John Quincy Adams by Gilbert Stuart, 1818 US President John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767,

John Quincy Adams by Gilbert Stuart, 1818

US President John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767, in Braintree, Massachusetts.  As an American diplomat in Europe during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, he had ample opportunity to observe the effects of Napoleon’s military adventures. Adams admired Napoleon’s intelligence and military talent. However, he thought they were overshadowed by flaws in the Emperor’s character. In January 1814 he wrote to his brother from St. Petersburg:

The events of the last two years opened a new prospect to all Europe, and have discovered the glassy substance of the colossal power of France. Had that power been acquired by wisdom, it might have been consolidated by time and the most ordinary portion of prudence. The Emperor Napoleon says that he was never seduced by prosperity; but when he comes to be judged impartially by posterity that will not be their sentence. His fortune will be among the wonders of the age in which he has lived. His military talent and genius will place him high in the rank of great captains; but his intemperate passion, his presumptuous insolence, and his Spanish and Russian wars, will reduce him very nearly to the level of ordinary men. At all events he will be one of the standing examples of human vicissitude, ranged not among the Alexanders, Caesars, and Charlemagnes, but among the Hannibals, Pompeys, and Charles the 12th.

For more, see “John Quincy Adams and Napoleon.”