America's Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick

During the tumultuous period between the era of the Founding Fathers and the disunion of the Civil War, John Quincy Adams was the man standing in the breach. After an unsuccessful presidential re-election campaign, he was left reckoning with his political legacy. The United States' tortured adolescence that was the years 1820-1850 would drag Adams back into the fray in ways he never expected, pitting him against the slavocracy and southern Congressmen, and solidifying him as a key ally to the anti-slavery cause.

America's Founding Son argues that John Quincy Adams represented a crucial bridge between two eras as he helped force America to reckon with the disconnect between the promises of its founding documents--freedom and equality for all--and the stain of its original sin: slavery.

Bob Crawford, known to many as the bassist for The Avett Brothers, tells the tale of Adams's turbulent government career and his evolving views on slavery through the lens of his relationship with two lesser-known abolitionists, Benjamin Lundy and Theodore Weld, and culminates in his advocacy for the anti-slavery cause and his historic 72-day takeover of the congressional floor. Together the three men found themselves at the center of the coalition that leveled the first blow against slave power in the United States. The battles they fought would be foundational to push for emancipation to follow. An entertaining deep dive into an under-explored period in American history, America's Founding Son shows how John Quincy Adams and the grassroots activism of the 1830s and 40s shifted American politics forever.