-- jamesmes 12 traub. then nigel farage and diane james. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," new york university professor james traub. professor traub discusses his book "john quincy adams, militant spirit." ♪ traub, what would john quincy adams say if he was here today about what he sees in the world? james: john quincy adams did not very much like his own world.

he was a censorious fellow. he was critical then. he would be critical now. you know, i think above the -- of the donald trump thing, you know, his first reaction would be, "what happened to the idea of public service?' why are we having some guy who thinks his qualification is that he was a businessman?" he was very close to the republic and he felt himself -- if you had asked him, why are you qualified to be president, he would say, "because i have served the public selflessly," and that was true. " since i was a young man." he had been a congressman, secretary of state. his own definition of sacrifice and even of heroism all had to

do with the idea of -- "i am here for the republic. that is my purpose." and i think he would be sort of saddened and second by this sort of disgust with which people talk about the idea of service. brian: what would he think about a former secretary making $225,000 to give a speech? james: that is an interesting question. in his day, politics was not a route to wealth. was the opposite. when he was a young man, he ran for the state legislature of massachusetts. most of his friends, who were all lawyers like himself, would not do that. first of all, you make dough at being a lawyer, and then you went into politics. a congressman would get nine dollars at a time is a per diem. so adams struggled economically his whole life, but he thought that it was right that he

struggled. and i think that again, part of his sense is, it is public service. you accept the fact that you are not going to make money doing it. you will die poor. indeed, the presidents who preceded adams, jefferson famously, madison not so famously, monroe not so famously, had terrible economic problems once they step down because they never made any money at all. adams was haunted by the fear that he would die destitute. actually, he was a pretty good investor and was able to invest enough money to bail out many importunate family members as well as his own family. but he would of thought profiting from politics was immoral. brian: what did you like about him most? james: it is funny. he is not a likable person. i use the word admire more than like. when we have this like test,

what i like to have a beer with this guy, the test george w. bush won over al gore, the answer is no. he is kind of a forbidding figure. his son said he wore the armored mask. his visage, bearish, chilly. he was an astonishing talker. he forgot nothing. but i don't describe him as a likable man. i give full measure to his unlikable, indeed, really unpleasant qualities. bad husband, and bad father, a great son, a reverent son. but there is this deep sense of an obligation beyond himself. you know, he was never in a war. he never saw battle, but he was fearless and he was prepared to risk his life in the name of public service. when it came to the last part of his life, and we can come to this later, when he took on the

slaveocracy on in congress, he started getting death threats. and i read them all because he kept all the letters. there were dozens of them. they were not things like, you deserve to die. no they were things like, i am , in kentucky or someplace, and i am leaving now. and i am coming for you. and i will cut you down on the street. sometimes he would get letters from people that say, ok, i am halfway there. i am still advancing towards washington. very credible threats. what did he do? he did not tell federal marshals. he did not tell his wife. he lived his life and thought it was shameful to live otherwise. that is heroism. brian: when did you think it was worth spending all of this time with john quincy adams? james: among the various things i do, i teach class on foreign policy at nyu.

in abu dhabi, by the way, of all places. where nyu has a campus. the class is basically in foreign policy from woodrow wilson forward. and so i was researching 19th-century foreign policy and naturally, you come across adams' name. i thought, i should read a book on adams, and i looked. and no disrespect to any of my predecessors, but really since 1950 and 1956 when the great diplomatic historians wrote a prize-winning biography, there has not been a substantial treatment of him. i thought, oh, unexpanded founding father territory. then the second thing was, i discovered that he had kept a diary. not an episodic diary but a diary like no public figurehead has ever kept. every day of his life.

it began when he was 11. from the time he was 18, he was -- until he was physically paralyzed near his death, that is an astonishing record. he must've thought this. you don't have to say that of adams. we know what he thought. he does not have to tell us what he thought. you don't have to say that, he tells us what he thought. here is a 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 father's career ended at the end of his presidency. he goes back to congress and becomes the great champion of the anti-slavery forces. and to me, that trajectory of a man who leaves the presidency scorned and mocked, as a fossil

-- even then, he was thought of as a fuddy-duddy, he goes back to this increasingly westernized america, that was the judgment on him. he lived not just to revert that judgment but the same qualities that had made him a bad president, the same kind of moral intransitence, that sealed the case. brian: a book who wrote about -- he said something in the interview i have never forgot. i want you to fill in the blanks. this is about the diary. [video clip] >> back to the diaries? >> 608 reels for the adams papers. 19 reels devoted to the diaries. >> have you read them all? >> more than once. i think i am the only person in the united states who has had the tenacity to do that.

>> how many different pages? can you quantify how many pages? >> if you rolled out -- i forgot who told me this -- if you extended the real of the film, it runs nine miles. experience us your of the diaries and the archives. james: it is 17,000 or so pages of adams' own volumes. think of that as an experience. so no diary is ever of course truly a transparent record. it is a record of what that person thought, not what actually happened. not only that, there are elements where adams goes sideways. things you would not expect. his wife louisa had innumerable miscarriages. you don't know for sure because adams won't talk about that until we come to a passage where she has agonized and suffered, and then adams himself is

tortured. but for him, pregnancy -- too intimate. but the thing that does come through so powerfully is the personality of a man with a deep in his soul. self accusatory, harshly self accusatory -- "i must wake up earlier. i must read more. i reread my diary, it has all been nothing." there is that. there is his astonishing erudition. and things that are startling. byron. he loved byron was the most bad of the bad boys, bad and dangerous to know, everything adams would have deplored. but he loved the poetry and literature. he loved byron, he loved aupere, who he also thought of as a libertine.

-- full terror. he loved voltaire, who he also thought of as a libertine. so the breadth of his personality also comes through. i was never through. it got to this tree, he was fascinated by dendrology, which is his word for the study of trees. he planted trees, he grew trees, he loved trees. and it are moments i knew, when and my scanned over, eyes scanned over and i thought, more trees, i can skip this passage. so unlike paul nagel, i can't say i have read every word. brian: where did you read it? james: here is the great thing about modern life. the answer is, on my computer. so adams' journal exists in several forms.

his son, charles francis adams, who was illiterate, and indeed his mother john and abigail, collected 45% of the diaries in 12 bound volumes. so i have that. then, in addition to that, the adams papers project at the massachusetts historical society, which cannot be said from the point of view of people who care about this that start with john all the way down to the seventh generation, have digitized the whole diary. it is all available online. in addition to that, they have begun optically scanning the diary so that you get a typescript version, which now runs through, i don't know, 1817, when he was secretary of state.

brian: i want to put on the screen his life broken down so that those who have never paid any attention or even those that have can see the run down. you look at, i know you point out in your book, he was overseas and was minister to the netherlands age 27 to 29. minister to prussia age 30 to 33. u.s. senator from massachusetts age 35 to 40. minister to russia 42 to 46, that is his age. minister to great britain 47 49. secretary of state 50 to 57. president of united states 1825 to 1829, age 57 to 61, and then representative of the house for massachusetts age 63 to 80.

which parts did you have the most interest in when you wrote? james: i guess the last. i would say, prior to what you put up on the screen, his youth was fascinating because his father took him, john adams, took him to france in 1778 and again in 1780 when he was going as a diplomat. and as a 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.

and so we know about the time that he spent, nine months or maybe a year, as a 13-year-old secretary to america's then ambassador to russia in st. petersburg. the ambassador was received by catherine the great. there was a five volume history of england. i know everything he did then. his youth was very, very interesting. but then, if you ask what was the part that was the most riveting for me, it was really his final phase when he is, he is the former president of united states, and there he is in the house. 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 would taunt and rage. he was unreasonable. he was bitter, he was indicative. all of his righteousness and his bile were all provoked by slavery.

and by the southern smug opposition to those anti-slavery forces. and so, this is really magnificent. i mean, he is like a hissing snake or a spitting dog. but above all, he is the most credible opponent. and not once but twice, he is so enraged, this is what he called the slaveocracy, the southern slaveowners of congress, they had moved to have him censured. the united states subjected to a censure proceeding. the first time, he defended himself alone, nobody would come to his aid, and he defeated the south alone. the second time in 1842, he had a whole community of people around him. there was more of an abolitionist movement. he had a researcher in the library of congress, but in the end, it was still his own speech for days that caused the south to cry uncle. honestlyt -- i mean, when people say to me, when his lin-manuel miranda going to do j qa pop musical for him? if you work to do something,

-- but if he were going to do something, this would be the moment when this cantankerous old new englander is spitfire. -- became this spitfire. brian: what was the gag rule? james: here is the form in which he took on the slaveholders. the constitution guarantees the right of petition, and we don't think about that right anymore, because if you want to influence your congressman, you can join a lobby or a special interest group or write them a letter, or give them money. ok. in those days, 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, he has not gotten the pension, he should get one. but there were also petitions about issues. so starting in 1835 when the abolitionist movement really began, it was really more the anti-slavery movement, people were not calling themselves abolitionists yet, they would

petition congress. 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 could not do it in virginia. that was virginia's call. so, no one in congress wanted to submit these petitions because the south dominated congress because of the 3/5 rule, that meant every slave counted for 3/5 of a person. so, south carolina, states like that were hugely overrepresented for because they were filled with people who had no rights as individuals. so adams would present them. in the beginning he said, look, i do not even sympathize with these petitions, but people have a right to petition them, so i will present them. this was a big threat because slaveowners said, slavery is a state's right issue. it cannot be discussed or

debated in congress. and adam said, it is a right of petition, of course it can. so the slaveholders responded by doing something unprecedented. they said, they passed, propose and then pass laws which stipulated that on the issue of slavery, and only on the issue of slavery, congress would not receive petitions. and there were many variants of that, but it was like that. well, that rule was a congressional rule which expired with each new congress. and so that meant with each new congress there would be a huge fight. adams and others would present these petitions. immediately, the south would respond for the proposal for a new gag rule. then there would be a huge debate over that and every time the south would win. but the debates and got closer and more ferocious. and adams, after standing alone the first couple times, got more and more confederates.

he became the mentor a whole generation of anti-slavery congressmen. the censure motions in both cases for consequences of adams was doing things preposterously to flout the rules. he would present the petition that was not from abolitionists, it was from slaves. the south went crazy. how can slaves present a petition? they are not people, they are property. and adams said, well, if the petition came from a dog or a horse, i would present it to congress. even the ottoman sultan hears petitions. so this huge thing blew up and only then did adams revealed that the petitions of slaves was asking congress not to ban slavery but to preserve slavery. but the fact was, he knew it was sent in as a fraud in order to goad him into presenting it, and he did it on purpose.

so he enraged the south. they had these incredible dramas. and every year, generally, the opposition to the gag rule built up. and finally, after 10 years of nonstop battle, the gag rule was ended. they congress would not vote to sustain the gag rule. brian: what did that mean then in the house from there on? james: the honest answer is, was slavery going to be ended by debate in the house or senate? no. so one cannot say adams' heroism led to the end of slavery. what it did was it led to the , free debate of slavery which the south feared. and that free debate over slavery is what ultimately led to the election of 1860 of the explicitly anti-slavery candidate, abraham lincoln, which convinced the south that had no future in the republic, and theit to secede

civil war. so adams and kind of laid the foundation. brian: i want to diverge for a minute to and talk about james traub. where do you start your life? james: i have been a journalist all my life. this writing history thing is new for me. i don't write about dead people. i write about living people. and so i have been a journalist since i graduated from college. brian: where? james: at harvard. and i'd knocked around and whenever young people come to me and say, you know i want to be a , journalist like you. i say, don't be journalist like me. i spent years writing for magazines that are all defunct now. i cannot even remember the names of some of them. science magazines and business magazines and airlines -- anything. i worked as an editor briefly, but i did not want to do that. i wanted to write. in so actually the thing i

, always tell kids who come to me, i only got remotely good at this thing when i insisted on writing about the stuff that i cared about, the stuff that i was thinking about even if i weren't writing about it. so that is when i started , writing more important things for more important publications that i am happy to say still exist to this day. so i wrote about my favorite subjects, foreign policy. urban issues, race, crime, the 1980's, still the cold war. nobody wrote about foreign policy. foreign policy was to me a frozen thing. it was domestic questions, things like affirmative action, school reform. i wrote about school reform for many years. that is my life. i have books at the same time on some of these subjects. and in the new york times, which i was writing for chiefly at that time and for many years, assigned me a piece about a man going to iraq to try to persuade

saddam hussein to let weapons inspectors back in. he had kicked them out. this was january 1980. i did that. i showed up on a thursday, and on monday, i flew to baghdad. that was the most fun i ever had as a journalist. i thought, wow, foreign policy, this is great. and that was really the beginning of what is the chief source of my career since then. thank you think -- you your son in this book, alex. what part did he play, and how big is your family now? james: i am from the suburbs of new york. my wife is an art historian who now runs an organization called the center for curatorial readership which trains curators to be better leaders of their institutions, whether they are going to become directors or not. our son alex who is 25 right now lives in calcutta where he works on the editorial page of the

telegraph. an english-language newspaper. he is very happy. calcutta is one of the worst cities you have ever seen, and he loves it. he is a very gifted editor. he sends me his stuff to be edited, and i sent him my stuff to be edited. he read every word of this book and gave me extensive comments. i would say never unduly harsh, but to top. -- but tough. mean, he can be very tough on me to the point where i will just push back because, you know, you get defensive. but he is usually right. so he has that role, and i hope he will always have that role with my work. brian: back to john quincy adams. he was born to john adams, but where, and how many kids are in his family? james: he was born in a place then called braintree, but it is now quincy.

it was really quin-zee" but people always call it quincy. and so, he was this second child. he had an older sister named abby. and then there were two more boys who were born after him. he was the second of four. but because he was the oldest boy, he was always treated as number one. and so, on the question of education, for example, when the parents talk about nabby, she is kind of folded into the group. but john quincy is there, he is the one who is kind of nominated for to be the next generation. i suppose they must have seen early on that he was an exceptionally gifted person and also very disciplined, which his two younger brothers were not. they just did not have that iron in their soul that both of the elder adams had.

so he always bore the weight of their hopes, their expectations, their disappointments with a heavy burden to bear. brian: joshua kendall has a book called "first dad," a book on presidents and their children. here's is what he had to say about john quincy adams. [video clip] >> of all of the other dads, who would you not like to have been the son of? >> i think john quincy adams was really, really tough. >> number one reason? greg c had a son who was 30th in -- class at harvard and >> well, he had a son at harvard who was 30th in his class, and don't come home for christmas, i will feel nothing but shame in your presence." it

was a class of 75 kids. it was really, really tough. james: he was a terrible father. the thing that strikes you is that this guy did not have an easy time as the son of parents who had such high expectations. and his mother would write him these letters that would chill your blood. when he goes to europe as a boy, she writes him a letter that says, that warns him against the pleasures of europe. she says, i would sooner you perish beneath the sea then that you become -- she does not say a libertine, but that is what she means. and she means it. you would think that if you had grown up under this excruciating burden, and you were aware of the chill that had entered your own soul as a result -- that i think he was -- you would say, i will not make that mistake with my own children. but adams worshiped his parents. he worshiped his mother as much as his father. in a biography, she is kind of a villain. in modern terms, we can kind of under stand that. but he did not view her that way at all. he wept when she died. he never, he never dissented. he worshiped them both. so there was no part of him that said, when he finally had

children of his own, i better not do to them what they did to me. quite the contrary, it was worse. he was worse because i think he had a terrible fear of failing. and so he drove the children unmercifully. horror ofeep improper, unacceptable behavior, which would include not only being 30th in the class -- one of his sons was actually kicked out of harvard. in those days, students were always rioting about this and that. his whole class was rioting, and he was kicked out. he was good friends with the president to and the president said -- sorry.

he was writing these letters to both of his, there were three boys. one of whom, charles francis, became the john quincy adams of the next generation. he always, he was kind of a loose liver, but he kept it from his father. his father did not know. the other two, one, john was a real problem drinker. and really kind of irresponsible. caused tremendous hardship to his parents. the other was a deeply troubled person. he just did not grasp reality. he was a lovely person. people like tim but he lived in a dream world. and adams did not recognize that's what -- when he realized that's what george was. just laid into him. you could say in a letter he wrote, said i love you. committed suicide. now, do i think adams is

responsible for the suicide? that is a hard call. i think george was a strange one from the time he was born. her husbanded that would think she blamed him for george's suicide. i can only think the reason she thought that was because secretly she did. she did not think she should, but secretly she did. one could have. again, that is a mystery. there was no question that he was a harsh and unforgiving father. brian: talked with about chapter 24. i will read a couple lines. the title is " 1825-1827. in aero to the heart." john quincy adams awoke in almost every day of his tenure in the white house. he rose as early as four clock in the summer and perhaps an hour later in the winter.

then you go on to a lot of things. a lot of personal things. james: the thing that strikes you, not as a politician, he has done whatever he needs to do, he is so solitary. he a solitary man. when you ask, why is his great literary achievement a journal, i think the answer is because he was most at ease speaking to himself. speaking with in his own mind. it is very powerful, enormous, multi-chambered mind. , as president one is just struck by how solitary he was. he did not have boom companions. more presently, he did not form -- more importantly, he did not form alliances. he did not do anything that you would do in order to be able to persuade people who otherwise might not go along your agenda. his four years in the white house were just pain. everything was hard. he achieved almost nothing. he probably would not have succeeded very well anyway

because he was very much the last of the line and a new world was coming into being with andrew jackson. and there are other reasons that had to do with the contested election that he won that made people think he was illegitimate. a conventional politician like henry clay who was a secretary of state, the lbj at this time, would have found a way of saying, i will not propose this or that because it will never get through, but i'm just going to focus on this and then i will really work it hard to get it . adams never did that. he said, i am going to say what is right. i'm going to put it out. maybe nobody will look for. will votebe nobody for it. it eventually people will see am right. eventually, abraham lincoln

enacted a certain amount. that is self defeating. brian: what was his routine in the morning? james: once he would wake up at dawn, he would take himself on a solitary walk. he went out to the white house and would either turn right towards congress or the left towards georgetown. he would walk through the darkness. no one would ever see him. there was nobody there. washington was still a small town. pennsylvania avenue had just been paved. he would walk and think. he would come back and see the dawn rise in the white house. then he would get to work. normally, he would read the bible for in our. an hour. maybe when he was president he would have to omit that. that was his usual habit.

he would read the bible. then he would have breakfast later and get to work. getting to work for him, a lot of it was writing. he was writing letters to other officeholders. he was responding. he -- if anybody wanted a military pension, he had to do that. he had to do a lot of things that other presidents would not have to do. then he would meet with the cabinet in the afternoon and go back and write some more. then he would have a late supper and then he would write in his journal late at night. he would probably right the last thing in the day. he would spend an hour a day writing. this was a guy who was unbelievably overworked. his cabinet got worked into the ground. he still wrote the journal. brian: you write that he was frequently ill, almost always melancholy. this line, yet luis's name rarely appears in his journal for his presidential years. james: it is striking.

virtually never. he was so consumed with these battles he was fighting. and luisa absented herself. she went up to the bedroom and bonbons. and she would not gain weight, she was always thin. she was basically profoundly depressed. she was having a breakdown. during those times, she was so miserable and angry at him. she wrote a lot of -- she wrote poetry. she loved to write poetry. fragments oftle place. the most painful one to read by far, it begins as a processional.

it never turns into a narrative. in the processional, there is lord sharply and lady sharply. lord sharply is self-evidently adams. he is seen as a man of absolutely irreproachable morals and perfect demeanor who is utterly devoid of human warmth and vauntingly ambitious at the same time. you can't believe that a first lady would write this about her husband. i have to say the one time in the course of writing this book when i thought, why am i writing about this man? it was when it was reading that play she wrote. it is just awful. brian: describe them as a short man, balding and stubby. indifferently dressed. and he would have passed unnoticed as he moved swiftly along the streets. no secret service or protection of any kind? james: you knocked on the door and his son would probably answer it.

his son john. there was nobody else to answer the door. maybe a servant. one thing i skipped, in the summer, when he would do in the morning is he would go swimming. in those days, there was a branch of the potomac that went to the white house and he would walk to a rock and take his clothing off, go naked, put on goggles and go swimming. one time he is swimming with his longtime servant and he decides to not take off his clothes. he is wearing a shirt with kind of bulbous sleeves. with waterilling up and tea comes very, very close to drowning. he has to strip off his clothing. his servant has to hail a carriage, go to the white house, taken back some clothing. anyway, he comes back to the white house at 9:00-10:00 and as far as i can tell, no one had missed him. he had been gone for hours.

if this happened now, you would have the entire u.s. military out hunting for the guy. nobody noticed he was not there. brian: you write that he had monroe'so follow example of accepting no social invitations left to give offense to whomever he refused. james: monroe's wife was very shy and retiring. luisa was a gregarious person. had been secretary of state, she gave parties which was the only way that adams could connect with the larger world. she was very important to him politically. once he got into the white house, he felt that i am the president of the united states. he felt that as a burden. just as a burden. in so -- i can't do anything that would be seen as partial. he did not want to invite this one and not that one.

it was a completely unnecessary restriction. when he first came to washington as a senator, thomas jefferson would basically invite every interesting person in washington and he and adams had been great friends when they had been in paris. when adams was 14-years-old or and sendoh. and and luisa would go all the time. it was fun. and so he was quite accustomed to the idea of the white house as a social center. but no he was like a bear in a , cave as president. to his life showing different years. a couple other moments. in particular, let's look at the years he was in the united states senate. 35-40 years old. did he do anything in the senate memorable? how did he get there? james: in those days, senators were not elected directly.

they were chosen by state legislatures. so, it was not surprising that he was the son of a president and a very highly regarded diplomat. through a series of retirements, he got the job. the thing that distant wished him from the moment he got there was that he was a member of the federalist party, his father's party, the opposition party. thomas jefferson was the republican party. brian: was that a republican today? james: no. it ultimately becomes the democratic republican party and then the democratic party. jefferson's party was the antecedent to the republican party. the republican party as we know it now really aligns with lincoln. adams took the position that he is not here as a party man. he did not believe in party. george washington did not

believe in party. must of the founders felt that party meant faction and it was bad. selfish association instead of national patriotism. adams absorbed that. and so when jefferson was doing things that were seen by other federalists as being a disaster for their own party, therefore they opposed it. for example the louisiana , purchase which was going to hugely expand the magnitude of the country into areas of the west and parts of the separate some of which would be slaveholding areas. all of it would be new men who would see old new england as clearly antiquated. adams said, this is a good thing. he had a vision of america as a continental nation. as many did at the time. he supported it. with a million caveats. weird to caveats, by the way, that no one believed in except him. on one hand, he was kind of the eccentric and had his own intellectual views and would follow them much working on the other hand, he would indifferent to party and was prepared to accept whatever consequences came of that.

and that was ultimately how he the the senate because in run-up to the senate, the thing that was happening in america was shipping. takemean they would british sailors who had signed up on american ships and take them off. often they were not british. they were american. it was hard to tell the difference. the accents were not so different back then. jefferson said this was unacceptable. ultimately, he said we are going to establish an embargo. no transatlantic shipping. this is a catastrophe for england. all of doing what impose the embargo except for adams. he said we can never be supine before a foreign foe. he knew would be a disaster for him politically and he was not sure the embargo would work. actually at times, he said it

won't work. could not bear the idea of allowing british to get away with these degradations on american shipping. so his friend said to them, are you crazy? you can't do this. he said, i will do it. and so ultimately, 1808, massachusetts shows the replacement before the term has come up. he said, fine. i resign as of today. it was an episode that from the outside looks humiliating. adams considered it one of the proudest moments of his life. brian: back to the second page. we will ask you about the period where he was secretary of state. who was the president then? and what did he do that mattered? james: he is secretary of state under james monroe. america is no longer at war.

it is already a different kind of profession. america's great object then, it it's foreign-policy was what we would consider domestic policy and it was territorial expansion. that was the goal. and so in terms of foreign , policy, america was like what china spoke of a peaceful rise. all they wanted was to not have problems abroad so they could focus on this enormous dynamic at home of expanding. and so adams, his great achievement was negotiating with spain over territorial expansion. so spain held florida. called the floridas and included the western part which is arkansas now. which america had been trying to get for a long time. adam saw that spain was a weak country. america was rising.

adams knew he had them over a barrel. rather the end simply negotiating for florida, he wanted land to the west. he wanted all of this property to the west. he and the spanish ambassador dueled over this. a look at maps and the spanish ambassador with the here and adams was a, no, there. this side of the river, know -- no, that's one. that one. he ultimately got the spaniards to concede a line to this pacific ocean. that line was a line. it had no geographic value but made america a specific power. -- a pacific power. because american power now, if only theoretically, extended to the pacific and that was a great achievement. and adams kept pushing for more territory. and no one expected that to happen. adams kept pushing for more territory. even at some point, monroe said he would get more.

went to the that eastern edge of texas and then this line to the pacific. it was a great achievement. it was one of the greatest diplomatic achievements by one man america has ever achieved. brian: could he speak? james: interesting question. adams was a fantastic talker. and people have testified that this man knew every word in shakespeare. but he knew -- if we talked about dancing girls, he could talk about stories from the old testament and talk about the -- the indiana idea of the dancing girl. but he was not a public speaker. he was convinced he was a terrible public speaker.

and he tried very hard to learn. so in 1806, -- in 1805 he is back in boston earning a living as a lawyer. harvard approaches him and says, we would like you to be the first professor of rhetoric and oratory. a chair, by the way that still exist today. the oldest continuously endowed chair. adams had long studied cicero and the other great rhetoricians. now he became obsessed with this. every time he went to church -- which he went twice on sunday verbal ticsnote the of the preacher. he put himself through this education in order to make himself a better professor and also better at this thing. ultimately, adams became a great speaker in congress as an older man.

as a younger politician, he always felt that he would lose the thread or forget. i don't know. he did not have a great voice. he was not like daniel webster. who had a great voice. he was not a very persuasive speaker. i would say that at the end of his life, these last 20 years when he was in congress, he then became a public speaker. in those days, that was the great entertainment you would have. daniel webster was going to speak at nathaniel hall, many hundreds of people would turn out. adams became in demand because of the whole slavery thing. he would deliver speeches in new england. at one time he was asked to deliver a speech in cincinnati which is the furthest west he ever went to. so he became one of the great speakers and gave great oratory. brian: you say this is your first history book. james: correct.

brian: over the years, we have learned that people with phd's do not particularly like popular historians. did you come up against that and were you worried that somebody would rip this book apart because of sources? james: yes. i have only come up with -- against it recently when i was introduced giving a talk by someone who very much is a phd and very much is a kind of official credited spurt in this subject. lacks themr. traub one credential of our field. he does not have a phd. he then went on to say, however, he nevertheless has not been an impediment. but it was certainly seen by my lack of crack at experience. you can understand that if you went through all the misery of

writing your dissertation, all of the donkey work, that the idea that somebody like me who did not have to pay that price of admission and just comes along and says, i'm just as qualified as you, here is my book." that can cause resentment. now, i was incredibly relieved when the review of my book appeared in the new york times book review it was written by joseph ellis who is certainly the most popular and perhaps the greatest of our living historians of the 18th century. and ellis said, since the guy is not a historian, he does not feel he has to pursue everything down every rabbit hole. he treats things as much, if not more than they need to be treated. he writes a very jargon free prose. he said many nice things. and so i thought, thank god. that was my one big fear. and so whatever else anybody

says, i don't care. because joe ellis said i'm ok. brian: what did you think of this experience? james: i loved it. i was never bored. i never regret of it. except maybe when i was reading -- louisa's horrible story of him. i love reading his journals. i love doing the secondary research. i was fascinated by the characters around him. clay, jackson, webster, calhoun. you know, these are great men. writing it was a profound pleasure. it was five years of my life. i always looked forward to going to work. brian: what was the day like? when did you start, where did you work? james: i'm not old-fashioned. i sat in front of my computer all day. i think they think that may be a little different because i'm not

an academic -- or so i have been told -- academics tell me that they love research and they do not like writing. of course, i write stuff for a living. i love it. unlike perhaps, scholar would work where you spend two or three years or whatever amount of time learning the stuff and then you sit down and write it, that is not how i worked at all. i would learn everything i thought i needed to know about a particular chunk of his life and then i would sit down and write it. then i would do the next phase at which point i learned that much of what had written before was not quite right. then i would go back and rewrite it. and so that is kind of the natural process to me. i could never have put off the writing for that long could it would have driven me crazy. brian: fast, slow writer?

james: i mean, you know, if you are a journalist as i am, you have to produce. so i am not a person -- i mean my idea writer's block is beginning of chapter and i cannot figure out the way in. and so that first word alludes me.ludes once i have that, i am if anything to fast and too glib. if i feel i am writing to fast, i will stop because of not taking enough time. i am very recursive. when i begin, i will go back and read the first word i wrote before print i will not start writing anything new until i have reread and rewritten what i wrote the day before. brian: here's your first sentence. john quincy adams was a plain man. visitors who traveled to quincy, massachusetts, to speak to the old man, the former ambassador to the courts of london and st. petersburg, secretary of state to james monroe and six presidents were taken aback by the austerity of his furniture and the simplicity

of his frock coat, which seemed always to care a fine layer of dust as if from the old volumes he had been scrutinizing only a moment before. that is a long sentence. james: that is one sentence? my god. brian: how long did it take you to begin that way? is there anything that sparked the idea? james: i did not begin that way. that was my nth beginning. brian: after was all over? james: no, what i mean is i don't remember the first step i took at my first page. i do not think it was that. then, i was reading -- i was thinking about an account written by william seward became lincoln'same one of cabinet members ian's meant to

an old man. and he described that plainness and i thought, that is what i want to evoke. that black cloth puritan austerity. then it was easy enough to write. brian: your last sentence is louisaong and it is about catherine adams. you say she was buried in the family vault in the stone temple to her father-in-law and she adored. her mother in law who she feared, her husband who saw she had penetrated as no other mortal had and whom she found -- whose sole she had penetrated foundmortal had into she -- and whom she found exasperating, pedantic, intolerant, self-absorbed and

yet, magnificent. when did you write that one? was that your last sentence? james: it was not my first last sentence. i think my first last sentence -- it was probably about his descendents, about how he has continued on into the world. somehow it seemed right to talk about his legacy. it is a little weird in a way to louisa, noth with and maybe it is not the best ending, but i think when i thought about her knowing him as no one else knew him, that her judgment on him which was harsh in many ways, it was the right way to end because i'm talking about my own feelings about him. i'm projecting my own feelings about him. into louisa. james: another book? history book? james: another book, but not history. i'm backsliding into journalism. brian: if anyone was report

policy directives, where do they go? james: foreign policy.com and check my name under voices. everything i write is underneath. name of the book is "john quincy adams: militant spirit." thank you. james: thank you. ♪ announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments, qanda.org. programs are also available as c-span podcast. ♪ if you enjoyed this week's q and a interview with james traub,

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a use social media like twitter, now telegram. largely concentrated. you see individuals in the u.s. finding like-minded people and reaching online to find recruiters and radicalize her's. >> you want depth, you want religiosity, you want blood lust, you want revenge, you want wacko? you have that as well. the complete package in a way that bypasses regular media. it is acceptable for all people. announcer: watch the communicators monday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two. >> british prime minister theresa may answered questions about