School of War - Ep 82: Charles Edel on John Quincy Adams (New Makers of Modern Strategy #8)

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

Charles Edel, senior adviser and Australia Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and contributor to New Makers of Modern Strategy, joins the show to talk about one of the founding architects of American foreign policy, John Quincy Adams.  ▪️ Times      •    01:33 Introduction      •    02:20 Democratic strategy     •    04:43 Adams     •    08:03 Early threats to the Republic     •   13:20 A potential challenger to Europe     •    18:10 Unity and strength      •    25:08 “In search of monsters to destroy”     •    30:07 British parallels      •   34:11 Slavery      •    38:36 Public service Follow along on Instagram

America, quote, goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. This remark of John Quincy Adams, one of the great statesmen of the United States' early years, is frequently referred to by those who advocate for greater restraint in American foreign policy, often as part of a broader case that the authentic tradition of small R Republican forum policy advocated for by the founders is one that, well, sticks close to home. But is that true? What was the vision of the founders? and for that matter of John Quincy Adams.

And what relevance does any of that have for our decisions today in the 2020s? Well, it won't surprise you to hear that I think the answer to that last question is a lot. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of the way. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infinite. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender.

For maps, photos, and more School of War content, follow along on Instagram at School of War. Just tap the link in the show notes and subscribe. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to be joined today by Charles Eidel. He's the senior advisor in the inaugural Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Charles, thanks so much for joining the show. Oh, thanks for having me. Aaron, I'm really happy to be here with you.

Now, you're the author of numerous books, one of which is a study of John Quincy Adams called Nation Builder, John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic. And you recently updated your thinking on this subject in the New Makers of Modern Strategy with a chapter on Adams and some of the strategic challenges that the early American Republic faced. And I wanted to open us up today with a very broad question, because your chapter attacks the question broadly of John Quincy Adams and the problems of democratic strategy or Republican, both small D and small R, small R respectively, strategic thinking.

What are the inherent or special problems when it comes to democratic strategy making? Great question, Aaron. I think the obvious answer is multiple voices in the mix at any one time that we don't want to stifle and yet have to find a way to move. move forward. That is, you know, kind of in opposition to a lot of the, you know, monarchical imperial systems that were existing in Europe at that outset of the American Republic. We were a different type of government. And so the question began to raise its head, does a different type of government with a different set of values, a different set of governance

structures should it have a different type of foreign policy? And can it have a different type of different type of foreign policy when it has to compete and jostle in a very competitive international environment, but it needs to not stifle alternative voices and alternative sources of power within the political entity. So that is, I think, problem set number one for a republic. You know, the other questions that I think come up pretty early are, you know, can you expand geographically, you know, even politically as well, but can you expand on a geographical basis? without losing the democratic nature of the entity. That is, can it look like something that's not necessarily imperial advancement?

Could you build a sufficiently strong military without corrupting the nature of the Republic itself? Can you have economic prosperity for a state without the state being too intrusive in and of itself? And then I think, you know, one of the kind of perennial questions for American policymakers is can you influence the world while noting that you have a deeply imperfect democratic entity at home? And if so, how do you go about doing that? And so why with these questions, very, very interesting questions in mind, why focus on John Quincy Adams, who, you know, after all, is literally a child of the founding? generation, not a founder himself, except as a very young man, kind of in an assistant role. What does his career have to tell us about these questions that a study of the founders maybe wouldn't? Yeah, well, first of all, you get a longer duration, right? Because he was there at their

knees, but he lives longer than them. But, you know, kind of take a step back, Aaron, from your question, you know, a lot of people, you know, who came to the study of Adams, and we don't even have to say John or John Quincy, you know, came across John Adams over the last 10, 15, 20, years from that wonderful book by a biography by David McCullough. And if you're more of a visual person, if you're more of an HBO person, right, you then watch that terrific series, John Adams, starring Paul Giamatti. And if you're watching that, right, Paul Giamatti played John Adams. Helen Hunt, I think, plays Abigail Adams. And like this like little, is it Helen Hunt? Well, it's not Helen Hunt, though. That's amazing. No, it's, if you hadn't said Helen Hunt, I would have

known the name. I'm going to look up the name while you continue this. You look it up. I now have made like a terrific copa. Loralini. Thank you. Even better than Helen Hunt. Now I'll put my foot in it twice. But, you know, John Quincy Adams appears, but he's like this eight-year-old, then a 10-year-old. And he's like a brat.

And, you know, when I was doing my research on JQA, I call him JQA because we've become very intimate over the years. You know, he is, yes, he's like a little brat, but he is such an interesting figure because if you think about the span of his lifetime, I mean, he really, he really, you really, reaches everywhere from obviously, you know, accompanying his father to the European continent in the middle of the American Revolution. He literally considers Thomas Jefferson his second father at one point. He visits with learns from Benjamin Franklin.

And on the flip side, on the back end of his career, he serves in the same Congress as Abraham Lincoln. And along the way, if we think about kind of the main elements in the development of American statecraft, right? We think about Washington's farewell address, right, as maybe the first big statement of American principles. JQA is one of five American diplomats. I mean, serving as ambassador, it's called minister at the time, right, abroad. And it's his letters that are so deeply informing Washington's thinking that they end up finding their ways into that fairwell address. If we think about the Monroe doctrine, like the first big presidential doctrine, it is the

Monroe Doctrine because it comes in the 1823 State of the Union address, but all the foreign policy elements of it by paragraphs that are in there are written by the Secretary of State, who is John Quincy Adams. When we even think about kind of projecting forward to the Emancipation Proclamation, John Quincy Adams serves his final 17 years of his life as a congressman kind of warring against slavery and introduces on the floor of the Congress what could be the foundation stones for the Mancipation Proclamation, talking about how, you know, executive power could bolderize in an act of war, the abolition of slavery. So when I kind of take this all together, when I think about the positions that he held, when I think about this kind of the length and duration of his career, the founders are amazing because they're just like a hive. They're a trove of, you know, thinking.

But they have the idea, you know, a couple of them, if we get into Jefferson, if we get into Madison, you know, have careers that go on. but you don't get to see the development of the republic, nor some of the contradictions that begin to kind of come into four that the founders glimpsed but didn't have to deal with quite as quite as much as some of the later entities. So, you know, from from Washington to Lincoln, JQA is really the spanning bridge there. If you would paint a picture in the sort of immediate post-revolutionary period of the threats facing the American Republic. What kept Adams, and his fellow states been up at night, as they thought about the picture of the Republic.

So here we are. We're back into the sit room in like 18, 23 or so, that there are a bunch of threats, as they kind of take the memo, right? But some of which are external, some of which are internal, as they think about, you know, the position in the national security of the United States.

So let's start with the external ones. The big external ones, and again, it shifts and depends on exactly what date we're talking about. But the United States, first and foremost, has to deal with the British Empire. I mean, that's a changing set of relationships over the course of the early Republican period. Corey Shockey, who I hope you interview at some point on School of Wars, we're in this terrific book about the unfolding of that Anglo-American relationship. But let's not forget, right? Of course, there's American Revolution, but then in 1812,

we go back to war with breaths. In between those two periods, you know, the Britsch shut down, basically commercial relations between the U.S. and the Northern Atlantic, and then decide that they're going to deal and engage with the U.S. again because of the wars of the French Revolution. So the British Empire is really large and really strong. And consistently American policymakers have to be aware about what that means. I would also note that post-1815 after the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire is really strong. And so the United States has to think carefully about, about how it will deal with a much strengthened British Empire. In fact, right, the interesting part of the War of 1812 is that the burning of Washington occurs after the Brits have kind of wrapped up State one of the Napoleonic Wars, and they can take their best trained troops and throw them across the Atlantic. Okay, sorry, there was a long-winded way of saying,

the British Empire we have to think about and deal with. But just as you have to think about kind of a really strong power and what that might mean, You also have to think about really weak and weakening powers. So to a certain degree, the Spanish Empire has a consistently loosening grip on the North American continent, not on the South American continent, but starting in Florida, but also kind of reaching all the way west. So what that might mean if the Spanish Empire cannot police their own holdings, but still has some of those areas under there key, matters a lot. And so, you know, when John Quincy Adams is a secretary of state, he has to deal with a very powerful British Empire. But he also has to figure out how he's going to deal with a Spanish empire that is losing its own hold in some ways in power in Madrid, but also in Spanish Florida at this point while they are negotiating what is the westward boundary of the United States, right?

The Adams-Oniece Treaty of 1819, the Transcontinental Treaty, which kind of gives the punchline away, right, that we take it all the way. out in the Pacific, is dealing with a much weakened Spanish Empire. So that is to say, you might be in more of an accommodating mode with a very strong power, whose values line up more closely to yours, and you might be in more of a power projection mode when dealing with a weaker power at this point. Look, there are a number of other players in there. At various times, you have to deal with the French, the French Republic, the French Empire. You also have to deal with the Russians. The prompt for the Monroe Doctrine is not only what the Spanish are up to, but also what the Russians are doing at this time.

Okay, so that's some of the external powers. The other two things you have to think about consistently are the indigenous people, the Native Americans within the United States, because the United States' first treaty that it signs is with Native American tribes brought to New York City to negotiate with George Washington's administration. And then increasingly, you have to deal with the issue of slavery, which is obviously a domestic political issue, but it is also a foreign policy issue, too. How are you going to deal with the Haitian revolution led by slaves to overthrow kind of slavery and really with anti-imperial tendencies? So there's this whole mix of kind of things that the early republic has to deal with, which is to say that it's a very insecure position.

that the American policy makers, the founders are dealing with at the outset. They basically have no military to speak of, but they don't have the ability to coordinate across the states until they come up with the federal constitution, and they have to figure out how they're going to kind of warm out their existence on the edge of the Western world. And just to flip the map a bit, when these, the great powers of the day, the British, the Spanish, the French, and any of their various iteration, look at the new United States of America do they perceive the vulnerability or do they perceive the potential or do they which one do they wait over the other yes and yes they perceive the vulnerability right that they might be able to kind of claw

apart these emerging the united states kind of clawed up for themselves but they also know or at least are cognizant of that if the united states remain long united it's potentially challenging for them in the long term in fact when john quincy adams comes back from like multiple tours abroad to be the Secretary of State. One of the conversations that's resonant most in his head is a conversation that he had in London. He came from being the U.S. ambassador. Again, the U.S. minister is actually the term at the time, where one of his colleagues

said, look, if you guys remain united, we are all in trouble. But we're not so worried about that because you have so many centrifugal tendencies and we can kind of work in the seams to help claw you guys apart. So I think Europeans simultaneously are viewing the early republic as a potential threat to their legitimacy. If you think about the resources, if you think about the expansion of size, it really could be formidable. But at the outset, it certainly is anything bump. And they understand this and attempt to exploit a lot of those divisions. So that's why at the outset, you know, we like to talk about how we hope that oftentimes American national security and foreign policy is by.

bipartisan and its broad outlines. But at the beginning, it's a national security imperative that you have national unity because if not, you're going to be ripped apart by European powers. We're trying to claw you apart. One final note for you on this, Aaron, that I know we're talking about the makers of modern strategy or the new makers of modern strategy as how I deem this one. On my book on John Quincy Adams, I have this background. It's like his giant face projected against this map.

of the United States. And the reason why I chose the map is basically it's this wonderful 1775 map of the United States. And it was drawn up, I think, by the Brits. And it says North America as divided among the British, Spanish, French, and Russians, which is exactly the concern and the fear of the American founders that they didn't want the North American continent to be divided among anyone else. And at the outset, they certainly didn't have the power to enforce that in any way, shape, or form. And I guess as these powers are making their calculations about America, it's democratic form of government probably counted against it, right, in their estimates, that this was going to be a vulnerability, not a, not a strength. Well, it certainly looks

as something that's peculiar and quite different, right? I mean, what exactly is this? It seems really loud, cacophonous, right? It says multiple things at once. So it's, seems ineffectual, I think, to a certain degree from a European standpoint at the outset. But even an ineffectual entity that manages to kind of, if not defeat, certainly hold out against the British Empire is certainly noteworthy. And the way that the early Americans, of course, start talking about their new country is an idea as much as it is a type of government, right? America is an idea. It's a Republican form of government. It's meant to inspire. the rest of the world, whether or not it does. And that, in some ways, is an ideological concern,

an ideological threat to monarchical empires of the old world. And so, again, it's not a real threat, right, in 1776 and 1789 in 1800. But there is a kernel of concern from the old world, from Europe, about what is this new entity? And you can hear regularly in John Quincy Adams' diplomatic in the 1810s, in the 1820s, this kind of undercurrent to how the Europeans are talking about the Americans, that this is a dangerous idea that has been put into place that can undermine the kind of ideological underpinnings and legitimacy of a lot of the old world types of government. And so in your characterization of Adams' career, you describe him as having a sort of three-pronged approach to managing these challenges. Unity, neutrality, and the building of a

deterrent. I want to take each of those. Sure. Unity, I mean, what comes to mine immediately, and of course you point to it in the chapter is the sort of semi-mystical way in which Lincoln will come to talk about union, and the union is a Casas Belli and alter which to sacrifice so many lives. But the way you're talking about Adams, it gives a little bit more of a practical sense of of why union is necessary in the face of these foreign challenges. But talk a bit about what this idea meant to Adams. Sure, absolutely. And look, this three-pronged approach, I should say,

is kind of the evolution of how Adam sees security writ large, not his strategy overall, but how his approach to security. And the first one is, you know, we started talking about this just a second ago, that the absolute fundamental nightmare, I think, of the founding generation, is that you have the replication of Europe in North America. That is, you have a multitude of sovereign states jam-packed next to each other that are jealous of each other and they have territorial designs on each other. And therefore, to make sure that like your small fiefdom isn't invaded by another one,

you have to arm yourself to the teeth. And if you have to arm yourself to the teeth, you probably have to mill. your society to do that, and you probably have to do away with a fair amount of civil liberties. That is the nightmare of the founding generation. They do not want this to occur, but to make sure that that doesn't occur, you have to make sure that you kind of weave this confederation of entities, of colonies, then states into something that is greater than the sum of its parts, so that, you know, New York and New Jersey are not spending their resources on arming themselves against each other. And this is really reinforced during that confederation period before we get to

the Constitution, because New Jersey and New York, just to pick on the two, right, might have very disparate trade policies. And if so, that might allow France or Britain to play them off against each other. You also have early on, you know, one of their early kind of political scandals is this citizen Ginné scandal, right, where the French are actively working to influence American politics. And the American cabinet under Washington decides that even though you might have some Americans who are more sympathetic to the French cause and the French Revolution than others, if you don't have a unified national federal response, you will have agents of influence kind of running amok and not expressing their own, but another country's preferences.

So therefore, right, kind of take these together, you know, one, that you need to have a federal entity that supersedes the power of the states. And right, that is the battle for the Constitution in many ways, which is quite hard. If you think about this from American perspective, because you fought a revolution based on making sure that you don't have a, you know, a distant seat of power that rides roughshod over these colonies and states. And all of a sudden, and the drive to the Constitution in that kind of 1780s, period, you realize that when you have totally a weekend governing authorities, you really have a hard time raising taxes, raising a military, conducting kind of uniform trade policies. So unity at a certain degree needs to be hardwired at least into the conduct of our foreign policy and national security, right? That's kind of one part of this. But, you know, the second part is you can talk about a unity all you want, but you have to think about what you're going to do with your unity. And if the goal is to expand both territorially and kind of, you know, from an influence perspective on the global stage, involving yourself in the quarrels of Europe at the outset is probably not the best strategy, right? It will dissipate your energies. It will lay you open to the charge that you're taking sides in European,

quarrels and therefore Europe can take sides and kind of struggles between New York and Pennsylvania. And so neutrality really becomes the strategy by which the Americans seek to position themselves. Now, it's not 100% neutrality. They clearly lean to one side, then lean to another. In fact, you know, the first two decades of American foreign policy is basically a tilting match between the French and the British, trying to get maximum advantage for themselves. And nor is this, I should say, neutrality, a policy that is meant to be a straight jacket for the United States. In fact, when we get to World War I and you see kind of debates erupting about whether or not the United States should involve itself in Europe's great conflagration, a lot of policymakers in the early

1910 say like, no, no, no, we should go back to Washington's policy of neutrality. We should never involve ourselves in any conflicts brought. And when you go back to Washington's and you go back to the debates that break out around this, Washington themselves says, we don't have to be neutral for all time. This is a strategy now while we are weak. And then the final point I would just make on this is if you want to be neutral from like the big, you know, great power dustups of the day, that's all well and good to say. But the question begins to, you know, raise itself about you're going to be a neutral based on what and with what army. And so you have a, you know, a debate kind of that take shape, still taking shape, but really for the first couple of decades, about what is the

appropriate size of the military instrument, what's the right balance between a land-based power and a naval power at time? But consistently, Adams, amongst others, is advocating for, we don't want to overly militarize, but we certainly need a sufficiently large military deterrent to make sure that we can be neutral when we want to, and probably the Navy is a better instrument for that than an army. So if we could linger on this question of neutrality for a moment, You probably guess where I'm going here. And to take it a bit further forward than World War I, but up to present day debates about America and the world, as you know, no better than most, Adams' name is invoked frequently

on behalf of not exactly neutrality, but certainly a strongly non-interventionist vision of American power in the world. Restraint, I think, is a term that gets applied to it by its adherence, isolationism, by its critics. There's a think tank in Washington now. the Quincy Institute, dedicated to propagating this particular vision of American foreign policy. And certainly, you know, the Washington's farewell address, there's this sort of line of Adams about America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

I don't know if I've gotten that word for correct. You got to an extent, to an extent this idea of the Monroe doctrine being about an America that is Western Hemisphere in its orientation, these are all sort of cited as evidence of an authentic founding American vision of an America that stays out of, well, stays out of other people's problems. How fair is that to invoke the legacy of Adams for this particular sort of very 20th and 21st, the way I'm framing the question indicates where puts my cards in the table, this very 20th and 21st century vision of American foreign policy? Yeah, look, it's perfectly fair in terms of cherry picking that one quote and holding it up as kind of,

dogmatic approach to foreign policy. It's totally unfair if we think about the context of what Adams himself advocated over the course of his career, and even within like a year or two of the time that he made that famous speech on July 4th of 1821. Look, there are a couple of things that I think we need to kind of say as we unpack that, not to argue that there is no strain that advocates what you just laid out in the history and tradition of American foreign policy. Of course there is. But say that this is the authentic approach or that this is Quincy Adams' approach to foreign policy, I think are both like woefully wrong and not quite fair looks at what he did. So a couple of things to note about Adams himself. So the very forceful words of restraint that we heard

you quoting on the July 4th address, sometimes a mask that Adams was never shy about prompting or promoting American values or using military power abroad. He always talked about the promotion of American values. He was willing to use the military instrument when it made sense, sometimes even threatening war when he didn't have to. He did this. We talked a little while ago about a very strong British state. In fact, he threatened war with the Brits, knowing that they probably wouldn't send warships out to what eventually becomes Oregon. and knowing that he could get away with it. On the other hand, he's perfectly willing to countenance Andrew Jackson's

probably internationally illegal invasion of Florida because it's in the interest as he sees it of the United States. I should also say that when we begin to kind of position where the Quincy Institute might be, and I won't pay more broadly and say the Quincy Institute is the same as those who advocate for restraint in American foreign policy, Adams had a lifelong antipathy to authoritarian regimes, and he was willing to combat their spread into new territories around the world, starting in the Western Hemisphere. So I think those are two things that are totally taken out of context when we talk about this.

What he was advocating for at that time, though, was specific to a certain degree, right? When he makes that speech on July 4th, 1821, he is advocating that America should should not begin sending aid to rebels in Greece, who are rebelling against kind of the Ottoman Turks at this point, or in Latin America, who are in the midst of a series of revolutions against the Spanish empire. And the reason he says that they shouldn't is because that would dissipate America's energies, which are best spent at that particular moment into expanding territorial in many sense. He also makes the broader claim, Aaron, that you've got to be careful about kind of backing horses in civil wars abroad, right? That not only dirties our hands, but it's quite entangling.

So that part of the charge is true. But he does say that you have to be very judicious about what type of power you have matching your resources to your objectives at the time. And in 1821, it makes absolutely no sense for the United States to do that. comma, I would note that, you know, just five years later when he's present in 1826, he makes the exact opposite argument and says that now is the time and we have a sufficient amount of power that we should be seeking to do more and to give more aid to the fledgling republics in South America. And a lot of people at the time say like, wait a second, what about like those wise words of the Monroe Doctrine, which drives him a little cuckoo because he said, well, I actually

wrote them, but we're in a fundamentally different situation now. than we were then. Yeah, it does seem to, the notion of Adams as an isolationist does seem to clash with both his support of a strong naval program, which is usually not the same thing you find. Yeah, or the, or countenancing the use of force by Andrew Jackson against, you know, not only Native American tribes, but the Spanish Empire as well. Yeah, yeah. So I want to talk about sort of just to use modern terms of defense policy and then this,

this inclination of his towards a kind of expansionism in turn. First on defense policy, and I'm going to violate sort of the old lawyer's rule of never asked a question you don't know the answer to. This is just, I was inspired preparing for this interview today to ask this, and I have no idea what you're going to say. But this debate about do we need a stronger Navy or a stronger army, relatively speaking, in Adams' break in the naval camp. Does this map on at all to the debate in Britain throughout the 19th century with which I'm sure you're familiar of the sort of the wig, blue water, global naval approach on the one. excuse me, sorry, the Tory Blue Water Global Naval Approach on the one hand and the Whig Continental approach. Is there, is there any parallel there between British politics and American politics? There is a parallel, although it's not exact. And for those of your listeners who are kind of

deep into this debate like you and I are, apparently, and that might be only the two of us are. But there's a really good kind of a foundational work in the history of U.S. foreign policy. And it's really appropriate when we're talking about the makers of modern strategy because it's a small little book written by Felix Gilbert to the farewell address, which is it's a small book. I say Felix Gilbert because I believe he had an essay in one of the earlier versions of makers of modern strategy. And he talks about the well springs of U.S. foreign policy and that they're basically British, right? But that British means more than one thing, as you just said, right? if there's a continentalist approach, and then there's the kind of offshore balancer approach, you know, for lack of a better term, and describing this. There is no doubt that the founding

generation Adams included, although he's like generation and a half removed, as we've noted, you know, are well across these debates, right? They grow up kind of reading all of the debates, all of the kind of the Victorian debates that you hear in 18th and 19th century England. And they are not only well across that, but if you read the Federalist papers, you know, which are really a statement of our political philosophy as much as they are a defense of the Constitution. And I would go one step further than that, too. If you read the Federalist papers, which I have done, you know, we generally think of them as a statement about, you know, in defense of checks and balances about our domestic constitution. I'm forgetting the number off the top of my head, Aaron, but something like 38 of the 89 essays

about national security and go very deeply into the historical analogies and also the contemporary policy suggestions that Hamilton and that Madison and to a certain degree, Jay, pull out of them, and a lot of them are about navies and why navies are best equipped not only to defend republics, but also to ensure that they don't kind of, you know, not only gobble up all of the domestic resources but don't have large sitting armies that can trample on civil liberties. And you actually hear that kind of spelled out in the Federalist papers themselves. So I'd say that Adams in general is very well across these debates, has them advocating for the Navy, but then don't forget two, you know, local politics of this, that Adams is a politician for Massachusetts.

Massachusetts is where our shipbuilding industry, you know, it comes from in the early Republic too. It's also where our commercial industry, it doesn't wholly reside. But if we think about all the trade that's coming out of Massachusetts, out of Cape Cod, I mentioned a while ago that, you know, the Northern Europe is closed down to trade for the Americans right after the American Revolution. So by the time you hit the Constitution, as much of an eighth of the American economy is wrapped up in trade with China. And that is all going out of Massachusetts at this time. So there are reasons kind of parochial, there are reasons commercial, there are reasons strategic,

and there are reasons philosophical to support a Navy from the beginning. Got it. Thanks for that. Let's talk a bit about expansionism. We've touched on it throughout the conversation, but I want to zoom in on the tension between continental expansion on the one hand and slavery on the other,

which you address in the chapter. And it's, you know, you have this elegant, even really beautiful formulation of the significance of Adams as his career shows some of the answers to the questions raised by America's founding. And this is a question, this question of how to reconcile, you know, continental hegemony on the one hand with the, you know, the challenge to our Republican character leveled by slavery on the other as a kind of insoluble

question. You know, it's a question Adam certainly does not solve. Talk a bit about that. How does slavery, how does Adam's career and his thought on foreign policy and slavery, How do those things all intersect? No, it's a great question and a deeply disturbing one, not only to Adams, but for America and Americans still. You know, look, the grand kind of sweep answer to that, and then we'll get a little bit more specific about Adams, is the founding generation knew, obviously, that slavery was a problem, right? I mean, if you look at all the debates around both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, what was put in, what was taken out,

it was obviously because slavery didn't accord with principles that the American founders were holding up, but they couldn't quite figure out how to deal with it. That's a very crude way of talking about this, but they kind of cobbled their political compromise together on the backs of all the enslaved Americans, come up with the hope that over time things would get better, that slavery will become less ingrained in America, that as America developed, the transatlantic slave trade would become, less prominent, and it would ultimately wither away and become a historical artifact.

That was the hope, right? That was the hope of everyone at the Constitutional Convention. It's not how things played out. And in fact, if you look at Adams himself, I think he was willing to make his deals with the devil when he was coming up, even when he was Secretary of State, including on acts like territorial expansion. The, as America is expanding with the Adams-Oenese Treaty, you also have the Missouri compromise coming up, right, in 1820. And the longest, most anguish passages in Adam's diary are about whether or not he can support the Missouri compromise, whether or not he can bring Missouri in as a slate state, add some free slates on top of that. And his bargain with himself is, this is a really hard one.

I don't think we can support it in the long term, but I don't see anything better than we can do right now. when our number one objective is territorial expansion. But it's his hope, too, that this will kind of lighten its hold on the Republic. Unfortunately, what happens in American history, what Adams begins to realize is that as you expand westward, instead of having a larger area for freedom and liberty, you're creating a larger repository of states that are slaveholding states that therefore have a bigger grip on the the political decision-making processes of the Republic. And so rather than kind of exploding and slowly attenuating slavery, you are ingraining it ever

more deeply into the fabric of the Republic. And so what's super fascinating, what's super interesting about John Quincy Adams is he is the only president we've had in our entire history as a country that goes back into electoral politics post-presidency. You know, he quits politics, quits is like the play way of saying that he is defeated soundly by Andrew Jackson. He licked his wounds for about a year and a half, and then he runs for Congress. And increasingly over his final 17 years of his life, he becomes a kind of solo-cause

congressman, a one-cause congressman, and it's to rail against slavery and see what he can do to disrupt it and to weaken its hold on the political processes of the, Republic. But yeah, I mean, back to your point, Aaron, I think the tragedy for him is and the tragedy for America, it said he realizes that in order to expand, which is unquestionably seen as a good by the early generation, you're also going to more deeply ingrained slavery in the fabric of the Republic. And you cannot solve that without a giant rupture, which is beyond his or frankly anyone's ability to solve. It takes a civil war to solve. It takes a civil war to solve that one. Just to talk about Adams, the man for a minute, because we've been, you know, at my,

at my insistence talking about these very general issues. It's quite the, quite the picture, isn't it, at the end of a career to go from the presidency to service in the house, dying, in the house, litigating in all these issues, you know, from, from that relatively humble position, you know, impossible to conceive up in the 21st century where, you know, post-presidentially, you go, you get your foundation, you're consulting. etc. What is it about, well, I guess one way to ask questions, is Adams unique? Was there, was this kind of thing just a sort of genuine lifelong commitment to public service more, more common in his generation, or is there something unique about him? I think it's, yes,

it's more common to a certain degree in the 19th century, but this is absolutely unique to him. And he is a truly unique individual. In fact, his contemporaries recognize this. I mean, when he dies, literally on the floor of Congress, Congress, he has a hemorrhage on the floor of Congress. I mean, he begins to be eulogized by everyone, including his enemies, as this is a unique individual in our history. And they recognize this at the time. Why does he do this? There are a lot of, you know, individuals are complex and Adams is more complex than most. You know, I'd say, like, I have a book to sell you. And I do. It's the first one where, you know, his post-presidential career, is fascinating. I mean, they're like fascinating episodes in there, Aaron, including,

like at one point, right, you probably learned this in grade school. All of us didn't and forgot it right. We had the gag rule on Congress, right? That slavery was so combustible of an issue that there was a congressional prohibition on even talking about slavery on the floor of Congress, which is, you know, preposterous in so many ways. And yet you couldn't talk about it as a congressman. There was no congressional privilege on this. Adams decides at one point that this is antithetical to how he needs to see the United States develop and wages like through, you know, acute understanding of parliamentary procedures. He gets himself censured or potentially censured because he bates, you know, Southern congressman and then leaps to the floor again says, well, now that you've

said something about me, I have to defend myself and basically holds the mic for two weeks straight. talking about slavery. And eventually, the gag rule is rescinded because of all the work that he does here. So he's a really unique, very kind of ornery individual. And there are a lot of reasons for this. He has quite an interesting relationship with his very famous parents. He has a lot of personal tragedy in his own life, where he feels like things have not gone right, including, you know, at the end of his presidency, his eldest son commits suicide. You know, his younger brother, who he's quite close to, drinks himself to death at one point. And so I think it's making amends for this that he throws himself in.

The other thing is, you know, individuals, as we said, are unique, but also kind of pointy in some ways. You know, Aaron, there are some things that you have, you know, tendencies to, and they're quite different than I'm sure what mine are. Adam's strength is in opposition. He's better in opposition than he is in consensus building. And this comes out in spades when he's president, right? He's been aiming.

He's been dreaming to be president since he was like, you know, seven years old. But he can't really do it because he can't really make the compromises that are necessary and incumbent on a consensus builder, particularly at a time when we don't have more than one parties, right? There's only one party, really, when he becomes president. But when we think about the major acts that he gets forward, you know, the Monroe Doctrine amongst others, this is done from a position of advocacy and sometimes even opposition. And he's actually in his like happy place when he's railing against something or someone or some great group of conspirators.

So he gets better and better as he gets older and older and really has a cause to champion. And, you know, again, if your your listeners aren't readers, although I know they are, I'd say that probably the best way of understanding him, go back and watch that terrific film version where Anthony Hopkins plays him in Amistat. Remember, I mean, he really kind of captures him and gets him. And by the way, the accumulating point of that movie where he argues for the freedom of the slaves who have revolted on the ship, Amistad. What they don't tell you is that's like a 10 or 12 hour consecutive argument that he puts forward before the Supreme Court when he's like in his like 60s at this point. I mean, like he really has he has a lot of vinegar in him, piss and vinegar. That's amazing. Whatever war movies come up, you know, with students, I'm always at pains to point out.

this battle in band of brothers or whatever that seems to take about five minutes. Actually, that was four hours, you know, in real life. And I didn't, I had no idea, actually, that this is true of the Adam's speech in the movie. So it applies even in politics. Yeah, you know, one other thing I'm thinking about as we're talking about this, that, you know, Ralph Waldo Emerson also kind of touches him in some ways, right? And Emerson has this great quote about John Quincy. I'm towards the end of his career.

He says, look, Adams is like, you know, one of those enfeebled old cardinals in the Vatican, who the second that the smoke goes up and he actually gets appointed to be Pope, he kind of throws away the crutches. He says, that's what Adams is like in opposition. And he like likes to drink his sulfuric acid and he's ready to go. I mean, they're kind of amazing descriptions of him. Charles Edel, senior advisor and Australia chair at CSIS, author of Nation Builder, John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic, contributor to the new makers of modern strategy. And I should, I should add, also the author of a wonderful short book with our mutual friend, Hal Brands, The Lessons of Tragedy, State Craft and World Order.

I learned a ton today, and I really appreciate you making the time. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks so much for having me on, Aaron. Much appreciate it. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.