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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO THE INHABITANTS AND CITIZENS OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811) [1854]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 9.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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TO THE INHABITANTS AND CITIZENS OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

Gentlemen,

I thank you for the declaration of your approbation of the measures adopted by me, relative to our foreign relations, to conciliate the French republic and to accommodate all existing difference upon terms compatible with the safety, the interest, and the dignity of the United States.

Your high and elevated opinion of, and confidence in, the virtue, wisdom, and patriotism of the national government, and fixed resolution to support, at the risk of your lives and fortunes, such measures as may be determined to be necessary to promote and secure the honor and happiness of the United States, do you honor, and are perfectly in character.

It must, however, be a very unnatural and peculiar state of things to make it necessary or proper in you, or any other American in your behalf, to declare to the world, what the world ought to have known and acknowledged without hesitation, that you are not humiliated under a colonial sense of fear, that you are not a divided people in any point which involves the honor, safety, and essential rights of your country, that you know your rights, and are determined to support them.

John Adams.