He almost never consulted his wife on matters involving her and their children. As a lover, husband, and father he was always dutiful, but even by the patriarchal standards of his era often very difficult. John Quincy had great difficulty expressing his feelings even offering simple words of consolation to a friend who had lost a child was a struggle. John Quincy was harder and more stern than his father and lacked much of his father’s redeeming warmth and humor. Whatever problems the senior Adamses had with their relationship, they paled next to those experienced by John Quincy and Louisa. This Adams marriage was very different from that of John and Abigail. Although we have as yet no studies of John Quincy and Louisa as a couple, juxtaposing these two books gives us an excellent picture of what an intriguing and complicated marriage they had. For that reason Louisa Thomas’s smoothly written life of Louisa is bound to seem newer and more remarkable than Traub’s life of John Quincy, no matter how ably written, complete, and fair-minded it is. Adams, in 2014, we still know much less about Louisa Adams than we know about her husband, John Quincy Adams, who has been blessed with a recent spate of biographies, this one by James Traub being one of the best. Heffron’s abbreviated biography, Louisa Catherine: The Other Mrs. What were the odds that their brilliant son John Quincy would marry a woman who was as bright, as interesting, and as able a writer as Abigail? John Quincy and Louisa haven’t acquired much of the acclaim that John and Abigail have, but they are an equally fascinating couple.Īlthough Louisa Adams has begun to attract attention, especially with the publication in 2013 of the two-volume edition of her Diary and Autobiographical Writings and the appearance of the late Margery M. We have always considered John and Abigail Adams as the most famous couple of the Revolutionary generation-each of them smart, observant, and a superb letter-writer. After Clay threw the election to Adams, Adams made Clay his secretary of state.Louisa Adams miniature painting by John Thomas Barber Beaumont, 1797 The election then went to the House of Representatives.Īdams beat Jackson by making a deal with Henry Clay, then Speaker of the House. Jackson still ran against Adams for president, and he even won the popular vote in a three-way Electoral College tie. In March, her husband recorded they’d had 235 visitors in their home that month alone. The National Republican printed a poem in her honor, which ended, Louisa filled the house with flowers, hired the marine band and served a lavish buffet. They even built pillars to keep the floor from caving in. Louisa invited a thousand people to the house on F Street, so many they had to remove all the furniture and doors. They might even persuade him to run as vice president. Plus, by “honoring” Jackson, the Adamses hoped to win his endorsement for president. On the social front, Jackson’s backwoods wife, Rachel, couldn’t hope to compete with the worldly Louisa. The purpose of the party was ostensibly to honor Jackson, but really to eclipse him. 8, 1824, the ninth anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. John Quincy Adams by George Peter Alexander Healy Louisa Adams’ Ball to End All Balls They moved to Washington, D.C., and eventually bought the house Monroe had lived in on F (now I) Street. In 1817, President James Monroe appointed John Quincy Adams secretary of state. During their marriage she had 15 pregnancies and delivered three sons and a daughter, who died in infancy. Louisa followed her husband to his diplomatic postings in Russia, Ghent and London. Financial troubles plagued the Adamses for the rest of their lives. Around the time of the wedding, Louisa’s father told John Quincy he had lost most of his money. “a man of extraordinary talents…his natural disposition was ardent and impetuous, but a perpetual watchfulness over these natural defects, had taught him to master them completely, and it was only those who were the most constantly with him, who were aware that occasions could arise in which the internal volcano would sometimes produce an eruption that was short but violent in its explosion. She was a charming, fashionable, hot-blooded socialite. The two probably couldn’t have differed more. She had been born in London and spent much of her childhood in France as the daughter of a wealthy American merchant and diplomat. He was a rising young diplomat, the son of the vice president of the United States.
0 kommentar(er)
