Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/119

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 99 Dana (afterward chief justice of Massachu- setts), having been appointed minister to Rus- sia, he took with him as his private secretary John Q. Adams, then in his 15th year. Hav- ing discharged the duties of this position for 14 months to Dana's entire satisfaction, the latter not having succeeded in getting recog- nized as minister, young Adams left St. Peters- burg, and, travelling back alone, returned lei- surely through Sweden and Denmark, and by Hamburg and Bremen, to the Hague, where he resumed his studies. In October, 1783, the treaty of peace having been signed, John Q. Adams attended his father on his first visit to England. Returning with him, he spent the year 1784 in Paris, where the whole family was now collected. His father having been appointed minister to Great Britain, he ac- companied the family to London, but soon after, with a view to the completion of his education, returned home to Massachusetts. In 1786 he entered the junior class at Harvard college. He graduated in 1788, and imme- diately after entered the office of Theophilus Parsons, afterward well known as chief justice of Massachusetts. Here he remained for three years. In 1791 he was admitted to the bar, when he opened a law office in Boston, and in the course of four years he gradually attained practice enough to pay his expenses. He did not, however, confine himself entirely to the law. A series of articles which he published in the "Boston Centinel," with the signature of Publicola a reply to some portions of Thomas Paine's " Rights of Man " attracted a good deal of attention not only at home but in England, where these papers were repub- lished and ascribed to his father. In another series of articles in the same journal, signed Marcellus, published in 1793, he defended Washington's policy of neutrality. . In a third series, signed Columbus, published the same year, he reviewed the conduct of Genet, the French ambassador, in relation to the same subject. These writings drew attention to- ward him, and in May, 1794, Washington ap- pointed him minister to the Hague. Upon his arrival there he found things in such confusion, owing to the French invasion, that after a few months' residence he thought of returning ; but, by the remonstrances of Washington, who predicted for him a distinguished diplomatic career, he Avas induced to remain. In 1795 he had occasion to visit London to transact some business with Thomas Pinckney, who after Mr. Jay's departure had resumed the embassy at that court. The American consul at London was Joshua Johnson of Maryland, brother of Thomas Johnson, one of the signers of the 'declaration of independence, and a judge of the United States supreme court. Mr. Joshua Johnson had formerly been a merchant at Nantes, where in 1779 the Adamses had made his acquaintance. He had by this time a grown- up daughter, with whom young Adams now formed an intimacy, which resulted in mar- riage on July 27, 1797. Previously to this event, and shortly before the close of Washing- ton's administration, John Q. Adams had been appointed minister to Portugal ; but his father, on becoming president, changed his destination to Berlin. In thus promoting his own son, John Adams acted by the written advice of Washington, who expressed his decided opin- ion that young Adams was the ablest person in the American diplomatic service, and that merited promotion ought not to be withheld from him merely because he-was the president's son. He arrived at Berlin shortly after his marriage, in the autumn of 1797. In 1798 he received an additional commission to negotiate a treaty of. commerce with Sweden. While residing at Berlin, with a view to perfecting himself in the German language, he made a translation into English of Wieland's " Oberon," and would have published it but for the ap- pearance about that time of a translation by Sotheby. In 1800 he travelled through Silesia, of which tour he wrote an account in a series of letters to his brother which were, published, though without the writer's knowledge, in the "Port Folio," a weekly paper at Philadelphia. These letters were collected and published in a volume in London, and, being translated into French and German, had a wide circulation. On the accession of Mr. Jefferson to the presi- dency, John Q. Adams was recalled; but he had previously succeeded in negotiating a treaty of commerce with Prussia. Returning to Bos- ton, he again opened a law office there. In 1802 he was elected from Suffolk county (which in- cludes Boston) to the Massachusetts senate, and the next year was chosen by the legisla- ture a senator in congress from Massachusetts. He owed this position to the federal party of Massachusetts,, and for four years he continued to sustain their views ; but on the question of the embargo recommended by Jefferson he separated from them. The Massachusetts elec- tion in the preceding spring had resulted in the success of the Jeffersonian party, who elected their candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, and a majority in both branches of the legislature. At the time when the embargo was proposed by the president to congress, it seemed probable that the question of Adams's reelection to the senate would have to be de- cided by a legislature favorable to the views of the national administration; and the support which Adams gave to that measure was charg- ed by the federalists to the hope of securing his reelection and the favor of a party, whose predominance seemed at length established, not merely in the nation, but in Massachusetts also. This course on his part led to a warm controversy between him and his colleague in the senate, Timothy Pickering, who now made the same charges of treacherous selfish- ness against the son which he had formerly brought against the father. Pickering address- ed a letter to Governor Sullivan of Massa- chusetts, in which he forcibly stated his ob-