I'm Bob Crawford. This is founding son John Quincy's America. There's a town in Massachusetts, just outside of Boston called Quincy. In that town you'll find a home called Peacefield. And in that house you'll find a clock. It's a clock that belonged to John Adams, our second president, one of our founders. It still works today, marking the seconds and hours,
two hundred years after his death. I like to imagine John and his wife Abigail, sitting in their parlor hearing it tick as they talked about the nation they helped create. What would they have said about it? I like to imagine their son, John Quincy Adams, greeted by its steady beat when he returned home from Washington for his father's funeral. John Quincy was President of the United States when his father died. Like his father before him, he reached the
pinnacle of political success. Yet he never escaped the long shadow cast by the founding father, John Adams. John Quincy Adams would not be remembered as a national hero no matter what he did, how hard he tried, or how much time he had. By many accounts, John Quincy Adams accomplished just as much even more than his father, beginning with his education in staycraft at just ten years old, following his dad on diplomatic missions to France during the
height of the American Revolution. In life, facing down Southern politicians who held Congress in a chokehold, John Quincy Adams was the only president elected to the House of Representatives after leaving office. You could argue that he did more for this nation in his nearly two decades as a congressman than he did as President, thrusting the issue of slavery to the center of political debate when Southern politicians wanted to silence the very discussion of it. The slave ocracy,
as John Quincy called it, had to be stopped. The slavery the snake coiled under the table when the Constitution was drafted, was unfurled and slithering into our culture and our laws. The head of the snake needed to be lopped clean off. John Quincy never gave up the fight, ultimately collapsing at his desk in the US Capitol and dying on the job, paving the way for Abraham Lincoln and the next generation of lawmakers and activists to finally
end human bondage in America. He was the right man for his time, a bridge that linked the founding of our nation to the war that freed its enslaved citizens and preserve the union. His war was not against tyranny like his father's, but a war for the direction of the fledgling nation, a nation being pulled apart as a new generation took the reins. This is what led me to tell the story of John Quincy Adams, a man whose story is just as relevant today as it was
two hundred years ago. Some of you know me as a musician. I'm the basis for the Avett Brothers, and as a musician, I spent a lot of time on the road. I fill that time by reading mostly biographies in American history. Some of you who know me well know I also host a historical podcast called The to Now. Of all the figures in American history who have gotten lost in the annals of time, John Quincy Adams tops
my list. Can you name one of his accomplishments. He fought to protect American democracy and build the nation while others sought to infiltrate the government and tear it down from the inside. He fought for the Constitution and American ideals putting the nation above any political party, even his own. A true maverick, a poet, a public servant, a president. I'm Bob Crawford, and this is founding son John Quincy's America,
Chapter one, The Corrupt Bargain. In the late fall of eighteen twenty four, votes were still being counted in America's tenth presidential election. James Monroe was about to leave office. His secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, won in the gig. He was itching for it, so John Quincy threw his hat in the ring. Do you think that in some way inside, John Quincy Adams felt like the presidency was his birthright. Yes.
I don't think it was really because he had some notion of hereditary succession.
That's John Quincy Adams biographer James Traub.
I think it's more because he was brought up by his parents to see serving this infant republic, which became a republic, it became a free nation while he was a boy as the highest good.
By eighteen twenty four, one of the two original political parties, the Federalist disintegrated, leaving really only one party, the Democratic Republican Party. Since every candidate was technically a member of the same party. This period became known as the Era of Good Feelings. Despite the name, there was plenty of factionalism and discord. The four way race to replace Monroe devolved into an all out brawl. Adams was facing off
against the crowded field. And I don't want this to get too confusing for you, so let me break it down. These are the candidates. William Crawford no relation, a Georgia statesman and Monroe's Secretary of the Treasury. Henry Clay, a season lawmaker from Kentucky who is ambitious as it gets you'll see later. But his most potent challenger was Andrew Jackson, a US senator and former general from Tennessee.
Andrew Jackson was an adventurer. He was not just a military figure. He was a military figure who almost could not be restrained. He famously fought a war against first the Spanish and then the Indians, which was really brutal, and famously executed two British citizens who he said were agents on a drumhead. That is to say, he had his own impromptu court and hanged them. He was an ungovernable figure.
Is there a single word or a sentence you would use to describe.
Andrew Jackson probably not a very nice one.
Presidential historian Lindsay Schervinsky picks it up from there.
By the time that he died, he owned one hundred and fifty enslaved people, which was a huge estate, and so he presented himself as this man of the people, but actually was incredibly wealthy.
Jackson did not back down from a fight. For many Southerners at the time, dueling was a common way of life, and Jackson had a number of them under his belt.
The concept of honor and honor culture some feels a little bit foreign to us, but it was essential at that point because your reputation and your honor was what made possible business arrangements, business deals, whether or not you could get credit, what families you were able to socialize with or marry into, and so it was really important to people, and there was this sense that you had to defend it, even up through violence, and so dueling
was a very complex system, and most duels actually were not violent, and so Andrew Jackson himself had been in several duels where they agreed to either walk away or they agreed to fire into the sky. So while fans of Hamilton may know that that duel was fatal, most were not. Now, some that Andrew Jackson were in were violent.
In eighteen oh six, Jackson killed a man in a duel, and in another one Jackson took a bullet to the shoulder. In the election of eighteen twenty four, all bets were on Jackson to win. He was a war hero, a firebrand, riding a populist wave. More states were joining the Union all the time, bringing new voters to each election, and Jackson, being a tough talking Southerner, was popular with these voters.
He promised to wrestle federal government control from New England and East Coast elites and put it in the hands of the people. Whether it was true or not, he was seen as one of them, a common man empowering the common man.
A lot of states started to amend their suffrage laws, meaning more people had the right to vote. Now, of course, at this time it still really only applied to white men, but a lot of states dropped the property requirements, so even if you were not a landholder, you could still vote, which meant that what we might think of as more sort of radical voters started to have a voice in this process.
Establishment politicians like Clan Adams feared Jackson, and they had no idea what he would do as president.
They didn't know if he would work to undermine these institutions that they felt were really essential to long term success. And there was a lingering sense, and this had been an inheritance from the founding generation, that populism or mob control would lead to anarchy, and so they weren't sure if you gave the people too much power what they would do with it, if they would tear down the entire system.
If you were a voter in eighteen twenty four, Jackson was the wild card and Adams was the safe bet. He promised to unite the nation, and he was by far the most qualified to be president.
In John Quincy Adams's day, the presidency was almost a thing that you succeeded to by right, that is to say, you earned your way to it by conspicuous public service. Adams had been a diplomat from the age of twenty six. Really he became America's senior diplomat while he was still in his thirties.
He had been the Secretary of State for eight years and had an incredible tenure, got some really major treaties passed that were essential to the United States future, as well as the articulation of the Monroe Doctrine, and was I think one of the best secretaries of State we've ever had.
Up until eighteen twenty four. Being secretary of State was like being president in waiting. In the short life of the Republic, three former secretaries of State were elected President, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Now Adams was up.
So he's coming into this position thinking, surely, hit some my turn. Surely the American people will select me and recognize these credentials.
As he waited for the election. In the fall of eighteen twenty four, Adams returned to Quincy to visit his aging father, the ex president. Pondering his fate, he walked through the family graveyard, visiting his sister Nabby, who had died from breast cancer. As he paced, perhaps the words of his father rang in his ear. If you do not rise to the head not only of your profession, but of your country, it will be owing to your
own laziness, slovenliness, and obstinacy. Adams also stopped at the grave of his great great grandfather, Henry Adams, who came over from England nearly two centuries.
Before last another century, we shall all be moldering in the same dust, or resolved in the same elements. You, then, of our posterity, shall visit this yard. What shall he read engraved upon the stones? This is known only to the creator of all The record may be longer, may be of as blameless lives.
When the election got under weigh in October, John Quincy's anxiety only got worse. What if all this experience, his diplomatic skills, his knowledge, What if it wasn't enough to rise above the anger and resentment the war hero General Jackson stoked in the minds of voters, what do you think was going through John Quincy Adam's head while the votes were being counted?
He so desperately doesn't want to care, and yet cares so much, And he sort of detested himself for wanting it so badly.
When the votes were finally tallied, US Secretary of War John C. Calhoun won a clear majority to become vice president. In the presidential race, Jackson was the clear front runner, but the four way race split the vote so much that no single candidate won a majority of votes or electors.
Under the rules of the current system, the top three candidates. If there was no majority, which there was not, the top three candidates would go to the House, and the House of Representatives would be in charge of then basically selecting the next president.
For the second time in America's short history, the House of Representatives would decide who would become the next president. If that sounds like a complicated and contentious way to decide an election, it is not to mention the House of Representatives circa eighteen twenty four wasn't exactly like we see these days on c SPAN.
The House was really quite calamitous. So there's a great book by Joanne Freeman that talks about the violence in the House of Representatives leading up to the Civil War called The Field of Blood, and it talks about how the House chambers the floor was covered with straw because a lot of congressmen wouldn't bother to spit their tobacco juices into tins, and so the entire floor was just disgusting. A lot of people would kind of be coming in and out of the chambers. They would be taking naps
at their desk. There was often regular threats of violence, so this was not a particularly esteemed branch of government at the moment.
The House scheduled the vote to decide the election for early February. Henry Clay was automatically eliminated because he got the fewest votes. But Clay wasn't the type of guy to sit on the sidelines. He threw his support in all his political capital behind Adams.
Clay admired Adams. They were radically different people. Clay was a Westerner and a card player, and a drinker and a carouser, and I'm sure he was the world's most charming person. We would have loved him if we met him. Adams was not. Adams was a prickly, bearish New England, high principled, high toned federalist.
Clay and Adams both wanted a strong centralized government. They wanted a central bank. They wanted the federal government to fund national infrastructure projects to find the east to the growing West. And they wanted tariffs to protect northern manufacturers from farm products.
And they didn't know what Jackson would do with all of those things. They didn't know if he would be pro union or would be just pro Tennessee or pro West.
Even though they agreed on so much, Clay wasn't always a fan of Adams. The two had been political rivals when both vied to be Monroe's Secretary of State. Now they had a common enemy.
Clay hated Jackson, maybe because they were both Westerners, and he also regarded them as a dangerous figure because he was a general, and since Washington, America hadn't elected a general as president, so he regarded him as what we would now call a man on horseback, like Napoleon.
Here's how Henry Clay put.
It, I cannot believe that killing twenty five hundred Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult and complicated duties of the Chief Magistry. So there was no way he was going to support Jackson period. He just could not stand him.
Adams knew that Clay, a congressman from Kentucky, could be an ally in the House vote, but he had to tread lightly. The two couldn't be seen doing anything that's smacked of scheming.
A complicated dance then ensued. Adams began to meet with people who clearly were proxies for Clay, who made it clear that if Adams could, and there was always a euphemism like treat mister Clay with the respect that he deserves, nobody was more specific than that that he would feel that it was right to support mister Adams.
In early January, just weeks before the House would decide the election, Clay visited Adams in person for the first time. Here's how Adams remembered it in his die.
Clay came to talk to me and we spoke frankly. He says of men and events, and he uses the expression of prospective events future events. Well, does that mean the future event of perhaps John Adams appointing Henry Clay as Secretary of State. We don't know.
The meeting would be one both men would regret for the rest of their lives. Within days, the partisan press and yes it was pretty rancorous, reported that Adams and Clay were engaged in a corrupt bargain. They were scheming to steal the election from Jackson. In his diary, John Quincy feared the tension surrounding the election was growing, spreading beyond Washington.
Letter from Philadelphia threatening organized opposition in civil war if Jackson is not chosen. This blustering as an air of desperation, but we must meet it.
Jackson's supporters became convinced that they had been robbed of a rightful victory, that there had been election fraud, that there was this deep stake ball trying to keep Jackson from the White House.
The fragile unity holding the nation together was on the brink of collapse. We'll have more after the break. Dawn broke cold and snowy on the February morning the House was set to decide the presidency. A long line of people, dressed in their finest clothes, brave the weather, camping outside the Capitol for hours. Many traveled days to get a front row seat for the political spectacle about to unfold.
And even though this was one of the most intense moments of John Quincy Adams's life, he avoided the commotions surrounding the vote.
The way that he dealt with that was to kind of ignore it and to try and go about his daily business. He was very strict with his physical health regimen, so he usually involved either along walk or swimming almost every day. He tried to approach it like any other day and be in the office and just treat it as a matter of state. Of course, that didn't really work, and we can all kind of guess where his brain probably was. But he tried, He really tried.
This wasn't the first time the House decided a presidential election. Still, nobody could predict how the vote would go down.
So the original constitution specified that in presidential elections, each elector would cast two votes. One in theory was a vote for the president, and one was a vote for the vice president. Under that system, however, it remained that if there was a tie, or if no one can it received a majority of the Electoral College votes, the election would go to the House of Representatives, and that is what happened in eighteen hundred. The election went to
the House. It took thirty six ballots for them to figure out that Thomas Jefferson would be the third president, thirty.
Six rounds of voting in the House to finally declare Thomas Jefferson president. While the build up to the eighteen twenty four election was long and arduous, the vote itself was simple. There were twenty four states at the time. The delegation from each state would cast a single vote for either Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams or William Crawford, but no one really saw Crawford as a threat.
Crawford was incredibly ill. There was uncertainty whether or not he would actually be able to serve out a full term, so that's not exactly putting the country on its strongest foot.
It all came down to a two way race between Jackson and Adams to capture an absolute majority of thirteen votes to win. Behind the scenes, Henry Clay was whipping delegations into the Adams camp, encouraging state delegates who had supported him to now vote for Adams.
Kentucky wanted Andrew Jackson to be president, but it was the congressional delegation that made that decision, and they chose to completely violate the will of the voters and cast their vote for Adams. They had become what we would nowadays call faithless electors.
So this is where we get the idea of a corrupt bargain. James Trupp says that Clay promised Adams the support of Kentucky's congressional delegates, even though the state obviously supported Jackson.
Once Kentucky had shifted, that began a series of other shifts. And so a series of these smaller states, Maryland as well, began to swing away from Jackson and towards Adams.
Thanks to Henry Clay, Adams won thirteen states in the first round of voting, a slim majority, but enough to win. An old friend and former colleague, Alexander Everett, ran to adams home on f Street with the news he won. He would become the first son of a president to become commander in chief. Later that night, President Monroe held a celebration in honor of President elect Adams. All of Washington was there.
So Jackson walks to the door with a lady on his arm, and there is Adams.
As the story goes, the crowd parted as Jackson approached Adams. Nobody knew what he might say or do. This was a man with a history of gunning down his rivals. A bullet still lies in his shoulder. When Jackson got to Adams, he said.
I give you my left hand for the right, as you see, is devoted to the fair. I hope you are very well, sir.
The gentility did not last. Just days after winning the House vote and becoming president, Adams nominated Clay, not Jackson, to be a Secretary of State.
Well, there was an immediate blowback right away. Jackson's supporters started chanting corruption.
Jackson was outraged Clay's ascension to Secretary of State was proof that he and Adams had in fact hatched a corrupt bargain.
The Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver. Was there ever witnessed such a bear faced corruption in any country before?
It created this sense that John Quincy Adams had stolen the presidency and Clay was the cynical inst whereby he had stolen that presidency, and Clay insisted he'd done nothing wrong. Is that we had nothing on his conscience? He says, something like these knaves can't even credit true innocence where it exists.
Adams did offer Jackson the War Department, but Jackson had no intention of taking the position. He was the rightful president. How could he work with the usurper Adams. Stoked by fire and fury, jackson supporters geared up for his next presidential run in eighteen twenty eight.
Immediately they started planning their revenge tour and the reelection campaign for Jackson. So what was already a very well organized organization became even more so, so they bulked up their newspapers. They started to build out their state infrastructure.
Newspapers ran wild, printing alternative facts claiming Adams stole the election, calling him an illegitimate president. The Democratic Republican Party splintered in two, laying the foundation for what would become the new Democratic Party and sending the nation into a deep and lasting division. Before Adams even took the oath of office, his presidency was facing unyielding opposition. Jacksonian lawmakers vowed to oppose all of Adam's objectives, pledging to make him a
one term president. On the next episode of Founding Sun.
It appears we live in evil times when those exalted to high, dignified, and honorable stations have abandoned the course dictated by truth and honor.
There were so many reasons why Adams failed as president that you almost could remove the legitimacy question and say he still would have failed.
He Founding Son is a curiosity podcast brought to you by iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. For help with this episode, we want to thank James Traub, author of John Quincy Adams Militant Spirit and Lindsay Stravinsky, author of The Cabinet, George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Our lead producer, story editor and sound designer is James Morrison. Our senior producer is Jessica Metzger. Our production manager is
Daisy Church. Fact checking by Adam Bisno. Jesse Niswanger mixed and mastered this episode. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon barr, El C. Crowley, and Jason English. Original music by me Bob Crawford. Additional scoring by Blue Sessions. John Quincy Adams is voiced by Patrick Warburton, Andrew Jackson is voiced by Nick Offerman. Luisa Adams is voiced by Gray Delisle. Additional voice in this episode provided by John King. Show art
designed by Darren Shock. Special thanks to John Higgins, Julia Chris gaw, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Mary Anne Peak with the National Park Service for letting us record John Quincy Adams's clock at Peacefield. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a five star rating in your podcast app. You can also check out other Curiosity podcasts to learn about history, pop culture, true crime, and more. This podcast was recorded under a SAG after a collective bargaining agreement.
I'm your host, Bob Crawford, Thanks for listening.
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