Well said Armory. And don't forget the liberation of Europe from the heel of the Nazi oppressor under several flags. Tut tut,AH. a US Pressie no less!
"John Quincy Adams may have been the greatest U.S. secretary of state, but he was not one of the greatest presidents. He was really a minority president, chosen by the House of Representatives in preference to Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford following the inconclusive one-party ELECTION of 1824. In the popular contest Jackson had received the greatest number of votes both at the polls and in the state ELECTORAL COLLEGES, but lacked a constitutional majority. Henry Clay, one of the four candidates in 1824, threw his support to Adams in the House in February 1825, after secret conferences between the two, thus electing Adams on the first ballot. The supporters of Jackson and Crawford immediately cried "corrupt bargain": Clay had put Adams into the WHITE HOUSE in order to become his secretary of state and successor. The judgment of historians is that there was an implicit bargain but no corruption.
President Adams believed that liberty had already been won--at least for white people--by the American Revolution and that this liberty was guaranteed by the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. His policy was to exert national power to make freedom more fruitful for the people. Accordingly he called for strong national policies under executive leadership: the Bank of the United States as an instrument of the national fiscal authority; a national tariff to protect domestic industries; national administration of the public lands for their methodical and controlled disposal and settlement; national protection of the Indian tribes and lands against encroachments by the states; a broad national program of internal physical improvements--highways, canals, and railways; and national direction in the field of education, the development of science, and geographical discoveries. He preferred the word "national" to "federal." His outlook anticipated by nearly a century the "New Nationalism" of Theodore ROOSEVELT and (by a strange reversal in DEMOCRATIC PARTY policy) of Franklin D. ROOSEVELT
Adams as president was too far in advance of his times. The loose democracy of the day wanted the least government possible. And the South feared that his program of national power for internal improvements, physical and moral, under a consolidated federal government might pave the way for the abolition of slavery. He had no real party to back him up. The opposition, with Andrew Jackson as its figurehead and "bargain and corruption" as its battle cry, combined to defeat him for reelection in 1828.
Congressman
In November 1830, more than a year and a half after Adams left the White House, the voters of the 12th (Plymouth) District of Massachusetts elected him to CONGRESS. He accepted the office of congressman eagerly, feeling himself not a party man but, as ex-president, a representative of the whole nation. As a member of Congress the elderly Adams displayed the most spectacular phase of his lifelong career of public service. He preached a strong nationalism against the states' rights and pro-slavery dialectics of John C. CALHOUN. Never an outright abolitionist, he considered himself "bonded" by the Constitution and its political compromises to work for universal emancipation, always within the framework of that instrument. Singlehanded he frustrated the Southern desire for Texas in 1836-1838. In 1843 he helped defeat President John TYLER's treaty for the annexation of Texas, only to see that republic annexed to the United States, by joint resolution of Congress in 1845, after the election of James K. POLK over Henry Clay in 1844.
Adams tried in 1839 to introduce resolutions in Congress for constitutional amendments so that no one could be born a slave in the United States after 1845, but the "gag rule" prevented the discussion of anything relating to slavery. "Old Man Eloquent," as Adams was nicknamed, staunchly defended the right of petition and eventually overthrew the gag in 1844. An abolitionist at heart but not in practice, he tried to postpone the sectional issue over slavery until the North was strong enough and sufficiently united in spirit and determination to preserve the Union and abolish slavery if necessary by martial law.
The Adams Legacy
Personally John Quincy Adams was a man of gruff exterior and coolness of manner--given to ulcerous judgments of his political adversaries, but binding friends to himself with hoops of steel. He was, before Woodrow WILSON, the most illustrious example of the scholar in politics. During all the controversies over slavery, the tariff, Texas, and Mexico, he correctly divined the sentiments of his own constituents. His fellow citizens regularly elected him to Congress from 1830 on, and he died in the House of Representatives on Feb. 23, 1848: "This is the last of earth. I am content."
Of Adams' three sons, only one, the youngest, Charles Francis Adams, minister to Britain during Abraham LINCOLN's presidency, survived him. Charles Francis Adams' four sons, including three famous historians (Charles Francis Adams, Henry Adams, Brooks Adams), carried on the traditions of the Adams family".
