I, Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams, will be your spiritual guide on this rainy December night to tell you about my late husband and all of his endeavors. My dear John was a wonderful man and I truly am a fortunate woman to have had him for a husband.

             My dear John was born on July 11, 1767 in Braintree Massachusetts. I believe that now you call it Quincy Massachusetts. He had an older sister, but was the eldest son of his John Adams, his father, and Abigail Smith Adams, his mother. As you probably already know, his father became the second president of the United States in 1797, so my dear John was born into a political family. .

             From what I can recall, John spent many years of his childhood in Europe and studied mainly with tutors, but at one point he did attend an actual school in France and the Netherlands. He was never very sociable with children of his own age, and preferred to mingle with the other diplomats.

             In 1783 my dear John was summoned by his father to go to Paris. There he witnessed the signing of the treaty that ended the American Revolution. It was then that my dear John began keeping a diary. He continued to write in it from that day to the last day of his life. I hear that it"s been published and is now available for all the world to read. My dear John sure did know how to impress me. .

             My dear John returned to the United States to study at Harvard College. He graduated two years later, he really was a very studious man. He started his own law practice in 1790 but he never really enjoyed practicing law and he soon gave it up to become involved in important public matters. .

             An anonymous author, using the pen name Publicola, published a series of articles in a Boston newspaper that were reprinted and read throughout the nation. The articles offered a closely reasoned and brilliant defense of Washington"s policy and concluded with these words: "It is our duty to remain, the peaceable and silent, though sorrowful spectators of the sanguinary scene.