Author: James Traub
Title: John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit
Publication Info: New York : Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, [2016]
Summary/Review:

John Quincy Adams is a man of contrasts.  Born during the revolutionary era he’s essentially the first post-colonial American politician.  Yet he’s oddly old fashioned, formal, and clings to the idea of a government without parties that only George Washington could make work.  He’s flinty and economical in a way that reflects his home state of Massachusetts, but he actually lives much of his life abroad and in Washington.

From the age of 11 he was accompanying his father on diplomatic missions to Europe, and at 14 was working as an ambassadorial secretary and translator.  He was elected to the Senate as a Federalist but his determination to following his own conscience earned him the enmity of his own party in New England.  He was more successful as a diplomat with positions in Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom.  He negotiated the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812. President Monroe appoints him Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825. The Monroe Doctrine, despite his name, is largely Adams’ idea.

All of this sets him up for the presidency. Not able to accomplish anything easily Adams is elected in a multi-candidate race that is decided by the House of Representatives and some notorious vote trading.  Despite his efforts to rise above party politics, Adams’ single term is consumed by it, with partisan attacks by the Jackson faction preventing any major accomplishments.  After losing in the Election of 1828, Adams doesn’t fade away into retirement but instead is elected to the House of Representatives.

It’s this last 16 years of his life where Adams flourishes.  While opposed to slavery, Adams was not an abolitionist.  But he leads the opposition to the gag rule preventing the reading of petitions against slavery on the grounds of free speech.  As a result he becomes a hero to nascent abolition movement befriending leaders of the movement, and adopting their views, although believing that slavery would only be ended through war.  In 1841 he defended the enslaved people in the Amistad case before the Supreme Court.  Adams kept working and fighting to the end, suffering a massive stroke on the floor of the House in 1848, preceding his death.

The book is also interesting in detailing Adams’ obsessions and interests. Traub writes: ” Adams took up hobbies to the point of mania.” During his career Adams tried to introduce the metric system, a national university, and a system of astronomical observatories, with little success.  He was more successful in directing the James Smitshon gift toward a museum and research institute.  He also loved swimming in the Potomac each morning, on one occasion during his presidency coming close to drowning with only one assistant as a witness.  He was also fascinated by the railroad, becoming an early adopter, even after surviving a deadly derailment in New Jersey.

This is a fascinating book in that if provides an insight into a period of American history I’m less familiar with.  In fact it’s basically a history of the first 75 year of U.S. politics.  Adams is a complex and often unlikable man.  His family relationships are strained, with his wife Louisa seeming to be miserable most of the time from having to conform to the stern Adams way of life.  Adams’ brothers and sons are also troubled by depression and alcoholism resulting from the overbearing expectations of the family’s ideals.

Favorite Passages:

In the years to come, Adams would discover that the solution to his life lay in politics. He had a gift not for avoiding the storms of partisanship, but for weathering them. – Chapter 9

Adams regarded the Bible not as infallible text but as a human narrative inspired by revelation—the greatest of all works of literature. He knew all the debates and did not wish to be distracted by them from the central message. He told George that it was unknowable, and unnecessary to know, whether Jesus was “a manifestation of almighty God” or simply his only son. – Chapter 14

(On the Monroe Doctrine) It is striking that so self-consciously moral and Christian a figure as Adams was prepared to excuse bellicose behavior in the name of national self-aggrandizement. For Adams, American destiny had a moral force of its own – Chapter 16

Tom’s slow downward spiral, and his ultimate humiliation, offers a pointed reminder of how very hard it was to be an Adams. The family lacked the wealth that served as a safety net for the less lucky or gifted or driven members of other prominent families. At the same time, a merely ordinary disposition, much less a tender one, could not survive the pressure of family expectations. John Quincy had been forged in the fires and emerged whole and hard; neither Charles nor Tom had proved so fortunate. John Quincy Adams had put his own children through the same thresher, and that generation, too, would see a terrible winnowing. – Chapter 17

THE MOST IMPORTANT JOBS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS HAD EVER held were ones to which he had been appointed by a president—minister to the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia, and England; chief negotiator at Ghent; secretary of state. Of course he had sought electoral positions, but he had not shown much of a gift for attracting voters. He had lost his very first contest, for state assemblyman, and had been recalled as a US senator by a state legislature outraged at his stubborn independence. He did not like appealing to voters, did not believe he should have to, and was not good at it. And now he was living with the consequences. – Chapter 22

As the first president to have gone back to work after his tenure, Adams had given himself the opportunity, as none of his predecessors had, to benefit from a “sober second thought.” He had changed the meanings Americans attached to him. No longer the dynastic New Englander who represented an archaic Federalist America, Adams had become the dauntless standard-bearer of the very modern cause of abolitionism. At the same time, his rootedness in the republican principles of the founders also placed him on a pedestal in the national pantheon. Indeed, the very fact that he had not changed, that he had stood for principles when they were despised and lived to see them vindicated, offered the most powerful evidence of his greatness of character. – Chapter 36

Recommended books:

• John Adams by David McCullough
• Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams by Joseph J. Ellis
• The Great Abolitionist by Stephen Puleo

Rating: ****