ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY

(July 11, 1767–February 23, 1848), was the 6th President of the United States, 1825–29; one of the few Presidents to re-enter politics after his term; U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, 1830–48, being nicknamed “The Hell-Hound of Slavery,” as he singlehandedly led the fight to lift the Gag Rule which had prohibited discussion of slavery on the floor of Congress; Secretary of State for James Monroe, 1817–25, where he promulgated the Monroe Doctrine, 1823, and obtained Florida from Spain, 1819; U.S. Minister to Great Britain, 1815–17, where he negotiated the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812; U.S. Minister to Russia, 1809–14; Professor at Harvard, 1805; U.S. Senator, 1803–08; State Senator of Massachusetts, 1802; U.S. Minister to Prussia, 1797–1801; married Louisa Catherine Johnson, 1797; U.S. Minister to the Netherlands, 1794; admitted to the bar, 1791; graduated from Harvard College, 1788; Secretary to the U.S. Minister in the Court of Catherine the Great, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1781, receiving the Congressional appointment at the age of 14; his political career began at age 11, when he was sent to join his father, John Adams, who was serving as the U.S. Minister in France, 1778.

On September 26, 1810, in a diary entry, John Quincy Adams wrote:

I have made it a practice for several years to read the Bible through in the course of every year. I usually devote to this reading the first hour after I rise every morning. As, including the Apocrypha, it contains about fourteen hundred chapters, and as I meet with occasional interruptions, when this reading is for single days, and sometimes for weeks, or even months, suspended, my rule is to read five chapters every morning, which leaves an allowance of about one-forth of the time for such interruptions.

Extraordinary pressure or business seldom interrupts more than one day’s reading at a time, and Sickness has frequently occasioned longer suspensions, and traveling still more and longer. During the present year, having lost very few days, I have finished this perusal earlier than usual. I closed the book yesterday.

As I do not wish to suspend the habit of allowing regularly time for this purpose, I have this morning commenced it anew, and for the sake of endeavoring to understand the book better, as well as giving some variety to the study, I have begun this time with Ostervald’s French translation, which has the advantage of a few short reflections upon each chapter.1598

In September of 1811, John Quincy Adams wrote a letter to his son from St. Petersburg, Russia, while serving for the second time in the U.S. Ministry to that country:

My dear Son:

In your letter of the 18th January to your mother, you mentioned that you read to your aunt a chapter in the Bible or a section of Doddridge’s Annotations every evening.

This information gave me real pleasure; for so great is my veneration for the Bible, and so strong my belief, that when duly read and meditated on, it is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men good, wise, and happy—that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more steadily they pursue the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the more lively and confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens of their country, respectable members of society, and a real blessing to their parents. …

I have myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year. …

My custom is, to read four to five chapters every morning immediately after rising from my bed. It employs about an hour of my time. …

It is essential, my son, in order that you may go through life with comfort to yourself, and usefulness to your fellow-creatures, that you should form and adopt certain rules or principles, for the government of your own conduct and temper. …

It is in the Bible, you must learn them, and from the Bible how to practice them. Those duties are to God, to your fellow-creatures, and to yourself. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thy self.” On these two commandments, Jesus Christ expressly says, “hang all the law and the prophets”; that is to say, the whole purpose of Divine Revelation is to inculcate them efficaciously upon the minds of men. …

Let us, then, search the Scriptures. … The Bible contains the revelation of the will of God. It contains the history of the creation of the world, and of mankind; and afterward the history of one peculiar nation, certainly the most extraordinary nation that has ever appeared upon the earth.

It contains a system of religion, and of morality, which we may examine upon its own merits, independent of the sanction it receives from being the Word of God. …

I shall number separately those letters that I mean to write you upon the subject of the Bible. … I wish that hereafter they may be useful to your brothers and sisters, as well as to you.

As you will receive them as a token of affection for you, during my absence. … From your affectionate Father,

John Quincy Adams1599

John Quincy Adams’ correspondence to his son was compiled into a work, entitled, Letters of John Quincy Adams to his son, on the Bible and its Teachings, and was published after his death. In this work is the statement:

No book in the world deserves to be so unceasingly studied, and so profoundly meditated upon as the Bible.1600

On March 13, 1812, John Quincy Adams noted:

This morning I finished the perusal of the German Bible, which I began 20th June last. There are many differences of translation from either the English or the French translations—some of which I have compared in the three versions.1601

On December 31, 1812, John Quincy Adams penned this entry in his diary:

I offer to a merciful God at the close of this year my humble tribute of gratitude for the blessings with which He has, in the course of it, favored me and those dear to me. …

My endeavors to quell the rebellion of the heart have been sincere, and have been assisted with the blessing from above. As I advance in life, its evils multiply, and the instances of mortality become more frequent and approach nearer to myself. The greater is the need for fortitude to encounter the woes that flesh is heir to, and of religion to support pains for which there is no other remedy.1602

In 1813, near the close of the year, John Quincy Adams recorded in his diary:

Religious sentiments become from day to day more constantly habitual to my mind.1603

After negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, on December 24, 1814, John Quincy Adams wrote several times from London regarding the false doctrines which were being promulgated among the intellectuals back in Boston:

I perceive that the Trinitarians and the Unitarians in Boston are sparring together. … Most of the Boston Unitarians are my particular friends, but I never thought much of the eloquence or the theology of Priestly. His Socrates and Jesus Compared is a wretched performance. Socrates and Jesus! A farthing candle and the sun! I pray you to read Massilon’s sermon on the divinity of Christ, and then the whole New Testament, after which be a Socinian if you can.1604

I find in the New Testament, Jesus Christ accosted in His own presence by one of His disciples as God, without disclaiming the appellation. I see Him explicitly declared by at least two other of the Apostles to be God, expressly and repeatedly announced, not only as having existed before the worlds, but as the Creator of the worlds without beginning of days or end of years. I see Him named in the great prophecy of Isaiah concerning him to be the mighty God! …

The texts are too numerous, they are from parts of the Scriptures too diversified, they are sometimes connected by too strong a chain of argument, and the inferences from them are, to my mind, too direct and irresistible, to admit of the explanations which the Unitarians sometimes attempt to give them, or the evasions by which, at others, they endeavor to escape from them.1605

You ask me what Bible I take as the standard of my faith—the Hebrew, the Samaritan, the old English translation, or what? I answer, the Bible containing the Sermon on the Mount—any Bible that I can … understand. The New Testament I have repeatedly read in the original Greek, in the Latin, in the Geneva Protestant, in Sacy’s Catholic French translations, in Luther’s German translation, in the common English Protestant, and in the Douay Catholic translations.

I take any one of them for my standard of faith. … But the Sermon on the Mount commands me to lay up for myself treasures, not upon earth, but in Heaven. My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ. … You think it blasphemous that the omnipotent Creator could be crucified. God is a spirit. The spirit was not crucified. The body of Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.

The Spirit, whether external or created, was beyond the reach of the cross. You see, my orthodoxy grows on me, and I still unite with you in the doctrine of toleration and benevolence.1606

John Wingate Thorton, in his book The Pulpit of the American Revolution, 1860, wrote:

The highest glory of the American Revolution, said John Quincy Adams, was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.1607

On February 10, 1825, in reply to the notification of his election, President-elect John Quincy Adams stated:

I shall therefore repair to the post assigned to me by the call of my country … confident in the trust that the wisdom of the legislative councils will guide and direct me in the path of my official duty, and relying above all upon the superintending providence of that Being in whose hands our breath is and whose are all our ways.1608

On Friday, March 4, 1825, in his Inaugural Address, President John Quincy Adams stated:

In compliance with an usage coeval with the existence of our Federal Constitution, and sanctioned by the example of my predecessors in the career upon which I am about to enter, I appear, my fellow-citizens, in your presence and in that of Heaven to bind myself by the solemnities of religious obligation to the faithful performance of the duties allotted to me in the station to which I have been called. …

From evil—physical, moral, and political—it is not our claim to be exempt. We have suffered sometimes by the visitation of Heaven through disease; often by the wrongs and injustice of other nations, even to the extremities of war; and, lastly, by dissensions among ourselves. …

Freedom of the press and of religious opinion should be inviolate; the policy of our country is peace and the ark of our salvation union are articles of faith upon which we are all now agreed. …

To the guidance of the legislative councils, to the assistance of the executive and subordinate departments, to the friendly cooperation of the respective State governments, to the candid and liberal support of the people so far as it may be deserved by honest industry and zeal, I shall look for whatever success may attend my public service; and knowing that “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh in vain,” with fervent supplications for His favor, to His overruling providence I commit with humble but fearless confidence my own fate and the future destinies of my country.1609

On Tuesday, December 6, 1825, in his First Annual Message to Congress, President John Quincy Adams expressed:

In taking a general survey of the concerns of our beloved country, with reference to subjects interesting to the common welfare, the first sentiment which impresses itself upon the mind is of gratitude to the Omnipotent Disposer of All Good for the continuance of the signal blessings of His providence, and especially for that health which to an unusual extent has prevailed within our borders, and for that abundance which in the vicissitudes of the seasons has been scattered with profusion over the land. Nor ought we less to ascribe to Him the glory that we are permitted to enjoy the bounties of His hand in peace and tranquillity—in peace with all other nations of the earth, in tranquillity among ourselves. There has, indeed, rarely been a period in the history of civilized man in which the general condition of the Christian nations has been marked so extensively by peace and prosperity. …

Moral, political, intellectual improvement are duties assigned by the Author of Our Existence to social no less than to individual man. For the fulfillment of those duties governments are invested with power, and to the attainment of the end—the progressive improvement of the governed—the exercise of delegated powers is a duty as sacred and indispensable as the usurpation of powers not granted is criminal and odious. …

While dwelling with pleasing satisfaction upon the superior excellence of our political institutions, let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon the earth, and that the tenure of power by man is, in the moral purposes of his Creator, upon condition that it shall be exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and fellow-men. While foreign nations less blessed with that freedom which is power than ourselves are advancing with gigantic strides in the career of public improvement, were we to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence and doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority? …

May He who searches the hearts of the children of men prosper your exertions to secure the blessings peace and promote the highest welfare of our country.1610

On December 26, 1825, in communicating with the Senate, President John Quincy Adams stated:

There is yet another subject upon which, without entering into any treaty, the moral influence of the United States may perhaps be exerted with beneficial consequences at such a meeting—the advancement of religious liberty. Some southern nations are even yet so far under the dominion of prejudice that they have incorporated with their political constitutions an exclusive church, without toleration of any other than the dominant sect. The abandonment of this last badge of religious bigotry and oppression may be pressed more effectually by the united exertions of those who concur in the principles of freedom of conscience.1611

On December 31, 1825, President John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary:

I rise usually between five and six—that is, at this time of year, from an hour and a half to two hours before the sun. I walk by the light of the moon or stars, or none, about four miles, usually returning home in time to see the sun rise from the eastern chamber of the House. I then make my fire, and read three chapters of the Bible with Scott’s and Hewlett’s Commentaries.1612

On March 15, 1826, in writing to the House of Representatives, President John Quincy Adams stated:

Objects of the highest importance, not only to the future welfare of the whole human race, but bearing directly upon the special interests of this Union, will engage the deliberations of the congress of Panama whether we are represented there or not. Others, if we are represented, may be offered by our plenipotentiaries for consideration having in view both of these great results—our own interests and the improvement of the condition of man upon the earth.

It may be that in the lapse of many centuries no other opportunity so favorable will be presented to the Government of the United States to subserve the benevolent purposes of Divine Providence; to dispense the promised blessings of the Redeemer of Mankind; to promote the prevalence in future ages of peace on earth and good will to man, as will not be placed in their power by participating in the deliberations of this congress. …

Of the same enumerated topics are the preparation of a manifesto setting forth to the world the justice of their cause and the relations they desire to hold with other Christian powers. …

The Congress of Panama is believed to present a fair occasion for urging upon all the new nations of the south the just and liberal principles of religious liberty; not by any interference whatever in their internal concerns, but by claiming for our citizens whose occupations or interests may call them to occasional residence in their territories the inestimable privilege of worshipping their Creator according to the dictates of their own consciences. … The blessing of Heaven may turn it to the account of human improvement.1613

On July 11, 1826, in an Executive Order, President John Quincy Adams stated:

The President with deep regret announces to the Army that it has pleased the Disposer of All Human Events, in whose hands are the issues of life, to remove from the scene of earthly existence our illustrious venerated fellow-citizen, Thomas Jefferson. This dispensation of Divine Providence, afflicting to us, but the consummation of glory to him, occurred on the 4th of the present month—on the fiftieth anniversary of that Independence the Declaration of which, emanating from his mind, at once proclaimed the birth of a free nation and offered motives of hope and consolation to the whole family of man. …

It has become the painful duty … to announce to the Army the death of another distinguished and venerated citizen. John Adams departed this life on the 4th of this month. Like his compatriot Jefferson, he aided in drawing and ably supporting the Declaration of Independence. With a prophetic eye he looked through the impending difficulties of the Revolution and foretold with what demonstrations of joy the anniversary of the birth of American freedom would be hailed. He was permitted to behold the verification of his prophecy, and died, as did Jefferson, on the day of the jubilee.

A coincidence of circumstances so wonderful gives confidence to the belief that the patriotic efforts of these illustrious men were Heaven directed, and furnishes a new seal to the hope that the prosperity of these States is under the special protection of a kind Providence.1614

On Tuesday, December 5, 1826, in his Second Annual Message to Congress, President John Quincy Adams stated:

The assemblage of the representatives of our Union in both Houses of the Congress at this time occurs under circumstances calling for the renewed homage of our grateful acknowledgements to the Giver of All Good. … We are, as a people, increasing with unabated rapidity in population, wealth, and national resources, and whatever differences of opinion exist among us with regard to the mode and the means by which we shall turn the beneficence of Heaven to the improvement of our own condition, there is yet a spirit animating us all which will not suffer the bounties of Providence to be showered upon us in vain, but will receive them with grateful hearts, and apply them with unwearied hands to the advancement of the general good. …

Since your last meeting at this place, the fiftieth anniversary of the day when our independence was declared … two of the principal actors in that solemn scene—the hand that penned the ever-memorable Declaration and the voice that sustained it in debate—were by one summons, at the distance of 700 miles from each other, called before the Judge of All to account for their deeds done upon earth. They departed cheered by the benedictions of their country, to whom they left the inheritance of their fame and the memory of their bright example. … In the pledge of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of freedom and of mankind; and on the last extended to bed of death, with but sense and sensibility left to breathe a last aspiration to Heaven of blessing upon their country, may we not humbly hope that to them too it was a pledge of transition from gloom to glory, and that while their mortal vestments were sinking into the clod of the valley their emancipated spirits were ascending to the bosom of their God!1615

On December 24, 1827, in his Third Annual Message to Congress, President John Quincy Adams stated:

A revolution of the seasons has nearly been completed. … In that interval the never-slumbering eye of a wise and beneficent Providence has continued its guardian care over the welfare of our beloved country … the productions of the soil, the exchanges of commerce, the vivifying labors of human industry, have combined to mingle in our cup a portion of enjoyment as large and liberal as the indulgence of Heaven has perhaps ever granted to the imperfect state of man upon earth; and as the purest of human felicity consists in its participation with others, it is no small addition to the sum of our national happiness at this time that peace and prosperity prevail to a degree seldom experienced over the whole habitable globe, presenting, though as yet with painful exceptions, a foretaste of that blessed period of promise when the lion shall lied down with the lamb and wars shall be no more.1616

On Tuesday, December 2, 1828, in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress, President John Quincy Adams stated:

If the enjoyment in profusion of the bounties of Providence forms a suitable subject of mutual gratulation and grateful acknowledgment, we are admonished at this return of the season when the representatives of the nation are assembled to deliberate upon their concerns to offer up the tribute of fervent and grateful hearts for the never-failing mercies of Him who ruleth over all. He has again favored us with healthful seasons and abundant harvests; He has sustained us in peace with foreign countries and in tranquillity within our borders; He has preserved us in the quiet and undisturbed possession of civil and religious liberty; He has crowned the year with His goodness, imposing on us no other condition than of improving for our own happiness the blessings bestowed by His hands, and, in the fruition of all His favors, of devoting the faculties with which we have been endowed by Him to His glory and to our own temporal and eternal welfare. …

Proceeding from a cause which humanity will view with concern, the suffering of scarcity in distant lands, it yields a consolatory reflection that this scarcity is in no respect attributable to us; that it comes from the dispensation of Him who ordains all in wisdom and goodness, and who permits evil itself only as an instrument of good; that, far from contributing to this scarcity, and that in pouring forth from the abundance of our own garners the supplies which will partially restore plenty to those who are in need we shall ourselves reduce our stores and add to the price of our own bread, so as in some degree to participate in the wants which it will be the good fortune of our country to relieve. …

They were, moreover, considered as savages, whom it was our policy and our duty to use our influence in converting to Christianity and in bringing within the pale of civilization. … As brethren of the human race, rude and ignorant, we endeavored to bring them to the knowledge of religion and of letters. The ultimate design was to incorporate in our own institutions that portion of them which could be converted to the state of civilization. … We have had the rare good fortune of teaching them the arts of civilization and the doctrines of Christianity.1617

On November 13, 1831, John Quincy Adams recorded:

Since I left Quincy [for Washington] I have composed twenty-three stanzas of versions of the Psalms—all bad, but as good as I could make them.1618

John Quincy Adams composed the poem:

Almighty Father! look in mercy down:

O! grant me virtue, to perform any part—

The patriot’s fervour, and the statesman’s art

In thought, word, deed, preserve me from thy frown.

Direct me to the paths of bright renown—

Guide my frail bark, by truth’s unerring chart,

Inspire my soul, and purify my heart;

and with success my steadfast purpose crown.

My country’s weal—that be my polar star—

Justice, thou Rock of Ages, is thy law—

And when thy summons calls me to thy bar,

Be this my plea, thy gracious smile to draw—

That all my ways to justice were inclin’d—

And all my aims—the blessings of mankind.1619

On January 1, 1837, at age 71, John Quincy Adams entered in his diary:

Whether I am or shall be saved is all unknown to me; I know that I have been, and am, a sinner … but I cannot, if I would, divest myself of the belief that my Maker is a being whose tender mercies are over all His works … 1620

On July 4, 1837, in 2 John Quincy Adams proclaimed:

Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Saviour of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day.

Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the Progress of the Gospel dispensation?

Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth?

That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfillment of the prophecies announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Saviour and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets 600 years before.1621

In 1838, in a speech before Congress, John Quincy Adams spoke:

Sir, I might go through the whole of the sacred history of the Jews to the advent of our Saviour and find innumerable examples of women who not only took an active part in politics of their times, but who are held up with honor to posterity for doing so. Our Savior himself, while on earth, performed that most stupendous miracle, of raising of Lazarus from the dead, at the petition of a woman.1622

On May 27, 1838, in Washington, D.C., John Quincy Adams entered into his diary:

The neglect of public worship in this city is an increasing evil, and the indifference to all religion throughout the whole country portends no good. There is in the clergy of all the Christian denominations a time-serving, cringing, subservient morality, as wide from the Gospel as it is from the intrepid assertion and indication of truth.

The counterfeit character of a very large portion of the Christian ministry in this country is disclosed in the dissension growing up in all the Protestant churches on the subject of slavery. … 1623

In his diary which he kept meticulously, John Quincy Adams made note of his church attendance:

Scarcely a Sunday passes [that I fail to] hear something of which a pointed application to my own situation and circumstances occurs to my thoughts. It is often consolation, support, encouragement—sometimes warning and admonition, sometimes keen and trying remembrance of deep distress. The lines [of Isaac Watts’ hymn sung] are of the cheering kind.1624

On April 30, 1839, John Quincy Adams spoke to the New York Historical Society on the fiftieth anniversary of Washington’s inauguration:

The signers of the Declaration further averred that the one people of the united colonies were then precisely in that situation—with a government degenerated into tyranny and called upon by the laws of nature and of nature’s God to dissolve that government and to institute another.1625

And thus was consummated the work commenced by the Declaration of Independence—a work in which the people of the North American Union, acting under the deepest sense of responsibility to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, has achieved the most transcendent act of power that social man in his mortal condition can perform.1626

Now the virtue which had been infused into the Constitution of the United States, and was to give to its vital existence the stability and duration to which it was destined, was no other than the consecration of those abstract principles which had been first proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; namely, the self-evident truths of the natural and unalienable rights of man, of the indefeasible constituent and dissolvent sovereignty of the people, always subordinate to a rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that sovereign, constituent, and dissolvent power.1627

In writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Quincy Adams stated:

For many years since the establishment of the theological school at Andover, the Calvinists and Unitarians have been battling with each other upon the atonement, the divinity of Jesus Christ and the Trinity. This has now very much subsided; but other wanderings of mind takes the place of that, and equally lets the wolf into the fold. A young man, named Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a classmate of my lamented son George, after failing in the everyday avocation of a Unitarian preacher and schoolmaster, starts a new doctrine of transcendentalism, declared all the old revelations superannuated and worn out, and announces the approach of new revelations and prophecies.1628

Ralph Waldo Emerson commented concerning John Quincy Adams:

No man could read the Bible with such powerful effect, even with the cracked and winded voice of old age.1629

On July 11, 1841, his seventy-fourth birthday, John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary:

My birthday happens this day upon the Sabbath. Every return of the day comes with a weight of solemnity more and more awful. How peculiarly impressive ought it then be when the annual warning of the shortening thread sounds in tones deepened by the church bell of the Lord’s Day! The question comes with yearly aggravation upon my conscience, “What have I done with the seventy-four years that I have been indulged with the blessings of life!”1630

In 1843, at seventy-six years of age, John Quincy Adams officiated at the laying of the cornerstone for an astronomical observatory in Cincinnati:

The hand of God himself has furnished me this opportunity to do good. But, oh how much will depend upon my manner of performing the tasks! And with what agony of soul must I implore the aid of the Almighty Wisdom for powers of conception, energy of execution, and unconquerable will to accomplish my design.1631

On February 27, 1844, at the age of 77, John Quincy Adams was not only a U.S. Representative, but also the chairman of the American Bible Society. In addressing that organization, he proclaimed:

I deem myself fortunate in having the opportunity, at a stage of a long life drawing rapidly to its close, to bear at this place, the capital of our National Union, in the Hall of representatives of the North American people, in the chair of the presiding officer of the assembly representing the whole people, the personification of the great and mighty nation—to bear my solemn testimonial of reverence and gratitude to that book of books, the Holy Bible. …

The Bible carries with it the history of the creation, the fall and redemption of man, and discloses to him, in the infant born at Bethlehem, the Legislator and Saviour of the world.1632

Returning to politics after having served as the nation’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams spoke to the House of Representatives, where he led the fight against slavery for nearly fourteen years before seeing results:

Oh, if but one man could arise with a genius capable of supporting, and an utterance capable of communicating those eternal truths that belong to this question, to lay bare in all its nakedness that outrage upon the goodness of God, human slavery! Now is the time, and this is the occasion, upon which such a man would perform the duties of an angel upon earth!1633

When asked why he never seemed discouraged or depressed over championing the unpopular fight against slavery, John Quincy Adams replied:

Duty is ours; results are God’s.1634

On December 3, 1844, after years of struggle against the powerful slavery interests, John Quincy Adams’ motion succeeded to rescind the infamous Gag Rule, which had forbidden the discussion of slavery in the Congress. After hearing the progress of his long and lonely anti-slavery crusade, John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary:

Blessed, forever blessed, be the name of God!1635

On July 11, 1846, his 80th birthday, John Quincy Adams entered in his diary:

I enter upon my eightieth year, with thanksgiving to God for all the blessings and mercies which His providence has bestowed upon me throughout a life extended now to the longest term allotted to the life of man; with supplication for the continuance of those blessings and mercies to me and mine, as long as it shall suit the dispensations of His wise providence, and for resignation to His will when my appointed time shall come.1636

John Quincy Adams revealed his convictions and philosophy in the following quotations:

The first and almost the only Book deserving of universal attention is the Bible.1637

I speak as a man of the world to men of the world; and I say to you, Search the Scriptures! The Bible is the book of all others, to be read at all ages, and in all conditions of human life; not to be read once or twice or thrice through, and then laid aside, but to be read in small portions of one or two chapters every day, and never to be intermitted, unless by some overruling necessity.1638

In what light soever we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revelation, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.1639

It is no slight testimonial, both to the merit and worth of Christianity, that in all ages since its promulgation the great mass of those who have risen to eminence by their profound wisdom and integrity have recognized and reverenced Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of the living God.1640

Posterity—you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.1641

My own deliberate opinion is, that the more of pure moral principles is carried into the policy and conduct of a Government, the wiser and more profound that policy will be.1642

From the day of the Declaration … they (the American people) were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of The Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct.1643

All that I am, my mother made me.1644

In an article published in The Churchman, June 14, 1890, John Quincy Adams stated:

There are two prayers that I love to say—the first is the Lord’s Prayer, and because the Lord taught it; and the other is what seems to be a child’s prayer: “Now I lay me down to sleep,” and I love to say that because it suits me. I have been repeating it every night for many years past, and I say it yet, and I expect to say it my last night on earth if I am conscious. But I have added a few words more to the prayer so as to express my trust in Christ, and also to acknowledge what I ask, for I ask as a favor, and not because I deserve it. This is it:

“Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep;

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take;

For Jesus’ sake. Amen.”1645

Near the end of his life, John Quincy Adams entered in his diary:

May I never cease to be grateful for the numberless blessings received through life at His hands, never repine at what He has denied, never murmur at the dispensations of Providence, and implore His forgiveness for all the errors and delinquencies of my life!1646

On February 21, 1848, John Quincy Adams stated:

Fortune, by which I understand Providence, has showered blessings upon me profusely. But they have been blessings unforseen and unsought. Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo do gloriam. [Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory.]1647