Others have focused on the roots of Trump’s visceral appeal. Debates over foreign policy would no longer center on relations with Britain and France, but would instead focus on western expansion and relations with Native Americans. The impeachment process did not move forward, though, in large part because the Whigs did not believe that the Senate would vote to remove Tyler from office.

He quickly established a productive working relationship with Russian official Nikolay Rumyantsev and eventually befriended Tsar Alexander I of Russia. John Quincy Adams left two divergent legacies. Adams instead selected James Barbour of Virginia, a prominent supporter of Crawford, to lead the War Department. The State Department tasked Adams with developing commercial relations with Prussia and Sweden, but President Adams also asked his son to write him frequently about affairs in Europe. He previously served as the eighth United States Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825. Adams's ideas for a national university, national observatory, and the establishment of a uniform system of weights and measures never received congressional votes. [238] The original daguerreotype is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. All Rights Reserved. [105] He also proposed the establishment of a Department of the Interior as a new cabinet-level department that would preside over these internal improvements.

[145] Clay and Adams hoped that the conference would inaugurate a "Good Neighborhood Policy" among the independent states of the Americas. The determination of the western boundary of the United States proved more difficult.

[115], In the immediate aftermath of the 1825 contingent election, Jackson was gracious to Adams. John Quincy Adams left two divergent legacies. The best I could do was summarize Trump’s links to organized crime. [219], Adams's personality and political beliefs were much like his father's. [45] Later that year, President James Madison appointed Adams as the first United States Minister to Russia in 1809. This appointment was primarily due to his diplomatic experience but also due to the president’s desire to have a sectionally well-balanced cabinet in what came to be known as the Era of Good Feelings. He took the oath of office on a book of constitutional law, instead of the more traditional Bible. [33], On his return to the United States, Adams re-established a legal practice in Boston, and in April 1802 he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. [220] His relationship with his mother was rocky; she had high expectations of him and was afraid her children might end up dead alcoholics like her brother.

Adams realized that this might allow the United States to realize his dream of building a national institution of science and learning. [71], When Adams took office, Spanish possessions bordered the United States to the South and West. Despite the tension—or maybe because of it—John and John Quincy developed a singular bond, a convergence of temperament and intellect that was vital to both men. Americans feared that parties, once consolidated, would inhibit “the development of a national political morality,” elevate personal ambition, and wind up enshrining either dictatorship or oligarchy. Trump, the celebrity anti-politician, exploited this decline ruthlessly, winning the White House through a hostile takeover of a badly shaken and divided Republican Party, which he has now transformed into his personal fiefdom. Calhoun, meanwhile, won a majority of the electoral votes for vice president. [172] After the crisis, Adams increasingly came to believe that Southerners exercised an undue degree of influence over the federal government, largely through their control of Jackson's Democratic Party. Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, I participated in a session at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting devoted in part to assessing the president-elect in historical terms.