Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, John Quincy Adams was the son of John Adams. John Quincy Adams studied law at Harvard University and became a lawyer in 1790. He was appointed diplomatic minister to the Netherlands in 1794 and to Prussia in 1796. He was elected to the Massachusetts senate in 1801 and two years later to the U.S. Senate. In 1809, at the end of his first term in the Senate, Adams became the minister to Russia, a post that he held until 1811. In 1814 he served as one of the negotiators of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. In 1815 he was appointed minister to Great Britain. Adams served as secretary of state under President James Monroe from 1817 to 1825. He helped negotiate with Great Britain in 1818 to determine the northern U.S. border. In 1825 Adams was elected president as a Democratic-Republican, but he was defeated for re-election in 1828 by Andrew Jackson. In 1830 Adams was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he opposed the expansion of slaves. Adams died of a cerebral stroke during a debate on the House floor in 1848.
