John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the U.S.

Born: 1767, Died:1848

President: 1825-1829

His vice president: J. Calhoun

John Calhoun called him a "cast-iron man who looked as though he'd never been born and never could be extinguished."

Just look at him. Study his face, hands, shoes and handkerchief. Bear in mind that this very great man was 78 years old. He's sitting for a daguerreotype which required him to stay immobile with a metal vice holding his head and neck for ten minutes. To achieve this kind of pictorial success he must not blink an eye, or twitch a nostril. The original of this picture hangs in the Metropolitan in New York City. It's the first of any president and was done in 1845 three years before he died. He's John Quincy Adams, our sixth president, son of President John Adams and First Lady Abigail Adams.

At age 7, J.Q. Adams started out being a child prodigy as created by his splendid parents when his mother took him out on a hill near Cambridge, Mass., so he could watch and listen to the Battle of Bunker Hill 10 miles away in June 1775, a year before Mr. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and the real start of our Revolutionary War.

He was a brilliant linguist in both classical and live languages. He served our budding nation all over Europe and was employed in Europe in numerous assignments for eight years at a stretch. He was like a son to George Washington, who not only employed him actively but recommended him for jobs under his father, our second president. He was a close personal friend of Czar Alexander of Russia. Served later as our minister (ambassador) to the court of Catherine the Great. He served in Paris as his father's secretary as a teenager. Went to university in Netherlands and did diplomatic missions there. Also in Sweden, Prussia where he was our minister. Did a masterly job of making us look like winners when he, as U.S. representative, signed the Treaty of Ghent, bringing to closure the War of 1812 which, in reality, we lost. Got deeply involved in Latin American relations, even putting in play the long-term possibility of the Panama Canal. He served in federal positions under each of our first five chiefs and then he himself became our sixth president.

From its very outset, the United States was blessed with highly placed diplomats who refused to recognize that we were a tiny, strung-out nation lacking in funds or military power. Men like Franklin, Jefferson, Clay Adams, John Adams Sr., Polk, Monroe, no two alike acted like conquering heroes whenever they sat in negotiations. In his own way, each was effective.

John Quincy was not a great president. But he was the greatest secretary of state we've ever had for the eight years he served President Monroe. He'd beaten Andrew Jackson for the presidency -- who got a lot more votes than he did and was to dominate our politics for the next twenty years. It was the start of the Jackson era that took the power from those early Virginia scholars and Massachusetts patriotic thinkers and placed it more nearly at the disposal of those Appalachian mountain scalers who were fanning out in all directions with fresh ideas about this America of ours, the plain people, the plains people, the tobacco-spitting people.

In a private letter John Quincy wrote, "The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by Divine Providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles and accustomed to one general tenor of social usage and customs. For the common happiness of them all, for their peace and prosperity. I believe it is indispensable that they should be associated in one Federal Union." It's his fancy way of discussing "manifest destiny" and a lot of other things including the possibility of secession.

As secretary of state for the eight years of President Monroe's tenure in office, John Quincy was responsible for instituting the Monroe Doctrine, which warned all nations to keep their hands and military off the whole Western Hemisphere. He got favorable resolutions to boundary disputes with Great Britain and Canada. Even more than his father, he used sarcasm, was cold, austere, forboding. Got elected to the U.S. Senate in preparation for which he was quoted as saying, "I'll have to be nice to people for a month." He was always in agreement with Jackson, a slaveowner, in their joint desire to oppose any breakup of the union, any addition of slave states and any talk of secession.

In later years, Adams introduced legislation to have any potential slave baby born after 1840 be born free. This was rejected but was a brilliant idea and would have made Civil War unnecessary and improbable.

He called slavery, "that great and foul stain on our country." During his term in office, we standardized our weights and measures and established the Smithsonian Institute with money provided by an Englishman.

During these early years when her Adams men (husband and son) were shouldering the jobs that would make this nation stable, Abigail was home running the farm and building a shaky financial base of stability.

As David McCullough puts it, "J.Q. Adams was the most superbly educated and maybe most brilliant human being who ever occupied the executive office." Young Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois got ideas for the Emancipation Proclamation in time of war from Johnny Q.

J.Q. Adams is the only ex-president to return to our national legislature after leaving national leadership. He served the last 17 years of life as a member of our House of Representatives in the Capitol Building in Washington. While speaking, they called him Old Man Eloquent, he suffered a stroke and since he never recovered -- although he breathed another 48 hours -- he can truly be said to have died on the floor. Abraham Lincoln was there that day, as a congressman from Illinois.

People who write about our Founders seem so often to fall in love with their subjects. John Quincy Adams read deeply in the Bible each day and kept a magnificent daily journal all his life. He attended as many as three church services each Sunday, maybe three different religions. He was a physical fitness buff and swam at every opportunity, cold or hot. He made the abolition of slavery a respectable subject. He would have abominated our present-day low education objectives. He was a powerful symbol for high aspirations and had no tolerance for lowering standards.

Attorney Austin Cunningham has been the president of five business companies and in 1988 was named Outstanding Elder Citizen of the Year for South Carolina.

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