Presidential Biographies | John Q. Adams Administration - The Adams Administration Legacy

The Adams Administration Legacy

Despite Adams's defeat in 1828, there was a solid minority who supported his administration's goals. The most prominent pro-Adams newspaper, the Daily National Journal, regularly carried editorials, many written by Adams and his secretary of state, Henry Clay, that supported their proposals for national improvement. In contrast, the United States Telegraph spent four years denouncing the "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Clay, and criticizing their "unconstitutional" efforts to increase the power of the federal government over the states. In the end, however, even Adams had to sum up his presidency as a fiasco:

When I came to the Presidency the principle of internal improvement, was swelling the tide of public prosperity, till the Sable Genius of the South saw the signs of his own inevitable downfall in the unparalleled progress of the...