tenant-colonel. He was promoted captain of 1st dragoons, 30 Nov., 1856, but resigned 81 May, 1861, and became a confederate brigadier-general.
ADAMS, John Folsom, clergyman, b. in Stratham, N. H., 28 May, 1790; d. in Greenland, N. H., 11 June, 1881. lie began to preach in 1812, and joined the New England Methodist conference. He served as a circuit rider in the backwoods of Maine, and so distinguished himself by zeal and ability that he was repeatedly assigned as presiding elder to important stations at Boston and Lynn, and the
larger towns of eastern New England. In the anti-slavery agitation he took a prominent part in favor of emancipation, and he was four times chosen as a delegate to the general conference.
ADAMS, John Quincy, sixth president of the
United States, b. in Braintree, Mass., 11 July,
1767; d. in Washington, D. C., 23 Feb., 1848. He
was named for his mother's grandfather, John
Quincy. In his eleventh year he accompanied his
father to France, and was sent to school near Paris,
where his proficiency in the French language and
other studies soon became conspicuous. In the
following year he returned to America, and back
again to France with his father, whom, in August,
1780, he accompanied to Holland. After a few
months at school in Amsterdam, he entered the
university of Leyden. Two years afterward John
Adams's secretary of legation, Francis Dana, was
appointed minister to Russia, and the boy
accompanied him as private secretary. After a stay of
fourteen months, as Catharine's government refused to
recognize Mr. Dana as minister, young Adams left
St. Petersburg and travelled alone through
Sweden, Denmark, and northern Germany to France,
spending six months in the journey. Arriving in
Paris, he found his father busy with the negotiation
of the treaty of peace between Great Britain
and the United States, and was immediately set to
work as secretary, and aided in drafting the papers
that “dispersed all possible doubt of the independence
of his country.” In 1785, when his father
was appointed minister to England, he decided not
to stay with him in London, but to return at once
to Massachusetts in order to complete his
education at Harvard college. For an American career
he believed an American education to be best fitted.
Considering the immediate sacrifice of pleasure
involved, it was a remarkably wise decision in a lad
of eighteen. But Adams's character was already
fully formed; he was what he remained throughout
his life, a Puritan of the sternest and most
uncompromising sort, who seemed to take a grim
enjoyment in the performance of duty, especially
when disagreeable. Returning home, he was
graduated at Harvard college in 1788, and then studied
law in the office of Theophilus Parsons, afterward
chief justice of Massachusetts. In 1791 he was
admitted to the Suffolk bar, and began the practice
of law, the tedium of which he relieved by writing
occasional articles for the papers. Under the
signature of “Publicola” he criticised some positions
taken by Thomas Paine in his “Rights of Man”;
and these articles, when republished in England,
were generally attributed to his father. In a
further series of papers, signed “Marcellus,” he
defended Washington's policy of neutrality; and in
a third series, signed “Columbus,” he discussed the
extraordinary behavior of Citizen Genet, whom the
Jacobins had sent over to browbeat the Americans
into joining France in hurling defiance at the
world. These writings made him so conspicuous
that in 1794 Washington appointed him minister
to Holland, and two years later made an appointment
transferring him to Portugal. Before he had
started for the latter country his father became
president of the United States, and asked Washington's
advice as to the propriety of promoting his
own son by sending him to Berlin. Washington
in strong terms recommended the promotion,
declaring that in his opinion the young man would
prove to be the ablest diplomat in the American
service. In the fall of 1797 Mr. Adams accordingly
took up his residence at the capital of Prussia.
Shortly before this he had married Miss Louisa
Johnson, a niece of Thomas Johnson, of Maryland.
During his residence at Berlin Mr. Adams
translated Wieland's “Oberon” into English. In 1798
he was commissioned to make a commercial treaty
with Sweden. In 1800 he made a journey through
Silesia, and wrote an account of it, which was
published in London and afterward translated into
German and French. When Jefferson became
president, Mr. Adams's mission terminated. He
resumed the practice of law in Boston, but in 1802
was elected to the Massachusetts senate, and next
year was chosen to the senate of the United States
instead of Timothy Pickering. The federalist party
was then rent in twain by the feud between the
partisans of John Adams and those of Hamilton,
and the reception of the younger Adams in the
senate was far from flattering. Affairs grew worse
when, at the next vacancy, Pickering was chosen to
be his uncongenial colleague. Mr. Adams was
grossly and repeatedly insulted. Any motion he
might make was sure to be rejected by the
combined votes of republicans and Hamiltonians,
though frequently the same motion, made soon
afterward by somebody else, would be carried by a
large majority. A committee of which he was a
member would make and send in its report without
even notifying him of its time and place of
meeting. At first Mr. Adams was subjected to
such treatment merely because he was the son of
his father; but presently be rendered himself more
and more amenable to it by manifesting the same
independence of party ties that had made his
father so unpopular. Independence in politics has
always been characteristic of the Adams family,
and in none has this been more strongly marked
than in John Quincy Adams. His first serious
difference with the federalist party was occasioned by
his qualified approval of Jefferson's purchase of
Louisiana, a measure that was bitterly opposed and
fiercely censured by nearly all the federalists,
because it was feared it would add too much strength
to the south. A much more serious difference arose
somewhat later, on the question of the embargo.
Questions of foreign rather than of domestic policy
then furnished the burning subjects of contention
in the United States. Our neutral commerce on
the high seas, which had risen to very considerable
proportions, was plundered in turn by England and
by France, until its very existence was threatened.
In May, 1806, the British government declared the
northern coast of Europe, from Brest to the mouth
of the Elbe, to be blockaded. By the Russian
proclamation of 1780, which was then accepted by all
civilized nations except Great Britain, such paper
blockades were illegal; but British ships none the
less seized and confiscated American vessels bound
to any port on that coast. In November Napoleon
issued his Berlin decree making a paper blockade
of the whole British coast, whereupon French cruisers
began seizing and confiscating American vessels
on their way from British to French ports. Two
months later England issued an order in council,
forbidding neutrals to trade between any of her
enemy's ports; and this was followed by orders
decreeing fines or confiscation to all neutral ships
