J.Q. Adams' presidency isn't particularly remembered as a
success -- he wasn't the last president to face a hostile
Congress -- but he was much else besides, including a highly
talented diplomat and cabinet member in service of the young
United States, and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from 1831 until his death on February 23, 1848, two days after
he had (presumably) had a stroke on the floor of that chamber.
During his tenure in Congress, Adams because a prominent
opponent of slavery, though not strictly speaking an
abolitionist (more that once he predicted correctly that only a
civil war would eventually end the peculiar institution). In
1841, he famously argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the
Amistad case, a cause célèbre of the time. At issue was the
status of enslaved Africans, led by one of the number called
Cinque, who had in 1839 taken control of the Spanish ship
Amistad, on which they were being transported. The ship ended up
in the United States, and, with the help of sympathize