Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress

Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress by Joseph Wheelan is truly a presidential biography like no other.  After JQA’s disastrous presidency, he was elected to the House of Representative, and spent seventeen years in that position.  He is one of only three presidents to hold federal office following their presidency (Andrew Johnson in the Senate and William Howard Taft in the Supreme Court).

Wheelan’s book is full of gripping details of how Adams time in congress was anything but a coda to his already long history of public service.  He became a very early advocate of the abolition of slavery, and as he aged, his abolitionist tendencies only firmed.  He was a gadfly to his southern colleagues; he was a brilliant orator with a nearly photographic memory.  He speeches to congress became legend.  In the process, he set the stage for the battles over slavery that would dominate American politics from the Mexican-American War to the Civil War.  He more than once predicted the Civil War.

By the time of his death in 1848, he was a living symbol of the founding generation.  As a young boy he stood with his mother to watch the Battle of Bunker Hill.  He began is career in government when George Washington appointed him Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1794.  He dedicated fifty-four years of near continual service to his country.  Appropriately, he died sitting at his desk in the House.   This symbolism struck  a deep chord in the United States.  The Revolutionary era had passed, and no one knew what would come next.