John Quincy Adams, who isn't one of those Presidents you know as much about from history class. He isn't one of the more talked about Presidents. He's not who you usually hear about as an answer when you ask a random person who their favorite U.S. President is. Although if you do pay attention to history, he might be one of our smartest - if not THE smartest - U.S. President. Yet it isn't his Presidency where he achieved his greatest accomplishments. It might have been everywhere BUT the Presidency. In his other jobs he was given more power and respect, which allowed him to achieve more of what he set out to accomplish. During his entire Presidency, he had to deal with accusations of a "corrupt bargain" which caused many to oppose him and his political agenda, and even caused him to lose his supporters in the House and Senate during the 1826 midterm elections, and even his own re-election in 1828.
Now that I've given you a brief summary, let me tell you about this great American who is truly an unsung hero that I wish more people especially Americans knew more about so that they too could appreciate his accomplishments and give him his rightful place in commonly known history.
He was born on July 11th, 1767. His father was also a future U.S. President, John Adams. Not to change subject, but in 2018 at a Second Amendment rally, I met a descendant of theirs 7x and 8x great grand daughter of theirs, and got a picture with her.
You can literally tell by looking at her that she bears some resemblance to her ancestors the two Adams' Presidents. That could always just be coincidental but I don't think it is.
Anyway, while not old enough to fight in the American Revolution, he did witness some of the battles that took place. While not old enough to actually be one of the Founding Fathers, he worked for one of them at the time. At the age of 6, while John Adams Sr. was a type of Ambassador (of other known titles such as Minister Plenipotentiary or Commissioner) to France, he chose his son John Quincy Adams to be his Secretary. So JQA had an earlier head start into his life of politics, specifically in the area of foreign policy. His father had a tutor or tutors for his son to provide him with the best education someone could possibly receive. I believe due to lack of technological distractions that we have today, education was taken far more seriously back in those days. You would notice this by the way they phrased their sentences in those older books from back in those days. Anyway, by the age of 10, he could read, write, speak, understand, and translate even classic novels, in four different languages. And if that isn't impressive enough, he graduated from Harvard (of all places) - at age 19 (of all ages) - and with honors (the icing on the cake).
At age 26, while his father was serving as the Vice President of the United States under George Washington, the President selected John Quincy Adams to be an Ambassador to The Netherlands, a job he initially chose to refuse, until his father convinced him that it would be a good idea to accept the job. He held that position and also later simultaneously Ambassador to Portugal until the end of George Washington's second term as President, and when the senior John Adams succeeded Washington as the 2nd President of the United States, John Quincy Adams spent the entire four years of his father's one Presidential term as Ambassador to Prussia, which later in the year 1835 would eventually be known as Germany. When he returned to the United States, Thomas Jefferson was now President.
For the first few years of the Jefferson Presidency, John Quincy Adams became a member of the Bucket Brigade, as all able bodied men were part of. For those who don't know what that is, it was a volunteer firefighter group. For one year, John Quincy Adams served as a State Senator in the Massachusetts State Legislature, before that same legislature elected him to serve as their U.S. Senator, back before Senators were directly elected by the people of that state. In the Senate he defied the very Federalist Party that he was a member of at the time, and the party which got him elected to the Senate. He was the only Federalist in the Senate to support the Louisiana Purchase. He also sided with President Thomas Jefferson (who was of the Democratic-Republican Party) on a trade embargo against the United Kingdom, when at the time the Federalist Party took a friendlier approach toward the British, while the Democratic-Republicans were friendlier toward France. By June of 1808 when John learned that the Massachusetts State Legislature elected his successor, he abruptly resigned out of spite.
Later next year, he was chosen to be Ambassador to Russia. During that time, he was sent as part of a delegation to Great Britain to end the War of 1812 - although in 1814. He successfully negotiated the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war. In 1815, he became the Ambassador to Great Britain, in which he spent most of his time helping stranded American sailors and prisoners of war.
In late 1817, President James Monroe selected John Quincy Adams to be his Secretary of State. By this time, the incumbent President and his two immediate predecessors served as Secretary of State, though Thomas Jefferson served as Vice President in between his stints as Secretary of State and President. John Quincy Adams' biggest accomplishment as Secretary of State was his authoring and successful negotiating of the Monroe Doctrine, which allowed Spain to continue to colonize in South America in the countries they already owned, while keeping them from doing so to any more countries beyond that. It was considered the greatest foreign policy success of the 19th century.
In 1824, due to the last 8 years of the Monroe Presidency being known as the "Era of Good Feelings", which resulted in the dissolvement of the Federalist Party, and the Democratic-Republican Party being the one party in control, all four of the Presidential Candidates were of the Democratic-Republican Party. The results had Andrew Jackson winning a plurality of both the popular and electoral vote, with John Quincy Adams winning second place in both, William Crawford winning fourth place in popular vote but third in the electoral vote, and Henry Clay winning third place in popular vote, but fourth place in the electoral vote. In order to win the Presidency, one must win a majority of the electoral votes, not merely just the most with a plurality. So when no candidate receives a majority, the top 3 (or 2 in case of a tie) candidates in the electoral vote are then chosen amongst the House of Representatives. Each state gets one vote. For each state, all of their U.S. Representatives in that states delegation vote and which ever candidate wins the most votes in that state, that state casts their vote for that candidate. The eliminated candidate was Henry Clay, who just happened to be the incumbent Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. While a Speaker cannot force who anyone votes for, there is a lot of respect and influence that comes with that job, and so while John Quincy Adams has had meetings with Henry Clay, it has been thought to be common knowledge that a deal was made and if Henry Clay was to help John Quincy Adams win the election through the House vote, that he would then select Henry Clay as his Secretary of State. And that's exactly what happened.
Andrew Jackson initially believed he had won the election, so when he learned that that had not happened, and that John Quincy Adams had been elected instead, and that Henry Clay was chosen as Secretary of State, and knowing that there was meetings between the two men, he began to complain of a "corrupt bargain" and continued to do so all throughout John Quincy Adams' duration in the White House, which damaged the Presidents reputation and held him back from being able to accomplish a lot of what he set out to accomplish, and caused him to lose most of his supporters in the House and Senate during the 1826 midterm election. Which made his last two years in the White House amongst the most difficult for any POTUS. Some of his ideas were good too, such as wanting to create a national highway. He did reduce the national debt by $11 million dollars during his four years, which went from $16 million to $5 million. And one of my personal favorite things he did, was after the murder of Captain William Morgan, a man who was killed by freemasons for exposing their secrets - John Quincy Adams waged his own personal war on Freemasonry. A few of his famous quotes regarding them:
"I do conscientiously and sincerely believe that the Order of Freemasonry, if not the greatest, is one of the greatest moral and political evils under which the Union is now laboring ... a conspiracy of the few against the equal rights of the many ...Masonry ought forever to be abolished. It is wrong - essentially wrong - a seed of evil, which can never produce any good."
"It's promise is light while it's performance is darkness."
This is why he's one of my personal favorites. Where as many Presidents were involved with directly or indirectly secret societies associated with the Illuminati, and many of them glorified as great men because of that - John Quincy Adams fiercely opposed them. He had little if anything to gain, and everything to lose, by exposing them. Yet he did it because it's the right thing to do. It doesn't matter how popular they are because good and evil is not determined by popular majority but rather by God Almighty.
Anyway, it goes without being said that with the end of Monroe's second term and the beginning of John Quincy Adams' term, the Era of Good Feelings had ended. Andrew Jackson formed the Democratic Party, and John Quincy Adams was considered part of the National Republican Party, but considered himself an Independent Republican.
In slightly less than relevant news I want added for the record, because it's historically worth noting, John C. Calhoun in 1824 ran as the Vice Presidential running mate of both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, and with their electoral votes combined won an outright majority, therefore immediately becoming Vice President-Elect, following the counting of votes of U.S. Voters and Electoral College. Had this occured any time within the first few Presidential elections, John C. Calhoun would have been elected President. As for which candidate would have been elected his Vice President would have been determined by factors admittedly mostly beyond my knowing. Although I would honestly guess that he might have done more to help Andrew Jackson, with whom he was more politically aligned with, which became evident in the next election of 1828, when the Vice President ran as the running mate of Andrew Jackson, and Treasury Secretary Richard Rush was chosen as John Quincy Adams' Vice Presidential running mate.
Following the results of this now two way election, the Jackson/Calhoun ticket won a majority of popular and electoral vote over the Adams/Rush ticket. Ironically John Quincy Adams received about 44% of the popular vote in the election he lost, after only receiving 30.9% of the popular vote in the election he ultimately won. This was based on reasons obvious if you read the earlier parts of this article about it.
After leaving the White House, John Quincy Adams, an avid reader, chose to enjoy his retirement reading all his books, but when the 1830 midterm elections came around, voters in his district unexpectedly elected him - as a write-in choice to serve his district in the United States House of Representatives. For his first four years in the lower house of Congress, he was a founding member of the Anti-Masonic Party, the first "Third Party" in the United States. While it was a single-issue party, it was considered "Right, to Far Right" based on the political ideologies of it's members. In the 1832 Presidential election, while John Quincy Adams would have been willing to run, the party leaders feared he wouldn't be a popular enough Presidential candidate (at least at the national level, and at that time) to take on the incumbent, Andrew Jackson, so they nominated - "ironically" - a freemason - to be their Presidential Nominee.
During the mid-1830's, many members of the Anti-Masonic Party joined the Whig Party (which is the immediate predecessor to the current Republican Party, which occurred in the mid 1850's).
During the 1830's, there was a rule in the House of Representatives called The Gag Rule, which meant people could petition the House to end slavery, and it could be discussed in House Committees and Sub Committees, but not on the House floor before the entire House of Representatives. John Quincy Adams, known for his blatantly stubborn ways just like his father, and refusing to ever show weakness in the face of opposition, decided he was going to be a badass, and broke the Gag Rule. Every. Single. Chance. He. Got. Like a Boss. Another reason I respect him so much. This was around when he earned a few nicknames. His most known one was Old Man Eloquent. The other one is The Abolitionist. There was even a vote to censure him, and the vote was very close but did not pass. Had the vote to censure him passed through Congress, he had a back up plan. He would have resigned Congress, and ran for his same seat in a special election, and won, thus nullifying any effect that the censure could have or would have had on his ability to function as a Congressman.
During his time as a Congressman, he lost two races for Massachusetts Governor, back when they were elected to 1 year terms by their state legislature. But this worked out for the nation in a few ways, because he was able to effectively end the Gag Rule in the House of Representatives. He also successfully argued a case before the Supreme Court, freeing prisoners who were falsely thought to be escaped slaves. And during his last half term, was during Abraham Lincoln's only term in Congress, and he was considered to be an inspiration to Abraham Lincoln, especially in regards to fighting slavery, before he himself passed away in the (at the time) House Speaker's chamber of a stroke at age 80, in February, 1848. His last words were "This is the last of earth. I am content." At the time of his death, he was the Dean of the House of Representatives.
Some interesting facts about John Quincy Adams were he would read about 4 or 5 chapters of the Bible every day. He once had a pet alligator when he lived in the White House named Lucy, and he would use her to play a prank on guests. He used to walk for 3 miles every morning and skinny dip in the Potomac river. One day someone stole his clothes so he asked someone to please go to the White House and ask the First Lady to bring him clothes. He had time to do all of this before most of his Congressional colleagues had even woken up. Him being such an early riser might indicate why he was always known for falling asleep in the chamber for the U.S. House of Representatives. Others believe he was faking it so that he could fool his rivals into saying things they might not say in his presence if he was awake. If you were to ask me, I believe he was genuinely tired and took a nap, but with his intelligence that earned him the nickname "Old Man Eloquent", had he woken up and heard any ill spoken words against him, he might have occasionally been inclined to listen. One of his most glorious moments in Congress was after suffering from a stroke, and with his old age many would have expected him to die imminently. When he walked into the House of Representatives after surviving a strong, there was a standing ovation from both the Democrats and Republicans. He is also known for having the highest IQ of all the Presidents, although sometimes it's listed as low as 162 and as high as 168.
Because we live in a world where good is called evil, and evil is called good, people usually pick their favorite Presidents based on the most famous and talked about Presidents, and sometimes most recent. Most people will usually pick amongst George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, or Donald Trump.
My two favorites equally, yet for some similar and some different reasons, both important and unimportant reasons, are John Quincy Adams, and Donald John Trump, Sr. Some unimportant similarities between the two are the John in their names, both having lost the popular vote, yet still elected to serve one term as President, with their Vice President's having something to do with electing their replacements. John C. Calhoun as mentioned earlier ran with Jackson, and Pence announced certification of results, which led to a political falling out between the two men who ran together on the Republican ticket in 2016 and 2020.
