Life of Service

Even for a person of John Quincy Adams's remarkable credentials, the practice of law was challenging.

- Randy Krehbiel and Andrew Matthews

As a new lawyer in Boston, he found it difficult to earn a living from the profession. But his practice took off after a few years. By then, his experiences in Europe-traveling and working with his father made him an asset to the young nation. Adams was active in government affairs during each of the first 11 U.S. administrations. One of those administrations was his own.

President George Washington was the first to recognize Adams's value. Adams had written articles that expressed support for Washington’s efforts to remain neutral in a conflict between Great Britain and France. In 1794, Washington appointed Adams as the U.S. minister to the Netherlands. While posted to the Netherlands, Adams traveled to London to help with the negotiations for the Jay Treaty in 1794. The treaty avoided another war with Great Britain and encouraged a period of peaceful trade between the two nations. Washington referred to Adams as “the most valuable public character we have abroad.”

Washington also appointed Adams minister to Portugal in 1796. By that fall, Adams’s father, John Adams, was elected president. John changed his son’s diplomatic assignment to U.S. minister to Prussia. Adams devoted time and energy to perfecting his knowledge of the German language to better serve in that capacity. While in the Prussian capital of Berlin, Adams negotiated a friendly commercial treaty with that nation. When his father lost re-election to the presidency in 1800, Adams returned to the United States.