Hal Brands, Columnist

John Quincy Adams Isn’t Who You Think He Is

The sixth president has become an icon for those wanting to shrink America’s global role, but he was actually a die-hard expansionist.

February 8, 2020 at 2:00 PM UTC

By Hal Brands

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

He wasn’t afraid of monsters. — He wasn’t afraid of monsters.
Photographer: Henry Guttmann Collection/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

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John Quincy Adams isn’t who you think he is.

Adams, who was a mediocre president from 1825 to 1829 after serving as America’s greatest secretary of state under President James Monroe, is enjoying a remarkable afterlife in today’s arguments over U.S. foreign policy. He is put forth as an exemplar of restraint and realism by those who seek to shrink America’s global role; his warning against going abroad “in search of monsters to destroy” is a shibboleth among critics of U.S. military interventions.