John Quincy Adams: Diary Entries on the Adams-Onís Treaty

About the Author

John Quincy Adams was born in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, on July 11, 1767. His father, John Adams, was a stalwart of the Revolutionary movement and the second president of the United States. Both his father and his mother, Abigail Smith Adams, instilled in John Quincy a commitment to moral perfectionism and public service. That service began when he accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission to Europe at ten years of age, and it was made official when he became secretary to the American minister designate to Russia four years later. He graduated from Harvard College in 1787 and began the practice of law.

The first significant phase of Adams's career was as a diplomat. George Washington appointed him minister to the Netherlands; his father made him the minister to Prussia. After one term as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, from 1803 to 1808, during which Adams displayed an increasing political independence, President James Madison appointed him minister to Russia in 1809. Adams served as the key negotiator for the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812. Following a brief stint as the minister to Great Britain, Adams became President James Monroe's secretary of state. In this position Adams used his considerable experience to define and extend the nation's boundaries. His extensive diaries provide a good sense of the evolution of his thinking and negotiations. With Great Britain he obtained valuable fishing rights and the northern border of the Louisiana Purchase at the 49th parallel. He manipulated Andrew Jackson's unauthorized invasion of Florida in 1818 into the Adams-Onís Treaty (also called the Transcontinental Treaty) of 1819. The United States not only acquired Florida and extended the western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase but also removed Spanish claims to the Pacific Northwest north of the 42nd parallel. With James Monroe, Adams helped devise the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, which increased the nation's prestige in the Western Hemisphere and established a fundamental piece of future American foreign policy. Many scholars recognize John Quincy Adams as the nation's greatest secretary of state.

No one secured a majority of Electoral College votes in the presidential election of 1824, such that it was the House of Representatives that elected Adams in February 1825. His thoughtful policies for national growth are contained in his presidential messages to Congress. In a nation fragmented into many political factions, Adams failed to negotiate significant measures through Congress other than commercial trade treaties. The contrast between his presidential and diplomatic years could not be starker.

Adams is the only former president to serve in the House of Representatives. Elected in 1830, Adams used his office to promote his nationalistic goals. He worked with the Whig Party in opposition to the Jacksonian Democrats, but his sense of morality often led him to follow a distinctive political course. He demanded higher tariff and land sales revenues to finance internal improvements. He claimed the role of protector of liberty from the autocratic slaveholders of the South, who, he felt, stunted the nation's progress in placing the interests of slavery over all else. His attacks on the “gag rule” that prevented the acceptance of antislavery petitions in the House of Representatives led admirers to call him “Old Man Eloquent.” In 1841, before the Supreme Court, Adams delivered a biting sarcastic oration against the slave trade and for the freedom of the slaves who had rebelled aboard the Spanish ship Amistad. For all his moral sense, Adams was an inept politician, refusing to compromise and alienating potential allies. His last major crusade was one of opposition to the Mexican-American War. It was at his seat in the House in 1848 that he suffered a fatal stroke.