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John Quincy Adams

 

            John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of The United States. He ran against Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and William H. Crawford in the 1824 election. John C. Calhoun became his Vice President. He received some flak shortly after the election for choosing Clay to be his secretary of state. For the rest of his career, he was haunted by the cries of "corrupt bargain", which also helped with his defeat in the 1828 election. .
             Adams turned out to be quite disappointed in his years as president. He fought to be a leader of all the people, but received a lot of harsh criticism of his policies by the senate. Supporters of Jackson constantly tried to find ways to make Adams fail, or in the least humiliate him. He was also harder to get along with due to his cold personality. He didn't like crowds, and preferred not to be around others if at all possible. He was also not into the political side of the presidency. He was more concerned with competence than a person's political affiliation. He even gave some of his political enemies very important government positions.
             In his first congressional message, Adams proposed a program that would strengthen the nation and it's bonds. He wanted to use federal funds to build more canals, harbor improvements, a better navy, good military schools, and a national university. Congress refused the President's ideas outright. They were especially displeased with his requests for better funding of the arts and sciences with which to build observatories and support scientific research. He wanted to promote projects that would benefit the nation as a whole, not just a minority of them.
             Adams even had trouble because of his ideas for foreign policy. He only had one case of foreign policy come up during his whole career. A Pan-American conference was held at Panama city, Panama in 1826. Adams wanted to have two U.S. delegates and asked Congress for approval.


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