#1555 John Quincy Adams Deserves Better

I'm going to be touring an ICBM missile site that is operated by the National Government of the United States. Near Phillip, South Dakota, and then on to the Sand Creek massacre near Pueblo, Colorado. I've got some work to do in Vail in mid-June, but this is a journey along the way to all of that, and I couldn't be more excited. Almost everything I do now winds up being good fruit for Listening to America. Go to our website ltamerica..org and sign up for our newsletter.

It comes out every week, at most, every second week. We are up and running, still need the airstream, still need your contributions to the themes we did.

Water in the West, we'll continue to look at that subject, you know? Lake Powell is now up 40 feet, maybe going up to 70 or more. Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam is just up 10 feet. And who knows what will happen with that? It's all about how they push water downstream.

Of course, their main recipient of that water is California, and in spite of the attempts by the national government to sort all this out so far, California gets its share. It's an amazing time in my life. I want to thank you for being part of it. You know, we were a little bit reluctant to shift from the Jefferson Hour to listening to America. But I think it's going to pay off in the quality of the program in some important ways. I'm very excited about it and Lindsey Trevinsky has agreed to continue to be one of our most frequent guests.

Joe Ellis will be here, and when he is, David Swenson will come out of retirement to host those programs. David Dicandri will continue to be a West Coast correspondent for Questions of the Enlightenment. And I'll be doing a whole series of programs from the road. I'm going in just a few days to South Dakota, heading to the Pine Ridge and to what once was known as Harney Peak in the Black Hills, now Black Elk Peak. It's a good and very important name change, the beginning, I hope, of a whole range of name changes in the American West.

I'm writing a book, two of them, actually three of them, but the book I'm working on at the moment is a history of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The Great Steinbeck trip will be occurring in the spring of 2024. I'll do it in five segments, but I will do all of Steinbeck within a calendar year, or just a little bit above that. This is going to be one of the most extraordinary adventures of my life. And we need you to be part of it, we want you to make suggestions. Follow along in the reading.

I'm going to read all of Steinbeck from start to finish during that journey.

The people that I visit, the people that I meet. If you can contribute to the success of this project so much, the better. I'm also continuing to work on the Edward S. Curtis project. Curtis was a photographer between 1905 and 1935. He took 40,000 images dry glass plate images of Native Americans and landscapes of the American West, and they're widely regarded as the greatest photographs ever taken.

So I'm working with elders. I've already had six or so interviews with Absaroka, The Crow and The P'Gon, The Blackfeet and the Hopi about Curtis's work. In some quarters, he's criticized for romanticizing Natives and, to a certain degree, for cultural appropriation. But most Native people have deep appreciation for what he did, and, in fact, recognize their own ancestors and some of their own life ways in his gorgeous photographs. Starting to read books to get ready for the 250th anniversary of the United States that's coming in 2026..

I have great misgivings about this. It's going to be the culture wars on double steroids. So I want to read about 30 books that will sort of help me think about America at 250. So, beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which was published between 1835 and 1840. Maybe the greatest book ever written about America by a non-American. But I want to read a history of the women's movement in America, history of the civil rights movement in America, history of white Indian relations in America.

I'll read Bowling Alone, Putnam's book about the sort of increasing isolation of the American people that was before the coming of smartphones and social media. But if you have thoughts about books that a person should read to make sense of this extraordinary nation on the eve of our 250th birthday, send me a note. You'll see at lpamerica..org that there are ways to reach me. And we're going to try to create a kind of a book club where you can follow along in all of this.

And today, on today's program, I will talk about it here. Lindsay Trevinsky and I talk 10 things about John Quincy Adams. I have a great interest in John Adams. He's in some ways my favorite of the founding fathers because he's so gritty, so earthy, so vain, so irascible, so self-divided, envious of everybody else, including, of course, Jefferson. But such a great, important contributor to our national independence, the author of the Constitution of Massachusetts, upon which many other state constitutions were based, one of our supreme diplomats.

Not a great president, but a president who preferred peace to war. And I think that's always worth celebrating. And the father of a very great son, John Quincy Adams. Lindsay's working on the Adams family now writing about them, and I've been thinking about John Quincy Adams.

He has a relationship to North Dakota because he squared off the northern border of the country at the 49th parallel. Had he not stepped in to do that, much of North Dakota, about two-fifths, maybe two and a half-fifths, would be. Canada would be part of British North America, because that's.

Hudson Bay System. But it was John Quincy Adams who stubbornly insisted that we protect the northern border and brought that about in 1818. So let's go to the program. Thank you so much, we're so pleased that you're enjoying this.

We've gotten tremendous feedback. Keep us posted, let us know what you like and don't like, what you want. More of or less of themes that we should pursue. This is a time of extraordinary growth at Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson. So let's go to the show.

Hello everyone and welcome to Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson. Today, my guest, Dr. Lindsay Trevinsky and I discuss 10 things about John Quincy Adams. His dates are 1767 to 1848. He's the sixth president of the United States and the son of the second president of the United States, the famous John Adams.

He does not win the popular vote, he does not win the electoral vote, it goes to the House of Representatives. Thereafter, almost everybody believed that there had been a corrupt bargain, that he had had some sort of backroom. Understanding with Henry Clay of Kentucky. And that Henry Clay then delivered the votes in the House of Representatives that would be needed to get John Quincy Adams over the top. Is it fair to say that this was a corrupt bargain?

It's how politics work. But what I think people forget is that Henry Clay despised Andrew Jackson. He loathed Andrew Jackson. He was not going to swing his delegates or use any of his influence to help Andrew Jackson under any circumstances. And he knew that the other options were not going to get close enough to have a majority.

So there was really only one option for him.

Yeah, structural problem. Let's go to your list. So number one Bunker Hill, what's?

His father, John Adams, is at the Continental Congress, serving as one of the Massachusetts delegates. His mother, Abigail, he was their oldest son, took him to a nearby hill and they looked out to see what the sound was. And they watched the battle of Bunker Hill happening. Those are the stakes which he understands and is beginning to think about history. Is this battle trying to define the?

I mean, her commitment to her husband, to liberty, to the idea of the United States is so huge. And you just already get the sense that they're fashioning him for a great destiny.

In a certain sense, you feel a little bit sorry for some of them, and I do feel a little sorry for John Quincy Adams. I grew up in the 1960s. Dr. Benjamin Spock.

Parents had a kind of laissez-faire do your own thing, we won't interfere, find your happiness sort of attitude.

One is that it must have been difficult to be in that family, and secondly, it edges up on abuse, right to put that much pressure on any child. I want to read to you this letter Abigail wrote to him when he first went over to Europe with his father. And here's what she said to poor young J.Q For dear as you are, to me, I had. Much rather, you should have found your grave in the ocean, or any untimely death crop you in your infant years, rather than see you an immoral, profligate or a graceless child.

That's gonna take some therapy.

By all accounts, they were delightful people. These were not mean men, They were not bad men, They were good humans. But they didn't have his genius, and they knew it.

I just it blows my mind. His father brings him in and feels they would be good for him to see the world, that he would be educated and all these different places, he'd see different cultures. He would have a firsthand training in diplomacy. This is interesting for a couple of reasons.

One that really worked. J.Q.A was a man of the world. He had an understanding of different cultures, which sometimes put him at odds with his fellow Americans. Because he was so much more worldly and so much more cultured. He loved to continue to try and master languages, so when he was in Berlin, he was determined that he would be able to speak and to read German.

And later on in his life, he makes himself translate things in German. It's just relentless. But it was also not comfortable. They often ended up landing in places they didn't intend they had to go on. I think it was on the back of a donkey over some of the hills in Spain to get to where they were going.

So this was a childhood kind of unlike any.

So they're rolling, like Don Quixote and Sancho Ponzo, over the low mountains of Spain. To these diplomatic posts, I want to throw in one of my own here. That's John Quincy Adams relationship with Thomas Jefferson. Later in life. When JQ becomes president, John Adams writes a letter to Jefferson. A very gracious letter. It says. You know, thanks for congratulating me.

In some sense, he was almost as much your son as mine, because we were all there in Paris. And you took him under your wing and you treated him with respect. And you know, he's never gotten over that. And so this is a bit of nostalgia. Because it didn't take J.Q. long to decide that. Jefferson was an unreliable human being, and particularly unreliable with respect to his father. John Adams in the craziness of the 1790s and the election of 1800, that Jefferson had a series of journalistic attacks, not only on Adams, the policymaker, but on Adams, the human being. Nobody really got over this.

John Adams was the most forgiving, Abigail a little less, and J.Q. not, and he just couldn't stand. Jefferson And he said that at one time. Jefferson said that when he was in Paris, the Seine had frozen over. And John Quincy in his diary says, No, that never happened, and then Jefferson told him that he had learned.

Adams knows what it takes to learn a language. Jefferson said that he had learned Spanish while crossing the Atlantic over 19 days with a copy of Don Quixote in Spanish and a dictionary. And John Quincy, Adams says Jefferson tells tall stories like, No, this did not happen, I love this. And then, when Jefferson's letters were published after Jefferson's death, three volumes of them, J.Q. read these and kept a kind of an active journal.

As he was reading it, he got madder and madder. He just loathed what Jefferson represented. Your view of the of that relationship?

So let's pick up there. We need to take a break. We're talking with the great Dr. Lindsay Trevinsky, the author of The Cabinet, you're listening to, listening to America.

We'll be back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Listening to America. I'm talking with Dr. Lindsay Trevinsky 10 things about J.Q. Adams, the sixth President of the United States. So when we went to break, you said we should talk about his mother and his father, his relations. So my sense is that his relations with his father were good, that there was a kind of reverence. Deep respect, certainly. But my sense, Lindsay, is that his relations with his mother were always a little bit troubled.

And so that naturally is going to create a bond that is.

And I think in a lot of ways, John kind of left it to her to do that. And so there are times that I think JQA resented her, especially her meddling. We're going to talk more about his relationships, but her meddling in his romantic life, where I see most the difference in the relationship is. After Abigail died, there's no doubt that John Quincy Adams was sad. But after John died every single year on July 4th, in his diary, JQA made a about his father, about how he observed this date with real sort of bittersweet melancholy. Because it was the anniversary of independence. But he also had lost his father.

And so I think we see in those reflections a difference in that relationship. So let's get to another one on.

She was from a good family and he kept it secret, which was probably a mistake. When Abigail learned of this, she came down on her son like a ton of bricks, and she basically said, No, you're too young, you're not settled enough in the world. A bad early match could really derail a life.

Let it go, stop, and he did now. If this had happened with my mother, things would never have been the same again.

He would inherit once his parents died, but he did not have a lot of money.

So he had to take care of himself. And at the time, until you had an established career, whether that be a lawyer, which is what he was training for, or in politics or something. It was difficult to keep your own house, you had to have funds in order to do so. And so she was worried that he wasn't going to be able to support a wife, and she had seen a lot of other people make this mistake.

And it did cause a lot of stress and pressure and it was difficult for people who married young. Which is why John and Abigail waited until John was almost 30 to get married. If I'm remembering my dates, correct? So there are practical concerns there. But instead of saying wait, she said no. And as someone who hates being told what to do and resents it deeply.

Then, when he did marry, he wisely married in England. His parents couldn't attend. It's a fait accompli. Louisa Johnson He marries her, brings her back to the U.S, and Abigail never really warmed to her.

She was sort of glacially cordial, but she never warmed her. And this is one of the things I love most about John Adams. The father, because he realized how much Louise was suffering under this and he befriended her. They talked about literature, they, they, they became really close, and you get a sense that he stood between her and Abigail.

Would it be an impediment to his political career at a time when wives were really an essential helpmate, an essential part of the political process? So she was really nice to the family.

He was good at almost anything he set his mind to, but he never really loved it. And I think one of the reasons he was such a phenomenal diplomat was that sense of letters, that identity and that membership in sort of the international intellectual community. And why he was so good at conversing with people in that space when you think of the most intellectually.

I mean, you think he's learning four or five, six languages, he's traveling, he's writing state.

Duties throughout his life that keep him at a writing desk, I suppose, three, four, five hours per day. And somehow he finds time to read not only the English classics, from Chaucer through Alexander Pope, but all the important historical and political books of the era, too. It makes you a little bit depressed, doesn't it to think of what he could do? The thing is is, you can't compare.

And at the last minute, he had to change plans. So he writes this incredibly petulant letter, complaining about the position being like, I am all out of books. I have run out of books to read. And you can just imagine there's nothing more insulting to John Quincy Adams, and he has run out of books to read.

And he said, Now what?

And books, Lindsay doesn't mean like a novel by Jane Addams, it's the complete works of Milton, the complete works of Chaucer, the complete works of Shakespeare. And so think of this that Theodore Roosevelt is dying of a variety of jungle problems, and he's reading 50 thick complete works, books and then complaining. And his son, Kermit, was fond of French literature, and so he had an anthology of French poetry.

And Roosevelt read it, of course, because he could read French, and he said, I really don't like this, but then he read it because he's Roosevelt. He needed words, he needed words to read.

He needed words. So let me go to a more important topic from your list. He's certainly one of the top three or four secretaries of state in American history, and you could make the argument that he's the greatest secretary of state. I leave it to you to show that.

To be sure, Jefferson shared it, but he was really kind of the one that put it into place and maneuvered it. And for all of his very interesting life experiences. I don't think that President James Monroe was going to be doing so, and it was really John Quincy Adams that made it.

Jefferson was angling for New Orleans and the Floridas. Really, control of the Gulf of Mexico and access to the Caribbean did not get it. During his presidency, John Quincy Adams is the secretary of State for James Monroe. He gets it done, that's one.

He also squared off the top of America. The Louisiana purchase had been a little uncertain. About the northern boundaries, J..Q. Adams works it out with Britain, and the 49th parallel becomes the northern boundary once and for all of the United States. Those are two of his achievements as secretary of state.

And then Monroe and Monroe, I think, is a little bit of a lightweight compared to the great ones of his time, Monroe as president. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed, yeah.

I love Monroe, but he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he and Adams....

We don't want Britain anywhere near the Western Hemisphere. And so what he does is he proposes this idea in a Cabinet meeting. And Monroe sends a letter to Jefferson and Madison, saying, What do you think? And they write back saying, That's a great idea. So John Quincy Adams writes the language in the annual address. That becomes known as the Monroe doctrine, which says that basically hands off to the European powers for the Western hemisphere.

I'm simplifying, that's obviously not his language, but for the purposes of understanding the principle, that's what he says. But then, and this is the part that I think is also forgotten. He then has a very extensive correspondence and a relationship with the British minister to the United States. Telling them this in nicer terms and maintaining a good relationship while also making sure that they have nothing to do with Latin America. And that piece is quite essential, because that's what gets Britain to kind of accede to this idea, not fully.

I mean, they don't, you know, write a treaty themselves, but it doesn't provoke additional conflict, and they don't end up intervening.

There's a vindictive, crazy streak in Jefferson, and that's part of it.

Is ended by the Treaty of Ghent, and the Treaty of Ghent is really what solidifies, I think, what solidifies American independence once and for all. Because I do see the war of 1812 as sort of part two. And it solidifies the United States neutrality on the world stage for almost for another century. Basically, I mean, we have some smaller conflicts, but we don't go over to Europe or anything like that. And the person that negotiated, the chief negotiator of the Treaty of Ghent, was John Quincy Adams.

So 10 years prior, he negotiates this treaty, 10 years later, he is then the one talking to the British and saying, hands off.

And so, neutrality did not mean isolationism, but it meant not getting dragged into wars unnecessarily through defensive treaties that were completely foreign to American interests. And so both John Adams and John Quincy Adams, I think, would have agreed with that. That, you know, right now. It made no sense for them to do anything in Europe other than trade and make money.

And then we get drawn into World War II in a more emphatic way, and suddenly people are talking about the American century from a certain point of view. There's a kind of a sadness in that that America was meant to be this sort of fortress of enlightenment, turning its back on the madness of the world. And yet the global situation has been such that inevitably, a power as strong and an economy as mighty as America has to get drawn in.

But that also, I think, is a wonderful opportunity. It's just we're not always great at determining what is really in American interests and what is not. We sometimes get that wrong.

Welcome back to Listening to America, and I want to say something about this just for a moment. LINDsAy Some people are concerned about, well, what happens to the Jefferson Hour now that it's listening to America. And I keep reassuring people, nothing much changes.

You're going to be a very constant guest. We're talking about the early national period. Jefferson, John Adams, Quincy Adams, James Monroe. We're not going to deviate very much from our purpose. And I so appreciate you because we're both champing at the bit to talk about things outside of the early national period. And we will and have. This is really the foundation of America.

And as we approach the 250th birthday of the country, July 4th, 2026, July 4th. Who made? Well, I won't say who made that happen on July 4th, 17th, but anyway, as we approach that date, not July 2nd, not 1783, but Jefferson's big day. I think it's important for us to be talking about the original intent of the American Republic. That period of intense idealism, coupled with a pragmatic approach to life, that made this a really, really remarkable republic. And so I just want to assure people that nothing much will change except the name of this program. So let me go to.. ..

Wasn't very good at coalition building anyway. He was too smart to get along with most people, he didn't really like them. It was very frustrating.

And so it was. It was a grave disappointment. Three things worth mentioning. As I said, foreign policy was always his strength, He left the United States in a better place diplomatically and on a stronger footing with foreign policy.

Then he came in, as did John Adams, I should say. Second, he wrote a remarkably.

To Congress, it went nowhere. But as we think about what came next, I think this idea inspired a lot of the infrastructure that we saw afterwards. And he wrote weights and measures that was scientifically far ahead of his time, and I think one of the greatest governing documents.

In sort of a very weird way. One of the greatest and most brilliant governing documents. Not particularly riveting reading, but also chalk that up to his extraordinariness as secretary of state.

It existed back then. They wanted him to fail. Two, there were a lot of people who felt that the federal government had no business investing in anything national. Because the federal government was supposed to be small powers were supposed to be reserved to the states, anything that gave the federal government too much power could be used in other ways.

And at this point, people are starting to think about, well, if the federal government can create canals, can they limit slavery? And so there starts to be a concern about how the federal government and how federal power is being used. And the third reason is that the different regions of the country had different infrastructure needs and different infrastructure demands. So whereas one part of the country really wanted canals, others maybe wanted roads, etc. etc. And so it was very hard to get agreement on where the funds should go and what.

And here's what really bothers me so much of American history has been bedeviled by race and slavery. So you mentioned it that. One main reason why states would not, especially southern states, would not get on board with an infrastructure bill is because they said. To do that, the federal government might have the power to. And then you fill in the blank to end slavery, to damage slavery, to put slavery on the road to extinction, to, etc. And John C. Calhoun said as much.

He said If they can do this, then they can do that. And if you think about the number of times in American history that the protection of slavery, and afterwards, the protection of apartheid. And Jim Crow has gotten in the way of forward progress, it's astounding. And so these people that say, Oh, we don't want to hear about critical race theory or the 1619 project, that's wrong. We have to acknowledge that the South has had a stranglehold on this country from the beginning. At the Constitution, in the early national period, in the run-up to the war, through the war, and then, tragically, in the aftermath of the civil War. As a historian, you know, our purpose is to clarify, not to judge, but it's hard not to feel.

Kind of straightjacket for America at all of these moments, race and slavery served as.

And if we were to try and tell the story and omit that part, it wouldn't make any sense. Because otherwise, it would appear as though these congressmen were being ridiculous or were not acting rationally. But they had their own set of concerns, and under those set of concerns, which included slavery, they were acting rationally to pursue their goals. So it's really not a matter of trying to say that, you know, this one thing is to blame for everything, but rather, let's make sure we talk about all the factors that were in play.

Number one, the gag rule, so people were beginning to petition the Congress of the United States and do something about slavery. The Southern states managed to enforce a gag rule in which the Senate and the House could not accept petitions that they would be immediately laid on the table. And then forgot, and John Quincy Adams decided that a that's terrible democratic theory, and b it's just plain wrong. We're going to have to, you know, this is our only way through this.

So so, tell us about his heroic role in ending the gag rule. So he protested against it.

And he was able to do so, one because he had this incredible attention to detail, but two because of who he was. So many other Northerners who objected to a gag rule or who criticized slavery were either attacked or threatened, or beaten with canes. Or, you know, any number of other forms of violence by Southern representatives, because that was how they were defending their quote. Unquote honor. But it was John Quincy Adams, who was a former president, it was the son of a president, it was this incredible statesman. They couldn't challenge him to a duel, they couldn't beat him with a cane, they couldn't even really physically threaten him. So he used his incredible prestige of who he was to attack this rule.

You would have thought that'd be the end of it, he'd go home to Braintree, lick his wounds, write a memoir and do the things that former presidents do. But no, he's promoted for the House of Representatives. He's elected in 1830, takes his seat in 1831 and spends the rest of his life in the House of Representatives. And dies in the Capitol, has a stroke at the Capitol and dies thereafter in 1848..

It takes a certain kind of person to do that. And he convinced himself, and I think accurately, that it was not a diminution. It was a sign of what a republic is. That you're not too good to be a member of the House of Representatives, even if you have been the president of this country. I admire this. It's not that he was just looking like an ambitious man for more roles.

I think he felt there's work to be done. And there's a way that I can do it, and maybe more effectively, than I was able to do it as the president.

I should say much to his wife's consternation, she didn't really want him to do this for the rest of his life. But he felt called to it and he was good at it. And if anyone has the opportunity to tour the Capitol, you can see where his desk was. And then if Congress is out of session and you can get sort of access to the special rooms, what is now? The Women's House Lounge was at the time the speaker of the House's office.

And the couch that he died on is still.

He very thoughtfully fought on this one front about democratic process, and was able, finally, to overcome the opposition. And allow petitions to be considered by the Congress of the United States. And the South didn't want this done because they realized that their power was waning and that the North was becoming an industrial powerhouse, and certainly its economy was stronger. They knew that time wasn't on their side and so they had to do everything in their power to forestall probably an inevitable future. And as you said, other people who spoke out about slavery were beaten up, called out for duels, beaten nearly to death on the floor of the Congress of the United States.

He was sort of impregnable to this because he was a an Adams B, the former president. And everyone got it that. He was one of the most formidable political beings in the United States, so we have to give him extraordinary credit for that achievement. It didn't change much. The civil war was by now probably inevitable. But nevertheless, to think that, after all the disappointments of his life, he made that his quest and succeeded, and it gives me the deepest respect for him.

Amazing. So then let's go to the Amistad, explain that what happened?

So, partway through this.

They weren't supposed to come to the U.

S.

They needed someone who could speak before the Supreme Court and garner respect. Especially because this is the same Supreme Court that had been quite friendly to slavery, this is the same Supreme Court. That was really dominated by Southerners. And was going to go on to decide the Dred Scott decision, which was one of the worst slavery decisions. So they needed someone who could bring heft to this decision. John Quincy Adams agrees to argue the case. He does so in such a persuasive and compelling way that he convinces Supreme Court justices, who are pro-slavery to decide. On behalf of the Africans, who then, once they won this case, elected to be returned to Africa.

And it is a remarkable achievement, is remarkable success. And I think it was a big turning point for him as well in his evolution of abolitionist thought. Because he was meeting with these men who were so dignified and so well-spoken under the most.

But still, John Quincy Adams, you know, making this argument, there's nothing of the orator in him. This is going to be like, so solid an argument.

What's extra interesting about this moment is his son, Charles Francis. Adams really didn't want him to take the case. Because he was building up his own business and he had a lot of family ties. He ended up marrying a very wealthy heiress and his in-laws were southern. And so he asked his dad not to take the case, and John Quincy Adams did anyway.

Thanks everyone.