John Quincy Adams and America’s Tortured Adolescence

John Quincy Adams (1815), National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

And what his example of statesmanship can teach us today.

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The 1830s and 1840s are the era I call “America’s tortured adolescence.” The Founding Fathers have ceded the stage to their sons and grandsons. One of those sons, John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, addressed the New York Historical Society on April 30, 1839, the 50th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration and the jubilee of the Constitution.