John Quincy Adams Read Free

myself for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year . . . that it may contribute to my advancement in wisdom and virtue. . . . You must soon come to the age when you must govern
yourself. . . . You know some of your duties and . . . it is in the Bible that you must learn them and from the Bible how to practice them. Those duties are to God, your fellow creatures and you yourself. 5
    Writing to his son made John Quincy regret having rejected the Supreme Court appointment. His rash decision would mean remaining in Europe, apart from his boys, indefinitely. He wrote to his parents declaring, “I can no longer reconcile either to my feelings or to my sense of duty their absence from me. I must go to them or they must come to me.” 6
    In the spring of 1811, Secretary of State Robert Smith resigned. From the first, he had proved himself incompetent and all too cozy with the British ambassador, who promised an end to the British blockade of American ports if President James Madison ended the embargo on British trade. After Madison responded accordingly, the British government repudiated their minister and recalled him from the United States, leaving an embarrassed President puzzling whether to reimpose the embargo and risk plunging the nation into another recession.
    President Madison dismissed Smith and appointed James Monroe secretary of state. Experienced in foreign affairs, Monroe had represented the nation in both Britain and France and, next to John Quincy, was the nation’s foremost European affairs expert. The appointment, however, outraged New England’s Federalists, who accused Madison of perpetuating the “Virginia dynasty” by giving Monroe an office that had become the stepladder to the presidency. Federalist newspapers called Madison and Monroe James I and James II. The British were even less pleased. Monroe was as outspoken a Francophile as his mentor Jefferson, and the British responded to his appointment by attacking an American ship within sight of New York and impressing a seaman. Under orders to protect American ships, the frigate President countered by attacking the British ship Little Belt, killing nine and wounding twenty-three. When the new British minister demanded an explanation, Monroe replied angrily that American ships had as much right to recover impressed seamen as British ships had to
impress them in the first place. He then renewed American demands that Britain cease depredations on American shipping and respect the rights of neutral ships carrying noncontraband.
    When the British refused, Congress declared British impressment and ship seizures an affront to the nation’s rights and honor. On April 1, 1812, Madison went to Congress and requested a sixty-day reinstatement of the embargo on British trade; ten days later, Congress authorized him to prepare for war and call up 100,000 militiamen for six months’ service.
    War fever was infecting Europe as well. After Russia refused to cease trading with Britain, Napoléon ordered French troops to the Russian border. Fearful of an imminent invasion, foreign diplomats sent their wives and daughters home from St. Petersburg, leaving Louisa Adams and her sister Kitty as the only foreign ladies in the diplomatic corps—and Kitty as the only target for the czar’s amorous glances. In mid-January 1812, however, the Adamses—and the czar—noticed a decided change in Kitty’s demeanor. She was pregnant—not by the czar, but by John Quincy’s nephew Billy Smith, Nabby’s son. John Quincy was irate, and after he had a “very solemn conversation” with his nephew, Smith married Kitty Johnson in a private ceremony at the Adams house in early February.
    Tragedy marred their marriage from the start, however, and seemed to envelop the rest of the family. Kitty’s baby was stillborn. Then the two newlyweds learned that Billy’s mother, John Quincy’s older