John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People

According to this sparkling biography, John Quincy Adams both “reflect[ed] and transcend[ed] his famous parents,” just as he was both a product of his young country and a major force in its evolution from fledgling rebel alliance to continent-spanning behemoth to fractured nation riven by civil strife. Biographer Woods (LBJ) makes a long, primary source–rich examination of Adams’s formative years and early career, finding that his mother Abigail’s intellectual influence, his experiences during the Revolutionary War as a diplomat’s son, and his accomplishments as a diplomat himself (he brokered some the country’s most important early treaties) led him to a novel political position. His “goal,” according to Woods, was to “make [the republic] strong enough to... resolve its great contradiction,” slavery, which he thought could be accomplished through the addition of more free territory. Thus, he served as “a high priest to manifest destiny” but also an abolitionist “fellow traveler.” Woods pegs the tensions of this position as the cause of Adams’s failed presidency but also as the hallmark of his victorious final act as forceful antislavery congressman. Woods’s account especially shines when focusing on Adams’s marriage to Louisa Catherine Johnson; the devoted pair rivaled one another in intellect but also oversensitivity, making for entertaining reading (“Louisa pretended a headache for the privilege of being cross,” notes a typical Adams diary entry). It’s an immersive, winsome character study. (June)