Monday, December 01, 2008

John Quincy Adams -- Inaugural Address -- Friday, March 4, 1825

Excerpt

If there have been those who doubted whether a confederated representative democracy were a government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have been dispelled;

if there have been projects of partial confederacies to be erected upon the ruins of the Union, they have been scattered to the winds;

if there have been dangerous attachments to one foreign nation and antipathies against another, they have been extinguished.

Ten years of peace, at home and abroad, have assuaged the animosities of political contention and blended into harmony the most discordant elements of public opinion. There still remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the nation who have heretofore followed the standards of political party. It is that of discarding every remnant of rancor against each other, of embracing as countrymen and friends, and of yielding to talents and virtue alone that confidence which in times of contention for principle was bestowed only upon those who bore the badge of party communion.