Adams, John Quincy

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), the sixth president of the United States, represented Massachusetts in both the Senate and House of Representatives during his long career in public life.

The son of John Adams, the nation's second president, John Quincy Adams was a man of uncompromising rectitude and inflexible purpose. Adams entered the Senate in 1803 as a Federalist, but he soon ran into trouble for supporting Jeffersonian policies. He resigned his Senate seat in 1808. After holding various diplomatic posts, he served with distinction from 1817 to 1825 as President James Monroe's secretary of state. He was chiefly [Page p2]responsible for the Monroe Doctrine, which barred colonization in the Western Hemisphere by European nations

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Adams ran for president in 1824, in an inconclusive four-way race that ultimately had to be decided by the House of Representatives. Although Andrew Jackson was the leading candidate in both the popular and the electoral votes, the House chose Adams. Lacking political or popular support, Adams was not a successful president; Jackson defeated him in 1828.

In 1830 Adams was elected to the House of Representatives, where he served for seventeen years until his death. Known as “Old Man Eloquent,” he conducted an almost single-handed attack on so-called gag rules that prevented discussion of antislavery proposals. The House repealed the rules in 1844.

On February 21, 1848, the eighty-year-old Adams was stricken ill at his desk in the House chamber. He was carried to the Speaker's room, where he died two days later.

Adams was one of two presidents to serve in Congress after leaving the White House. Andrew Johnson, also a former senator, returned to the Senate for five months before his death in 1875. (See Electing the President.)