John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit by James Traub

Tier 2

Much like the one on Monroe, this biography was a pleasant surprise. I knew a little about John Quincy Adams from the biography of his father and the film Amistad, but let’s be honest, no one’s getting too excited about a book on our sixth president. Andrew Jackson is looming in the wings, and I expected to have to power through this one. And, once again, I was completely wrong.

JQA was an indifferent president. There’s no need to pretend otherwise, and I think Traub would openly admit this. But one of the beautiful things about this project is seeing that their presidency does not solely define the men who have served as president. JQA is the president that most exemplifies that idea.

There’s a concept in management known as the Peter principle. Essentially it states that in a hierarchy, people tend to rise one level above where they should. You are continuously promoted based on your performance at a certain level until you reach one where you are no longer competent.

This concept defines JQA’s presidency. He was a brilliant diplomat and secretary of state who made for a forgettable president largely due to his inability or unwillingness to form coalitions and compromise.

I don’t say that as an insult. I don’t believe that being president should be the ambition of every politician, and I think that very idea has been quite damaging to our nation. There’s nothing wrong with being a congressperson and diligently serving your constituency in the best way possible. There’s a saying in Washington that every congressperson wants to be a senator, and every senator wants to be president. That creates a system where everyone focuses on the next job rather than on how best to accomplish their current one.

This wasn’t an issue for JQA. Two ideas drove his desire to become president. First, to rewrite his father’s legacy. Second, to have more say in international diplomacy. He genuinely didn’t seem to crave the power or want to inflate his ego. This, I don’t need to tell you, is incredibly rare in a president.

After getting walloped by Andrew Jackson in the 1828 election, Adams didn’t retire or disappear. He instead served in the House of Representatives for nearly two decades. While there, he defiantly fought for what he felt was right –notably as one of the most prominent abolitionists in the country. Again, as with his earlier diplomatic career, this station suited him. He didn’t feel the need to play games or compromise his beliefs while in the House of Representatives. He could, instead, be cantankerous and intractable, and no one can do anything about it.

Speaking of Jackson, JQA’s election is perhaps the most contentious in US history (yes, even more so than the recent ones). The basics are that four people ran for president – JQA, Jackson, Henry Clay, and William Crawford – effectively splitting the election. Jackson won both the popular and electoral votes but failed to win a majority of the latter. When this happens, the vote is then sent to the House of Representatives, where they select from one of the top three electoral vote-getters. Due to the three-fifths compromise (which inflated the southern states' voting power due to the number of enslaved people imprisoned in those states), Clay finished fourth and was not eligible for the House of Representatives runoff. He likely would’ve won that vote being an immensely popular figure in that body. As he wasn’t eligible, he threw his support behind Adams, who prevailed.

Confused? Me too.

Suffice it to say that Jackson felt he got robbed and immediately began a campaign against JQA and the “rigged” election of 1824. This culminated four years later in Jackson trouncing Adams and beginning his presidency.

Did Jackson have a point? Perhaps. I’m no fan of the man, but he did win the popular vote, and it seems to me that in a supposed democracy, that should count for something. But then again, as I mentioned previously, his electoral votes were inflated by slaveholders claiming to speak for the people they owned and imprisoned. Adams would’ve bested him in the electoral college if not for the three-fifths compromise.

So where do we land on this? Mainly that it was a mess, and the electoral congress is dumb.

That was essentially the most exciting part of JQA’s presidency. He had an ambitious agenda but failed to get things done. He continued the expansionist foreign policy he laid out as Monroe’s Secretary of State and, aside from that, didn’t leave much of an imprint.

He does serve as a presidential bridge between the founding generation and Jackson – a man who would be seen for many years as one of the most influential figures in US history. Adams had a connection to the founding generation – through his father and his time as a diplomat –and ultimately gave way to Jackson, who ushered in a new populist politics to our nation. (I’ll talk more about Jackson’s stature next week, suffice it to say he was held in much higher regard by previous generations.)

But that’s not what this biography was about. It’s about the man who traveled with his father to France and the Netherlands during the revolution. The man who read voraciously and was hailed as one of the finest minds of his generation. The man who made many of the same mistakes as his father – a middling presidency and some significant failures as a parent – but also learned from that man’s principles. The man who negotiated the treaty that ended the War of 1812. The man who spent his life violently opposed to slavery and dedicated much of his later years to working toward its eventual abolition. The man who suffered from extended bouts of depression brought on by the crushing expectations of his father and mother.

That is the man found in the pages of this wonderful biography. And that is a man we should remember as more than the answer to a trivia question.  

Traub’s biography isn’t the most artfully written book I’ve ever read. It’s not bad in this respect, but it doesn’t possess the novelistic rhythm that some of the other biographies I’ve read do. Still, that’s just a slight knock on an otherwise excellent book. The true power of this one is found in the brilliant stories of this fascinating man’s life. And, unlike with a biography of, say, Washington or Lincoln, these are stories you may never have heard otherwise, like how JQA loved to start his morning as president by walking down to the Potomac and taking a swim in it – naked.

I think that’s a fitting image to leave you with.

As always, if you know someone who might like this, please tell them about my substack, website, or both. It would be a great help to me. Thanks for reading!