John Quincy Adams was raised, educated, and groomed to be President, following in the footsteps of his father,
John. At fourteen he was secretary to the Minister to Russia and, later, was himself Minister to the Netherlands and Prussia. He was U.S. Senator,
Secretary of State, and then President for one ill-fated term. His private life showed a parallel descent. He was a poet, writer, critic, and Professor of Oratory at
Harvard. He married a talented and engaging Southerner, but two of his three sons were disappointments. This polymath and troubled man, caught up in both a democratic age not to his understanding and the furies of passion, was an American lion in winter.
Background Information
John Adams of Massachusetts was a Founding Father, the second president, and the founder of an American political dynasty. John Quincy Adams, the sixth American president, was the son of John Adams, the second president, and had a long career representing Massachusetts in Congress after his presidency.
