by Neal Millikan, Digital Projects Editor
On 4 March 1825, 57-year-old John Quincy Adams believed he had reached the apex of his political career when he was inaugurated the sixth president of the United States. “I entered upon this day with a supplication to Heaven, first for my Country; secondly for myself, and for those connected with my good name and fortunes, that the last results of its events may be auspicious and blessed.” However, Adams found the four years of his administration among the most challenging of his life. This month the Adams Papers editorial project added verified transcriptions of Adams’s diary entries for the period March 1825 to December 1829 as part of its John Quincy Adams Digital Diary. The entries chronicle his time in the White House, the 1828 presidential election, and Adams’s uneasy retirement from office, during which the former president worried he was “losing day after day without atchieving any thing.”
As president, Adams’s agenda encompassed an ambitious strategy of reforms for American society, including internal improvements, a national university, and a department of the interior, many of which he outlined in his first State of the Union address in December 1825. From the start of his presidency, John Quincy dealt with the repercussions of the 1824 election, which Andrew Jackson and his supporters believed Adams had unfairly won by making a “corrupt bargain” with Henry Clay to secure the executive. By the 1826 mid-term elections, the Jacksonians assumed the majority in the House of Representatives and used their power in Congress to thwart Adams’s plans. The 1828 presidential campaign also began almost as soon as Adams took office in 1824, and with Adams and Jackson as the main opponents, it became one of the most fiercely contested political campaigns in American history.
John Quincy Adams’s private life was also difficult during these years. His wife, Louisa Catherine Adams, continued to have bouts of ill health throughout his presidency, and he grieved the loss of two close family members: his father, John Adams, died in 1826, and his eldest son, George Washington Adams, died in 1829. Upon learning of John Adams’s death, John Quincy recorded in his diary: “My father had nearly closed the ninety-first year of his life: A life illustrious in the Annals of his Country, and of the World— He had served to great and useful purpose his Nation, his Age, and his God— He is gone, and may the blessing of Almighty Grace have attended him to his Account.” As in previous years, John Quincy’s diary recounts his outlets from the pressures of his myriad public duties by continuing his exercise regimen of swimming and walking and spending time in the White House gardens.
For an overview of John Quincy Adams’s life during these years, read the headnote for the presidential period or navigate to the entries to begin reading the diary.
The John Quincy Adams Digital Diary is a born-digital edition that will pair a verified and searchable transcription of Adams’s diary with the manuscript images of the diary pages. The diplomat and statesman kept a journal for more than 68 years, starting in 1779 at the age of 12, and continuing until just before his death at age 80 in 1848. In all, his diary spans 51 volumes and comprises 15,000 manuscript pages. More than 3,200 pages are now available online through the generous support of the Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund, Harvard University Press, and private donors. To find out how you can get involved, visit the Digital Diary website.