John Quincy Adams, by Paul Raymond Audibert, Paris.

Additional information on Audibert pending.

John Quincy Adams, Sixth President of the United States, (1825-1829) Born Braintree, Mass., July 11, 1767; died Washington, D. C., February 23, 1848 The following is excerpted from the coverleaf of the engraving:

"If then you ask what motive enabled him to rise above parties, sects, combinations, prejudices, passions, and seductions, I answer that he served his country not alone, or chiefly, because the country was his own, but because he knew her duties and her destiny, and knew her cause was the cause of humand nature. If you inquire why he was so vigorous in virtue as to be often thought austere, I announce it was because human nature required the exercise of justice, honor, and gratitude by all who were clothed with authority to act in the name of the American people.*** Such men are of no country. They belong to mankind. If we cannot rise to this height of virtue, we cannot hope to comprehend the character of John Quincy Adams or understand the homage paid by the American people to his memory. Need it be said that John Quincy Adams studied justice, honor, and gratitude, not by false standards of the age but by their own true nature? He generalized truth, and traced it always to its source, the bosom of God."***

"The distinquished characteristics of his life were beneficent labor and personal contentment. He never sought wealth, but devoted himself to the service of mankind, yet, by the practice of frugality and method, he secured the enjoyment of dealing forth continually no stinted charities, and died in affluence. He never solicited place or preferment, and had no partisan combinations or even connections; yet he received honors which eluded the covetous grasp of those who formed parties, rewarded friends and proscribed enemies; and he filled a longer period of varied and distinguished service than ever fell to the lot of any other citizen. In every step of this progress he was content. He was content to be president, minister, representative, or citizen."--WILLIAM H. SEWARD (born 1801), speech before the United States Senate, 1849. Effective published copyright, ©Mickey Cox 2002. All rights reserved.