Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.

Adams also predicted the Union's dissolution over the slavery issue but said that if the South became independent there would be a series of bloody slave revolts. Adams enacted a part of his agenda and paid off much of the national debt. John Quincy Adams /ˈkwɪnzi/ (July 11 1767 – February 23 1848) was the sixth President of the United States (1825–1829).