Vocabulary from "John Quincy Adams' address on July 4, 1821"

In this speech, delivered on the 45th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Quincy Adams outlines not only the history leading up to the Revolutionary War and the establishment of America, he also traces the history of the very idea at the heart of America- that the right to govern issues from the people themselves. Less than 50 years into the life of the nation, Adams sees the embodiment of this principle as America's greatest contribution to the world. His point resonates even today, more than a century and a half after the speech was given. E-text available here.
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words only definitions & notes
  1. dominion
    control or power through legal authority
    Fellow Citizens, UNTIL within a few days before that which we have again assembled to commemorate, our fathers, the people of this Union, had constituted a portion of the British nation; a nation, renowned in arts and arms, who, from a small Island in the Atlantic ocean, had extended their dominion over considerable parts of every quarter of the globe.
  2. sovereignty
    the authority of a state to govern another state
    Governed themselves by a race of kings, whose title to sovereignty had originally been founded on conquest, spell-bound, for a succession of ages, under that portentous system of despotism and of superstition which, in the name of the meek and humble Jesus, had been spread over the christian world, the history of this nation had, for a period of seven hundred years, from the days of the conquest till our own, exhibited a conflict almost continued, between the oppressions of power and the claims
  3. portentous
    of momentous or ominous significance
    Governed themselves by a race of kings, whose title to sovereignty had originally been founded on conquest, spell-bound, for a succession of ages, under that portentous system of despotism and of superstition which, in the name of the meek and humble Jesus, had been spread over the christian world, the history of this nation had, for a period of seven hundred years, from the days of the conquest till our own, exhibited a conflict almost continued, between the oppressions of power and the claims
  4. despotism
    dominance through threat of punishment and violence
    Governed themselves by a race of kings, whose title to sovereignty had originally been founded on conquest, spell-bound, for a succession of ages, under that portentous system of despotism and of superstition which, in the name of the meek and humble Jesus, had been spread over the christian world, the history of this nation had, for a period of seven hundred years, from the days of the conquest till our own, exhibited a conflict almost continued, between the oppressions of power and the claims
  5. extort
    obtain by coercion or intimidation
    Through long ages of civil war the people of Britain had extorted from their tyrants, not acknowledgments, but grants of right.
  6. amelioration
    the act of relieving ills and changing for the better
    How much of these two qualities, the fountains of all amelioration in the condition of men, was stifled by these two principles of subserviency to ecclesiastical usurpation, and of holding rights as the donations of kings, this is not the occasion to inquire.
  7. ecclesiastical
    of or associated with a church
    How much of these two qualities, the fountains of all amelioration in the condition of men, was stifled by these two principles of subserviency to ecclesiastical usurpation, and of holding rights as the donations of kings, this is not the occasion to inquire.
  8. usurpation
    wrongfully seizing and holding by force
    How much of these two qualities, the fountains of all amelioration in the condition of men, was stifled by these two principles of subserviency to ecclesiastical usurpation, and of holding rights as the donations of kings, this is not the occasion to inquire.
  9. enervate
    weaken physically, mentally, or morally
    Of their tendency to palsy the vigor, and enervate the faculties of man, all philosophical reasoning, and all actual experience concur in testimony.
  10. sophistry
    a deliberately invalid argument in the hope of deceiving
    It was this principle which the sophistry and rapacity of the church had obscured and obliterated, and which the intestine divisions of that same church itself first restored.
  11. cloister
    residence that is a place of religious seclusion
    Centuries of desolating wars have succeeded, and oceans of human blood have flowed, for the final establishment of this principle; but it was from the darkness of the cloister that the first spark was emitted, and from the arches of a university that it first kindled into day.
  12. slough
    any outer covering that can be shed or cast off
    The slough of brutal force was entirely cast off; all was voluntary; all was unbiased consent; all was the agreement of soul with soul.
  13. indignant
    angered at something unjust or wrong
    This enormous project of public robbery was no sooner made known, than it excited, throughout the colonies, one general burst of indignant resistance.
  14. venerable
    profoundly honored
    It lives in the venerable records of Holy Writ.
  15. polity
    the form of government of a social organization
    And if justice has been truly defined, the constant and perpetual will of securing to every one his right, how absurd and impracticable is that form of polity, in which the dispenser of justice is in one quarter of the globe, and he to whom justice is to be dispensed is in another; where “moons revolve and oceans roll between the order and its execution;” where time and space must be annihilated to secure to every one his right.
  16. sinew
    a band of tissue connecting a muscle to its bony attachment
    To unite the sinews of numberless arms, and combine the councils of multitudes of minds, for the promotion of the well-being of all?
  17. ordinance
    a statute enacted by a city government
    To each of these relations, different degrees of sympathy are allotted by the ordinances of nature.
  18. indissoluble
    incapable of being broken up
    The ties of neighbourhood are broken up, those of friendship can never be formed, with an intervening ocean; and the natural ties of domestic life, the all-subduing sympathies of love, the indissoluble bonds of marriage, the heart-riveted kindliness of consanguinity, gradually wither and perish in the lapse of a few generations.
  19. remonstrance
    the act of expressing earnest opposition or protest
    ... it is not the melancholy catalogue of alternate oppression and entreaty, of reciprocated indignity and remonstrance, upon which, in the celebration of this anniversary, your memory delights to dwell.
  20. inexorable
    impossible to prevent, resist, or stop
    From the day of this declaration, the people of North America were no longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an inexorable master in another hemisphere.
  21. vicissitude
    a variation in circumstances or fortune
    In the progress of forty years since the acknowledgment of our Independence, we have gone through many modifications of internal government, and through all the vicissitudes of peace and war, with other mighty nations.
  22. ineffable
    defying expression or description
    The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power.
  23. diadem
    an ornamental jeweled headdress signifying sovereignty
    The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power.
  24. lascivious
    driven by lust
    Enter the lists, ye, boasters of inventive genius! ye mighty masters of the palette and the brush! ye improvers upon the sculpture of the Elgin marbles! ye spawners of fustian romance and lascivious lyrics!
  25. contrivance
    the faculty of inventive skill
    It is not by the contrivance of agents of destruction, that America wishes to commend her inventive genius to the admiration or the gratitude of after times; nor is it even by the detection of the secrets or the composition of new modifications of physical nature.
Created on Tue Nov 19 11:19:44 EST 2013 (updated Mon Sep 09 12:02:22 EDT 2019)

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