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John Quincy Adams is arguably one of the supreme figures in American history - a fierce, unforgiving fighter for all men's rights.
As a boy, he stood with his mother and heard the cannons from the battle of Bunker Hill. He entered government in 1794, when he was appointed minister to The Netherlands by President George Washington, and in 1797 became minister to Prussia. He was elected to the Senate in 1803, reluctantly resigning five years later in the wake of his unpopular support of Thomas Jefferson's Embargo Act. In 1809, he became minister to Russia.
As secretary of state in the James Monroe administration, he negotiated the Transcontinental Treaty with Spain which added Florida to the nation and forced Spain to renounce its claims to the Pacific Northwest.
In 1824, he ran for president, with none of the candidates winning a majority of the electoral votes, the election was thrown to the House and he prevailed. His sweeping plans to make the central government more powerful were rejected by a Congress that saw them as a threat to states' rights. He was swept out of office in 1828 but went on to serve 17 years in the House of Representatives.
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