Whereas: Stories from the People’s House

Edition for Educators—John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts

Since the First Congress opened in 1789, more than 11,000 people have served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Most served capably for a few terms and returned to their communities. But some lawmakers have left towering legacies and are remembered for their legislative prowess, path-breaking careers, and bold personalities. These Members of Congress, including powerful Speakers of the House, strong-willed legislators, trailblazing Representatives, and policy specialists, qualify as “Giants of the House.”

John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts remains the only President elected to the U.S. House of Representatives after his service as chief executive. When Adams took his seat in the House in 1831, he had already enjoyed a long career in some of the federal government’s most powerful posts. The son of the second U.S. President, Adams brought a stubbornness and a lifetime of experience to his job as Representative. Adams served for 17 years in the House, representing his Massachusetts district from 1831 until his death in 1848. From both committee rooms and the House Floor, Adams argued ceaselessly against the expansion of slavery and remained steadfast in upholding the right of the American people to petition their government. Thanks in large part to the voluminous diary entries he left behind, historians enjoy ample access to Adams’s various musings and frustrations during one of the most tumultuous periods in House history.

Relying on a wealth of material published on the History, Art and Archives website, this month’s Edition for Educators highlights the life and congressional career of Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts.

Son, Senator, Secretary, President

PEOPLE PROFILE—John Adams of Massachusetts
John Adams was one of the most famous men in early America. As a Member of the Continental Congress, Adams proposed George Washington to head the Continental Army and helped write the Declaration of Independence. While his new nation grappled with the Articles of Confederation, Adams represented American interests abroad in France, Holland, and England. He returned to the United States in 1788 to serve as the first Vice President under Washington. When Washington declined to run for a third term in 1796, Adams won election as the second President of the United States. Adams, a Boston lawyer of esteem long before joining the Continental Congress, ensured his children received excellent educations. His oldest son John Quincy Adams was schooled in Europe before following his father’s path through Harvard College and into law in Boston and diplomacy abroad.

HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHT—The House of Representatives Elected John Quincy Adams as President
On February 9, 1825, the House of Representatives elected Secretary of State John Quincy Adams as President. Following an inconclusive Electoral College result, in which no candidate won a majority, the House performed its constitutionally prescribed role of deciding the 1824 presidential election. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee had won the popular vote and commanded 99 electoral votes. He was followed in the electoral tally by Adams (84), Treasury Secretary William Crawford (41), and Speaker of the House Henry Clay (37). Despite Jackson’s lead following Election Day, lawmakers in the House elected Adams President on the first ballot.

From the White House to the House of Representatives

HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHT—The Election of John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts
The 1830 midterm election made Adams the first and only former President to be elected to the House of Representatives. Adams sought a second term as President in 1828 but lost to former Representative and Senator Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. Two years later, Adams handily won election to the House to represent a district encompassing southeastern Massachusetts in the 22nd Congress (1831–1833). Prior to the election, Adams reflected on his candidacy for the House in his journal, “no person could be degraded by serving the people as a Representative in Congress . . . [nor] would an ex-President of the United States be degraded by serving as a selectman of his town, if elected thereto by the people.”

BLOG—“Planting Laws and Institutions”: The Election of Representative John Quincy Adams
On November 6, 1830, former United States President John Quincy Adams spent the day at his family’s farm near Quincy, Massachusetts, planting trees. On the edge of what would become the orchard, he laid out five rows of chestnuts, oaks, and shagbark hickories. Adams ate lunch at home and went back to the farm “to lay out the ground for the Orchard,” all the while debating what else he would plant there. Toward the end of the day, he read the evening newspapers and nonchalantly noted in his diary that the news had “brought the last returns of the Congressional Election for the District of Plymouth. Twenty-two Towns gave 2565 votes, of which 1817 were for John Quincy Adams, 373 for Arad Thompson (Jacksonite), 279 for William Baylies (federal), and 96 scattering votes.” The final line in Adams’s diary that day: “I am a member elect of the twenty-second Congress.”

Antislavery Crusader

HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHT—The House “Gag Rule”
On May 26, 1836, during the 24th Congress (1835–1837), the U.S. House of Representatives instituted the “gag rule,” the first instance of what would become a traditional practice forbidding the House from considering antislavery petitions. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts raised the first and most impassioned objections to the procedure. Adams shouted during the roll call vote, “I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States.” For the next four Congresses, Adams fervently fought against the gag rule, declaring it a restriction on free speech. Despite his efforts, the House successfully reintroduced the gag rule each Congress until Adams finally mustered enough votes to repeal it on December 3, 1844.

HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHT—A Motion to Censure Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts
On February 7, 1842, the House voted 106 to 93 to table a motion censuring Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts for antislavery agitation. Weeks earlier, Adams had masterfully manipulated the public debate over slavery by baiting proslavery Representatives into a prolonged dialogue. Because the House had instituted the “gag rule” in 1836—preventing floor discussion of abolition petitions—Adams manufactured a debate by submitting a petition, allegedly drafted by a group of Georgians, to have Adams removed as Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman. (Historians doubt the authenticity of the petition—some implying that Adams or one of his allies authored it). Through this sleight of hand, Adams used the defense of his chairmanship to hold the floor for days delivering a far-ranging harangue against “slave mongers,” as one observer recalled, “till slaveholding [and] slave trading . . . absolutely quailed and howled under his dissecting knife,” inspiring the effort to censure Adams.

“Old Man Eloquent"

HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHT—Congressman and Poet John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts
A man of many talents, Congressman John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts was a poet as well as a statesman. During his first term as Representative, Adams penned the epic poem, “Dermot MacMorrogh, or The Conquest of Ireland.” Adams once confessed, “Could I have chosen my own genius and condition, I should have made myself a great poet.” Another poem, “Fragments From an Unfinished Manuscript: An Epistle To the Muse of History,” captured a poignant moment in his House career. While seated at his desk in the old House Chamber (now National Statuary Hall), Adams wrote the poem honoring Clio, the Greek muse of history. He was inspired by a marble clock, located over the north door of the chamber, depicting Clio riding in the “Winged Car of History” and recording the deeds of Congress.

HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHT—The First Parliamentary Procedure to Limit House Floor Debate
On July 7, 1841, the House adopted the first rule intended to limit the time a Representative could speak in debate on the House Floor. Concerns about long speeches impeding House business had dated to at least 1820, when the irascible John Randolph of Virginia held the House Floor for a four-hour speech on the Missouri Compromise bill. This 1841 rule, adopted on the motion of Lott Warren of Georgia, required that “no member shall be allowed to speak more than one hour to any question under debate.” It passed the House by a vote of 111 to 75—with John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts (known as “Old Man Eloquent” by his peers) among those dissenting. Warren’s amendment, however, only temporarily altered the House Rules. According to Hinds’ Precedents the one-hour limit did not become a standing rule of the House until June 1842.

BLOG—Father Knows Best
Shortly after noon on an unseasonably mild Thursday in late February 1842, a hush fell over the House as the venerable John Quincy Adams creakily arose from his chair. Just weeks earlier, the House had considered censuring the gray-haired Massachusetts Congressman whom many knew as “Old Man Eloquent” to punish him for manufacturing a crippling debate about the evils of slavery. But on this day Adams eulogized North Carolina’s Lewis Williams, whom colleagues revered as the “Father of the House”—the Member with the longest continuous service. The prior afternoon Williams had succumbed to pneumonia. His abrupt passing shocked colleagues and ended an unbroken run of House service reaching back to 1815—far longer than any of his peers in that 27th Congress (1841-1843), Adams included.

Mr. Chairman

BLOG—A Mob in Search of a Speaker
During the chaotic first two weeks of the 26th Congress (1839–1841) in December 1839, three separate men presided over the House of Representatives: Clerk Hugh Garland of the previous Congress, Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts in an entirely invented position, and finally Robert M.T. Hunter of Virginia, the youngest Speaker of the House ever to hold the office.

BLOG—The Apportionment Act of 1842: Legal, When Convenient
Throughout his 17-year career in the House, Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts existed in a state of almost perpetual irritation. Whether it was debate over tariff rates or his fight against slavery, the House’s daily business routinely left Adams exasperated but nevertheless resolute that he was right and everyone else was wrong. Adams was in no mood then, when on June 25, 1842, a curious decision by President John Tyler stretched Adams’s already short patience to its breaking point. After failing to convince the House to take up his bill providing back payments to the American victims of French privateers, Adams sat in disbelief as John Tyler Jr., the President’s son and aide, delivered a message to the House from his father explaining his decision to begrudgingly sign the Apportionment Act of 1842.

RECORD—Smithsonian Fund Stocks
After his death in 1829, British scientist James Smithson left $500,000 to the United States to found an institution dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. The House Select Committee on the Bequest of James Smithson, chaired by Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, determined what should be done with the windfall. This House record shows how the United States Treasury used these funds while the select committee worked. The Secretary of the Treasury primarily invested the bequest in the states of Arkansas, Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio, with a rate of interest around six percent. As this record shows, Smithson’s capital temporarily supported the Detroit and Pontiac Railroad Company and canals in Ohio, among other economic and infrastructural projects. In 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was officially created by law.

Death and Legacy

BLOG—The Last Hours of John Quincy Adams
The morning of February 21, 1848, was bright and clear. Representative John Quincy Adams left his house on F Street for the Capitol for the last time. Age had made him frail and a little hunched over in the winter air, but still with a piercing gaze. Adams knew he was nearing the end of his career. But he likely did not suspect that his last hours in the Capitol would become a national media event, driven by brand-new technologies and nostalgia that Adams represented.

HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHT—The Death of Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts
On February 21, 1848, Representative and former President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts suffered a fatal stroke on the House Floor. Members moved the 80-year-old former President to the Rotunda for fresher air and then relocated him to the Speaker's Room (the present-day Lindy Claiborne Boggs Congressional Women’s Reading Room). Adams mustered the strength to thank the Officers of the House for their service. He then lapsed into a coma and died two days later. A funeral to celebrate the life of the great sage took place on February 26, 1848, in the House Chamber which was attended by political friends and foes alike. Until arrangements could be made to move his remains to the family burial grounds in Quincy, Massachusetts, his body was laid to rest in Congressional Cemetery. A cenotaph marker remains in the cemetery to honor the former President.

Extra Resources

Learn more about the career of John Quincy Adams as a Senator from Massachusetts, U.S. Secretary of State, and the sixth President of the United States—the opening acts to his tenure as Congressman from Massachusetts.

John Quincy Adams kept a diary for much of his life, which is publicly available online through a number of databases, including the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Library of Congress.

This is part of a series of blog posts for educators highlighting the resources available on History, Art & Archives of the U.S. House of Representatives. For lesson plans, fact sheets, glossaries, and other materials for the classroom, see the website's Education section.