A Subtle Shift

What's unusual about this picture?



For starters, it's a photograph. That's a new thing. In fact, John Quincy Adams is the first president for whom we've got photographic evidence. The first five presidents: only paintings, which are never quite as mimetic as we'd like them to be. Even when a painter is as faithful as possible to the sitter's appearance, he or she still can't quite replicate the real thing. But a photograph--that's different.

It's appropriate that John Quincy Adams is our first president to be captured by the new technology--our first president for whom we've got a "real" picture. That's because he's also the first president whose entire life we can trace. He's born to a famous father (or at least a father who will be famous soon, and keeps his own diary), and, at the age of 11, starts his own diary, which he keeps off and on (like everyone else with a diary) for the rest of his long, illustrious life.

And there may not be a president who's so involved in the beginning of the Republic. Take a look at what he does during, say, the first sixty years of the United States:

--Washington appoints him (at age 26!) to be the Ambassador to the Netherlands.
--Adams (his father) appoints him to be the Ambassador to Prussia.
--Jefferson doesn't want him for his administration, so JQA becomes a Senator from Massachusetts.
--Madison appoints him as the Ambassador to Russia and later the United Kingdom.
--Monroe names him his Secretary of State. In fact, the Monroe Doctrine is written by Adams.
--Jackson defeats JQA in the election of 1830. Adams sits out two years, then runs for and wins a seat in the House, representing Massachusetts. He's there for seventeen years, through the Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, and Polk administrations. He collapses in the House during a vote on commemorating the Mexican-American War and dies a few days later.

From President #1 to President #11, John Quincy Adams is involved in the government of the United States (including a term as President #6). In a sense, his story is the story of the beginning of the country. It's a wonder that Nagel's book is only 419 pages.