An Address Delivered at the Request of a Commission of the Citizens of Washington; on the Occasion of Reading the Declaration of Independence, on the Fourth of July 1821. By John Quincy Adams. Washington: Davis and Force, 1821. Also find it here, here, and here.
John Quincy Adams’ Address of July 4, 1821. By Jerald L. Banninga. Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 53, No. 1 (1967).
Excerpt, pp. 28-29:
And
now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older
world, the first observers of mutation and aberration, the discoverers of
maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and
shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, what has America
done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this–America, with the same
voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the
inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of
government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among
them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of
honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly
spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the
language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights. She has, in the
lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence
of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from
interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for
principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the
heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of
that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power,
and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been
or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers
be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the
well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and
vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the
countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well
knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even
the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the
power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual
avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of
freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the
ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be
substituted an Imperial Diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the
murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the
world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.
