John Quincy Adams

January 1, 2024

Historian Woods (Univ. of Arkansas; LBJ: Architect of American Ambition) pens a mammoth political and intellectual biography of President John Quincy Adams, exploring his extraordinary upbringing--he sat by Voltaire at the opera and was intertwined with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and more--and his multivarious roles in the formation of the United States. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from July 1, 2024
Intensively readable life of an early American statesman whose destiny mirrored the fledgling republic he devoted his life to serving. Woods, a professor of history and biographer of Lyndon Johnson and J. William Fulbright, draws from correspondence and diaries to offer a magnificently full-blooded portrait of John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) against the backdrop of early America. John and Abigail Adams instilled young John Quincy with the sense that he was destined to be a person of importance in the new republic. His father made sure he was steeped in an Enlightenment education; as a youth, he accompanied his father to Paris and London on his ministerial posts to drum up support for independence. After a few years in Europe, he entered Harvard as a junior. Well versed in languages and the classics, he gained notoriety as a scholar and orator. Chosen to serve in the foreign ministry from Washington's administration through that of Monroe, Adams situated himself for higher office, ascending from senator to secretary of state to president. Revered for his erudition and experience rather than charisma, he was horrified by the rise of Jacksonian populism, spurring him to represent Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the House of Representatives for the rest of his life, where he became the scourge of the slave states. The author includes rousing excerpts from Adams' famous speeches challenging the gag rule. Woods writes admiringly that despite his subject's occasional priggishness, overweening ambition, patronizing tirades toward his children and wife, Louisa (who becomes a strong character in this book), and martyr complex, Adams was "unique--an architect of American empire, a relentless opponent of secessionist movements, a protector of American independence, a man above party, and a living link between the Revolutionary Era and the Early Republic." A tremendous history lesson through the life of this insuppressible voice for liberty and justice.

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July 29, 2024
According to this sparkling biography, John Quincy Adams both “reflect and transcend his famous parents,” just as he was both a product of his young country and a major force in its evolution from fledgling rebel alliance to continent-spanning behemoth to fractured nation riven by civil strife. Biographer Woods (LBJ) makes a long, primary source–rich examination of Adams’s formative years and early career, finding that his mother Abigail’s intellectual influence, his experiences during the Revolutionary War as a diplomat’s son, and his accomplishments as a diplomat himself (he brokered some the country’s most important early treaties) led him to a novel political position. His “goal,” according to Woods, was to “make strong enough to... resolve its great contradiction,” slavery, which he thought could be accomplished through the addition of more free territory. Thus, he served as “a high priest to manifest destiny” but also an abolitionist “fellow traveler.” Woods pegs the tensions of this position as the cause of Adams’s failed presidency but also as the hallmark of his victorious final act as forceful antislavery congressman. Woods’s account especially shines when focusing on Adams’s marriage to Louisa Catherine Johnson; the devoted pair rivaled one another in intellect but also oversensitivity, making for entertaining reading (“Louisa pretended a headache for the privilege of being cross,” notes a typical Adams diary entry). It’s an immersive, winsome character study.