Which Adams Was This?

I’m impressed by David Franzoni’s visceral understanding of “black rage” (“Giving Credit Where It’s Due,” Calendar, Dec. 15) and by his courageous defense of John Quincy Adams--a man who, as Franzoni puts it, “sponsored unpopular ideals that got him reviled.”

However, I do have a few questions concerning Franzoni’s essay:

First of all, why was I never told before now that Adams was “a man who to this day is essentially reviled in American history.” I used to live in Quincy, Mass., and no one ever mentioned this.

Secondly, who was “the Keen Mind of the South”? Franzoni’s disjointed syntax suggests that the term must somehow apply to either Thomas Hobbes, John Locke or Martin Van Buren. You don’t have to resurrect the souls of the dead (a power which Franzoni claims for “Amistad” co-producer Debbie Allen) to know that Hobbes and Locke were English philosophers. My desktop encyclopedia confirms Van Buren’s status as a New Yorker.

R.S. DEESE, Los Angeles