Happy Fourth

For John, BLUF:  John Quincy Adams, before he became President, on the Declaration of Independence.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS ON FREEDOM, INDEPENDENCE AND PEACE

Here is the sub-headline:

On July 4, 1821, then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams gave the following Independence Day speech.

From War on the Rocks, by WOTR Staff. 4 July 2023.

Here is the lede plus three:

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.

And it goes on.

I think we, as a nation, would do well to follow what then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams told us.

Regards  —  Cliff