Historians have not been generous in judging the presidency of John Quincy Adams. Those who have most conspicuously upheld Adams's fame have, at the same time, virtually ignored his service in the White House. Critics, on the other hand, have described his administration as a failure, founded upon "bargain and corruption" and marked by exclusion of the United States from the British West Indian trade, the ineffectiveness of its efforts to promote strong Pan-American relationships, and the enactment of the "tariff of abominations." Some analysts have even argued that it generated the sectionalism which terminated the "Era of Good Feelings."

Mary Hargreaves contends, instead, that the basic effort of Adams's presidency was to harmonize divergent sectional interests. To ignore the Adams administration's commitment to nationalism, she argues, is to overlook a fundamental stage in the establishment of the federal government as guardian of the general interest.

The volume contains new information on the development of United States commercial policy, the nation's early relationships with Latin America, and difficulties of local and regional adjustment to the growth of the national economy. It will be of keen interest to all students of the economic and political history of the early national period.

In volume 5 of The Papers of Henry Clay, the second of the series to cover Clay's role as Secretary of State, problems arising from domestic political pressures become significant in the conduct of national affairs both at home and abroad. With the president absent from Washington one-third of the year, Clay's burden and his personal role in the conduct of office are evident. His health becomes precarious, he neglects to take action to forestall embarrassing ministerial faux pas in several areas, and he misjudges the gravity of British alienation-all of these handicaps to the future course of his administration here become manifest.