“You, my dear son, are formed with a constitution feelingly alive; your passions are strong and impetuous; and, though I have sometimes seen them hurry you into excesses, yet with pleasure I have observed a frankness and generosity accompany your efforts to govern and subdue them.  Few persons are so subject to passion but that they can command themselves when they have a motive sufficiently strong; and those who are most apt to transgress will restrain themselves through respect and reverence to superiors, and even, where they wish to recommend themselves, to their equals.  The due government of the passions has been considered in all ages as a most valuable acquisition.  Hence an inspired writer observes, ’He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit, than he than taketh a city.’  This passion, co-operating with power, and unrestrained by reason, has produced the subversion of cities, the desolation of countries, the massacre of nations, and filled the world with injustice and oppression.  Behold your own country, your native land, suffering from the effects of lawless power and malignant passions, and learn betimes, from your own observation and experience, to govern and control yourself.  Having once obtained this self-government, you will find a foundation laid for happiness to yourself and usefulness to mankind.  ’Virtue alone is happiness below;’ and consists in cultivating and improving every good inclination, and in checking and subduing every propensity to evil.  I have been particular upon the passion of anger, as it is generally the most predominant passion at your age, the soonest excited, and the least pains are taken to subdue it;

    ‘What composes man, can man destroy.’”

With such a mother to counsel him, one is led to ask, how could John Quincy Adams help becoming a noble-minded and great man?  Who wonders that, with good natural endowments and his excellent privileges, coupled with maternal training, he fitted himself to fill the highest office in the gift of a free people?

In June, 1784, Mrs. Adams sailed for London, to join her husband, who was then our Minister at the Court of St. James.  While absent, she visited France and Netherlands; resided for a time in the former country; and returned with her knowledge of human nature, of men, manners, etc., enlarged; disgusted with the splendor and sophistications of royalty, and well prepared to appreciate the republican simplicity and frankness of which, she was herself a model.  While Mr. Adams was Vice-president and President, she never laid aside her singleness of heart and that sincerity and unaffected dignity which had won for her many friends before her elevation, and which, in spite of national animosity, conquered the prejudices and gained the heart of the aristocracy of Great Britain.  But her crowning virtue was her Christian humility, which is beautifully exemplified in a letter which she wrote to Mr. Adams, on the 8th of February, 1797, “the day on which the votes for President were counted, and Mr. Adams, as Vice-president, was required by law to announce himself the President elect for the ensuing term:”