John Quincy Adams

He was seven when his mother walked him up Penn's Hill to watch Charlestown burn across the water. At 10 he sailed for France with his father. At 14 he went to St. Petersburg as secretary and interpreter on the first American mission to Russia, and came home across northern Europe largely alone. Harvard admitted him as an advanced student and graduated him second in his class in 1787. He tried law in Boston and was rescued at 27 by George Washington, who sent him as minister to The Hague. In London in 1797 he married Louisa Catherine Johnson, the only foreign-born woman ever to be first lady. He had kept a diary since he was 12, and he kept it until the year he died.

The job he was best at came before the top one. As James Monroe's secretary of state from 1817 to 1825 he pried Florida out of Spain, fixed the northern boundary at the 49th parallel, and drafted most of the doctrine that carries Monroe's name. Then the election of 1824 went to the House, followed by four years of proposing roads, canals, a national university and a national observatory to a Congress that funded none of it. Jackson buried him in 1828. BriefHistory has that term and what came after it. This page is interested in the household.

Adams drove his sons the way he had been driven, and two of them broke. George Washington Adams — drinking, deep in debt, by then the father of a chambermaid's child — went over the side of the steamship Benjamin Franklin on Long Island Sound on April 30, 1829. His hat and cloak were found on deck. His body came ashore six weeks later. John Adams II, dismissed from his father's staff and failing in business, was dead by 1834 at 31. Only Charles Francis outlived him. Louisa, who had buried an infant daughter in Russia and endured a string of miscarriages, spent much of the marriage ill and alone in houses she had not chosen. The diary records all of it and mostly convicts its author of idleness.

The failed president got a second life, and it is the one that lasted. Massachusetts sent him to the House in 1831, where he filed antislavery petitions the chamber had voted to ignore, turned an 1842 censure motion against himself into a trial of the gag rule, argued the Amistad captives free at 73, and forced Congress to accept James Smithson's bequest and build the Smithsonian with it. He collapsed at his desk on February 21, 1848 and died two days later in the Speaker's room. Abolitionists who had found him too cautious claimed him anyway. Rankings still file the presidency in the bottom half, and there is no survey at all for the thing he was good at.

John Quincy Adams's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Treaty of Ghent other
  Headed the American delegation that ended the War of 1812 1814
• Adams-Onis Treaty other
  Took Florida from Spain and drew the line to the Pacific 1819
• Report upon Weights and Measures book
  A 250-page study of measurement standards, still cited as a model of the form 1821
• The Monroe Doctrine speech
  He wrote most of it — Monroe delivered it and got the name 1823
• United States v. The Amistad case
  Argued for the captives at 73 and won their freedom 1841
• Smithsonian Institution company
  He fought for a decade to make Congress accept James Smithson's bequest 1846

• June 17, 1775 aged 7 Watches Charlestown burn from Penn's Hill with his mother He was seven. The Battle of Bunker Hill was 10 miles off.
• 1781 aged ~14 Goes to St. Petersburg at 14 as secretary and interpreter to Francis Dana The first American diplomatic mission to Russia. He came home the long way, mostly alone.
• July 26, 1797 aged 30 Marries Louisa Catherine Johnson in London The only foreign-born woman to serve as first lady.
• December 24, 1814 aged 47 Signs the Treaty of Ghent
• December 2, 1823 aged 56 Monroe reads to Congress the doctrine Adams wrote
• April 30, 1829 aged 61 His eldest son disappears from a Long Island Sound steamboat George Washington Adams, 28, in debt and drinking. The body washed ashore on June 10.
• December 5, 1831 aged 64 Takes his seat in the House of Representatives The only former president to return to the chamber and stay.
• March 9, 1841 aged 73 The Supreme Court frees the Amistad captives Adams argued the case over two days in late February and early March.
• February 23, 1848 aged 80 Dies in the Speaker's room two days after collapsing at his desk

• John Adams 1735–1826
  Second President and key Founding Father who helped secure independence and shaped early American diplomacy. son of
• Abigail Adams 1744–1818
  Correspondent and presidential spouse whose letters urged legal consideration for women in the new republic. son of
• Henry Clay 1777–1852
  Senator and statesman known as the Great Compromiser for his role in preserving the Union. allied with
• John C. Calhoun 1782–1850
  Vice president and theorist of slavery and states’ rights whose doctrines intensified sectional conflict. opposed
• Roger B. Taney 1777–1864
  Chief justice whose Court shaped federalism but is principally remembered for the disastrous Dred Scott decision. argued before
• James Smithson 1765–1829
  British scientist whose bequest founded the Smithsonian Institution, America's museum complex. executed the bequest of