Who even is John Quincy Adams? When I stepped into the Adams crypt for my moments in the presence of JQA, his wife, and his parents, I racked my brain trying to put together an image of the man I was visiting. Let’s paint this portrait of mine of the great John Quincy Adams with three simple facts. The first stroke of the paintbrush: JQA is the son of John Adams and used to swim naked in the Potomac. With the second stroke, I add a different color and try to remember something more meaningful to his presidency: he had a pet alligator. With the third stroke I recall JQA’ harsh and strict parenthood towards his children, and the early self-inflicted deaths of two of his sons. With more time I began to recall more details, such as his career in foreign policy and his shenanigans in my most beloved (to read about) politics of the era of the Clay-Jacksonians feuds. He also was fascinated by cutting-edge science and was one of the first politicians to bring investments and uniformity of our nation’s scientists, which I’ll talk about more later.
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But first, I've got a really good biography and a hot cup of coffee waiting for me; I'll be back before too long.
Beneath the large sanctuary of First United Parish Church of Quincey lies a small room of white painted stone. Through the small metal gate that separates living from dead, you can see the edges of the stones that mark the resting place of John and Abigail Adams. In another story, they are the First Lady and the President. In this story, they are mom and dad. If you step into the crypt, you have to overlook the weight of the presence of the two essential Americans lying before you and force your gaze slightly to the right. Lying there in an adjacent room, matching up in perfect symmetry, tomb for tomb, foot by foot, are the stone slabs of sixth president John Quincy Adams and his wife, Louisa Adams.
I learned something very important on my trip to the town of Quincy that I’ll impart to to you non-natives of the region. The name Quincy, coming from JQA’s mother’s line of prominent Quincies in the Massachusetts areas stretching back to the 1600s is pronounced with a “z” sounds. Even without a thick New England accent, you are expected to say something that sounds more like “Quinzey,” lest, as my tour guide at the church forewarned: ‘you might get run out of town!’ I’ve been saying ”Quincy” with the “s” sound all my life to I made sure to practice getting the feel and sound of it right a few times before attempting to call our sixth President, or the town he is buried in, by name again. Luckily, I only slipped up once while I was there.
When the younger executive pair died, a room in the base of the church that was previously used for storage of farming equipment was recrafted to create a mirror chamber to the small stone room where John and Abigail lie. A large crevice in the wall now separates the two mirror chambers, with the gate letting you enter right in front of John (to your left) and Abigail (to your right). You have to take a turn to the right to see JQA and Louisa. I remember the ceiling being low; I could have reached out and touched it with my hand.
I learned something very important on my trip to the town of Quincy that I’ll impart to to you non-natives of the region. The name Quincy, coming from JQA’s mother’s line of prominent Quincies in the Massachusetts areas stretching back to the 1600s is pronounced with a “z” sounds. Even without a thick New England accent, you are expected to say something that sounds more like “Quinzey,” lest, as my tour guide at the church forewarned: ‘you might get run out of town!’ I’ve been saying ”Quincy” with the “s” sound all my life to I made sure to practice getting the feel and sound of it right a few times before attempting to call our sixth President, or the town he is buried in, by name again. Luckily, I only slipped up once while I was there.
When the younger executive pair died, a room in the base of the church that was previously used for storage of farming equipment was recrafted to create a mirror chamber to the small stone room where John and Abigail lie. A large crevice in the wall now separates the two mirror chambers, with the gate letting you enter right in front of John (to your left) and Abigail (to your right). You have to take a turn to the right to see JQA and Louisa. I remember the ceiling being low; I could have reached out and touched it with my hand.
To get to know JQA more (as he often referred to himself in his youth, or as my friend Ben sarcastically refers to him as Ja-Qua), I read Remini’s brief biography which is a part of the presidential biography series. I am quite familiar with Remini due to my dabbling with a lot of Henry Clay. Remini was an expert in Jacksonian era politics, centered around the man Jackson. He has a lot of voice, so I quite enjoyed this little biography. At one point he responds to one of JQA’s actions in congress with two words: “What idiocy!”. Remini likes Jackson, and a key part of JQA’s political life is Jackson’s ruination of it.
Young Johnny was born perfectly in time to be just grown up enough to understand that a revolutionary war was breaking out. The building of America was his life. There’s a story about how when fighting broke out at Bunker Hill in 1775, Abigail brought 8-year-old Johnny to see the fighting and give him a lesson about what all was going on. I imagine the biggest lesson little Johnny took from that might have been a little queasiness or fear from seeing battle up close(ish). While in Boston visiting the Adamses, I also went to Bunker Hill and the Bunker Hill museum across the street and saw some of the battle recreations and logistics (including taking care of the high number of bodies on that small hill). I would not have wanted to see that as an eight year old nor to hear mom’s nagging lesson about the dangers of war and the importance of freedom.
Abigail and John had extremely high expectations for their children. And once dad became president, those expectations went through the roof. As the oldest, JQA wore the greatest weight of it. I stood in the house that Johnny spent the first few years of his life in. I briefly just wanted to write “the house he grew up in,” but that wouldn’t quite be true... We’ll get into that later. He was born here however. This home that John and Abigail lived in after they wed hosts a breadth of political creation. John Adams would have written the Massachusetts Constitution in the front left room. John Quincy Adams would be born in the upstairs room on the right. I stood in the room where young JQA would have run around playing games, if he wasn’t such a quiet, serious, and studious child. I found letters dating back to him under the age of 10 writing to his father with worries that he wasn’t doing well enough in his studies of etiquette and the classics! When I was that age, all I wanted to do was run around in the woods, finding creatures in the mud, and getting up to as much trouble as possible before the dinner call rang. I certainly never wrote or said to my parents an apology for not being good enough (which young JQA frequently did). I don’t think he became very self-confident nor learned how to actually advocate for himself until his elderly years. Part of the strict parenting we as historians can be very grateful for. Daddy John taught JQA from an early age how to keep track of his affairs and to log his affairs, if not every day, then close to it. So we have a nearly day by day account of most of JQA’s life from his experience. This journaling became all the more important with the next unexpected phase in his young life. When JQA was a preteen, John Adams was called again to diplomatic work in Europe. Johnny followed his father as an assistant and did the greatest chunk of his ‘growing up’ in Europe. Throughout his life he would regret not being able to go to finishing school and have a consistent early education. This would be like grabbing your child after they finished middle school and taking them to Europe to hob-knob with all of the important diplomats and political leaders of the most important countries in the Western world at the time. Whatever he missed going to school, he got triple in social competence. Johnny was raised in a world of diplomacy and he travelled to courts throughout Europe as a beloved young guest. Abigail stayed back in Massachusetts with the younger children, and she constantly worried about her teenage son being surrounded by loose young European women. From as far as we can tell, nothing happened that would have confirmed Abigail’s fears, but that didn’t stop her from berating her son. The influx of condemning letters from his mom with her worries and with more commands to him from afar put a strain on their mother-son relationship. There was never a little that said merely, “I love you; have fun in Europe!” There was always something to do, or something that had been done wrong, or a fear about what might go wrong. I’m not sure what the proper metaphor for an 18th century helicopter parent would be, but Abigail was it. |
While reading, I started to feel a very strong connection to young John. Besides his strained relationship with his mom (because my mom is awesome), his yearning for travel, his preference for scholarly pursuits, and his natural inclination towards languages make me feel like we might have been similar teens. See, I have a true love for history, but my modern day ‘do-something-meaningful’ application of that desire has been to study international affairs. I imagine looking back in time and seeing a 17-year old me in 2014 in hazy image next to a 17-year old Johnny in 1784, flipping through Thucydides, trying to understand great power relations and the complexity of international trade. That’s right, he and I shared some required textbooks... 200 years apart. Johnny should be grateful he never had to study the new theoretical nuclear dynamic theories. If I didn’t already start to feel a kinship to JQA from our mutual Thucydides misery, his new upcoming job sealed the connection. See, a friend of his father’s (or perhaps a friend of a friend) needed a secretary to accompany him to the court in St. Petersburg and serve as both an aid and translator. The Russian court operated in French, and young Johnny, by proclivity for languages, was fluent. It’s unclear if Johnny volunteered himself, or if his father pushed him into it, but as a teenager he moved from Western Europe to Northern Russia, just in time for Winter to start and settle on the city. Here’s the connection: I lived in St. Petersburg myself for a semester and had one of the most miserable times. In my time there it was Summer, so I can’t imagine the compounded misery of being freezing on top of everything else. So I feel as if in reading his letters and accounts I have a special understanding of those long and difficult months he spent in St. Pete, and I want to shout “I UNDERSTAND! YOU ARE NOT ALONE!” He threw himself into the library in substitute for friends or entertainment, in typical JQA style. While his intelligence and life experience dramatically rose during this time, and while he would return to Russia later in life, he never could shake that he felt these years wasted.
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Here are some examples of how extra as hell eighteenth century St. Petersburg was. I grabbed these pictures from a shared photos folder of my Study Abroad cohort, so photo creds to Paulina and Rachel if I mistakenly grabbed some of yours. The last picture is seriously one of the only pictures I have from living in St. Pete because I wanted to show my mom how cold and emaciated I was from eating only potatoes and cabbage for two months straight.
AS A DISCLAIMER... Peter itself is not a bad city; I just happened to have a miserable time of it. I was taking classes at a university that was over an hour from where I was living, public transportation was undergoing all sorts of renovations and so it was very unreliable, and for some reason I thought that barely being able to piece together a few phrases in Russian would suffice, as I was told that somehow my language skills would magically develop when need and survival demanded. I have met people who say that St. Petersburg is their favorite city in the whole world, so don’t knock off the city as a whole. But I do still recommend not going in the Winter time. |
Eventually JQA returned home, he attended his father’s Alma Mater, Harvard, and he tried to start a career of his own: a law practice just like daddy. He even fell in love towards the middle of his twenties with a young teenage girl from a wealthy family down the street: Mary Frazier. (Spoiler alert: not his to-be wife.) In a recurring theme both of demanding parents and of Johnny being hesitant to stand up for himself, he was caught in a Catch 22: The girl’s father wouldn’t let JQA spend any more time with his daughter until he proved he was serious and proposed marriage to her. John and Abigail allowed their son to spend time with whomever he pleased, but they wouldn’t let JQA consider marriage, let alone get engaged, until he had his finances together and enough clients to sustain his law practice and make a career. So, with time (and possibly parents) as the enemy, he had to let the girl go. Remini is convinced that JQA never loved another girl in the same way that he adored this one, even his relationship with his wife was more a matter of convenience than of love. Oh Johnny, I too mourn the pain of young lost love.
Johnny’s career eventually took off, and he was pushed by community members and a bit by his father to start and get involved in politics. He ended up returning to Europe as a part of the team that wrote and signed the Treaty of Ghent. On his return trip to Europe in his 30s, he met and eventually married a girl named. Louisa, who was half British and half America. It was much to the appellation of John, but more fervently of Abigail, that he had married this girl. I can’t help but wonder if there were any internal sentiments towards the British as the ‘enemies’ of the Revolutionary War that John and Abigail were so actively involved in, that resurfaced these years later. I learned at the Adams crypt that Abigail and Louisa had a very strained (and that’s putting it lightly) relationship for the rest of Abigail’s life. I think I see both of their points of views: Abigail who sees her son marrying a daughter of the enemy, and Louisa learning the loveless strictness with which her mother in law stifled her children. On a more hopeful note, maybe we can think that Abigail simply didn’t like Louisa because she knew that the new young couple didn’t share the love that she and John had.
I said that Johnny and Louisa’ marriage was only a matter of convenience, and I mean that truly. They had hung out enough (Johnny was working with her father from time to time when he was in the area) that Louisa’s friends had started to talk. At 22, she also was getting old for the time to be still unmarried, and it brought her some social chagrin. She brought it up to Johnny before he left again to work in another European city, and I imagine him standing there nervously saying “Sure, whatever.” To Johnny, ‘sure, whatever’ meant “I like you but probably not, but I don’t want to make you super emotional right now because I have to leave so I’m just going to say something that will get you off my case.” And to Louisa, ‘sure, whatever’ meant ‘Yes! Of course, whenever and wherever you want to, I’m in.” I’m not saying that Louisa liked Johnny any exuberantly more than he liked her, but she had invested too much time into this relationship to leave and start over looking for a husband from the ground up again that she’d rather take what she had in front of her than waste the time hoping for something better. The ‘sure, whatever’ conversation is just how I like to imagine it happened, but these musings from Louisa about being out of time are paraphrased from her own writings about her feelings at the time. JQA did his best to kick an impending down the road and as far as possible into the future, but eventually he stopped again in London on his way to Lisbon for a new diplomatic mission, and they were wed. I’ve been told there’s a great biography about Louisa’s life that I have already purchased and placed on my bookshelf to violently stare at my for the next few months until I read it. Perhaps then I’ll revisit this and add more on their relationship. |
JQA’s political life was on fire in the upcoming years. He never was one to advocate for himself, but he started getting selected for office. His most prominent appointment was by the then-president James Monroe as Secretary of State. It was the perfect role. JQA was able to achieve the prestige and glory that his dad had pressured him towards, use his expertise and first hand experience on foreign affairs, and hold tight to his demure personality and stay mostly out of the spotlight. JQA fought for internal investments in infrastructure and investments into science and national education as a way to grow the strength of the nation. He also was one of the first to try and forge ties with and recognize some of the newly independent nations in Latin America. He negotiated with the British about commercial rights in the Post-War-of-1812 world and helped set the stage for the gobbling up of America to the West that would occur with the rise of the Manifest Destiny concept in the upcoming years. Most people thank Polk for the states of Washington and Oregon, but I like to think of JQA making the assist that allowed Polk to score those goals.
It was around this time that his father started writing to him with hopes of him securing the presidency. See, besides Washington, every other president up until that point had been Secretary of State preceding their rise to Presidency. Secretary of State was the staircase up to the Presidency platform. I don’t know when it shifted, but at some point, JQA started to go for it.
The election of 1824 was vicious. John Quincy Adams represented the manufacturing interests of the North-East. Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson also ran for the interests of the frontier states, though on dramatically different issues, with Jackson pulling large support from the South. And then William Crawford ran as the Democratic candidate for the South. I won’t go into it much but it was brutal. There was so much mudslinging and slander around this time (Jackson’s wife, Rachel, is said to have died from the stress of the campaign during the 1828 elections), that even after the votes had been cast, the drama had barely begun. No person had won a majority, so the election went off to be decided by the House of Representatives. As the two lowest scoring candidates, Clay and Crawford were not eligible for this run-off, so it became Adams vs. Jackson. Henry Clay as speaker of the house had a lot of influence over the course of the election. Now there’s a lot of political intricacies in what happened next, but at the time, and generally still today, it was called the corrupt bargain. Henry Clay got enough of his people to cast their votes for Adams and once President, Adams selected Henry Clay as secretary of state. Jacksonian assumed something very sketchy had gone on behind the scenes: money passed, promises made, corruption rooted. You can read more about the Corrupt Bargain elsewhere, but the important takeaway is this: it looked as if Adams and Clay, prior enemies, teamed up just to take Andrew Jackson down, and he was livid. Jackson dedicated the next four years to de-estimating Adams, using his political power to cripple Adams at every turn and every move in his presidency. He was vicious. Adams would be voted out in favor of Jackson four years later. And despite being on the ‘steps’ as Secretary of State, Clay would never become president. Not for want of trying.
Everyone assumed that Adams would be politically dead on the national scale after his limited presidency (though we likely can blame its limitations on the work of the Jacksonians.) However, he returned to his law practice in Boston only to be called back into local politics before long. This journey for the aging John Quincy would bring him back to the national stage: he was elected to Congress to represent Massachusetts, where he would serve until the end of his life, literally. In these years, John Quincy would, in my opinion, truly become himself. The Jackson years I think taught him the need to be bold and fight for himself and not be squashed down by what other people think or feel. It helped that his parents were no longer around: Abigail had died unexpectedly in 1818 and John lived just long enough to see his son become president, passing himself in 1826. JQA also started seriously fighting against the expansion of slavery. He vigorously fought against the gag rule, which prevented congress from even discussing slavery. I see a distinct parallel between JQA fighting the gag rule to debate slavery, and his father John more than 50 years earlier fighting the unofficial Congressional gag on discussing independence.
As he aged, JQA continued to return to congress, session after session. One session, he stood up to yell at a southern (which apparently he did a lot), and suffered a stroke. He collapsed into the arms of a fellow congressman and was taken to an adjacent room. He was laid out on a couch and died right there, in the capitol building. A friend has told me that if you can find your way into the Capitol building somehow, the couch that John Quincy Adams died on is still there in that very same room. Perhaps I’ll have to add ‘couch quest’ to my list.
It was around this time that his father started writing to him with hopes of him securing the presidency. See, besides Washington, every other president up until that point had been Secretary of State preceding their rise to Presidency. Secretary of State was the staircase up to the Presidency platform. I don’t know when it shifted, but at some point, JQA started to go for it.
The election of 1824 was vicious. John Quincy Adams represented the manufacturing interests of the North-East. Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson also ran for the interests of the frontier states, though on dramatically different issues, with Jackson pulling large support from the South. And then William Crawford ran as the Democratic candidate for the South. I won’t go into it much but it was brutal. There was so much mudslinging and slander around this time (Jackson’s wife, Rachel, is said to have died from the stress of the campaign during the 1828 elections), that even after the votes had been cast, the drama had barely begun. No person had won a majority, so the election went off to be decided by the House of Representatives. As the two lowest scoring candidates, Clay and Crawford were not eligible for this run-off, so it became Adams vs. Jackson. Henry Clay as speaker of the house had a lot of influence over the course of the election. Now there’s a lot of political intricacies in what happened next, but at the time, and generally still today, it was called the corrupt bargain. Henry Clay got enough of his people to cast their votes for Adams and once President, Adams selected Henry Clay as secretary of state. Jacksonian assumed something very sketchy had gone on behind the scenes: money passed, promises made, corruption rooted. You can read more about the Corrupt Bargain elsewhere, but the important takeaway is this: it looked as if Adams and Clay, prior enemies, teamed up just to take Andrew Jackson down, and he was livid. Jackson dedicated the next four years to de-estimating Adams, using his political power to cripple Adams at every turn and every move in his presidency. He was vicious. Adams would be voted out in favor of Jackson four years later. And despite being on the ‘steps’ as Secretary of State, Clay would never become president. Not for want of trying.
Everyone assumed that Adams would be politically dead on the national scale after his limited presidency (though we likely can blame its limitations on the work of the Jacksonians.) However, he returned to his law practice in Boston only to be called back into local politics before long. This journey for the aging John Quincy would bring him back to the national stage: he was elected to Congress to represent Massachusetts, where he would serve until the end of his life, literally. In these years, John Quincy would, in my opinion, truly become himself. The Jackson years I think taught him the need to be bold and fight for himself and not be squashed down by what other people think or feel. It helped that his parents were no longer around: Abigail had died unexpectedly in 1818 and John lived just long enough to see his son become president, passing himself in 1826. JQA also started seriously fighting against the expansion of slavery. He vigorously fought against the gag rule, which prevented congress from even discussing slavery. I see a distinct parallel between JQA fighting the gag rule to debate slavery, and his father John more than 50 years earlier fighting the unofficial Congressional gag on discussing independence.
As he aged, JQA continued to return to congress, session after session. One session, he stood up to yell at a southern (which apparently he did a lot), and suffered a stroke. He collapsed into the arms of a fellow congressman and was taken to an adjacent room. He was laid out on a couch and died right there, in the capitol building. A friend has told me that if you can find your way into the Capitol building somehow, the couch that John Quincy Adams died on is still there in that very same room. Perhaps I’ll have to add ‘couch quest’ to my list.
I dwelled a lot on JQA’s early life because lately I’ve been fascinated to think about how these young founders and ‘heirs of the founder’ (stealing Brands’ phrase here) shaped their life trajectories and allowed themselves to be molded by the times. You older people reading this will know, but I am experiencing some very transformative years! Reading about these ‘greats’ in biographies and pondering on their lives is the closest I can come to having a cup of coffee with them and asking questions myself. If you are interested, I’ve linked the aforementioned books here (Louisa), here (Remini), and here (Brands).
TL;DR
I’ll finish this off with my three favorite JQA stories.
If you don’t care to read all of the above (I kind of took it a little too far-- I was just vibing too hard with JQA) you can also start here for the TL;DR.
If you don’t care to read all of the above (I kind of took it a little too far-- I was just vibing too hard with JQA) you can also start here for the TL;DR.
- While in Europe negotiating the treaty of Ghent in the 1810s, John Quincy Adams was staying in a small boarding house with his fellow diplomats. Well, his fellow diplomats, including notorious Kentucky party boy Henry Clay, were not 80 year olds at heart like JQA. Johnny would go to bed at 8pm, and get up between 4am and 5am for the most effective use of his day. Everyone else would stay up smoking, drinking, and playing cards until the early hours of the morning, likely to just before when Johnny would start his day. He complained often of being kept up by the noise. It is said that whenever the other diplomats were being too rowdy, a groggy JQA would waddle out in his night clothes and ask them to keep it down. Henry Clay, ever the peacemaker, would take it upon himself to placate John and walk him back to bed and make sure he fell asleep before the boys resumed their festivities. Though it probably didn’t happen, I just love to imagine Henry Clay patting John’s head and saying “Go to sleep” until he heard snoring start.
- John Quincy Adams was a huge advocate for science. Lucky for him, the early 1800s were a hotbed of scientific discovery. But the problem is that learning and discovery often involves getting a few things wrong before you figure out what is right. In the early 1800s, there was a group of people who believed that the Earth was shaped more like an elongated donut, where there was a surface world, but then there was a whole inner world on the inside of the donut that didn’t get any light. It was theorized that possibly mole-like humans inhabited there, but the reason that the two worlds were separated was because the poles had frozen over, making travel in and out of donut earth impossible. Until now. With new fancy 1800s surveying and travelling equipment, a crew could be sent to the poles, where the earth caved inward, and explore what the called the “Hollow Earth.” John Quincy Adams was all for it. As president he even tried to set aside money to fund this expedition, but it fell through. Don’t believe me? Look up “Hollow Earth Theory.”
- As I said above, John Quincy Adams would get up ridiculously early, go for a walk, and also go for a swim if the weather permitted. Part of the regiment of keeping both mind and body strong involved vigorous exercise. One of his favorite exercises was swimming in Potomac in the early morning light. But, in the days before nylon bathing suits, the best swimwear is what was God-given. So yes, John Quincy Adams loved swimming for miles nude in the Potomac. Can you imagine the president today doing such a thing?
To get to the Adams Crypt, I took the red line south from Boston to Quincy Center Station. There's also of plenty of parking in Quincy if you choose to drive. From the metro, the church under which the Adamses are entombed is literally just across the street. United First Parish Church is still an active congregation, so be respectful. Also note that the crypt is only open to visitors seasonally, so plan a trip during the Summer or on an Adams birthday! For the Adams ancestral graves dating back to JQA's great-great-grandfather, check out Hancock Cemetery, adjacent to the metro station and across the park from the church.
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