In One Man's Lifetime

On June 17, 1775, an eight-year old boy, led by his mother to a height near their home, watched the distant smoke of the Battle of Bunker Hill. There was no American nation, or even claim of one, until the next year. Thirteen British colonies, with a free population of about a million and a half, straggled near the Atlantic Ocean from Passamaquoddy Bay to the St. Marys. River.

The sole cluster of settlement far inland was in Kentucky. Only ten towns had more than 5,000 inhabitants, althouth 35,000 people lived in Philadelphia. In that city, second in size only to London in the British Empire, the boy’s father was serving in the Continent Congress.

Three years later, John Quincy Adams sailed to Europe. During most of the rest of the Revolution he served as secretary to his father, in diplomatic service in Paris and The Hague, and the Francis Dana, an emisary sent to the court of Catherine the Great in a futile attempt to gain Russian recognition. In 1783, he returned to Paris, making a long overland journey, shortly after his father, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens had signed the treaty that ended the American Revolution and provided the United States with a “great empire,” nearly 900,000 square miles stretching to the Mississippi River.

After a short career at Harvard (he graduated Phi Beta Kappa after two years in residence) and a few years in law, young Adams turned to politics. He endorsed the Constitution, which, for the first time, provided the U.S. government with powers essential to effective bargaining in international affairs. Like his father, when parties emerged he became a Federalist, albeit an independent one.