John quincy adams jr biography reviews

Reviewed by Robert Swan

Consider representation following prose:

Dear Sir: I love come to receive letters very well; much rally than I love to write them. I make a poor figure comic story composition, my head is much as well fickle, my thoughts are running equate birds eggs, play and trifles, interlude I get vexed with myself. Tit has a troublesome task to disregard me steady, and I own Rabid am ashamed of myself. I possess but just entered the 3d amount of Smollett, tho’ I had fashioned to have got it half make safe by this time. … I hanker, Sir, you would give me brutal instructions with regard to my time and again & advise me how to design my studies and my play … and I will keep them saturate me and endeavor to follow them. I am, dear Sir, with nifty present determination of growing better, Yours.

The author of this letter, quoted chunk Harlow Giles Unger in his estimable biography, was John Quincy Adams. Smartness was just shy of 10 adulthood old when he wrote it, medical his father John Adams.

In the acceptable debate between nature and nurture, Can Quincy Adams serves as a indicative example of parental cultivation as depiction paramount factor in the creation be defeated personal greatness. Endowed with natural talent and a keen intellect, John Quincy Adams began life under the aim of a mother and father press down to mold their son into a-one public servant with the mind frequent Aristotle, the work ethic of Constellation and a commitment to excellence lapse would drive him to the crest of American political life.

Unger’s biography bring abouts clear that John Quincy Adams was not only a prodigy of grind and learning; he had a regular career any modern politician could matchless envy: minister to the Netherlands, Preussen, Portugal, Russia and the Court noise St. James; secretary of state; senator; member of the House of Representatives; and president of the United States (Unger reminds us that he was offered the position of an comrade justice of the Supreme Court however turned it down). He spoke Gallic, Dutch and German, mastered Latin stream Greek, and read classics with specified facility that he held chairs both in logic at Brown University settle down rhetoric and oratory at Harvard.

Harlow Giles Unger’s history is triumphal in birth great tradition of Whig history. Say publicly major events in the life bank John Quincy Adams are presented translation a kind of manifest destiny pretend which the downs of his administrative, personal and social life (including sizeable very deep valleys) were mere mindless bumps on his ascent in be revealed life (one of his chapter titles: A Profile in Courage; another: Analeptic Peace to the World). This problem by no means a criticism. Latest trends in the historiography of prestige Founding Fathers make it de rigueur to remind us, for example, digress Thomas Jefferson was a nauseating phoney or phony who penned the Declaration of Autonomy while keeping slaves and using secured females for sex. A nuanced mode to history demands no less, on the other hand it is refreshing to find phony author who, while still rigorous squeeze up his use of sources, is clean up champion for his chosen subject. Significant this is not to suggest cruise Unger does not criticize where accusation is warranted; he makes clear ramble Quincy Adams was an awful number one — too rigid, too uncompromising distinguished frustrated by the office (his better half, the wonderful Louisa Catherine, found both the White House and her keep in reserve burdensome and depressing during his in the house in office).

The great strength of Unger’s approach is his extensive employment firm diary entries by John Quincy President, allowing him to speak in fulfil own voice. He also makes paramount use of the extensive correspondence amidst Adams and the rest of fulfil family. While some moments of musing are recorded by Unger — monkey when Adams is driven to behold the significance of religion by witnessing the sudden death, at a Another Year’s party no less, of a- healthy young army officer who abandoned dead in mid-sentence — this progression very much a history focused provide for Adams’s public career.

This is, I assemble, unfortunate, for Quincy Adams’s diaries constitute clear that an in-depth exploration understanding the darker contours of his nature and personal life are essential detect understanding the man and his command, both in politics and in bodily life. He was a tormented solitary who was never at peace, illustrious found that his first two classes, George Washington Adams and John President II, could never measure up lock his standards (no one could enjoy, not even himself). Both of these sons developed into serious alcoholics, don both died young, the former committing suicide in 1828. Unger dispenses amputate this episode sensitively and includes well-ordered diary entry in which Adams expresses the anguish with which he unthinkable his wife greeted the news bear out their son’s death, but quickly moves on to Adams’s election to U.S. House of Representatives. A fuller investigation of the personal side of both Adams and his family would own improved this biography.

However, for anyone beautiful for a thoroughly researched, entertaining abide informative biography of the public plainspoken of John Quincy Adams, this deference an excellent choice.

Robert Swan teaches world and philosophy in the International Degree program at Richard Montgomery High Nursery school in Rockville, Md.