After his one term as the 6th president of the United States, John Quincy Adams served 18 years in Congress and lived to age 80. None of that would have happened had things gone a little differently on this date in 1825.
Adams went swimming in the Potomac River every summer from 1818, when he was 50, until 1846, when he was 79. He would usually awake between 4 and 5 a.m., walk two miles to the river, then strip naked and swim, often for an hour or more, usually accompanied by one of his sons, or by his valet Antoine Guista.
Despite the objections of his wife and doctor, at age 57 he decided to try swimming entirely across the river, a distance he estimated at about a mile. It took him an hour and a half, but on August 25, 1824, he and his son John swam all the way across, being trailed by Antoine in a boat “to take us in had we met any insuperable difficulty.”
On June 13, 1825, less than three months after being sworn in as president, Adams decided to cross the Potomac by canoe and swim back. His son John took a look at the canoe, declared it unsafe, and said he’d just swim over from the north shore and meet Adams halfway across the river as he swam back. “I thought the boat safe enough,” Adams later wrote, “or rather persisted carelessly in going without paying due attention to its condition; gave my watch to my son; made a bundle of my coat and waistcoat to take in the boat with me; put off my shoes, and was paddled by Antoine, who had stripped himself entirely naked.”
The canoe was leaking and filling with water when, about halfway across the river, a sudden storm blew over. The little boat was swamped, and Adams and Antoine jumped into the river. Being naked, Antoine had no trouble making it to the shore. But Adams was still partially dressed, wearing his shoes and his shirt, the sleeves of which “hung like two fifty-six-pound weights upon my arms.” With great difficulty, Adams eventually made it to shore. His son John, who had become alarmed, swam all the way across the river and found his father on the shore, half-dressed and exhausted. “This incident gave me a humiliating lesson and solemn warning not to trifle with danger,” Adams wrote.
As news of the mishap made its way around Washington, it evolved into a rumor that the president had drowned. Worried that their son George would hear the rumor, First Lady Louisa Adams dashed off a letter to him: “As it is possible my dear George that you may hear a rumour that your father was drowned I hasten to write you a few lines to assure you that he is safe although he did run some risk this morning in one of his swimming expeditions. … The affair is altogether ridiculous as it turned out but might have been fatal to your Mother’s future peace.”
Although he didn’t try any more challenging cross-river swims, Adams continued to swim in the Potomac until deep into his old age, reporting in his diary that two days after his 79th birthday he went down to his “old bathing spot,” took off his clothes, and jumped in the river for a half-hour swim. As he was swimming, Adams noticed three young men in the river who he did not know. One of them pointed at the old man and said, “There is John Quincy Adams.”
He died of a stroke in February 1848, at age 80.
The photo is of Adams in 1843, at age 76.
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