John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767, in Braintree (now Quincy), MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry, to John AdamsJohn AdamsJohn Adams (1735–1826) was the first vice president (1789–1797) and the second president (1797–1801) of the United States. Earlier he served in the Continental Congress, was a signer of the Treaty of Paris and became the first American minister to Great Britain.Open the full entry and Abigail Adams.⁠[1][2]

On June 17, 1775, he and his mother watched the fires of Charlestown and heard the cannons of the Battle of Bunker Hill from PennUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry’s Hill.⁠[1]

In 1778 Adams went to France with his father and studied at academies there and elsewhere in Europe. In February 1780 he arrived in Paris after a journey across Spain and France, and later that year went to Holland to attend Leyden University.⁠[2][1]

In 1781, at 14, he went to Russia as private secretary and French interpreter to Francis Dana, the U.S. minister to Russia; in 1783 he served as an additional secretary to the U.S. commissioners negotiating the Treaty of Paris.⁠[2][1]

Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1787, then read law under Theophilus Parsons at Newburyport, Massachusetts, and was admitted to the Boston bar in 1790.⁠[1][2]

President George WashingtonGeorge WashingtonGeorge Washington (1732–1799) was the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. Earlier he commanded the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787.Open the full entry appointed Adams minister resident to the Netherlands on May 30, 1794; he presented his credentials on November 6. He remained after the Batavian Republic was proclaimed, though he was not reaccredited, and presented his recall on June 20, 1797. On May 30, 1796, he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Portugal but did not serve under that appointment.⁠[2][1]

On June 1, 1797, the year John Adams became president, Adams was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Prussia, residing in Berlin; his credentials were formally received on December 5, and he presented his recall on May 5, 1801.⁠[2][1]

On July 26, 1797, Adams married Louisa Catherine Johnson at the parish church of All Hallows Barking in London; they had become engaged in 1796. The couple lived in Berlin from 1797 to 1801 and arrived at Quincy in the fall of 1801.⁠[3][4]

In 1802 Adams was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. In February 1803 the Federalist-controlled Massachusetts legislature chose him for the U.S. Senate, and he took his seat that October.⁠[1][5]

In December 1807 he supported the embargo, against the Federalist position; in 1808 he resigned from the Senate.⁠[5][1]

On June 24, 1805, the Harvard Corporation of Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry elected Adams Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. He delivered the first of his 36 lectures on July 11, 1806, and the lectures were published in 1810.⁠[5]

President James MadisonJames MadisonJames Madison (1751–1836) was the fourth president of the United States, serving from 1809 to 1817. He helped frame the Constitution, co-wrote The Federalist and guided the Bill of Rights through Congress, and earlier served as a U.S. representative and secretary of state.Open the full entry appointed Adams the first U.S. minister to Russia on June 27, 1809; he presented his credentials on November 5 and left the post on April 28, 1814.⁠[2][1][6]

Adams headed the U.S. commission that negotiated the Treaty of Ghent with Great Britain to end the War of 1812; the treaty was signed on December 24, 1814.⁠[2][1]

On February 28, 1815, Adams was appointed envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the United Kingdom, commissioned to the court of the Prince Regent; he presented his credentials on June 8 and his recall on May 14, 1817.⁠[2]

Adams was appointed secretary of state under President James MonroeJames MonroeJames Monroe (1758–1831) was an American politician and diplomat who served as President of the United States from 1817 to 1825; his administration proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine.Open the full entry on March 5, 1817, entered duty on September 22 and served until March 3, 1825.⁠[2][1]

In office he arranged with Britain the joint occupation of the OregonOregonOregon (officially the State of Oregon) is a state on the Pacific coast of the western United States; its capital is Salem and its largest city is Portland. It was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1859, as the 33rd state. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 4,237,256.Open the full entry country and obtained the cession of the Floridas from Spain; the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 led to the acquisition of FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry and the U.S. assumption of Spain’s claim to the Oregon Country.⁠[6][2]

The Monroe Doctrine, announced by Monroe in 1823, reflected many of Adams’s views, especially his insistence that it be a unilateral declaration.⁠[2]

Five men sought the presidency in 1824; John C. Calhoun withdrew by accepting the vice-presidential nomination. In the Electoral College Andrew JacksonAndrew JacksonAndrew Jackson (1767–1845) was an American soldier and politician who served as President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, after leading U.S. forces to victory at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.Open the full entry received 99 votes, Adams 84, William H. Crawford 41 and Henry Clay 37; in the popular vote Jackson received 151,271 and Adams 113,122.⁠[7][8]

A majority required 131 of the 261 electoral votes. Under the Twelfth Amendment the House could consider only the top three candidates, so fourth-placed Clay was ineligible; on February 9, 1825, with Clay’s support, the House elected Adams on the first ballot.⁠[9][7]

Adams then appointed Clay secretary of state, which Jackson’s supporters called a “corrupt bargain.”⁠[9][6]

In December 1825 Adams delivered his first annual message to Congress, proposing a national university, a national naval academy, a uniform system of weights and measures, improved patents, internal improvements, mostly canals and turnpikes, and an astronomical observatory.⁠[7]

He also proposed a national program of highways, canals and public land development funded by land sales, and urged the financing of scientific expeditions.⁠[6]

In the 1826 elections Jacksonians gained control of both houses of Congress, and that year Congress blocked Clay’s effort to send U.S. delegates to the Panama conference.⁠[7]

On July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Adams’s father, John Adams, died.⁠[7]

In 1828 Adams signed a new tariff, which Southern cotton interests called the “tariff of abominations.” That year he broke ground for the 185-mile Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.⁠[7][6]

In the 1828 presidential election Jackson defeated Adams by 178 electoral votes to 83, with a popular vote of 647,276 to 508,064. During the campaign Adams faced charges of corruption and public plunder; after his defeat he returned to Massachusetts.⁠[7][6]

On November 6, 1830, Adams was elected to the House of Representatives from the Plymouth district of Massachusetts, becoming the only former president later elected to the House. He served there for 17 years, from December 1831 and the 22nd Congress until his death.⁠[10][7]

On May 26, 1836, the House instituted the gag rule, which tabled antislavery petitions; Adams raised the first and most impassioned objections, shouting during a roll call vote, “I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States.”⁠[11]

He fought the rule through the next four Congresses, arguing that it restricted free speech; on December 3, 1844, the House repealed it by a vote of 108 to 80.⁠[11][7]

In 1839 Adams presented to the House a constitutional amendment on slavery under which children born in the United States after July 4, 1842, would be born free, no new state except Florida could enter the Union with slavery, and slavery and the slave trade would end in the District of Columbia after July 4, 1845.⁠[7]

During the chaotic opening of the 26th Congress in December 1839, Adams presided over the House in an improvised role.⁠[10]

On July 2, 1839, 52 captive Africans aboard the Spanish schooner Amistad revolted under the leadership of Joseph Cinqué. Adams represented the Africans before the Supreme Court of the United States, which on March 9, 1841, freed the remaining 35 survivors; Justice Joseph Story wrote the majority opinion, and only one of the nine justices dissented.⁠[12][7]

In January 1842 the survivors returned to Sierra Leone with funding from private donations.⁠[12]

On February 7, 1842, the House voted 106 to 93 to table a motion to censure Adams for antislavery agitation.⁠[10]

In 1844, at the age of 77, Adams traveled to Cincinnati to lay the cornerstone of an observatory.⁠[7]

James Smithson died in 1829 and left $500,000 to the United States; Adams chaired the House Select Committee on the Bequest of James Smithson, which decided how the funds would be used. The Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is a museum, education and research institution created by the U.S. Congress in 1846 with the bequest of the English scientist James Smithson. Based in Washington, D.C., it runs museums such as the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of Natural History, as well as the National Zoo.Open the full entry was created by law in 1846, and Adams was largely responsible for its congressional charter. That year he returned to Congress after a stroke and received an ovation.⁠[10][7]

On February 21, 1848, while protesting the U.S.-Mexican War, Adams suffered a stroke and collapsed on the House floor; he was moved to the Speaker’s Room and died there two days later, inside the Capitol.⁠[1][10]

A funeral was held in the House Chamber on February 26, 1848; he was temporarily buried in Congressional Cemetery, where a cenotaph now honors him.⁠[10]

Louisa Catherine Johnson was born in London on February 12, 1775. Her father, Joshua Johnson, was a merchant from MarylandMarylandMaryland is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States, deeply indented by Chesapeake Bay and bordered by Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and West Virginia; its capital is Annapolis and its largest city is Baltimore. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on April 28, 1788, as the seventh state to do so, and had a population of 6,177,224 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry who became the first U.S. consul in London; her mother, Catherine Nuth, was British.⁠[4]

The couple’s children were their eldest son, George Washington Adams; John, born in 1803; Charles Francis, born in 1807; and a daughter, Louisa Catherine, born in August 1809, who died of dysentery within a year. George Washington Adams died after the 1828 election.⁠[4][7]

Adams was buried at First Parish Church in Quincy alongside his father, mother and wife; the crypt of United First Parish Church holds the tombs of John Adams and John Quincy Adams and their wives, Abigail Adams and Louisa Catherine Adams. The church, designed by Alexander Parris and completed in 1828, is a National Historic Landmark.⁠[6][13]

In 1849 a bust of Adams carved in 1845 was installed in the room where he died.⁠[10]

Adams National Historical Park preserves the birthplaces of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, along with the Old House at Peace Field and its Stone Library, which holds up to 14,000 family books.⁠[14]

Adams was the first president who was the son of a president and was nicknamed “Old Man Eloquent”; the Adams National Historical Park biography counts his public service as spanning almost 70 years.⁠[6][7]

Adams National Historical Park: Official website: https://home.nps.gov/adam/index.htm (opens in a new window).⁠[14]