It is no wonder his father referred to him as the “greatest Traveller of his Age.” 2 He knew the most important people in America, possibly had traveled more than any living American, and was well regarded everywhere he went.Īny discussion of John Quincy Adams’s education must begin with his parents. At a young age, John Quincy Adams had already traveled to France, England, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, and Prussia, and at the age of fourteen moved to Russia as a part of a diplomatic mission to the court of Catherine the Great. The younger Adams had already served as his father’s personal secretary while he was concluding the final peace treaty that ended the American Revolution, knew Thomas Jefferson intimately, and had spent time living in the same house as Benjamin Franklin.

These were not just any dogs, but seven hounds bred in Normandy by the Marquis de Lafayette and sent as a special gift to George Washington. If you see the Marquis, you will inform him, that his Dogs are on board, and shall be well kept, if my attention to them has any effect.” 1 While this remark, which concluded a brief letter to his father, John Adams, detailing his seventeen-year-old son’s final preparations before setting sail, might have felt casual to the young traveler, it was anything but usual. Jefferson … and all our friends in Paris.

S HORTLY BEFORE BOARDING a ship in May 1785 that would take him back to America for the first time in seven years, John Quincy Adams asked his father “please to present my best respects to Mr.

Nation Builder by Charles N. Edel