Biography of john quincy adams president term

Influence on American Diplomacy

Adams’ unsurpassed diplomatic career addressed the major foreign policy challenges of his time. President George Washington appointed him U.S. Minister Resident to the Netherlands in 1794. After serving three years in the Netherlands, Adams became U.S. Minister Resident to Prussia from 1797 to 1801, appointed this time by his father.

President James Madison appointed Adams U.S. Minister to Russia in 1809, and Adams served until 1814. He duly reported on Napoleon’s failed invasion, among other events. Adams headed the Commission that negotiated the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, which ended the War of 1812 with Great Britain. His placement as U.S. Minister to Great Britain from 1815 to 1817 insured that he would be central to the ongoing efforts to improve Anglo-American relations. He concluded the Commercial Convention of 1815, which included a mutual import non-discrimination measure that would serve as a model for future trade agreements.

Adams helped start negotiations to disarm the Great Lakes that culminated in the Rush-Bagot Pact of 1817. He also guided the progress of the Convention of 1818, which set the boundary between the United States and western British North America (later Canada) at the Rocky Mountains and stipulated joint occupation of the Oregon Country, among other issues.

As Secretary of State, Adams’ views about territorial expansion guided President Monroe’s policies. Adams’ brilliant diplomacy with Spain, which led to the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, was largely responsible for the Acquisition of Florida and the U.S. assumption of Spain’s claim to the Oregon Country. Adams worked to delay U.S. support of the new Latin American republics until the treaty was ratified.

By 1822, however, he supported President Monroe’s recognition of several new republics. The following year, Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine, which reflected many of Adam

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, the second child and eldest son of John and Abigail (Smith) Adams was born 11 July 1767. As a young boy Adams accompanied his father on his diplomatic missions to Europe. He attended school at a private academy outside Paris, the Latin School of Amsterdam, and Leyden University. The years 1781–1782 he spent in St. Petersburg as private secretary and interpreter to Francis Dana, U.S. minister to Russia. In 1785 Adams returned to the United States to continue his formal education. He graduated from Harvard College in 1787, studied law for three years with Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and then practiced law in Boston.

Adams’ own diplomatic career began in 1794 when President Washington appointed him minister to the Netherlands. Immediately following Adams’ arrival, French armies occupied the country. On 26 July 1797, in London, John Quincy Adams married Louisa Catherine Johnson, daughter of the U.S. consul. He was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Berlin in 1797 and recalled by his father after the elder Adams' defeat in the presidential election of 1800.

Adams served one year in the Massachusetts State Senate and in April 1803 was appointed to fill an unexpired seat in the U.S. Senate. His independent actions in the Senate, namely support for the Louisiana Purchase and the Embargo of 1807, quickly alienated him from the Federalist party in Massachusetts. When the state legislature, dominated by Federalists, prematurely named Adams’ successor in the Senate (six months before his term was to expire), Adamsimmediately resigned.

Commissioned minister plenipotentiary to Russia in 1809, Adams, his wife, and their youngest son Charles Francis spent five years in St. Petersburg. Adams was in a unique position to report Napoleon’s march across Europe and fatal attempt to conquer Russia. Within months of the United States’ declaration of war against Great Britain in 1812, John Quincy Adams was involved in

John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767, in the village of Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, a few miles south of Boston. His early years were spent living alternately in Braintree and Boston, and his doting father and affectionate mother taught him mathematics, languages, and the classics. His father, John Adams, had been politically active for all of John Quincy's life, but the calling of the First Continental Congress in 1774 marked a new stage in John Adams' activism. The older Adams would go on to help lead the Continental Congress, draft the Declaration of Independence, and oversee the execution of the Revolutionary War. He was also absent from his children's lives more often than he was present, leaving much of their raising and education to their mother, Abigail.

In the first year of the war, young John Quincy Adams feared for the life of his father and worried that the British might take his family hostage. Indeed, when John Adams signed his name to the Declaration of Independence, he committed an act of treason against England, an offense punishable by death. For John Quincy, these years were actually the beginning of his manhood, and he recalled later in life feeling responsible—as the eldest son—for protecting his mother while his father attended to the business of revolution. John Quincy witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill with his mother from the top of one of the Braintree hills and regularly saw soldiers passing through his hometown. The Revolutionary War was not some distant, theoretical event but an immediate and frightening reality.

Grooming for the World Stage

From ages ten to seventeen, Adams experienced an incredible European adventure that prepared him for his later career in the foreign service of his country. In late 1777, John Adams was posted to Europe as a special envoy, and in 1778, John Quincy accompanied him to Paris. Over the next seven years, John Quincy would spend tim