ADAMS, Charles Francis, congressman, diplomat, was born in Boston on August 18, 1807. In 1809, his father, John Quincy Adams, accepted the appointment as U.S. minister to Russia and moved his family to St. Petersburg. After his father returned to Washington in 1817, Charles Francis attended the Boston Latin School, then graduated from Harvard University in 1825. For two years during his father's presidency he resided in the White House, after which he returned to Boston to devote the next ten years to study, writing, and management of his father's financial affairs. He sat on the Massachusetts General Court (1840-1845) and edited the Boston Whig (1846-1848).
During the Mexican War, Adams became a Conscience Whig, then bolted the party in 1848 and presided at the Buffalo convention that founded the Free Soil party. That convention nominated Martin Van Buren for the presidency and Adams for the vice presidency. With other Conscience Whigs he drifted into the Republican party, and as a Republican he entered the House of Representatives in 1859. He represented Massachusetts on the House Committee of Thirty-three, formed to deal with the secession crisis. At the request of the committee chairman, Thomas Corwin (q.v.), Adams introduced the committee's resolution to protect slavery, where it existed, by constitutional amendment.
Abraham Lincoln (q.v.), acting on the advice of Secretary of State William H. Seward (q.v.), appointed Adams minister to Great Britain; he resigned his congressional seat on May 1, 1861. His arrival in London later that month coincided with the Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality toward the American Civil War. Adams conveyed to the London government Seward's forceful admonitions against British recognition of the Confederacy, fortunately without damaging U.S. — British relations. When, in 1862, he could not prevent the departure of the Florida, the Alabama, and other Confederate raiders built in British shipyards, he warned the London government that it would be held liable for the damages inflicted on Northern shipping by Confederate commerce destroyers. In April 1863 British officials, conscious of the mounting Confederate toll on the high seas, prevented the sailing of the Alexandra. Adams's efforts were finally successful when, in September 1863, the British government seized the two ironclad Laird rams being built at Liverpool for the Confederates. Adams did not leave England until May 1868. In 1871-1872, he sat on the tribunal in Geneva that settled the Alabama Claims. He died in Boston on November 21, 1886. Duberman, Charles Francis Adams.
Norman A. Graebner
Source: Hubbell, John T. and Geary, James W., eds. Biographical Dictionary of the Union: Northern Leaders of the Civil War. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1995.