49 Fun Facts About John Quincy Adams

After Adams, which president's son next became president?

George W. Bush took office 176 years after Adams, the sixth president; like Adams, he became president despite trailing his main rival in the popular vote.

Who unseated Adams's father, the second president?

Thomas Jefferson won in 1800, and John Adams left the capital rather than watch him sworn in; 28 years later his son likewise refused to attend his own successor's inauguration.

In which Massachusetts town was Adams born in 1767?

Braintree's north precinct, where he was born, split off in 1792 as the new town of Quincy, so his birthplace now stands in a city that did not exist when he was born.

After whom was Adams given his middle name?

His mother's grandfather, Colonel John Quincy, lay on his deathbed when the boy was baptized and died two days after the birth; the name was given at the request of the colonel's daughter.

At 14, Adams went to which Russian city as secretary and interpreter to a US envoy?

Saint Petersburg was then Russia's capital; the American envoy asked for the 14-year-old as his secretary and translator because the boy's French was so good.

From which university did Adams graduate in 1787 after his boyhood years in Europe?

Harvard took him as an advanced student because of his schooling in Europe, so he finished the course in two years and then turned to the law.

As a boy of seven, Adams stood with his mother and watched which Revolutionary War battle from afar?

Bunker Hill was fought in June 1775 while his father was away at the Continental Congress; he later recalled feeling responsible, as the eldest son, for protecting his mother.

In which city did Adams marry Louisa Catherine Johnson in 1797?

London's All Hallows-by-the-Tower hosted the wedding; soon afterwards her merchant father fled the country to escape his creditors, and the dowry he had promised never came.

Louisa Adams was the first First Lady to be what?

Born outside the United States to an American merchant, Louisa first saw the country at 26; Adams's parents had disapproved of his marrying a woman raised abroad.

Adams's support for Jefferson's Embargo Act cost him what in 1808?

His Senate seat: the Federalist-run Massachusetts legislature picked his successor well before his term was up, so Adams resigned at once and soon joined Jefferson's party.

While a senator, Adams held the Boylston professorship in which subject?

He also taught logic at Brown; classical rhetoric shaped his public style for life.

In 1811 the Senate confirmed Adams for which post, only for him to turn it down?

Supreme Court justice: the Senate confirmed him a day after he was nominated, but Adams, then serving in Russia, preferred diplomacy and politics, and the seat went to Joseph Story.

Which president made Adams the first US minister to Russia in 1809?

James Madison sent him to the tsar's court, where Adams reported on Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia before the president reassigned him to negotiate peace with Britain.

Adams led the American negotiators for which 1814 agreement that ended the War of 1812?

The Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve 1814, but the news took weeks to cross the Atlantic, so the Battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after the peace.

Which nickname did Adams earn in Congress late in his career?

Old Man Eloquent: the name honoured the long, forceful speeches against slavery that he was still delivering when he was past seventy.

The 1818 treaty Adams oversaw set the US–Canada border along which line?

The 49th parallel became the border from the Lake of the Woods to the Rockies, while the Oregon Country beyond was left open to both nations, a quarrel that outlived Adams's presidency.

Which territory did the United States acquire from Spain under the Adams–Onís Treaty?

Florida changed hands with no payment to Spain; instead the United States took on about $5 million in claims itself.

The Adams–Onís Treaty fixed the border between American Louisiana and Spanish territory along which river?

The Sabine is still a state line today; expansionists wanted the border pushed west to the Rio Grande, but Adams accepted it once Spain gave up its claims to the Oregon Country.

As president, Adams often began his day with a swim in which river?

The Potomac was his morning exercise ground; on one swimming trip in 1825 his leaky boat filled with water in midstream, and he had to jump overboard and swim for the bank.

Which statement of American foreign policy did Adams chiefly draft while secretary of state?

The Monroe Doctrine bears the president's name, but it reflected Adams's views: he insisted that the United States issue the warning alone instead of jointly with Britain.

Who won the most electoral votes in 1824 yet lost the presidency to Adams?

Andrew Jackson took 99 electoral votes to Adams's 84 but fell 32 short of a majority; he spent the next three years campaigning to reverse the result.

When the House chose Adams as president in 1825, what counted as a single vote?

Each state delegation cast one vote, whatever its size, so Adams needed 13 of the 24 states and won exactly that many on the first ballot.

Which Speaker of the House threw his support to Adams and became his secretary of state?

Henry Clay had finished last of the four candidates and was shut out of the runoff, yet as Speaker he still held the deciding influence, and he used it for Adams.

What two-word phrase did Adams's opponents use for the 1825 deal that made him president?

'Corrupt bargain' was the cry after Adams gave the State Department to the Speaker whose backing had just won him the vote; his chief rival campaigned on the charge for three years.

On what did Adams place his hand when taking the presidential oath in 1825?

A book of constitutional law, by Adams's own account: the volume held the Constitution he was swearing to uphold, and Chief Justice John Marshall gave him the oath.

Which of these did Adams propose to Congress in his ambitious 1825 message?

A national astronomical observatory was his dream: he told Congress that Europe had 130 such 'light-houses of the skies' and America none, and opponents turned the phrase into a taunt.

Which highway did the Adams administration extend towards Zanesville, Ohio?

The National Road was one of the few parts of Adams's ambitious programme that Congress agreed to fund, pushing on from Cumberland, Maryland, into Ohio with surveys onward to St. Louis.

What nickname did Southern opponents give the protective duties of 1828?

The Tariff of Abominations was shaped by Adams's opponents in Congress, who left him a choice between a harsh tariff and none at all; he signed it, and Southern legislatures denounced it as unconstitutional.

Adams suspended a treaty forced on the Muscogee (Creek) by the governor of which state?

Georgia's governor, George Troup, rejected the fairer treaty Adams signed in 1826 and told his citizens to evict the Muscogee anyway; the standoff ended only when they gave up the land in a third treaty.

Adams said America "goes not abroad in search of" what?

'Monsters to destroy' comes from his Fourth of July speech of 1821, which held that America wishes freedom for all but is 'the champion and vindicator only of her own'.

Which 1826 conference of New World republics did Adams want the US to attend?

The Congress of Panama met without the United States: Southern congressmen, wary of nations that had outlawed slavery, held up the mission so long that neither American delegate got there in time.

Which vice president deserted Adams in 1828 to run on his opponent's ticket?

John C. Calhoun kept the vice presidency under the man who beat Adams, who had been left to run with his Treasury secretary, Richard Rush.

In the 1828 campaign, opponents attacked Adams for installing what in the White House?

A billiard table: it appeared in a list of White House furniture bought with public money, and opponents attacked him for it, though Adams said the entry was a mistake and that he had paid for it himself.

Adams ran for governor of Massachusetts in 1833 as the nominee of which party?

Anti-Masonic: the party grew out of the uproar when a man about to publish the Freemasons' secrets vanished in 1826. Adams ran second of four, and when no one won a majority he withdrew and the legislature chose his rival.

Which House practice of automatically tabling anti-slavery petitions did Adams fight?

The gag rule stood from 1836 to 1844; Adams kept finding ways around it until the House finally scrapped it on a repeal resolution he had written himself.

In which 1841 Supreme Court case did Adams defend enslaved Africans who had seized a ship?

The Amistad captives had been kidnapped in Africa in defiance of the laws against the slave trade, the 73-year-old Adams argued, so they were free men; the Court agreed, and the survivors sailed home.

Which actor played Adams in Steven Spielberg's 1997 film about a slave-ship revolt?

Anthony Hopkins earned an Oscar nomination as Adams; Justice Joseph Story is played in the film by Harry Blackmun, a retired justice of the real Supreme Court.

In Congress, Adams led the opposition to annexing which territory, fearing it would enter as a slave state?

Texas had once tempted him: his own administration tried to buy it, but after Mexico abolished slavery there he argued that annexation would turn free soil into slave territory.

Where did Adams collapse from a stroke in February 1848?

On the floor of the House, moments after shouting 'No!' to a motion honouring officers of the Mexican War; he was carried to the Speaker's Room and died there two days later.

What were Adams's reported final words?

'This is the last of Earth. I am content,' he is reputed to have said in the Speaker's Room before slipping into a coma; some accounts give the opening words as 'the end of earth'.

Which of Adams's sons became US minister to Britain during the Civil War?

Charles Francis Adams spent the war as Lincoln's envoy to Britain, working to keep it from recognising the Confederacy, in a post his father had held before him.

Adams named his first son after which president, to the annoyance of his own mother, Abigail?

George Washington was the name he chose a month after his own father left the presidency; Abigail called the decision 'ill judged', believing the boy should have been named for her husband.

As president, Adams's father named him the first US minister to which German state?

Prussia: Adams feared the posting would look like nepotism but took it and moved to Berlin, where he stayed until his father lost the presidency and he was called home.

Adams was the first president to take the oath of office wearing what?

Long trousers replaced the knee breeches earlier presidents had worn to be sworn in; Adams had also long since given up the powdered wig of his youth.

What did Adams begin at twelve and keep until just before his death?

A diary: begun in 1779, it grew to 51 volumes, and historians still mine it as a first-hand account of the early republic.

Adams's 1843 portrait, the earliest known surviving photograph of a president, was made by which process?

Daguerreotype: Philip Haas made the plate just four years after the process was unveiled; William Henry Harrison is said to have posed in 1841, but the Adams plate is the earliest known today.

In the bitter 1828 campaign, which charge did Adams's supporters throw at his opponent's wife?

Bigamy: the couple had lived together for years before they were legally married; she died weeks after the election, and her husband blamed the Adams campaign's slanders for her death.

Which region did Adams sweep while losing in 1828?

New England stood by him as it had by his father in 1800: with New Jersey and Delaware added, he carried almost exactly the states John Adams had won in his own losing race.

Where are Adams and his wife Louisa buried?

United First Parish Church holds both Adams presidents: after Louisa died in 1852, their son had his parents laid together in the family crypt beneath it, beside John and Abigail.