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Senate Years of Service: 1803-1808 Party: Federalist
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Oil on canvas, Edwin Ahlstrom (after Jean-Baptiste-Adolphe Gibert), 2002, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives |
ADAMS, John Quincy, (son of John Adams, father of Charles Francis Adams, brother-in-law of William Stephens Smith),
a Senator and a Representative from Massachusetts and 6th President of the United
States; born in Braintree, Mass., July 11, 1767; acquired his early education in Europe at the
University of Leyden; was graduated from Harvard University in 1787; studied law; was admitted to
the bar and commenced practice in Boston, Mass.; appointed Minister to Netherlands 1794, Minister
to Portugal 1796, Minister to Prussia 1797, and served until 1801; commissioned to make a
commercial treaty with Sweden in 1798; elected to the Massachusetts State senate in 1802;
unsuccessful candidate for election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1802; elected as a
Federalist to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1803, until June 8, 1808, when he
resigned, a successor having been elected six months early after Adams broke with the Federalist party;
Minister to Russia 1809-1814; member of the commission which negotiated the Treaty of Ghent in
1814; Minister to England 1815-1817, assisted in concluding the convention of commerce with Great
Britain; Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President James Monroe 1817-1825; decision in the 1824
election of the President of the United States fell, according to the Constitution of the United States,
upon the House of Representatives, as none of the candidates had secured a majority of the electors
chosen by the states, and Adams, who stood second to Andrew Jackson in the electoral vote, was
chosen and served from March 4, 1825, to March 3, 1829; elected as a Republican to the U.S.
House of Representatives for the Twenty-second and to the eight succeeding Congresses, becoming a
Whig in 1834; served from March 4, 1831, until his death; chairman, Committee on Manufactures
(Twenty-second through Twenty-sixth, and Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Congresses), Committee
on Indian Affairs (Twenty-seventh Congress), Committee on Foreign Affairs (Twenty-seventh
Congress); unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1834; died in the U.S. Capitol
Building, Washington, D.C., February 23, 1848; interment in the family burial ground at Quincy, Mass.;
subsequently reinterred in United First Parish Church.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Adams, John Quincy. The Diary of John Quincy
Adams. Edited by David Grayson Allen, Robert J. Taylor, et al. 2 vols. to date. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981-; Nagel, Paul C. John Quincy Adams: A Public Life,
A Private Life. New York: Knopf, 1997; Remini, Robert. John Quincy Adams. New York: Times Books, 2002.
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