San Antonio College Library

"Historians have not been generous in judging the presidency of John Quincy Adams. Those who have most conspicuously upheld Adams's fame have, at the same time, virtually ignored his service in the White House. Critics, on the other hand, have described his administration as a failure, founded upon "bargain and corruption" and marked by exclusion of the United States from the British West Indian trade, the ineffectiveness of its efforts to promote...

As son of the second president of the United States, father to 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 an actor in some of the most dramatic events of the nineteenth century. In this biography, Lynn Hudson Parsons chronicles the life of one of America's most absorbing figures....

A towering figure in the formative years of the American nation, John Quincy Adams was the only son of a Founding Father president to become president himself, and the first one to serve in Congress after his term. Pushed by his parents to climb to the heights of their ambitions, Adams surpassed their expectations, not only as president, but also as an ambassador, a powerful voice before the Supreme Court, a fearless secretary of state, and America's...