[163]

Later congressional career (1830–1848)
Jackson administration, 1830–1836
Daguerreotype of Quincy Adams by Philip Haas, 1843
Adams considered permanently retiring from public life after his 1828 defeat, and he was deeply hurt by the suicide of his son, George Washington Adams, in 1829.[164] He was appalled by many of the Jackson administration's actions, including its embrace of the spoils system[165] and the prosecution of his close friend, Treasury Auditor Tobias Watkins, for embezzlement.[166] Though they had once maintained a cordial relationship, Adams and Jackson each came to loathe the other in the decades after the 1828 election.[167] Adams grew bored with his retirement and still felt that his career was unfinished, so he ran for and won a seat in the United States House of Representatives in the 1830 elections.[168] His election went against the generally held opinion, shared by his own wife and youngest son, that former presidents should not run for public office.[169] Nonetheless, he would win election to nine terms, serving from 1831 until his death in 1848.[1] Adams and Andrew Johnson are the only former presidents to serve in Congress.