“In 1839, former president John Quincy Adams delivered a speech before the New-York Historical Society to mark the fiftieth anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration. At seventy-one, Adams was the last living link to the founding generation. But now he had a sober message for the American people: “If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred,” Adams said, “… far better will it be for the people of the disunited states, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint.”