John Quincy Adams an Opponent of Coercion (1861)

The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, August 3, 1861.

John Quincy Adams an Opponent of Coercion
In 1839, ex-President John Q. Adams delivered a lengthy address upon the principles of our Government, before the Historical Society of New York. He took a strong ground against any attempt to hold States in the Union by force, against their consent. We make the following extract from it. -N.O. Daily Crescent.

Nations acknowledge no judge between them upon earth; and their Governments, from necessity, must, in their intercourse with each other, decide when the failure of one party to a contract to perform its obligations, absolve the other from the reciprocal fulfillment of his own. But this last earthly power is not necessary to the freedom or independence of the States, connected together by the immediate action of the people, of whom they consist. To the people alone is there reserved, as well the dissolving power as the constituent power, and that power can be exercised by them only under the tie of conscience binding them by the retributive justice of Heaven.

With these qualifications, we may admit the same right as invested in the people of every State in the Union, with reference to the Great Government, which was exercised by the people of the United Colonies with reference to the supreme head of the British Empire, of which they formed a part; and, under these limitations, have the people of each State of the Union a right to secede from the Confederate Union itself.