John Quincy Adams and the Sacred Fire of Liberty
By Tom Malone
Virtue to discharge all the duties of life; and Fortitude, to bear whatever destiny awaits me. —John Quincy Adams
The long, eventful life of John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), which began on the eve of the American Revolution and ended on the eve of the Civil War, is a testament to ambition, fortitude, integrity, moral courage, and patriotism. Although he is naturally overshadowed by his father, John Adams, who was both a founding father and the second president of the United States, John Quincy was a crucially important figure in the country’s formative years and left an enduring political legacy that is still relevant to issues we face today.
In his book Profiles in Courage, President John F. Kennedy ranked John Quincy first of the nine figures he profiled, writing that Adams “held more important offices and participated in more events than anyone in the history of our nation.”1 The only son of a founding father to become president, John Quincy served under George Washington and with Abraham Lincoln. He served as America’s diplomat to six countries; was a senator, a congressman, and a secretary of state; negotiated the treaty that ended the War of 1812; convinced Spain to cede Florida to the United States; and won a dramatic Supreme Court case that freed the African captives of the slave ship Amistad. John Quincy was the first congressman to issue a call to end slavery in the House of Representatives in an address that Abraham Lincoln would later echo in the Emancipation Proclamation. Slaveholding senator Henry Wise of Virginia called Adams “the acutest, the astutist, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed.”2
He was also a husband, father of four, lawyer, Harvard professor, and writer, and he was passionate about astronomy, horticulture, and poetry. A brilliant polymath, Adams mastered a wide range of subjects. In 1821, New York City Mayor Philip Hone wrote that Adams “has probed deeply into the arcana of all the sciences, understands and can explain all subjects, from the solar system down to the construction of a toothpick. He has the Holy Scriptures at his fingertips, knows every line of Shakespeare, can recite Homer in the original Greek.”3
During the American Revolution, John Quincy, accompanying his father who was then serving as an American diplomat, traveled throughout Europe, where he absorbed the ideas and culture of the European Enlightenment that had profoundly influenced the founding fathers. Those ideas included an authentic respect for reason as man’s only means of knowledge. Adams was an essential link between the visionaries who founded the United States and later generations. His education and early experiences sharply contrasted with those of many of his contemporaries, such as Andrew Jackson, who was raised on the American frontier with little formal schooling. While in Europe, he became intimately acquainted with such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and John Paul Jones. When John Quincy was fourteen, the American ambassador to Russia asked him to be his translator at the court of Catherine the Great. While in his teens, John Quincy taught English to French diplomats and would eventually become fluent in seven languages. All these experiences profoundly influenced the future statesman.
Despite his enormous accomplishments, John Quincy’s tenure as the sixth president of the United States was a disappointment, and his major achievements came before and after his presidency.
***
John Quincy Adams was born to John and Abigail Adams on July 11, 1767, in Braintree, Massachusetts. With revolution already in the air, the elder Adams quickly became a major figure in the independence movement, gaining local and international fame after his principled legal defense of British soldiers in the Boston Massacre trial of 1770. As a prominent patriot leader and a cousin of the “Father of the American Revolution,” Samuel Adams, John Adams increasingly stoked the ire of the British monarch, King George III. Adams attended the first Continental Congress in the fall of 1774. Soon after, British troops were ordered to put down the rebellion and “arrest the principal actors and abettors in the Congress.”4 John Quincy remembered the terror his family felt at the threat of his father’s arrest: “My mother with her infant children dwelt every hour of the day liable to be butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried into Boston as hostages by any foraging or marauding detachment of men.”5 The British attempt to crush the rebellion by seizing weapons from the colonists, and arresting Samuel Adams and John Hancock led to skirmishes at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775. The war began in earnest on June 17, 1775, at Breed’s Hill (named the Battle of Bunker Hill, after the highest hill in the area, though that’s not where the fighting took place).
On that day, seven-year-old John Quincy Adams held his mother’s hand as they watched the battle from a hillside on their family farm. The horror of the battle, which included heavy losses on both sides, was compounded when they learned that a patriot leader and close family friend, Dr. Joseph Warren, had died. In 1848, two years before John Quincy died, he still vividly remembered what his mother had called the “decisive Day,” because it sparked a war on which “the fate of America depends”:
I saw with my eyes those fires, and heard Britannia’s thunders in the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, and witnessed the tears of my mother and mingled them with my own, at the fall of Warren a dear friend of my father. . . . He had been our family physician and surgeon, and had saved my fore finger from amputation under a very bad fracture. . . . Yet in the spring of 1775 my mother taught me to repeat daily after the Lord’s prayer, before rising from bed, the Ode of Collins—“How sleep the brave who sink to rest / By all their country’s wishes blest!”6
So began the sweeping eight-decade saga of John Quincy Adams. It was an astonishing journey that left an indelible mark on American history. It began with that small seven-year-old boy standing on Penn’s Hill with his mother and ended with him, eighty years old and a former president, collapsing in the House of Representatives after serving in Congress for sixteen years.
Great Expectations
John Quincy Adams was immersed in a world of ideas and politics from his earliest years.
His father, once dubbed the “Colossus of Independence,” was one of the key architects of the American Revolution and later the second president of the United States. His mother, Abigail, was a woman of remarkable intelligence and strength whose letters provide deep insight into the political and social climate of the time. She was also one of the first advocates for property rights and equal education for women. They set the bar high for John Quincy, as evidenced by a 1775 letter from John to Abigail concerning the education and homeschooling of their children. “It should be our care,” he told Abigail,
to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt for meanness, abhorrence of injustice, and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.7
A serious proponent of classical education, John Adams had specific recommendations for young John Quincy, which included reading Shakespeare and Thucydides, mastering Greek and Latin, and studying algebra. He also prescribed the sixteen-volume Complete History of England by Tobias Smollet. To round out his education, he urged his son to use his idle time by studying poetry, quipping, “You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”8 Although John Quincy was a voracious reader and ideal pupil by all accounts, the nine-year-old did confess that he was overwhelmed at times with his father’s intense program: “My head is much too fickle, my thoughts are running after bird eggs, play and trifles, till I get vexed with myself. Mamma had a troublesome task to keep me steady.”9
His father also emphasized the value of keeping a diary, advice John Quincy certainly took to heart. The Diary of John Quincy Adams is one of the most remarkable documents of American history, spanning seven decades. It not only chronicles events in the country’s formative years but also provides a view into his internal dialogue and humanizes a man many saw as cold, aloof, and rigid. John Quincy biographer Samuel Bemis suggested it served as a “secret tuning fork for his pent-up emotions,” helping him maintain a healthy emotional baseline. The diary also illustrates that the founders and other historically significant figures were not superhuman or infallible but flesh-and-blood human beings who were neither perfect nor without their own challenges and self-doubts. It was a testament to his discipline that he continued this practice daily for sixty-nine years, no matter what happened.
‘The Greatest Traveler of His Age’
In 1777, John Adams was appointed commissioner to France and decided to bring John Quincy along to advance his education and experience abroad. The first voyage must have been terrifying and surreal for the ten-year-old boy who had grown up on a small farm. Father and son set sail on a blustery February morning on the twenty-four-gun frigate Boston. The trip included violent storms, a lightning strike on the mast, and threats from British frigates. The elder Adams described one of the storms:
The ship shuddered . . . darted from side to side . . . all hands were called, and with much difficulty the guns were all got in and secure. It was with the utmost difficulty that my little son and I could hold ourselves in bed with both our hands, and bracing ourselves against the boards, planks, and timbers with our feet.10
Adams was incredibly proud of how his son held up during all of this.
His behavior gave me satisfaction that I cannot express. Fully sensible to our danger, he was constantly endeavoring to bear up under it with manly courage and patience, very attentive to me, and his thoughts always running in a serious strain.11
Over the next seven years, John Quincy would live in France, the Netherlands, and Russia, with extended visits to England, Sweden, and Prussia. At Passy Academy outside Paris, he studied Latin, fencing, dance, music, and art alongside the grandsons of Benjamin Franklin. The Adamses lived with Franklin and spent much time with Thomas Jefferson, whom John Quincy then idolized. He dined with Lafayette. He wrote letters back home about his sightseeing in Paris, with accounts of Versailles, Notre Dame, and the theater, which his father sometimes let him attend on his own.
The initial sojourn lasted about a year, and they returned home in June 1779. That fall, after John Adams was named minister plenipotentiary (a high-ranking diplomat) to France, they were off to Europe again. This time, John Quincy did not want to go; he preferred to stay with his friends and prepare for Harvard. But his mother urged him to, saying
These are the times in which a genius should wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life that great characters are formed. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.12
At the age of twelve, John Quincy probably wasn’t interested in being a hero or a statesman, but he acquiesced to his mother’s wishes. That voyage to Europe was even more hazardous than the first, and they had to land in Spain instead of France. From there, John decided they would travel to France by land, which meant a journey of hundreds of miles through the mountains of northern Spain, mostly walking or riding on mules. After an arduous two-month trek, they finally arrived in Paris in February 1780. When John was sent to the Netherlands in search of financial aid for the American cause, John Quincy enrolled in the Latin school in Amsterdam and then later attended Leiden University.
When John Quincy was just fifteen, Francis Dana, the U.S. emissary to Russia, asked him to accompany him to St. Petersburg as a translator and personal secretary. Dana was impressed with the young man’s fluency in several languages. At first, John Quincy was enthralled with St. Petersburg, calling it “the finest city I ever saw. It is by far superior to Paris, both for the breadth of its streets, and the elegance of the private buildings.”13 However, later in his visit, he would perceptively call it a land of “masters and slaves,” writing to his mother, “The government of Russia is entirely despotical; the sovereign is absolute in all extent of the word.”14 Although no formal school was available to him in St. Petersburg, he used the library to study such books as Voltaire’s History of Russia, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and the works of Frederick the Great.
A year later, he traveled without Francis Dana from St. Petersburg to the Netherlands to rejoin his father. The trip took five months because the sixteen-year-old decided to take a few adventurous excursions, including a lengthy stay in Sweden, which he dubbed “the land of the lovely dames.” Once he arrived in the Netherlands, father and son then set off for France to join John Quincy’s mother and sister, who had arrived from America. In France, he became closer with Jefferson, who said John Quincy possessed “abilities, learning, application, and the best of dispositions.”15 John Quincy loved spending time with Jefferson, calling him a “man of great judgment” with “universal learning and very pleasing manners.”16 These early travels and forays into international diplomacy helped the future statesman hone his skills, and they foreshadowed his significant influence on the nation’s foreign policy.
Dark Winters in Newburyport
John Quincy returned to America in 1785 and promptly enrolled in Harvard College, his father’s alma mater. As an advanced student, he completed his studies in two years. He then studied law as an apprentice to attorney Theophilus Parsons of Newburyport, Massachusetts. At the time, Newburyport was a small seaport town of fewer than five thousand residents. This must have been quite a culture shock for a teenager who had just returned from a heady life in the capitals of Europe.
He struggled intensely during these years in Newburyport (1787–1790), plagued with severe depression. This may be why his son Charles Francis essentially deleted this period from the published version of his father’s diary.17 Fortunately, this omission was corrected by his grandson, the second Charles Francis, who gathered the entries from this period and published them in a volume called Life in A New England Town, 1787, 1788. It is deeply pessimistic, full of emotional tumult and psychological searching. In one entry, John Quincy assails the power of emotion (the “passions”) to overcome reason, targeting the vice of envy in particular:
An opportunity to observe the effects of the passions. How despotically they rule! How they bend, and master, the greatest and the wisest geniuses! ‘Tis a pity! ‘Tis a great pity! That prudence should desert people when they have the most need of it. Tis a pity, that such a mean, little, dirty passion as envy, should be the vice of the most capricious souls.18
It’s unclear whether he was rebuking himself or someone else, but he was both reflective and despondent in many such entries. He pondered “Human Nature,” saying, “How inexplicable art thou! Oh, may I learn before I advance upon the political stage (if I ever do) not to put my trust in thee!”19 That December, he wrote of “a depression of spirits to which I have hitherto been entirely a stranger.”20 An entry on December 18, 1787, seems to point to the cause of his angst:
The question, what am I to do in this world recurs to me very frequently; and never without causing great anxiety and a depression of spirits: my prospects appear darker to me every day, and I am obliged sometimes to drive the subject from my mind, and to assume some more agreeable train of thoughts.21
It is clear from the entries of this period that he had great ambivalence about his legal studies and career in law. In a letter to his mother, he complained that there were too many lawyers already and said he felt that they tended to evoke the hatred of their fellow citizens because many of them were dishonest. To John Quincy, whose true intellectual interests were in literature, philosophy, poetry, and science, the study and practice of ordinary law—the world of wills, trusts, and bankruptcies—bored him to tears. “God of heaven,” he complained, “If those are the only terms upon which life can be granted to me, Oh! Take me from this earth before I curse the day of my birth.”22 He seems then to have had few good friends and no close confidants. His diary was the one constant. On January 12, 1788, he wrote, “I hope to god that I will not go on in this way, squandering week after week, till at the end of three years I would go out of the office, as ignorant as I entered it.”23
Eventually, he brought himself out of this dark winter. Several events in the spring of 1788 seem to have helped. The first was the news that the Constitution would be ratified, which caught John Quincy’s attention and study. The second was the return of his father and mother from Britain. After their reunion in Braintree, he wrote that his “spirits were so much exalted.” And the third was his interest in a young Newburyport girl named Mary Frazier. John Quincy fell deeply in love with the sixteen-year-old Mary. Their romance lasted for several months, and talk of marriage began. At that point, his mother, Abigail, intervened and persuaded him to put off marriage until he could support a wife. John Quincy agreed, so he and Mary soon parted ways. According to his diary, their parting resulted in “four years of exquisite wretchedness,” and not until he returned to Europe in 1794 did “the wound in my bosom heal.”24
Finding His Voice
After three years in Newburyport, John Quincy moved to Boston, where he announced his law practice but found few clients. He decided to put pen to paper outside the confines of his diary. In so doing, he started to craft his life purpose and put his experiences and education into practice by focusing on the sorts of issues that were meaningful to him.
The first thing that captured his attention was the controversy over the French Revolution. In 1791, Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man in response to the reactionary Edmund Burke’s Reflections on t__he Revolution in France, which denounced the French Revolution. Paine offered much sound and insightful criticism of Burke, who essentially believed in hereditary rule by aristocrats. However, Paine’s pamphlet was problematic as well because he advocated for democracy combined with “economic” rights—which would lead to a welfare state if not anarchy. Although it was written in the early stages of the French Revolution, before the guillotines and the Reign of Terror, many astute observers, including John Adams, were already uncomfortable with the direction the revolution was taking.
The Rights of Man included a preface by Vice President Thomas Jefferson that took a shot at a series of papers by John Adams titled “Discourses on Davila.”25 Jefferson claimed the preface was unauthorized, saying that the publisher had published private correspondence without his permission. The Discourses also expressed a negative view of the French Revolution (but it was not a defense of Burke). While living in Europe, John Adams witnessed the coming of the French Revolution and recognized its potential for tyranny and anarchy. He held that unrestrained democracy tended to devolve into anarchy—and then dictatorship—as the people looked for a “strong man” to save them from themselves. As he explained years later in a letter to Jefferson supporter John Taylor of Virginia,
The history of all ages shows that the caprice, cruelties, and horrors of democracy have soon disgusted, alarmed, and terrified themselves. They soon cry, “this will not do; we have gone too far! We are all in the wrong! We are none of us safe! We must unite in some clever fellow, who can protect us all,—Caesar, Bonaparte, who you will! Though we distrust, hate, and abhor them all; yet we must submit to one or another of them, stand by him, cry him up to the skies, and swear that he is the greatest, best, and finest man that ever lived!”26
In Jefferson’s preface, he called the Discourses “political heresies” and alleged that Adams supported aristocracy and monarchy over republican principles. Jefferson’s attack appeared to be a political move to discredit Adams and bolster his own political position. Despite defending himself as the “mortal and irreconcilable enemy to monarchy,” John Adams found that he had “few friends” and even fewer people willing to defend him against the charges of Jefferson and Paine.
The one exception was a writer whose pen name was “Publicola,” who took direct aim at Paine and Jefferson with letters defending John Adams and criticizing Paine’s understanding of constitutional theory. Publicola attacked Paine’s arguments with methodical precision, arguing that a written constitution with checks and balances was far superior to unfettered democracy. He then took aim at Jefferson:
I confess, sir, that I am somewhat at a loss to determine what this very respectable gentleman means by political heresies. Does he consider this pamphlet of Mr. Paine’s as the canonical book of political scripture? As containing the true doctrine of popular infallibility, from which it would be heretical to depart in one single point? . . . [does it] compel all countrymen to cry out, “There is but one Goddess of Liberty and Common Sense is her prophet?”27
Jefferson was convinced that John Adams and Publicola were one and the same, but James Madison disagreed, speculating that it was John Quincy: “There is more of method also in his arguments, and much less of the clumsiness and heaviness of style, than characterize his father’s writings,” wrote Madison in a letter to Jefferson.28
Madison’s surmise was correct. The Publicola letters were not merely a son’s defense of his father; they were well-reasoned arguments that sparked a vigorous public debate about the nature of America’s emerging constitutional order. History showed that the Adamses were on the right side of the debate regarding the “fire, impetuosity, and vehemence” of the French Revolutionaries and their guillotines. Despite his eminence, Jefferson’s support of the French Revolution, not to mention his dishonest attacks on his old friend John Adams, are two glaring spots on his character. As for John Quincy, once he was identified as the author, the Publicola letters made him the target of political attacks as well, but they also brought him into the public eye and bolstered his confidence in expressing his ideas.
As his law practice began to put enough bread on the table to sustain him, John Quincy spent more time writing and publicizing his political ideas. He wrote articles for newspapers in Boston that were republished nationally and internationally. In his essays, John Quincy advocated neutrality in foreign affairs and urged America to stay out of European conflicts. His reputation grew, and he began speaking in public. In a review of one of his speeches at Boston’s Old South Meeting House, which contrasted the American and French Revolutions, the Massachusetts Mercury reported, “The elegance and spirit of the composition, and the forceful elocution of the speaker, excited such a burst of admiration as would have flattered Cato.”29
None of the praise over his speeches or writings appears to have gone to John Quincy’s head; he remained immensely self-critical throughout his life. Writing to his brother Thomas Boylston Adams on February 13, 1794, he said, “Advanced almost to the age of thirty, I have no political existence” and “my ideas of liberty and government are so widely distant from the fashion of the day that they are much more likely to be injurious than beneficial to my advancement. . . . Surely then as far as success is the criterion of talents, I have no reason to be vain.”30 Despite his misgivings, his efforts bore fruit when he got the momentous news on March 30, 1794, that President George Washington had nominated him to The Hague, in the Netherlands, as resident minister from the United States. John Quincy’s talents were noticed and appreciated by the most important American of the time.
John Quincy’s years as a diplomat were both significant and challenging. He would meet and marry his wife, Louisa, the English-born daughter of Joshua Johnson, the American consul in London. Unfortunately, they were blindsided by financial troubles due to the abrupt failure of Louisa’s father’s business (his creditors demanded that John Quincy cover his father-in-law’s debts). Louisa was also plagued with chronic health issues, which tragically included two miscarriages within six months. While caring for his wife and solving their financial problems, John Quincy also had demanding diplomatic duties, which entailed traveling all over Europe, negotiating treaties, and sending dispatches back to his father, who had now become the second president of the United States. John Quincy was then appointed by his father as U.S. minister to Prussia, stationed in Berlin. He remained there until Jefferson defeated John Adams in a very close and ugly election in 1800. John Quincy and Louisa returned to the United States in 1801 with their young son, George Washington Adams. There, John Quincy threw himself into local politics and was elected to the Massachusetts state senate, whereafter the Massachusetts legislature appointed him to the U.S. Senate in 1803.
Principle over Party
As a U.S. senator, John Quincy demonstrated his commitment to principle over party time and time again. He often supported the policies of Jefferson’s Republican administration over his father’s Federalist party. Despite his mistrust of Jefferson after the Rights of Man controversy, he remained remarkably objective regarding policy. He was one of only two Federalists in Congress to support the Louisiana Purchase, saying, “I must square every vote I give to some principle, and not say aye or no, as the mere echo to my file-leader.”31 Nonetheless, he also strenuously argued that a constitutional amendment was needed for the purchase to be legal.
His support for the Embargo Act of 1807 precipitated his break with the Federalist Party. The embargo was retaliation for French and English aggression toward U.S. merchant ships, which included the impressment of sailors. President Thomas Jefferson thought the act was a means to avert war. However, it was highly unpopular throughout New England, as it prevented American vessels from transporting goods to overseas markets. Although Adams understood this, he thought it was a necessary measure to gain British respect and assert America’s rights. He produced a resolution (which was later adopted) that accused the British of “wanton” violations of maritime law and urged nonimportation of British goods.32 Many in the Federalist-controlled Massachusetts state legislature considered John Quincy’s apparently pro-Jefferson conduct to be a betrayal, and they appointed his successor nearly a full year before his term was complete. John Quincy promptly resigned and switched his party affiliation from Federalist to Republican.
Shortly after, President James Madison offered Adams a position as the first U.S. minister to Russia. John Quincy accepted the post on the spot without discussing it with his wife or parents. His family did not welcome his decision. With three young children to consider, Louisa was stunned and furious. His parents said he was exiling himself.
To make matters worse, citing the poor quality of Russian schools, John Quincy unilaterally decided that his two older sons, ages six and eight, would remain in Massachusetts. This meant splitting the family apart for at least four years. Only their two-year-old son, Charles Francis, would accompany them. This threw Louisa into an unbearable despair. Referring to the situation as “this agony of agonies,” she said that “from that hour to the end of time, life will be to me a succession of miseries only to cease with existence.”33 In trying to explain his rash decision, John Quincy acknowledged that it made little sense given the ages of his young children and his elderly parents, as well as his teaching position at Harvard, but said, “I have the duty of a citizen to obey the call of his country.”34
Putting “duty to country” above one’s own rational interests was the Adams way, and, in this instance, it would have grave long-term consequences for John Quincy and his family. Once they arrived and settled in St. Petersburg, Louisa rallied and did her best to support her husband and his mission. However, her chronic ill health worsened with the brutal Russian winters. John Quincy wrote that his office got so cold that he “could not hold his pen.” Although he’d been critical of this nation of “masters and slaves,” he soon befriended the Russian emperor, Czar Alexander. He admired Alexander’s willingness to stand up to Napoleon, who invaded Russia in 1812. Adams’s dispatches home gave President Madison detailed and perceptive accounts of the war. From this vantage point, Adams witnessed and reported on Napoleon’s disastrous invasion and subsequent retreat and exile.
Although John Quincy excelled at his work, the sons he left behind were always on his mind. In a letter to his parents, he wrote, “I can no longer reconcile either to my feelings or to my sense of duty their absence from me. I must go to them or they must come to me.”35 Unfortunately, John Quincy and Louisa’s already difficult years in Russia took a tragic turn in the summer of 1812 when they lost a one-year-old daughter, Louisa Catherine, to dysentery. Their grief was unbearable. Louisa later confided to her mother-in-law that she often questioned her sanity and felt she was a “calamity to all those who surrounded her.”36 They would later lose their sons George and John as well, both of whom became alcoholics. Only Charles Francis would survive his parents.
In 1814, President Madison appointed John Quincy to head a delegation to Ghent, Belgium, to negotiate with Britain to end the War of 1812. This was a temporary reassignment, and Louisa and Charles Francis remained behind in Russia. The treaty negotiations took several months and resulted in an agreement to end the fighting and restore all U.S. territory. This was a significant victory for the United States: The new nation stood up to the greatest military power in the world without conceding anything in return for peace. The Ghent Treaty was signed on December 24, 1814, two weeks before the great victory of U.S. forces, led by General Andrew Jackson, at the Battle of New Orleans. (The fighting had continued because it took a month for news of the treaty to reach the United States.)
John Quincy’s Russian appointment mercifully ended in 1815, but even this entailed one more hardship for Louisa. Louisa and seven-year-old Charles Francis had to travel from St. Petersburg to Paris to meet John Quincy. They were then to reunite with George and John in London after six long years. They left in the middle of February in a Russian carriage with three servants. This meant an arduous and dangerous trip of two thousand miles across a frozen wasteland that had been ravaged by Napoleon’s army and was full of bandits and hostile French troops. Their carriage had been modified with runners, so it would act as a sled because the snow was often up to the chests of their horses. Near Leipzig, they crossed a vast battlefield filled with bones of dead soldiers. Determined to get there as quickly as possible, Louisa drove their party day and night for forty days. As they finally approached Paris, a unit of Napoleon’s soldiers spotted the Russian carriage and threatened to seize and kill them. As she was explaining in French that she was the wife of an American minister, the commanding officer rode up. He examined her papers and then advised her to shout “Vive Napoleon!,” which, of course, she did. The soldiers let them pass. Louisa later chronicled this adventure in her book Narrative of a Journey from Russia to France. Louisa had already been through many trials, but this trip made her a much stronger person. This was the first time she had to travel on her own, and she confronted physical hardship and grave dangers with incredible courage. She said this trip made her a “somebody,” and she would never again be the “hothouse flower” that her mother-in-law, Abigail, had once likened her to.
His Star Rises . . . and Falls
John Quincy returned to the United States in 1817 to serve as U.S. secretary of state under President James Monroe. He would play a pivotal role in shaping American foreign policy during his tenure from 1817 to 1825 and beyond. He would help resolve remaining disputes between the United States and Great Britain; negotiate a disarmament agreement between the United States and Canada, contributing to the longest-lasting unfortified international border in the world; and arrange for the acquisition of Florida from Spain through the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, expanding U.S. territory and defining the boundary between Spanish and American lands, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.
John Quincy also had a hand in shaping immigration policy as secretary of state. Although the borders were open in the early 1800s, he made it clear that “newcomers” were expected to provide for themselves, follow the laws, and assimilate. There were no handouts whatsoever. In 1819, John Quincy replied to a letter from a German man named von Fiirstenwarther, who had written a report about emigration and wanted the U.S. government to give him a job if he immigrated to the United States. John Quincy’s reply disabuses him of the notion of expecting unearned privileges:
The United States has never held out any incitements to induce the subjects of any other sovereign to abandon their own country, to become inhabitants of this. It was explicitly stated to you, and your report has taken just notice of the statement, that the government of the United States has never adopted any measure to encourage or invite emigrants from any part of Europe.
John Quincy acknowledged the great benefits and “additional strength and wealth, which accrues to the nation, by the accession of a mass of healthy, industrious, and frugal laborers,” and then he emphasized the core principle of American immigration policy:
But there is one principle which pervades all the institutions of this country, and which must always operate as an obstacle to the granting of favors to new comers. This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights. Privileges are granted by European sovereigns to particular classes of individuals, for purposes of general policy; but the general impression here is that privileges granted to one denomination of people, can very seldom be discriminated from erosions of the rights of others. Emigrants from Germany, therefore, or from elsewhere, coming here, are not to expect favors from the governments. They are to expect, if they choose to become citizens, equal rights with those of the natives of the country. . . . They come to a life of independence, but to a life of labor—and, if they cannot accommodate themselves to the character, moral, political, and physical, of this country, with all its compensating balances of good and evil, the Atlantic is always open to them, to return to the land of their nativity and their fathers.37
John Quincy was also instrumental in the formulation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. He upheld the principle of self-determination and encouraged his countrymen to support national independence and republican aspirations of other North and South American countries. The doctrine, introduced by President Monroe but largely shaped by Adams, warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of independent nations in the Western Hemisphere. It was a bold, assertive policy statement that reflected John Quincy’s belief in “peace through strength”; he preferred to negotiate but was willing to use force if necessary to protect the security of the United States.
In a speech on July 4, 1821, Adams articulated his philosophy on foreign policy, famously saying of America,
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.38
In that speech, he also shared his views about the nature of rights, saying that they were not “donations from . . . Kings” but, rather, stem from the “moral and physical nature of man.”
Now, at fifty-four, Adams seemed to be at the height of his powers and ready for his next challenge.
As Monroe’s second presidential term ended in 1824, John Quincy aspired to succeed him. The other contenders were Henry Clay, William H. Crawford, and the swashbuckling war hero General Andrew Jackson. When votes were cast, Jackson received ninety-nine electoral votes; Adams, eighty-four; Crawford, forty-one; and Clay, thirty-seven. Because no one had at least a 50 percent majority, the House of Representatives decided between the three candidates with the most votes. Clay threw his support behind Adams, whose election was thereby secured. A few days later, John Quincy offered Clay the office of secretary of state, which he accepted. Jackson supporters claimed that Adams and Clay had made a “corrupt bargain.” Although the charges were baseless, Jackson’s supporters continued to repeat them, along with every other accusation they could conceive. They essentially began Jackson’s 1828 campaign right after Adams took office. As a result, John Quincy entered the White House under a cloud of controversy because Jackson had received more electoral votes and claimed the election was illegitimate due to a “corrupt bargain.” John Quincy was aware of this handicap, admitting in his inaugural address that he was “less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors.”39 Unfortunately, his chosen initiatives and overall vision for his presidency would not help.
Similar to Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy believed the federal government should take an active role in promoting commerce and industry through tariffs, a national bank, and government subsidies for internal improvements. For example, he championed “modernization” during his term, attempting to build what he and Clay termed the “American system.” In his first annual message to Congress, Adams presented an ambitious program that included a national university, a national astronomical observatory, and a national market bolstered by government-funded roads and canals. Many congressmen, even his supporters, took issue with his proposals. Some thought he had lost his mind. His knowledge of history and his love of science and classical education seem to have backfired on him. Enamored of the internal improvement projects of Greece and Rome, he seems to have become convinced that such infrastructure building should be a key role of the federal government. As he explained in his inaugural address,
The magnificence and splendor of their public works are among the imperishable glories of the ancient republics. The roads and aqueducts of Rome have been the admiration of all after ages, and have survived thousands of years after all her conquests have been swallowed up in despotism or become the spoil of barbarians. Some diversity of opinion has prevailed with regard to the powers of Congress for legislation upon objects of this nature. The most respectful deference is due to doubts originating in pure patriotism and sustained by venerated authority. But nearly twenty years have passed since the construction of the first national road was commenced. The authority for its construction was then unquestioned.40
John Quincy did not think that such projects conflicted with government limited to protecting the individual’s rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But his opponents did not forget, as he seems to have, that the only way government can pay for public works projects is through taxation, and so the “magnificence and splendor” necessarily entails taking what rightfully belongs to some for the benefit of others. “The moment it is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of public law or justice to protect it,” his father had said, “anarchy and tyranny commence.”41
In trying to explain his programs, John Quincy said,
The great object of the institution of civil government is the improvement of the condition of those who are parties to the social compact, and no government, in whatever form constituted, can accomplish the lawful ends of its institution but in proportion as it improves the condition of those over whom it is established.42
He held that “all power originally resides in the people and is derived from them” and that “the tenure of power by man is, in the moral purposes of his Creator, upon condition that it shall be exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and his fellow men.”43 Thus, his religion neatly dovetailed with another of his influences: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had argued that individuals properly are subordinate to the “general will” or common good. The misguided idea that the “common good” sometimes trumps the rights of the individual has always had proponents in America, but John Quincy’s presidential aspirations highlighted some of its flaws at the national level.
His proposals were not viewed favorably by most Americans. His critics claimed that he was arrogant to push such ambitious federal programs after being narrowly elected in the House. They said John Quincy should not be acting as if he had a national mandate.44 His idea for a national observatory was ridiculed, and people said they would not pay for “lighthouses in the skies.” Seemingly oblivious to the blowback, he dug the hole deeper in his 1825 State of the Union address:
While foreign nations less blessed with that freedom which is power than ourselves are advancing with great strides in the career of public improvement, were we to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not cast away the bounties of Providence and doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority?45
Many in John Quincy’s own cabinet came to oppose his tariffs and infrastructure proposals. His overreach polarized and hardened the factions against him. Andrew Jackson pounced on his opponent’s blunders, rightly concluding,
When I view the splendor and magnificence of the government, embraced in the recommendation of the late message, with the powers enumerated, together with the declaration that it would be criminal for the agents of our government to be palsied by the voice of the people, I shudder for the consequence—if not checked by the voice of the people, it must end in consolidation, & then in despotism.46
Compounding his troubles, John Quincy’s father died on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (Incredibly, Jefferson died on the same day.) John Adams’s death left John Quincy reeling and isolated; his father had always been his mentor and closest personal and political ally. To make matters worse, the Jacksonians had taken control of both houses of Congress, stifling his initiatives. Unfortunately, he again shot himself in the foot by signing a poorly drafted tariff bill. It included levies on raw wool, flax, molasses, hemp, and alcohol and was particularly damaging to the economy of the South. Southern legislatures denounced the tariff as unconstitutional, unjust, and oppressive, and the Virginia legislature called it the “Tariff of Abominations.”
Even when he made decisions that were right in principle, such as when he refused to sign a fraudulent treaty designed to remove the Creek Indians from their lands in Georgia, he hurt himself politically. In that case, his moral concern for the rights of Native Americans infuriated Southerners and Western settlers. He also failed to make headway in his area of greatest expertise, foreign affairs. He could not persuade the British to open the West Indies for U.S. trade. He and Clay were even blocked (for partisan reasons) from sending U.S. delegates to a conference in Panama intended to improve relations between countries in the Western hemisphere.
Although he was politically crippled, John Quincy opposed the “spoils” system of handing key government positions to friends, allies, or supporters. He felt that “politicking” and patronage were beneath the dignity of the office. Like the founders, he viewed party politics as divisive and held that a president should be a spokesperson for the whole nation, someone who could build consensus. Jackson’s supporters did not have those same qualms and worked hard to create a populist political machine that would crush Adams and propel Jackson into the White House. The election of 1828 was billed as a contest between “John Quincy Adams who can write” versus “Andy Jackson who can fight.”47 It turned out to be one of the most vicious elections in American history, with supporters on both sides stooping to extremely low levels of mudslinging and personal attacks. In the end, Jackson won a decisive victory with 178 electoral votes to just 83 for Adams.
Like his father’s one-term presidency, John Quincy’s tenure in the White House ended with defeat, failure, and frustration. The loss was compounded soon after the election by the sudden and untimely death of John and Louisa’s oldest son, George Washington Adams. Grief-stricken over his son’s death, virtually penniless, and believing that his political career was over, Adams went home to Quincy, Massachusetts, to recover, uncertain of what the future would hold.
Redemption: ‘Let Justice Be Done Though the Heavens Fall’
Despite the disappointment and tragedies of 1828, retirement and a life of leisure were not in the cards for John Quincy. Once again exhibiting his resilience, he followed his presidential tenure with a record-breaking nine consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from 1830 until his passing—within the halls of the Capitol Building—in 1848. His remarkable tenure displayed commitment and grit as he continued to shape the nation’s future long after his presidency.
During this period of congressional service, Adams, who began his tenure at sixty-three years of age, earned the nickname “Old Man Eloquent.” He became one of the most respected and influential members of Congress, regularly speaking on controversial issues of the day. Most significantly, Adams demonstrated his commitment to freedom in his long, courageous campaign to abolish slavery. “My election to Congress was a call,” he wrote in his diary. Foreshadowing Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech, Adams wrote, “The real question convulsing the Union, was whether a population spread over an immense territory, consisting of one great division of freemen, and another of masters and slaves, could exist permanently together as members of one community or not.”48 By this time, he had concluded that abolishing slavery was required by the logic of America’s founding, declaring, “The same moral thunderbolt, which melted the chains of allegiance that bound the colonist to his sovereign, dissolved the fetters of the slave.”49
From 1831 to 1838, Representative Adams regularly presented antislavery petitions in the House of Representatives. The petitions came not just from voters in his district but from all over Massachusetts. And as Adams’s reputation for opposing slavery grew, he began to receive petitions from men and women across the United States. These petitions often led to debates over whether the House should discuss them, and many of Adams’s speeches in defense of doing so were publicized in the newspapers.
It was Adams who first gave hope to a young Frederick Douglass while he was still a slave. In 1831, Douglass read a newspaper article on antislavery petitions that Adams had brought before Congress and learned of the abolitionist movement. Douglass described this discovery in his first oration:
I well remember getting possession of a speech by John Quincy Adams, made in Congress about slavery and freedom, and reading it to my fellow slaves. Oh! what joy and gladness it produced to know that so great, so good a man was pleading for us, and further, to know that there was a large and growing class of people in the north called abolitionists, who were moving for our freedom.50
In 1839, Adams presented a resolution for a constitutional amendment declaring that every child born in the United States after July 4, 1842, would be born free; that no new slave state would be admitted into the Union; and that both slavery and the slave trade would be abolished in the District of Columbia after July 4, 1845. In response, Southern members of the newly formed Democrat party passed a resolution that became known as the “gag rule,” which was designed to silence Adams and shut down all discussion of slavery in the House of Representatives. This effectively blocked any debate of Adams’s proposed amendment.
But the rule only hardened Adams’s resolve. When the first abolition petition thereafter was presented on December 16, 1835, Speaker James K. Polk allowed several members to speak in favor of the rule and then prohibited further debate. Adams rose and shouted out, “Am I gagged, or am I not,” inadvertently giving the rule its historic name. He refused to be silent, which set off furious arguments in the House that lasted six weeks. Several members were so alarmed at the intensity of the debate that they armed themselves with knives when they entered the chamber.
The suppression of his freedom to speak his mind on the House floor, especially on a moral question of such magnitude, would not stand with Adams. He held “the resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States, of the rules of the House, and of the rights of my constituents.”51 With each new session of Congress, Adams escalated his attacks on the gag rule. He was fighting for moral principles that transcended party politics, and he would not be silenced. He pilloried the Democrats along with what he called the “slaveocracy” and all those who defended it. He cleverly used parliamentary procedures to get around the rule, such as when he asked to read the prayers of a group of Massachusetts women, pointing out that they were not petitioning but simply praying for “the greatest improvement that can possibly be effected in the condition of the human race—the abolition of slavery!”52 On the House floor, he was sharp, fearless, and unrelenting. Many southern Democrats took to calling him “the Madman from Massachusetts.” On the national stage, however, he was now seen as a courageous freedom fighter, battling the forces of slavery and oppression. He achieved a level of popularity with American citizens that he had never experienced. When he traveled to Ohio for a speech, the citizens of Cincinnati put up a banner in his honor, which read, “John Quincy Adams: Defender of the Rights of Man.”53
Although he had witnessed friends go off to battle since the days of Bunker Hill, Adams had never been to war. Now, nearing the age of seventy, he fought like a knight charging into battle. He began to receive death threats, with one letter saying, “The rod is cut that will make your hide smart for your insidious attempt on southern rights . . . If ever you dare to vindicate abolition again you will be lynched . . . drawing you from your seat in the House by force. So be on your guard.”54 The constant stream of threats terrified Louisa and their son Charles Francis, but they could do nothing to dissuade John Quincy from speaking out. He was convinced that the future of the nation was at stake. He took vigorous daily walks to keep himself in shape and returned to the House floor day after day to fight this war, his moral crusade.
In January of 1840, his attention was diverted from Congress with news involving the legal trial of thirty-four Africans who had been enslaved on the Spanish ship Amistad off the coast of Cuba. The Africans had broken their chains, killed the captain, and demanded that the crew take them back to Sierra Leone. The crew, however, kept stealthily changing course, and the ship wound up floundering off the coast of Long Island. They were brought to New London, Connecticut, where the Africans were promptly arrested and charged with piracy and murder. The district court judge ruled that the Africans were free men who had been kidnapped illegally and transported to Cuba against their will, concluding that the killings were justified as legitimate acts of self-defense. He ordered the Africans turned over to the president of the United States and transported home at America’s expense. Unwilling to stand up to his southern constituency, President Martin Van Buren declined and ordered an appeal to the circuit court. The circuit court upheld the ruling, which prompted an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Attorneys Ellis Gray Loring and Roger Sherman Baldwin, both staunch abolitionists, agreed to take the case pro bono. Knowing that they would need heavyweight help for such a high-profile case, they asked John Quincy to join them as part of the defense team. He was now seventy-three years old and had not tried a case in the high court since 1809. Knowing that the lives of thirty-four people were on the line, he recorded in his diary that the stress of this decision weighed heavily on him, saying, “Should my life and health be spared to perform this service . . . then will be a proper time for me to withdraw and take my last leave of the public service.”55 He agreed to take on the case—one in which he would be a prosecutor against the United States government. To make matters worse, the majority of the nine judges were slaveholding Southerners, with only Joseph Story of Massachusetts and Roger Taney of Maryland sympathetic to abolitionism.
On George Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1841, Adams walked from his home to the Supreme Court for the start of the trial. Two days later, it was his turn to address the court. He spoke for more than four hours on the first day. “Justice,” he began, “as defined in the Institutes of Justinian nearly 2,000 years ago . . . is the constant and perpetual will to secure everyone his own right.”56 For hours, he summarized the legal appeals, reinforcing the argument that these were free men, abducted against their will and forced onto a ship where they killed their captors in self-defense. He attacked the Van Buren administration for accusing the captives of piracy and theft, saying that the actual criminals were the captain and crew of the Amistad who kidnapped these men, women, and children and sought to enslave them. However, he knew that legal arguments and outrage alone were not likely to sway his audience.
In his closing remarks, he made a much deeper appeal—to their honor and sense of morality and justice. Pointing to a copy of the Declaration of Independence, he said, “the moment you come to the Declaration of Independence, that every man has a right to life and liberty, as an inalienable right, this case is decided. I ask nothing more on behalf of these unfortunate men, than this Declaration.” He then called out the hallowed names of the court’s early justices, such as John Marshall, William Cushing, Samuel Chase, and Henry Livingston, noting the service they had faithfully rendered to their country. He ended with an appeal that he knew would strike home with the justices: “I can only petition heaven that every member of [the Supreme Court] may . . . after a long and virtuous career in this world, be received at the portals of the next with the approving sentence, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of the Lord.’”57
Justice Story exclaimed that Adams’s defense was “extraordinary for its power and its bitter sarcasm, and its dealing with topics far beyond the record and points of discussion.”58 A week later, the court rendered a majority decision declaring the Africans freemen. Only Justice Henry Baldwin dissented. Accolades, tributes, and gifts came pouring in, thanking Adams for rescuing the captives of the Amistad. The one that pleased him most was a “splendidly bound Quarto Bible” signed by “Cinque, Kinna and Kale for the thirty-four Mendian Africans of the Amistad.”59
After the Amistad trial, he returned to his seat in the House and resumed his fight against the gag rule and slavocracy with renewed vigor. He became even more militant and determined. He knew that the gag rule’s days were numbered. However, from his decades of abolitionism, he also knew that slaveholders would never voluntarily give up what they viewed as their “property.” Perhaps it was his direct experience with the people of the Amistad, or he had simply reached a tipping point in his long fight against this moral abomination, but whatever the reason, he crossed the Rubicon one day during a speech he gave in Pittsburgh, saying to a group of black citizens “the day of your redemption” was “bound to come.” “It may come in peace, or it may come in blood; but whether in peace or in blood, LET IT COME.”60 When he later proposed another resolution in the House to eliminate the gag rule, James Dellet of Alabama used this quote in his opposing remarks, claiming that it showed the true motives of the anti-gag activists (i.e., fomenting civil war). When Adams heard this, without rising from his seat, he calmly said, “I say now let it come.” Dellet responded by reminding the house that the expression was a call for civil war. Without hesitating, Adams roared back, “Though it cost the blood of millions of white men, let it come! Let justice be done though the heavens fall!”61 This was shocking; nobody in Congress had gone that far before in public. Adams’s protege, the abolitionist Joshua Giddings, wrote that, upon hearing this, “a sensation of horror ran through the southern slaveholders.”62
He followed this bombshell by calling for a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery, arguing that it violated the Declaration of Independence, which rested on the idea that all human beings are created equal. By this time, Adams had come to see a moral flaw in the Constitution, writing that the injustices in American society had been caused by “that fatal drop of Prussic acid in the Constitution of the United States, the human chattel representation.”63 Adams prepared a special committee report, outlining his reasons for proposing the constitutional amendment, and submitted it to the House, where it was promptly dismissed. He no doubt expected such a response and was undaunted. He knew that the tide was turning. On the first day of the new session, December 2, 1844, he once again submitted a resolution requesting that the gag rule be revoked. The opposition then moved to sideline his resolution. For the first time, their motion failed 104 to 81. Adams’s resolution was then put to a vote—it passed 108 to 80. At last, his long, exhausting battle for freedom of speech was over.
Adams continued the fight against slavery for two more years. He supported the expansion of the northwest territories and opposed admitting Texas into the Union as a slave state. But now, at seventy-nine years of age, he was in failing health and no longer had the strength to fight as he had for the past two decades. In November of 1846, he suffered a stroke. He recovered but not without lingering effects. The following year, weak as he was, he felt duty-bound to continue serving in Congress. He struggled to write but still managed to keep up with his diary. On February 20, 1848, he made what would be the last entry, consisting of four lines from John Donne:
Fair Lady, thou of human life
Hast yet but little seen.
Thy days of sorrow and of strife
Are few and far between.
The next day, during a discussion about ending the Mexican-American war, Adams rose to speak and promptly collapsed. He was rushed to the Capitol rotunda for fresher air. Struggling to remain conscious, he said, “This is the end of earth, but I am composed.”64 He then lapsed into a coma and died two days later on February 23, 1848. The national mourning that followed had not been seen since the deaths of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Charles Francis Adams called it “as great a pageant as was ever conducted in the United States.”65
Seventy-three years earlier, when John Quincy Adams was just eight years old, family friend Dr. Joseph Warren said, in his annual Boston Massacre oration, “On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn.” John Quincy Adams certainly took Warren’s injunction to heart. Dr. Warren would have been proud of how John Quincy carried the torch of liberty that he and the other founders ignited. Adams held that torch from the time of Bunker Hill to the eve of the Civil War before handing it off to a new generation. That generation included John Quincy’s freshman colleague in Congress, Abraham Lincoln, who was one of his honorary pallbearers. “Let it come,” John Quincy had said regarding armed conflict to decide the fate of slavery in America, and indeed it did. Although he would not live to see it, the war that eventually came under President Lincoln was bloodier and more horrific than Adams could have imagined.
Despite his contradictions and disappointing tenure as president, John Quincy Adams was a fount of moral courage who helped his country establish a noninterventionist foreign policy, end the War of 1812, defeat the slaveocracy’s gag rule, secure freedom for the Amistad captives, and give national prominence to the abolitionist cause. “My cause is the cause of my country and human liberty,” he once said, “the fulfillment of prophesies that the day shall come when slavery and war shall be banished from the face of the earth.”66 He anchored this valiant struggle in the Declaration’s principle that “all men are created equal,” fighting fiercely to preserve what George Washington had called “the sacred fire of liberty.”
Correction: The original posting of this article erroneously claimed that a young John Quincy Adams met Charles Dickens in Europe. In fact, Adams met Dickens much later, while Dickens was in America. —Editor