John Quincy Adams, Monsters and the 4th of July
John Quincy Adams explained America's place in the world, which speaks to the threat of globalism verses sovereignty today.
Happy Independence Day!
How did John Quincy Adams celebrate Independence Day? His habits were very similar to today. As I wrote in American Phoenix, for Adams, Independence Day in Boston was about attending boisterous parades, jubilant luncheons with veterans at Bunker Hill, and sparkling fireworks at night.
On July 4, 1809. John Quincy Adams’s life was radically changed. At the time, Adams was a down-on-his-luck politician turned professor who had been forced to resign his Senate seat a year earlier. His crime was not a moral one but a political one. He had simply chosen the moral right over political expediency by supporting President Jefferson's embargo against shipping trade in the face of Napoleon’s global conquests and Britain’s trade tyranny that resulted in kidnapped American sailors.
Around 10 p.m. on July 3, a boy dropped off a newspaper at his front door. The newspaper editor wanted to give Adams a heads up of the shocking news that everyone else in Boston would discover and gossip about the next day after reading the newspaper.
What was the big news? President James Madison had appointed Adams as the U.S. minister plenipotentiary to Russia. This meant that he was to become the top U.S. official to ever represent America in Russia.
How did his wife, Louisa, react? She was devastated. Instead of celebrating independence, she felt like she was being shackled into Russian captivity. After all, traveling there would take three months on a ship. Because communication was slow, they knew they would be cut off from news about their family and their country for months at a time.
To John Quincy, the appointment was an honorable exile. Though being a diplomat was respectable, it was also a convenient way for his political enemies to get him out of the country and prevent him for running for governor of Massachusetts or, worse in their minds, higher office.
Little did Adams know at the time, but his mission to Russia would transform him from a down-on-his-luck politician into a statesman on track to become president. Louisa would also change from a marginalized mother into a woman who would make life and death decisions and face Napoleon to be reunited with her children. My book, American Phoenix, reveals their transformations and how these homespun Americans won over the lavish Russian tsar. Their success LED Britain's foreign minister to admit, “I fear the Emperor of Russia is half an American.”
Adams's views on America's place in the world were challenged and sharpened during his diplomatic days in Russia. By 1821, his views had crystallized into what became known as the Monroe Doctrine. America as a predator imperial power or monster empire like Britain was a no. America as a strong, independent nation leading by example was a go.
On July 4, 1821, he gave a speech to the House of Representatives. Exerted below are his words, which resonate today as America spirals downward from powers that advocate for globalism and one world government through medical and technological tyranny versus those who advocate for U.S. sovereignty and respect for nation-states.
John Quincy Adams's Warning Against the Search for “Monsters to Destroy,” July 4, 1821
AND NOW, FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire 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, of equal justice, and of 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 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 of 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 commend 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....
She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....
[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
