How America's Most Brilliant President Became Its Most Miserable: John Quincy Adams

On February 21st, 1848, an 80-year-old man collapsed at his desk on the floor of the House of Representatives. He died two days later without ever leaving the Capitol. This alone is a strange story - but here's the detail that makes it stranger: this man had already been President of the United States, and had lost that job in one of the most lopsided defeats in American history, nearly twenty years earlier. This is the real story of John Quincy Adams - a man who built the strongest diplomatic résumé of any American who had ever lived, negotiated the actual language of the Monroe Doctrine while getting none of the credit, then won the presidency itself through the disputed "Corrupt Bargain" of 1824 and spent four years watching a hostile Congress block nearly everything he tried to do. It covers his childhood serving as a diplomatic secretary at fourteen years old, his wife Louisa's remarkable solo winter journey across war-torn Europe, the brutal 1828 campaign that ended in a landslide defeat, and what he did next - becoming the only former president to serve in the House of Representatives, where he spent seventeen years fighting a rule designed to silence anti-slavery petitions, and personally argued the Amistad case before the Supreme Court and won. Unlike the five presidents before him in this series, John Quincy Adams enslaved no one across his entire life - a genuine, worth-stating point of difference this video doesn't skip past. CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Intro 1:43 - Died at His Desk 3:37 - The Boy Ambassador 6:53 - The Best Résumé in American Diplomacy 10:52 - The Best Secretary of State America Ever Had 14:00 - The Corrupt Bargain 17:04 - Lighthouses of the Skies 20:03 - The Tariff of Abominations 21:45 - The Landslide 24:21 - Old Man Eloquent If you're drawn to American history, political biography, and the real stories behind the men who've held the nation's highest office, subscribe and follow the republic, one chapter at a time. #JohnQuincyAdams #amistad #americanhistory #Presidents #documentary