His mother and father told him from the time he was a really, really little boy that it was his job

to carry the family name, to serve the Republic, but they're much starker in their language.

I mean these are good New England, Pureden, you know, traits that they want to bring out in their son.

So it's, you know, he sails across the Atlantic when he is not even 10 with his father in wartime conditions.

They're chased by British scoeners and he gets letters from his mom constantly.

And say something along the lines of, keep your morals. It's really important to the public and to me.

If you don't keep your morals, it would have been better that you went down to the bottom of the ocean.

He gets letters from his father. He actually has a much closer relationship with his father in many ways.

That say something along the lines of, considering the advantages that you've been given in life.

If you don't rise to the top not only of your profession, but of your country, you will have squandered everything that was given to you.

John Quincy Adams didn't squander everything. He reached the very top to become president of the United States, just like his father John Adams.

But as we'll learn, John Quincy was much more influential on his way up and on his way down, then he was during his time at the nation's pinnacle.

I'm Lillian Cunningham and this is the sixth episode of Presidential.

Charlie Zine, the president of the CFS, is that news tomorrow?

What y'all have to do for you?

They date which will live in Jim Cunningham.

That was Charles Adele speaking at the beginning.

He's a professor at the US Naval War College, but he's currently serving in the State Department.

He's also the author of the book Nation Builder, John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic.

Now this episode is of course about our sixth president, John Quincy Adams, but perhaps what this episode is really about is a single unique and all important presidential leadership trait.

And that is the ability to work with Congress.

We're about to see how lacking that one trait can break a presidency.

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