“America’s Founding Son”: Author & Musician Bob Crawford on the Life of John Quincy Adams

Oh, it is...

It is deep and wide.

He at the age of eight was an eyewitness to the Battle of Bunker Hill.

His mother, Abigail, they walked a mile to a nearby overlook and they were witnesses to the battle.

They saw the flash of the cannon.

They smelled the smoke.

They hear the reverberations and the echoes of the battle.

And then two years later, he's on his way in winter.

He crosses the Atlantic with his father.

in a warship where they are being pursued.

First of all, they're crossing the Atlantic in winter.

Right.

To where I was reading the waves could just turn to chunks of ice could come and smash the boat.

At one point, the boat is struck by lightning, and a man working on the boat is killed.

And at one point, they awake in the midst of a storm, and they're holding on to the planks of their beds.

And then at one point they overtake a British vessel and take the booty from the British vessel.

So it is this amazing.

And so this is on the way to Paris for his father, John Adams, to begin to negotiate France into the war.

By the time they arrive, the deal has been done.

But Adams now is going to get this, what I call an internship in a firsthand education in diplomacy.

And I would argue he surpasses his father in both intellect and experience.

And ultimately in we talked about, like you said, he's one of our greatest American statesmen.

You kind of struggle for the term.

Like, where does he fit in? Because he is appointed to his first diplomatic post by George Washington as a young man.

And then he serves in Congress As a congressman post-president, he serves alongside Abraham Lincoln.