The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics by William J. Cooper

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics by William J. Cooper Ben Wynne The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics. By William J. Cooper. (New York and London: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018. Pp. xvi, 526. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 978-1-63149-495-6.) In a departure from his consistently fine work on southern history, William J. Cooper has produced in The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics an outstanding biography of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. The well-written tome is aptly named, giving readers a portrait of one of American history’s best-credentialed statesmen, whose story is sometimes diminished by the shadow of both the older founding leaders he followed and the wave of social and political change that ushered in the Jacksonian era. Cooper offers a balanced treatment of Adams’s life in the context of the turbulent times in which he lived. Cooper portrays Adams’s conduct against a backdrop of national growing pains, including the increasing “democratization of American politics for white men” and the relentless progress of slavery as the nation’s most divisive issue (p. xii). The strengths of this book are many. Adams was involved in all the important debates of his era, as James Monroe’s secretary of state, as president, and as a United States congressman after his term in the White House. Cooper does a wonderful job weaving Adams’s views into the historical fabric of the times and describing his relationships with powerful political contemporaries such as Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun. Of particular [End Page 896] interest are treatments of Adams’s work on the Adams-Onis Treaty with Spain and the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, along with Adams’s views of the Missouri Compromise as an ominous harbinger of things to come rather than an agreement that would help bring calm to the slavery debate. Adams was unique among American presidents in that, rather than retire from politics after his term as president, he continued to contribute significantly to public discourse through lengthy service in the U.S. House of Representatives. There he cast the South’s increasingly angry rhetoric promoting slavery and states’ rights as a “simmering brew of political evil” and became increasingly pessimistic regarding the immediate future of the country (p. 268). Guided by a firm belief in American exceptionalism before his presidency, he lived long enough to see the national fabric begin to unravel, dimming, in his view, the original vision of the Founders. In addition to chronicling major national events during turbulent times, this work also reminds readers of a towering political figure in America who has never quite achieved the historical status that he surely deserves. In many ways John Quincy Adams was indeed the last Founding Father—or “Founding Father by extension,” as Cooper puts it (p. 3). As John Adams’s son, he grew up in the household of a president and surrounded by leading members of the Revolutionary generation, men he looked up to and whose enlightened vision for the country he admired. Harvard-educated and well-traveled as a young man, there was probably no person better prepared to carry the Founders’ ideals into the next generation than John Quincy Adams. Yet he was unable to sustain his presidency for two terms against the swell of Jacksonian democracy that took the country in a new direction. Overall, Cooper’s work helps define Adams’s legacy and, one hopes, will give readers a chance to finally recognize this “lost Founding Father” and appreciate his contributions to his era. Anyone interested in antebellum American history, political history, or presidential biography would do well to add this book to their collection. Ben Wynne University of North Georgia Copyright © 2019 The Southern Historical Association