Episode Details

John Quincy Adams was born in Massachusetts in 1767 to John and Abigail Adams and raised to embody the ideals of the new republic. As a boy he translated Virgil and Plutarch, studied at Leiden University, and at 14 served as secretary to an American diplomat in St. Petersburg, Russia. He graduated second in his class at Harvard, struggled with depression throughout his life, and defied his parents by marrying Louisa Catherine Johnson even after her father went bankrupt and her dowry vanished. Elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in 1803 as a Federalist, he backed the Louisiana Purchase and Jefferson's embargoes, and the angry state legislature chose his successor months early. James Madison then made him the first U.S. minister to Russia.

Adams led the delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Ghent, and as Secretary of State under James Monroe he secured Florida from Spain through the Adams-Onís Treaty and designed the Monroe Doctrine. His 1824 presidential win in the House, followed by Henry Clay's appointment as Secretary of State, was branded the corrupt bargain, and Andrew Jackson defeated him in 1828. Instead of retiring, he won a seat in the U.S. House, fought the gag rule on antislavery petitions, opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War, and at 73 argued the Amistad case before the Supreme Court. On February 21, 1848, at 80, he collapsed on the House floor and died in the Capitol two days later.

• He urged Monroe to issue the doctrine alone, saying the U.S. should not look like a cock boat in the wake of the British man of war.
• At Ghent he held firm until Britain dropped its demand for a Native American barrier state near the Great Lakes.
• He wrote an exhaustive report urging the United States to adopt the metric system.
• As president he proposed a national university, a naval academy, an astronomical observatory, and federal roads and canals.
• He read antislavery petitions into the record by claiming he needed to read them to see whether the gag rule applied.