Hi everybody. Today. Bye, mommy. It's going to talk about John Quincy Adams. Thank you, Noah, for introducing John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. As you may have guessed from his name, John Quincy Adams was the son of our second president,

John Adams.

John Quincy Adams was very accomplished before becoming president.

He went to Harvard College like his father, served in the Senate, and was the Secretary of State

for previous President James Monroe.

As a senator, Adams was a Federalist.

He loved fellow Federalist George Washington so much he named his first-born son George Washington Adams.

He wasn't the type of politician to blindly follow his party's lead, so he supported rival

Thomas Jefferson on some issues while he was in the Senate. As a result, he was replaced in the

Senate by a federalist, so he decided to become a Democratic Republican instead.

John Quincy Adams became the president in the election of 1824,

which would prove to be the most controversial presidential election in our history.

The foreign nominees were all Democratic Republicans because the Federalist Party was no longer competitive.

His stiffest competition came from Andrew Jackson. The 1824 election was the first one where popular

votes were counted, and Andrew Jackson beat John Quincy Adams by account of 153,544 to 108,740. He also beat Adams 99 to 84 in electoral votes.

The problem was that neither candidate had the majority of electoral votes necessary to win because the other two candidates, William Crawford and Henry Clay, split 78 electoral votes between them.

The rule at that time was that the House of Representatives would decide the president if a majority wasn't reached.

Henry Clay decided to back John Quincy Adams and encouraged others to do so too.

This helped Adams become president, although he truly lost the election.

After becoming president, Adams made Clay his secretary of state which drove people crazy.

At the time, the Secretary of State was the second most powerful person in the United States,

because every president since Jefferson had previously been Secretary of State before becoming president.

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