Author: William Lee Miller
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679768440
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 594
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Book Description
In the 1830s slavery was so deeply entrenched that it could not even be discussed in Congress, which had enacted a "gag rule" to ensure that anti-slavery petitions would be summarily rejected. This stirring book chronicles the parliamentary battle to bring "the peculiar institution" into the national debate, a battle that some historians have called "the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy." The campaign to make slavery officially and respectably debatable was waged by John Quincy Adams who spent nine years defying gags, accusations of treason, and assassination threats. In the end he made his case through a combination of cunning and sheer endurance. Telling this story with a brilliant command of detail, Arguing About Slavery endows history with majestic sweep, heroism, and moral weight. "Dramatic, immediate, intensely readable, fascinating and often moving."--New York Times Book Review
Author: James Traub
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465028276
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 641
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Book Description
Drawing on Adams' diary, letters, and writings, chronicles the diplomat and president's numerous achievements and failures, revealing his unwavering moral convictions, brilliance, unyielding spirit, and political courage.
Author: Fred Kaplan
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062199323
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 571
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Book Description
“There is much to praise in this extensively researched book, which is certainly one of the finest biographies of a sadly underrated man. . . . [Kaplan is] a master historian and biographer. . . . If he could read this biography, Adams would be satisfied that he had been fairly dealt with at last.” —Carol Berkin, Washington Post In this fresh and illuminating biography, Fred Kaplan, the acclaimed author of Lincoln, brings into focus the dramatic life of John Quincy Adams—the little-known and much-misunderstood sixth president of the United States and the first son of John and Abigail Adams—and reveals how Adams' inspiring, progressive vision guided his life and helped shape the course of America. Kaplan draws on a trove of unpublished archival material to trace Adams' evolution from his childhood during the Revolutionary War to his brilliant years as Secretary of State to his time in the White House and beyond. He examines Adams' myriad sides: the public and private man, the statesman and writer, the wise thinker and passionate advocate, the leading abolitionist and fervent federalist. In these ways, Adams was a predecessor of Lincoln and, later, FDR and Obama. This sweeping biography makes clear how Adams' forward-thinking values, his definition of leadership, and his vision for the nation's future is as much about twenty-first-century America as it is about Adams' own time. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, John Quincy Adams paints a rich portrait of this brilliant leader and his vision for a young nation.
Author: Carole Fink
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521406710
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
A full biography of one of the great historians for the twentieth century.
Author: Howard Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190281324
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
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Book Description
This volume presents the first full-scale treatment of the only instance in history where African blacks, seized by slave dealers, won their freedom and returned home. Jones describes how, in 1839, Joseph Cinqué led a revolt on the Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, in the Caribbean. The seizure of the ship by an American naval vessel near Montauk, Long Island, the arrest of the Africans in Connecticut, and the Spanish protest against the violation of their property rights created an international controversy. The Amistad affair united Lewis Tappan and other abolitionists who put the "law of nature" on trial in the United States by their refusal to accept a legal system that claimed to dispense justice while permitting artificial distinctions based on race or color. The mutiny resulted in a trial before the U.S. Supreme Court that pitted former President John Quincy Adams against the federal government. Jones vividly recaptures this compelling drama--the most famous slavery case before Dred Scott--that climaxed in the court's ruling to free the captives and allow them to return to Africa.
Author: Paul C. Nagel
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307828190
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 636
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Book Description
February 21, 1848, the House of Representatives, Washington D.C.: Congressman John Quincy Adams, rising to speak, suddenly collapses at his desk; two days later, he dies in the Speaker’s chamber. The public mourning that followed, writes Paul C. Nagel, “exceeded anything previously seen in America. Forgotten was his failed presidency and his often cold demeanor. It was the memory of an extraordinary human being—one who in his last years had fought heroically for the right of petition and against a war to expand slavery—that drew a grateful people to salute his coffin in the Capitol and to stand by the railroad tracks as his bier was transported from Washington to Boston.” Nagel probes deeply into the psyche of this cantankerous, misanthropic, erudite, hardworking son of a former president whose remarkable career spanned many offices: minister to Holland, Russia, and England, U.S. senator, secretary of state, president of the United States (1825-1829), and, finally, U.S. representative (the only ex-president to serve in the House). On the basis of a thorough study of Adams’ seventy-year diary, among a host of other documents, the author gives us a richer account than we have yet had of JQA’s life—his passionate marriage to Louisa Johnson, his personal tragedies (two sons lost to alcoholism), his brilliant diplomacy, his recurring depression, his exasperating behavior—and shows us why, in the end, only Abraham Lincoln’s death evoked a great out-pouring of national sorrow in nineteenth-century America. We come to see how much Adams disliked politics and hoped for more from life than high office; how he sought distinction in literacy and scientific endeavors, and drew his greatest pleasure from being a poet, critic, translator, essayist, botanist, and professor of oratory at Harvard; how tension between the public and private Adams vexed his life; and how his frustration kept his masked and aloof (and unpopular). Nagel’s great achievement, in this first biography of America’s sixth president in a quarter century, is finally to portray Adams in all his talent and complexity.
Author: James E. Lewis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1461665647
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 190
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Book Description
This new book focuses on John Quincy Adams's extensive role in foreign policy, including his years as secretary of state and as president. Brief but thorough, John Quincy Adams: Policymaker for the Union analyzes Adams's foreign policy accomplishments during key moments in American history, including the Rush-Bagot Agreement, the Transcontinental Treaty, the recognition of the Spanish-American republics, and the Monroe Doctrine. At the same time, the book shows that Adams was far less successful than many historians suggest. John Quincy Adams: Policymaker for the Union focuses on Adams's ideals of the centrality of the union to American happiness, the necessity of federal action to protect the union, and the indivisibility of foreign and domestic concerns. This book's examination of these three points casts new light on the logic behind many of Adams's accomplishments and also exposes the sources of some of his failures. This is the first study to examine how Adams's views ultimately led to his failure as a policymaker. This book is ideal for courses in diplomatic history, American history, and American political history.
Author: David Waldstreicher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199947961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
In the final years of his political career, President John Quincy Adams was well known for his objections to slavery, with rival Henry Wise going so far as to label him "the acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of southern slavery that ever existed." As a young statesman, however, he supported slavery. How did the man who in 1795 told a British cabinet officer not to speak to him of "the Virginians, the Southern people, the democrats," whom he considered "in no other light than as Americans," come to foretell "a grand struggle between slavery and freedom"? How could a committed expansionist, who would rather abandon his party and lose his U.S. Senate seat than attack Jeffersonian slave power, later come to declare the Mexican War the "apoplexy of the Constitution," a hijacking of the republic by slaveholders? What changed? Entries from Adams's personal diary, more extensive than that of any American statesman, reveal a highly dynamic and accomplished politician in engagement with one of his generation's most challenging national dilemmas. Expertly edited by David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason, John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery offers an unusual perspective on the dramatic and shifting politics of slavery in the early republic, as it moved from the margins to the center of public life and from the shadows to the substance of Adams's politics. The editors provide a lucid introduction to the collection as a whole and frame the individual documents with brief and engaging insights, rendering both Adams's life and the controversies over slavery into a mutually illuminating narrative. By juxtaposing Adams's personal reflections on slavery with what he said-and did not say-publicly on the issue, the editors offer a nuanced portrait of how he interacted with prevailing ideologies during his consequential career and life. John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the complicated politics of slavery that set the groundwork for the Civil War.
Author: Leonard L. Richards
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
This covers the lasts years of John Quincy Adams in his congressional career in great detail.
Author: Harlow G. Unger
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN: 030682129X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 387
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Book Description
From a leading Founding Fathers historian, a masterful biography of a towering figure in the American nation's formative years.
