Read Online John Quincy Adams by Harlow Unger - Free Book Online

beyond expression.” (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

    Sensing the outrage of ordinary voters, Congress blocked every Adams proposal and brought federal government to a halt. And still clinging to his belief that the public would recognize merit, John Quincy refused to campaign for his programs, refused to answer critics, refused to explain his vision in terms the public could understand. In short, he refused to lead or fight back—even after journalist Russell Jarvis of the Daily Telegraph assaulted his son John II in the rotunda of the Capitol.
    Jarvis had attended a White House reception after publishing a vicious attack on the President, and young Adams proclaimed in a loud voice that Jarvis should have shown the propriety not to show his face at the President’s home. Jarvis sent John II a letter challenging him to a duel, and when
John II ignored it, Jarvis waited in the Capitol rotunda for the young man to arrive with messages from the President for Congress. He went up to John II, pulled his nose, then slapped his face—the standard, public provocation to duel. Unskilled with swords or pistols, John II faced certain death if he accepted the challenge. He wisely walked away, and John Quincy responded with a letter of protest to the Speaker of the House that his son had been “waylaid and assaulted.” He demanded a congressional inquiry.
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    The second-born son of John Quincy and Louisa Adams, thirty-one-year-old John Adams II. (NATIONAL PARKS SERVICE, ADAMS NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK)

    â€œAssault Within the Capitol,” ran the headline of a pro-Adams newspaper, while Jarvis’s Telegraph called “the pulling of the Prince’s nose . . . a signal chastisement . . . of the Royal puppy.” Congress held hearings, questioned both Jarvis and John II, and did nothing. The President never said another word.

    Politically impotent, John Quincy recognized that he would be the first chief executive in the nation’s short history to contribute nothing to his country. With little else to do, he joined Louisa in breeding silkworms outside his office and lengthened the time he spent walking, swimming, and horseback riding each day.
    The political misery that Jacksonians inflicted on John Quincy hurt Louisa as well. Calling the White House a “dull and stately prison,” she continually searched for ways to quash rumors that she and her husband had imported the aristocratic grandeur of European palaces to the executive mansion. She opened White House doors to the public and turned her home into a public museum that left her all but imprisoned in her living quarters, making it “impossible,” she said, “for me to feel at home or to fancy that I have a home anywhere.” 25
    In addition, she resumed the weekly receptions, or “levées,” v that Martha Washington, Dolley Madison, and, for a time, Elizabeth Monroe had held. Like Elizabeth Monroe, Louisa stood under the rotunda as visitors passed before her, one by one, bowing or curtsying—shaking hands was forbidden—acknowledging her welcoming nod and short greeting and passing on to partake of refreshments. “All classes of society mingled in the throng that crowded outside the audience chamber and surged into the great East Room,” according to one participant. Diplomats in powdered wigs and high-ranking officers with medals mixed with farmers and hunters in muddy boots and frontiersmen with jingling spurs.
    John Quincy’s inability to discuss the mundane at public functions, however, often stripped White House parties of the mirth that had filled the mansion during the tenures of some of his predecessors. What provoked John Quincy’s laughter—for example, a misinterpretation he had read of Tacitus—left others staring in disbelief without the slightest understanding of what he was talking about. Only Louisa understood.

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    Going to the White House levée. First Lady Louisa