John Quincy Adams on Thomas Jefferson

John Quincy Adams was a staunch opponent of slavery who viewed it as a moral evil. He spent his post-presidency career in Congress fiercely defending the right to petition against slavery and combating the political dominance of Southern slaveholders. So during these later years, after much reflection and experience, this is what he said about me on September 17, 1842, when Mr. Adams was 75 years old:

“The utter and unqualified inconsistency of slavery, in any of its forms, with the principles of the North American Revolution, and the Declaration of our Independence, had so forcibly struck the Southern champions of our rights, that the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves was a darling project of Thomas Jefferson from his first entrance into public life to the last years of his existence.”

Thank you for setting the record straight, Mr. Adams.

I first knew John Quincy Adams when he was just a young boy, tagging along with his father, John Adams, on his early diplomatic missions. Years later, when John Quincy was a teenager living in France, I took him under my wing, accompanying him to many places and guiding his studies while his father was away in London. Our bond was so close that the elder Adams later wrote to me, noting that the boy seemed almost as much my son as his own, making me like a second father to him.

Read more about what other US Presidents said about me in this large collection, the only one of its kind on the Internet: https://www.thomasjefferson.com/presidents