#john quincy adams
“Justice Story reported from his vantage point on the Hill in 1818; “the House of Representatives has absorbed… all the effective power of the country.” With this view no legislator appears to have disagreed at any time in Monroe’s administration. Said Speaker Clay to Secretary Adams two years later, Monroe “had not the slightest influence in Congress… henceforth there was and would not be a man in the United States possessing less personal influence over them than the President.”
Washington Community James Sterling Young
Clay ripping into Monroe will always be funny to me
The United States purchase of Spanish Florida is hailed as the greatest dick joke President John Quincy Adams ever made.
John Quincy and Louisa Adams: Middle-Aged Love - Shannon Selin
America’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams, was not a romantic man. He and his wife, Louisa, frequently exasperated each other. However, their correspondence in 1822, the year of their 25th wedding anniversary, reveals something of the affection and partnership that bound them together.
Madame de Staël by François Gérard, circa 1810
French writer Germaine de Staël died on July 14, 1817, at the age of 51. John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States, met her in Russia in 1812 and again in France in 1815 (both times were before he became president). After their first meeting, he wrote:
I found her better conversant with rhetoric than logic. She had much to say about social order, much about universal monarchy, much about the preservation of religion – in which she gave me to understand she did not herself believe – and much about the ambition and tyranny of Bonaparte, upon which she soon discovered there was no difference of sentiment between us. But why did not America join in the holy cause against this tyrant? First, because America had no means of making war against him: she could neither attack him by sea nor land. Second, because it was a fundamental maxim of American policy never to intermeddle with the political affairs of Europe. Thirdly, because it was altogether unnecessary. He had enemies enough upon his hands already.
For more about their encounters, see “When John Quincy Adams Met Madame de Staël.”
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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.”
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William Daniels originated the role of John Adams in the musical 1776 when it debuted on Broadway in 1969 and also starred in the film version of the stage show. Four years afterwards, PBS produced a thirteen-part miniseries titled The Adams Chronicles in which Daniels played John Quincy Adams, the eldest son of John and Abigail Adams. Daniels then went on to play Samuel Adams, John Adams’ second cousin and fellow revolutionary, in a 1978 made-for-television film called The Bastard.
“At that point,” Daniels says, “I felt I had achieved a lock on the Adams family. I had played every one of them except Abigail.”
I couldn’t find any pictures of him as Sam Adams (tragically), but the fact that William Daniels dedicated three years of his life to playing John Adams and then played his son in an Emmy-winning miniseries just a few years later is pretty incredible imo!
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