People talk about the idea of service. What would he think about a former secretary of state making 225,000 to give a speech . John well, thats an interesting question. Of course, in his day politics was not a root to wealth. The opposite. And when he was a young man, he ran for the state legislature of massachusetts. Most of his friends who were all lawyers like him wouldnt do that because the theory was first you make dough as a merchant or a lawyer, whatever it was, and then when you are comfortable, you can afford to go into politics because no one ever made a nickel. Congressman in those days would get 9 as a per diem. Adams struggled economically his whole life but he thought that it was right that he struggle. And i think that, again, part of his sense of its Public Service is that you accept the fact that youre not going to make money doing it and youll die poor. Indeed, the president s who preceded adams, jefferson famously, but madison not so famously, monroe not so famously had terrible economic problems once theyd stepped down because they never made money at all and adams was haunted by the fear that he would die destitute. He was a pretty good investor and was able to invest enough ney to bail out many impecunius family members and kept going but he felt profiting from politics was immoral. What did you like about him most . John its funny, hes not a likable person. I tend to use the word admire more than like because when we have the kind of implicit like test, would i like to have a beer with the guy, you know, the test that george w. Bush won over al gore, the answer was no. He is a forbidding figure. His son said he wore the iron mask. And its really true. Cihlly. Age of bearish he was an astonishing talker and he knew everything about everything and had forgotten nothing. But in the end i do not describe him in this book as a likable man and i think i give full measure to his unlikable, indeed, unlikable qualities, bad husband, great father, irreverant son. But when i asked what i admire about him, its this deep sense of this obligation beyond himself. He never was in a war, he never saw a battle but he was fearless and prepared to risk his life in the name of Public Service. When he in the last part of his life, and we can come to this later, when he took on what he called the slaveocracy in congress, he started getting Death Threats. I read them all because he kept all the letters. Theres dozens of them. The Death Threats were not things like you deserve to die. No, they were things like im in covington, kentucky, or some place and im leaving now and i am coming for you. And i will cut you down in the street. Sometimes he would get letters from people saying ok, im halfway there, im still advancing towards washington. Very credible threats. What did he do . Nothing. He didnt tell federal marshals or tell his wife. He basically lived his wife and would have thought it shameful to live otherwise. Thats heroism. Host when did you think it was worth spending all this time with John Quincy Adams . John among the various things i do, i teach a class on Foreign Policy at n. Y. U. In abu dhabi where n. Y. U. Is a campus and the camp is basically a Public Policy from Woodrow Wilson forward and i was researching 1th century Foreign Policy and you come across adams name and was secretary of state for both of James Monroes terms and i should read the good book on adams and i looked and no disrespect to any of my predecessors but really since 1950 and 156 when the great diplomatic historian, samuel beamus wrote a prizewinning autobiography of him, that had been a substantial treatment of him. That was remarkable. Kind of an underexplored founding father like territory. And then the second thing was i discovered that he had kept a diary, not an episodic diary like some public figures, a diary like no public figure has ever kept every day of his life from the time he was 18. He began when he was 11. From the time he was 18 he hardly skipped a day until he was physically paralyzed close to his death. Thats an astonishing record. It means the way you always write in writing about people in the past, he must have thought this, well, you dont have to say that with adams. We know what he thought, tells us what he thought. Thats an astonishing record. Then theres the third thing, adams was not a good president. He was not a successful president. If his career had ended at the end of his presidency as his fathers career ended at the end of his presidency, i dont think i would have written a book about him. But he didnt. He has 16 years when he goes back to congress and he becomes a great champion of the antislavery forces and to me that trajectory of a man who leaves the presidency scorned and mocked and thought of as a fossil, even they he was thought of as an old wink to a and laugh new england patriarchal path that westernized american was moving towards. That was the judgment on him. And he lived not just to reverse, to alter that judgment but the same qualities that had made him a bad president , the same kind of moral intransigents then made him a great man. That cinched the case. Host the great paul naga who wrote a book on John Quincy Adams was here almost 20 years ago and is now deceased, said something in the interview ive never forgotten and want you to fill in the blanks after you hear. This is about the diary. Back to the diaries. How big is the 00 and how many reels . 608 real reels for the adams papers and 19 reels devoted to the diaries. Host you have read them all . Yes, more than once. I think im the only person in the world who had the tenacity to do that. Host how many different pages . Can you quantify how many pages . The best thing to say is it you rolled out i forgot who told me this, if you extended the film it would run nine miles. Host tell us your experience with the diaries and archives. John well, first of all, its about 17,000 or so pages of adams own volumes. So think about that as a experiment. No diary is ever of course truly a transparent record. Its a record of what that person thought and not of what actually happened and not only that there are periods adams goes silent. For example, on things you wouldnt expect. Is wife loosea his wife louisa had many miskearnls and you dont know it until adams talks about it until you come to a passage where shes agonized and suffered and adams himself was tortured but for him pregnancy, too intimate. But the thing that does come through so powerfully is the personality of a man with kind of a deep puritan iron in his soul, selfaccusatory, harshly selfaccusatory, i must wake up earlier, im falling short of my own standards. I must read more. I reread my diary its all binal, its nothing. Theres that. Theres his astonishing erud imbing tion. And things that are startles. He loved byron, the most mad of the bad boys, mad and dangerous to know, everything adams would have deplored but his literary taste was not just a dependable variable of his morals because he loved poetry and literature and he loved byron and altaire who he thought of as a lipper teen. The breadth of his personality comes through. I never really was never bored. Well, ok, well, i guess when i th iteration ousand of his trees, he was fascinated by dindrology which is his word for study of trees, he planted trees and grew trees and loved them and there were moments my eyes scanned over and i thought oh, more trees, i can skip this package so unlike paul neagle, i cant say i read every word. Host where did you read it . John well, here is the great thing about modern life. He answer is on my computer. And so adams journal exists in several forms. One, his son Charles Francis adams who is his literary executor and also of his father and father john abigail, collected about 35 to 40 of the diaries in 12 bound olumes, so i had that. Then in addition to that the adams papers project at the Massachusetts Historical Society about which through much cannot be said from the point of view of people who care about this family and starts with john and goes all the way down to the seventh generation, has digitized the whole diary, so its all available online, in addition to that, they have begun optically scanning the diary so that you get a type script version which is now run through, i dont know, i think 1816 or 1817, beginning when he is secretary of state. So it exist in many different forms all of which i could have in my office in my computer or on my shelves. Host i want to put on the screen his life broken down so that those who never paid any attention or even those that have can see the rundown here. As you look at that, i know you point out in your book he went overseas before he was 27 but he was the minister to the netherlands 2729. He was minister to prussia, age 3033. He was u. S. Senator from massachusetts, 3540. Minister to russia, 4246. Thats his age. This is in the early 1800s. Behindster to great britain, 4749 years old. Secretary of state, 5057. President of the United States, 18251829, age 5761. And then member of the house of representatives until he died 6380, which part of that, those periods, did you have the most interest in when you wrote . John i guess the last. I would say prior to what you ut up on the screen, his youth was fascinating because his father took him, john adams, took him to france in 1778 and then again in 1780 when he was going as a diplomat. So this young man had an upbringing in europe that was really like that of very, very few americans. And he wrote about it in his diary. So we know about the time he spent nine months or maybe a year at the 13yearold and 14yearold secretary to americas then ambassador to ssia in st. Petersburg where the ambassador wasnt received by katherine the great so adams i read humes five volume history of england so i kind of know everything he did then. His youth was very, very interesting. And then if you ask me, you know, whats the part that was the most riveting for me, its really this final phase when he is hes the former president of the United States, and there he is in the house. And what you would imagine in a case like that is this man full of years and honors, speaking grandly, you know, of his knowledge no. No. He was furious. He was a harpy. He was a he would taunt and enrage the south. He was unreasonable. He was bitter. He was vindictive. All of his righteousness and his bile were all provoked by slavery. And by the southern smug opposition to those antislavery forces. And so this is really magnificent. I mean, hes at times hes a hissing snake or a spitting dog, but above all, hes the most formidable opponent. And not once but twice the south had hes so enraged and what he called the slaveocracy, the southern slave owners of congress, they had him censured and he was subjected to a censured proceeding. The first time he defended himself alone. Nobody would come to his aid and he beat the south alone. The second time, were now into 1842 when there was an Abolitionist Movement and he had people around him, a researcher in the library of congress but in the end it was still his own speech for days that forced the south to cry uncle. So thats magnificent. Honestly when people say when is lynn manual amanda going the do the a. J. A. Pop musical . Well, i think hes going on to other things. But if he were to do something this would be the moment the cantankerous old new englander became this spitfire. Host what was the gag rule . John ok. So heres the form in which he took on the slave holders. So the constitution guarantees the right of petition. We dont think about that anymore because if you want to influence your congressman, you can join a lobby or special Interest Group or write a letter or give them money. Ok. In those days when you couldnt, the only way you had a voice besides voting was to submit a petition. Most petitions said my uncle john fought bravely in the revolutionary war and hadnt gotten a pension and he should get one. There also were petitions about issues. So starting at 1835 when the Abolitionist Movement in america really began, you say the antislavery movement. Many of themselves wouldnt have called them abolitionists and begin to send petitions to congress and the petitions would say, i would Like Congress to prohibit slavery in the district of columbia which is a federally administered district and therefore the congress has the power to do so or i Want Congress to eliminate the slave trade. Everyone knew you couldnt Petition Congress to have slavery end in virginia. That was virginias call. So no one in congress wanted to submit these petitions because the south dominated congress in part because of the same 3 5 rule which had within enshrined in the constitution every slave was 3 of a person and states like South Carolina were overrepresented because it was swelled with people with individuals with no rights and adams would present them and in the beginning adams said look im not sympathizing with these petitions but people have a right to petition so im going to present them. This was a big threat because a e holders said slaves is states rights issue and it cannot be discussed or debated in congress. And adams said its a right of petition and of course can be discussed and debated. The slave holders responded by doing something unprecedented. They proposed and passed law which stipulated on the issue of slavery and only on the issue of slavery, congress would not receive petitions and there were many variance of what received meant but in fact thats what it meant. Well, that rule was a congressional rule which expired with each new congress and that meant in each congress there would be this huge fight, adams and others would present these petitions. Immediately the south would respond with a proposal for a new gag rule and then there would be a huge debate over that and every time the south would win but the debates got closer and more ferocious and adams, after standing alone the first couple times, got more and more confederates. He became the mentor to a whole generation of antislavery congressmen. The censure motions were consequences of adams doing things preposterously to flout the rules. He would present the petition that wasnt from abolitionists but was from slaves. Well, the south went crazy. How can slaves present a petition. Theyre not people, theyre property. So adams said well, if a petition came from a dog or a horse, i would present it to congress. The right of petition. Even the ottoman simultaneous an hears petitions. So this huge thing blew up and only then did adams reveal the petition from slaves was asking congress not to ban slavery but to preserve slavery. Well, the fact is he knew the petition had been sent to him as a fraud in order to go to him, and he did it on purpose so he enraged the south so theyd have these incredible dramas and every year well, generally the opposition to the gag rule built up and finally after 10 years of nonstop battle the gag rule ended congress and would not vote to sustain the gag rule. What did it mean in the house from then on . John look, the honest answer was, was slavery going to be ended by a debate in the house or senate . No. One cannot say that adams heroism led to the end of slavery. What it did was it led to the free debate over slavery which the south feared. And that free debate over slavery is what ultimately led o the election in 1860 of an explicitly antislavery candidate, Abraham Lincoln which convinced the south it had no future in the republic to is he seed in the war. In that direct sense adams laid the foundation. Host let me divert for a minute and talk about james traub. Where did you start your life . James this is new to me, i dont write about dead people, i write about living people. Ive been a journalist since graduating from harvard. Host where . I knocked around. Whenever young people come to me and say i want to be a journalist like you, i say dont be a journalist like me. I say, i spent years writing for magazines that are all defunct now. I cant remember the names of some of them, science magazines and business magazines and airline, i worked as an editor briefly but really didnt want to do that. I wanted to write. And so actually the thing i always tell these kids who come to me, i said i only got even remotely good at this thing when i insisted on writing about the stuff that i cared about, the stuff that i would be thinking about even if i werent writing about it. Thats when i started writing more important things for more important publications im happy to say still exist to this day. And so i wrote a lot before i wrote about my current subject which is Foreign Policy, i wrote about urban issues, race, crime, in the 1980s, still the cold war, the Foreign Policy to me was a frozen thing but the great question, you know, domestic questions about things like affirmative action, School Reform. I wrote about School Reform for many, many years. That was my life. I wrote books at the same time on some of these same subjects. And then in 1998, the New York Times magazine, which i was writing for chiefly at that ime and for many years assigned me a piece about kofi annan who was about to go to iraq about to persuade Saddam Hussein about weapons inspectors to come in, this was assigned me a january of 1998. I did that and showed up on a thursday and on monday i through to baghdad. That was the most fun i ever had as a journalist. And i thought wow, Foreign Policy, this is great. That was the beginning of the chief source. Host you thank your son in this book, alex and what part he plays and why is your family and where are you originally from and how big is your family now . Jake im from new york and my wife runs a place training curators to be better readers of their institutions and whether their directors will become directors or not. Our son alex works in calcutta and it is the worst city youve seen and he loves it. Alex is a very gifted editor. He sends me his stuff to be edited and i send him my stuff to be edited. He read every word of this book d gave me extensive comments i would say never unduly harsh. I would push back because you get defensive but hes usually right. So he has that role and i hope he always will have that role n my work. Host back to John Quincy Adams. James people now say quincy. The second child. He had a younger sister and two more born after him. He was the second of four. Because he was the oldest boy he was treated number one. When the parents talk about abby, she kind of folded into the group but john quincy is there and he is the one who is kind of nominated to to be the next generation. I suppose they must have seen pretty early on that he was an exceptionally gifted person and also very disciplined. Which the two younger brothers were not. They didnt have that iron in their soul both of the elder adams had. So always had the weight of the hopes and expectations and they ad the heavy burden to bear. Ost it is all about republicans and how they treated their children. He was really tough. Number one reason . James he had a son who was 30 in his class at harvard and he said dont come home for christmas, ill feel nothing but shame in your presence in those days. There were about 75 kids in a class but really, really tough. Host agree . James he was a terrible father. The thing that strikes you is that this guy did not have an easy time as a son of parents who had such High Expectations and his mother would write him these letters that would chill your blood. When he goes to europe as a boy, she writes him a letter that says that warns him against the pressures of europe. And she says i would sooner you perish beneath the sea than that you become she doesnt say a liberteen but thats when she means and she means it. You would think that if you had grown up under this excruciating burden and you were aware of the chill that had entered your own soul as a result, and that i think he was, you would say im not going to make that mistake with my own children. But adams worshiped his parents. He worshiped his mother as much as his father, you know, and in the paul neagle biography, shes kind of the villain. And i think in modern terms we can understand that but adams didnt think that way at all. He revered her and wept when she learned she died though it wasnt a surprise, shed been sick for a long time. He never descented a tittle from one of the parents, he worshiped them both. So there was no part of him that said when he finally had children of his own, i better not do to them what they did to me. Quite the contrary. He was worse. He was worse because i think he had a terrible fear of failing. So he trove the children unmercifully. He had a deep horror of improper, unacceptable behavior which would include not only being 30th in the class, one of his sons was actually kicked out of harvard because in those days students were always writing about this and that and his class had rioted and kicked out and adams tried to intervene and the president of harvard, his great friends said sorry. He was writing these letters to both of his there were three boys, one of whom, Charles Francis, became the John Quincy Adams of the next generation. And he always he was kind of a loose liver but kept it from his father, his father didnt know. The other two, one, john, was a real problem drinker and really kind of irresponsible and cause of tremendous heart sickness to both parents. The other, george, though, was a deeply troubled person. There was something that just didnt grasp reality about george. He was a lovely person. People liked him but he just couldnt he lived in a dream world. And adams, instead of recognizing thats what george was just laid into him for his unrealism. Even adams realized at some point he wasnt getting anywhere and could say in later letters, i love you, whatever he could say to make him come around but he ultimately committed suicide. Now, do i think adams is responsible for georges suicide . Its a terrible heavy judgment to make and i think george was a very strange young man from the time he was born so who knows. Louisa, his wife, worried that her husband would think that she blamed him for georges suicide. I can only think that the reason she thought that is because secretly she did. She didnt think she should but secretly she did and one could have. Again, thats a mystery but there is no question he was a harsh and unforgiving father. Host through chapter 24, ill read the first couple lines, the title, its 18251827, an arrow to the heart. John quincy adams awoke in darkness almost every day of his tenure in the white house and arose as early as 4 00 in the summer and perhaps an hour later in the winter. Then you go on through a lot of things, a lot of personal hings. James the thing that strikes you, hes a politician and held Elective Office and done whatever you do to win. Hes so solitary. Hes a solitary man. And when you ask why is his great literary achievement a journal, i think the answer is because he was most at ease speaking to himself, speaking within his own mind, his very powerful, enormous, multichambered mind. And so as president one is just struck by how solitary he was. He didnt have companions and more importantly he didnt form alliances and he didnt do anything you would do in order to be able to persuade people who otherwise might not go along with your agenda to do so. And so his four years in the white house were just pain, just pain, everything was hard. E achieved almost nothing. He probably wouldnt have succeeded much anyway because he was pretty much last of the line and a new world was coming into being which Andrew Jackson would inherit and other things that had to do with the contested election that he won that made people think he was illegitimate. But a conventional politician like henry clay who was secretary of state, like the l. B. J. Of his time, would have found a way of saying ok, i wont propose this or that or this or that the because theyll never get through but im just going to focus on this and then im going to really work it hard to get it through. Adams never did that. He said, im going to say whats right. Im going to put it out and maybe nobody will vote for but its the right thing and eventually people will see that im right. Well, eventually thats true, eventually Abraham Lincoln reacted to a certain amount of that, to adams domestic agenda but thats selfdefeating behavior for a politician. Host what was his routine in the morning . James once hed wake up at dawn he would take a solitary walk and hed turn out of the white house and turn right to congress or left to georgetown and he would walk through the darkened streets. Nobody would ever see him. There was nobody there and washington was still a small town then, pennsylvania avenue had just been paved. I dont think all of it was paved yet. He would walk and think, think his thoughts. He would come back and see the dawn rise. From the white house. And then he would get to work. Normally he would read the bible for an hour in the morning. It may be that when he was president he would have to omit that at times. That was his usual habit. He would read the bible and then finally have breakfast. Hed have breakfast later and then he would get to work. And getting to work for him, a lot of it was writing. He was writing letters to other office holders, he was responding, he would have to if anybody wanted a pension, a military pension, he had to do that. He had to just do a lot of things president s wouldnt have to do and then hed meet with his cabinet in the afternoon and then hed go back and write some more and then he would have supper and then he would usually write his journal late at night. I think hed probably write the journal kind of last thing. But he would spend an hour a day, im guessing, writing in the journal because they were long entries. And this is a guy who was unbelieveably overworked. His cabinet got basically worked into the ground and still wrote the journal and omitted a few months because even he got overwhelmed. Host you read in the chapters louisa was frequently ill, often melancholy. But her name rarely even appears in his journal during his president ial years. James its really strikely, virtually never. He was so consumed with these battles he was fighting. And louisa absented herself. She went up to the bedroom and she ate bonbons. She had a real sweet tooth and some miraculous ability not to gain weight. She was always thin. But she had she was basically profoundly depressed. We would say now she was having a breakdown. And during those times she was angry at him. Nd she wrote poetry. She loved to write poetry and wrote fragments of plays. And the most painful one to read by far is kind of begins as a processional and never really turns into a narrative but in the processional, there was lord sharply. And lady sharply. Lord sharply is selfevidently adams and seen as a man a absolutely irreproschable morals and perfect demeanor who is utterly devoid of human warmth and vauntingly ambitious at the same time. You cant believe that a first lady would write this about her husband. I would have to say the one time in the course of writing this book when i thought why am i writing about this man was when i was reading that play she wrote. Its just awful. Host you describe him as a short man, balding and stubby and differently dressed and he would have passed unnoticed as he moved swiftly in the streets. Was he by himself . No secret service or protection of any kind. James you knocked on the door, his son john would probably answer it. There was nobody else to answer the door. Maybe a servant. He would go one thing i skipped, in the summer what he would do in the mornings is he would go swimming. In those days there was a brafrpbl of the potomac called the tyber that ran up against the white house. He would walk to a rock there and strip on his clothes and go naked and put on goggles and go swimming. One time hes swimming with antoine, his long time servant, and he decides to not take off his clothes. Hes wearing a shirt with a kind of bulbous sleeve, cinched at the wrist and it starts filling up with water and he comes very, very close to drowning and has to strip off all his clothes soing wet and antoine has to hail down someone in a carriage and go back to the white house and get him a change of clothes and then come back. Anyway, he comes back to the white house at 9 00 or 10 00 and so far as i could tell, no one has missed him. Hed been gone for hours. If this happened now, youd have the entire u. S. Military out hunting for the guy. Nobody noticed he wasnt there. Host you write, he had decided to follow monroes example of accepting no social invitations lest he give offense to whomever he refused. So. James monroes wife was very shy and retiring. Louisa was a giguereous person and when adams had been secretary of state she threw these parties that was the only way adams could actually connect with the larger world. She was very important to him politically in that regard. But once he got into the white house, he felt, im the president of the United States and he felt that just as a burden, just as a burden. So i cant do anything that would be seen as partial. And so he didnt want to invite this one and not that one. It was a completely unnecessary restriction. When he first came to washington as a senator, Thomas Jefferson would basically invite every interesting person in washington and he and adams had been great friends when the two had been in paris when adams was 14 or 15 and adams and louisa would go all the time and it was great fun. Adams loved it. So he was accustom to the white house as a social center. No, he was like a bear in a cave as president. Host lets go back to the us life on the screen, sign on shine on the different years and ask you about a couple moments in there, in particular, lets look at the years where he was in the United States senate. He was 3540 years old, did he do anything in the senate memorable and how did he get there . James in those days senators were not enacted legislatively but chose by state legislators. Its not surprising he was the son of a president and a very highly regarded diplomat and so through a series of retirements basically he wound up taking the job. And so the thing that distinguished him from the moment he got there was that he was a member of a party, the federalist party, his fathers party which was the opposition party. Thomas jefferson was the Republican Party. Host is that a republican today . James no. The Republican Party decreases the Democratic Republic Party which ultimately decreases the Democrat Party and it was theant seedent. The Republican Party we know now really arises with lincoln. Adams always took the position, im not here as a party man. Adams didnt believe in party. This was a very, very important question. George washington didnt believe in party. Most of the founders thought party meant faction and it was bad and selfish associations with national patriotism. Adams absolutely absorbed that. So when jefferson was doing things that were seen by other federalists as being a disaster for their own party and therefore they opposed them, for example, the louisiana purchase, which was going to hugely expand the magnitude of the country into areas, the west and parts of the south, some of it clearly would be slave Holding Areas and all of it would be new men who would see old new england as antiquated, clearly bad for the federalists. Adams said this is a good thing for america because adams had a vision of america as a continental nation, as many did at the time. He supported it with a million caveats, weird caveats no one believed in except him. On the one hand he was kind of eccentric who had his own intellectual views and would follow them no matter what but otherwise he was indifferent to party and prepared to accept whatever consequences came of that and ultimately was how he left the senate because in the runup to the war of 1812 and by the runup i mean five or six years earlier, the english were attacking american shipping, this word imprespant, we learned in school, they would take men sailors on the ships and they werent british but were american and it was hard to tell the difference because the accents arent as they are now. And jefferson said weve got to do something about it and establish a embargo, no transatlantic shipping. That was a catastrophe for new england because that was their economy and all of them opposed it except adams, he said we never with be supine against a foreign foe. He knew it would be a disaster for him politically. He wasnt even sure the embargo would work and actually at times said it wont work but he couldnt bear the idea of allowing the british to get away with these depp aizations on american shiping. So his friend said to him, are you crazy . You cant do this. He said, i will do it. So ultimately in 1808, massachusetts chose his replacement before his term had come up. And adams understood perfectly well what that mean. He said fine, i resign as of today. And it was an episode that from the outside looks humiliating. Adams considered it one of the proudest moments of his life. Host lets go back to the second page we have of his life and ask i about the period he was secretary of state. Who was the president . I think you mentioned it earlier. And what did he do that mattered . James so hes secretary of state under james monroe. This is a period of peace. Energy is no longer at war. So its already a different kind of profession. So americas great object, then, its Foreign Policy was really what we today would call domestic policy, territorial expansion. That was the goal. And so in terms of Foreign Policy, america was a little bit like when china spoke of peaceful rise, all they wanted was to not have problems abroad so they could focus on this enormous dynamic at home of expanding. And so adams, his great achievement was negotiating with pain over territorial expansion and spain held florida because it was called the floridas and also included the western part of arkansas which america had been trying to get a long time. Adams saw spain was a weak country, United States was a rising power and spain a declining power. And rather than simply negotiate, he wanted land to the west. He wanted all this property to the west. And so he and the then spanish ambassador dueled over there, they looked at maps and the spanish ambassador would say here, and he would say no and he would say that siped of river and adams would say no, that side of the river. He ultimately got the spaniards to concede literally a line to the pacific ocean. That line was literally a line with no geographic value but it made america a Pacific Power because american territory now, even if only kind of theoretically, extended to the pacific and was a great achievement american had longed for. Nobody expected it to happen then. Adams kept pushing for more territory and even at some point monroe and the cabinet would say fine, we have enough, stop. Adams would say no, i can get more. So ultimately he got areas basically that went up to the eastern edge of texas and then this line to the pacific. It was a great achievement. Samuel flag beamus, a historian, said it was the greatest diplomatic achievement, i think he says its the greatest achievement by one man that ever achieved. Host could he speak . James thats an interesting question. Adams was a fantastic talker. And people have testified that this man knew every word in shakespeare. He knew about if we talked about dancing girls, he could talk about stories from the Old Testament and then talk about the indian idea of the notch girl. He knew everything about everything and he was an amazing talker. But he was not a public speaker. He was convinced he was a terrible public speaker. And he tried very hard to learn. So in 1806, hes still a young 1805. Hes back, hes been a diplomat and hes back in boston and earning a living as a lawyer. Harvard approaches him and said wed like you to be the first director of rhetoric and orator, the oldest continuous endowed chair in america. Adams had long studied cicero and the other great rhetoricians. And he became obsessed. And every time he went to church, he did it twice on sunday, hed note the verbal ticks of the preacher in question and would listen to what would work and didnt work and put himself through this education in order to make himself a better professor but also better at this thing. Now, ultimately, ultimately adams became a great speaker in ongress as an older man. S a younger policy physician he always thought hed lose the thread or forget. He didnt have a great voice like daniel webster. He was not a very persuasive speaker. I would say at the end of his life, these last 20 years when he was in congress and a public speaker he then became a public speaker. In those days this was a great entertainment. Webster and hall were going to speak and hundred of people would turn out. Adams became in demand really because of the whole slavery thing and would deliver speeches in new england. One time he was asked to deliver a speech in cincinnati and was the further west he went to and became a great speaker in the age of great oratory. Host you said its your first history book. James correct. Host over the years weve noticed that guests here who have p. H. D. s dont pickly like popular historians. I dont know if the reverse is true and did you come up against it and were you worried someone would break this book apart because of sources . James yeah, ive only come up with it against it once recently when i was introduced giving a talk by someone who is very much is a p. H. D. And kind of is a very official credited expert in this subject who said, mr. Traub lacks the one decree contentional of our field. E does not have a p. H. D. And nonetheless hasnt been an impediment but was seen by people as a crack in my lack of experience. And you can understand that if you went through all the misery of writing your dissertation, all the donkey work, and the idea somebody like they who didnt have to pay that price of admission and just comes along with latida and says im just as qualified as you, heres my book. But that can create resentment. Now, i was incredibly relieved when the review of my book appeared in the New York Times book review. It was written by joseph ellis who really is certainly the most popular and perhaps the greatest of our living historians of the immediately early era, the 18th century. And ellis said since the guy is not a historian, he doesnt feel he has to pursue everything down every rabbit hole, he treats things as much as but not more than they need to be treated and he writes very jargonfree he said many other nice things. So i thought thank god, you now, that was my one big fear. Whatever else anyone says i dont care because joel us said im ok. Host what did you think of this experience . James i loved it. I never was bored. I never regretted it except maybe when i was reading louisas horrible story about him. I liked it so much. I love reading his journals. I love doing the secondary research. I was fascinated by the characters around him, clay, jackson, webster, calhoun, these are great men. Writing it was a profound treasure. It was five years of my life i always looked forward to going to work. Host what was the day like, where did you start, what did you write it on, on a computer or handwritten . James im not an oldfashioned person and sat in front of my computer all day basically. I think what it different because im not a macademic. They tell me they Love Research and dont look forward to writing. Of course to me i write stuff for a living. I love the writing part. So unlike perhaps the way a collar would work where you spend two or three years or whatever a amount of time you need learning the stuff and then you sit down and write it, thats not how it worked at all. I would learn everything i thought i needed to know about a particular chunk of adams life and then i would sit down and write it. Then i would do the next phase. At which point i learned much of what i had written before wasnt quite right so i would go back and rewrite it. So thats kind of the natural process to me. I never could have put off the writing for that long, it would have driven me crazy. Host fast, slow writer . James you know, if youre a journalist as i am, you know, ou got to produce. My idea of Writers Block is im beginning a chapter or im beginning an article and i cannot figure out the way in. And so that first word, you now, alludes me. Once i have that, im if anything too frst and too glib. Once i feel im writing too fast, ill stop because im not taking enough time. Im very recursive. When my day begins ill go back and read the first word i wrote before and i wont write anything new until ive reread and rewritten what i read before. Host in the introduction heres your first sentence, John Quincy Adams was a plain man and those who travel to convince question, massachusetts to speak to the old man, the formered a boom of the courts of london and st. Petersburg and secretary of state to james monroe and others were taken back by the austerity of his furniture and the simplicity of his frock coat which seemed always to carry a fine layer of dust as if from the old items he had been scrutinizing only a moment before. Its a long sentence. James is that one sentence . My god. Host how long did it take you to begin that way . Is there anything that sparked the idea . James god knows i didnt start ninth y, it was my beginning. I dont remember the first stab i took at my first page. I dont think it was that. Then i was reading i know, i was thinking about an account written by William Seward who became one of lincolns cabinet members and met adams as an old man and he describes that plainness and i thought, yes, evoke, at i want to that puritan austerity. So i think once i saw that then it was easy enough to write. Host your last sentence is long, also, and about Louisa Katherine adams and buried in the stone temple next to her fatherinlaw whom she adored and motherinlaw whom she feared and her husband whose sole she penetrated as no other mortal had and whom she found asperating, kendentious, intolerant, and selfabsorbed and yet in the end magnificent. When did you write that one and was it your last sentence . James it was my first last sentence. I think my first last sentence i know, it was probably about his descendants, about how adams has continued on into the world because somehow it seemed write to talk about his legacy and its a little weird louisa, to end it with not with him. And maybe its not, you know, the best ending, but i think when i thought about her knowing him as nobody else knew him, that her judgment on him which in many ways was harsh, but not altogether harsh was the right way to end because of course im talking about my own feelings about him, im projecting my own feelings about him into louisa. Host another history book . James its not history, im backsliding into journalism. Host if someone wants to write your Foreign Policy writing where do they go . James foreignpolicy. Com and check the voices and my name and everything i write is underneath. Host the name of the book is John Quincy Adams, militant spirit and our guest has been james traub. Thank you very much. Ames thank you. For free transcripts or to give us your comments about his program, visit us at qanda. Org and theyre also available at cspan podcasts. If you enjoyed this weeks interview with james traub, here are some other programs you might like. Author fred kaplan talks about his book John Quincy Adams, american visionary. And Joshua Kendall looking at president s at fathers and author David Stewart on madisons gift, five partnerships that built america. Watch these many times or search our Video Library at span. Org. Next, your calls and comments live on washington journal. Then live at 12 30 speaker of the house paul ryan talks about Economic Opportunities at the Economic Club of new york. Live at 2 45 p. M. , senator rand paul of kentucky and connecticut senator Christopher Murphy on defense and Foreign Policy issues. The Smithsonian National museum of africanamerican history and culture opens its doors to the public for the first time saturday and cspan will be live from the National Mall starting at 10 00 a. M. Eastern for the outdoor dedication ceremony. Speakers include president obama, Founding Museum director lonnie bunch and First Lady Michelle Obama and former president george w. Bush and mrs. Laura bush, john roberts, congressman john lewis and smithsonian secretary. Watch the Opening Ceremony for the Smithsonian Museum for africanamerican history and culture Live Saturday morning at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan, the cspan radio app and cspan. Org. This morning olivia golden, the executive director for the center of law and social policy and Robert Rector on the Census Bureau report on the policy of the u. S. And Dave Levinthal looks at president ial and congressional fundraising and spending for the campaign so far and u. S. Election assistant Commission Chair thomas hicks on the security of the electronic voting systems and if theyre vulnerable to hacking. As always, we take your calls and you can join the conversation at facebook and twitter. Washington journal is next. Host good morning. Its monday, september 19, 2016. A weekend of violence in minnesota, new jersey, and new york has Law Enforcement on high alert this morning. No one was killed in the explosions in new york and new jersey, and only the attacker died in the mall stabbing in minnesota. But each happened in a very public place, and each had the potential to be very deadly. With authorities still working to provide answers in all three cases, we begin our program today on the washington journal. Simply asking to you take stock of how safe you feel in your community. Are you concerned or has this type of violence in the United States become something of a new normal . Phone lines are open this morning, want to