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 gav