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In a lengthy and beautifully crafted address on Independence Day, July 4, 1821, then-President John Quincy Adams delivered an extraordinarily detailed and learned lesson on the founding of America. It’s one that still deserves repeated and close reading -- though much of it will simply not be understood by most Americans today, for it is dense in references to history no longer taught widely in the United States.

Adams’ most memorable sentences are often quoted:

"[America] has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been fo

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