John Quincy Adams

By Atlas MeyersThe 6th Presidency (1825–1829)

Length48m

Summary

John Quincy Adams was the most qualified man to ever hold the office, yet his presidency was a magnificent ruin. He was a prophet of the modern state who spoke a language of scientific advancement and centralized improvement that his countrymen refused to understand. We examine the years 1825 through 1829 as the friction point between the aristocratic republic of the Founders and the raw, populist democracy of the future. Adams stood on the fault line. His administration was not undone by incompetence, but by a legitimacy crisis that began before he took the oath. This is the story of a man who believed that governance was a science to be administered by the wise, only to be crushed by the realization that politics is a street fight won by the loud. We trace the paralysis of a president who offered the nation roads, canals, and "lighthouses of the skies," only to be met with the paranoid accusation that he was a tyrant attempting to enslave the common man.