A Reckoning: A Guest Post by Bob Crawford

Bringing John Quincy Adams to life in a new light, this insightful narrative traces his political evolution and his emergence as a leading voice in the fight against slavery. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Bob Crawford on writing America’s Founding Son.

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For the past twenty-five years, I’ve been the bassist for the Avett Brothers. My journey to write America’s Founding Son began in the back of a van, traveling from gig to gig, devouring books about American history. In those early days, we’d arrive at the venue hours before sound check. To pass the time, we’d find a bookstore. It gave us a chance to disperse, explore, and unwind. When we reconvened, we’d share the treasures we found—biographies, art books, obscure historical treatises. That ritual became a rhythm as steady as the music itself.

Those hours of reading—on highways, in green rooms bright with color and plants, in the quiet corners of bookstores big and small, and in the dingy backrooms of punk rock clubs—led me to John Quincy Adams. Not the president, but the post-president. The man who returned to Congress to defy the gag rule, champion abolition, and redefine dissent as a patriotic duty. A crusader for freedom, Adams understood that the First Amendment is the mustard seed of democracy.

In America’s Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick, I invite my readers to rediscover a figure whose moral clarity and rhetorical fire reshaped the meaning of public service. Long overshadowed by his presidential tenure, Adams’s later years reveal a man reborn—not as a relic of the founding generation, but as its redeemer.

This book is not a conventional biography. It’s a reckoning. I researched Adams rigorously, and wrote what I think is an accessible picture of Adams’s transformation into a radical voice whose battles—against slavery, silence, and political cowardice—echo with startling relevance. His story illuminates the past and guides us to moral courage in our present.