John Quincy Adams: Jubilee of the Constitution Address

Glossary

• Articles of Confederation the constitution for the thirteen original U.S. states from 1777 until 1787, when it was replaced by the Constitution
• concretion of those abstract principles the realization or establishment, in actual and physical form, of ideas
• confederate corporations organizations or governments joined in a loose alliance
• declared of right … definitively established in fact rights that were given to the colonies by nature, in Adams’s view, were later won through war and then made into law
• Locke John Locke (1632–1704), English philosopher whose political ideas strongly influenced the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution
• nullify refuse to accept the legal authority of
• primitive not based on principles or ideals but simply on strength
• republican referring to a political system in which the people elect their rulers, as opposed to a monarchy or dictatorship
• sovereignty of organized power legal rights of a nation or other state that come not from natural law but from the ability to enforce those rights by the strength of police or armies
• state sovereignty the power of a political entity, such as a nation, to govern itself
• that instrument the Declaration of Independence
• the tree was made known by its fruits a reference to a statement made by Jesus in Matthew 12:33, meaning that the effects of something help to identify its cause