How is this for pedigree? Your parents are John (#2) and Abigail Adams (FL#2). By the time you are twenty years old, you had witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill, resided in France with your father who successfully aided the end of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson was your BFF, you lived with Benjamin Franklin, at fourteen years of age you spoke fluent Russian and went to Russia as secretary to the American minister, and in a few years you would be a Harvard graduate. Seems like a full life, but ironically the young years of John Quincy Adams were just a precursor to the rest of his accomplished life with only one major blip: his presidency. The failure of his one term as our sixth president explains why, in "John Quincy Adams" by Harlow Giles Unger, of this 315-page book only 30 pages were dedicated to his presidency. Appropriately, the chapter is titled "The End of the Beginning". John Quincy's best achievements, remarkably, occurred prior to and after his presidency, which is ......

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