He was born in 1767, a subject of the British Empire, and died in 1848, a citizen of the United States and a member of Congress in company with Abraham Lincoln. In his dramatic career he had known George Washington and Benjamiin Franklin, La Fayette of France, Alexander I of Russia, and Castlereagh of Great Britain. He had both collaborated and quarrelled with Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster. In his lifetime Americans had fought for and established their independence, adopted a Constitution, fought two wars with Great Britain and one with Mexico. They had expanded south to the Rio Grande and west to the Pacific. At the time of his death, Adams was seen as a living connection between the present and past of the young republic and his passing severed one of the nation's last ties with its founding generation. As son of the second president of the United States, father of the minister to the Court of St. James, and grandfather to author Henry Adams, John Quincy Adams was part of an American dynasty. In his own career as secretary of state, President, senator, and congressman, Adams was as an actor in some of the most dramatic events of the nineteenth century. In this concise biography, Lynn Hudson Parsons masterfully chronicles the life of one of America's most absorbing figures. From the day in 1778 when, as a boy, he accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission to France, to his last years as an eloquent , cantankerous opponent of this country's foreign and domestic policies, Adams was rarely detached from public affairs. And yet, this biography reveals Adams as a man never truly at home anywhere-in Washington he was stubborn and reclusive, in Europe he was a phlegmatic ideologue, a bulldog among spaniels. His story parallels America's own.

About the Author
Lynn Hudson Parsons is professor of history at State University of New York College at Brockport. He is author of several articles on John Quincy Adams and his family, and compiler of John Quincy Adams: A Bibliography.

Reviews
John Quincy Adams is a beautifully written, well-balanced, and remarkably complete biography of Adams. Its lively account of his long career as diplomat, senator, president, and congressman, and as scholar, poet, and patron of science should make clear to every American his prominent and then commanding role in the first seven decades of this nation's life. Parsons' book should immediately take its place as the best one-volume biography of this great American. -- Richard Alan Ryerson, editor in chief, The Adams Papers
Lynn Parsons has ventured into the daunting record left by John Quincy Adams and reproduced a remarkable portrait of Adams and his times. Thorough, fair, and authentic, this full-scale biography is written with grace and clarity. It is as engaging to read as it is useful and provocative. -- Edith Gelles, author of Portia: The World of Abigail Adams
John Quincy Adams continues to be ranked as our greatest of all secretaries of state, and Lynn Hudson Parsons has given us a superb, succinct, engagingly written biography that not only tells us about this incredible person, but about his America as it became modernized politically and economically-and as it, and he, became increasingly haunted by the specter of slavery. -- Walter LaFeber
Lynn H. Parsons, who has been working on Adams for many years, provides a very readable general biography. -- Richard Samuelson * Claremont Review of Books *
A beautifully written, well-balanced, and complete biography. -- Richard Alan Ryerson, editor-in-chief, The Adams Papers



Book Information
ISBN 9780945612599
Author Lynn Hudson Parsons
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 230mm * 154mm * 22mm