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John Quincy Adams and the ethics of America's national interest
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1993
Extract
This essay examines John Quincy Adams' diplomatic and ethical thinking and explores the implications of this legacy for the exercise of American power in contemporary world affairs. Both as America's most accomplished Secretary of State i n the nineteenth century, and through his voluminous public and private papers, Adams helped to identify the normative foundations of the national interest. In particular, he defined the limits of America's obligations to defend human rights and t o intervene on behalf of revolutionary principles in the quarrels of distant nations. Attention focuses here upon Adams' contribution to historic debates concerning: (1) individual and national rights which must be defended if freedom is to be maintained; (2) the basis for American neutrality in the 1790s; and (3) the claims upon American diplomacy generated by the independence movements of South American and Greek patriots.
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- Copyright © British International Studies Association 1993
References
1 John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), the son of John and Abigail Adams, enjoyed a career unsurpassed by any other American of his generation. A graduate of Harvard College (1787), he served as: Minister to Netherlands (1794); Minister to Prussia (1797); Member of Massachusetts Senate (1802); United States Senator (1803); Minister to Russia (1809); Minister to Great Britain (1815); Secretary of State (1817); President of the United States (1824); Member of the House of Representatives (1831–48).
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