State of the Union Addresses

These are the voices of a nation finding its feet. John Adams, the second president of the United States, delivered these addresses between 1797 and 1800, and they capture the raw, uncertain work of building a republic from scratch. Here is Adams pleading for unity against factionalism, warning of foreign threats from both France and Britain, defending the need for a independent judiciary, and grappling with questions that still echo today: how do you balance liberty with security? Commerce with defense? Peace with honor? The Quasi-War with France boils beneath the surface of these pages, but so does something more universal, the anxiety of leadership, the weight of governing a people who have never been governed before. These are not polished monuments. They are urgent, sometimes rambling, always earnest attempts to explain the state of a nation still learning what it is. Reading them is to hear the founding generation think out loud, with all the messiness and grandeur that entails.