Speaker 1: I'm Bob Crawford. This is founding son John Quincy's America.
Speaker 1: June seventeenth, seventeen seventy five. A seven year old John
Speaker 1: Quincy Adams. Here's explosions in the distance.
Speaker 2: His mother, Abigail, took him up to a nearby hill
Speaker 2: when they heard the sounds of canons.
Speaker 1: Presidential historian Lindsay Stravinsky says that when John Quincy and
Speaker 1: his mother got to the top of the hill, they
Speaker 1: saw all the British and the Continental armies locked in
Speaker 1: a heated battle.
Speaker 2: And he actually observed and witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill,
Speaker 2: which is one of those incidents that you read about
Speaker 2: and you just think like, surely this cannot be true,
Speaker 2: surely this is made up. And yet he was there
Speaker 2: and he saw it.
Speaker 1: Fifty years before John Quincy Adams was president. He saw
Speaker 1: the American Revolutionary War up close, first as a spectator
Speaker 1: from his home in nearby Braintree, Massachusetts, but eventually as
Speaker 1: an unofficial ambassador. The son of one of America's most
Speaker 1: important diplomats, John Adams, he.
Speaker 2: Was this remarkable child. He was eleven years old and
Speaker 2: his father brought him to Europe to serve as his
Speaker 2: private secretary.
Speaker 1: He ate new cuisines, spent evenings at the opera, learned
Speaker 1: at some of the world's finest schools.
Speaker 2: He was picking up new languages, and so it totally
Speaker 2: changed who he would become because he had such a
Speaker 2: worldly perspective and ultimately ended up having so many decas
Speaker 2: aids of experience at the foreign policy level that he
Speaker 2: was just an unparalleled mind.
Speaker 1: John Quincy Adams was born in seventeen sixty seven, the
Speaker 1: same year as his future political rival Andrew Jackson. But
Speaker 1: even though the two men were the same age, Jackson
Speaker 1: lived through a very different revolutionary war.
Speaker 3: He was a boy soldier, not a soldier exactly, but
Speaker 3: he was a boy participant in the American Revolution.
Speaker 1: Sean Wallentz is the author of The Rise of American
Speaker 1: Democracy Jefferson de Lincoln. He says Jackson grew up along
Speaker 1: the border of North and South Carolina, in a region
Speaker 1: known as the Waxaws.
Speaker 3: That part of South Carolina, the part of the Carolinas,
Speaker 3: was dark and bloody ground during the Revolution, and at
Speaker 3: one point he was captured by the British and was
Speaker 3: asked to shine a an officer's shoes or.
Speaker 1: Boots Jackson refused.
Speaker 3: Upon which the outraged officer lifted his sword and cracked
Speaker 3: him over the head and hit him so hard that
Speaker 3: he bore that scar for the rest of his life.
Speaker 3: And I actually think that that's an important moment in
Speaker 3: understanding Jackson, because his hatred of the British Empire was
Speaker 3: from that moment on undying.
Speaker 1: To say Jackson held a grudge is an understatement. He
Speaker 1: didn't just have bad blood with the British, but anyone
Speaker 1: who wronged him, and in eighteen twenty four, John Quincy
Speaker 1: had done just that. In Jackson's mind, John Quincy and
Speaker 1: Henry Clay had broken a backroom deal to steal the
Speaker 1: presidency from him. From that moment on, Jackson and his
Speaker 1: supporters were hell bent on getting even.
Speaker 4: It appears we live in evil times when those exalted
Speaker 4: to high, dignified and honorable stations have abandoned the course
Speaker 4: dictated by truth and honor and move on to self aggrandizement,
Speaker 4: regardless of the use of the means by wi may
Speaker 4: be acquired.
Speaker 1: How far would Jackson's followers go to make John Quincy
Speaker 1: Adams a one term president and who would win the
Speaker 1: rematch between the two Chapter two Andrew Jackson strikes back.
Speaker 1: It's late morning on March fourth, eighteen twenty five, cavalry
Speaker 1: arrived at John Quincy adams f Street home in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Trumpets blared, cannons boomed as Adams prepared to
Speaker 1: leave for the inauguration. He put on his plain black coat.
Speaker 1: It would be his last moments as a private citizen
Speaker 1: before being sworn in as the nation's sixth president. His wife, Louisa,
Speaker 1: lay sick in her bed the night before. She had
Speaker 1: a violent fever and the doctor attempted to bleed the
Speaker 1: sickness from her.
Speaker 5: Body, and afterwards, to what should be the surprise of
Speaker 5: no one, she fainted.
Speaker 1: This is Louisa Thomas, staff writer at The New Yorker
Speaker 1: and author of Louisa, The Extraordinary Life of Missus Adams.
Speaker 1: She says Luisa had long suffered from physical and mental illnesses.
Speaker 1: Many were misdiagnosed and mistreated, which was not uncommon at
Speaker 1: the time, especially if you were a woman.
Speaker 5: She was given leeches laudanum, which is basically opium mercury.
Speaker 5: I mean, he's just basically poisoned. Every turn.
Speaker 1: With his wife bedridden, John Quincy headed to his inauguration alone.
Speaker 5: She did rouse herself out of bed and got dressed
Speaker 5: and came down afterward, and then when the family went
Speaker 5: on to celebrate the inauguration, she went to bed.
Speaker 1: After taking the oath of office, President John Quincy Adams
Speaker 1: plunged into his extremely ambitious agenda. He detailed plans to
Speaker 1: transform the nation through what he called improvements.
Speaker 6: For Adams, improvements meant physical things, what we would today
Speaker 6: call infrastructure, the building of roads and canals. It meant institutions,
Speaker 6: the creation of a naval academy. He dreamed of building
Speaker 6: a network of what he called lighthouses of the skies,
Speaker 6: which meant telescopes, because he he loved telescopes.
Speaker 1: James Traub is author of John Quincy adams Militant Spirit.
Speaker 1: He says, shortly after taking office, Adams planned to tell
Speaker 1: the nation about his improvements during his first message to Congress.
Speaker 1: But when Adams rehearsed the speech to his cabinet, they
Speaker 1: were like, m, we have a few notes.
Speaker 6: When he read his the equivalent of the State of
Speaker 6: the Union speech, his first annual speech, they all blanched
Speaker 6: because of how ambitious the demands were, and even the language.
Speaker 1: The idea of a strong federal government stoked fears of tyranny.
Speaker 1: In eighteen twenty five, freedom meant freedom from government, and
Speaker 1: many lawmakers believe the Constitution wouldn't allow the government to
Speaker 1: fund John Quincy's infrastructure projects. Adams ignored the advice of
Speaker 1: his cabinet and threw all of his energy and political
Speaker 1: capital into the American system.
Speaker 6: Anyway, thereby infuriating a large fraction of the Congress and
Speaker 6: maybe the public you know who thought otherwise.
Speaker 1: Adams's determination to plow forward required trust in the government,
Speaker 1: flying in the face of Thomas Jefferson's idea that government
Speaker 1: is best which governs least, still a widely popular sentiment.
Speaker 1: On top of that, many Americans considered Adams an illegitimate president.
Speaker 1: Congress elected him, not the people.
Speaker 6: There were so many reasons why Adams failed as president
Speaker 6: that you almost could remove the legitimacy question and say
Speaker 6: he still would have failed.
Speaker 1: John Quincy refused to compromise his beliefs and his political ambitions,
Speaker 1: and he balked at the idea of working with his
Speaker 1: political opponents. He had a critical handicap as commander in chief.
Speaker 1: His worldly experience and privileged upbringing made him detached from
Speaker 1: the typical American he was quick to show off as
Speaker 1: Harvard education, quoting Cicero and Tacitus at will, Adams thundered
Speaker 1: in his first annual message in December of eighteen twenty.
Speaker 7: Five, while foreign nations are advancing with gigantic strides and
Speaker 7: public improvement, were we to slumber and indolence and proclaim
Speaker 7: to the world that we are paulsied by the will
Speaker 7: of our constituents, would it not be to doom ourselves
Speaker 7: to perpetual inferiority.
Speaker 1: You may not understand exactly what paulsied by the will
Speaker 1: of our constituents means, but Adams might as well have
Speaker 1: called a vast swapt of Americans a basket of deplorables.
Speaker 1: In the early eighteen hundreds, America was still mostly an
Speaker 1: agrarian society. Many of its citizens were planners, farmers, and
Speaker 1: mechanics with no formal education, and Adams essentially said that
Speaker 1: they were the reason America couldn't compete with Europe. Not
Speaker 1: to be outdone, Jackson replied.
Speaker 4: When I view the declaration, that it would be criminal
Speaker 4: for the agents of our government to be poalsied by
Speaker 4: the will of their constituents. I shudder for the consequence.
Speaker 4: The voice of the people must be heard.
Speaker 1: Jackson got it, Adams did not. And it wasn't just
Speaker 1: voters who hated the direction Adams and Henry Clay wanted
Speaker 1: to take America. Southern politicians had their own specific misgivings
Speaker 1: about the policies. They despised the goals of Clay and
Speaker 1: Adams's so called American system.
Speaker 2: The American system posed a threat to slavery in a
Speaker 2: number of ways. If you have more and better forms
Speaker 2: of travel and communication, it's easier for enslaved individuals to
Speaker 2: self emancipate and to run away. It's easier for the
Speaker 2: federal government to encroach on what they call the Southern
Speaker 2: way of life. So they really saw any measure of
Speaker 2: federal intervention as a threat to slavery.
Speaker 1: While Andrew Jackson represented the antithesis of everything Adams believed,
Speaker 1: he was mostly the figurehead operating by proxy. Jackson's loyal
Speaker 1: network of supporters and followers did his bidding in Congress,
Speaker 1: and the man leading Jackson's rabid sympathizers was a senator
Speaker 1: from New York.
Speaker 6: Martin Van Buren was an operator. You know, he'd be
Speaker 6: like Carl Rove or something.
Speaker 1: Van Buren was a Northerner who liked many didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: like Jackson. But where others saw widening political division, he
Speaker 1: saw opportunity.
Speaker 6: He saw that there was a chance to combine the
Speaker 6: West and the South, the old planter class and this
Speaker 6: new class, as well as some Northerners who could live
Speaker 6: with slavery.
Speaker 1: Since the original parties had dissolved, politics divided along regional boundaries,
Speaker 1: really North versus South. Van Buren wanted to bring back
Speaker 1: a Jeffersonian way of dividing political allegiancies by ideology, and
Speaker 1: for him, the winning strategy was Jacksonian populism.
Speaker 6: And so Van Buren is thinking, we have to found
Speaker 6: a new popular party which poses itself against these old
Speaker 6: populations and old parties and saying, let's create this new thing.
Speaker 1: That new thing is the Democratic Party, and that system
Speaker 1: has evolved into the two party system that largely exists today.
Speaker 1: The new party was still just an idea in Van
Speaker 1: Buren's head when the midterm elections of eighteen twenty six
Speaker 1: rolled around, but the divisions were real. Jacksonian candidates swept
Speaker 1: the election, winning a vast majority in both chambers of Congress.
Speaker 8: The drubbing that he takes in Eateen twenty six is
Speaker 8: an indication that most of Congress, even people who would
Speaker 8: normally think of themselves as belonging to the president's party,
Speaker 8: would see that John Quincy Adams was perhaps more of
Speaker 8: a nationalist than what they were. Perhaps, if you're in
Speaker 8: the House of Representatives, their constituency wants to see in
Speaker 8: a president.
Speaker 1: David S. Brown is a professor of history at Elizabethtown
Speaker 1: College in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 8: He could not position himself in such a way that
Speaker 8: even some of his advocates in his own party could
Speaker 8: really campaign on his record, and so they run against him.
Speaker 1: Voters in Congress soundly rejected the American system. John Quincy,
Speaker 1: like his father, believed to his core that it was
Speaker 1: the president's duty to doggedly pursue what was best for
Speaker 1: the nation and to rise above party politics. The midterm
Speaker 1: election of eighteen twenty six proved that this belief, while laudable,
Speaker 1: was not a strategy for political success. New York City
Speaker 1: Mayor Philip Hohne later said of Adams, his desire to
Speaker 1: avoid party influence lost him all the favor of all
Speaker 1: the parties. Eighteen twenty six was a tough year all
Speaker 1: around for John Quincy. His agenda had stalled in Congress,
Speaker 1: blocked by obstructionists, his opposition had swept the midterm elections.
Speaker 1: In that summer, he learned that two founding fathers had died.
Speaker 1: In the early afternoon of July fourth, eighteen twenty six,
Speaker 1: President Adams was informed that Thomas Jefferson had died. The
Speaker 1: irony of the moment was not lost on anyone, the
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but the news
Speaker 1: got even worse. John Quincy learned that on the very
Speaker 1: same day, July fourth, his father, his mentor, his hero,
Speaker 1: John Adams, had also died.
Speaker 3: And it was taken as a great omen by a
Speaker 3: lot of people, but it was a special omen for
Speaker 3: John Quincy Adams in the middle of his what would
Speaker 3: be his only term as president, in the.
Speaker 1: Wake of his father's funeral and his trouncing in the midterms,
Speaker 1: John Quincy was in deep despair. Putting his father's affairs
Speaker 1: in order, John Quincy contemplated what was to come.
Speaker 9: For an active and much agitated life to pass suddenly
Speaker 9: forever to a condition of total retirement and almost solitude
Speaker 9: trial to which I cannot look without some concern.
Speaker 1: He was heading into what many said would be the
Speaker 1: biggest political route in American history. The election of eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight. The populist wave had become a tsunami powerful
Speaker 1: enough to sweep Adams from office, and at the head
Speaker 1: of this movement was his former and now current opponent,
Speaker 1: General Andrew Jackson. Coming up. Jackson and Adams square off
Speaker 1: for the presidency again, and this time it's personal, like
Speaker 1: real personal. We'll have more after the break. The election
Speaker 1: of eighteen twenty eight was a rematch of eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: four John Quincy Adams, once again facing Southerner Andrew Jackson,
Speaker 1: and he was prepared to win.
Speaker 2: So when people say today that elections and politics are
Speaker 2: nastier than they've ever been, that usually indicates that they
Speaker 2: haven't actually looked into elections in the past, because the
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty eight election was incredibly nasty.
Speaker 1: Newspapers at the time were used by politicians as instruments
Speaker 1: of personal destruction.
Speaker 8: Most newspapers didn't even pretend to be objective. The storylines
Speaker 8: they might be fabricated, they might have a bit of
Speaker 8: truth in them, but really this was not objective reporting.
Speaker 1: Newspapers on both sides were brutal and unforgiving in their attacks.
Speaker 6: On Jackson's side, it was the NonStop corrupt bargain which
Speaker 6: they turned into the greatest scandal in the nation's history.
Speaker 1: Publications on Adam's side got personal, some downright cruel.
Speaker 6: One of the more scurreless newspapers in Cincinnati runs some
Speaker 6: giant headline about Jackson's mother was a prostitute.
Speaker 1: Jackson fumed at the attacks on his mother, Elizabeth. His
Speaker 1: father died before he was born, so he felt fiercely
Speaker 1: protective of the only parent he knew, a woman who
Speaker 1: had given literally everything to her children and her country.
Speaker 1: When Jackson and his guerrilla fighting brothers were captured by
Speaker 1: the British in the Revolutionary War, they were sent to
Speaker 1: a prison camp.
Speaker 2: And the conditions were so terrible that when they were released,
Speaker 2: his brother died two days later, and then his mom.
Speaker 2: Because she was so moved by this experience, served as
Speaker 2: a nurse for other prisoners of war that were held
Speaker 2: on British ships, on which the conditions were absolutely ghastly.
Speaker 1: While working as a nurse on the ship, she came
Speaker 1: down with cholera and died, leaving Jackson an orphan when
Speaker 1: he was just fourteen years old. It's of John Quincy
Speaker 1: to drag Jackson's mother through the mud, calling her a prostitute.
Speaker 1: This cut Jackson to the core, but what really set
Speaker 1: him off were the attacks on his wife, Rachel.
Speaker 6: Rachel was previously married and she then sought a divorce,
Speaker 6: but it certainly appears that she married Jackson before her
Speaker 6: divorce was finalized, so that then gave rise to the
Speaker 6: notion that Jackson had married a harlot.
Speaker 1: But like I said, the attacks were vicious on both sides.
Speaker 1: The newspapers that were sympathetic to Jackson were plenty cruel
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 8: John Quincy Adams held several diplomatic posts in Europe and
Speaker 8: one was in Russia, and the opposition press in eighteen
Speaker 8: twenty four and to claim that Quincy Adams, while ambassador,
Speaker 8: had pemped out one of his female servants to the Czar.
Speaker 1: This, of course is false, and the press targeted John
Speaker 1: Quincy's wife, Louisa too.
Speaker 8: The claim about his wife being British is of course true,
Speaker 8: and up until Melania Trump, his wife was the only
Speaker 8: first lady to have been born elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Louisa Catherine Johnson was born in London in seventeen seventy five.
Speaker 5: The same year as Jane Austen.
Speaker 10: To give you some contexts also, you know, on the
Speaker 10: eve of the Revolutionary War. Her father was an American,
Speaker 10: her mother was a Londoner, and she had a sense
Speaker 10: of herself as always an outsider looking in.
Speaker 1: When the Revolutionary War began, Louisa's father, a patriot from
Speaker 1: Maryland living in London, fled with his family to France.
Speaker 1: When the war was over, she returned with her family
Speaker 1: to London. It was there seventeen ninety five that Louisa
Speaker 1: met John Quincy Adams at a party at their home,
Speaker 1: a young diplomat of the fledgling United States, dressed in
Speaker 1: a boxy coat.
Speaker 5: Oh, she thought he looked ridiculous. He wasn't dressed fashionable.
Speaker 1: Louisa came from a large family and had a lot
Speaker 1: of sisters. They were all educated, fashionable, social, very pretty
Speaker 1: and played music.
Speaker 5: I think he somewhat fell in love with the scene
Speaker 5: at first. He was wrote in his diary about the
Speaker 5: beautiful music and the good food, and the good conversation
Speaker 5: and the daughters, and he sort of mentioned, you know,
Speaker 5: which one was good at the harbor, which one was
Speaker 5: good at piano? And Louisa sings. I think that was
Speaker 5: his first mention of her.
Speaker 1: John Quincy found himself falling in love with one of
Speaker 1: Louisa's sisters. Eventually, though it seems like he sort of
Speaker 1: listened to his heart and chose Louisa.
Speaker 5: His account of getting engaged, in fact, was he was
Speaker 5: like passive. This isn't the exact line, but it was
Speaker 5: something like the ring jumped from my finger or something.
Speaker 5: I mean, it was a very odd way of phrasing.
Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety seven, John and Luisa got married. Fast
Speaker 1: forward thirty years later. Now her name was smeared across
Speaker 1: the front pages of newspapers across America. She was criticized
Speaker 1: for being European upper class. Her sympathies lied with the monarchs,
Speaker 1: not with their subjects.
Speaker 5: She felt vilified and she was. They poked every single
Speaker 5: sore spot for her, and it was an extraordinarily painful experience.
Speaker 1: At this time in American history, it was still only
Speaker 1: white men who could vote, but in the election of
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty eight, more men than ever cast ballots, many
Speaker 1: for the first time, and candidates were fiercely competing for
Speaker 1: these new voters.
Speaker 8: This is a demographic revolution happening. Between eighteen three and
Speaker 8: eighteen twenty one, eight states entered the Union. All of
Speaker 8: them were in the South and the west, excepting for one,
Speaker 8: the state of Maine.
Speaker 1: The nation was growing, spreading south and west, racing towards
Speaker 1: the Pacific.
Speaker 8: Ocean sunbult politics isn't just a twentieth century or twenty
Speaker 8: first century phenomena. It was growing in the early nineteenth century,
Speaker 8: and Jackson embodies it.
Speaker 1: For these new voters. Intellectuals and establishment politicians like John
Speaker 1: Quincy were what was wrong with the nation. But an
Speaker 1: adventurer from the West who rose from humble beginnings to
Speaker 1: become a war hero, that was someone the people could
Speaker 1: relate to.
Speaker 8: Jackson is going to be really the only candidate who
Speaker 8: could win the selection. I think.
Speaker 1: When all the votes were counted in the late fall,
Speaker 1: Jackson was the clear winner of the popular vote again,
Speaker 1: but he had also won a decisive one hundred in
Speaker 1: seventy eight electoral votes. It was a landslide that completely
Speaker 1: wiped out John Quincy. Unlike the eighteen twenty four vote,
Speaker 1: there could be no doubt that the people had rejected
Speaker 1: Adams and the ideals he stood for. Jackson's limited government
Speaker 1: and states rights agenda prevailed, but Jackson's victory came at
Speaker 1: a great cost. Just weeks later, his wife, Rachel died.
Speaker 1: She had suffered from debilitating health issues for years. President
Speaker 1: elect Andrew Jackson blamed her death on the brutal attacks
Speaker 1: that Adams and his allies broadcast during the campaign.
Speaker 6: Rachel was prostrated by this public humiliation and died after
Speaker 6: Jackson was elected and before he was inaugurated. And so
Speaker 6: you can't imagine how bitter Jackson felt towards it, Adams
Speaker 6: towards everyone on the other side, and indeed, more broadly,
Speaker 6: how Jacksonians felt about them.
Speaker 1: Jackson later said about his wife.
Speaker 4: Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do
Speaker 4: not meet my wife there.
Speaker 1: The election came in a great cost for John Quincy
Speaker 1: as well. He had spent his life coping with depression,
Speaker 1: and after losing the White House, he was consumed by despair.
Speaker 3: What we think of now is clinical depression. He had it.
Speaker 3: There's no question, you read it. He has a serotonin deficiency.
Speaker 3: It's a problem. So when he left office he was depressed.
Speaker 3: He thought he had let the country down. He had
Speaker 3: let his father's memory down, his parents' memory down, so
Speaker 3: he's pretty low.
Speaker 1: After Jackson's inauguration, John Quincy and Louisa lingered in Washington,
Speaker 1: waiting for their eldest son, George, to help them make
Speaker 1: the trip back to Quincy. Louisa was devastated from the
Speaker 1: stress of the campaign and a combination of physical afflictions.
Speaker 1: She looked forward to seeing her oldest son, George.
Speaker 5: She was very close to her children and to George
Speaker 5: in particular.
Speaker 1: But George had taken a bad turn. Shortly after the election,
Speaker 1: Louisa received a letter from her other son, Charles Francis,
Speaker 1: telling her that George was not doing well.
Speaker 11: I write this without any intention of unnecessarily alarming you.
Speaker 11: He is well enough in all bodily respects, but he
Speaker 11: pines for want of some kind of excitement to action
Speaker 11: which does not exist.
Speaker 1: George Washington Adams was never adept at handling the pressure
Speaker 1: of being born into one of the most influential families
Speaker 1: in New England. He was an alcoholic and womanizer. Now
Speaker 1: his behavior was getting worse. Louisa and John Quincy had
Speaker 1: watched their son slowly unravel, feeling helpless, hoping a trip
Speaker 1: to Washington would do him good. John Quincy was still
Speaker 1: waiting for George to arrive when his brother in law
Speaker 1: showed up instead. He broke the news George Washington Adams
Speaker 1: had gone overboard and drowned.
Speaker 5: It may have been an accident, It may have been
Speaker 5: a mental health crisis. He may have been hearing voices
Speaker 5: of some kind. He may have been drunk, he may
Speaker 5: have jumped.
Speaker 1: In his diary, John Quincy wrote that upon learning the
Speaker 1: news about George's death, Louisa's condition is not to be described.
Speaker 5: For him too, that was an unspeakable tragedy, and he
Speaker 5: was open with himself, at least in his diary, that
Speaker 5: the pain of the losing the election was nothing, nothing
Speaker 5: compared to the pain of losing his son.
Speaker 1: Utterly crushed by his defeat in the election and the
Speaker 1: death of his first child, John Quincy retreated to the
Speaker 1: solitude of Peacefield, been his days, tending to his garden
Speaker 1: and focusing on his next project, organizing and publishing a
Speaker 1: collection of his father's papers. And while this could have
Speaker 1: been the end of John Quincy's story, it was actually
Speaker 1: just the beginning on a late September morning in eighteen thirty,
Speaker 1: Adams was visited by a few old friends.
Speaker 3: He's approached by locals in Massachusetts to actually or get
Speaker 3: back into the fray. Go run for Congress.
Speaker 1: Run for Congress. He had reached the pinnacle of political
Speaker 1: success in America. Now he was being asked to be
Speaker 1: one of dozens of elected officials, all of equal power.
Speaker 1: He didn't like the idea of taking into motion, but
Speaker 1: there was something he did like.
Speaker 3: There was a certain aspect of revenge. I've always thought
Speaker 3: that it's not so much that he wanted to get
Speaker 3: out one particular person, but he did want to reclaim
Speaker 3: his greatness after he'd been knocked down, after he'd been
Speaker 3: hurt eighteen twenty at election, after his presidency actually had
Speaker 3: been something of a failure.
Speaker 1: Getting back at Jackson and the other politicians who sank
Speaker 1: his presidency was an enticing prospect. There are probably many
Speaker 1: reasons Adams ran for Congress, but Louis's wishes were not
Speaker 1: one of them. In fact, his wife did not know
Speaker 1: he was even considering it until days later when she
Speaker 1: read about it in the newspaper. She was furious she.
Speaker 5: Had forcedeign politics. Washington wanted no part in that. She
Speaker 5: blamed also all that for killing George.
Speaker 12: Certainly, she wrote, to pretend that I make this sacrifice
Speaker 12: willingly would be ridiculous and false.
Speaker 1: She basically told John Quincy, enough is enough. How much
Speaker 1: of your family are you willing to sacrifice to satisfy
Speaker 1: your ambition?
Speaker 12: In the marriage compact, there are, as in every other,
Speaker 12: two parties, each of which have rights strictly defined by
Speaker 12: law and by the usages of society. In that compact,
Speaker 12: the parties agree, before the face of Heaven, to promote,
Speaker 12: as far as in their power, the wealthare and happiness
Speaker 12: of each other. The woman, being the weaker of the two,
Speaker 12: is expected and does, nine times out of ten, make
Speaker 12: the great sacrifices for her husband.
Speaker 1: For Louisa, the sacrifices were gut.
Speaker 12: Wrenching, the grave of my lost child, the grasping ambition,
Speaker 12: which is an insatiable passion, swallowing and consuming all in
Speaker 12: its ever devouring more.
Speaker 1: Against his wife's wishes. John Quincy Adams successfully ran for Congress.
Speaker 1: He took the oath of office once again in December
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty one, this time not as president but a
Speaker 1: US representative. A king now upon thrust into the raucous
Speaker 1: us House of Representatives. He entered Congress at a time
Speaker 1: when the nation's fabric was tearing apart. The insidious slaveocracy
Speaker 1: was burrowing itself deep into the soul of America. John
Speaker 1: Quincy was yet to make his greatest contribution to his
Speaker 1: legacy in the country he loved. On the next episode
Speaker 1: of Founding Son.
Speaker 3: John Quincy Adams played in a deeply important role in
Speaker 3: bringing slavery to the center of American national debates at
Speaker 3: a time when no one else or very few people
Speaker 3: wanted to do that.
Speaker 9: You suppressed the right of petition.
Speaker 7: You suppressed the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press,
Speaker 7: and the freedom of religion.
Speaker 1: Founding Son is a curiosity podcast asked brought to you
Speaker 1: by iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. For help with
Speaker 1: this episode, we want to thank James Traub, author of
Speaker 1: John Quincy Adams Militant Spirit, Lindsay Stravinsky, author of The Cabinet,
Speaker 1: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Luisa Thomas,
Speaker 1: staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Louisa,
Speaker 1: The Extraordinary Life of Missus Adams. Sean Willentz, author of
Speaker 1: the Rise of American Democracy, Jefferson to Lincoln. David S. Brown,
Speaker 1: author of The First Populist, The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 1: Our lead producer, story editor and sound designer is James Morrison.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Jessica Metzker. Fact checking by Adam Bisno.
Speaker 1: Jesse Niswanger mixed and mastered this episode. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, L. C. Crowley, and Jason English.
Speaker 1: Original music by me Bob Crawford. Additional scoring is by
Speaker 1: Blue Dot Sessions. John Quincy Adams is voiced by Patrick Warburton.
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson is voiced by Nick Offerman. Luisa Adams is
Speaker 1: voiced by Gray Delisle. Additional voice in this episode provided
Speaker 1: by Scott David Show art designed by Darren Shock. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to John Higgins from Curiosity Stream, Julia Chris Gal,
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the National Park Service. We
Speaker 1: couldn't do this podcast without them. If you're a fan
Speaker 1: of the podcast, please give it a five star rating
Speaker 1: in your podcast app. You can also check out other
Speaker 1: Curiosity podcasts to learn about history, pop culture, true crime,
Speaker 1: and more. This podcast was recorded under a SAG after
Speaker 1: collective bargaining agreement. I'm your host, Bob Crawford, Thanks for listening.
Speaker 6: School of Humans