{"product_id":"the-lost-founding-father-john-quincy-adams-and-the-transformation-of-american-politics-9780871404350","title":"The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhy has John Quincy Adams been largely written out of American history when he is  in fact  our lost Founding Father? Long relegated to the sidelines of history as the hyperintellectual son of John and Abigail Adams  John Quincy Adams (17671848)  has never basked in the historical spotlight. Remembered  if at all  as an ineffective president during an especially rancorous time  Adams was humiliated in office after the contested election of 1824  viciously assailed by populist opponents for being both slippery and effete  and then resoundingly defeated by the western war hero Andrew Jackson  whose 1828 election ushered in an era of unparalleled expansion. Aware of this reputation yet convinced that Adams deserves a reconsideration  award-winning historian William J. Cooper has reframed the sixth presidents life in an entirely original way  demonstrating that Adams should be considered our lost Founding Father  his morality and political philosophy the final link to the great visionaries who created our nation. As Cooper demonstrates  no one else in his generationnot Clay  Webster  Calhoun  or Jacksonever experienced Europe as young Adams did  who at fourteen translated from French at the court of Catherine the Great. In fact  Adamss very exposure to the ideas of the European Enlightenment that had so influenced the Founding Fathers  including their embrace of reason  were hardly shared by his contemporaries  particularly those who could not countenance slaves as equal human beings. Such differences  as Cooper narrates  became particularly significant after Adamss failed presidency  when he  along with his increasingly reclusive wife  Louisa Catherine Adams  returned to Washington as a Massachusetts congressman in 1831. With his implacable foe Andrew Jackson in the White House  Adams passionately took up the antislavery cause. Despite raucous opposition from southern and northern politicians  Adams refused to relent  his protests so vehement that Congress enacted the gag rule in the 1830s specifically to silence him. With his impassioned public pronouncements and his heroic arguments in the Amistad trial  a defiant Adams was no longer viewed as a failed president but a national  albeit curmudgeonly  hero  who finally collapsed on the floor of the House chamber in 1848 and died in the capital three days later. Ironically  Adamss death and the extraordinary obsequies produced an outpouring of national  and bipartisan  grief never before seen in the nineteenth century  as if the country had truly lost its last Founding Father. Now  in another fractious age  the courageous life of John Quincy Adams suddenly takes on renewed vigor and meaning  as William J. Coopers momentous biography so eloquently affirms. 12 illustrations; 1 map\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45648267083829,"sku":"ByrdShop_0871404354","price":20.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780871404350.jpg?v=1781714738","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-lost-founding-father-john-quincy-adams-and-the-transformation-of-american-politics-9780871404350","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}