John Quincy Adams example essay topic

If anyone was raised to take on the role of the president of the United States, then that person was John Quincy Adams. He came from the town of Braintree, Massachusetts, which his ancestors had settled, and generations of Adams would come to prosper. His father, John Adams, studied law at Harvard College, and married Abigail Smith in 1765. On July 11th, 1767, the couple gave birth to their second child, John Quincy Adams. John Quincy grew up with much happening in nearby Boston to interest and educate him.

Revolution against Great Britain was on the minds of many, including his cousin, Samuel Adams, a leader of this uprising. At the age of eight, John Quincy watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from his house. John Quincy "represented the hopes and pride of his father". His father the second president our country would know, the stage was set for John Quincy to lead a successful political career.

With his father away on business often, the Adams children were raised by the strong-willed Abigail. She had high hopes for her oldest son, who was tutored personally by his father's law employees, and would become an avid reader and writer early on. With his father becoming more and more involved in the political scene, John Quincy successfully begged his father to take him overseas to Europe at the age of ten, where the elder John was helping to negotiate a settlement to the war. John Quincy attended some of the finest schools during his stay in Europe, learning much French and continuing reading extensively. When Adams was fourteen, he was hired as the private secretary to the American minister to Berlin, Francis Dana. In 1784, father and son returned to Massachusetts, where the younger John felt he was ready for college.

He entered Harvard to study law and graduated second in his class of fifty-one in 1787. Adams served as a law clerk while being trained as an attorney and, although he found he disliked practicing law, John Quincy opened a law office on Court Street in Boston in 1790. But his father's business was growing so much that he needed additional help. John Quincy took the job and managed the business while his father was away, which was often due to his role as vice president under George Washington.

This allowed him to focus less on his law career, and more on writing his own political ideas. President George Washington sought after someone to represent the American interests in Holland. Adams had been there and spoke many European languages. At the age of twenty-seven, he was appointed Minister Resident to the Hague, the capital of Holland. During his stay in the Netherlands, he became engaged to Louisa Catherine Johnson, the daughter of the American minister to Britain. With Adams traveling often, the wedding was delayed time and time again.

Adams was reassigned as the U.S. Minister to Berlin when his father was elected president. John Quincy and Louisa were married on July 26, 1797. Adams would return to Massachusetts to resume his political career. He was a member of the governing body of the state, the General Court. In 1803, he was elected senator, representing the Federalist Party. After losing his bid for re-election to the Senate, he joined the Republican Party, and became a professor at Harvard.

After Thomas Jefferson's two terms as president, James Madison took over and sent Adams to Russia, and later to London. He continued to work his way up when James Monroe became president and appointed John Quincy as secretary of state. He helped to write the Monroe Doctrine, and arranged for the United States to acquire Florida from Spain. In the election of 1824, the Republicans had four strong candidates, including Adams, against the famous general of the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson. Jackson won the popular vote, but no one won the majority of electoral votes. It was up to the House of Representatives to choose the president from among the top three contenders, and Henry Clay used his influence in the house to elect John Quincy Adams as the sixth president of the United States.

Clay would become Adams's secretary of state. Adams' presidency and the election were immediately deemed corrupt, which would taint his term and his reputation. Taking the position his father had prepared him for all his life in 1825, he came in filled with ideas and plans. Adams believed in expansive and expensive changes in government, internal improvements which would bring high protective tariffs. He wished to expand the country's roads and canals, build a national university, and create a standard system of weights and measurements for American business. He was heavily opposed by supporters of Jackson inside and outside of Congress.

Jackson was popular and intimidating, much different from Adams cold and dour personality. His visionary plans were ridiculed by his opponents, and none of them would be implemented. His administration was generally regarded as a complete failure, but Mary Hargreaves argues otherwise, saying "Adams established the federal government as guardian of the general interest". Adams believed that liberty had been won by the American Revolution and that this liberty was guaranteed by the Constitution. His policy was to exercise the national power to make freedom more beneficial. He called for strong national policies such as using the Bank of the United States as an instrument of the national financial authority, and national protection of the Indian tribes and lands against the advances of the states, as well as the development of science and other geographical discoveries.

His outlook would anticipate the "New Nationalism" policies of Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt by almost a century. Adams led a rather uneventful presidency, serving just one term as head of the nation, and being elected to the House of Representatives in 1830, where he would serve for the final seventeen years of his life. John Quincy Adams will never be regarded as one of the great presidents of history, but rather as a great politician, and possibly the best secretary of state ever. His father influenced him greatly in his view on politics and would help him work his way up to the presidency. Adams held unique and hopeful views for this country from his birth until his death in 1848. His contributions to the future political views of our government will never be forgotten..