John Quincy Adams Frontpage

American President Frontpage

John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767, in the village of Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, located a few miles from Boston. There the young John Quincy Adams lived the first nine years of his life learning mathematics, languages, and the classics from a doting father and affectionate mother. In his ninth year, however, Adams's life abruptly changed: he became a child of the American Revolution. His father, John Adams -- who would become the second President of the United States (1797-1801) -- helped draft the Declaration of Independence and served with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, and George Washington as a leader of the First Continental Congress.

In the first year of war, young John Quincy Adams feared for the life of his father and worried that his family might be taken hostage by the British. Indeed, when John Adams signed his name to the Declaration of Independence, he had committed an act of treason against England, an offense punishable by death. For young John Quincy, his tenth year was actually the beginning of his manhood, and he recalled later in life feeling responsible -- as the eldest son -- for protecting his mother while his father attended to the business of revolution.


Grooming for the World Stage

From ages ten to eighteen, Adams experienced an incredible European adventure that prepared him for his later career in the foreign service of his country. Shortly after the beginning of the American Revolution, John Adams was posted to Europe as a special envoy, and his son accompanied him, living in Paris, the Netherlands, St. Petersburg, and England for the next seven years. The young Adams experienced his first formal schooling at the Passy Academy outside of Paris, where -- together with the grandsons of Benjamin Franklin -- he studied fencing, dance, music, and art. The father and son remained in France a little over a year and returned home for some three months. When John was reassigned to Amsterdam, he returned with his sons John Quincy and Charles Francis, arriving in Europe again in November 1779. While unhappy Charles was sent home after a year and a half, John Quincy attended classes at Leiden University and was formally enrolled there in 1781. This education was interrupted when Francis Dana, the newly appointed emissary to St. Petersburg, asked that young John Quincy, then fourteen years old, accompany him as translator and personal secretary. A year later, John Quincy traveled alone for five months from St. Petersburg to The Hague, the Dutch seat of government, to rejoin his father. When he returned to America in 1785, Adams enrolled in Harvard College as an advanced student, completing his studies in two years.

After college, John Quincy Adams studied law and passed the Massachusetts bar exam in the summer of 1790. While preparing for the law exam, he mastered shorthand and read everything in sight, from ancient history to popular literature. He especially enjoyed the humorous novel Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, which he deemed "one of the best novels in the language." Always in awe of Thomas Jefferson, a close friend of his father and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Adams considered Jefferson's Notes on Virginia a brilliant piece of writing.

As a young man, Adams stood apart from his age group. He took no part in the usual college pranks, nor did he think much of his teachers. But he did have an appreciative eye for young women. His first love, at age fourteen, was a French actress, whom he never met personally but dreamed about for years after seeing her stage performance. In 1785, while at Harvard, he had a casual romance with a young woman who lived in the same boarding house. He admired her dazzling smile and good figure. A few years later, at age twenty-two, John fell deeply in love with a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman whom he met in Newburyport, where he was studying law. The romance lasted for several months before John's mother, Abigail Adams, persuaded him to put off marriage until he could afford to support a wife. John agreed, and the two drifted apart. It was a parting that he always regretted, but it demonstrated a character trait in Adams that accompanied him throughout his life: he always took seriously the opinions of his parents.

From 1790 to 1794, Adams practiced law with little success in Boston. Not even the fact that his father was now vice president of the United States seemed to bring him many clients. When not practicing law, Adams wrote articles in support of the Washington administration and debated the political issues of the day with his fellow lawyers. Finally, in 1794, President George Washington, appreciative of the young Adams's support for his administration and aware of his fluency in the Dutch language, appointed him minister to the Netherlands. It was a good time for the young diplomat. He carefully managed the repayment of Dutch loans made to America during the American Revolution and sent official reports to Washington on the aftermath of the French Revolution.


A Moody Suitor

While traveling in France as a young boy age twelve, John met the four-year-old daughter of Joshua Johnson, an American merchant who had married an Englishwoman and was then living in Nantes, France. Years later, in 1797, when the child, Louisa Catherine Johnson, had grown into a pretty twenty-two-year-old woman, she again met Adams, only now he was a thirty-year-old diplomat and the son of the President of the United States. She was living in London, where her father served as the American consul. Adams had decided that it was time to find a wife for himself, and the three Johnson daughters seemed eminently suitable to him. He regularly visited the Johnson household, carefully looking over the girls before settling his attentions on Louisa, the middle sister. For months he visited the family nightly for dinner, always leaving when the girls began to sing after the evening meal -- Adams detested the sound of the female voice in song. Louisa found herself intrigued by her moody suitor. The two were married on July 26, 1797, over the initial objections of Adams's father, who did not think it wise for a future President to have a foreign-born wife.

Soon after their marriage, John was appointed as minister to Prussia, where he remained until his father lost his bid for a second term as President in 1800. Adams then returned to the United States and threw himself into local politics, winning election to the state senate and then appointment by the Massachusetts legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1803.


Career in Diplomacy

As the U.S. senator from Massachusetts, he shifted from his nominally Federalist position to support the Democratic-Republican administration of President Thomas Jefferson. He supported the Louisiana Purchase, the only member of his party in either house to do so, and the imposition of the Embargo Act of 1807 against foreign trade. In 1808, the Federalist-controlled state legislature was infuriated by Adams's pro-Jeffersonian conduct. Because in those days U.S. senators were appointed by the legislatures of each state, Massachusetts state lawmakers removed Adams from the Senate. He subsequently changed his party affiliation from Federalist to Republican.

Shortly after the loss of his Senate seat, President James Madison appointed Adams the first U.S. minister to Russia. Although Adams had previously expressed negative feelings about Russia as a nation of "slaves and princes," he soon developed a strong personal attachment to Czar Alexander, whom he admired for his willingness to stand up to Napoleon. While in Russia, Adams persuaded the Czar to allow American ships to trade in Russian ports, and when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, Adams's dispatches home provided Madison with detailed and perceptive accounts of the war.

In 1814, President Madison appointed Adams to head a five-person delegation to negotiate a peace agreement ending the War of 1812 with Great Britain. It was an auspicious group of Americans who met in Ghent, Belgium: Special Envoy John Quincy Adams, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware, Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and the U.S. minister to Sweden, Jonathan Russell. The treaty negotiations took five months, resulting in an agreement to end the fighting and to restore all territory to the status quo at the beginning of the war. No mention was made of the issues that had started the war, such as the impressment of American seamen or the rights of neutral commerce. Still, the treaty was understood to be a significant victory for the United States: the young nation had engaged the greatest military power in the world without conceding anything in return for peace. The treaty was signed on December 24, 1814, two weeks prior to the great victory of U.S. forces over English Redcoats at the Battle of New Orleans -- word did not reach America of the treaty until mid-February, and it was ratified unanimously by the Senate on February 17.

President James Madison then posted Adams to England for two years. With the election of James Monroe, Adams accepted appointment as his secretary of state, serving from 1817 to 1825. During his long tenure as head of the State Department, he compiled an impressive record of diplomatic accomplishments. At the top of the list stands his role in formulating the Monroe Doctrine, which warned European nations not to meddle in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. Although Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had advised President Monroe to issue the proclamation in a joint statement with Great Britain, Adams -- understanding the diplomatic symbolism involved -- persuaded Monroe to make a unilateral and independent statement as a mark of U.S. sovereignty in the hemisphere.

Secretary of State Adams also successfully negotiated U.S. fishing rights off the Canadian coast, established the present U.S.-Canadian border from Minnesota to the Rockies, formulated a pragmatic policy for the recognition of newly independent Latin American nations, and achieved the transfer of Spanish Florida to the United States in the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819. This treaty also fixed the southwestern boundary of the United States at the Sabine River (in present-day Texas) and removed Spanish claims to Oregon. He also halted Russian claims to Oregon. Within the department, Adams appointed staff on the basis of merit rather than patronage, and upon his election as President in 1824, he left behind a highly efficient diplomatic service with clear accountability procedures and a system of regularized correspondence in place.