John Quincy Adams, The Monroe Doctrine, And The Perils Of Power

We trace John Quincy Adams’s 1821 address from its famous “monsters to destroy” line to its deeper call for principled strength and measured engagement. We connect it to Washington’s Farewell and the Monroe Doctrine to show how interest and justice can travel together without empire.

• why the Secretary of State signaled presidential stature in 1821
• post–War of 1812 confidence and domestic calm after the Missouri Compromise
• Latin American and European revolutions pressing for U.S. support
• the restraint reading of “monsters to destroy” and its limits
• risks of swapping liberty for force and wearing an imperial crown
• Washington’s Farewell reframed for a stronger America
• classical and biblical touchstones shaping policy ethics
• reconciling Adams’s 1821 speech with the Monroe Doctrine
• practical test: scale, proximity, and purpose as guardrails
• read whole documents, not lines; avoid presentism and slogans

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Transcript

Setting The Stage: 1821

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Welcome back to Civic City here. If you listen to the previous episode, Dr. Carez has gone through the Monroe Doctrine and talk us a little bit about foreign policy. And as much as we would like to do everything in chronological order, sometimes things come up and we want to go now back in time to 1821 to President John Quincy Adams in his July 4th address. So Dr. Craese is back with us. Dr. Craese, you mentioned in our last episode on the Monroe Doctrine that this 1821 address by, oh, I'm sorry, I said president, but it was Secretary of State John Quincy Adams on July 4th is an important source for understanding President Monroe's dramatic statement in 1823 about the US being predominant in the Americas in the Western Hemisphere. Why is the Quincy Adams address in 1821 so significant?

Why The Secretary Of State Mattered

America As Emerging Great Power

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Thank you, Liz. Yes, the the basic reality here is it's the Secretary of State of the United States in 1821, giving an address basically to Congress and others in Washington, D.C. to honor the Fourth of July, the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of American Principles, this important movement in our founding. And for us in the 21st century, we don't easily understand how important the Secretary of State was in American domestic politics as well as international affairs. In the first decades of the United States, and well into the twenty nineteenth century, excuse me, that we now think often of vice presidents being potential presidents in the United States. But it was different for our first century at least. The stepping stone to the presidency was not the vice presidency. That only worked really once for John Adams under George Washington. And then you could say well, maybe twice, you know, Jefferson moving from Secretary of State to Vice President to then president. What becomes the pattern from Jefferson's presidency forward is that the Secretary of State is kind of the heir apparent as we develop a party system as parties are thinking about who the potential presidential candidates are. The Secretary of State has some domestic roles, as our Constitution and Article II works out, but obviously the lead in advising the President on foreign policy and being vetted by the Senate for that. So John Quincy Adams as Secretary State is got the position, which has been for decades, the kind of heir apparent position, or you know, you're you're a prime candidate to be President of the United States. So he's talking about the domestic in this 1821 address about the domestic character of America and also our role in the world. So if a Secretary of State gives an address to Congress and people in Washington, D.C., it's a big deal, bigger than it would be now for us in the 21st century. And then where are we in 1821? In 1821, we are several years past the War of 1812, which is a bit of a mess. National capital is invaded and burned, but we come out of it, and we come out of it effectively as a great power. And the Monroe presidency, with John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State, is taking some steps to build up our great power status. As I mentioned in an earlier episode, Monroe sort of holds this view that the presidency is kind of weak. Congress should really take the lead. But there are some domestic policies being passed about national improvements and growth of the American economy. As I think I've mentioned in earlier episodes, by 1821, the Monroe administration is effectively presiding over the birth of a naval academy, not explicitly by name, can't get that passed through Congress yet. But there's going to be a place for professional education of naval officers, just like there is for Army officers at West Point. And that's a signal of America being a great power in the world. That we're going to have, we've always had a commitment from Article I in the Constitution to providing and maintaining a Navy. We're going to have a permanent Navy. But now it's just going to be more of a great power Navy, right? And the Missouri Compromise has passed, so there's something of a domestic crisis that we've gotten over. There's some calm about that. The Union's going to hold together. And then the final thing happening in world affairs is that there are revolutionary movements in South America, Central and South America, in Europe, invoking the American Revolution and the American Declaration of 1776, invoking the French Revolution of 1789 and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. So, you know, the French Revolutionary Napoleonic crusade against all monarchies has failed in one sense. Napoleon is gone. But that's kind of spirit is out in the world. And Secretary of State and Quincy Adams and President Row are dealing with calls coming from all over the world to the United States, especially the president. Hey, we're a people that want to be liberated from this monarchy that we're under, this bipocrity under. You're the United States, you should help us. And then especially if it's in our own hemisphere, right, in our neighborhood, Central South America, shouldn't we get involved? And so Quincy Adams addressing at the closing final quarter of the address is speaking to this issue of what is America's leading position in the world and what responsibility do we have to these revolutionary movements and establishing new republics.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

So you mentioned that one particular quotation from this 1821 address is frequently cited in current debates about American foreign policy, about our role in world affairs.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Yeah. So again, this is the theme that being a citizen in the 21st century is hard is hard, difficult business, just like it's always been for 250 years. You have some thinking and learning to do. Here's an 1821 address by a Secretary of State that's being batted around in current debates, especially in the American post-Cold War period since the early 1990s. What should America's role be in the world? So, Liz, if you would read that passage that's most frequently cited now about the debates over American foreign policy.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

Revolutions Across The Atlantic World

SPEAKER_01 7:47

So here's the Secretary of State in 1821 saying, yes, we care about liberty in the world. We care about these republics being born or revolutionary movements against monarchies or autocracies. But our job is not to be some mythic, heroic demigod figure going out there slaying dragons. We wish well to all of these revolutionary and independence movements and republics, but we are the champion, hero, and vindicator only of our own liberty. So it's now invoked as a statement for American restraint in the world. There are terms that get batted around in American foreign policy debates, especially since the 1930s and then the outbreak of what we call the Second World War, about isolation and this charge of being isolationist. That can be loaded and pejorative. So a maybe gentler word is restraint, or you know, uh America should be more inward focused and only be outward focused necessarily, as it's absolutely necessary, right? So the restraint school, let's call it. America is a great power at the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, and now you know 30 plus years later. We are a great power. We're still the world's largest economy, we have the world's largest military, but we should be restrained in how we think about our power in the world and especially the use of our military power. And they invoke this quotation from the 1821 address. See John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, later President of John Quincy Adams, he was wise in saying this, and we've forgotten this wise principle. Now, I I'm gonna read another quote that sort of fleshes this out. Why is Quincy Adams saying, don't go abroad in search of monsters destroy? So shortly after this, he says, if we did this, if we were out there taking up flags and banners and causes that are not our own, but some other place, uh, you know, revolution happening, a republic happening, we'd get involved in all the messy wars of the world. So then he says, now the fundamental maxims of her policy, our policy, would insensibly change from liberty to force. The sort of, you know, he's using language from myths and histories. The the sort of crown we would wear on our brow would not be the beam, shining the beam of freedom and independence, but it would be an imperial diadem, as if we become like the Roman Republic turned empire. We, and then I'll just leave it here. We might become dictators of the world, right? Dictator, dictators of the world, but we would no longer be the ruler of our own spirit, her own spirit. We'd lose liberty. We'd become an imperial power. So that's that's the warning he's given. My own view is that his 1821 address as a whole is a little more complicated than this. And and it as Secretary of State, he's not really an isolationist or an insularist or even a restraintist in the way we think about it in the post-Cold War American foreign policy debates.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

So if there's such an emphasis by John Quincy Adams in 1821 on the United States not being involved in the international fights to spread liberty in Republican government, why are you suggesting this address as an important resource for understanding the 1823 Monroe Doctrine with its statement of American dominance in the Western Hemisphere so as to protect liberty and Republican governments close to the United States? Aren't the two documents in tension or even contradicting one another?

“Monsters To Destroy” Quotation

The Case For Restraint And Its Limits

Balancing Power, Interest, And Justice

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yes, it's a fair point. If the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, basically urged upon President Monroe by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, is making this astounding statement that we are we are a great power in the world and we are so great a power that we say that all the other great powers stay out of this quarter of the globe, stay out of this hemisphere. How does that fit with this statement that we should not be going abroad in the world as some kind of imperial power? How could they possibly fit together? So I think if you read the in an extraordinary assignment for yourself as a citizen or for a student, this is a long address. So we're not used to this now in the 21st century world, a President or Secretary of State speaking for a full hour from a prepared script, longer than an hour, perhaps. It's a long, complicated address. And so it's more complicated than this one set of quotations we've just looked at. And again, I think John Quincy Adams, who was appointed to the American Foreign Service by President Washington, is thinking about Washington's farewell address. How do we hold together the tension between the statement we will soon be a great nation? What should we do with our great nation status, great power status? The tension between being a great power and our principles of justice for the Declaration of Independence. We can't be an empire. Washington says we will soon be such a great power that we will be in command of our own fortune, human our own fortunes, humanly speaking. We will be able to dictate the terms to the world of peace or war, as he says, our interests guided by justice shall recommend to us. Interests and justice and balance. That's what Quincy Adams is trying to figure out as we become an even greater power after the War of 1812 and our economy is growing and Missouri compromise has settled things down. So if Washington in I think in the ninth in the in the Quincy Adams interpretation in 1821 of the Washington's Farewell Address, Washington's warning about no permanent alliances in 1796 is given to a weaker United States as a power, right? We're not really a great power yet. Washington says no permanent alliances, but he says you can have alliances as you need them. And I don't read the Farewell Address as many do, as more insularist or isolationist or even restraintist. It's more complicated. Washington's advice is more complicated what we do with our great power status. And here, to get to the nub of it, the 1821 address, Biser and Christian Adams, portrays America as the greatest country ever in the history of the world. You can't believe the things he says in this 1821 address. He invokes the history of Moses with God's help liberating the Jews from Egypt and establishing a republic, basically, right? And setting Western civilization on a path of liberty is what God intends for human beings. He invokes the Greeks and the Romans, you know, Athens fighting for liberty and the Roman Republic being for liberty. He invoked Shakespeare and John Milton. And this all puts America as like the inheritor of and the culmination of, the greatest completion point of these great elements of all of human history, all of human civilization, especially Western civilization, for liberty. We are the greatest example of and power for liberty in the world and in all of human history. This is not a kind of meek, humble address. Who is America to be thinking about being a power? We should not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, just protect our own liberty. This is like building up America as like the greatest thing ever. And then saying, but don't go too far with it. And and the Shakespeare he's invoking repeatedly is Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, in which the last defenders of Roman Republican liberty decide Caesar's basically an emperor tyrant already, the warlord Caesar, and they need to kill him to defend liberty. So he repeatedly invokes this idea of Republican revolution in the name of liberty, bloody and violent as it is. He repeatedly refers to fellow citizens of the United States. I think he's invoking the opening line at Washington's Fairwell Address, friends and fellow citizens. He repeatedly refers, and especially after, so the last few pages, if you have the text of it, of this 1820 address, after the we go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy warning. After it, he invokes Virgil, epic poem about the destiny of Rome and its greatness. He invokes Virgil. He's clearly saying we are the inheritor of the greatness of the Roman Republic, but we will not be as imperial as the Roman Republic. And he the last lines of it invoke the parable of the Good Samaritan. America's responsibility in the world is to act the way the Good Samaritan did. Crimes happen, thugs beat up on people, somebody steps in to repair it. And the last lines of the address is af is quoting the parable of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus says to anyone listening, Go thou and do likewise. It's not a passive thing. It's not just stay at home and protect your own liberty. And it's for very Christian people in 1821, it's invoking the Christ figure in the scripture, go thou and do likewise. So this is complicated, I'm sorry. You know, there's not an easy way to read this as saying, oh, so then he's contradicting himself and he's saying, but it does explain, the complexity explains how could the same person as Secretary of State within two years be advising his president, President Monroe, to declare the Monroe Doctrine. To declare ourselves a great power dominant in a quarter of the world. The rest of the world, the great powers, stay out. How does that fit with go abroad nuts in search of rest of the street? Well, the complexity is already there in the 1821 address. And I'll just say this has been, again, you know, this has been the challenge from Washington's Fairwell Address onward. This was the challenge, what do we do when the French Revolution breaks out? What do we do with our treaty with France in Washington's first and second administrations? What do we do about Britain being panicked and fighting wars against the French Revolutionary Republic? What do we do about our westward expansion, right? We've had the potential to be a great power, we've become a great power. How do we do that, be a great power responsibly, given our principles in the Declaration of Independence? It's an ongoing argument for 230 some odd years, and it takes some work to figure it out. And I just would recommend avoid simple answers. I don't want to tell anybody what the right foreign policy doctrine is in 2026, but just avoid simple slogans and simple answers. Avoid taking just a paragraph or a sentence or something out of an important document. Do I understand the whole document? Do I understand the whole moment? And that also means we have to be open to various interpretations of an important document like this, various arguments about what the best American foreign policy should have been in an earlier moment of our history, should be now. So it sets us up for a little bit of deeper study, sets us up for some reasonable disagreement and civil disagreement about these important historical questions, but also obviously current, currently important questions.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Well, and thank you for saying that too, Dr. Careese, because I think that's, you know, one of the reason we one of the reasons we like going through primary sources is there is nuance. It is not something that you can just fluck a quote from and say, like, well, this is good and we're moving on. There is, you know, so much context that needs to go with it. And I think one of my things, my favorite things when I was a teacher about teaching primary sources is that there is nuance. You know, we need to make sure we're not looking through a lens of presentism. We're understanding how these documents, you know, influence history, but also influenced other documents. So I'm so looking forward to this kind of whole series looking at these primary sources and talking about the nuances of them. So, Dr. Kharese, again, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Well, great. Thanks, Liz, for your work in organizing the podcast and organizing these episodes.