John Quincy Adams
Inaugural Address
Friday, March 4, 1825
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.
