The establishment of the Republic of the United States of America, is the most important secular event in the history of the human race.  It did not disentangle the confused theory of the origin of Government, but cut through the bonds of power existing by prescription, at a blow; and thus directly and immediately affected the opinions and the actions of men in every part of the civilized world.  It animated them everywhere to seek freedom from despotic power and aristocratic restraint.  Whenever and wherever they have since moved, either by peaceful agitation or by physical force, to meliorate systems of government, whether in France at the close of the last century, or afterward on the second subversion of the elder branch of the Bourbons, or in the recent overthrow of the constitutional king, or in Ireland, or in England, or in Italy, or in Greece, or in South America, whether they succeeded or failed, there, in the tumult or in the strife, was the spirit of the American Revolution.  “It gave an example of a great people, not merely emancipating themselves, but governing themselves, without either a monarch to control, or an aristocracy to restrain them; and it demonstrated, for the first time in the history of the world, contrary to the predictions and theories of speculative philosophy, that a great nation, when duly prepared, is capable of self-government by purely republican institutions.”

But the establishment of the American Republic was too great an achievement to be made all at once.  It was a drama of five grand acts, each of which filled a considerable period, and called upon the stage actors of peculiar powers and distinguished virtues.  Those acts were, colonization, preparation, revolution, organization, consolidation.

Two of these acts were closed before John Quincy Adams was born.  The third, the revolution, the shortest of them all, dazzles the contemplation by the rapidity and the martial character of its incidents.  The fourth, the organization of the Government, by the splendors of genius elicited, and the felicity of the new form of government presented, satisfies the superficial inquirer that, when the Constitution had been adopted, nothing remained to perfect the great achievement.  But other nations have had successful revolutions, and have set up free constitutions, and have yet sunk again under reinvigorated despotism.  The consolidation of the American Republic—­the crowning act—­occupied forty years, reaching from 1789 to 1829.  During that period, John Quincy Adams participated continually in public affairs, and ultimately became the principal actor.