John Quincy Adams (July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American diplomat and politician who served as the sixth President of the United States from March 4, 1825 to March 4, 1829. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties.
Adams was the son of the second President John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams. He was a diplomat, involved in many international negotiations, and helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine as Secretary of State. As president he proposed a program of modernization and educational advancement, but was stymied by Congress.
Adams was elected a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts after leaving office, the only president ever to do so, serving for the last 17 years of his life. In the House he became a leading opponent of the Slave Power and argued that if a civil war ever broke out the president could abolish slavery by using his war powers, which Abraham Lincoln partially did during the American Civil War in the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.
Adams was born to John Adams and Abigail Adams in the section of the town of Braintree that is now Quincy, Massachusetts. At seven years, Adams witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill. In 1779 Adams began a Diary which he kept until just prior to his death in 1848. He first learned of the Declaration of Independence from the letters his father wrote his mother from the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
Much of Adams' youth was spent accompanying his father overseas. John Adams served as an American envoy to France from 1778 until 1779 and to the Netherlands from 1780 until 1782, and the younger Adams accompanied his father on these journeys.
Adams acquired an education at institutions such as Leiden University. For nearly three years, at the age of 14, he accompanied Francis Dana as a secretary on a mission to St. Petersburg, Russia, to obtain recognition of the new United States. He also spent time in Finland, Sweden and Denmark, and in 1804 published a travel report of Silesia.
During these years overseas, Adams gained a mastery of French and Dutch and a familiarity with German and other European languages. He entered Harvard College and graduated in 1788. He apprenticed as a lawyer with Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport, Massachusetts, from 1787 to 1789. He was admitted to the bar in 1791 and began practicing law in Boston.