Missive #43

In Heir to the Fathers, author Gary V. Wood examines the ideas that guided John Quincy Adams throughout his political career. For Wood, it is Adams’ understanding of The Constitution of the United States that foregrounds a crucial link between the principles laid-forth in The Declaration of Independence and the original intent of the Framers of The Constitution. Heir to the Fathers traces this link through an examination of Adams’ celebrated essay, Jubilee of the Constitution and, most significantly, through his defense of a group of Africans who mutinied aboard the slave ship Amistad. An Interesting book for an overview of Adam’s life that avoids the usual biography format. It also pointed me to the three other books that I have listed below. A good read. The contradictory relationship between what is stated The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution and the treatment of African slaves has been a persistent problem in any attempt to understand the legacy of freedom in the United States. Adams’ argument before the Supreme Court, based on his interpretation of constitutional law, is an example of how this unique political mind comes to terms with this contradiction without abandoning the spirit of America’s founding principles. Wood’s discussion of Adams’ political and intellectual life invites readers to reexamination the principles upon which the United States of America was founded. Heir to the Fathers is a salient addition to the study of constitutional law and history and American political thought. — Book promo @ goodreads.com

These are the three other books that were cited in Heir to the Fathers that I read. The first two are short speeches but Jubilee of the Constitution is lengthy and is discussed the most in Heir with a lot of quotes cited. I have selected two.

An Address Delivered
At the request of a Committee of the Citizens of Washington
On the occasion of reading The Declaration of Independence
On the Fourth of July, 1821.
BY John Quincy Adams. 

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 comntenance 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 interestand 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 Arontlet 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 lustre 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.

An Oration
Addressed to the citizens of the town of Quincy
On the Fourth of July, 1831
The fifty-fifth anniversary of the independence of the United States of America.
by John Quincy Adams

The Jubilee Of The Constitution
A discourse delivered at the request of the New York Historical Society, in the City of New York
On Tuesday, the 30th of April, 1839
Being the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington as president of the United States

The Constitution of the United States was the work of this Convention. But in its construction the Convention immediately perceived that they must retrace their steps, and fall back from a league of friendship between sovereign states, to the constituent sovereignty of the people, from power to right – from the irresponsible despotism of state sovereignty, to the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. In that instrument, the right to institute and to alter governments among men was ascribed exclusively to the people – the ends of government were declared to be to secure the natural rights of man: and that when the government degenerates from the promotion to the destruction of that end, the right and the duty accrues to the people, to dissolve this degenerate government and to institute another. The Signers of the Declaration further averred, that the one people of the United Colonies were then precisely in that situation – with a government degenerated into tyranny, and called upon by the laws of nature and of nature’s God, to dissolve that government and to institute another. Men in the name and by the authority of the good people of the Colonies, they pronounced the dissolution of their allegiance to the king, and their eternal separation from the nation of Great Britain – and declared the United Colonies independent States. And here as the representatives of the one people they had stopped. They did not require the confirmation of this Act, for the power to make the Declaration had already been conferred upon them by the people; delegating the power, indeed, separately in the separate colonies, not by colonial authority, but by the spontaneous revolutionary movement of the people in them all.

Thus stands the RIGHT. But the indissoluble link of union between the people of the several states of this confederated nation, is after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect union, by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center.

I have quoted only one paragraph from a good posting by JHK. Suggest that you read it all.

There actually are no good reasons for what we are doing in Ukraine, only bad reasons. Mainly, stoking the war there diverts Americans attention from our own problems, which is to say the titanic failures of America’s political establishment. The USA is falling apart from a combination of mismanagement, malice, and negligence. Our economy is a tottering scaffold of Ponzi schemes. Our institutions are wrecked. The government lies about everything it does. The news industry ratifies all the lying. Our schoolchildren can’t read or add up a column of numbers. Our food is slow-acting poison. Our medical-pharma matrix has just completed the systematic murder and maiming of millions. Our culture has been reduced to a drag queen twerk-fest. Our once-beautiful New World landscape is a demolition derby. Name something that hasn’t been debauched, perverted, degenerated, or flat-out destroyed. — The World Has Enough Trouble by James Howard Kunstler

Just another sucide by someone that might have known more than they should and remain alive.

The mysterious death of an aide to President Bill Clinton with ties to Jeffrey Epstein has been officially ruled a suicide — despite there being no sign of a weapon near the body.

Mark Middleton, 59, who served in the Clinton White House in the 1990s, was found dead on Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas, on May 2, 2022, the Daily Mail reported.

Almost one year after Middleton’s death, a police report obtained by the outlet this week revealed that the Little Rock businessman was discovered with a gunshot wound to the chest and an extension cord tying his neck to a tree. — Death of shot Clinton aide with Epstein ties found tied to tree ruled suicide — despite no gun at scene by Olivia Land