https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3787394.html

Really interesting book about one of the less successful American presidents, at least considered as a president - only the second (after his own father) to fail to be re-elected. But John Quincy Adams had a long political career both behind him and, uniquely, ahead of him apart from his four not very happy years in the White House; he had been the USA's diplomatic representative to the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia and the United Kingdom, a United States senator, and Secretary of State before becoming president, and then after losing re-election in 1828, went on to serve in the House of Representatives from 1831 until he had a fatal stroke at his desk in the chamber in 1848. (No living US President has ever served in the US House of Representatives; the last were the elder Bush, who served two terms more than fifty years ago, and Gerald Ford, who was a Congressman from 1949 to 1973.)

The climax of his career came in 1841, a decade after he had left the White House, when he defended the captured slaves who had taken control of the Spanish slave ship Amistad and subsequently been captured by the US coastguard; he successfully convinced the Supreme Court that the treaty with Spain which he himself had negotiated did not apply here, and exposed some embarrassing inconsistencies in the paperwork supplied by the Executive branch, as a result of which the Africans were liebrated back to Africa. He had always been viscerally opposed to slavery, though felt he could not say so out loud until near the end of his career.

Adams, like his father, left a lot of writing behind, including a lot of poetry which Kaplan integrates into the narrative. A lot of it is written to his deeply loved wife Louisa, who was born and brought up in London, though by American parents; she was the only First Lady born outside what are now the United States before Melania Trump. He was in St Petersburg during the French invasion of Russia in 1812. He negotiated the Spanish cession of Florida to the United States. He wasn't a good party politician, which is why he barely scraped into office in the Presidency (the only President apart from Jefferson to be elected by the House due to lack of majority in the electoral college). But his intellectual ability was clearly valued even by those who opposed him politically.

A good book from which I learned a lot. ( )

The book is a well-written biography of the man. It contains unique insights sourced directly from JQA's enormous diary collection. The book is a pleasure to read as the author's writing style ensures that you won't be overwhelmed with too much details crammed in one paragraph. The only reason i didn't give this a 5 star is because i feel that the discussion when it comes to the political context and especially to foreign relations (JQA' specialty) seems to be lacking. I wish there were more background discussion behind the domestic and foreign policy decisions undertaken by JQA. ( )

So this book was not as much of a slog as I feared it was going to be! Kaplan claims his major intervention is the focus on Adams as a writer, which I guess I'll grant him--I'm not familiar enough with Adams historiography to argue otherwise, though I think Kaplan kind of over-stretches it with "writer"--like yes, he's an able and determined diarist, but only a few of his public speeches are excerpted at any real length? (I may also find this argument less moving since we've done this 'x person the WRITER' theme practically to death in Lincoln studies, and there are also so many others who have had this treatment; if these authors are to be believed, the US was a nation founded and led by a bunch of writers.)

But the biography itself isn't terrible, and Kaplan is Adams-friendly enough that it's obvious and sort of adorable? It's sort of standard--not bad, but nothing amazing in it, honestly. Just very middle-of-the-road. ( )

Fred Kaplan's bio of J.Q. Adams is a fairly good work in spite of the author's difficulty in understanding his subject. This work reminds me of Lincoln biographers who write of their subject but end up a hit & miss target. It is also a reminder why socialist writers struggle with subjects who are immersed in their culture in which the Judeo-Christian world view prevail. For example, in Mr. Kaplan's introduction, he makes four serious glaring errors, one statement in particular is a code word(s) that socialists often use which even J.Q. Adams would have rejected or avoided, "living organism." Also, claiming J.Q. Adams, quote, "dreaded & hoped for the Civil War," unquote, which Adams would not have even considered such a thought. Nothing in Adams writing or behavior ever indicated such a view so on what basis did Mr. Kaplan assume this? There are 2 other quotes he makes, all of these in his introduction alone. The rest of the work unfolds with such either code words his subject would have vehemently rejected or broad sweeping statements such as the Civil War quote scattered throughout his 652 page bio. It is true that J.Q. Adams was an enigmatic figure in his lifetime & after his death but there is no excuse to impose on a 19th century subject terms that he would ever understood or believed in. Having said this, this book is a good example of the necessity to keep a subject within the context of the world they lived in. Mr. Kaplan's forte is in English so perhaps the reader will need to keep this in mind as well as being aware of how one's worldview can deeply influence how one sees the world & the dangers of forcing that worldview on a subject that lived & breathed from an entirely opposing world view. ( )

5251. John Quincy Adams American Visionary, by Fred Kaplan (read 2 Mar 2015) Even though I read Samuel Flagg Bemis' two-volume biography of John Quincy Adams in 1970-1971 and Harlow Giles Unger's biography of him on 14 Dec 2013, i decided to read this 2014 biography and enjoyed it much. Adams had an amazing life, from the time he was ten and accompanied his father to Europe during the Revolutionary War, through his teenage years in Europe, his return to the USA and to Harvard (for a year and a half, he being admitted as a junior), then to the U.S. Senate for over five years (1803-1808), then as Minister to Russia, negotiator at Ghent to extricate the country from the War of 1812, then minister to Britain, then Secretary of State, President, and Congressman. This book not only covers the public life of Adams but spends a lot of time on his personal life--which was often clouded by dire events. It is an exceptionally crowded and eventful life and I found the book extraordinarily felicitous reading. Kaplan shows that Adams foresaw that slavery would only be ended in this country when the President as commander-in-chief exercising his war power was able to do so by decree. ( )