'John Quincy Adams': Workmanlike bio of a prickly, embattled political life

John Quincy Adams

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By James Traub

Basic Books. 640 pp. $35

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Reviewed by Paul Jablow

nolead ends To read this biography of our sixth president is to see both how little and how much has changed in American politics in the last two centuries.

John Quincy Adams, son of our second president, John Adams, spent a miserable and largely unsuccessful four years in the White House from 1825 to 1829. Like Jimmy Carter, he is generally acknowledged to have made his greatest contributions after leaving office. Like Richard Nixon, he was uncomfortable enough with most people to raise questions about why he sought the presidency in the first place.

And, like President Obama, he was constantly attacked by political opponents who saw him as an illegitimate occupier of the office, although in Adams' case, the argument was out in the open and had some logic to it.

What differs most from our current political climate, and much of our political history, is the way this president navigated the political waters strictly by the stars of what he thought was right, not by the compass and guidebooks of polls and advisers. He refused to play patronage games. And, of course, he lacked the means to carry his message to the electorate in anything like today's televised news conferences and Twitterverse.

By the time he sought the presidency, Adams already had established himself as the country's leading diplomat, both as secretary of state and in lesser postings.

He played key roles in negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812; negotiated with Spain for the annexation of Florida; and drafted the Monroe Doctrine.

An 1821 address produced one of the most timeless lines in the history of American foreign policy when he said America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

Three years later, he won the presidency when the election was tossed to the House of Representatives after no candidate gained a majority of electoral votes. Andrew Jackson had been leading, though, and when losing candidate Henry Clay gave his support to Adams and was quickly named secretary of state, enraged Jacksonians made Adams' life a political hell until their leader could win the White House in 1828.

Traub, a freelance writer whose work appears regularly in the New York Times Magazine, has produced a solid, workmanlike account, nuanced but not spellbinding. Like his subject.

He's probably at his authorial best when Adams is at his aging-lion best, returning to the public arena as a Massachusetts congressman and spending most of his remaining 17 years supporting the abolitionist cause.

It was a losing battle, of course - the civil war that Adams feared followed his death by some two decades. But it did produce the victory best remembered by history: His successful 1841 argument before a pro-slavery Supreme Court that freed the captured slaves on the ship Amistad after it was boarded at sea by the U.S. Navy.

Traub is also skillful at unraveling - as much as possible - the prickly and often cold personality that made it tough for others to live with Adams and for Adams to live with himself. He committed no marital felonies in his years with the long-suffering Louisa, but many misdemeanors and summary offenses.

In Traub's words, John Quincy Adams "was not fashioned to be happy."

Paul Jablow is a former Inquirer editor and reporter.