Jubilee of the Constitution

In 1839, in a speech to the New York Historical Society on the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington, John Quincy Adams, then representing Massachusetts’s 12th district in Congress, drew from the biblical tradition of the Jubilee to combine an ideological history of the formation of the United States with a stylized biography of our first President under the Constitution.Covering the events, figures, and prevailing philosophies of the European and American continents from the time of the English Civil Wars through the French Revolution and beyond, Adams educes the principles of the Declaration of Independence, recounts the early weaknesses and first crises of our fledgling republic, and lauds Washington and his Constitution as the salvation for a nation on the verge of dissolution.In particular, Adams examines the history and formative defects of the Articles of Confederation with a critical eye, and traces the unraveling of their fragile union while recounting the