By Rhonda Barlow, Adams Papers

When President John Quincy Adams delivered his first annual message to Congress on December 6, 1825, he noted that “the want of a naval school of instruction, corresponding with the Military Academy at West Point, for the formation of scientific and accomplished officers, is felt with daily increasing aggravation.” But Congress was not sufficiently aggravated to establish a school. Because young naval officers could learn to handle a ship only at sea, it seemed reasonable for all their education to be conducted aboard ship.

On December 4, 1827, Adams gave his third annual message to Congress, and for the third time, recommended the establishment of a naval academy similar to West Point, which Thomas Jefferson had established twenty-five years earlier. But this time, Adams explained his view of naval education in detail.

Adams held high standards for the “enquiring minds” of “the youths who devote their lives to the service of their country upon the ocean.” In his 1827 message, he explained that the academy he envisioned needed teachers, books, equipment, and a permanent location on shore. Subjects should include not only shipbuilding, math, and astronomy, but also literature, “which can place our officers on a level of polished education with the officers of other maritime nations,” and knowledge of foreign laws. As a former diplomat, and secretary of state from 1817 to 1825, Adams recognized that naval officers were a special class of American ambassadors.

But this combined scientific, technical, and liberal education was not enough. “Above all,” Adams continued, a young naval officer needed to learn “principles of honour and Justice” and “higher obligations of morals.” For John Quincy Adams, an American naval officer was a “Warrior Patriot,” equipped with a moral education that distinguished him from a mere pirate.

An entry in Adams’ Diary, made a few days after his 1827 speech, sheds light on his understanding of the role of morality in officer education. In his Diary, Adams reflected on the court martial of Master Commander William Carter for drunkenness.

Although he was reluctant to end Carter’s naval career, he wrote that “such enormous evils from intemperance demanded a signal example.” While intoxicated, the master commander twice was guilty of giving orders that almost caused the ship to founder, endangering both the valuable warship and her crew. On another occasion, he had been rude to a British officer. On another, he had engaged in disorderly conduct on shore, observed by, among others, a British officer. Adams’ Diary reveals that moral education was about self-control and responsibility, and the reputation of America’s fledgling navy abroad, especially among the British, whose Royal Navy was the envy of the world.

Adams failed to convince Congress to establish a naval academy. But eighteen years later, Adams, then a congressman, met with George Bancroft, the new secretary of the navy. In his Diary, Adams recorded that Bancroft “professes great zeal to make something of his Department.” A few months later, on October 10, 1845, Bancroft opened the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.

By Hobson Woodward, Adams Papers

On 17 July 1800 John Quincy Adams and his wife Louisa Catherine embarked on an extended tour of Silesia, now southwest Poland. John Quincy chronicled their tour in a series of letters to his brother Thomas in the United States. The letters provide a rich description of a European excursion at the dawn of the nineteenth century. They also provide a rare look at a relaxed John Quincy Adams, unfettered by the demands of his diplomatic duties in Berlin.

John Quincy Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 20 July 1800, letterbook copy (Adams family papers, Massachusetts Historical Society)

John Quincy prefaced his first letter to Thomas by advising him to send his correspondence to their mother Abigail if his extended descriptions of the Silesian countryside and people proved a bore:

I cannot promise you an amusing journey, though I hope it will prove so to us; & if at the sight of this my first letter on this occasion, you think it looks too long, & appears likely to prove tiresome, seal it up, unread, & send it to Quincy, where a mother’s heart will fill it with all the interest of which it may be destitute in itself

Thomas Boylston Adams to John Quincy Adams, 15 January 1801 (Adams family papers, Massachusetts Historical Society)

Thomas found the letters anything but boring, however, and he was so entranced that he gave them to a newspaper editor friend for publication. John Quincy graciously accepted their printing for the public, even though he had not been told in advance. He was less happy when the articles were later published in an unauthorized 1801 London edition.

John Quincy’s travel accounts are indeed vivid. In a 3 August letter he described an ascent of a mountain near Schreiberhau (now Szklarska Poreba, Poland). The hike began easily enough, he reported, traversing a grade “about equal to the steepest part of Beacon hill in Boston.” The difficulty increased, however, and the party finally emerged to a dramatic sight:

Instantly a precipice nearly fifteen hundred feet deep opened its gastly jaws before us— A sort of isthmus, or tongue of land however allowed us to proceed about an hundred rods further, untill we could fix ourselves against the side of a rock, & look over into the tremendous depth— We had then the precipice on both sides of us, & it passes by the respective names of the great & the small snow-pit— They are so called because generally the snow at the bottom remains unmelted the whole round, although this has not been the case for the last two summers, & at present they contain no snow at all

Later John Quincy and Louisa visited the Zackenfall waterfall. One is almost brushed by the leafy mist when reading John Quincy’s description:

At this place you stand upon one side of the cleft & see the water dash down from the other; upon a level with yourself; between you & the stream is an abrupt precipice, which seems the more profound, for being so narrow; about an hundred yards— With the help of a ladder I descended to the bottom, & walked partly over the rocks, & partly over the billets of wood lying in the bed of the stream to the spot from which the water falls— We likewise went round by a winding foot path on the top, to the spot from which the streams launches itself

John Quincy also described a visit to a coal mine near Waldenburg (now Walbrzych, Poland). The mine was accessed by a small boat navigated over a subterranean stream.

You go down in a boat, flat bottom’d, about a yard wide, & ten feet long. The canal is not more than four wide, & equally deep, & over it is an arch about as high, hew’d in many places through the solid rock. It is nearly an english mile long, & strikes deeper & deeper under ground, untill the surface of the earth over head is more than 150 feet above you. The boat is pushed along through the canal, by two men, one standing at each end, who with a short stick in the hand press it against the sides of the arch that goes over the canal.

John Quincy further commented on churches, factories, and estates, and the peasants, craftsmen, and soldiers who occupied them. Thomas called his brother’s travel accounts a “rich feast of epistolary excellence.” The letters survive today in the Adams Papers collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 2019 a selection of them will be annotated and published in volume 14 of Adams Family Correspondence, providing unprecedented access to a luminous portrait of an excursion through central Europe in an age gone by.

By Neal Millikan, Adams Papers Editorial Project

On February 22, 1821, John Quincy Adams noted in his diary that “two of the most memorable transactions of my life” occurred that day: the ratification of the Transcontinental Treaty between the United States and Spain, and the submission of his report on weights and measures. While the treaty is remembered for orchestrating the U.S. acquisition of Florida, Adams’s work on weights and measures, which he referred to as “a fearful and oppressive task,” is largely forgotten today.

John Quincy’s obsession with the subject began in 1810 when he was minister plenipotentiary to Russia and spent his free time researching the variations among countries’ standard weights and measures. His wife, Louisa Catherine, recorded in her diary on July 21 that he “too often passed” the days “alone studying…no article however minute escaped his observation and to this object he devoted all his time.”

A page of John Quincy’s notes

 [John Quincy Adams memorandum and garden book, 1810-1845, Adams Family Papers, microfilm edition, 608 reels (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society) reel 203.]

As secretary of state (1817–1825) John Quincy had many duties, but none intrigued him more than this topic. In 1817, the Senate passed a resolution asking that office to submit “a statement relative to the standard weights and measures” within the states and foreign countries, along with “propositions…as may be proper to be adopted” in America. John Quincy assumed the position on September 22, and by October 7 he drolly noted in his diary that the subject “weighs much upon my mind.” During the summer of 1820 he would wake up early to perform tests and record his results before going to work. Adams’s final report recommended that “no innovation upon the existing weights and measures should be attempted.” He instead called for America to “declare” its official measures “as they now exist” and to give standard metal measurements to “every State and Territory.”

For all his efforts, Adams’s work was not widely read. Indeed, his own father, John Adams, referred to it on May 10, 1821, as “a Mass of historical, philosophical chemical mathematical and political knowledge” but noted, “I cannot Say and perhaps Shall never be able to Say I have read it.” Upon the completion of the work Louisa Catherine recorded in her diary: “Thank God we hear no more of Weights and Measures” [January 6], and John Quincy commented on the final report in his diary:

It is, after all the time and pains that I have bestowed upon it a hurried and imperfect work; but I have no reason to expect that I shall ever be able to accomplish any literary labour more important to the best ends of human exertion, public utility, or upon which the remembrance of my children, may dwell with more satisfaction.

By Gwen Fries, Adams Papers

When Louisa Catherine Johnson wrote to her then-fiancé John Quincy Adams on March 20, 1797, she desired to impress him with her reading of Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son. The reaction she received was not the reaction she expected.

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

(National Portrait Gallery, London)

Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son is a compilation of 448 letters from Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773), to his son, also named Philip (1732–1768), from the time the boy was five until his death. The letters contain lessons on subjects such as history and mythology in the boy’s youth, but the older he gets, the more the lessons relate to what Stanhope constantly refers to as, “the useful and necessary art of pleasing.” When the boy was eleven, Stanhope wrote that he desired he should be “as near perfection as possible” as “never were such pains taken for anybody’s education” and as his opportunities for knowledge and improvement were unparalleled. “The smallest inattention, or error in manners, the minutest inelegancy of diction, the least awkwardness in your dress and carriage, will not escape my observation,” Chesterfield wrote to his son. Understandably, Philip felt the need to keep secrets from his father. Upon his death from edema in 1768, Chesterfield discovered that Philip had been secretly married for ten years and had two sons. While Chesterfield provided for Philip’s two sons during what remained of his life and in his will, he neglected to leave Philip’s wife Eugenia anything, prompting her to publish over thirty years of his letters to his son. The collection of letters, published in 1774, attracted a great deal of notice in Britain and across the Atlantic.

Over twenty years after their original publication, Louisa wrote to her fiancé that she thought the letters “very good” but asked for John Quincy’s opinion on the book. John Quincy responded that he was never permitted to read the letters in his youth and harbored “too much contempt” for the principles within to have dedicated time to its perusal in his adulthood. Furthermore, he told her Chesterfield had a “stain of depravity which pervades all his ideas of morality” and that could only generate an “accomplished knave.” He advised her to read Samuel Johnson instead and leave Chesterfield’s “fraud” and “baseness” alone. (There is a 1779 copy of Stanhope’s work in the Stone Library at Peacefield with John Quincy’s bookplate attached.)

Undoubtedly, John Quincy’s fervent ideas about the book he claimed not to have read came, in part, from his parents. When his mother Abigail requested a copy in 1776, his father dissuaded her, telling her she wouldn’t want it as the letters were, “stained with libertine Morals and base Principles.” Abigail accepted her husband’s advice but got her hands on a copy four years later. After perusing the letters, she agreed that Chesterfield was filling his son’s mind with “the most immoral, pernicious and Libertine principals.”

Though John Quincy was no stranger to a father’s care, attention, and critiques, his relationship with his father little reflected the relationship of the Stanhopes. While John Adams urged his son to study the history of revolutions, Chesterfield outlined the proper way to bid farewell to mistresses. Chesterfield was, and urged his son to be, a chameleon in the world, a far cry from John Adams, the possibly uprooted but never swayed oak. In fact, Chesterfield’s instruction was so opposed to John Quincy’s lifestyle that he admitted to Louisa he felt as though Chesterfield were “personally satyrising” him.

John Quincy’s reaction to the text perhaps realizes his father’s April 15, 1776 wish that his children should “wear mean Cloaths, and work hard, with Chearfull Hearts and free Spirits” and that they would “scorn Injustice, Ingratitude, Cowardice, and Falshood. Let them revere nothing but Religion, Morality, and Liberty.” Nowhere did John Adams mention the useful and necessary art of pleasing.

By Rhonda Barlow, Adams Papers

In the summer of 1830, John Quincy Adams was preoccupied with two projects: planting trees on his properties in Quincy and reading the works of the Roman statesman and philosopher, Cicero, in the original Latin. Just two years earlier, in an 11 May letter to his son Charles Francis, John Quincy had lamented that he had not planted trees in his youth, for if he had, he could now enjoy their fruits and shade. He likewise wished he had read Cicero (106–43 B.C.) in Latin forty years earlier, when it would have been more profitable for his public service. He kept records of his planting and his reading in his Diary, which he had started in 1779, and by his death in 1848, filled 51 volumes.

On 14 August 1830, he started reading Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, a philosophical treatise that began with “On the Contempt of Death.” In the midst of Cicero’s moralizing and speculation, a quote from the Roman poet Caecilius Statius leapt off the page:

Serit arbores quae alteri seculo prosint

John Quincy, writing in his Diary, made this translation from the Latin:

“He plants trees, says Statius… for the benefit of another century: for what purpose, if the next century were something to him? The diligent husbandman then shall plant trees, upon which his own eyes shall never see a berry? and shall not a great man plant laws, institutions, a Commonwealth?”

Cicero drew a comparison between the farmer and the statesman; but John Quincy was both. In his Diary, JQA followed his translation with this personal reflection:

“I have had my share in planting Laws and Institutions, according to the measure of my ability and opportunities— I would willingly have had more— My leisure is now imposed upon me by the will of higher powers, to which I cheerfully submit, and I plant trees for the benefit of the next age, and of which my own eyes will never behold a berry— To raise forest trees requires the concurrence of two Generations, and even of my lately planted nuts seeds and Stones, I may never taste the fruit— Sero arbores quae alteri seculo prosint.” Here John Quincy altered the Latin significantly, from Caecilius Statius’ “He plants” to “I plant.”

Having lost the 1828 presidential election to Andrew Jackson, John Quincy faced an early retirement from public life. He had passed from planting a republic to planting a garden. He could not forget the brief quote from Caecilius Statius. “Seculo prosint” kept appearing in his Diary as he cared for his trees. But within three months, he was elected to serve in the U. S. House of Representatives, and given a fresh chance to continue to plant laws for another century, another age, another generation.

In June 1833, President Andrew Jackson, was in Boston inspecting the local troops. While listening to the roar of the cannons in the distance, John Quincy, alone with his seedlings, proclaimed alteri seculo as his motto. The Latin phrase was a shout of triumph in the midst of defeat. His grandson, Henry Adams, recorded that JQA designed a seal, featuring an acorn and two oak leaves, and began using it to seal his letters. He even made a fob for his watch, and carried it everywhere (Catalogue of the Books of John Quincy Adams, Boston, 1938, p. 144–145).

This seal now adorns every volume of The Adams Papers, and appears on the website for the digital edition.

By Gwen Fries, Adams Papers

A line in John Quincy Adams’s 1788 diary is the earliest example of his use of English poet John Byrom’s shorthand system. The system replaces words with symbols to make writing faster and, eventually, easier. Six years later, Adams recorded in his diary that his youngest brother, Thomas Boylston, was attempting to teach himself shorthand and noted that he had once endeavored to learn the system, “but soon gave over the pursuit; not having a very high opinion of the utility of the art.”

Later in life John Quincy changed his mind about shorthand’s usefulness, though he did not strictly adhere to the Byrom system. The symbols, some of which are his own variations, appear in his diary more frequently beginning in 1810. John Quincy penned an entire sonnet in shorthand on October 30, 1826. He wrote, “I record it thus that it may be legible only to myself, or to a reader who will take the trouble to pick it out of the short-hand— If it were better poetry I would have written it at full length.”

Though it at first appears to be a page of scribbles, by using a combination of Byrom’s original structure and the hints John Quincy scattered throughout his papers, it is indeed possible to “pick it out.” The linear symbols represent consonants and digraphs; vowels are represented by dots, if at all. If a symbol stands alone, it represents a commonly used word.

Directly translated, the first line of the sonnet (above) reads, “Da f/v m fthrs brth I hl th y.” Once the vowels and commonly used words are filled in, we get “Day of my father’s birth I hail thee yet.” Let’s examine some of the symbols used here. The first symbol in the line is a “d.” If it stood alone, it would mean “and;” however, it is modified by a dot. The placement of the dot reveals what vowel it represents. From top to bottom, the dots represent A E I O U. Because it sits at the top of the symbol, we can read the letters as “da.” The word is “day.” For longer words, several symbols are combined. You can see the green that represented f or v in the second word is repeated in the fourth; in this case, it represents f. The next symbol, in blue, is the digraph th. The orange dash is r, and the yellow line is s. What is written is “fthrs,” obviously, “father’s.” The r and th are repeated in the following word, with a b at the front, “brth,”—“birth.” Note that even though the th arch is flipped upside down, the meaning remains the same.

Using past examples of John Quincy’s shorthand as a guide, you simply need to write out what you know, use context clues, repeat the process fourteen times, and you’ve picked out the sonnet!

By Amanda M. Norton, The Adams Papers

As March 15 marks Andrew Jackson’s 250th birthday it will come as no surprise that this incredibly influential and controversial figure in American history provoked strong and memorable reactions from the Adams family as he entered their circle in the 1820s, eventually clashing with John Quincy for the presidency in 1824 and 1828.

The relationship between the Adamses and Jackson did not begin with hostility however. Louisa Catherine Adams recorded her first impressions of Jackson in her Diary in February 1819: “He is tall and very thin and when he smiles his countenance is very agreeable his manners are those of a Gentleman neither confidant or timid and on the whole he produced the most favourable impression— I heard much astonishment expressed by some persons not friendly to him at his being so polite as they expected to have seen him at least half Savage.” John Adams declared him a “Hero and a Conqueror” and even as the election of 1824 was underway, John asked his grandson John Adams 2d to “give my compliments to General Jackson and tell him, if I had strength enough in my old fabric I would take a “Journey to Washington” and pay my homage to the “deliver[er] of his country.” He also thought that “if General Jackson should be chosen,” that John Quincy should continue as Secretary of State for Jackson “untill he has time to look about him and choose a successor, and for what I care, throughout his whole administration.”

The controversial conclusion to the election of 1824 which saw John Quincy’s elevation to the presidency through the House of Representatives, and even more so, the bitterness and rancor that surrounded the election of 1828, which had included deeply personal attacks, ended forever any positive feelings by the Adams family for the newly elected Andrew Jackson.

This change in attitude and the depth of their animosity toward the man was fully revealed in 1833 in the reaction to Harvard University’s decision to award Jackson an honorary doctorate of laws. Louisa Catherine Adams mocked the idea in rhyme:

            Discerning old Harvard presents the Degree

            Old Hickory asks pray what means LLD?

            The Corporate Sages afraid of excess

            Reserve for themselves that of A.S.S.

John Quincy meanwhile recorded his conversation with the president of the university, Josiah Quincy III, on the matter in his Diary, declaring that as “an affectionate child of our alma Mater, I would not be present to witness her disgrace in conferring her highest Literary honours upon a barbarian, who could not write a sentence of Grammar, and hardly could spell his own name.” To Charles Francis Adams the event marked “the climax of absurdity in General Jackson’s elevation.”

A political feud too personal to overcome, even forgiveness was difficult and the Adamses and Jackson would have “no intercourse of a friendly character” ever again.

By Amanda M. Norton, Adams Papers

John Adams’s administration was in its waning days as January 1801 closed. While Thomas Jefferson had not yet been officially elected, Adams knew for certain that he was not going to continue in office and would soon head home. In the meantime, however, there was still plenty of work to be done.

The empty seat on the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice’s chair in fact, was one of his more pressing issues as the previous chief justice, Oliver Ellsworth, had resigned his seat in October. John Adams had no doubts about the importance of the high court in the young republic: “The firmest Security We can have against the Effects of visionary Schemes or fluctuating Theories, will be in a solid Judiciary,” however his first choice to replace Ellsworth, former chief justice John Jay, declined to serve in the position again. With only a few weeks left in his administration, Adams made one of the most significant and long-lasting decisions of his entire public career. On January 20, Adams formally submitted the nomination of his secretary of state, John Marshall, to serve as chief justice, to which the Senate consented one week later.

Adams sent Marshall his commission on the 31st, likely with a letter in which he requested that Marshall prepare letters of recall for John Quincy Adams to return home from his position as minister plenipotentiary to Prussia. Although Adams believed his son deserved to have his position upgraded with an appointment to Great Britain or France, he recognized that was not possible; “Besides it is my opinion that it is my duty to call him home,” Adams confessed.

Marshall accepted the role on February 4, writing to Adams, “I pray you to accept my grateful acknowledgements for the honor conferd on me in appointing me chief Justice of the United States. This additional & flattering mark of your good opinion has made an impression on my mind which time will not efface. I shall enter immediately on the duties of the office & hope never to give you occasion to regret having made this appointment.” Adams replied the same day, thanking Marshall for his acceptance but requesting that given the “Circumstances . . . of the times” he stay on as secretary of state for the remainder of Adams’s term. Chief Justice Marshall would serve for the next 34 years and profoundly influence and define the role and place of the Supreme Court in the nation in ways that endure to the present.