, Boston, 1842–1886. In 1840, Adams was elected to the first of three one-year terms in the
Massachusetts House of Representatives and he served in the
Massachusetts Senate from 1843 to 1845. In 1846, he purchased and became editor of the
Boston Whig newspaper. In
1848, he was the unsuccessful nominee of the
Free Soil Party for
Vice President of the United States, running on a ticket with former president
Martin Van Buren as the presidential nominee. That same year, on February 21, his father had suffered a massive stroke and collapsed on the floor of the House. He died two days later in the Speaker's Room in the Capitol building at the age of 80. From the 1840s, Adams became one of the finest historical editors of his era. He developed his expertise in part because of the example of his father, who in 1829 had turned from politics (after his defeated bid for a second presidential term in 1828) to history and biography. John Quincy Adams began a biography of his father, John Adams, but wrote only a few chapters before resuming his political career in 1830 with his election to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Meeting with Joseph Smith In 1844, while traveling with his cousin
Josiah Quincy, Charles Francis Adams met
Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints, in Nauvoo, Illinois, and received a copy of the Book of Mormon which had previously belonged to Smith's first wife,
Emma Smith. The book is now in the archive collections of
Adams National Historical Park. At the visit, Smith showed Adams and Quincy four Egyptian mummies and ancient papyri. Adams was not impressed by Smith, and wrote in his diary entry that day, "Such a man is a study not for himself, but as serving to show what turns the human mind will sometimes take. And herafter if I should live, I may compare the results of this delusion with the condition in which I saw it and its mountebank apostle." Adams' companion and cousin, Josiah Quincy, also reflected on Joseph Smith's influence, writing: "It is by no means improbable that some future textbook... will contain a question something like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen? And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet." Quincy, Figures of the Past 376.
Congressman and diplomat on the reverse of the 2008 First Spouse coin of the
presidential dollar coin series As a
Republican, Adams was elected to the
United States House of Representatives in 1858, where he chaired the
Committee on Manufactures. He was re-elected in 1860 but resigned to become
U.S. minister (ambassador) to the
Court of St James's (Britain), a post previously held by his father and grandfather, from 1861 to 1868. Powerful Massachusetts senator
Charles Sumner had wanted the position and so became alienated from Adams. Britain had already recognized Confederate belligerency, but Adams was instrumental in maintaining British neutrality and preventing British diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy during the
American Civil War. Part of his duties included corresponding with British civilians, including
Karl Marx and the
International Workingmen's Association. Adams and his son,
Henry Brooks Adams, who served as his private secretary, also were kept busy monitoring Confederate diplomatic intrigues and the construction of rebel
commerce raiders (like
hull N°290, launched as
Enrica from
Liverpool but was soon transformed near the
Azores Islands into sloop-of-war ) and
blockade runners by British shipyards. His main success as a diplomat was in keeping Britain neutral. He helped resolve the
Trent Affair in 1861, in which an American naval officer had violated British rights. With the Union blockade of Confederate ports growing increasingly successful, little cotton now reached Europe except through Union channels. A strong element in Britain, including Chancellor of the Exchequer
William Gladstone, wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy. Adams warned doing so would mean war with the United States, as well as the cutting off of American food exports, which constituted about a fourth of the British food supply. The American Navy, increasingly strong, would try to sink British shipping. The British government pulled back from talk of war when the Confederate invasion of the North was defeated at
Antietam, and Lincoln announced that he would issue the
Emancipation Proclamation. Adams and his staff collected details on the shipbuilding issue, showing how warships and blockade runners built for the Confederacy caused widespread damage to American interests, the former being against the
U.S. Merchant Marine and the latter against the
Union Army on the battlefield. The evidence became the basis of the postwar
Alabama Claims. The claims went to arbitration, with Adams in charge of the American side. However, the British in 1872 agreed to pay $15 million (~$ in ) in damages only for damages caused by British-built Confederate warships. ==Later life==