From John Quincy Adams: Speeches & Writings
Interesting Links
“‘Dissent, Compromise, and Lead’: Historian David Waldstreicher on the Singular Public Life of John Quincy Adams” (Library of America)
“From Son of the Revolution to Old Man Eloquent” (Michael Lucchese, Law & Liberty)
Previous Story of the Week selections
• “This Whole Horrible Transaction,” John Quincy Adams
• “The Spirit of party has overpowerd the Spirit of Patriotism,” Abigail Adams
• “The Petitions of Belinda an African,” Belinda Sutton
• “On the Absurdity of a Bill of Rights,” Noah Webster
Buy the book
John Quincy Adams: Speeches & Writings
21 essential works
832 pages
“‘Dissent, Compromise, and Lead’: Historian David Waldstreicher on the Singular Public Life of John Quincy Adams” (Library of America)
“From Son of the Revolution to Old Man Eloquent” (Michael Lucchese, Law & Liberty)
Previous Story of the Week selections
• “This Whole Horrible Transaction,” John Quincy Adams
• “The Spirit of party has overpowerd the Spirit of Patriotism,” Abigail Adams
• “The Petitions of Belinda an African,” Belinda Sutton
• “On the Absurdity of a Bill of Rights,” Noah Webster
Buy the book
John Quincy Adams: Speeches & Writings21 essential works
832 pages
 |
| “A Westerly View of The Colledges in Cambridge New England,” engraving hand-colored with water colors, 1767. Drawn by Joshua Chadwick (c. 1721–1783) and engraved by Paul Revere (1734–1818). At the bottom is the legend “A Harvard Hall | B Stoughton | C Massachusett [sic] | D Hollis | E Holden Chapel,” corresponding to the five buildings in this order: E D A B C. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. |
The following introduction to Adams’s graduation speech is the headnote included in the recently published John Quincy Adams: Speeches & Writings, edited by David Waldstreicher.
On July 11, 1787, just one week before he delivered his first public address, graduating Harvard senior and future law student John Quincy Adams marked his twentieth birthday in the pages of his diary. “I am good for nothing,” he lamented, “and cannot even carry myself forward in the world: three long years I have yet to study in order to qualify myself for business: and then—oh! and then; how many more years, to plod along, mechanically, if I should live; before I shall really get into the world?” Adams was, by any measure, the most accomplished of the young men taking degrees from Harvard that year, having already made two voyages to Europe with his diplomat father, where he enjoyed a range of cultural and educational experiences unknown to many twice his age. Still, he was impatient for something greater, in a hurry to “really get into the world.”
Graduation offered a first chance. The faculty of Harvard College designated Adams one of the class orators at the ceremony, always a significant occasion in the civic life of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with the governor and other dignitaries usually in attendance. Adams’s oration came in the middle of a lengthy program of student presentations that included orations and colloquies in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; scientific and mathematical demonstrations; and syllogistic and forensic disputations on such topics as “Whether any man be so depraved as to have left all sense of virtue?” His topic, set by the college president, was “The importance and necessity of public faith to the well-being of a Community.” “Public faith” here referred not to religion but to the respect for public and private debts and contracts, a subject of paramount importance for the new nation during the “critical period” (a phrase Adams may have coined here) of the framing and ratification of the Constitution.
Nowhere was this issue more urgent than in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth had raised taxes to pay its portion of the national debt in hard coin, aggravating an ongoing currency shortage that hit farmers especially hard. A tax revolt ensued, with Daniel Shays and his followers closing courts in the central and western parts of the state. Shays’s insurgents included some of the leading men of Berkshire County, frustrated by policies that threatened dispossession of their neighbors from their farms, seemingly to pay war bonds held by easterners. Ultimately, the state militia, “the hand of patriotism,” as Adams calls it, had been called out to crush the “noxious plant” of rebellion, with several of Adams’s classmates joining the ranks.
For Adams the issue was bigger than just his home state. Both the debt controversy and the rebellion had national ramifications. The question young Adams asks in his address is the same his father had posed during the protests of the 1760s and early 1770s, and then during the Revolutionary War: Could devotion to the public good be made to last? And more pressingly now, would the present generation take up the task? The answer, for Adams, lay in a renewed commitment to a national compact—“the radiant sun of our union”—and the prompt payment of debts would convey the substance of this renewed nationalism. Local issues would be solved by faith in the union of states. If Americans did not trust each other, why would the foreigners who supported their trade and their outstanding loans? More than just important, public credit was the lifeblood of the social compact. Without it, the nation itself might be of short duration.
Adams’s first turn on the public stage was well received. In a July 27 letter to his friend and former comrade-in-arms Henry Knox, David Humphries, who had served as George Washington’s aide-de-camp during the war, wrote that “I was present at the Commencement in your University of Cambridge & highly delighted with most of the Academic Exercises, in particular young Mr. Adams distinguished himself by a manly and dignified oration on public credit.” Another witness described the event in a Boston newspaper: “The public expectations from this gentleman, being the son of an Ambassador . . . were greatly inflated. The performance justified the preconceived partiality. He is warmly attached to the republican system of his father, and descanted upon the subject of public justice with great energy.” Adams was already sensitive to charges of nepotism or favoritism; when clergyman and historian Jeremy Belknap sought permission to publish the address in Philadelphia’s Columbian Magazine, Adams asked Belknap to publish it anonymously so it could be judged on its own merits. But when the address appeared in the September issue, it carried not only his name, but the additional identifier “son of his Excellency John Adams, L. L. D. the American Minister at the court of London.”
Whatever its billing, the oration fit well with the nationalist sentiments on offer in the magazine, which included the first periodical publication of the U.S. Constitution, under the title “The new plan for a Fœderal Government proposed by the Convention.”
Notes: The following address appeared in the September 1787 issue of The Columbian Magazine or Monthly Miscellany under the title “An Oration, Delivered at the Public Commencement, in the University of Cambridge, in New England, July 18, 1787, by Mr. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, son of his Excellency JOHN ADAMS, L. L. D. the American Minister at the court of London.”
The quote “when then the souls of men were tried” is an allusion to the opening line of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The American Crisis, written in December 1776. The distinguished patriot mentioned by Adams is John Hancock, who had been the first governor of Massachusetts under its new constitution, serving from 1780 to 1785, and became its third when elected again on May 30, 1787, just six weeks before the Harvard commencement; he was in attendance, along with the governor’s council. Adams alludes to the disastrous fate of Alba, and of Carthage. According to Livy, the ancient city of Alba Longa in Latium was a precursor and rival to Rome until it was destroyed by the Romans in the seventh century BCE. The Carthaginians, who were conquered by Rome in the Third Punic War in the second century BCE, were characterized by their victorious rivals as a proverbially dishonorable people. The four mighty nations united against England during the War of American Independence were the American colonies, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic. The bald eagle was a late addition to the Great Seal of the United States, which was officially adopted by the Confederation Congress on June 20, 1782.
The quote “when then the souls of men were tried” is an allusion to the opening line of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The American Crisis, written in December 1776. The distinguished patriot mentioned by Adams is John Hancock, who had been the first governor of Massachusetts under its new constitution, serving from 1780 to 1785, and became its third when elected again on May 30, 1787, just six weeks before the Harvard commencement; he was in attendance, along with the governor’s council. Adams alludes to the disastrous fate of Alba, and of Carthage. According to Livy, the ancient city of Alba Longa in Latium was a precursor and rival to Rome until it was destroyed by the Romans in the seventh century BCE. The Carthaginians, who were conquered by Rome in the Third Punic War in the second century BCE, were characterized by their victorious rivals as a proverbially dishonorable people. The four mighty nations united against England during the War of American Independence were the American colonies, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic. The bald eagle was a late addition to the Great Seal of the United States, which was officially adopted by the Confederation Congress on June 20, 1782.
* * *
The solemnity of the present occasion, the numerous concourse of this brilliant audience, and the consciousness of my own insufficiency, all conspire to fill my breast with terrors hitherto unknown. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.