Bob Crawford on America’s Greatest Ex-President: John Quincy Adams

BOB CRAWFORD:

When you're learning the presidents, you get to him and it's just like John Quincy Adams and he's nothing, right? He's an afterthought. But really, if you take a minute and learn about the man, you realize he is the man standing in the gap between Washington and Lincoln. And Washington appoints him to his first diplomatic post. Lincoln, he serves within Congress. So he truly is that man in between.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Welcome to Good Citizen, a podcast from the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. I'm Ted Roosevelt. My guest today is Bob Crawford, the longtime bassist for one of my favorite bands, the Avett Brothers. But he's not here to talk about music. Bob has spent decades studying American history and his new book, America's Founding Son, John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick, makes a compelling case for a president that frankly I had long overlooked. We begin with the election of 1824 when accusations of a corrupt bargain shadowed Adams from the moment he entered office. Andrew Jackson turned that grievance into a political movement, rallied his supporters around the claim that the election had been stolen and rode this outrage all the way to the White House four years later. It may sound a little familiar, but Bob argues that Adam's greatest legacy came after the presidency. For 17 years, he served in Congress where he defended free speech, including the rights of people with whom he strongly disagreed and became one of the nation's most forceful opponents of slavery, decades before the Civil War.

Adams remained devoted to public service until the very end. At the age of 80, he collapsed on the floor of the House of Representatives and died two days later in the Capitol. Our conversation is about political courage, public service, and why John Quincy Adams deserves to be remembered as far more than just America's sixth president. Here's Bob Crawford.

BOB CRAWFORD:

The earlier days of the band, and I'm saying we started in 2001 — 2004, I start reading history books to try to connect where the country was at that moment from the founding to the moment we were in. Beautiful Saturday morning. And I woke up, we was in San Francisco and I walked out the hotel and walked down the street and there was a Barnes & Noble and I walked in and on a table, one of those round tables was Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz. I picked it up and it was 750 pages. It told a story I never knew existed. This is this period between the Revolution and the Civil War. It is America's tortured adolescence. And so in those decades, John Quincy Adams is for me the pivotal man.

And you're reading this book and here you have the son of John Adams and he's a diplomat, but then he's in the Senate. He's a senator from Massachusetts and he bucks his party, the Federalist Party, to support Thomas Jefferson's Embargo Act and to support the Louisiana purchase. And he gets drummed out of his party. And so the next thing you know, it's 1824 and Adams is at the center of the most controversial election we've ever had in our history, 1824. And then he loses reelection. And then you keep reading and here's Adams again. He's in Congress fighting against censorship.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I think probably the best place to start is that election of 1824 that you mentioned because that's between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. And they're actually very interesting foils for each other.

BOB CRAWFORD:

Running in the 1824 election is John Quincy Adams, who's the Secretary of State. William H. Crawford, who's the Treasury Secretary, Henry Clay, who's the Speaker of the House, and Andrew Jackson, who is the hero of the Battle of New Orleans. But more importantly, is Jackson kind of comes out of nowhere in this thing, and he is the man of the people. And what happens in this election is it comes down to Jackson wins a plurality, not a majority of the electoral votes, but based on the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, you need a majority. So the top three vote getters go to a vote in the House of Representatives. And they are John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and William H. Crawford. There's one man, a very important man here that's left out of this vote. It's Henry Clay. And Clay hates Andrew Jackson. Clay's from Kentucky, he's from the West.

Jackson's from Tennessee, he's from the West. Clay fancies himself the star of the West, and he's going to be the first president from the West. Every state gets one vote.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Yes.

BOB CRAWFORD:

Somebody had to win 13 to get a majority. So Adams and Clay meet, Adams who keeps a very detailed diary for his whole life from when he's a teenager to when he dies, it's 14,000 pages long, is noticeably thin on the details of this meeting. And what ultimately happens in that vote in the House, states like Kentucky who originally voted for Andrew Jackson, change their vote and vote for John Quincy Adams. And John Quincy Adams wins the vote in the House. And he becomes president and he appoints Henry Clay, Secretary of State, which at the time was seen as the stepping stone to the presidency. And Andrew Jackson and his men, his supporters immediately cry foul. It's a stolen election. These were faithless electors who elected this man, president, and that dooms the Adams presidency from the get-go and sets up 1828, which Andrew Jackson will win pretty easily.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

So can you just describe the differences in the political ideologies of the two men? What is Andrew Jackson running on? What is John Quincy Adams running on?

BOB CRAWFORD:

That's really funny, Ted, because in the election, there weren't many differences. Adams supported what Henry Clay called the American system. And that would be using taxpayer money to fund the construction of roads, bridges, and canals that would tie the nation together. And what we today call infrastructure. And that is what Adams always supported. And he also proposes investing in a naval academy and in a national university, which was George Washington's dream. And also something called lighthouses of the sky, telescopes for scientific research. He's pretty much laying out the 20th century, but he says to Congress, "This is what they're doing in Europe. If we want to compete, if we want to be a great nation, this is what we have to do. Your constituents don't want to spend money on this stuff, but you should not be palsied by the will of our constituents." Meaning I know what's best. They don't know what's best. And we should vote for this stuff whether they want it or not. And that was a lot of people in the country were very offended by that. And Jackson pointedly writes, "Don't think that we would be palsied by the will of our constituents." And it becomes a rallying cripe and it really dooms Adams' presidency.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

You didn't mention slavery because this is where the two men diverged dramatically as well.

BOB CRAWFORD:

Well, but at this time, they didn't diverge. If you're thinking, talking about 1824, 1828, they didn't diverge. Of course, yes, Andrew Jackson, he's a slaveholder. Now, John Quincy Adams, at this time, he's writing in his diary his feelings on this issue. He's watching what's going on. He's reading what's going on. And he begins to, for the first time, talk about slavery and how he feels about it in the pages of his diary. And he abores it. And he says, "The only way this is going to end is going to be through a civil war." Adams just confesses that in 1820.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Which doesn't happen for another 40 years, just, I mean, let's orient everyone —

BOB CRAWFORD:

Yeah. And he says, "Oh, if only one man would rise up and take this cause on and he'd be an angel" and all this stuff. But then in his personal life, and when he's president, has two enslaved people that we know of living in the White House. One of the nieces from one of his wife's sister's marriages, she marries one of his sons and they emancipate the enslaved woman that she owned on the day of their wedding. And you have to think that was a condition from John Quincy Adams to bless the marriage. And then another one who I guess is an older enslaved man, he dies while Adams is president. And Adams writes a poem. He quotes a poem by horse, I guess who was a Roman poet in his diary on the occasion of this man's death. Holsley was the enslaved man's name.

And it's a really tender poem, and you can tell that Adams was affected by his passing.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

So John Quincy Adams is really on the forefront of this issue for the times, and yet has these juxtapositions in terms of his own life in the White House.

BOB CRAWFORD:

He does, but he also has issue with the anti-slavery movement. He finds it to be unrealistic. So morally, he believes that slavery should not exist. It is amoral. And so he's against it, but he can't reconcile in his mind a way that slavery ends and the nation stays together. And his rational mind can't find a way, can't get to a place where slavery ends without the union dissolving.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Right.

BOB CRAWFORD:

But yet you have this minority of a minority of group of people, abolitionists in the north who are these radical Christians, most of them, many of them women who are — go to all lengths and extremes to end slavery, but they have no plan for how to do it or what the day after slavery looks like. And that's not acceptable to Adams. And they are hated. Of course, they're hated in the South, but they are hated like they're hunted and hated in the north by their neighbors. Because to end slavery is to end the status quo. To many northerners, to end slavery is to threaten their jobs.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

So chaos.

BOB CRAWFORD:

So absolute chaos because there was no plan. So Adams was on all sides of this issue.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

So I can't think of another historical reference for this. He becomes a congressman after being president.

BOB CRAWFORD:

Andrew Johnson, he goes into the Senate after his impeachment and after his presidency ends, but he dies five months later. So he really doesn't have a post-presidency in Congress. But Adams is in Congress for 17 years.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

And arguably, and I think you've made this case, is a sort of almost more impressive political career in Congress than as president.

BOB CRAWFORD:

Absolutely. And you're talking about good citizens. I think he's our most extraordinary post-president with all due respect to President Carter. But I think more importantly is he's our greatest public servant. And he feels rejected by the American people. And he served them in every capacity, right? Diplomat, senator, president. And he goes back to Quincy, Massachusetts. And then he's approached to stand for Congress. His local congressman is retiring. Of course, he's like, "Well, I'm not going to run, but if the people want me, how can I say no?" His son, Charles Francis Adams, comes to him and says, "Dad, you can't do this. This is beneath you, beneath the office." And he says, essentially, if the town council wanted me to serve, how could I say no?

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I'd do it. Yeah.

BOB CRAWFORD:

I'd do it. On the one hand, there was absolute ego involved because he was absolutely egotistical. But in another sense, he did it because his parents raised him. John and Abigail Adams raised him to be a public servant. To serve the nation and preserve the nation they had sacrificed so much to establish. It's the ultimate denial of ego because you're saying this isn't about me. This is about we. And I think that that's what makes Adams so extraordinary as a figure in American history. He is our greatest public servant.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Let's talk about the gag rule.

BOB CRAWFORD:

The abolitionists realize that one way to get attention, we can petition our government for a redress of grievances. So these anti-slavery activists, abolitionists, they begin to send petitions to Congress. And not all congressmen would read them, but Adams was one who felt like it was his job. And so the first 1831, it's like the first time he stands up in Congress to speak. Here's the former president, now Congressman. And he starts reading these anti-slavery petitions. And this is 1831. Well, by 1835, they are showing up at the Capitol by the wagon load. I point out in my book, one anti-abolitionist newspaper editor is walking through the halls of Congress and he sees them stacked up like three feet high against the wall of these petitions. Hundreds of thousands of them arrive. And what is happening in the country at the time is you have this chain of slave uprisings.

The men who are captured say, we read or was read to us anti-slavery speeches from Congress. Eventually, congressmen from South Carolina, they say enough is enough. They form a committee. They come up with, what do we do with these anti-slavery petitions? Well, they essentially say they're dead letters. They come to the Congress, we table them. We don't read them. We don't print them. We don't acknowledge them. They are dead. And when that was passed, Adams lost it. That is the moment he becomes radicalized because he says,

"I don't agree with these petitions, but these people have a right to be heard by their government." And now you're talking about the right to petition. Next is the right freedom of religion, freedom of press, right to peacefully assemble, freedom of speech. Now you're messing with the Constitution. And he became more so than at first, more so than an anti-slavery activist, he became a free speech advocate.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Would you describe this as kind of a defining component of his political career? Is his fighting against the gag role?

BOB CRAWFORD:

Yes, it is. Because what he does is, so you can no longer mention slavery on the floor of the house. The next resolution before the Congress is for aid for citizens of Alabama and Georgia who have faced depredations from Native American wars, from the Seminole wars. And these citizens, they need rations, they need food, they need relief. So the Congress is going to vote in an appropriation without a dollar amount attached to it to send these people aid. And Adams gets up to speak on it and he says, "Look, I want to vote for this. I think it's the right thing to do. But I can't see in the Constitution where we have the ability to spend from the public treasury a limitless appropriation."

TED ROOSEVELT V:

A blank check. Yeah.

BOB CRAWFORD:

A blank check to help these people. He says, "If we do have the power, it's found in the war powers." Now, we don't think that Congress has the ability to interfere with slavery in the states where it exists. But if there was a civil or survival war and we had to negotiate with enslaved people who have risen up against the government, we may need to negotiate with them. And in order to find a resolution, we may need to emancipate them as part of these war powers. But this was little, I call it verbal jiu-jitsu, where he would take an issue and he was so adept with the rules of the house and of course nimble of mind and very intelligent. And he was the Boylston professor of rhetoric at Harvard before he was a senator. He knew how to debate. He knew how to verbally joust, and he got joy from tweaking other people, like getting people riled up.

And he would do this with the Southerners endlessly. One footnote on this, when Lincoln writes the Emancipation Proclamation, he essentially stands on the same ground that John Quincy Adams lays out in that speech.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

So I want to bridge that gap now between John Quincy Adams and Lincoln. Because in history, there are a number of ways in which you can influence things. And sometimes it's directly, it's in your timeline. And sometimes it's by pulling a future timeline forward. And in the case of John Quincy Adams, there's a case to be made that he pulled the abolition movement forward and actually created abolition in a faster timeline than it might have otherwise happened. Do you agree with that impact from John Quincy Adams?

BOB CRAWFORD:

I do. I do. So he's making these speeches in Congress and they're being printed in the newspapers. And abolitionists are like, they're lauding him and they are celebrating him and passing declarations of appreciation, John Quincy Adams. And really you get a sense he found his people. And it's funny because he's this Puritan from New England, this old school Puritan, but then these people are essentially radicals, but they're religious radicals. And they would continuously ask him to be the leader of the movement. And he would say, "I can do more for you defending free speech because once I become one of you, I become small." So all this is happening. The movement is fractured. It's broke. And then the Amistad happens. 1839. But it's basically a slave ship who's on their way to Cuba. International slave trade's been outlawed for decades. But these Spanish slave traders, they captured people in present day Sierra Leone.

They take them to Cuba. There's a mutiny. And the captives kill the captain and the cook and they get these Spanish enslavers. They demand they take them back to Africa. They wind up off the coast of Long Island. And this is the trial of the century. This becomes this big deal. And it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court. And so they go to John Quincy Adams and they say, "Will you argue this case?" And Adams has been not commenting on this case, but of course he's reading it in the newspaper and he's doing his own research and he's kind of ready to go.

And they come to him and of course his son, Charles Francis is like, "Dad, don't get involved. You don't want to do this." Because his son is running for state office and is like, "Dad, you're killing me. You're killing me, dad." And Adams, of course, is like, he writes in his diary. It's real dramatic like, "If I have eyes, if my eyes can see and I have lung breath in my lungs, I will defend these men." And he does. And he goes before the Supreme Court, he defends them, and he wins their freedom. All the heartbreak and the rejection of losing reelection that Adams felt, he's redeemed. This is his moment of redemption. He becomes a folk hero. He and this growing body of this next generation of Northern congressmen are beginning to come in and he is the grand old man and they defeat the gag rule.

And that's the way I look at it with John Quincy Adams. I think he struck the first blow against the slave power.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

So this is a monumental shift for the nation that has repercussions for decades. I mean, maybe all the way till today. Yeah. Why do you think he's forgotten by history? I mean, he's not totally forgotten by history, but why is he not accredited as you think he should be by historians?

BOB CRAWFORD:

He's not been completely forgotten. He's not in the pantheon because he's not a successful president. I think we tend to elevate the man at the top in 1794 at a moment where Adams didn't know what he was going to do with his life. And his father's like, "All the privilege you've been afforded, if you do not rise to the head of not only your profession, but of your country, it's owed only to your own laziness, slavenliness, and obstinacy." So much pressure. And so I think that because Adams isn't this great president, he's not though of in the pantheon of great leaders, but truly he is our greatest leader in a lot of ways. There's a jazz song called There Will Never Be Another You. Well, There Will Never Be another John Quincy Adams.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I'm curious about your lived experience because this is not your day job. Your day job is as a quite successful musician with the Avett Brothers. I guess what I'm getting at is the Venn diagram doesn't seem like there's a lot of overlap between the two. And I'm just wondering how you think about that, how you manage that. Maybe they're just totally separate parts of your life, which is not totally uncommon, but they are divergent enough that it's a curiosity.

BOB CRAWFORD:

Two things. Well, schedule-wise, they work together great. Well, also you don't have to be anywhere until soundcheck at 3:00 PM. And I'm up at 6:30, 7:00. I'm 55 years old. I get up early. I have kids and whatnot. And so it's like you get a full work day in if you're doing history and you're reading with breaks. So they work together very well. Also, it's nice to not think about music all the time. Also, I'm very obviously drawn to the subject matter. And there's another part of it that when we first started playing and we were beginning to get successful and I was always the oldest one age-wise, I'm the oldest one. And I always though, what happens if this all ends tomorrow? We go through, especially when you get white, get married and have kids. What would I do at 30? What would I do at 35, at 40, at 45?

And this has all been part of this. Building another career, another identity. But I don't need to lean on. Of course, my son asked me at one point, "Dad, are you just going to write books?" And I'm thinking and do podcasts. I'm like, "I can't put you through college writing books and doing podcasts." But there's probably something that's always been getting back to the psychoanalysis is there's probably always been — I've always been driven because I have a fear of what's coming around the corner.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

You mentioned that you started all this as a way to connect our past to our present. And so I'm curious about what lessons you have learned about this moment in time from all the work you've done around John Quincy Adams.

BOB CRAWFORD:

That history doesn't repeat and it doesn't rhyme. If it seems like it does, it's because people don't change. We are the same people. You and I are probably hundreds of miles apart, but it's like we're in the same room together talking.

And I don't know how this plays out, but the hubris of some of these people and the accumulation of wealth and power is it different than a king? Is it different than an enslaver in some ways? These are just things I think about. I'm just trying to make the point that humanity is capable of really good things and we're capable of awful, terrible things. And just because we don't have slavery in the United States, it doesn't mean that we aren't capable of doing terrible things to each other. Whatever it is, things advance, society advances because it's handed off from one generation to the next. The thing that doesn't change is the center of the wheel. It's the human heart. The human heart, human's capacity to do great harm or great good does not change. We're the same people.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

What do you think John Quincy Adams would say to the question of what makes a good citizen?

BOB CRAWFORD:

Well, by my research, it would be a citizen of good virtue who served his fellow man and served his government, was a good citizen.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Bob, what a fascinating journey through the life and the work of this incredibly important man. A true model of good citizenship. Thank you for sharing these stories. And listeners, there's a lot more from Bob Crawford for you. America's Founding Son: John Quincy Adams from President Political Maverick is out now. Pick up a copy. You can also head over to his history podcast, The Road to Now, and you can see him on stage with the Avett Brothers on tour now. Good Citizen is produced by the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in collaboration with the Future of StoryTelling and Charts & Leisure. You can learn more about TR's presidential library at trlibrary.com.