‘John Quincy Adams: A Man For the Whole People’
By Randall Woods
Dutton, 784 pages

Randall Woods joins a distinguished group of biographers, including Samuel Flagg Bemis, Fred Kaplan, and Phyllis Lee Levin, who have developed a profound understanding of the pivotal presidency of John Quincy Adams, who served between 1825 and 1829, the sixth to hold that office.

Virtually from birth, JQA was schooled by his father into believing it was his destiny to become a public man and assume the highest office of the nation — one his father had occupied before him. The pressure to live a political life seems almost tautological in its imperative dynamic, with JQA beginning a diary in 1779 that he continued nearly to the day of his death.

JQA departed for Europe in 1778, accompanying his father on diplomatic posts in France and the Netherlands. By 1781, JQA served as secretary to an American diplomat, Francis Dana, and by 1784 he was in Britain at the side of his father, serving as the American ambassador. By 1794, JQA was appointed by George Washington as ambassador to the Netherlands, and then by his father to ambassadorial posts in Prussia and Portugal, followed by President Madison sending him to Russia and Britain.

Between 1817 and 1825, JQA served as President Monroe’s secretary of state, in the position that traditionally meant he was next in line for the presidency, which he assumed in a controversial Electoral College victory that riled up the supporters of Andrew Jackson, the victor of the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 — and the candidate with the most electoral votes. Jackson’s followers believed JQA had made a corrupt bargain with Henry Clay, who threw his considerable support behind JQA when it was clear Clay could not win the presidency but could secure a position in JQA’s cabinet.

Mr. Woods sides with virtually all of JQA’s biographers in believing that Clay and JQA did not engage in a corrupt bargain that resulted in Clay’s appointment as secretary of state, though JQA certainly understood that Clay should receive some kind of reward for his support. JQA has been called a minority president, but as Mr. Woods points out, if the constitutional provision of the 3/5’s rule — which counted slaves as part of the southern population for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives — had not been in force, JQA would have had a larger electoral vote plurality than Jackson’s.

Mr. Woods argues that JQA, vilified as an elitist, and Jackson, a planter/slave owner celebrated as a populist, both favored national expansion westward, and JQA was the only member of Monroe’s cabinet to support General Jackson’s incursions into what was then Spanish-held Florida. By temperament and upbringing, the two rivals could not have been more different, and yet in policy matters the differences were not actually that great, Mr. Woods argues.

What made the contrast between Adams and Jackson stand out was the former’s aloof way of governing, his refusal to seek the approval of the electorate, and his maneuvering to gain power under the George Washingtonian guise of not wanting it. Mr. Woods believes that JQA deluded himself into thinking he was not ambitious for office — a delusion not shared by his wife Louisa or other members of the family, who deplored his constant forsaking of family concerns for his public career. 

In this lengthy biography, Mr. Woods allots ample space to depict Adams as husband and father, desirous of doing his duty to both, and yet, even after his presidency was over in the Jacksonian landslide of 1828, refusing to retire with dignity but instead submitting himself to the rowdy and dangerous environs of Washington, D.C. as a congressman, subject to threats for his anti-slavery speeches. This was a time when congressmen came to blows and engaged in duels, sometimes even murdering one another. When JQA spoke on the floor of Congress, well into his 70s, he was surrounded by colleagues who feared that certain southerners would assault him.

Mr. Woods writes with great authority, though he resorts to clichés like “back to the drawing board” and “broke the camel’s back.” He has enormous admiration for his subject but does not deny JQA’s “martyr complex” and periods of “self-pity.”

Mr. Rollyson’s work in progress is “Making the American Presidency: How Biographers Shape History.”