JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

Over the years, members of the Adams family have served their country well—as revolutionary leaders, Presidents, Cabinet and State Supreme Court members, Ministers to foreign countries, legislators. John Quincy was the second Adams to become President.

In 1824, no man was able to get a majority of votes in the Electoral College, so the choice of a new President fell to the House of Representatives, the lower house in the United States Congress. The House, despite popular enthusiasm for Andrew Jackson, voted for the sound statesmanship of John Quincy Adams.

Before becoming President, John Quincy Adams was probably the greatest Secretary of State America ever had His training was without equal, for his entire life was tied up with the beginnings of the American Republic. At the age of seven, he and his mother, Abigail, watched the Revolutionary War battle of Bunker Hill from a neighboring hill. He accompanied his father to Europe, on two occasions; his early schooling took place in Pans, Leyden, Amsterdam, Leipzig, London. When only fourteen, he became private secretary to the American Minister to Russia. He studied Russian. French, German, Dutch, and Italian, as well as Lszia and Greek. Serious as a youth, he soaked up knowledge everywhere. When the Revotaboo ended, he accompanied his father to the peace-signing in 1783.

Young Adzms graduated from Harvard in two years with high haaon. After three years of reading law, he esohfifed «Coes In Boston at the age of twenty-three. Xexr. he wrote an excellent series of newspaper articles in answer to Thomas Paine’s “The Rights of Man.'

In 1794, the twenty-sevea-year-oki Adams was appointed by Radar Wathpn to be American Afinas to HrihaLlVhca the aider Adams became President, he hesitated to keep his own t in the foreign service. But George Washing- 1 wrote him: “I give it as my decided opinion that Mr. [John Quincy] Adams is the most valuable public character we have abroad. . . .” Not tül 1801, after his own defeat for re-election, did President Adams order his son’s return from his post in Prussia.

After Adams’ recall as Minister to Prussia, he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. There he was referred to by his party as “too unmanageable.” He failed in a try for Congress; but in 1803 the State Legislature sent him to the Senate in Washington. They discovered he was “unmanageable” there too. If he thought it more in the kiterest of the nation to vote Republican, he did so. When he voted for Jefferson’s embargo, the politicians of his native state were so furious they named another man to succeed him in office. Adams resigned, rather than finish his term under snch conditions.

President Madison offered Adams a seat on the Supreme Court, but he declined, feeling he was not fitted for such a post. But he did accept the position of American Minister to Russia. He remained in Europe for almost eight years, five of which were spent in the Russian capital.

John Quincy displayed brilliant reasoning power in securing an honorable peace for America through the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. After the signing he was sent to London as American Minister. Soon after, he reached the high point of his career as Secretary of State.

In this position he obtained Florida for the United States without loss of American life or dignity. He also obtained agreement with England on joint occupation of the Oregon country that led to America’s acquiring a claim to the Pacific Northwest. Then followed the Monroe Doctrine.

The great Doctrine resulted from two outside threats. One was from Russia, who wanted to extend her Alaskan possessions to rich, fur-trading Oregon. The other was from the Holy Alliance— a group of European kings led by the Russian Tsar who wanted to uphold monarchy and also help Spain recover her lost colonies in Latin America. England, always struggling to keep the balance of power on the Continent, became alarmed at the plans of the Holy Alliance to use force in the newly-independent republics of Latin America. She feared that Spain might turn over her old colonies to her long-time rival France. So the clever British foreign minister, George Canning, proposed that the United States and England unite in declaring a “hands off” policy in the Western Hemisphere for all European powers. Monroe, supported by Jefferson and Madison,presented Canning’s idea to his Cabinet. But John Quincy Adams realized that England was concerned with her own security rather than the freedom of the new republics. He insisted that, to preserve America’s reputation, the declaration of policy must come from the United States alone. Thus, a proposal originating with a British statesman became the basis of a policy that allowed America to grow and develop without intervention from any country, including England.

The Jackson forces, who disliked Adams and thought he had become President through a “deal,” made his Administration more and more difficult. He was finally defeated in 1828.

Adams became the first and only President to sit in Congress after leaving the White House. He won his seat without conducting a campaign —a fixed policy all his life in running for office. He was returned by his Plymouth district, election after election. One day he fell ill in the House of Representatives and was carried to the Speaker’s Room. Two days later, on February 23, 1848, he died there.

Unfortunately, Nature seldom combines superior talents with winning personal qualities. Like his father, John Quincy Adams did not attract people to him. He was short and fat, and had an unpleasant voice. He was also very critical of others. Interested in literature and the arts, he

was by nature a poor companion, a man who could not feel at ease with others.

His nature was very much like that of the New England land from which he came: forbidding, harsh and sometimes cold and unfriendly—yet, with it all, solid and strong.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

GEORGE WASHINGTON

Without George Washington there might never have been a United States of America.

Character rather than genius made it possible. Because America’s first President exhibited great character, the poor Colonials were kept together in some likeness of an army and were able to win their independence from England. Because of his character, delegates from many states were will¬ing to assemble “in order to form a more perfect union” and to present to the world what is today the oldest Constitution in existence. Because of his character, the two political parties one in favor of “democracy,” or the will of the majority, and the other, wanting “rule by the few” put aside their differences.

Little is known of George Washington as a boy. His father, Augustine Washington, had four children by his first marriage and six by his second, to Mary Ball; George was the oldest of the six. In the neck of land between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers where he was bom on February 22, 1732, lived many wealthy families of Virginia. Augustine Washington himself owned about six plantations.

Washington had little formal schooling. But he had the perfect older brother in Lawrence, the master of the Mount Vernon plantation where George went to live when his father died. What he learned from Lawrence and Lawrence’s guests, who were outstanding people of the colony, fired his ambition to become someone of importance. Feeling a sense of destiny about himself, he chose a military life.

Because he loved physical adventure, he was a natural choice for the expedition that first brought him to public notice in 1753. Young Major Washington was entrusted with the task of delivering a message from Virginia’s Governor Dinwiddie to the French Commander in the Ohio Valley, demanding that the French abandon that area. This message began the French and Indian War, the conflict which was to grow into the Seven Years’ War, lasting until England forced France from the New World mainland.

In later years Washington revealed a quality which is another mark of greatness growth. He became a great general, not only because he knew something of military science, but because he could keep an army together in the face of defeat. He did this through force of character alone. When he took command of the Continental

Army on July 3, 1775, the early Revolutionary War battles had already been fought. The follow¬ing March, Washington drove the British from Boston. They never came back and New England was returned to the hands of the Colonials.

Then came a series of defeats. After losing the Battle of Long Island, Washington’s troops had to retreat into Pennsylvania. On Christmas night, 1776, Washington made his famous crossing of die icy Delaware River. His army surprised the Hessians, who were observing the holidays in their German style. He captured a thousand of them, together with the town of Trenton, suffering only five American casualties. Some days later, he took Princeton in another surprise attack. As a result, the British abandoned New Jersey.

The following year Washington lost two battles Brandywine and Germantown. Yet, almost immediately, the American general, Horatio Gates, won his triumphant victory at Saratoga in New York. The British general, Burgoyne, had to give up one-fourth of the King’s forces fighting in America. Following the surrender, an attempt was made to present Gates as the real hero of the Revolution. But Washington refused to be bothered by this. He even sent some of the negative reports about himself directly to Congress for them to do with as they pleased. The plot against him came to nothing.

The British then moved into Philadelphia, and Washington retreated to Valley Forge, outside of the city, for the winter of 1777. The hardships of that winter are well-known. Washington was tortured by worry over his remaining troops. Three thousand of his army had deserted to the British. But saddest of all, the people seemed to care little about independence. Often they would rather sell food to the British than to their own soldiers. From the American troops they received only Continental money and in this they had no faith.

In 1778, France entered the war on the side of the colonials not so much for her love of free¬dom but because she saw a chance to humble her ancient enemy, England. The French trusted Washington completely and gave him entire con¬trol of their forces in America.

The heaviest defeat of the war took place at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780, when the British General Clinton captured the city, as well as 5,400 Continental soldiers and four ships. In Washington’s camp at Morristown, New Jersey, supplies were cut for six weeks to one-eighth of normal quantities, and the soldiers rebelled. Gates lost the Battle of Camden with two thousand casualties. On top of it all came the betrayal of Benedict Arnold. ... It was the darkness before the dawn of victory.

Yet at this dark hour Washington made a wise move. He selected Nathanael Greene to succeed Gates as commander in the South. Greene was an organizer, quick in decision, and soon had a real striking force assembled.

The French recognition of American independence in 1781 and the consequent French- American military alliance signaled the end of the war in the colonies. The British General Corn¬wallis was trapped in Virginia. While pretending to make preparations for an attack on New York, George Washington and the French General Rochambeau marched their armies instead to the Chesapeake Bay. A French fleet then transported them to the neck of land between the York and the James Rivers. Feeling a sense of destiny around them, the 16,000 men approached the vil¬lage of Yorktown. A battle was fought, and, on October 19, Cornwallis surrendered his eight thousand-man army to Washington.

The British still held the cities of New York, Charleston, and Savannah, and had thirty thou¬sand troops in the colonies. George HI wanted to continue the war, but the British people felt the Americans would never submit, so the King was forced to give up the effort. Two years after the battle of Yorktown, peace was signed with England. Twenty years of dispute and eight years of war with the Mother Country had enabled the thirteen states to “assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitled them.” Washington resigned his commission in the army.

At the Constitutional Convention, called in Philadelphia in 1787 to strengthen the union, the delegates asked Washington to direct the proceedings. In three months the work was finished. A President was to be chosen by an Electoral College composed of educated, selfless citizens.

In February, 1789 the only time the Electoral College was ever to meet in the same year as the Inauguration every member voted for Washington to head the new Federal government. Some wanted to call him “King” but he absolutely refused. There would be no “Kings” in the New World. He became President of the United States on April 30, 1787.

Three years later, the Electoral College again chose Washington and he accepted. Although it was offered him, he declined a third term as did all succeeding Presidents except Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On December 14, 1799, George Washington died at Mount Vernon. He and his wife, Martha Dandridge Custds, are both buried there.If Washington had been devoted to humanity, as such, he would never have chosen a military career. But since the affairs of men show a pat¬tern of violence, military departments in the social structure of peoples appear necessary. A nation is fortunate if it can furnish a military leader with nobility of spirit, like Washington.

Some historians say Washington was an enemy of the common man, that he was overly fond of display, and lacking in religion. But though it is sometimes difficult, we must judge a man by the customs and beliefs of the age in which he lived. George Washington had his faults. But he is a hero to Americans because he loved his country as selflessly as any man could. He is a hero to all men because he was willing to develop himself to the fullest in order to serve that country.