status, and even the news of Washington’s decisive victory at Yorktown in October 1781 did not open any doors. With little work to do, the young Adams

spent his time reading extensively, making his way through David Hume’s History of England and Adam Smith’s pioneering economics treatise The Wealth of Nations. As there were few Americans in Russia and John Quincy was instructed by his father to be wary about socialising with Englishmen while the war was still ongoing, the young man lived a lonely existence. Worried about his son’s lack of companionship, John Adams decided to recall John Quincy to the Netherlands, and the boy arrived in July 1

782. In August, after successfully negotiating a loan with the Dutch, Adams returned to Paris to join Franklin and John Jay in their peace negotiations with the British and appointed John Quincy as his own secretary. After reaching a preliminary agreement at the end of November 1782, a final peace was signed on the 3rd of September 1783, formally recognising the independence of the United States. After the signing of the treaty, John Quincy joined his father in England, where he saw the sights o

f London and heard debates in Parliament featuring famed politicians such as Edmund Burke, Lord North, William Pitt the Younger, and Charles James Fox. In early 1784, the Adamses returned to Paris, where Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, had arrived to support Franklin in his ambassadorial duties. Jefferson was a close friend and associate of the elder Adams, and in Paris he developed a close relationship with John Quincy. The Adamses were also distinguishe

d guests at the home of the Marquis de Lafayette, the young French soldier who had served as Washington’s aide and fought at Yorktown during the Revolutionary War. In the spring of 1785, John Adams was appointed ambassador to Great Britain, but rather than return to London with his father, John Quincy decided it was time to complete his studies in the United States. After returning to American shores in July, he was interviewed by President Joseph Willard of Harvard College only to be informed t

hat he was not ready, and it was only in March 1786 that he passed his examination and was admitted as a junior. As a Harvard graduate himself, John Adams was keen to promote the prestige of the institution, whose academic reputation was nothing like it is in the modern day. During his fifteen months at Harvard, John Quincy Adams did not learn much more than what he had already been taught at Leiden, and in July 1787 he graduated second in his class and began studying for a legal career under Th

eophilus Parsons, the future chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. In the meantime, John Adams requested to return home to the United States and arrived in Boston in June 1788, setting his eyes on John Quincy for the first time in three years. In the meantime, after widespread recognition that the existing Articles of Confederation did not give the US federal government enough power to govern the country effectively, a Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia to produce the Cons

titution of the United States, which was ratified on the 21st of June. In the presidential election that winter George Washington was elected to the presidency, while John Adams was the runner-up and became the first vice president of the United States in April 1789. A year later, John Quincy Adams opened a law office in Boston after being admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-three. As the son of the vice president, he expected to attract a large and wealthy client base but was bitterly disa

ppointed when business did not materialise. In early 1791 John Quincy was invited to the temporary capital at Philadelphia, where he joined his parents at dinner with George and Martha Washington. His brief visit to the federal capital inspired him to take part in ongoing national debates being published in various newspapers throughout the United States. In June he began a series of essays under the pseudonym Publicola. In these essays, Adams criticised the celebrated patriotic writer Thomas Pa

ine’s latest pamphlet, The Rights of Man, which called for a revolution in England along the lines of the French Revolution of 1789. Although many Americans had welcomed the revolution for extending political liberties and freedoms, by 1791 the revolution had turned increasingly radical and King Louis XVI and his family were effectively kept under house arrest at the Tuileries Palace. As Washington’s Secretary of State and chief foreign policy advisor, Thomas Jefferson continued to sympathise wi

th the revolutionaries, but President Washington, Vice President Adams, and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton feared that the radicalism and bloodshed in France might spread to the United States. Over time, Hamilton’s supporters came to be known as Federalists, while the Jeffersonians adopted the label of Republicans. By contributing to the debate in his Publicola essays, John Quincy Adams entered the political limelight and soon became increasingly involved in Boston politics. When B

raintree asked him for help in its efforts to be recognized as a town, Adams renamed his birthplace Quincy after his great-grandfather Colonel John Quincy, while a banking crisis in Massachusetts delivered Adams a steady stream of legal work. In the meantime, the political violence in France showed no sign of stopping, and in January 1793 the radical Jacobin government executed King Louis at the guillotine. The regicide led to war with Great Britain in February, and France sought American help o

n the basis of the 1778 alliance. The French envoy Edmond-Charles Genêt was immensely popular among many in the American public and had Jefferson’s support, but Washington and Hamilton sought to avoid war with Britain, its largest trading partner. When Washington issued a Proclamation of Neutrality in April 1793, Genêt responded by appealing to the American people over the president’s head and using American ports to equip French privateers to attack British merchant shipping. Writing a series o

f newspaper articles under the pseudonym Columbus, Adams attacked the Frenchman’s activities as “highway robbery,” while describing his lack of respect for the president as “obnoxious.” Adams’ eloquent defence of Washington’s neutrality policy made its way to the president’s desk and led Washington to appoint him as minister to the Netherlands in 1794. After being reassured by his father that Washington had not made the appointment as a favour to his vice president, John Quincy resigned from the

bar and accepted the posting. He spent the rest of the summer in Washington at the State Department, receiving his instructions from Edmund Randolph, who succeeded his cousin Jefferson as secretary of state at the beginning of the year. Accompanied by his younger brother Thomas, John Quincy Adams departed for Europe in September 1794. Adams had been instructed to stop in London to deliver a trunk of documents to John Jay, who had been in London since June to negotiate a treaty with Britain to c

larify some of the outstanding issues which remained unresolved from the peace settlement a decade earlier, as well as to obtain a commitment from the British to end the practice of impressment of American sailors. Impressment was a common practice in the British Empire by which sailors were forced into the British Navy. Despite the American victory and new independence, British naval officers had continued to impress American sailors, often claiming that the American sailors were mutinous Briti

sh sailors who had taken refuge in American ports or aboard American ships. Adams arrived just as Jay and his fellow envoy Thomas Pinckney were finalising the terms of the treaty, which delivered favourable trade terms without any substantive British concessions on impressment. In January 1795, around four months after Adams arrived in the Netherlands, a French revolutionary army under General Jean-Charles Pichegru took control of The Hague, the Dutch capital. The regime change did not affect Ad

ams’ diplomatic position, and he remained at The Hague gathering diplomatic intelligence from the European powers and reporting his information to the secretary of state and his father, the vice president. In late 1795, Adams was instructed by the new secretary of state Timothy Pickering to go to London to formally exchange copies of the Jay Treaty with the British government in the absence of Thomas Pinckney, who had gone to Spain to negotiate an agreement over navigation rights to the Mississi

ppi River. Jay sought to maintain the strictest secrecy during his negotiations, and the terms of the treaty were not known in the United States until the spring of 1795. While the Federalists endorsed the treaty as the best means to avoid war with Britain, the Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson, opposed the agreement for failing to stop impressment. Despite vocal opposition from Republicans in Congress, Washington signed the treaty in July 1795. By the time Adams arrived in London in November

, Pinckney’s secretary had already exchanged the treaties, but John Quincy remained to present the document to King George III. While holding down the fort for Pinckney in London, Adams met with the American consul Joshua Johnson and was introduced to his three eldest daughters. In February 1796, Adams surprised many by proposing to the second daughter, Louisa Catherine, who duly accepted. Louisa hoped for an immediate wedding but her prospective groom preferred to wait until he had finished his

diplomatic assignment in the Netherlands. In late summer, around the time he published his Farewell Address declaring his intention to step aside from the presidency after two terms, Washington offered Adams the post of minister plenipotentiary to Portugal, starting the following spring. After informing Louisa of his new appointment, the couple decided to marry in London on the 26th of July 1797 at the church of All-Hallows-by-the-Tower, a short distance from the Tower of London. Having already

arranged for his possessions to be shipped to Lisbon, Adams was then informed that he had been appointed by his father, who had defeated Jefferson in the 1796 presidential election, to the more prestigious diplomatic posting as minister to Prussia in Berlin. The newly married Adams soon had to contend with several problems in rapid succession. Upon his return from his honeymoon John Quincey was forced to repay the creditors of his father-in-law’s collapsed business, while at the same time his f

ather’s political opponents in the Senate accused President John Adams of nepotism and postponed consideration of the younger Adams’ posting to Berlin before finally granting approval late in the year. By the end of December Adams had been reunited with his possessions from Lisbon and presented his credentials to the new king, Frederick William III. The new American minister quickly began negotiations for an improved commercial treaty which was eventually signed on the 11th of July 1799, John Qu

incey’s thirty-second birthday. In addition to his negotiations with Prussia, Adams kept his father informed about developments in Europe through his diplomatic contacts. The French navy had been attacking American merchant ships for several years, and in late 1797 Adams sent three envoys to negotiate a settlement with France to avoid war. The American envoys met with three intermediaries identified in diplomatic papers as ‘X’, ‘Y’, and ‘Z’, who demanded a substantial bribe before negotiations c

ould begin, which outraged the American diplomats, leading to a breakdown in negotiations in April 1798. Using his diplomatic contacts, John Quincy discovered the identities of the three French individuals and his reports to his father strengthened calls in the United States to go to war with France. Though Adams recalled the ageing Washington to command an army of 80,000 men raised by Alexander Hamilton, fighting in the undeclared Quasi-War was limited to the sea. With the French war effort in

Europe faltering in 1799, Foreign Minister Talleyrand agreed to reopen negotiations, which were finally concluded in September 1800 under the new French government led by First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, the revolutionary general who had taken power the previous November. After President Adams was narrowly defeated by Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 presidential election, he decided to recall his son from his diplomatic posting in order to prevent Jefferson from unceremoniously removing him from it

. On the 4th of March, Jefferson was the first president to be inaugurated at the new permanent federal capital of Washington, DC. On the 12th of April 1801, having suffered four miscarriages, Louisa Adams gave birth to her first child, George Washington Adams. After his return to the United States, John Quincy bought a house in Boston and re-established his law practice. In April 1802 he was elected to the state senate as a Federalist, embarking on a fight against corruption which accomplished

little against the entrenched interests of both parties. In February 1803, the state legislature nominated him for the United States Senate, where he joined the Federalist minority. Soon after the birth of their second son John Adams II, John Quincy and Louisa left for Washington in September for the new session of Congress. Several weeks after Adams took up his seat, the Senate considered the Louisiana Purchase, the acquisition of around one million square miles of western territory from France

for $15 million. This fortuitous deal was occasioned after Napoleon abandoned his plans to revive French imperial ambitions in North America following the French Army’s disastrous defeat at the hands of the Haitian revolutionaries. Adams’ fellow New England Federalists objected to the purchase on constitutional grounds, masking their fear that the westward expansion of the United States would leave the Northeast economically isolated. Adams was the only Federalist to support the purchase and de

fended its constitutionality by arguing that the purchase agreement was no different from other diplomatic treaties. Adams’ fellow Massachusetts senator, former Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, plotted to separate New England from the nation and create a confederation under British protection. These developments caused Adams to split from the Federalists, but while he was on good terms with Jefferson and regularly played chess with Secretary of State James Madison, Adams’ voting record in t

he Senate was independent of both parties. In 1804, President Jefferson sought to remove the Federalist-leaning Associate Justice Samuel Chase from the Supreme Court after Chase criticised Maryland’s decision to give all white men the vote with the warning that it would lead to “mobocracy.” In February 1805, Chase went on trial before the Senate charged with sedition and treason, John Quincy Adams defended Chase’s right to free speech under the First Amendment and secured his acquittal by arguin

g that the political statements he made were not the sort of high crimes and misdemeanours that justified impeachment proceedings. Not long before, President Jefferson had been re-elected in a landslide in the 1804 election and the Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress. As he was politically homeless and his prospects of further advancement seemed limited, in June 1805 Adams accepted an offer from Harvard to become the Boylston Professor of Oratory and Rhetoric. He reopened his l

aw office in Boston and began his lectures in June 1806. That same year, the British navy began impressing American sailors more aggressively, and after failed negotiations at the end of the year, the Jefferson administration began to consider more forceful measures. Adams was the only Federalist in either house to support Jefferson’s embargo of all foreign trade in December 1807, considering it the best way to avoid war with Britain while ensuring that British actions did not go unpunished. Sta

rved of British trade, America’s industrial base in New England collapsed, and the Federalists blamed John Quincy for his part in helping Jefferson pass the embargo through the Senate. In May 1808, the Massachusetts Federalists responded by denying Adams’ candidacy for re-election to the Senate the following year, causing Adams to resign from the Senate with immediate effect in June. Adams returned to his legal and academic duties in Boston convinced that his political career was over. However,

he remained on good terms with Republican leaders in the federal government. After succeeding Jefferson as president in March 1809, James Madison asked John Quincy Adams to return to Russia as minister plenipotentiary. Without consulting his wife, Adams accepted the posting as a means to rebuild his political career. In August a devastated Louisa, with her third son Charles Francis Adams in her arms, accompanied her husband to Europe. John Quincy Adams arrived in Russia in October 1809, seeing t

he European continent for the first time in eight years. Much had changed in Europe during the intervening period after Napoleon had crowned himself Emperor of the French in December 1804. Between 1805 and 1807, Napoleon and his armies sequentially defeated the Austrians, the Prussians, and the Russians at the battles of Austerlitz, Jena-Auerstedt, and Friedland. As far as Napoleon was concerned, Britain remained his most formidable enemy, and in 1806 he established his Continental System to blo

ckade continental ports to British trade. After Napoleon made peace with Tsar Alexander of Russia in 1807 and obliging the Russians to join the blockade, only Portugal and Sweden remained outside the Continental System. At the same time, the Royal Navy was imposing a blockade on French ports and attacked all ships, including hundreds of American and Russian ones. Both the Russians and Americans had a common interest in supporting freedom of navigation on the seas against the Royal Navy, and unli

ke his previous experience in Russia twenty-five years earlier, Adams was received warmly by Chief Minister Nikolay Rumyantsev and Tsar Alexander I. The American minister soon developed a close friendship with the Russian ruler, and the two men were seen strolling together along the banks of the River Neva. Despite her initial reservations about living in Russia, Louisa Adams was warmly received by Russian high society, while their two-year-old son Charles Francis delighted the imperial couple.

With unprecedented access to the Tsar, Adams was able to provide detailed intelligence on European affairs to President Madison in Washington. The Adamses enjoyed their exalted position in the Tsar’s court so much that when the Senate unanimously approved his appointment to the Supreme Court in February 1811, John Quincy refused the nomination. The family’s joys further increased when Louisa gave birth to a daughter in August 1811, who was named after her mother. Tragically, the child died the f

ollowing year. The family’s pleasant life in the Russian capital was soon interrupted by war in both North America and Russia. The disputes between Britain and the United States over impressment led to the outbreak of the War of 1812 in June. Meanwhile, after Napoleon discovered that Russia was secretly trading with British ships, he amassed an army of over 600,000 men on Russia’s frontier and launched an invasion on the 24th of June. While a Russian force under General Peter Wittgenstein blocke

d the road to St Petersburg, Napoleon’s main force advanced on Moscow. In September Adams attended a celebration following a report from Field Marshal Kutuzov of victory over Napoleon at Borodino outside Moscow, only to receive news days later that the Russian army evacuated the city and allowed Napoleon to occupy the old capital. However, in little more than a month, Napoleon’s dwindled force was running out of supplies and abandoned the city, retreating westwards in freezing winter conditions

closely pursued by Russian cavalry. At the end of the year, the tsar hurried to join his generals at the front, eager not only to drive Napoleon out of Russian territory but to put an end to his dominance over Europe. While the fighting in North America was on a much smaller scale than that in Russia, an American invasion of Canada in the summer of 1812 was defeated, prompting President Madison to request peace negotiations in September. When the British rejected the approach, Tsar Alexander off

ered Russian mediation which was eagerly accepted by Madison but rejected once again by London. American forces saw greater success the following year with the sacking of York, now Toronto, in April 1813. At the Battle of the Thames in October, General William Henry Harrison defeated and killed Tecumseh, the charismatic Native American leader allied to the British. Following these setbacks, the British proposed direct negotiations at Ghent in Belgium. The United States government accepted the pr

oposition and appointed John Quincey to lead the American negotiators, forcing him to leave the Russian capital at the end of April 1814. Earlier in the month, Napoleon was forced to abdicate his throne after the occupation of Paris by allied Austrian, Russian, and Prussian troops. These developments also freed the Duke of Wellington’s British army from fighting in southwestern France after driving Napoleon’s men out of Spain in 1813. While the American government was bankrupt, the British could

divert their resources to North America, and in August 1814 a small force under General Robert Ross sacked Washington DC in retribution for the damage done to York the previous year. When peace discussions began in August, both sides were unaware of the burning of Washington. Adams led a five-man negotiating team consisting of Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky, former Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania, the Federalist senator James Bayard of Delaware, and diplomat Jona

than Russell. Despite their advantages, the British were keen on peace, fearing a return of war in Europe prompted either by the return of Napoleon or new hostilities with Russia over its occupation of Poland. The end of the war allowed Britain to stop impressment, but the British refused Adams’ demands for freedom of navigation. In return, Adams rejected British demands for a large buffer zone between the United States and Canada controlled by the American Indians. Back in America, Secretary of

State James Monroe had taken charge of the war effort as acting secretary of war, overseeing the successful defence of Baltimore and ordering General Andrew Jackson to defend New Orleans from an anticipated British attack. Monroe gave Adams new instructions to seek peace based on the status quo from before the war, an arrangement that proved satisfactory for the British. On the 24th of December, the British and American negotiators signed the Treaty of Ghent, two weeks before General Jackson in

flicted a heavy defeat on the British at New Orleans. Jackson’s victory did not change the diplomatic situation but represented a significant morale boost that enabled the Americans to declare a glorious triumph over Britain, leading many Americans to hail General Jackson as a second George Washington. As the man who actually negotiated the peace, Adams was promoted to the American embassy in London, and in January 1815 he went to Paris to await the arrival of his family. Louisa and Charles Fran

cis had stayed on in Russia and did not leave St Petersburg until February. On the 1st of March, Napoleon landed in the south of France after escaping from exile on the island of Elba and prepared to march on Paris. Amidst the political confusion in France, Louisa ordered her driver to make for Paris as quickly as possible but was intercepted by soldiers loyal to Napoleon who believed that she was Russian. Only the intervention of a general who examined Louisa’s papers allowed her and her son to

continue their journey to Paris. They arrived at the French capital on the 20th of March, and later that night Napoleon himself arrived in Paris and restored himself to power. The Adams were glad to leave the turmoil in Paris and arrived in London on the 25th of May, where they were reunited with their sons George and John after six years of separation. Adams was also joined by Clay and Gallatin, who helped him negotiate new terms of trade with Britain. After establishing a close working relati

onship with Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh, Adams secured a commercial convention that established free trade between the United States and the whole of the British Empire. For the next two years, Adams and Castlereagh worked to strengthen goodwill between the two nations. Adams was glad to meet the Duke of Wellington, who had put an end to Napoleon’s return to power after leading an allied army to victory at the Battle of Waterloo on the 18th of June 1815. He also became good friends with J

eremy Bentham, the famous liberal philosopher. Adams’ stay in England came to an end in June 1817 after he was appointed secretary of state by the new president, James Monroe. The leadership of the State Department was a natural progression for an experienced diplomat like Adams but as Monroe’s senior cabinet secretary, Adams was also well-positioned as the president’s successor. After arriving back home in August and making provisions for the education of their three sons, John Quincy and Louis

a left for Washington the following month. Monroe had waited for Adams’ arrival in the capital before announcing his other cabinet appointments, including William Crawford of Georgia as secretary of the treasury and Henry Clay as secretary of war. Clay had ambitions for the presidency himself and declined the appointment, preferring to remain Speaker of the House. Monroe decided to appoint John Calhoun of South Carolina to the War Department instead. While Adams worked closely with Monroe, he re

alised that both Crawford and Calhoun were ambitious men who believed they were also destined for the presidency. Meanwhile, Henry Clay had established himself as the main opposition to the Monroe administration, moving to limit the budget of the State Department and prevent his former collaborator at Ghent from effectively exercising his functions. The work of a secretary of state in the early American republic extended far beyond that of foreign affairs, and he was tasked with preparing a Repo

rt on Weights and Measures to inform the establishment of a standardised system of weights and measures in the United States. Although the nation was officially at peace, tensions remained with the British along the northern frontier, while in the south the Seminole Indians launched frequent raids across the border from Spanish Florida. Leveraging his relationship with Castlereagh, Adams secured a treaty with Britain that fixed the border between the United States and Canada by extending it west

wards along the 49th parallel. In December 1817, Monroe ordered General Jackson to lead his Tennessee militia to bring the Seminoles under control. Jackson believed the only way to do this was to cross into Spanish Florida and did so without clarification from the Monroe administration. The occupation of the Spanish settlements of St Mark’s and Pensacola in early 1818 outraged both the Spanish and the Monroe administration, which criticised Jackson for exceeding his instructions and risking war

with Spain. Adams was the only member of the cabinet to support Jackson, sensing the opportunity to gain diplomatic leverage from the situation. President Monroe soon sided with John Quincey’s views and authorised Adams to negotiate the cession of Florida with the Spanish minister Don Luis de Onís y Gonzales. Adams’ work on the negotiations over Florida was interrupted by news of his mother Abigail’s death in October 1818, but by February 1819 Adams and Onís agreed a treaty that ceded Florida to

the United States. As part of the treaty’s provisions, the United States gave up claims to Texas while the Spanish relinquished claims to the Pacific Northwest. King Ferdinand VII of Spain refused to ratify the agreement for two years, but the treaty was eventually exchanged in February 1821. Although Adams remained focused on foreign affairs, he could not avoid taking his part in the debate between the Northern and Southern states over the westward expansion of slavery. After Missouri applied

for statehood in 1819, Congress divided along sectional lines as to whether to prohibit slavery in the new state. With their economies geared towards manufacturing and industry, the eleven free states in the North supported Missouri’s admission as a free state. By contrast, the agricultural economies of the eleven slave states in the South were highly dependent on slave labour and supported the extension of the institution into Missouri. As each state sent two senators to the United States Senat

e, the body was equally divided between free and slave states, and the admission of Missouri would tilt the advantage to one side or the other. With the nation threatening to tear itself apart and Congress unsure whether it had the authority to ban slavery, Adams advised President Monroe that while the federal government could not interfere with slavery in the states where it existed, it had the constitutional authority to ban the practice in newly-admitted states. Adams’ advice informed the com

promise whereby Missouri was admitted as a slave state while Maine was split from Massachusetts and admitted as a free state. Additionally, slavery would be prohibited in the remaining territories acquired in the Louisiana Purchase north of Missouri’s southern border. Although the Missouri crisis had threatened to tear the country apart, in 1820 Monroe was re-elected to the presidency unopposed with a single dissenting electoral vote cast for Adams. After the Missouri Compromise temporarily reso

lved the issues over slavery, Adams turned his attention to foreign affairs and the question of recognition for the Latin American republics which had thrown off Spanish colonial rule over the previous decade. Spain’s South American colonies had begun their rebellion against their imperial masters in 1810, when Spain was divided between pro- and anti-Napoleonic forces. Despite suffering many setbacks along the way, Latin revolutionary leaders Simon Bolívar, José de San Martín, and Bernardo O’Hig

gins had effectively liberated the entire South American continent from Spanish rule. Furthermore, Mexico had also declared its independence from Spain. Despite calls to support the Latin American revolutionaries from Henry Clay since 1818, Monroe and Adams remained neutral in order not to jeopardise negotiations over Florida. After the exchange of the Adams-Onís Treaty in February 1821, Monroe extended diplomatic recognition to Colombia and Mexico in 1822. While Monroe knew that Spain was incap

able of reconquering Latin America, many American leaders feared that France would possibly do so on Spain’s behalf. When the British government proposed an alliance to resist any French incursions into South America, Adams advised Monroe not to enter any alliances but rather remain neutral. John Quincy suggested to the president that he issue a statement of American non-interference in Europe in exchange for European non-interference on the American continent. The statement formed part of Monro

e’s annual message to Congress in December 1823 and was subsequently known as the Monroe Doctrine. When Monroe emulated his predecessors by refusing to run for a third term in office, the presidential election of 1824 was thrown wide open. Although Adams had his own presidential aspirations, he preferred to stay above the political fray rather than involve himself in the dirty work of soliciting votes in a fashion similar to his father and George Washington. Taking matters into her own hands, in

1823 Louisa began to campaign on behalf of her husband by hosting large gatherings and parties for the Washington political elite. When Adams returned to Massachusetts that summer to attend to the education of his sons, he resigned himself to the prospect of joining his ageing father in Quincy and taking over the family farm. As Adams had anticipated, Crawford, Calhoun, and Clay entered the presidential race while General Andrew Jackson, whose fame had only increased following his exploits in t

he Seminole War, reluctantly accepted the presidential nomination from his home state of Tennessee. Calhoun soon withdrew his presidential bid and successfully secured the vice-presidential nomination, while Crawford suffered a serious stroke in September 1823, leaving Adams, Jackson, and Clay as the three viable candidates. Adams was keen to deny the presidency to Jackson and attempted to co-opt him as his vice-presidential candidate by inviting him to a grand ball of more than 1,000 guests org

anised by Louisa, but within days Jackson resumed his campaign for the top job. When the votes were counted in the winter of 1824-25, Jackson won both the popular vote and the electoral vote, though no candidate received a majority. In the Electoral College Jackson had won 99 votes to Adams’ 84, while Crawford and Clay were a distant third and fourth. Under the Constitution, the House of Representatives would choose the president among the three top finishers, with each state delegation casting

a single vote. Having been eliminated from the presidential contest, Clay sought to prevent the presidency falling into the hands of a military man. In early January, he met Adams and pledged his support, and in return, Adams implied that Clay would succeed him as secretary of state. When the House cast its ballots on the 9th of February 1825, Adams was elected president with the support of thirteen states, including Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri, which Clay helped to deliver. John Quincy Adams e

nded twenty-four years of Virginian control of the presidency and became the second northerner to hold the post after his father. Although blind and ill, the ninety-year-old John Adams had lived to see his eldest son fulfil his ambitions. Within days of his election, Adams announced the appointment of Henry Clay as secretary of state, fuelling rumours from Jackson and Crawford supporters of a “corrupt bargain” between the two men. At his inauguration on the 4th of March 1825, Adams spoke about e

xpanding federal powers over the construction of public infrastructure projects and later proposed the creation of a Department of the Interior to manage these projects. Such talk further alienated the Westerners and Southerners who already believed that the federal government had gone too far in claiming powers reserved for the states. Jackson and Crawford’s supporters drew together in opposition to Adams in defence of Jeffersonian principles of limited government, forming a political alliance

that would become the Democratic Party. Within months of Adams’ assumption of office, Jackson had already begun his campaign for the 1828 presidential election. While Jackson championed policies to help ordinary people, Adams continued to betray his privileged upbringing by seeming out of touch, and in an address to Congress about economic development he warned against being “palsied by the will of our constituents,” creating the impression that he was an opponent of democracy. Although Congress

did approve funding for several canal projects to connect major rivers as well as the construction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first passenger railway in the country, most of Adams’ policy programme, including proposals to establish a national university, a national observatory, and a naval academy, was killed off by Jackson’s supporters in Congress. Even though he had been rendered ineffective as president, Adams did little to defend or explain his political programme to a popular

audience. Amidst his frustrations at his inability to exercise his power, Adams’ learned of the death of both his father and Thomas Jefferson on the 4th of July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of American independence. In the midterm elections in 1826-27, the Jacksonians won majorities in both houses of Congress, further limiting Adams’ ability to accomplish much in office. Although the president enjoyed greater authority over foreign affairs, Adams achieved little beyond obtaining improved terms

of trade with a host of lesser nations. When the Adams administration proposed sending American delegates to the Congress of Panama in 1826 convened by the South American liberator Simon Bolívar, Adams’ congressional opponents delayed their approval of the delegates until it was too late for them to attend. On the 4th of July 1828, Adams presided over the ground-breaking of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. After repeated attempts to remove the ceremonial first shovel of dirt, the president took o

ff his coat and successfully accomplished the task, drawing applause from a public audience for the first time in several months. Adams belatedly recognised that he had to win popular support if he were to have a second term in office and authorised his supporters to campaign energetically on his behalf. In a bitter campaign, the president’s supporters claimed that Jackson had married his wife Rachel while the latter was still married to her first husband, while the Jacksonians responded by atta

cking the English-born Louisa Adams. When the votes were tallied, Jackson defeated Adams convincingly in the popular vote and won 178 electoral votes to the incumbent’s 83. Adams’ popularity had not been helped by his signing the Tariff of 1828, which protected the interests of manufacturers in the Mid-Atlantic and farmers in the West while increasing prices in the South, where it was referred to as the “Tariff of Abominations.” When Andrew Jackson was inaugurated as president of the United Stat

es on the 4th of March, Adams was not in attendance. While preparing to return to Massachusetts, John Quincy and Louisa received news of the death of their first-born son George Washington Adams, who fell overboard while on a steamboat in a state of drunkenness on the 30th of April. George had been on his way to Washington to help his parents move when the tragedy occurred. Having left his grieving wife in the capital, Adams spent the next eighteen months between Quincy and Washington, strugglin

g to find a new purpose in life following the end of his presidency. In September 1830, after being asked to run for a seat in the House of Representatives representing his native town in the upcoming elections, Adams agreed and was elected to the House in November, beginning one of the most successful and influential post-presidential careers in American history. While Congress was still in recess, in the summer of 1831 Adams was invited to deliver the 4th of July oration in Quincy, during whic

h he attacked the doctrine of nullification, or the rights of states to invalidate federal laws. After being first proposed by Jefferson in 1798, the prospect of nullification had been revived in the essay “South Carolina Exposition and Protest,” authored anonymously in December 1828 by John Calhoun while serving as Adams’ vice president. Calhoun retained the vice presidency during Jackson’s first term and continued to champion states’ rights to nullify federal law, a position which set him at o

dds with Jackson. In his 4th of July speech, Adams described state sovereignty as a “hallucination” and considered nullification an act of treason. A few days later, he delivered a eulogy for his predecessor James Monroe, who had become the third former president to die on the 4th of July. These speeches reminded Washington’s elites of Adams’ eloquence as a speaker, and the Jacksonians feared that he might seek a return to the presidency. In an attempt to sideline Adams, the Jacksonian Speaker A

ndrew Stevenson appointed him chair of the Committee on Commerce and Manufactures responsible for the tariff question, the only issue apart from slavery guaranteed to divide the country along sectional lines. Since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Congress had gratefully set aside the divisive issue of slavery. In deference to the wishes of the southern slaveholding states, the House had traditionally remained silent on the issue of abolition. On the 5th of December 1831, his first day in the Ho

use, Adams defied this convention by using his privilege as a committee chairman to present a series of petitions from Pennsylvania Quakers to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the capital District of Columbia. Adams’ intervention generated a roar of disapproval from the rest of the House, but the former president had decided that he would use his position in Congress to represent the national campaign for abolition. After mastering his committee’s brief, he turned his attention to the equa

lly controversial subject of tariffs and proposed a compromise tariff reducing duties to what he hoped would be a more acceptable level for the southern states. The Tariff of 1832 failed to meet the expectations of South Carolina, and in November its governor called a convention which passed an Ordinance of Nullification declaring federal tariffs void, while Calhoun resigned from the vice presidency to support nullification in the Senate. In response, President Jackson, who had recently been re-

elected to a second term on a ticket with Martin van Buren of New York, threatened to send federal troops to enforce the tariffs. In early 1833 Adams supported a bill that gave Jackson the authority to use military force, prompting South Carolina to back down. However, Adams refused to support the Tariff of 1833 which further reduced duties to a more acceptable level for the South Carolinians. In October 1834, John Quincy and Louisa Adams mourned the loss of their second son, John Adams II, who

died from the consequences of alcoholism, an affliction that claimed the lives of several family members, including his late brothers Charles and Thomas. In December 1835, Congress received news that a wealthy Englishman James Smithson had left a bequest of half a million dollars to the United States to establish a research institution called the Smithsonian Institution. The House named Adams the chairman of the committee responsible for the management of Smithson’s funds, and the former preside

nt saw an opportunity to partially realise his presidential ambitions of establishing a national university. After almost a decade of debate over whether the federal government had the right to establish such an institution, Adams eventually convinced both houses of Congress to support a bill creating the Smithsonian Institution signed into law in August 1846. In May 1836, when the House considered three resolutions on slavery, Adams voted in favour of the first two which declared that Congress

had no right to interfere in slavery in any of the states and that it “ought not” to do so in the District of Columbia. The third resolution proposed that the House should not consider any petitions or proposals of any kind presented to it mentioning the issue of slavery or its abolition. When Speaker James K. Polk refused to recognise Adams in his repeated attempts to speak in the debate before the resolution was passed, the former president shouted “Am I gagged or am I not,” causing the rule t

o be known as the Gag Rule. Adams and his fellow northerners were outraged and he found ways around the rule by presenting calls for abolition as prayers rather than petitions. After running out of procedural manoeuvres, Adams defended the constitutional right of petition, only to have the House vote to deprive slaves of that right. Adams seized another opportunity to circumvent the Gag Rule in the debate over the future of Texas. In 1835, American frontiersmen and some local Mexicans in Texas r

ebelled against the Mexican government’s attempts to enforce the abolition of slavery and won independence after defeating the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto on the 21st of April 1836. The Texans applied for US recognition and anticipated eventual admission to the United States, an act that would inevitably lead to war with Mexico. In the congressional debates over Texan recognition, Adams spoke in opposition and warned of a civil war between slavery and emancipation if Texas were to

join the Union as a slave state. Adams was unable to prevent Congress from recognising Texan independence, but President Jackson stopped short of annexation in order to avoid war with Mexico. After Martin Van Buren succeeded to the presidency in 1837, he continued to reject Texan annexation, and the issue of abolition returned to centre stage. After the House reinstated the Gag Rule at the start of its new session, Adams continued to resist the rule and continued to speak about slavery while bei

ng shouted down and called to order by the Speaker. In 1839, the Southerners in the House moved to expel the former president from the body. When the House met in December 1839 after the midterm elections, it was equally divided between Van Buren’s Democrats and the opposition Whig Party and was unable to decide on a Speaker. Despite their opposition to his repeated violations of the Gag Rule, the House appointed Adams Speaker pro tempore to carry out the fair distribution of committee assignmen

ts, only to turn on him once again after he accomplished his task. In early 1840, Adams’ friend Ellis Gray Loring, a Massachusetts lawyer and abolitionist, informed the former president of a case involving thirty-six Africans who had mutinied from the slave ship Amistad off the coast of the Spanish colony of Cuba. While seeking to return to Africa, the ship entered American waters and ended up in Connecticut. In January 1840, a federal district court in Connecticut ruled that the Africans were f

ree men and ordered President Van Buren to return them to Africa at the expense of the American government. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and Loring invited Adams to join the case. On the 24th of February 1841, Adams spoke for more than four hours on behalf of his African clients reminding the court of their humanity. After Adams delivered another three-hour speech on the 1st of March in which he reiterated the argument that his clients had been abducted into servitude and kill

ed their kidnappers in self-defence, the Court ruled in the Africans’ favour on the 9th of March. On the 4th of March 1841, General William Henry Harrison was inaugurated as president after defeating Van Buren in the presidential election. Adams welcomed Harrison’s victory but the sixty-eight-year-old president died after only a month in office and was succeeded by Vice President John Tyler of Virginia, a former Democrat who renounced Whig policies after becoming president. In the House, Adams c

ontinued to protest against the Gag Rule and encouraged a nationwide petitioning campaign. Having refused to court popular support as president, Congressman Adams emerged as the popular champion on the issue of free speech. In December 1844, the House finally voted in favour of a resolution drafted by Adams to repeal the Gag Rule. The presidential election of 1844 pitted the Democrat James Polk against the Whig Henry Clay, both former Speakers of the House. After Polk was elected on a campaign p

romising Texas annexation, President Tyler signed the Texas annexation bill during the final days of his presidency in March 1845. After Texas formally joined the Union in February 1846, the Mexican-American War broke out in April. Adams opposed the war but supported Democratic Congressman David Wilmot’s proviso to ban slavery from any territories acquired from the war. In November 1846, Adams suffered a serious stroke in Boston but recovered sufficiently to return to the House in February 1847

to a rapturous welcome from the whole chamber. Among the newly-elected representatives was the Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln, who became one of Adams’ most loyal supporters on the issues of abolition and national improvements. After returning to Quincy for summer recess, an increasingly feeble Adams returned to the House for its new session in December and attended every session. On the 21st of February, when the House was considering the peace treaty with Mexico, Adams’ lone voice opposed a r

esolution of thanks to the US army officers for their victory. During the roll call for the next resolution, Adams tried to stand but collapsed into the arms of a fellow congressman. After regaining consciousness to thank those around him and bid farewell to Henry Clay, he fell into a coma and died a couple of days later on the 23rd of February 1848 in the Speaker’s Office at the age of eighty. Even his political opponents could not fail to be moved at the sight of the former president ending hi

s days in the political service to his country. From his earliest days, John Quincy Adams had been brought up for a distinguished political career following in his father’s footsteps. As a child, he accompanied his father on his diplomatic assignments in Europe, receiving a brilliant education and familiarising himself with European politics and society in the process. These experiences allowed Adams to become a successful diplomat, providing valuable intelligence to Washington during more than

two decades of warfare in Europe. In St Petersburg, he and his wife befriended the imperial family and remained in Russia during the uncertainties of Napoleon’s invasion, before playing a leading role in ending the War of 1812 on equal terms with Britain by concluding the Treaty of Ghent. As President Monroe’s secretary of state, Adams negotiated the acquisition of Florida from Spain and helped to formulate the influential foreign policy doctrine that bears Monroe’s name. He emulated his father

by becoming president in 1825 but left office after a single term with few accomplishments to his name as a result of congressional obstructionism by supporters of his great rival Andrew Jackson. Having been born into privilege, Adams did not appreciate the importance of courting public opinion until after he left the presidency. Despite his humiliations at the hands of the Jacksonian Democrats, Adams returned to Washington and spent the final sixteen years of his life developing a reputation as

a tribune of the people on the issue of slavery. He championed the abolitionist cause in the House by defying the Gag Rule, and successfully defended the rights of the Africans against the government in the Amistad case in front of the Supreme Court. During his tenure in the House, Adams managed to achieve part of his presidential agenda by playing a key role in the founding of the Smithsonian Institution. Having dedicated almost his entire life to public service, Adams died in the House of Rep

resentatives. What do you think of John Quincy Adams? Was he one of the most effective diplomats in United States history, or were his diplomatic achievements mainly down to fortune and circumstance and was he right to champion the cause of abolition in the House of Representatives at the cost of fuelling sectional tensions in the country? Please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.