Transcript

LINDSAY CHERVINSKY (EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY): As a nation, we’re actually not very old. Two hundred and fifty years isn’t that long, and so, so much of what we have experienced in previous generations is shaping what we are seeing now.

John Quincy Adams was an incredible leader before he was the president of the United States. He was a great diplomat. He could negotiate treaties and agreements with other nations. The Monroe Doctrine was crafted while Adams was secretary of state.

It set up the ideological concept that the United States was going to be the superpower in the Western Hemisphere. His broader vision for what the United States could be was embraced by presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Adams’s vision for what the nation should be and how it should interact on the global stage was very much the defining feature of much of 19th and 20th century history.

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John Quincy Adams: An Investment in Diplomacy

October 22, 2026

(1 min.)

Has lesson plan

John Quincy Adams’s life spanned much of the nation’s first century.

He witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill as a child and lived long enough to become the first U.S. president to be photographed. Here, the executive director of The George Washington Presidential Library, Lindsay M. Chervinsky, shares how Adams’s years as a diplomat shaped his influence on future presidents’ approach to foreign policy in this short by Retro Report, based on ⁨In Pursuit USA, for PBS.

In Pursuit: Lessons of American Leadership is a new documentary special produced by Retro Report, based on In Pursuit USA by More Perfect. It brings the leadership lessons of American presidents and first ladies to life for America’s 250th anniversary.

Tune in Oct. 27 at 10/9c (check local listings) on PBS.