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

TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX, VIRGINIA. - 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.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX, VIRGINIA.

Gentlemen,

I thank you for this address, presented to me by your representative in Congress, Mr. New.

The principle of neutrality has indeed been maintained on the part of the United States with inviolable faith, notwithstanding every embarrassment and provocation, both of injury and insult, until we have been forced out of it by an actual war made upon us, though not manfully declared.

For reasons that are obvious to all the world, you may easily imagine, that every manifestation of candor towards me from any part of Virginia must be peculiarly agreeable. The handsome expressions of your approbation deserve my thanks. Every thing has been done short of a resignation of our independence. A resignation of our independence! I blush to write the words; there would be as much sense in speaking of a resignation of the independence of France, or Germany, or Russia. We are a nation as much established as any of them, and as able to maintain our sovereignty, absolute and unlimited by sea and land, as any of them.

It is too much to expect that all party divisions will be done away as long as there are rival States and rival individuals; all we can reasonably hope is, and this we may confidently expect, that no State or individual, to gratify its ambition, will enlist under foreign banners.

John Adams.