John Quincy Adams

• John Quincy Adams (July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was
the sixth President of the United States from March 4, 1825, to March
4, 1829.
• He was also an American diplomat and served in both the Senate and
House of Representatives.
• He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National
Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties.
• Adams was the son of President John Adams and Abigail Adams.
• The name "Quincy" came from Abigail's maternal grandfather, Colonel
John Quincy, after whom Quincy, Massachusetts, is named.
• As a diplomat, Adams was involved in many international negotiations,
and helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine as Secretary of State
• . Historians agree he was one of the great diplomats in American
history.
• As president, he proposed a program of modernization and educational
advancement, but was stymied by Congress, controlled by his
enemies.
• Adams lost his 1828 bid for re-election to Andrew Jackson.
• In doing so, Adams became the first President since his father to serve
a single term.
• As president, Adams presented a vision of national greatness resting
on economic growth and a strong federal government, but his
presidency was not a success as he lacked political adroitness,
popularity or a network of supporters, and ran afoul of politicians eager
to undercut him.
• Adams is best known as a diplomat who shaped American's foreign
policy in line with his deeply conservative and ardently nationalist
commitment toAmerica's republican values.
• More recently he has been portrayed as the exemplar and moral leader
in an era of modernization when new technologies and networks of
infrastructure and communication brought to the people messages of
religious revival, social reform, and party politics, as well as moving
goods, money and people ever more rapidly and efficiently.
• Adams was elected a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts after
leaving office, the only president ever to do so, serving for the last 17
years of his life.
• In the House he became a leading opponent of the Slave Power and
argued that if a civil war ever broke out the president could abolish
 slavery by using his war powers, which Abraham Lincoln partially did
during the American Civil War in the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.
• Deeply troubled by slavery, Adams correctly predicted the dissolution
of the Union on the issue, though the series of bloody slave
insurrections he foresaw never came to pass.
• Adams was born to John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams in what is
now Quincy, Massachusetts.
• Quincy in 1767 was the "north precinct" of Braintree, Massachusetts;
Quincy became incorporated as an independent town in 1792 and was
named forJohn Quincy, just as John Quincy Adams had been.
• The John Quincy Adams Birthplace is now part of Adams National
Historical Park and open to the public.
• It is near Abigail Adams Cairn, marking the site from which Adams
witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill at age seven.
• In 1779 Adams began a diary that he kept until just before his death in
1848.
• Adams first learned of the Declaration of Independence from the
letters his father wrote his mother from the Second Continental
Congress in Philadelphia.
• Much of Adams' youth was spent accompanying his father overseas.
• John Adams served as an American envoy to France from 1778 until
1779 and to the Netherlands from 1780 until 1782, and the younger
Adams accompanied his father on these journeys.
• Adams acquired an education at institutions such as Leiden University.
• For nearly three years, at the age of 14, he accompanied Francis
Dana as a secretary on a mission to St. Petersburg, Russia, to
obtain recognition of the newUnited States.
• He spent time in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark and, in 1804,
published a travel report of Silesia.
• During these years overseas, Adams gained
a mastery of French and Dutch and a familiarity with German and
other European languages.
• He entered Harvard College and graduated in 1788, Phi Beta Kappa.
• Adams House at Harvard College is named in honor of Adams and his
father.
• He apprenticed as a lawyer with Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport,
Massachusetts, from 1787 to 1789.
• He was admitted to the bar in 1791 and began practicing
law in Boston.