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Adams, John Quincy (Sixth president of the United)

sixth president of the United States, was born July 11, 1767, in Braintree, now Quincy, Mass., and at the age of eleven years he accompanied his father, John Adams, to France. He attended school in Paris, and in 1781 accompanied the American ambassador, Francis Dana, to Russia as his private secretary.

He returned home in 1785, and entered Harvard college, where he graduated in 1788. He then began the study of law with Hon. Theophilus Parsons. In 1794 he was appointed resident minister to the Netherlands, and afterwards to Portugal; but, while on his way to Lisbon, he received a new commission from his father, then president, which changed him to Prussia. In 1797 he was married to Miss Louisa Catherine Johnson. He returned to America in 1801, and in 1802 he was elected to the senate of Massachusetts. In 1803 he was elected to the United States senate, and resigned his seat in 1806. In 1809 he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Russia, and in 1814 he was placed at the head of the American commissioners who negotiated the treaty of peace with Great Britain at Ghent. Mr. Adams was appointed minis-. ter to the court of St. James in 1815; was appointed secretary of state in 1817, and held the office eight years. Feb. 9, 1825, he was elected president of the United States by the house of representatives, the electoral college having failed to make a choice, and was inaugurated March 4.

He was defeated for a re-election, and on the 4th of March, 1829, he left the executive chair and retired to private life. In 1830 he was elected to the house of representatives, and held the office by re-elections until his death, Feb. 23, 1848, which occurred in the capitol at Washington in the speaker's room, two days after falling from his chair in the house of representatives. His last words were: This is the end of earth; I am content. His writings, though mainly political in their character, include several purely literary works. Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory; The Bible and Its Teachings; Poems of Religion and Society; Letters on Freemasonry; and Lives of Celebrated Statesmen, and many state papers. An elaborate history of his life was published in 1875, by his son, Charles Francis Adams.