Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-03-31
FiUe Minutes A Day
With Our Presidents
n ra.su-c HsoucAN
A Diplomat at Fourteen
BY JAMES MORGAN

n Diplomat at EoIIrteen
Among the Presidents, JohT
Quincy Adams holds the record Of
having been the youngest and oldest
public servant. From boyhood, when
he was a secretary of legation at the
extraordinary age of fourteen until
he fell at his post in the halls oil
| congress in hts e~ighty-first year, he
was in the service of his country
| dfty-hve of those eighty-seyen years.
A President and the son of q
President, all the other fifteen Presi-
ldents from Washington to johnson
were his associates. From the day
he climbed a height near his Massa-
chusetts birthplace to see the battle
Of Bunker Hill, fifteen miles away,
he was a witness to nearly every
great event in the history of the ma
| ton until the close of the Mexican
War.
When John Quincy stood beside
his mother watching the smoke OF
the first pitched battle for American
independence, he was not yet eight.
At nine he heard the windows rattle
| from the storming of Dorchester
Heights. Soon he stood again on the
! neighboring hill. looking off to Bos-
ton harbor, where he beheld the glad
sight of the British ships sailing
away from the rebel town, which
had been the first to defy and the
first to vanquish the king.
The boy was aglow with patriot
! ism. In the siege of Boston a mus
ket had been placed in his. little
hands by an officer Of a company
passing the Adams home to join
W~ashington's army and he went
through the manual of arms. with
crude drawings Of soldiers and fri
| gates, he covered the pages of his
| diary, which he began before he was
nine and which he kept until the
end, when twelve printed volumes
were required to hold this most re-
markable personal document in all
America.
With John Adams in congress the
child had to be the man of the fam
lily, and at nine he regularly rode his
horse to Boston to fetch the mail.
At ten his father took him with him
on his mission to France. By twelve
he had crossed the Atlantic four
times, running the British blockade
in leaky tubs and passing through
the perils of shipwreck on the Span
ish coast.
At fourteen an American minister
appointed the mature youngster"
his secretary of legation. BY seven
teen the youth had travelled over
much of Europe, and he came home
to enter Harvard. After graduation
he opened q law office in Boston. But
business was only beginning when
the young attorney was appointed by
washington, minister at The Hague,
where the government to which he
was accredited fed before the armies
of France and left him in the midst
of the triumphant revolutionists.
Meeting the daughter of the Amerl-
can consul in London, a Marylander,
she and the young diplomat were
married on the eve of his departure
Par parIfn 10 which NanttA1 he had
been promoted. as the first Amer
ican minister to knock at the Bran
denburg Gate, he was held up until
q Prussian lieutenant was assured by
private soldiers that there really was
a United States of America.
Among his last acts as President,
John Adams removed his son from
office to deprive Jefferson of the
malicious satisfaction of Diminishing
him. When the recalled diplomat
was elected to the senate he display
ed his family trait of independence
by taking sides with his fathers
hated rival and supporting the JEFF
ferson administration.
The Infatuated Federalists of
Massachusetts savagely turned upon
him as a traitor to his party n q
renegade from his class. They drove
him from the senate, n when he
came home he found himself IN MS
Boston house, which stood where the
Hotel Touraine now stands, a social
outcast on a lonely island entirely
surrounded by Ice. The bitter fend
was carried beyond the grave. and
the old Brahmins of Beacon Hill be
oueathed to children and grandchil-
dren an unrelenting hatred of the
mar who had dared to break caste.
With his name erased forever from
the Boston blue book. John Quincy
was no longer a gentleman, and the
Jeffersonians. who were not gentle
men, but only democrats, took him
up. By their favor he became min
lister to Russia, a negotiator OF the
peace of Client in 1914. and minister
to England.
AS il 1t had been the unpleasant
duty of John Adams to be the first
minister in London after the revo
luton, and as it was to be the even
more unpleasant duty of his grand
son, Charles Francis Adams, to be
the minister in the trying time of
the Civil War, it fell to his son, John
Quincy, to brave the frowns Of the
Court of st. James when he appeared