John Quincy Adams: First Annual Message to Congress

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The election of 1824 displayed the lack of a national political focus. Andrew Jackson received a plurality of Electoral College votes but not a majority. The Constitution’s provisions eliminated Henry Clay, the fourth-place finisher, and placed the election in the hands of the House of Representatives. There, Adams narrowly defeated Jackson and Secretary of Treasury William H. Crawford. Clay’s support for Adams proved crucial. Undeterred by his narrow margin of victory, President Adams presented his nationalistic ideals to Congress when they met on December 6, 1825.

The concluding part of his message is a strident call for improvement, physical and moral, on a national scale. Adams’s sense of the power of government was broad, and his argument for improvement is unequivocal. Using his foreign experience, he places the United States in an international context and offers a statesmanlike program for national greatness. The key agent in raising America will be the federal government.

Adams renews George Washington’s request for a national university and additional support for the military academy at West Point. He calls for a thorough exploration of the Pacific Northwest coast, anticipating a time when the United States and Great Britain would end their joint occupation. The federal government, in Adams’s opinion, should encourage scientific exploration by devising a system of weights and measures and should promote astronomy. In a particularly unfortunate phrase, Adams calls for “light-houses of the skies,” or astronomical observatories. In this and other scientific research, the United States would inevitably exceed the achievements of Europe.

A grand concept that Adams repeatedly stresses is that government has the power and the “sacred” responsibility for “the progressive improvement of the condition of the governed.” Although he warns Congress not to transcend its constitutional powers, failure to pursue the president’s plan “would be treachery to the most sacred of trusts.” In a most revealing phrase, Adams praises the governmental system and emphasizes that “liberty is power.” The federal government should use that power for the benefit of all.

The tragedy of Adams’s presidency was that neither Congress nor the country was willing to embrace his farsighted program. His First Annual Message was the product of a lifetime of scholarship and an international education, but the United States was not prepared for it. While many ridiculed the “light-houses of the skies,” many more feared the augmentations to government power. Localism and self-centered personal ambitions dominated perspectives. Several in the cabinet, especially the politically astute Secretary of State Henry Clay and Attorney General William Wirt, warned the president that such would be the case, but to no avail. Further complicating matters was the circumstance that Adams, despite his sincere devotion to the Union, was not a good politician. His relationship with Congress deteriorated, and his pleas for improvement went largely unheeded. By the election of 1828 the Jacksonian Democrats were poised to capture and dominate the presidency for most of the next thirty years.