Inaugural Address (John Adams)

Summary

John Adams delivered his inaugural address on 4 March 1797 in the House chamber of Congress Hall, Philadelphia, with George Washington, now a private citizen, looking on. It was the first time the presidency passed from one man to another, and Adams had won by only three electoral votes over Thomas Jefferson, who became his Vice President. Adams begins not with himself but with the founding. In the Revolution, men of reflection feared quarrels over forms of government more than British fleets; the colonists "launched into an ocean of uncertainty." Popular zeal supplied order for a time, but the Confederation, modeled on the Dutch and Swiss leagues, decayed into "universal languor," rivalries among the States, collapsing credit, and insurrection. In that crisis the people kept their good sense and framed the Constitution. Adams, then a diplomat abroad, first read it in a foreign country and approved it as "the result of good heads prompted by good hearts." He then praises republican government in its own terms. No spectacle is nobler than officers chosen at regular periods by their neighbors; nothing essential can be added "by robes and diamonds." The danger lies in corrupted elections: if a single deciding vote can be bought by party artifice or by foreign "flattery or menaces," then "it may be foreign nations who govern us." After a tribute to Washington's "prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude," Adams states his own program in one immense sentence of "if" clauses: attachment to the Constitution, impartial regard for every region, love of virtuous men of all parties, support for schools and colleges, equity toward the Indian nations, neutrality between the warring powers of Europe, esteem for France joined with redress for injuries to American commerce, and "a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service." He closes by asking the blessing of the Being he calls "the Patron of Order, the Fountain of Justice."

Top Lessons

• Narrating the founding to justify loyalty

  Adams spends the first third of his address on history: the Revolution, the failed Confederation, and the Constitution as the people's remedy. His loyalty to the Constitution rests on that story; the narrative is the argument.

• Corrupted elections and foreign influence

  Adams imagines an election decided by "a majority of a single vote" bought by a party or a foreign power. In 1797, with France and Britain both courting American factions, the warning was concrete: a purchased choice would have "little advantage to boast of over lot or chance."

• The long sentence of "if" clauses

  Adams's self-description runs as one sentence of conditional clauses, each naming a qualification he hopes to possess. It ends with "a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians." The form lets him state principles while leaving judgment to his hearers.

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Medical Lens

Presidential inaugurals concern constitutional politics and national crisis; they have no medical content for this library's lens.