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John
Quincy Adams Speech - Inaugural Address
In compliance with an usage coeval with the existence of our Federal
Constitution , and sanctioned by the example of my predecessors in the
career upon which I am about to enter, I appear, my fellow-citizens, in
your presence and in that of Heaven to bind myself by the solemnities of
religious obligation to the faithful performance of the duties allotted to
me in the station to which I have been called.
In unfolding to my countrymen the principles by which I shall be governed
in the fulfillment of those duties my first resort will be to that
Constitution which I shall swear to the best of my ability to preserve,
protect, and defend. That revered instrument enumerates the powers and
prescribes the duties of the Executive Magistrate, and in its first words
declares the purposes to which these and the whole action of the
Government instituted by it should be invariably and sacredly devoted--to
form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty to the people of this Union in their
successive generations. Since the adoption of this social compact one of
these generations has passed away. It is the work of our forefathers.
Administered by some of the most eminent men who contributed to its
formation, through a most eventful period in the annals of the world, and
through all the vicissitudes of peace and war incidental to the condition
of associated man, it has not disappointed the hopes and aspirations of
those illustrious benefactors of their age and nation. It has promoted the
lasting welfare of that country so dear to us all; it has to an extent far
beyond the ordinary lot of humanity secured the freedom and happiness of
this people. We now receive it as a precious inheritance from those to
whom we are indebted for its establishment, doubly bound by the examples
which they have left us and by the blessings which we have enjoyed as the
fruits of their labors to transmit the same unimpaired to the succeeding
generation.
In the compass of thirty-six years since this great national covenant was
instituted a body of laws enacted under its authority and in conformity
with its provisions has unfolded its powers and carried into practical
operation its effective energies. Subordinate departments have distributed
the executive functions in their various relations to foreign affairs, to
the revenue and expenditures, and to the military force of the Union by
land and sea. A coordinate department of the judiciary has expounded the
Constitution and the laws, settling in harmonious coincidence with the
legislative will numerous weighty questions of construction which the
imperfection of human language had rendered unavoidable. The year of
jubilee since the first formation of our Union has just elapsed that of
the declaration of our independence is at hand. The consummation of both
was effected by this Constitution .
Since that period a population of four millions has multiplied to twelve.
A territory bounded by the Mississippi has been extended from sea to sea.
New States have been admitted to the Union in numbers nearly equal to
those of the first Confederation. Treaties of peace, amity, and commerce
have been concluded with the principal dominions of the earth. The people
of other nations, inhabitants of regions acquired not by conquest, but by
compact, have been united with us in the participation of our rights and
duties, of our burdens and blessings. The forest has fallen by the ax of
our woodsmen; the soil has been made to teem by the tillage of our
farmers; our commerce has whitened every ocean. The dominion of man over
physical nature has been extended by the invention of our artists. Liberty
and law have Marched hand in hand. All the purposes of human association
have been accomplished as effectively as under any other government on the
globe, and at a cost little exceeding in a whole generation the
expenditure of other nations in a single year.
Such is the unexaggerated picture of our condition under a Constitution
founded upon the republican principle of equal rights. To admit that this
picture has its shades is but to say that it is still the condition of men
upon earth. From evil-- physical, moral, and political--it is not our
claim to be exempt. We have suffered sometimes by the visitation of Heaven
through disease; often by the wrongs and injustice of other nations, even
to the extremities of war; and, lastly, by dissensions among
ourselves--dissensions perhaps inseparable from the enjoyment of freedom,
but which have more than once appeared to threaten the dissolution of the
Union, and with it the overthrow of all the enjoyments of our present lot
and all our earthly hopes of the future. The causes of these dissensions
have been various, founded upon differences of speculation in the theory
of republican government; upon conflicting views of policy in our
relations with foreign nations; upon jealousies of partial and sectional
interests, aggravated by prejudices and prepossessions which strangers to
each other are ever apt to entertain.
It is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me to observe that
the great result of this experiment upon the theory of human rights has at
the close of that generation by which it was formed been crowned with
success equal to the most sanguine expectations of its founders. Union,
justice, tranquillity, the common defense, the general welfare, and the
blessings of liberty--all have been promoted by the Government under which
we have lived. Standing at this point of time, looking back to that
generation which has gone by and forward to that which is advancing, we
may at once indulge in grateful exultation and in cheering hope. From the
experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future. Of
the two great political parties which have divided the opinions and
feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now admit that both
have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism,
and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this
Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion
of human infirmity and error. The revolutionary wars of Europe, commencing
precisely at the moment when the Government of the United States first
went into operation under this Constitution, excited a collision of
sentiments and of sympathies which kindled all the passions and imbittered
the conflict of parties till the nation was involved in war and the Union
was shaken to its center. This time of trial embraced a period of five and
twenty years, during which the policy of the Union in its relations with
Europe constituted the principal basis of our political divisions and the
most arduous part of the action of our Federal Government. With the
catastrophe in which the wars of the French Revolution terminated, and our
own subsequent peace with Great Britain, this baneful weed of party strife
was uprooted. From that time no difference of principle, connected either
with the theory of government or with our intercourse with foreign
nations, has existed or been called forth in force sufficient to sustain a
continued combination of parties or to give more than wholesome animation
to public sentiment or legislative debate. Our political creed is, without
a dissenting voice that can be heard, that the will of the people is the
source and the happiness of the people the end of all legitimate
government upon earth; that the best security for the beneficence and the
best guaranty against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the
purity, and the frequency of popular elections; that the General
Government of the Union and the separate governments of the States are all
sovereignties of limited powers, fellow- servants of the same masters,
uncontrolled within their respective spheres, uncontrollable by
encroachments upon each other; that the firmest security of peace is the
preparation during peace of the defenses of war; that a rigorous economy
and accountability of public expenditures should guard against the
aggravation and alleviate when possible the burden of taxation; that the
military should be kept in strict subordination to the civil power; that
the freedom of the press and of religious opinion should be inviolate;
that the policy of our country is peace and the ark of our salvation union
are articles of faith upon which we are all now agreed. If there have been
those who doubted whether a confederated representative democracy were a
government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common
concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have been dispelled; if there
have been projects of partial confederacies to be erected upon the ruins
of the Union, they have been scattered to the winds; if there have been
dangerous attachments to one foreign nation and antipathies against
another, they have been extinguished. Ten years of peace, at home and
abroad, have assuaged the animosities of political contention and blended
into harmony the most discordant elements of public opinion There still
remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion,
to be made by the individuals throughout the nation who have heretofore
followed the standards of political party. It is that of discarding every
remnant of rancor against each other, of embracing as countrymen and
friends, and of yielding to talents and virtue alone that confidence which
in times of contention for principle was bestowed only upon those who bore
the badge of party communion.
The collisions of party spirit which originate in speculative opinions or
in different views of administrative policy are in their nature
transitory. Those which are founded on geographical divisions, adverse
interests of soil, climate, and modes of domestic life are more permanent,
and therefore, perhaps, more dangerous. It is this which gives inestimable
value to the character of our Government, at once federal and national. It
holds out to us a perpetual admonition to preserve alike and with equal
anxiety the rights of each individual State in its own government and the
rights of the whole nation in that of the Union. Whatsoever is of domestic
concernment, unconnected with the other members of the Union or with
foreign lands, belongs exclusively to the administration of the State
governments. Whatsoever directly involves the rights and interests of the
federative fraternity or of foreign powers is of the resort of this
General Government. The duties of both are obvious in the general
principle, though sometimes perplexed with difficulties in the detail. To
respect the rights of the State governments is the inviolable duty of that
of the Union; the government of every State will feel its own obligation
to respect and preserve the rights of the whole. The prejudices everywhere
too commonly entertained against distant strangers are worn away, and the
jealousies of jarring interests are allayed by the composition and
functions of the great national councils annually assembled from all
quarters of the Union at this place. Here the distinguished men from every
section of our country, while meeting to deliberate upon the great
interests of those by whom they are deputed, learn to estimate the talents
and do justice to the virtues of each other. The harmony of the nation is
promoted and the whole Union is knit together by the sentiments of mutual
respect, the habits of social intercourse, and the ties of personal
friendship formed between the representatives of its several parts in the
performance of their service at this metropolis.
Passing from this general review of the purposes and injunctions of the
Federal Constitution and their results as indicating the first traces of
the path of duty in the discharge of my public trust, I turn to the
Administration of my immediate predecessor as the second. It has passed
away in a period of profound peace, how much to the satisfaction of our
country and to the honor of our country's name is known to you all. The
great features of its policy, in general concurrence with the will of the
Legislature, have been to cherish peace while preparing for defensive war;
to yield exact justice to other nations and maintain the rights of our
own; to cherish the principles of freedom and of equal rights wherever
they were proclaimed; to discharge with all possible promptitude the
national debt; to reduce within the narrowest limits of efficiency the
military force; to improve the organization and discipline of the Army; to
provide and sustain a school of military science; to extend equal
protection to all the great interests of the nation; to promote the
civilization of the Indian tribes, and to proceed in the great system of
internal improvements within the limits of the constitutional power of the
Union. Under the pledge of these promises, made by that eminent citizen at
the time of his first induction to this office, in his career of eight
years the internal taxes have been repealed; sixty millions of the public
debt have been discharged; provision has been made for the comfort and
relief of the aged and indigent among the surviving warriors of the
Revolution; the regular armed force has been reduced and its constitution
revised and perfected; the accountability for the expenditure of public
moneys has been made more effective; the Floridas have been peaceably
acquired, and our boundary has been extended to the Pacific Ocean; the
independence of the southern nations of this hemisphere has been
recognized, and recommended by example and by counsel to the potentates of
Europe; progress has been made in the defense of the country by
fortifications and the increase of the Navy, toward the effectual
suppression of the African traffic in slaves; in alluring the aboriginal
hunters of our land to the cultivation of the soil and of the mind, in
exploring the interior regions of the Union, and in preparing by
scientific researches and surveys for the further application of our
national resources to the internal improvement of our country.
In this brief outline of the promise and performance of my immediate
predecessor the line of duty for his successor is clearly delineated To
pursue to their consummation those purposes of improvement in our common
condition instituted or recommended by him will embrace the whole sphere
of my obligations. To the topic of internal improvement, emphatically
urged by him at his inauguration, I recur with peculiar satisfaction. It
is that from which I am convinced that the unborn millions of our
posterity who are in future ages to people this continent will derive
their most fervent gratitude to the founders of the Union; that in which
the beneficent action of its Government will be most deeply felt and
acknowledged. The magnificence and splendor of their public works are
among the imperishable glories of the ancient republics. The roads and
aqueducts of Rome have been the admiration of all after ages, and have
survived thousands of years after all her conquests have been swallowed up
in despotism or become the spoil of barbarians. Some diversity of opinion
has prevailed with regard to the powers of Congress for legislation upon
objects of this nature. The most respectful deference is due to doubts
originating in pure patriotism and sustained by venerated authority. But
nearly twenty years have passed since the construction of the first
national road was commenced. The authority for its construction was then
unquestioned. To how many thousands of our countrymen has it proved a
benefit? To what single individual has it ever proved an injury? Repeated,
liberal, and candid discussions in the Legislature have conciliated the
sentiments and approximated the opinions of enlightened minds upon the
question of constitutional power. I can not but hope that by the same
process of friendly, patient, and persevering deliberation all
constitutional objections will ultimately be removed. The extent and
limitation of the powers of the General Government in relation to this
transcendently important interest will be settled and acknowledged to the
common satisfaction of all, and every speculative scruple will be solved
by a practical public blessing.
Fellow-citizens, you are acquainted with the peculiar circumstances of the
recent election, which have resulted in affording me the opportunity of
addressing you at this time. You have heard the exposition of the
principles which will direct me in the fulfillment of the high and solemn
trust imposed upon me in this station. Less possessed of your confidence
in advance than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the
prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence.
Intentions upright and pure, a heart devoted to the welfare of our
country, and the unceasing application of all the faculties allotted to me
to her service are all the pledges that I can give for the faithful
performance of the arduous duties I am to undertake. To the guidance of
the legislative councils, to the assistance of the executive and
subordinate departments, to the friendly cooperation of the respective
State governments, to the candid and liberal support of the people so far
as it may be deserved by honest industry and zeal, I shall look for
whatever success may attend my public service; and knowing that "except
the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain," with fervent
supplications for His favor, to His overruling providence I commit with
humble but fearless confidence my own fate and the future destinies of my
country.
John Quincy Adams
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