Second of the Adams Dynasty
HESSELTINE, WILLIAM E.
Second of the Adams Dynasty John Quincy Adams and the Union. By Samuel Flagg Bemis. Knopf. 547 pp. $8.75. Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine Professor of American History, University of...
...Yet, whatever his motivations-- and he was indeed a soured, embittered, and mostly unloved man-- there was no question of his patriotism and his devotion to his country's interests...
...He had no political following, no mandate from any body of supporters...
...His inner troubles might well excite the curiosity of a psychologist...
...Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine Professor of American History, University of Wisconsin In his old age, for no apparent reason except that his labeler admired him, John Quincy Adams bore the title "Old Man Eloquent...
...He cooperated with Abolitionists without joining them, presented their petitions for the abolition of slavery, and enjoyed molesting the "slavocracy...
...In his first volume, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, published in 1949, Professor Bemis traced Adams's career as a diplomat and as Secretary of State under Monroe...
...He was 63 years of age, and for the next 18 years he served his district without much reference to political parties or party affiliation...
...Behind him lay a. distinguished career...
...he flirted with anti-Masonry...
...And because of the peculiar conditions of his election, his administration was a failure...
...He was a Whig...
...After two years in retirement, Adams re-entered politics, or at least public offceholding, as Congressman from Massachusetts...
...He bore a deep resentment for the Southerners who had harassed his administration and inflicted the trials of a political Job upon him...
...The account is a straightforward, conventional narrative, lucid in style, careful in exposition, and soundly based on the rich collection of Adams manuscripts in the Massachusetts Historical Society...
...The second part of the biography, dealing with Adams's "second career," begins with his candidacy for the Presidency in 1824 and carries him to his collapse on the floor of the House of Representatives and his death in the Capitol building in February 1848...
...Leading the movement against him were Southerners, and he blames them for the troubles of his administration...
...Bemis contends--as Adams did--that he was concerned with the question of liberty and was determined to drive slavery from the land...
...The arguments presented, and the development of events, might lend themselves just as easily to a theme of revenge...
...Perhaps, on the other hand, the manner in which he obtained his honors tortured his Puritan conscience...
...By the time he got the title, whether he earned it or not, he was a member of the House of Representatives, secure in his hold on his Massachusetts district...
...His program was nationalistic, conservative, oriented toward the protection of property...
...Fortunately Professor Bemis is no psychologist, and he has refrained in his two-volume biography from psychiatric speculations...
...He was by that time certainly an old man, but he was more garrulous than eloquent, more contentious than persuasive, more bitter than a superficial listing of his achievements would seem to warrant...
...He was a man of personal integrity and of sound if second-rate ability...
...John Quincy Adams was born to be President, and his family intended that he should one day fill the position his father occupied...
...He had served efficiently in high posts, and formal honors aplenty had come to him...
...and he was distinctly anti-Jackson without ever being completely a supporter of Henry Clay or Daniel Webster...
...In 1825 he achieved his predestined station, but the position came to him as the result of his opponents killing each other off...
...and beyond that, stretching almost to the cradle, there had been a succession of public offices: ambassador, peace commissioner, Senator, secretary of legation...
...His acts, however, must have been motivated by hatred of Southerners and a desire to block the schemes which he believed the Southerners plotted...
...Before he was a Congressman, he had been President of the United States...
...He opposed the annexation of Texas--though in his diplomatic career he had been an ardent expansionist--and he opposed the Mexican War...
...before that, Secretary of State...
...Perhaps, indeed, he wanted to be popular, to be loved for himself...
...His election, says Bemis, "was not a party victory, not a triumph of political principles, not even a personal success...
...His opponents combined to defeat his schemes, to displace him in the Presidency, and to retire him without honor...
...But no honor had ever satisfied him, no reward ever fulfilled his unavowed ambition...
Vol. 39 • July 1956 • No. 28
