 Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming John. Thanks very much for the introduction. It's really exciting to be here So close to work right across the way speaking at the eight bells lecture series I Should say that if you take a look at the image of the cover of my book You might be forgiven if you ask yourself What does this have to do with maritime strategy? If you were going to judge a book or even a talk by its cover You might take a look at this and if you can see that map vaguely in the background You'd think huh? Okay. There are a couple of oceans there vaguely But this is probably a book and a talk about the strategy of continental Expansion not maritime So before I even get into the book I thought it would be appropriate to establish my navy bona fides I'm a professor at the naval war college More appropriately though, perhaps I probably have to establish John Quincy Adams is naval bona fides So let's go to the beginning John Quincy Adams started as a naval strategist This image that you see here is a sketch on the last page of his diary in 1780 when he was 12 years old and if you can't see what it says the top is a British Battleship the frightful it's got 10 six-pound guns on the bottom smaller But no less frightened name is the horrid which only has eight six-pound guns now These are imaginary warships the frightful and the horrid, but these are not really the works of a creative 12 year-old's Imagination in fact he drew both of these While he was on a ship Across the North Atlantic in the middle of winter in the middle of a war traveling with his father who was the lead American Diplomat during the American Revolution and they had spotted quite a bunch of British ships If these naval vessels had caught the American packet that was sailing them over the results probably would have been pretty Frightful and pretty horrid for him and his father So as John Quincy Adams matured and grew older the importance of a Navy only expanded in his mind He thought that for a rising nation a Navy was not a lot luxury But in fact was a requirement for its security for its commercial prosperity and even for its own prestige Here's another image with a couple more ships. There are also British ships in the background And once again things are working out somewhat frightfully and somewhat horribly for the United States If you don't immediately recognize this image, it's the most famous image from the War of 1812 This is the shelling of Fort McHenry by the British. This is the source of our national anthem It's not a particularly inspiring image. Our forts are being assailed and bombarded by the British but John Quincy Adams thought when he was serving abroad as a diplomat at this time and wrote that this war Might be instructive to ourselves. We might learn some lessons from this war If it will teach us to cherish the defensive strength of a respectable Navy Now John Quincy Adams spent a lot of his career a lot of his political capital working on building up That respectable Navy so one final naval image for you Any of you recognize this? Let me give you a hint for helping you out a little bit more now. Does anyone recognize it a Little further south Exactly, okay, this is the US Naval Academy an early Image of it now John Quincy Adams did not found Annapolis However, it right it wasn't found until 1845 But in 1825 in his first inaugural address John Quincy Adams said that and Proposed to the Congress the one of the Naval School of Instruction Corresponding with West Point we need it for the formation of a scientific and accomplished officer Corps He also proposed a massive shipbuilding expansion project So now that I've established John Quincy Adams as a fledgling naval strategist at the age of 12 Maritime enthusiast and the not quite founding father of Annapolis I can move on to probably his most well-known role He was the son of John Adams Right now many of my colleagues have heard me say this before How many of you have read the David McCullough biography of John Adams or seen the HBO movie adaptation? Okay, that's most here, but not all so I'll summarize for you John Adams not John Quincy John Adams was smart He knew it He wanted you to know it and as you might have guessed he was somewhat obnoxious about it Well in the Adams family the Apple did not fall very far from the tree This is an image from that HBO series And this was particularly true for John Quincy the eldest son of John and Abigail Adams Now for those of you that saw the HBO film if you remember anything about little Johnny You'll remember that he was a dutiful son an extremely bright young man and an insufferable brat But there are a couple of other things about John Quincy Adams that make him worth remembering As I gave you that introduction with his sketches He joined his father at the age of before he was even a teenager and sailed over to France and Holland in the midst of the American Revolution and got to witness American diplomacy and statecraft in its infancy When he returned to the United States To attend Harvard College. He was probably the most well-traveled American of the entire era He's appointed at the age of 27 years old to be ambassador to the Netherlands And he goes on to have a rather distinguished diplomatic career under presidents Washington presidents Adams That's his dad and president Madison He's then appointed Secretary of State under James Monroe and serves in that position for eight full years And is generally credited with extending US borders all the way to Pacific for the first time It's quite a list of accomplishments and he follows that up with the low point of his entire career He's elected president of the United States Now Quincy Adams actually does see the presidency as the low point of his career It's not a particularly successful presidency But the vision that he lays out as president of the executive branch and really of the entire federal government is Probably the most expansive vision of government until FDR more than a hundred years later If that's not enough for you Quincy Adams then goes back into politics as a congressman in Massachusetts Serving out the remainder of his days that's 17 more years as an increasingly vocal opponent of slavery So John Quincy Adams his career is pretty impressive Think about this as a young man, he is educated with and Sits around Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as an adult he shares the national stage with John Calhoun Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson And as an old man, he sits his final Congress. He's sitting in the first Congress that Abraham Lincoln sits in He when he goes abroad as a diplomat He rubbed shoulders with every famous person of the age including Austria's prince metternich Sar Alexander the first of Russia and even Napoleon Bonaparte when famous people travel to the United States of America They always seek out John Quincy Adams. That includes Alexi de Tocqueville The Marquis de Lafayette and Charles Dickens and with good reason, right? He John Quincy Adams is the author of the Monroe Doctrine He has influenced Washington when he wrote the farewell address and he even helped set the stage for Lincoln's emancipation Proclamation his career is so broad-ranging It's so wide-ranging that you might think of Adams having something of a forest dump-like effect on early American history Right with every famous person with almost every significant issue in the Republic Adams is there And let me give you a couple of examples of this have the Battle of Bunker Hill 1775 well a little seven-year-old Johnny Adams climbs the hill in his backyard with his mom and watches the cannon fire going off The Jay Treaty one of the first and most important treaties in American history Well as a newly appointed diplomat he sails across the Atlantic with the draft of the day Jay Treaty which he hands to Mr. Jay The war of 1812 I've showed you this image before well Quincy Adams is the lead negotiator on the resolution of this war The Treaty of Ghent which comes out of this the Monroe Doctrine It should be called the Adams Doctrine because he's the one that drafts all the language For the Monroe Doctrine it keeps going the gag rule which you might remember right that the idea that slavery Can not even be discussed because it's too volatile of an issue in the House of Representatives So they gag it right there's a you can't discuss slavery. That's the general idea But it's specifically geared towards John Quincy Adams who keeps bringing petition after petition for the abolition of slavery to the floor of Congress Finally the Amistad trial some of you might have seen that terrific film with Anthony Hopkins portraying John Quincy Adams where the Africans who were aboard the package ship the Amistad overthrow their captors kill them and then sue the US government For their liberty well, it's John Quincy Adams who argues their case and wins their freedom at the Supreme Court again Quincy Adams is Everywhere he's probably the most interesting and most influential American of the entire 19th century Think about what he was capable of what he did with his life. He was a Political essayist he was a diplomat. He was a politician. He was a professor. He was a poet He was a lifelong advocate of science and technology. He was an avid amateur astronomer He was a wine expert and he was a really good gardener to boot So I think at this point you get my point He's really interesting He's famous. He's really important to understanding early American history But then there's another reason I think why it's critical that we think about John Quincy Adams And when you think about American history that make him not only important for understanding early American history but in fact for thinking about America's place in the world today and that's because I argue in my book that John Quincy Adams serves as the first Grand strategist in American history and it's his strategy that implicitly shapes the rise of the United States to continental Hemispheric and ultimately global power Now I just said implicitly shapes the rise and implicit is the key word here Because it's not like John Quincy Adams ever sat down and wrote out his worldview and his grand strategy in prose That is not for lack of evidence John Quincy Adams as a historian is a gold man. The man produced hundreds of thousands of pages over the course of his life I've given you some of the formal documents that he wrote over the course of his life And if you can't see them in back, let me read you what he wrote Well, first of all as a politician he gave hundreds of public addresses He gave speeches on the floor of Congress one of which when he was rallying against slavery went for three weeks straight his correspondence is voluminous he writes histories of the Turkish war that's going on he writes letters to his sons about the Bible and its teaching He has a scholarly presentation on Shakespeare and what it can offer us as strategic thinkers He writes biographies of James Madison and Johnson Monroe starts one of his father never completes it Here's my favorite one. He even writes a 266 stanza for Kanto poem about the 12th century conquest of Ireland by Henry II And if that's not enough for you, that's only the beginning Because he keeps a diary from the day that he turns 12 until the day he literally drops dead on the floor of Congress Every day he sits down and writes in this diary It's runs to I've given you some of the images there almost 51 manuscript volumes Nearly 17,000 pages and every day. He's right writing down What he did who he met and what he thought about and it's an exceptional Window into what Adams thought he was doing and what he was trying to create Now here at the Naval War College We impress upon the officers that we teach that it before you can conduct any strategy You have to understand what you are driving at what you were trying to accomplish Right and on this Adams was crystal clear The rise of the United States was destiny Right, he thought that God he uses the word all the time had intended for the United States to become the most powerful and the most Prosperous nation in the history of mankind He also thought that it was destiny that the United States as embodied by the principles and the Declaration of Independence Was going to be the first ideology that had a global reach Destiny however is not a strategy right Destiny doesn't tell you what to do when and John Quincy ends is not a bad strategist Right, so from those destiny comments. I think you can understand. There is a pretty clear understanding that the Objective the mission of America is to preserve protect and expand the republic and the idea of republicanism But that's not enough right you can't just have a vision you have to understand What threats might get in the way of your vision actually happening right? You have to have an understanding of what constraints might be opposed on impose on this We all like to have what we would like But you have to understand how you are going to affect strategies to get there based on what threats you see there So John Quincy Adams had a very keen understanding of the strategic environment in which he was dealing These images you might remember them from your grade school textbooks, right? These are rather benign somewhat whitewashed images of American expansion westward across the continent If you kind of look very carefully here. I was told to use this. What does my laser pointer work? No Yes Here you go. There are some Indians some Native Americans They look sad, but this is not these are not paintings that tell you the story of American expansion from a native Indigenous perspective. This is from an American perspective and it is a decidedly optimistic point of view Right all America had to do to expand across the continent was simply March westward, right? Well, there were some reasons to be mildly optimistic. There was a big ocean between Europe and the United States The United States had enshrined the protection of individual liberties into its constitution and had a growing and commercially minded Spirit but having these ideas having this aspiration of America as a great Republican Entity did not make it. So Take again a look at the cover of my book perhaps you can't in the back see that image so well This is the map that's in the background of my book and if you can't read the title of this Let me read it for you This is a 1774 map and says North America as divided amongst the European powers And then you have on this image The location of British French Spanish and Russian interests on the North American continent Right. This is what America looked like to the founding fathers right multiple European entities having territorial stakes and claims on the North American continent so This is not the image that the founding generation had of America in the North American continent Right. All you got to do is expand westward a better image for how they thought About the North American continent a continent that was as a republic Something that was going to be opposed by European monarchies that did not like the idea of republicanism and had territorial ambitions on the North American continent This is a better image of how the American founding fathers thought of the North American continent, right? This is taken from 1804 William Pitt and Napoleon carving up the world and maybe North America Here's another image that might have struck them as more true the European monster Thrusting himself across the Atlantic and challenging America, right? These are the external realities that the founding generation had to deal with But this is only half of it right because there were internal problems as well and here I point to the issue of slavery and Divisive internal domestic politics which might actually threaten the growth of America So we had an external problem at the beginning We had some internal problems at the beginning even if they didn't quite yet jeopardize the nation But we also had what you might call a psychological problem at the beginning Americans wanted to sprint before they knew how to crawl Another way of saying this is Americans were so excited about the idea of Republican Institution Republican government that they want to rush to the aid of Anyone around the world who proclaimed themselves to be a Republican revolution before they had finished setting up their own one at home Quincy Adams was very Troubled by this because he thought that this missionary zeal that most Americans had Outstripped the capabilities the means that they had available to them and that left the nation vulnerable So if you think about these objectives, which I've talked about right preserving protecting and expanding The American Republic and the idea of Republicanism in light of these threats The strategy that Adams promotes in order for the United States grow to grow to a great power is Threefold I think it is carving out a space for physical security national development and Morality, so let me spend just a little bit of time talking about each of these first physical security This is that image again from the cover of my book, right North America as divided amongst the European powers Adams wanted to make sure that this did not happen, right? His strategy was to undermine The grip of that Europe might have on the North American continent Now a lot of this he thought would happen pretty naturally right as the United States grew It would naturally begin to push European powers out of North America But it had to be very careful because if it took actions that invited reprisal that invited or invited The European monarchies to expand their control here. That would be very dangerous for a young Republic So this was particularly true if you think of the context in which this is happening the world is dominated by Anglo-French commercial and Empire rivalry right and the United States if it wants to stay neutral in this so it can keep trading and Creep growing rich and say no to either London or Paris Needed to have the means the capabilities to say no and specifically we're talking about having a Navy Right so Adams actually is a big proponent of building a Navy as a defensive deterrent against the European powers However, this is a great thought to have but Adams knew Americans pretty well and to have a Navy. What do you have to do? Got tax yourself Americans do not like taxing themselves They didn't like to I should say they didn't like taxing themselves because we like to now very much And what Adams promoted was that absenting a national emergency Americans were probably Unlikely to tax themselves at a rate sufficient to build up a deterrent capability So that's one thing that he promoted in terms of physical security But remember having a big Navy is only a means to an end right and what's that end? It's the expansion across the North American continent. I love this image It this looks like it's supposed to be the great eagle of America stretching its wings across North It looks like the great pigeon of American security stretching its wings But you get the idea from this right and this can be seen I think most clearly when Adam serves as Secretary of State for eight years where he does really work to push French British and Russian interests out of or nearly out of North America and does project American power almost all the way to Pacific now he does this I think quite nimbly right because sometimes you have to use force But sometimes you use diplomacy and that depends who you're dealing with so if you're dealing with Britain Which has the biggest Navy in the world and is really emerged as very strong after the Napoleonic Wars a Little jaw-jaw before your war war as Winston Churchill said a lot of diplomacy if you're dealing though with the Spanish Empire Which still controls Florida and parts westward and they're losing their grasp on power Well, they threat of military force and sometimes the actual use of military force might actually push them So sometimes it makes sense to really use aggression but projecting American power across the North American continent Adam's thought actually required not only the use of aggression, but also the use of restraint All right, so if you think about the time when he's Secretary of State America is offered the that I use that verb loosely the opportunity to help spread freedom and the idea of republicanism specifically the Greeks are in rebellion against the oppressive rule of the Ottoman Turks a Most of South America has rebelled against the Spanish Empire And they almost all send envoys to Washington DC and they said See we've read our Declaration of Independence We want to do just what you did and we need your help and we need your men and we need your financial backing and we need your ships And this is wildly popular in America and has broad support And when it makes its way up to the cabinet for discussion Everyone says yes except for John Quincy Adams He says no, this is not in our interest and he ends up actually convincing the cabinet. That's not now Why does he say this is not an American interest? What explains this restraint? I would argue that the same thing that explains his desire to expand across the North American continent He wants to undermine European powers hold on the North American continent And if you give them an excuse to intervene, they'll take it But it's more than that. I think too He also Wants to be very clear. Let us not divert our energies and resources From what we are trying to do which is trying to set up a republic that functions well And if you run around the world intervening you are going to Dilute the strength of what America can offer to the world So what he ends up recommending is that America ought to restrain itself and focus its energies and resources at home And this leads I think to his second great strategy, which is one of national development national development with an idea to Making sure ensuring that American capabilities are set up for long-term economic growth right and you can see this in the industries and This is the University of Virginia, which has stood up right before he becomes president too What Adams really wants to do is make sure that the country can grow over the long term and what that means is investment investment in new industries investment in Infrastructure that will help create new markets He advocates for federal subsidies for roads and canals that will help bring products to market and expand The markets that they have into the West and also for investments in what we might today call human capital Right for the growth of universities so that the Republic citizens are as well trained as thoughtful and as entrepreneurial as they possibly can be Well, what this means actually in policy practices. He advocates for the American system and in broad stroke That's three interrelated measures right a tariff that will protect American industries a National bank that will help set up and fund new new industries That's one two. I'm pulling. I'm pulling a Rick Perry here I'm glad someone got that But then the third one is something else which I'll return to in a second But what he does is this idea of the American system though if you think about this is he's advocating for a Strong and interrelated and diverse American economy right one that's strong in agriculture one That's strong in finance and one that's strong in Manufacturer and in fact this is kind of the flip side of the coin of a strong foreign policy Right a strong foreign policy is the flip side of a strong domestic economy because if we are Rich at home will probably be more unified and for rich and more unified we can project our power even further So this is what Adams advocates for improvements In fact improvement this idea of improvement is the centerpiece of his presidency during his first inaugural address Not the inaugural during his first annual address to Congress. He mentions the word improvement 27 times It's interesting because it more or less goes down in flames And here's why because Adams doesn't just start with there. This is what we have to be improving on He pushes this idea even further and he says it It's not only the government's business to promote industries and infrastructure We have to create a positive vision of what a state can do if we're spreading this idea of Republicanism We have to show what it offers to citizens so it begins to Advocate for the educational and the moral improvement of the citizens as well And it goes down in flames and we can talk about that maybe a little bit more in Q&A for why that goes down in flames But again the vision that he sets out is the most progressive vision of the federal government until FDR But you don't have to wait till FDR to see this in practice because in fact it becomes really The centerpiece of the Whig party and the centerpiece of the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln for how they're going to develop the country Finally morality right from the beginning Americans thought of their idea that they thought of their country as an idea and an ideology as much as it was a place right and for this idea to be universally applicable it had to be logically reasonable and morally compelling Right, and that means bringing the promise of America in line with its practice and That means eventually taking on slavery now slavery is such a Difficult issue in early American history because it is part of America It's an institution woven into the very fabric of America's founding It is in the Constitution right and yet is so fundamentally at odds with the country's own aspirations for itself So figuring out that contradict. There's a real contradiction between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution right and figuring out how to resolve that is I think the contradiction that was at the heart of the Republic that Adams spends the energies of his final years in Congress working on now from the beginning from 1804 onwards Adams is saying somewhat publicly mostly privately that eventually abolishing slavery Will set up the country on a much firmer foundation But she can't do it too soon Because if you attack slavery before the country is ready for it, you're inviting you're up in Right, it's easy to exploit and so Adams I argue that he decides that he advocates for taking on slavery Only once three things have happened Once he thinks that the nation is strong enough to take on its own internal problems Without inviting outside European powers to cannibalize it and he thinks that's important because if you don't do so You will retard that progress and that improvements that he has made the centerpiece of his presidency And if you don't take it on it will ultimately betray the mission of America as a Republican nation So he does take this on as a congressman and he does so in two big ways that set the stage I think for Abraham Lincoln later the first of which is he advocates in public Repeatedly for multiple years that the Constitution is not the founding document of the United States of America the founding document is the Declaration of Independence and You have to read the Constitution through the lens of the Declaration of Independence and Give it the force of law Right because that tells you ultimately if you take the principles of the Declaration seriously the direction that America ultimately has to move in Right, that is the Gettysburg address by the way The second innovation that he makes I think it's not an innovation so much as much as a public Series of charges and arguments that he makes is only the federal government can do that And only the federal government can actually make that argument and therefore state sovereignty needs to be subordinated To that federal entity Well, this third element Morality obviously is not resolved until the American Civil War But it's the third component of the grand strategy that John Quincy Adams advocates along with again physical security national development and Morality and if you view these three together I think they go a long way to explaining the various stages of Adams's career that he moves through The bridge between the founding fathers and Abraham Lincoln and perhaps more importantly the evolving strategy of the United States of America itself I'm a historian and so we have to turn to the only important question, which is so what? Who cares right when Adams was Secretary of State he famously proclaims in his July 4th 1821 address America good does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy Right, we can remain neutral on incidents around the world that we don't think immediately affect our interests He also when he's Secretary of State and living in Washington, D.C.. Hops into the Potomac River for swim every morning with a pair of goggles on That's it The Secretary of State or even the President of the United States day does not have the luxury of either of those two today Right, I mean situation circumstances are extremely different I'm not just talking about skinny dipping in the Potomac, but really When American interests are worldwide this is fundamentally a different context with which to judge revolutions as they break out and yet I think that Adams's grand strategy offers four broad lessons that are as applicable today as they were in the 1820s So let me offer you my interpretation of this before you challenge me on all these first Defining American power using American power means being as conscious as conscious of its limits as of its reach that means that defining American power as limitless somewhat paradoxically undercuts American power And don't make a mistake here John Quincy Adams was not shy about promoting American values nor about employing military force when he thought it necessary but he was very wary of Over-extending America and throughout his career. He worked constantly to scale back what he thought were over broad commitments to America second The source of American power is domestic Right, and that's true in military in economic and even in moral terms so as or probably said Before America projects its power abroad it needs to pay attention to all three of those elements of its own power Third regarding autocratic and tyrannical regimes John Quincy Adams advocated change But not upheaval Right, he thought that upheaval was every bit as fraught and as full of danger as it was of promise So the best type of change whether or not America could influence this best type of change was something that was slow and Organic and emerged from societies and cultures themselves as opposed to the United States implementing it And then fourth and finally Sequencing right think of this as the you can't have everything you want at once principle Now Quincy Adams was pretty clear I think about the stages that a growing power had to go through right it had to protect itself from foreign attack It had to enhance its own security capabilities It had to work to bring its resources And capabilities to bear on itself to promote its own development and then gradually it had to align its actions with its ideals But some things were more important than others at certain stages right knowing which was which meant that he can not only Prioritize but sequence what made Quincy Adams? I think a grand strategist what continues to make him relevant is that he understand He understood the concept of grand strategy of long-term strategy, which means having a vision Having priorities and also being willing to make trade-offs as you went through Now you don't have to take my word on this Here we have George F. Kennan Probably the most famous American grand strategist of the 20th century and someone whom we were just teaching Over in strategy and policy about this past week and when he was writing in foreign affairs 1995 I believe that makes him 93 years old at this point. This is what he had to say about Adams This writer for one finds Adams principal I'll be with certain adjustments to meet our present circumstances and commitments Entirely suitable and indeed greatly needed as a guide for American policy in the coming period And if you don't want to take Kennan's word for it Take the current Secretary of State's word for it When John Kerry was recently hosting the Chinese State Counselor Wang Jie trip He was thinking where can I bring him to impress him about American power and ideals and he brought him to the Adams homestead up the road here in Quincy And I think he got it exactly right as you can tell by the overalled expression on Secretary Kerry's face So at this point, let me stop turn it over to you and see what questions you might have about Quincy Adams sir Not for him maybe for my hand So Alfred there my hand doesn't really come into his own as a theorist as a writer Until the 1890s sadly for John Quincy Adams because they both had great facial hair He had been dead by that point about 50 years But but some of the concepts some of the strategic writing that I'm sure my hand came across Himself, but they didn't overlap Chronologically during their lives other questions sir I have asked you a million I can ask but I want to one maybe two Okay Okay, so his relationship right I said that he had relationships with so many important people so let's choose two of them his mother and Thomas Jefferson so Think about the background that this young man had He probably had the two most famous parents in American history John and Abigail Adams It's not the model of parenting that we have today New England puritanism so let me give you a taste of it John Adams not Abigail writes to his son if you think about the advantages to which you were born to It is incumbent upon you to rise to the top of your profession Indeed the top of your entire country or you will have disgraced and disappointed me That's actually not enough for Abigail Abigail right if it's actually it's it's very challenging because he sails over to Europe when he's 12 and he's there almost For six seven years before he even sees his mother before she sails over as well So you know teenagers aren't very good about staying in contact He moves to Russia at one point and they exchange a letter or so each year But so which means that as a young man his mom doesn't really know him But what she does want to impress upon him is the value of his morals Right so in fact as she writes some charming letters to him or they sound charming to us in the 21st century That says it is more important for you to keep up your morals when you go to that den of iniquity Paris Russia actually Russia is not really a den of anything except a lot of snow She says you have to keep up your morals And that's more important to me than anything else And if you don't keep up your morals it probably would have been better that your ship went to the bottom of the sea Now I'm painting. I think one picture, but this is I mean This is kind of a norm right in Massachusetts, although the Adams are an extreme version of it to a certain extent John Quincy Adams loves his parents They said extremely high standards for him. His relationship is rather fraught with his mother She nixes his first two girlfriends. She tries to nix his wife when he gets engaged However, he's very smart he gets engaged when he is in London and she is in Massachusetts. So he says thanks, but no thanks mom I'm marrying her But he really does love his parents a lot There's a funny little anecdote that when he dies in the House of Representatives. He's given a state funeral They read passages, right? Of course in the House of Representatives The two passages that are read are a passage from the book of Job And one of his mother's letters to him, although probably not the one that I quoted to Second person you asked about was Thomas Jefferson So the I should say more broadly the Jefferson and Adams relationship is a very complicated entangled one, right? It's full of ups and downs high ups and really low downs and so John Adams and Thomas Jefferson of course start as great collaborators, right? Writing the Declaration of Independence together then as diplomats in Paris together during the American Revolution and thereafter Right and then Jefferson's in Paris while John Adams is in London and they're really working together Although they begin to have very different thoughts about the role of the federal government, right? And in fact, they are at the heads of two different parties Of course, they reconcile in the older age So I've given you that the nice story to make the point that when John Quincy Adams is a teenager When he comes back from Russia now I've said Russia a couple times and this is worth mentioning when he's 14 years old and he's in Europe with his father The when the American Revolution is underway America says, you know what we need more allies What again spread it during the American Revolution? How about we open up an alliance with Russia? Continental Congress says that's a great idea who do we have to send there and they have a American politician who's serving as John Adams is secretary a man named Francis Dana and he says well, I'll go But I don't speak French, which is the language of the court of Catherine So they say well, who do we have available who speaks French who's in Europe? How about the 14 year old? So he actually becomes a diplomat at 14 and goes without his parents for two and a half years to Russia Where there's basically no one his age and no one who speaks English It's just I mean if you think about how his life Plays itself out. It's it's just fascinating when he comes back. His father now is negotiating the end of the American Revolution and the loans from the from the Dutch government and Thomas Jefferson is actually right there and Jefferson has just recently been widowed He is living at a house nearby and he is a great friend of the Adamses So he starts at Abigail's really insistence because she's there He almost lives in their house and by extension when he's not living in their house Quincy Adams is living with Jefferson himself and studying geometry with Jefferson. I've scoured the diaries for more references I don't see that many or in the correspondence other than the fact that after Jefferson and Adams have this great falling out When they are older men deciding to reconcile themselves really for their place in history When Quincy Adams is elected to the presidency and of course John Adams is very proud And he's in the midst of reconciling himself on those famous letters He writes to Jefferson John Adams and says look at my boy and By the way, if you remember back, he's almost as much your son as he is mine Which is a nice coda to that of course before they both die on the same day July 4th 1826 Other questions there was one in the back What were the sort of fundamental philosophical differences between the federalists and what we then called the Republicans and I believe the actual better term is jump ship So a little bit of a distinction there's the Federalist Party to which John Adams is one of the founding member members He loses to Thomas Jefferson the election of 1800 and then John Quincy Adams in about 1808 becomes a Republican Soon to be known as the national Republicans Now there are two different points here One is why does he become or start to become a Republican and cross the aisle in 1808? And then why does he run on that ticket and what does that ticket actually advocate? So 1808 is an interesting moment, right? He is actually doesn't really even consider himself a federalist although the federalist appointed to that office and a little bit of background So he comes home from his diplomatic missions and he goes straight into politics, right? He's elected to the Massachusetts Assembly and he proves to be an Adams Which means a really big pain in the butt and so much of one that the rest of the Massachusetts legislature says Let's get rid of him. Let's kick him upstairs and promote him to US Senate and get him out of Massachusetts politics, and they do and From the very first day that he's there. He works to antagonize his own popular base So when he travels down to Washington, right? You can't take the Ocella. You can't fly You have to travel by coach and it takes a long time. He shows up one day After the momentous vote on whether or not to approve the Louisiana Purchase has been cast Now if you are from New England You are opposed to the Louisiana Purchase Everyone from New England votes against it and the reason they do is they look at where the country might expand to They look at all the new offices and it's going to undercut so they so they determine Massachusetts prime spot in American politics or maybe co-equal spot with Virginia It's seen as antithetical to New England interests. So they all vote against it Now if you're a smart politician and you're John Quincy Adams, and you show up the day after the vote What do you do? What should you do? Shut up Instead Quincy Adams gets on the floor and says let me tell you why I would have voted for it Although I didn't have to vote for it Although how I would have modified it to make it in line with my principles I would have proposed a couple of constitutional amendments that are et cetera et cetera et cetera This gets the Federalist hair up back in Washington and he moves more so in that direction as his term as senator progresses In fact, the the major moment is a naval moment, right as things heat up in Europe in the Napoleonic Wars Right the Brits don't want the Americans trading with the French Right aiding the enemy the Americans say hey, we're neutrals It doesn't matter who we trade with and this all of course ends with the You know Impressmen of American soldiers a cause of the war of 1812, but also the British firing on the HMS Leonard going at the USS What was that Someone's got it not me, but they go after it and they burn it right in the sights of Washington And of course this antagonized America puts up in planes There's been an attack on American ship where everyone can see it and so Quincy Adams says of course I'm supporting the president who happens to be Thomas Jefferson at this point No one in New England does Right because we can't the thought is if we're New England and our entire industry is based on Commerce and shipping commerce and New England is dependent upon Great Britain. Why would you antagonize them? And quickly they realize that they've been in the political wrong He's probably been in the political right, but Adams as with always goes one step further and the embargo act that Jefferson writes Right we're going to embargo. He actually pulls Quincy Adams in to help draft that language in the first place So finally let me jump forward a little bit. That's I think where he begins to ship by the way Abigail comes back into the mix She writes him a letter saying I can't believe you're slimy politician And you have voted for the party that kicked your father out of office And he writes right back and he says mom you raise me to be an independent and thoughtful and patriotic individual That's exactly what I was doing and she says oh good job By the way, his father supports him in crossing the aisle at this point and then to leap forward a little bit He's a national Republican because following the war of 1812. I've sketched kind of broadly where New England is not in line With a lot of what the country is seeing in the run-up to the war of 1812. Do you vaguely remember the Hartford convention? Right, this is where the Federalist Party shoots itself in the head forever more Otherwise known as the Federalist Party doesn't like being at war with Great Britain because it's mainly based in New England And they vote to they hold a convention in Hartford, Connecticut and vote to secede from the nation And Adam says absolutely not there is dangerous up there as what we will later see in the South So he runs as a national Republican at this point And by the way why the time you get to the elections of 1816 1820 There are Federalists, but good luck getting any of them to self-identify There's basically only one party by the time that Quincy Adams runs for president at this time Sir would he qualify as being politically correct Never John Quincy Adams basically everything out of it. So if you're an Adams, let me frame this a little bit better because it applies to his father If you're an Adams, you're the smartest person in the room You have the longest term vision and you are so Annoying that no one listens to you for the after the first five minutes And so Adams is a really interesting that most of the policies that they advocate are the ones that the United States Ends up adopting as very favorable to their national interests But both John and John Quincy spend most of their political career Chasing after those own policies and saying wait a second You're misapplying what I said. That's not exactly what I told you to do and wait. Why aren't you listening to me anymore? so politically correct though right that's a modern term that we use and So politically correct in terms of speaking about things that we find acceptable to the national Discourse and using acceptable language absolutely not. I mean I gave you the gag rule up there Slavery is really seen as an issue that is so volatile after the Missouri debates in 1820 where he is secretary of state that it will rip the nation apart if it is talked about again and You know, he's looked he's a politician. He's not simply a prophet and a visionary So when he's running for the presidency, he does not talk about slavery Right, I mean you're not just gonna be president of New England When he becomes president in his inaugural address I told you that on his first annual message to Congress he talks about improvement improvement improvement That's not his first speech as president His first speech of as president is his inaugural address and the only word that I think you will find in that address is James Monroe James Monroe and James Monroe otherwise known as a very popular president Think of me like him. I'm just going to be a legacy president. By the way nudge nudge wink wink He was from the south. I won't touch slavery and yet Nine months later. He starts talking about improvement not a talking about the potential abolition of slavery But if you're a southerner hearing these words an empowered federal government Has powers that you are very worried about Because a very powerful federal government might be able to abolish slavery So the way I mean politically correct He's never politically correct But probably the most volatile way that he's not politically correct is by constantly dealing with and nudging towards slavery particularly during his congressional career afterwards Other questions, sir Will but let me start by Firmly rooting you and me in the 19th century where my expertise is So Jefferson's vision of the government is Jefferson's vision of the federal government until it is not Jefferson's vision of the federal government and by that I mean Jefferson of course is the head of a party and an ideology that talks about a state sovereignty not a lot of central control a weak executive, right a Foreign policy that is unengaged with the world And yet when Thomas Jefferson himself is president It's the most massive expansion of executive authority that's happened up to that point the Louisiana purchase Being first and foremost example also his policies that he's advocated We don't need a strong military establishment because that's dangerous right. That's the European model So the state militia right that that will work and by the way the Navy that Jefferson advocates in theory is one that any Smell off the street can figure out right Shallow bottom boats that everyone will hop into and we'll just attack whoever comes at us That doesn't play particularly well during the war of 1812 the embargo is not a particularly effective policy So Jefferson finds himself I mean it's really kind of interesting the reevaluation of Jefferson's own thoughts that Jefferson has Including he writes to his successor his good friend James Madison as we are in the run-up to the war of 1812 I can't think of any government so as unready for a major conflict with Great Britain as ours Of course, he's the president that set the stage for that So on the one sense it depends which Thomas Jefferson were defining Are we talking the theoretical Jefferson or the Jefferson in practice now in terms of state sovereignty? State sovereignty is an issue I talked about briefly when I was talking about how the United States federal government is going to deal with the issue of slavery itself When he is a congressman Repeatedly his speeches are really fascinating. I'm not a legal historian But I really recommend a close reading by anyone interested on chapter 5 of my book because he makes legal arguments Based on where sovereignty is actually located It's a historical and illegal interpretation of the locus of sovereignty in American politics and what he says is that look We've actually tried a decentralized system. That was the Articles of Confederation and The Articles of Confederation a worked horribly It's the reason why we had to have a constitutional convention But be the Articles of the Articles of Confederation We're an adaptation after the Declaration of Independence which located sovereignty in the people writ large which means Not in individual states, but the American people which can now only manifestly be taken on in the federal government So that's that in terms of contemporaneously in American politics where Quincy Adams would stand I don't know and I would caution people to be wary When they think that any particular founding father or founding son in our case here Advocates for a particular position in contemporary politics, right? I mean anyone can quote America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy which is generally taken as the kernel of right We should not intervene in other countries politics, which means we should not project our power abroad That's not the real John Quincy Adams. That's an excerpted line from one of his speeches The next year he is advocating for us using force in Florida to forcibly take Florida away from the Spanish for ourselves So time and circumstances dictate a lot of things and I would just be cautious about kind of using him as a standard bearer for the contemporary Republican or Democratic Party Although if we're on safe ground in one space The federal government the federal government the federal government. He is not a states rights kind of guy He thinks it is a dangerous place to go and This is what he is what he thinks that also only the federal government can coordinate national products well as opposed to Decentralized states by the way, he's defeated on that idea right by Andrew Jackson who is a successor But that's a broad answer. I think for that question Any other or I should say final questions Sir Well educated, I'm sure that was What struck me about and this is from a column book about yeah, but struck me was that this was the luckiest kid in the world I mean he had all his stuff poured into it and he absorbed every bit of it He must have been brilliant He was he was absolutely brilliant. I mean he spoke seven languages to start He I mean I didn't say that too glibly although I said a glibly that he was also a wine expert, by the way I mean there's this great Moment when he's educated in everything is what I'm trying to say where he does a blind taste test of 12 different wines and can guess them and their vintage within two years each the man literally he's a great enthusiast of Gardening and in fact calls all us diplomats to send home samples and spends half of his presidency Actually, I take that back spends nine-tenths of his presidency because he's so bad at the politics of it planting new trees on the way He knows something and actually more than something about everything the most famous one Which you might recall is that when he's secretary of state? That's it. That's a pretty busy job, right and you don't have too many people back in the day to do it for you In fact in his opening days as secretary of state He's going to meet with the Swedish representative to talk about the terms of their ongoing treaty with the US and whether or not They're gonna renew it and he can't find the treaty anywhere in the State Department So things are rather disorganized, right and he starts trying to and attempting to organize everything and He really on top of that, right? So he's busy He's told by Congress that he personally needs to write a report on weights and measures, right? Are we going to have a standardized metric system? He takes this as a scholarly charge to himself Starts waking up at 5 a.m. That's not early enough 4 a.m. That's not early enough 3 30 a.m. That's about right and writes a 200-plus page report that actually is still seen as a standard Really of how to blend kind of a you know scientific and scholarly endeavor in this field So you're right. He knows something about everything whether or not. He's the luckiest person in the world though. I might Give us pause to think about a little bit because one of the things that I didn't talk about too much is I've talked about the incredible pressure that's brought to bear on him if you're in Adams I don't mean John Quincy Adams if you're in Adams one of two things happen Before I proceed to tell you them. Do we have any Adams is in the audience? This has happened to me twice before on talks, so I have to ask Okay, well even if you were here and Adams I'd say that one of two things happen You become president of the United States of America or you drink yourself to death by the age of 35 This happens to John Adams's generation. This happens to John Quincy's two younger brothers And in fact one thing which I didn't talk about is as he is leaving the White House as he's leaving the presidency He's pretty depressed that Andrew Jackson has defeated him. He gets news that his eldest son has committed suicide The although his youngest son then goes on to be British American ambassador to Britain during the American Civil War and keeps England from recognizing the Confederacy so Lucky, I don't know because an extraordinary record of accomplishment but an extraordinarily Difficult and challenging life and in the book I explore in a couple different instances. He's very much like Lincoln in this way You could think of them as about as different backgrounds as you could possibly have you can think about the educational opportunities about as differently as is possible to imagine between a Lincoln and an Adams and yet both of them are hounded by Personal depression and at multiple instances of Adams's life. He almost loses the ability to function himself This happens as a young man This happens during his presidency. He actually falls into not a funk But a great depression itself. So well educated. Yes Lucky accomplished. Yes. Lucky From our point of view. Yes from his I'm not quite so sure So with that, let me thank you all so much for coming out and spending your moon