John Quincy Adams on Foreign Policy

John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States, serving from 1825 to 1829. Before becoming President, he had previously served as the eighth U.S. Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825.

During his long political career, Adams also served as a Diplomatic Minister and also as a Congressman representing Massachusetts in both chambers. He was the eldest son of John Adams, the second President, and First Lady Abigail Adams. Initially a Federalist like his father, he won election to the Presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and later, in the mid-1830s, he became affiliated with the Whig Party.

John Quincy Adams was once asked: "What has America done for the benefit of mankind?" Here’s a part of his answer:

“. . . 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 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 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 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 brow 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 luster 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."

Wow. Wouldn’t it be something if today’s leaders thought and spoke like this?

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