Word Wisesavage Liberty's Kids | Braintree, MassachusettsJohn Adams was born in Braintree, Massachusetts. Tour the Adams birthplace (below left) and learn more about his wife (right).
Carefully read the following article. Use the information in the article to help you create three good questions for your classmates to answer. Provide the answers for a key. |
 Joseph Brant was an educated native who personally met both King George III and George Washington. Brant was a Mohawk military leader based in modern-day New York City. He was closely associated with Great Britain. He was given the name Monster Brant by some Patriots - a name that some historians say was undeserved. Music Appreciation | Name-CallingJoseph Brant called Patriots Bostonians. Patriots considered the Indians to be savages. Name-calling is not something unique to this generation or even the last few decades...but it is a thing that can be deterred. With training and practice, you can build resilience against name-calling and boost your own self confidence in the process. Positive Behavior ConversationsMood Music |
 John Quincy Adams was the oldest son of the second president, John Adams. He also became the sixth president. | Discussion Quote |
Along the way, JQ held a number of other posts, serving first at the pleasure of President George Washington.
 | In 1794, President George Washington appointed Adams as the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, and Adams would serve in high-ranking diplomatic posts until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson took office as president. Perhaps his early days under the tutelage of his father influenced his opinions later in life. |
Adams sought the gradual assimilation of Native Americans via consensual agreements, a priority shared by few whites in the 1820s.
His Personality
JQ had a strict and serious personality much like his father's. He enjoyed reading and avoided social events. Those in the know say that he often wanted to resign from public service and had to be encouraged to remain in office. According to Wikipedia:
Historian Paul Nagel states that, like Abraham Lincoln after him, Adams often suffered from depression, for which he sought some form of treatment in early years. Adams thought his depression was due to the high expectations demanded of him by his father and mother. Throughout his life he felt inadequate and socially awkward because of his depression, and was constantly bothered by his physical appearance. He was closer to his father, whom he spent much of his early life with abroad, than he was to his mother. When he was younger and the American Revolution was going on, his mother told her children what their father was doing, and what he was risking, and because of this Adams grew to greatly respect his father. 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. His biographer, Nagel, concludes that his mother's disapproval of Louisa Johnson motivated him to marry Johnson in 1797, despite Adams's reservations that Johnson, like his mother, had a strong personality. |  |
How do you like that! Here was a man who had the wherewithal to get himself elected to the Senate and finally to the presidency. That should emphasize to us that we never know the kinds of private struggles other people may be experiencing. You probably know someone who has depression. You probably know someone with pressures from their parents. You probably know someone affected by alcoholism
- Knowing all of this, should you think twice about how you treat others?
- What does it mean to give someone the benefit of the doubt?
- Why is important not to assume you know everything about others?
| Before we leave JQ for later studies, here are some final thoughts from Wikipedia: Though in his youth Adams wore a powdered wig, he abandoned this fashion and became the first president to adopt a short haircut instead of long hair tied in a queue and to regularly wear long trousers instead of knee breeches. It has been suggested that John Quincy Adams had the highest I.Q. of any U.S. president. Dean Simonton, a professor of psychology at UC Davis, estimated his I.Q. score at 165. | Take a video tour of the Adams house in Quincy, MA: |
