He spoke eight languages, skinny-dipped in the Potomac every morning, and may have been the smartest man ever to occupy the Oval Office. Before John Quincy Adams became the sixth President of the United States — serving from 1825 to 1829 — he led one of the most remarkable pre-presidential lives in American history.
A Founding Family
John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767, in what is now Quincy, Massachusetts, the eldest son of John Adams — the second President — and First Lady Abigail Adams. Growing up in one of the most prominent families in the young republic meant that history had a way of finding him early.
At just 10 years old, young John Quincy sailed to Europe with his father, who was serving on American diplomatic missions in France and the Netherlands. By the time he was 14, he had already outgrown being a spectator — he traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he served as secretary and translator for an American diplomat. He reportedly spoke eight foreign languages, more than any other U.S. president, and he remains the only president who could converse in Russian.
From Harvard to the Halls of Diplomacy
After returning to the United States, Adams studied at Harvard and built a successful legal practice in Boston. He was deliberate about establishing his independence — professionally and financially — from his famous family. He initially resisted politics, preferring to focus on the law. But the new republic had other plans.
In 1794, President George Washington appointed Adams as U.S. Minister to the Netherlands. When his father became president, he was elevated to Minister to Prussia. After being recalled in 1801 by the incoming Jefferson administration, Massachusetts Federalists arranged his election to the U.S. Senate in 1802. Then, in 1809, he was appointed the first official U.S. representative to Russia — a country he had first visited as a teenage translator some 25 years earlier.
The Making of an Architect of American Foreign Policy
Adams’s most consequential pre-presidential role came as Secretary of State under President James Monroe, a position he held for the entirety of Monroe’s eight-year presidency, from 1817 to 1825. It was arguably the most accomplished tenure in the history of that office.
As Secretary of State, Adams negotiated the treaty with Spain that allowed the United States to acquire Florida. He established the present U.S.-Canadian border stretching from Minnesota to the Rockies. And he was a principal architect of the Monroe Doctrine, the bold declaration that the Western Hemisphere was closed to further European colonization — a cornerstone of American foreign policy for generations.
The Most Controversial Election of the 19th Century
The presidential election of 1824 was unlike any other. John Quincy Adams faced off against Andrew Jackson in a four-way race that produced no majority winner in the Electoral College. It remains the only presidential election decided by the U.S. House of Representatives. Despite Jackson having won more popular votes and more electoral votes, the House named Adams president — a outcome Jackson’s supporters called a “corrupt bargain” and one that would fuel bitter political rivalries for years.
Adams thus became the first son of a former U.S. president to himself become president — a distinction that wouldn’t be repeated for 176 years, until George W. Bush followed his father, George H.W. Bush, into the White House.
A Man of Habits, Journals, and (Very) Cold Water
As president, Adams kept a rigorous personal routine. Every morning, he reportedly walked to the Potomac River, stripped down, and went for a skinny dip. We know this not from rumor, but because Adams wrote about it himself — in the extraordinary daily journal he kept from age 12 until his death at 80.
He was also something of a style trendsetter, though perhaps not by intention. Adams was the first U.S. president to abandon the long, powdered wig in favor of a modern, short, natural haircut. He was also among the first to regularly wear long trousers rather than the knee breeches that had been fashionable in the previous century. Some historians have suggested that John Quincy Adams may have had the highest IQ of any U.S. president — which, given the competition, is no small claim.
He Wasn’t Done Yet
After a brief retirement following his single presidential term, Adams did something no former president had ever done — or has done since. He ran for and won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1830, and served there until his death in 1848. He collapsed from a stroke at his desk on the House floor and died two days later.
He remains the only former president ever elected to the House of Representatives.
Not bad for a 10-year-old who once crossed the Atlantic to watch his father change history.