John Quincy Adams was an American politician, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829.
151 Facts About John Quincy Adams
2.
John Quincy Adams previously served as the eighth United States Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825.
3.
John Quincy Adams was the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801, and First Lady Abigail Adams.
4.
Multilingual, John Quincy Adams held diplomatic posts for the duration of Madison's presidency, and he served as part of the American delegation that negotiated an end to the War of 1812.
5.
John Quincy Adams helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine, which became a key tenet of US foreign policy.
6.
In 1818, John Quincy Adams was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
7.
Rather than retiring from public service, John Quincy Adams won election to the House of Representatives, where he would serve from 1831 until his death in 1848.
8.
John Quincy Adams remains the only former president to be elected to the chamber.
9.
John Quincy Adams led the repeal of the "gag rule", which had prevented the House of Representatives from debating petitions to abolish slavery.
10.
Historians concur that John Quincy Adams was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history; they typically rank him as an average president, as he had an ambitious agenda but could not get it passed by Congress.
11.
John Quincy Adams was named after his mother's maternal grandfather, Colonel John Quincy, after whom Quincy, Massachusetts, is named, who died two days after Adams's birth.
12.
John Quincy Adams soon exhibited literary skills, and in 1779 he started a diary that he kept until just before he died in 1848.
13.
Until the age of ten, John Quincy Adams grew up on the family farm in Braintree, largely in the care of his mother.
14.
In 1781, John Quincy Adams traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he served as the secretary to the American diplomat, Francis Dana.
15.
John Quincy Adams returned to the Netherlands in 1783 and accompanied his father to Great Britain in 1784.
16.
John Quincy Adams returned to the United States in 1785 and earned admission as a member of the junior class of Harvard College the following year.
17.
John Quincy Adams joined Phi Beta Kappa and excelled academically, graduating second in his class in 1787.
18.
John Quincy Adams initially opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution, but he ultimately came to accept the document, and in 1789 his father was elected as the first Vice President of the United States.
19.
In 1790, John Quincy Adams opened his own legal practice in Boston.
20.
John Quincy Adams initially avoided becoming involved in politics, instead focusing on building his legal career.
21.
John Quincy Adams considered declining the role, but ultimately took the position on the advice of his father.
22.
John Quincy Adams supported the Jay Treaty, but it proved unpopular with many in the United States, contributing to a growing partisan split between the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton and the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson.
23.
John Quincy Adams's parents disapproved of his decision to marry a woman who had grown up in England, but he informed his parents that he would not reconsider his decision.
24.
Shortly after the wedding, Joshua Johnson fled England to escape his creditors, and Adams did not receive the dowry that Johnson had promised him, much to the embarrassment of Louisa.
25.
John Quincy Adams noted in his own diary that he had no regrets about his decision to marry Louisa.
26.
Later that year, John Adams defeated Jefferson in the 1796 presidential election.
27.
The State Department tasked John Quincy Adams with developing commercial relations with Prussia and Sweden, but President John Quincy Adams asked his son to write to him frequently about affairs in Europe.
28.
In 1799, John Quincy Adams negotiated a new trade agreement between the United States and Prussia, though he could never complete an agreement with Sweden.
29.
John Quincy Adams frequently wrote to family members in the United States, and in 1801 his letters about the Prussian region of Silesia were published in a book titled Letters on Silesia.
30.
On his return to the United States, John Quincy Adams re-established a legal practice in Boston, and in April 1802 he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate.
31.
John Quincy Adams had strongly opposed Jefferson's 1800 presidential candidacy, but he gradually became alienated from the Federalist Party.
32.
John Quincy Adams's disaffection was driven by the party's declining popularity, disagreements over foreign policy, and Adams's hostility to Timothy Pickering, a Federalist Party leader whom Adams viewed as overly favorable to Britain.
33.
Unlike other New England Federalists, John Quincy Adams supported the Jefferson administration's Louisiana Purchase and expansionist policies.
34.
John Quincy Adams was the lone Federalist in Congress to vote for the Non-importation Act of 1806 that punished Britain for its attacks on American shipping during the ongoing Napoleonic Wars.
35.
John Quincy Adams became increasingly frustrated with the unwillingness of other Federalists to condemn British actions, including impressment, and he moved closer to the Jefferson administration.
36.
John Quincy Adams was influenced by the classical republican ideal of civic eloquence espoused by British philosopher David Hume.
37.
John Quincy Adams adapted these classical republican ideals of public oratory to the American debate, viewing its multilevel political structure as ripe for "the renaissance of Demosthenic eloquence".
38.
John Quincy Adams was well-qualified for the role after his experiences in Europe generally and Russia specifically.
39.
John Quincy Adams quickly established a productive working relationship with Russian official Nikolay Rumyantsev and eventually befriended Tsar Alexander I of Russia.
40.
John Quincy Adams continued to favor American neutrality between France and Britain during the Napoleonic War.
41.
From his diplomatic post, John Quincy Adams observed the French Emperor Napoleon's invasion of Russia, which ended in defeat for the French.
42.
The nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, but John Quincy Adams declined the seat, preferring a career in politics and diplomacy, so Joseph Story took the seat instead.
43.
John Quincy Adams had long feared that the United States would enter a war it could not win against Britain, and by early 1812, he saw such a war as inevitable due to the constant British attacks on American shipping and the British practice of impressment.
44.
In May 1815, John Quincy Adams learned that President Madison had appointed him as the US ambassador to Britain.
45.
John Quincy Adams served as Secretary of State during Monroe's eight-year presidency, from 1817 to 1825.
46.
John Quincy Adams wanted to delay American recognition of the newly independent republics of Latin America to avoid the risk of war with Spain and its European allies.
47.
John Quincy Adams sought to avoid exacerbating sectional tensions, which had been a major issue for the country during the War of 1812.
48.
One of the major challenges confronting John Quincy Adams was how to respond to the power vacuum in Latin America that arose from Spain's weakness following the Peninsular War.
49.
Monroe and John Quincy Adams agreed on most major foreign policy issues: both favored neutrality in Latin American independence wars, peace with the United Kingdom, rejection of a trade agreement with the French, and peaceful expansion into the Spanish Empire's North American territories.
50.
The president and his secretary of state developed a strong working relationship, and while John Quincy Adams often influenced Monroe's policies, he respected that Monroe made the final decisions on major issues.
51.
John Quincy Adams developed a strong respect for Calhoun but believed that Crawford was unduly focused on succeeding Monroe in 1824.
52.
When John Quincy Adams took office, Spanish possessions bordered the United States to the south and west.
53.
John Quincy Adams informed Spain that its failure to police its own territory had compelled Jackson to act, and he advised Spain to either secure the region or sell it to the United States.
54.
At Monroe's direction, John Quincy Adams agreed to the Sabine River boundary, but he insisted that Spain cede its claims on Oregon Country.
55.
John Quincy Adams was deeply interested in establishing American control over the Oregon Country, partly because he believed that control of that region would spur trade with Asia.
56.
John Quincy Adams was deeply proud of the treaty, though he privately was concerned by the potential expansion of slavery into the newly acquired territories.
57.
Immediately upon becoming Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams emerged as one of Monroe's most likely successors, as the last three presidents had all served in the role before taking office.
58.
Crawford favored state sovereignty and a strict constructionist view of the Constitution, while Clay, Calhoun, and John Quincy Adams embraced federally funded internal improvements, high tariffs, and the Second Bank of the United States, which was known as the national bank.
59.
John Quincy Adams felt that his own election as president would vindicate his father, while allowing him to pursue an ambitious domestic policy.
60.
John Quincy Adams's top choice for the role of vice president was General Andrew Jackson; John Quincy Adams noted that "the Vice-Presidency was a station in which [Jackson] could hang no one, and in which he would need to quarrel with no one".
61.
Candidates were instead nominated by state legislatures or nominating conventions, and John Quincy Adams received the endorsement of the New England legislatures.
62.
The regional strength of each candidate played an important role in the election; John Quincy Adams was popular in New England, Clay and Jackson were strong in the West, and Jackson and Crawford competed for the South.
63.
John Quincy Adams nearly swept the electoral votes of New England and won a majority of the electoral votes in New York, but he won just six electoral votes from the slave states.
64.
John Quincy Adams knew that his own victory in the contingent election would require the support of Clay, who wielded immense influence in the House of Representatives.
65.
John Quincy Adams met with Federalists such as Daniel Webster, promising that he would not deny governmental positions to members of their party.
66.
On February 9,1825, John Quincy Adams won the contingent election on the first ballot, taking 13 of the 24 state delegations.
67.
John Quincy Adams won the House delegations of all the states in which he or Clay had won a majority of the electoral votes, as well as the delegations of Illinois, Louisiana, and Maryland.
68.
John Quincy Adams's victory made him the first child of a president to serve as president himself.
69.
John Quincy Adams took the oath of office on a book of constitutional law, instead of the more traditional Bible.
70.
John Quincy Adams proposed an elaborate program of "internal improvements": roads, ports, and canals.
71.
John Quincy Adams promised that he would ask Congress to authorize many such projects.
72.
John Quincy Adams presided over a harmonious and productive cabinet that he met with on a weekly basis.
73.
John Quincy Adams instead selected James Barbour of Virginia, a prominent supporter of Crawford, to lead the War Department.
74.
John Quincy Adams chose Henry Clay as Secretary of State, angering those who believed that Clay had offered his support in the 1824 election for the most prestigious position in the cabinet.
75.
John Quincy Adams called for major investments in internal improvements as well as the creation of a national university, a naval academy, and a national astronomical observatory.
76.
John Quincy Adams proposed the establishment of a Department of the Interior as a new cabinet-level department that would preside over these internal improvements.
77.
John Quincy Adams hoped to fund these measures primarily through Western land sales, rather than increased taxes or public debt.
78.
Some in the South feared that John Quincy Adams was secretly an abolitionist and that he sought to subordinate the states to the federal government.
79.
Unlike other aspects of his domestic agenda, John Quincy Adams won congressional approval for several ambitious infrastructure projects.
80.
John Quincy Adams presided over major repairs and further construction on the National Road, and shortly after he left office the National Road extended from Cumberland, Maryland, to Zanesville, Ohio.
81.
Supporters of John Quincy Adams began calling themselves National Republicans, while supporters of Jackson began calling themselves Democrats.
82.
John Quincy Adams, meanwhile, clung to the hope of a non-partisan nation, and he refused to make full use of the power of patronage to build up his own party structure.
83.
Regardless, John Quincy Adams signed the Tariff of 1828, which became known as the "Tariff of Abominations" by opponents.
84.
John Quincy Adams was denounced in the South, and he received little credit for the tariff in the North.
85.
John Quincy Adams sought the gradual assimilation of Native Americans via consensual agreements, a priority shared by few whites in the 1820s.
86.
Yet John Quincy Adams was deeply committed to the westward expansion of the United States.
87.
Early in his term, John Quincy Adams suspended the Treaty of Indian Springs after learning that the Governor of Georgia, George Troup, had forced the treaty on the Muscogee.
88.
John Quincy Adams signed a new treaty with the Muscogee in January 1826 that allowed the Muscogee to stay but ceded most of their land to Georgia.
89.
John Quincy Adams famously said "America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy".
90.
One of the major foreign policy goals of the John Quincy Adams administration was the expansion of American trade.
91.
John Quincy Adams's administration reached reciprocity treaties with a number of nations, including Denmark, Prussia, and the Federal Republic of Central America.
92.
Agreements with Denmark and Sweden opened their colonies to American trade, but John Quincy Adams was especially focused on opening trade with the British West Indies.
93.
The John Quincy Adams administration negotiated extensively with the British to lift this ban, but the two sides could not reach an agreement.
94.
Clay and John Quincy Adams hoped that the conference would inaugurate a "Good Neighborhood Policy" among the independent states of the Americas.
95.
John Quincy Adams, meanwhile, refused to adapt to the new reality of political campaigns, and he avoided public functions and refused to invest in pro-administration tools such as newspapers.
96.
Vice President Calhoun joined Jackson's ticket, while John Quincy Adams turned to Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush as his running mate.
97.
John Quincy Adams did not attend Jackson's inauguration, making him one of only four presidents who finished their terms but skipped the event.
98.
John Quincy Adams considered permanently retiring from public life after his 1828 defeat, and he was deeply hurt by the suicide of his son, George Washington John Quincy Adams, in 1829.
99.
John Quincy Adams was appalled by many of the Jackson administration's actions, including its embrace of the spoils system and the prosecution of his close friend, Treasury Auditor Tobias Watkins, for embezzlement.
100.
John Quincy Adams grew bored with his retirement and still felt that his career was unfinished, so he ran for and won a seat in the United States House of Representatives in the 1830 elections.
101.
John Quincy Adams's election went against the generally held opinion, shared by his own wife and youngest son, that former presidents should not run for public office.
102.
John Quincy Adams expected a light workload when he returned to Washington at 64 years old, but Speaker Andrew Stevenson selected John Quincy Adams chair of the Committee on Commerce and Manufactures.
103.
Stevenson, an ally of Jackson, expected that the committee chairmanship would keep John Quincy Adams busy defending the tariff even while the Jacksonian majority on the committee would prevent John Quincy Adams from accruing any real power.
104.
John Quincy Adams helped pass the Tariff of 1832, which lowered rates, but not enough to mollify the South Carolina nullifiers.
105.
John Quincy Adams was appalled by the Nullification Crisis's outcome, as he felt that the Southern states had unfairly benefited from challenging federal law.
106.
Rather than seek election by the legislature, John Quincy Adams withdrew his name from contention, and the legislature selected Davis.
107.
John Quincy Adams was nearly elected to the Senate in 1835 by a coalition of Anti-Masons and National Republicans, but his support for Jackson in a minor foreign policy matter annoyed National Republican leaders enough that they dropped their support for his candidacy.
108.
Nonetheless, John Quincy Adams became aligned with the Whig Party in Congress.
109.
John Quincy Adams generally opposed the initiatives of President Van Buren, long a political adversary, though they maintained a cordial public relationship.
110.
John Quincy Adams considered the issue of Texas to be "a question of far deeper root and more overshadowing branches than any or all others that agitate the country", and he emerged as one of the leading congressional opponents of annexation.
111.
When he served as secretary of state, John Quincy Adams had sought to acquire Texas, but he argued that, because Mexico had abolished slavery, the acquisition of Texas would transform the region from a free territory into a slave state.
112.
John Quincy Adams feared that the annexation of Texas would encourage Southern expansionists to pursue other potential slave states, including Cuba.
113.
John Quincy Adams saw Tyler as an agent of "the slave-driving, Virginia, Jeffersonian school, principled against all improvement".
114.
John Quincy Adams was appointed chairman of a special committee that explored impeaching Tyler, and John Quincy Adams presented a scathing report of Tyler that argued that his actions warranted impeachment.
115.
John Quincy Adams attempted to win ratification of an annexation treaty in 1844, but, to Adams's surprise and relief, the Senate rejected the treaty.
116.
John Quincy Adams strongly attacked the treaty, arguing that the annexation of Texas would involve the United States in "a war for slavery".
117.
Adams had served with James K Polk in the House of Representatives, and Adams loathed the new president, seeing him as another expansionist, pro-slavery Southern Democrat.
118.
John Quincy Adams favored the annexation of the entirety of Oregon Country, a disputed region occupied by both the United States and Britain, and was disappointed when President Polk signed the Oregon Treaty, which divided the land between the two claimants at the 49th parallel.
119.
One of the 14 dissenting votes was John Quincy Adams, who believed that Polk was seeking to wage an offensive to expand slavery.
120.
John Quincy Adams wrote in his private journal in 1820:.
121.
In late 1836, John Quincy Adams began a campaign to ridicule slave owners and the gag rule.
122.
John Quincy Adams frequently attempted to present anti-slavery petitions, often in ways that provoked strong reactions from Southern representatives.
123.
John Quincy Adams fought actively against the gag rule for another seven years, eventually moving the resolution that led to its repeal in 1844.
124.
In 1841, at the request of Lewis Tappan and Ellis Gray Loring, Adams joined the case of United States v The Amistad.
125.
John Quincy Adams went before the Supreme Court on behalf of African slaves who had revolted and seized the Spanish ship Amistad.
126.
John Quincy Adams appeared on February 24,1841, and spoke for four hours.
127.
John Quincy Adams's argument succeeded: the Court ruled that the Africans were free and they returned to their homes.
128.
John Quincy Adams became a leading force for the promotion of science.
129.
John Quincy Adams realized that this might allow the United States to realize his dream of building a national institution of science and learning.
130.
John Quincy Adams thus became Congress's primary supporter of the future Smithsonian Institution.
131.
Congress debated whether the federal government had the authority to accept the gift, though with John Quincy Adams leading the initiative, Congress accepted the legacy bequeathed to the nation and pledged the faith of the United States to the charitable trust on July 1,1836.
132.
When John Quincy Adams entered the House chamber on February 13,1847, everyone "stood up and applauded".
133.
Immediately thereafter, John Quincy Adams collapsed, having suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
134.
John Quincy Adams always preferred solitary reading to social engagements, and he was repeatedly persuaded to stay in public service by others.
135.
Historian Paul Nagel states that, like Abraham Lincoln after him, John Quincy Adams often suffered from depression, for which he sought treatment in early years.
136.
John Quincy Adams thought his depression was due to the high expectations demanded of him by his father and mother.
137.
John Quincy Adams was closer to his father, with whom he spent much of his early life while abroad, than he was to his mother.
138.
In contrast, John Quincy Adams had a rocky relationship with his mother, due to her high expectations of him, and her fear that her children would follow in the footsteps of her brother, who died of alcoholism.
139.
John Quincy Adams reportedly spoke eight foreign languages, more than any other US president.
140.
John Quincy Adams remains the only US president who could converse in Russian.
141.
John Quincy Adams is widely regarded as one of the most effective diplomats and secretaries of state in American history, but scholars generally rank him as an average president.
142.
John Quincy Adams is remembered as a man eminently qualified for the presidency, yet hopelessly weakened in his presidential leadership potential because of the 1824 election.
143.
John Quincy Adams spoke of trying to serve as a man above the "baneful weed of party strife" at the precise moment in history when the Second Party System was emerging with nearly revolutionary force.
144.
Cooper writes that John Quincy Adams was the first "major public figure" to publicly question whether the United States could remain united so long as the institution of slavery persisted.
145.
John Quincy Adams has been praised as a strong prose stylist, with James Parker describing him as one of the "three authentically muddy-eyed and pained-by-subjectivity writers" that the White House has harbored, along with Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.
146.
John Quincy Adams Birthplace is part of Adams National Historical Park and open to the public.
147.
John Quincy Adams tower, located in the Southwest residential area of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is named for the president.
148.
An John Quincy Adams Memorial has been proposed in Washington, DC, honoring John Quincy Adams and his wife, son, father, mother, and other members of their family.
149.
Adams's middle name of Quincy has been used by several locations in the United States, including the town of Quincy, Illinois.
150.
Some sources contend that in 1843 John Quincy Adams sat for the earliest confirmed photograph of a United States president, although others maintain that William Henry Harrison had posed even earlier for his portrait, in 1841.
151.
John Quincy Adams was portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in the 1997 film Amistad, and again by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Steven Hinkle in the 2008 HBO television miniseries John Adams.