John Quincy Adams / Edition 1

by Lynn Hudson Parsons

Overview

He was born in 1767, a subject of the British Empire, and died in 1848, a citizen of the United States and a member of Congress in company with Abraham Lincoln. In his dramatic career he had known George Washington and Benjamiin Franklin, La Fayette of France, Alexander I of Russia, and Castlereagh of Great Britain. He had both collaborated and quarrelled with Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster. In his lifetime Americans had fought for and established their independence, adopted a Constitution, fought two wars with Great Britain and one with Mexico. They had expanded south to the Rio Grande and west to the Pacific. At the time of his death, Adams was seen as a living connection between the present and past of the young republic and his passing severed one of the nation's last ties with its founding generation.
As son of the second president of the United States, father of the minister to the Court of St. James, and grandfather to author Henry Adams, John Quincy Adams was part of an American dynasty. In his own career as secretary of state, President, senator, and congressman, Adams was as an actor in some of the most dramatic events of the nineteenth century.
In this concise biography, Lynn Hudson Parsons masterfully chronicles the life of one of America's most absorbing figures. From the day in 1778 when, as a boy, he accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission to France, to his last years as an eloquent , cantankerous opponent of this country's foreign and domestic policies, Adams was rarely detached from public affairs. And yet, this biography reveals Adams as a man never truly at home anywhere—in Washington he was stubborn and reclusive, in Europe he was a phlegmatic ideologue, a bulldog among spaniels. His story parallels America's own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780945612599
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	03/01/1999
Series:	American Profiles
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.05(w) x 9.04(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Lynn Hudson Parsons is professor of history at State University of New York College at Brockport. He is author of several articles on John Quincy Adams and his family, and compiler of John Quincy Adams: A Bibliography.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Illustrations Chapter 2 Editor's Foreword Chapter 3 Acknowledgments Chapter 4 Prologue Chapter 5 "Times in Which a Genious Would Wish to Live" Chapter 6 "To Serve My Country at its Call" Chapter 7 "Hitherto My Conduct has Given Satisfaction to Neither Side" Chapter 8 "A Bulldog Among Spaniels" Chapter 9 "Leave the Rest of the Continent to Us" Chapter 10 "Liberty is Power" Chapter 11 "I Was Born for a Controversial World.. . ." Chapter 12 "A Stout Heart and a Clear Conscience, and Never Despair" Chapter 13 Epilogue Chapter 14 Suggested Reading Chapter 15 Index

What People are Saying About This

Richard Alan Ryerson

John Quincy Adams is a beautifully written, well balanced, and remarkably complete biography of Adams. It's lively account of his long career as diplomat, senator, president, and congressman, and as scholar, poet, and patron of science should make clear to every American his prominent and then commanding role and the first seven decades of his nation's life. Parsons' should immediately take his place as the best one-volume biography of this great American.
— Richard Alan Ryerson, editor in chief The Adams Papers

Editorial Reviews

Lynn Parsons has ventured into the daunting record left by John Quincy Adams and reproduced a remarkable portrait of Adams and his times. Thorough, fair, and authentic, this full-scale biography is written with grace and clarity. It is as engaging to read as it is useful and provocative.

Edith Gelles

John Quincy Adams continues to be ranked as our greatest of all secretaries of state, and Lynn Hudson Parsons has given us a superb, succinct, engagingly written biography that not only tells us about this incredible person, but about his America as it became modernized politically and economically—and as it, and he, became increasingly haunted by the specter of slavery.

Walter LaFeber

John Quincy Adams is a beautifully written, well-balanced, and remarkably complete biography of Adams. Its lively account of his long career as diplomat, senator, president, and congressman, and as scholar, poet, and patron of science should make clear to every American his prominent and then commanding role in the first seven decades of this nation's life. Parsons' book should immediately take its place as the best one-volume biography of this great American.

Richard Alan Ryerson

Lynn H. Parsons, who has been working on Adams for many years, provides a very readable general biography.

Claremont Review of Books - Richard Samuelson

Lynn H. Parsons, who has been working on Adams for many years, provides a very readable general biography.
— Richard Samuelson

Claremont Review Of Books

This concise biography shows that from the day in 1778 when as a boy he accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission to France, to his last years as an eloquent, cantankerous opponent of his country's foreign and domestic policies, Adams was rarely detached from public affairs. It also reveals that he was never truly at home anywhere<-- >in Washington he was stubborn and reclusive, in Europe he was a phlegmatic ideologue. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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