On January 6, 8, 9, 15, 16, and 19 in 1818 John Quincy Adams wrote in his Memoirs
an account of the cabinet’s discussions about the Amelia Island off of Florida
that shows how the executive branch of the government was functioning:
6th. Attended the eleven o’clock the Cabinet meeting
at the President’s, concerning Amelia Island.
McGregor’s proclamation upon taking the island
being wanted, I went for it to the office, and
returned to the meeting, which was fully attended.
The President had partly drawn upon a message
to Congress, stating the taking of Amelia Island, and
concluding that the troops which took it would be withdrawn.
It seems that when the orders for taking the island
were sent, those from the War Department directed
that the persons to be expelled should not carry away
any public Spanish property taken by them upon the island.
Those orders I never saw.
The President says he has no doubt they were shown to and
authorized by him, but now comes the embarrassment what
to do with that property, consisting of two or four cannons.
The President is apparently determined to withdraw
the troops from the island, but he asks the opinions
of the Cabinet, to take the measure with deliberation.
Mr. Crawford, Crowninshield, and Wirt are
with the President for withdrawing the troops.
Calhoun and I are for keeping possession of the island,
subject to negotiation for it with Spain.
If I understand the characters of my colleagues,
Crawford’s point d’honneur is to differ from me.
Wirt and Crowninshield will always be
of the President’s opinion.
Calhoun thinks for himself independently of all the rest with
sound judgment, quick discrimination, and keen observation.
He supports his opinion too with powerful eloquence.
The discussion of this day was adjourned for the President
to finish preparing his draft of the message to Congress.
8th. I received two notes from the Spanish Minister Onís,
one with a strong remonstrance against the occupation
of Amelia Island, and the other, a third long memoir
upon the negotiation pending.
9th. When I called at the President’s,
I found N. Biddle of Philadelphia with him.
He directed a Cabinet meeting
on the Amelia Island affair at one o’clock.
I went to the office and returned to the President’s at one.
The draft of the message to Congress was again discussed,
and it still persisted in the paragraph
announcing that the troops would be withdrawn.
I presented for consideration the doubt whether,
having taken possession under the act of January 1811,
the Executive had a right to withdraw the troops
and abandon the island unless authorized
thereto by a new act of Congress.
The question again discussed with great
earnestness till past four o’clock.
Calhoun urged retaining it with great force and effect.
I repeated the arguments of the former day
and added new ones, as they occurred to me now.
The President, without giving up his opinion,
was very apparently affected by the conflict
of sentiment among his advisers.
Crawford was staggered and maintained
his ground more feebly than the former day.
Crowninshield candidly told me that the argument
was decidedly with us, but that he thought
the best policy would be to give the island up.
Mr. Wirt, who came in very late and heard little
of the debate, was still of the President’s opinion,
and if he changes, will, I believe, change with him.
We parted, leaving the question yet undetermined
and the President not a little embarrassed.
These Cabinet councils open upon me a
new scene and new views of the political world.
Here is a play of passions, opinions, and characters
different in many respects from those in which
I have been accustomed heretofore to move.
There is slowness, want of decision, and a spirit
of procrastination in the President, which perhaps arises
more from his situation than his personal character….
19th. At the President’s this morning I found
Colonel P. Reed of Maryland, now a member
of the House of Representatives and
formerly one of my colleagues in the Senate.
He was recommending paupers for office.
It is one of our misfortunes that all the places
under the Government are bestowed upon people
of this description, men whose wants are
their principal, if not their only qualifications.
When Colonel Reed withdrew, I found the President
was much agitated by a report in the Baltimore
newspapers of the 16th and 17th, announcing a letter of the
7th instant, from Savannah, stating that advices had arrived
there, by letter and otherwise, from Havana, that all the
American vessels there had been detained on the news
of the capture of Amelia Island by the American troops.
He appeared alarmed at the idea of a war with Spain
backed by the allied powers; observed that our squadron
in the Mediterranean would be exposed, and that
there was no sufficient cause for us to go to war with Spain.
He asked me what I thought was to be done,
and without expressly alluding to it, evidently
appeared to regret that he had not, as he had inclined,
ordered our troops to withdraw from the island
when the pirates were removed.
This incident is in truth an untoward one,
and therefore most likely to be well founded.
The President sent to ask me to call at his house
on my return from the office, which I did.
He came out to me from his dinner.
It was from a second account of the news from Havana.
He had read it in a Charleston newspaper that
three officers had arrived at Amelia Island
from Havana demanding its surrender, and
that in the meantime all the American vessels at Havana,
amounting to two hundred, were embargoed.
The number, he said, must be an exaggeration;
there could be no more than twenty or thirty.
But what was to be done?
Would it not be best to write immediately to Onís?
We could not for a moment parley with
a subaltern like the Governor of Havana.
The negotiation with Onís;
he considered it as certain, would fail.
But this event would immediately change the state
of our relations with Spain and bring us at once into war.
I told him if the account is true, it could not fail to come
officially within two or three days, and I thought it best
to wait till then before coming to any resolution
or taking any notice to Onís of the newspaper report.
To this the President agreed, and he appeared more
calm on the subject than he had been this morning.1
Also in January 1818 John Quincy Adams wrote
“Suppression of Piratical Establishments” to assist
the House Committee on Foreign Relations:
That the resolution and the act of 15 January 1811
fully empower the President to occupy any part or whole of
the territory lying east of the Perdido and south of the state
of Georgia, in the course of an attempt to occupy the said
territory, or any part thereof, by any foreign government or
power, and by the same resolution and act he may employ
any part of the army and navy of the United States which he
may deem necessary for the purpose of taking possession
and occupying the territory aforesaid and in order to
maintain therein the authority of the United States.
Among the avowed projects of the persons who have
occupied Amelia Island was that of making the conquest
of East and West Florida, professedly for the purpose
of establishing there an independent government;
and the vacant lands in those provinces have been,
from the origin of this project and down to the latest period,
held out as lures to the cupidity of adventurers, and as
resources for defraying the expenses of the expedition.
That the greater part of West Florida, being in the actual
possession of the United States, this project involved
in it designs of direct hostility against them, and as the
express object of the resolution and act of 15 January 1811
was to authorize the President to prevent the province of
West Florida from passing into the hands of any foreign
power, it became the obvious duty of the President
to exercise the authority vested in him by that law.
It does not appear that among those itinerant establishers
of republics, there is a single individual inhabitant of the
country where the republic was to be constituted.
The project was therefore an attempt to occupy
the said territory by a foreign power.
Where the profession is in such direct opposition to the fact,
where the venerable forms by which a free people
constitute a frame of government for themselves are
prostituted by a horde of foreign freebooters,
the refuse of civil society, for purposes of plunder,
if under color of authority from any of the provinces
contending for their independence, the Floridas,
or either of them, had been permitted to pass into the
hands of such a power, the committee are persuaded
it is quite unnecessary to point out to the discernment
of the House the pernicious influence which such a
destiny of the territories in question must have had
upon the security, tranquility and commerce of this Union.
That the immediate tendency of suffering such armaments
in open defiance of our laws would have been to embroil
the United States with all the nations whose commerce
with our country was suffering under these depredations;
and if not checked by the use of all the means in the
power of government would have authorized claims
from the subjects of foreign governments for indemnities
at the expense of the nation, for captures by American
citizens in vessels fitted out in our ports, and as could
not fail of being alleged, countenanced by the very
neglect of the necessary means for suppressing them.
That Spain, one of the powers with which the
United States have formally thus stipulated to prohibit
under the penalties of piracy, the acceptance by their
citizens of any commission from any prince or state
for privateering against her subjects, was precisely
the nation against whose subjects these privateers
have been commissioned to cruise; though in fact
they have respected no flag when plunder was
to be obtained—not even that of our own country.
That the issuing such commissions, as it was an offense
against the United States on the part of those who issued
them, was on the part of those who accepted them, a
forfeiture, by the 13th amendment of the constitution, of
their characters and rights as citizens of the United States.
That the possession of the Amelia Island as a
port of refuge for such privateers was a powerful
encouragement and temptation to multiply those
violations of our laws, and made it the duty of the
government to restore the security of our own
commerce and that of friendly nations upon our coasts,
which could only be done by taking this refuge from them.2
Adams wrote in a letter to Luis de Onís on March 12:
The European states are combined together and
connected with one another by a multitude of important
interests and relations with which the United States have
no concern, with which they have always manifested
the determination not to interfere, and of which,
no communication being made to them by the Governments
of Europe, they have not information competent to
enable them to estimate their extent and bearings.
The United States in justice to themselves, in justice to
that harmony which they earnestly desire to cultivate
with all the powers of Europe, in justice to that fundamental
system of policy which forbids them from entering the
labyrinth of European politics, must decline soliciting or
acceding to the interference of any other Government of
Europe for the settlement of their differences with Spain.3
Thomas Jefferson praised highly this state-paper.
Adams in his Memoirs on 18 March 1818 reflected on current issues and events:
18th. Walking this morning to the President’s,
I met Mr. Bagot, who turned and walked with me.
He told me that he had received letters from Admiral Milne,
commanding on the Jamaica station, informing him that
he issued orders similar to those of last year, to seize
all American vessels which may be found fishing within
the British jurisdiction, and that he could not take upon
himself the responsibility of counteracting those orders.
He had been promised a proposal from us
ever since last May, and had received none yet.
I told him that the President’s illness had prevented it;
that upon full enquiry it had been found that we could
not safely accept any particular limited bounds for
fishing grounds, because the fish resorted at different
times to different places; that Lord Castlereagh had
promised me he would direct certain statements to
be furnished to us upon which we might have founded
proposals, which was not done; that he should have
counteracted Admiral Milne’s order, because the Judge
at Halifax had decided last year that those seizures
were unlawful without an act of Parliament;
that I was afraid we should have to fight for this matter
in the end, and I was so confident of our right, I was for it.
He said the correctness of the Judge’s decision
was very doubtful; that Great Britain had gone so far
in this affair to accommodate us as she could go,
and he thought would do nothing further, &c.
He thanked me for having set Mr. Onís right in my note
to him about British mediation, and said Onís’s statement
of the case must have been a willful misrepresentation.
At the President’s, we saw him in his bed-chamber.
Met there Mr. Crawford, who, upon reflection, has
concluded not to press his bill for the repeal of all
discriminating duties, but to leave it on the foundation
of my report, and so that Congress, if they choose
to go further, may do it of their own movement.
The President asked me to draft a message
for him to send in with my report….
Lee came to give me a hint on a very ridiculous affair,
but which shows how I am situated.
My office of Secretary of State makes it the interest
of all the partisans of the candidates for the next
Presidency (to say no more) to decry me as
much as possible in the public opinion.
The most conspicuous of these candidates are
Crawford, the Secretary of the Treasury,
Clay, the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
and De Witt Clinton, Governor of New York.
Clay expected himself to have been Secretary of State,
and he and all his creatures were
disappointed by my appointment.
He is therefore coming out as the head of a new
opposition in Congress to Mr. Monroe’s administration,
and he makes no scruples of giving the tone
to all his party in running me down.
On the publication of the concluding part of my late letter
to Onís, he went about the House of Representatives
showing and sneering at a passage where it is said
that the United States, after waiting thirteen years
for justice from Spain, could without much effort,
wait somewhat longer.
Clinton’s party operate in another way.
There was published lately in the National Advocate,
a New York newspaper in opposition to Clinton,
a letter purporting to be from an agent of Clinton’s
to another named Asahel Clark, and detailing a
journey of intrigue in the State of Vermont
to secure partisans in favor of Clinton.
The letter is signed E. W. Robinson.
Clark, who is a real personage, and now at Washington,
has published repeated disavowals of having ever been
engaged in any such transactions, and certificates that
there is no such person in Vermont as E. W. Robinson.
The letter appears, therefore, to be a forgery,
and the Clintonians turn it back as a battery against
the National Advocate and its editor, M. M. Noah.
Lee’s visit to me was to tell me that it was
whispered about that Noah had received a letter
franked by me, and that it was to advise him
to say no more about the Robinson letter.
The remarkable part of this affair is that Noah did
actually receive lately a letter from me, which was
to call upon him to refund to the Government of the
United States a sum of one thousand dollars,
which Noah, upon being recalled from Tunis as Consul
of the United States there, had left due for two years’
house-rent, and which Mr. Shaler, upon his late visit to
Tunis, found himself bound to pay from the public moneys….
Of Crawford’s rivalry I have yet had no other
evidence than what has seemed to me a sort of
effort to differ from me in opinions concerning the
important measures to be pursued by the Administration,
and a disposition to impress upon my mind
every particular of Clay’s operations against me.
When Everett was here, he asked me
if it would not be advisable to expose Clay’s conduct
and motives in the newspapers, to which
I answered very explicitly in the negative.
He also asked me if I was determined to do nothing
with a view to promote my future election
to the Presidency as the successor of Mr. Monroe.
I told him I should do absolutely nothing.
He said that as others would not be so scrupulous,
I should not stand upon equal footing with them.
I told him that was not my fault—
my business was to serve the public to the best
of my abilities in the station assigned to me,
and not to intrigue for further advancement.
I never, by the most distant hint to anyone,
expressed a wish for any public office, and I
should not now begin to ask for that which of all others
ought to be most freely and spontaneously bestowed….
The subject of the Neutrality Laws is before Congress.
Mr. Clay pushes for the repeal of laws which trammel
the means of giving aid to the South American
revolutionists, and there is no member of the
House of Representatives friendly to the Administration
who has spirit and ability and mastery of
the subject adequate to withstand him.
The federalists hitherto have taken little
or no share in the debate.3
On 25 March 1818 Secretary of State Adams sent this
Report of the Department of State on South American Independence
to the United States House of Representatives:
The Secretary of State, to whom has been referred
the resolution of the House of Representatives of the
5th December, has the honor of submitting the documents
herewith transmitted as containing the information
possessed at this Department requested by that resolution.
In the communications received from Don Manuel H.
de Aguirre, there are references to certain conferences
between him and the Secretary of State,
which appear to require some explanation.
The character in which Mr. Aguirre presented
himself was that of a public agent from the government
of La Plata and of private agent from that of Chile.
His commissions from both simply qualified him as agent.
But his letter from the Supreme Director,
Pueyrredon, to the President of the United States,
requested that he might be received with the
consideration due to his diplomatic character.
He had no commission as a public minister of any rank,
nor any power to negotiate as such.
Neither the letter of which he was the bearer, nor he
himself, at his first interviews with the Secretary of State,
suggested that he was authorized to ask the
acknowledgment of his government as independent;
a circumstance, which derived additional weight from
the fact that his predecessor, Don Martin Thompson,
had been dismissed by the Director Pueyrredon,
for having transcended his powers; of which the letter,
brought by Mr. Aguirre, gave notice to the President.
It was some time after the commencement of the session
of Congress, that he made this demand, as will be seen by
the dates of his written communications to the Department.
In the conferences held with him on that subject,
among other questions which it naturally suggested,
were those of the manner in which the
acknowledgement of his government,
should it be deemed advisable, might be made?
And what were the territories, which he considered
as forming the state or nation to be recognized?
It was observed, that the manner in which the United States
had been acknowledged as an independent power by
France, was by a treaty concluded with them, as an existing
independent power; and in which each one of the states,
then comprising the Union, was distinctly named.
That something of the same kind seemed to be necessary in
the first acknowledgement of a new government, that some
definite idea might be formed, not of the precise boundaries,
but of the general extent of the country thus recognized.
He said the government, of which he desired the
acknowledgement, was of the country which had,
before the revolution, been the vice-royalty of La Plata.
It was then asked, whether that did not include Montevideo
and the territory occupied by the Portuguese;
the Banda Oriental understood to be under the government
of General Artigas; and several provinces still in the
undisputed possession of the Spanish government?
He said it did; and observed that Artigas, though
in hostility with the government of Buenos Aires,
supported however the cause of independence
against Spain; and that the Portuguese could not
ultimately maintain their possession of Montevideo.
It was after this that Mr. Aguirre wrote the letter
offering to enter into a negotiation for concluding
a treaty, though admitting that he had no authority
to that effect from his government.
It may be proper to observe that the mode of recognition
by concluding a treaty, had not been suggested as the
only one practicable or usual, but merely as that which
had been adopted by France with the United States, and
as offering the most convenient means of designating the
extent of the territory, acknowledged as a new dominion.
The remark to Mr. Aguirre, that if Buenos Aires
should be acknowledged as independent, others
of the contending provinces would perhaps demand
the same, had particular reference to the Banda Oriental.
The inquiry was whether General Artigas might not advance
a claim of independence for these provinces, conflicting with
that of Buenos Aires, for the whole vice-royalty of La Plata?
The Portuguese possession of Montevideo
was noticed in reference to a similar question.
It should be added, that these observations were
connected with others, stating the reasons upon
which the present acknowledgement of the
government of La Plata in any mode was deemed
by the President inexpedient, in regard as well
to their interests as to those of the United States.4
In a letter to his brother Thomas Boylston Adams on 14 April 1818
John Quincy Adams expressed critical views of the Latin American revolutions:
I will send you a National Register, as soon as
it is published; and if I can procure them, the
numbers of the National Intelligencer containing
the five Letters upon the affairs of Amelia Island,
the High-life below stairs of South America.
The South American struggles are now of nearly ten years
standing; but there has been so little difference of opinion in
this Country upon anything connected with them, that until
the commencement of Mr. Monroe’s Administration,
it was scarcely possible to raise a debate about them.
But our political mint is issuing a new coinage.
The images stamped upon the circulating
medium of party were all completely worn out,
like those of the old English Shillings.
So they are called in, melted down,
and reissued with a new image and legend.
A very laborious effort has been made at this session of
Congress with a sympathetic and corresponding exertion
out of doors to make the contest between Spain and
South America, an apple of discord among ourselves.
After eight or nine years of singular inattention, and
carelessness about South American Affairs, all of a sudden
starts up a sort of political Peter the Hermit, and exclaims—
“eighty-eight degrees of Latitude!—
eighteen millions of virtuous Patriots!—
Spanish tyranny and oppression!—
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans!
Mountains and Rivers!
Sir Gregor M’Gregor, Amelia Island and Commodore Away!”
And then our neutrality has been all on one side.
And then Bills of Indemnity for the past and of security for
the future for the benefit of Pirates! and then Expatriation
bills for the benefit of future Benedict Arnolds, who may be
inclined to expatriate themselves and surrender West-Point
for instance to the enemy by one and the same act!
And then a Battery opened upon the Administration
for suppressing a gang of Buccaneers; and for feuding
Commissioners to obtain information and ascertain facts.
And last of all—Appropriations of outfit and Salary
for a Minister to the Republic of La Plata—
with interludes of Vicente Pazos deputy from
all the Republics of the South, with his Memorial
to Congress against the President, and Vicente Pazos,
petitioner, for himself and friends, against
the cruel operation of the Courts of Law.
The Labor of this mountain has been so hard,
the agonies of its throes have been so compulsive,
and there has yet been so much of burlesque
intermingled with the commotion, that people are yet
looking about them and enquiring whether it is to end in
the explosion of a volcano or in the parturition of a mouse.
The struggle in South America is savage
and ferocious almost beyond example.
It is not the tug of war between Greek and Greek,
but the tiger-conflict between Spaniard and Spaniard—
The Cause has never been the same
in any two of the revolting Colonies—
Independence has not even been the pretext
during great part of the time—
Sometimes they have fought for Ferdinand;
sometimes for the Cortes—
Sometimes for Congresses and Constitutions,
and sometimes for particular leaders,
like Morales, Hidalgo, Artigas, or Bolivar—
The resemblance between this Revolution
and ours is barely superficial.
In all their leading characters the two Events,
present a contrast, instead of a parallel.
Ours was a War of freemen for political Independence.
This is a War of Slaves against their masters.
It has all the horrors and all the atrocities of a servile War.
That there are among the Patriots men of Virtue
and of Talents, there is no doubt—
and so there are among the negroes of Haÿti.
The State Papers of King Christophe, and his Counts of
Limonade and Marmelade, are as eloquent, and just as
profound as the manifesto’s of Bolivar and Pueyrredon.
The Common places of political Liberty, have been
so hackneyed throughout Europe and America, for the
last forty years, that idiots even have them all by heart.
There is not a parrot but can repeat them
with variations suited to the time and place.
The South-Americans have occasionally fabricated,
and are now fabricating Constitutions, but in the whole
History of their Revolutions, there is not an instance,
in which the Patriot commanders have shown the
slightest respect for individual rights or personal liberty.
There is no more liberty of the Press
at Buenos Ayres than at Madrid.
Once in the course of our Revolution it was
proposed in Congress to invest General Washington
with dictatorial powers for a few Months—
yet the proposition was rejected—
In South America every petty chieftain is a dictator
and puts down Congresses and Constitutions
with as little ceremony as Praise god Barebones
put down the Rump Parliament, or as Buonaparte
put down the Council of five hundred at St. Cloud.
Sir Gregor M’Gregor constitutes a
Republic of the Florida’s at Amelia Island—
Issues Letters of Marque and Acts of Naturalization—
establishes Admiralty Courts, and Collectors of the Customs;
distributes the Public Lands of Florida and hoists a National
Flag, under which Citizens of the United States are told
they may lawfully plunder Spanish property, and we
have suffered Vicente Pazos to tell us that we had
no right to enquire into the competency of his authority.
Avry, whose only Commission was that of a Lieutenant in
the Navy of New Grenada, takes a power from Herrera,
nominal ex-minister Plenipotentiary from an extinct
Mexican Congress, turns a sand bank at Galveston into
a Seaport, makes Custom House Officers Admiralty Courts
Privateers and Prizes with as little restrain as M’Gregor,
and when broken up in his best of piracy, sends Vicente
Pazos, a Peruvian Patriot Printer; banished from
Buenos Ayres by the Patriot Pueyrredon, as
Ambassador of all the Republics of the South,
to impeach the conduct of the President,
before the House of Representatives of the United States.
Surely to compare these Heroes and Legislators with
Sancho and his Buonartorias doing injustice to the wisdom,
and moderation of the sagacious Squire
of the valiant Knight of La Mancha.
In all this Tragi-Comedy of passion for South America,
which is acting in our Country, there is an underplot,
as yet but partially disclosed.5
On 20 April 1818 John Q. Adams for the Department of State sent this
informative letter to the United States Minister in Spain George William Erving:
Your dispatches to number 59 inclusive
have been received.
The pressure of indispensable business during the session of
Congress has prevented the regular acknowledgment of the
receipt of them as from time to time they came to hand.
Mr. Onís finds himself under the necessity
of sending a messenger (Mr. Pizarro)
to Spain for more ample instructions.
The printed documents which will be transmitted
to you by this occasion will give you a full view
of the manner in which the negotiation has been
conducted by him since the return of Mr. Noeli from Spain,
and the situation in which it now stands.
If in the inflexible perseverance with which Mr. Onís insisted
upon going again over the whole detail of discussion, which
had been exhausted at Aranjuez in 1805, the procrastinating
temper and disposition of Spain were fully disclosed,
they are still more eminently displayed in the motive
which he now alleges for sending again a special messenger
to Spain for further instructions and enlarged powers.
He now alleges that in all the offers which on our part have
been made to assume the Colorado River for the westward
boundary, the Spanish government have invariably
understood that we meant the Red River of Natchitoches,
instead of the river that falls into the Gulf of Mexico.
How this mistake should have been made is inconceivable
to us, inasmuch as we know of no maps which call
the Red River of Natchitoches the Colorado,
the usual name by which it passed being Rouge or Roxo.
Mr. Onís has intimated verbally that his government might
after all prefer to conclude the negotiation at Madrid.
And as this conjecture appears to be countenanced
by some of your late communications, I have only
to state that the President will be well pleased
if Spain should seriously come to that determination.
Your authority and instructions are amply sufficient
for the conclusion of a treaty and
no alteration of them is deemed necessary.
It is however to be remarked that the impression
upon public opinion of this country, of our unquestionable
right to the Rio Bravo as the western boundary,
is from day to day becoming stronger, and you will
give it very distinctly to be understood, that in offering
now to agree by treaty to the substitute of the Colorado,
the United States will not hold themselves bound
to abide by the same offer at any future period.
On the 27th of January, Mr. Bagot showed me the copy
of a dispatch from Lord Castlereagh to Sir Henry Wellesley,
dated 27 August last, and being an answer to one from him,
which had enclosed a detailed statement of the Spanish
minister Pizarro of the state of the controversies
between the United States and Spain with a request
on the part of Spain of the mediation of Great Britain.
The answer of Lord Castlereagh declined the offer of
mediation, unless it should be requested by both parties.
In making this communication Mr. Bagot expressed
the willingness of Great Britain to mediate,
if we should concur with Spain in requesting it.
Our motives for declining are generally set forth
in my letter to Mr. Onís of 12 March.
But in reflecting upon these transactions,
it could not escape observation:
1. That this overture from Mr. Pizarro to Sir Henry Wellesley
must have been made early in August last, between the
1st and 15th, and precisely while Mr. Pizarro was professing
an intention to conclude immediately a treaty with you.
2. That no notice was given to you, either by Mr. Pizarro
or by Sir Henry Wellesley of this very important incident
in a negotiation to which the United States were a party,
and in which the step ought not to have
been taken without first consulting you.
Mr. Onís, however, privately insinuates that the offer of
mediation did really first come from Great Britain;
that it was not requested by Spain, but resulted from
an intimation by Spain that she had resolved to cede
the Floridas to the United States, to which she requested
the assent of England; having been as he further hinted,
under previous engagements to England that she
would not cede any of her territories to them.
Instead of acquiescing in the pretended cession, Great
Britain now, according to Mr. Onís, offered her mediation.
However the fact may be, it is evident that Spain and
Great Britain have some serious misunderstandings
with each other, and it can scarcely be expected
that the policy, which England is adopting in relation
to South America, will tend to conciliate them.
From the complexion of the debates in the House of
Representatives, during the session of Congress which
terminates this day, you will infer the great and increasing
interest felt in this country with regard to the events
occurring in that part of the American hemisphere.
The part pursued by the government of the United States
in this contest has been unequivocal neutrality.
None of the revolutionary governments has yet been
formally acknowledged; but if that of Buenos Aires
should maintain the stability which it appears to have
acquired since the declaration of independence
of 9 July 1816, it cannot be long before they
will demand that acknowledgment of right.
And however questionable that right may be now
considered, it will deserve very seriously the consideration
of the European powers as well as of the United States,
how long that acknowledgment can rightfully be refused.
Since beginning this letter I have received your
dispatch No. 60 of 26 February, enclosing the
memoir of Russia on these South American affairs.
We have been promised a communication of the
proposals of Great Britain; but the receipt of them
has been delayed longer than we had reason to expect.
The proceedings of Congress will also show
the sensibility excited in this country by the unjust
and long continued imprisonment of R. W. Meade.
Nothing but the expectation that he will very
speedily be released has induced the forbearance
of Congress from resorting to measures of reprisal.
The information given you that W. D. Robinson
had been released from his imprisonment,
by virtue of the indulto was incorrect.
He was sent on board the frigate Iphigenia
from Vera Cruz to be conveyed to Spain.
But that ship proving to be unfit for sea,
was obliged to put into the port of Campeachy,
where she was condemned as not seaworthy.
Mr. Robinson was kept in close confinement on shore,
where he remained on the 4th of March last,
to be transported by some other vessel to Spain.
Eight other Americans are said by the
public journals to be confined there with him.
That he claimed the benefit of the indulto is certain.
His detention, therefore, is in violation of the royal word.
You will not fail, in the case of his arrival in Spain,
earnestly to demand his release.6
On 4 May 1818 wrote about a cabinet meeting:
The dispatches from General Jackson were just received,
containing the account of his progress in the war against
the Seminole Indians, and his having taken the Spanish
fort of St. Mark’s in Florida, where they had taken refuge.
They hung some of the Indian prisoners,
as it appears, without due regard to humanity.
A Scotchman by the name of Arbuthnot was found among
them, and Jackson appears half inclined to take his life.
Crawford some time ago proposed to send Jackson an order
to give no quarter to any white man found with the Indians.
I objected to it then, and this day avowed that
I was not prepared for such a mode of warfare.7
Secretary John Quincy Adams on 19 May 1818 in a letter
he wrote to Albert Gallatin, the United States Minister to France,
explaining his diplomacy related to Spain and Latin America:
By the newspapers and public documents transmitted
to you, the extraordinary interest which has been felt
in the contest between Spain and the South American
provinces will be disclosed in the various forms under
which it has occupied the deliberations of Congress.
You will see how it has been complicated with our
own Spanish relations, by the transactions relating to
Amelia Island, by the negotiation which Spain has thought
fit to have the appearance of keeping alive, and by the
question incidental to our neutrality in that warfare,
which the course of events has frequently produced.
The correspondence between Mr. Onís and this
government has been little more than a repetition on
both sides, of that which had taken place at Aranjuez at
the period of the extraordinary mission to Spain in 1805,
and it has terminated in a note from Mr. Onís stating that
he is under the necessity of sending again a messenger to
Spain for new instructions, and a further enlargement of his
powers; on the strange allegation that his government had
always supposed that the United States, in proposing to
agree to the Colorado, as the western boundary of
Louisiana, had reference to the Red River of Natchitoches
and not to the Colorado which falls into the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. Onís’s messenger is gone, and Mr. Onís expects
his return in August next, till when nothing further will
be done in the negotiation, nor does the nature of this
proceeding afford any encouragement to suppose that
after his return its progress will be more satisfactory.
Mr. Onís thought proper to address several
notes of protestation against the occupation
of the United States of Amelia Island.
At the time when that measure was taken,
instructions were forwarded to Mr. Erving to give
such explanations to the Spanish government relating to it,
as it was concluded could not but be satisfactory.
The documents on that subject communicated
to Congress at two different periods of the session
have shown the necessity and the urgency
by which the step was dictated and justified.
Mr. Onís’s remonstrances have excited very little attention;
but some dissatisfaction at the measure has been
manifested by the more ardent friends of the
South American revolutionists.
The disclosure of the transactions in which McGregor’s
expedition originated, of the manner and materials
of its execution, and of the pernicious influence
which it had and portended to important interests
of our own country, have conciliated to the proceedings
of this government the general acquiescence
and assent of the public opinion of the country.
A motion was made in the House of Representatives,
while the general appropriation bill was under
consideration, to introduce the appropriation
of an outfit and a year’s salary for a minister
to be sent to the provinces of La Plata, if the President
should think proper to make such an appointment.
The object of this motion was to obtain the sanction
of a legislative opinion in favor of the immediate
acknowledgment of the government of Buenos Aires;
but it was rejected by a majority of 115 to 45.
Independently of the objection to it that it had the
appearance of dictating to the executive with regard to the
execution of its own duties, and of manifesting a distrust of
its favorable disposition to the independence of the colonies
for which there was no cause, it was thought not advisable
to adopt any measure of importance upon the imperfect
information then possessed, and the motive for declining
to act was the stronger, from the circumstance that three
commissioners had been sent to visit several parts of
the South American continent, chiefly for the purpose
of obtaining more precise and accurate information.
Dispatches have been received from them dated 4 March,
immediately after their arrival at Buenos Aires.
They had touched on their way for a few days at Rio de
Janeiro; where the Spanish Minister, Count Casa Flores,
appears to have been so much alarmed by the suspicion
that the object of this mission was the formal
acknowledgment of the government of La Plata, that
he thought it his duty to make to Mr. Sumter an official
communication that he had received an official dispatch from
the Duke of San Carlos, the Spanish Ambassador at London,
dated the 7th of November last, informing him that
the British government had acceded to the proposition
made by the Spanish government of a general mediation
of the powers to obtain the pacification of Spanish America,
the negotiation of which it was upon the point of being
decided whether it should be at London or at Madrid.
This agitation of a Spanish Minister at the bare surmise
of what might be the object of the visit of our commissioners
to Buenos Aires, affords some comment upon the reserve
which all the European powers have hitherto observed
in relation to this affair, towards the United States.
No official communication of this projected general
mediation has been made to the government of the
United States, by any one of the powers, who are to
participate in it; and although the Duke de Richelieu and
the Russian Ambassador both, in conversation with you,
admit the importance of the United States to the subject,
and of the subject to the United States; yet the former
abstains from all official communication to you of what the
allies are doing in it, and the latter apologizes for the silence
of his government to us, concerning it on the plea that,
being upon punctilious terms with England, they can
show no mark of confidence to us but by concert with her.
On the 27th of January last, Mr. Bagot, at the same time
when he informed us of the proposal of Spain and
Great Britain to mediate between the United States
and Spain, did also by instruction from Lord Castlereagh
state that the European allies were about to interpose
in the quarrel between Spain and her revolted colonies;
and that very shortly a further and full communication
should be made to us of what was proposed to be done—
with the assurance that Great Britain would not propose
or agree to any arrangement in which the interests of all
parties concerned, including those of the United States,
should not be placed on the same foundation.
Nearly four months have since elapsed;
and the promised communication has not been made;
but we have a copy of the Russian answer,
dated in November at Moscow, to the first proposals
made by Great Britain to the European allies,
and we know the course which will be pursued
by Portugal in regard to this mediation.
If the object of this mediation be any other than
to promote the total independence, political
and commercial, of South America, we are neither
desirous of being invited to take a part in it,
nor disposed to accept the invitation if given.
Our policy in the contest between Spain
and her colonies has been impartial neutrality.
The policy of all the European states
has been hitherto the same.
Is the proposed general mediation to be
a departure from that line of neutrality?
If it is, which side of the contest are the allies to take?
The side of Spain?
On what principle, and by what right?
As contending parties in a civil war,
the South Americans have rights, which other powers
are bound to respect as much as the rights of Spain;
and after having by an avowed neutrality admitted the
existence of those rights, upon what principle of justice
can the allies consider them as forfeited, or themselves
as justifiable in taking the side with Spain against them?
There is no discernible motive of justice
or of interest, which can induce the allied
sovereigns to interpose for the restoration of
the Spanish colonial dominion in South America.
There is none even of policy; for if all the organized
power of Europe is combined to maintain the authority
of each sovereign over his own people, it is hardly
supposable that the sober senses of the allied cabinets
will permit them to extend the application of this
principle of union to the maintenance of colonial
dominion beyond the Atlantic and the Equator.
By the usual principles of international law,
the state of neutrality recognizes the cause of
both parties to the contest as just—that is,
it avoids all consideration of the merits of the contest.
But when abandoning that neutrality, a nation takes
one side in a war of other parties, the first question
to be settled is the justice of the cause to be assumed.
If the European allies are to take side with Spain,
to reduce her South American colonies to submission,
we trust they will make some previous inquiry
into the justice of the cause they are to undertake.
As neutrals we are not required
to decide the question of justice.
We are sure we should not find it on the side of Spain.
We incline to the belief that on a full examination
of the subject, the allies will not deem it advisable to
interpose in this contest by any application of force.
If they advise the South Americans to place
themselves again under the Spanish government,
it is not probable their advice will be followed.
What motives can be adduced to make
the Spanish government acceptable to them?
Wherever Spain can maintain her own authority,
she will not need the cooperation of the allies.
Where she cannot exact obedience,
what value can be set upon her protection?
The situation of these countries has thrown them
open to commercial intercourse with other nations,
and among the rest with the United States.
This state of things has existed several years and cannot
now be changed without materially affecting our interests.
You will take occasion not by formal official communication,
but verbally as the opportunity may present itself,
to let the Duke de Richelieu understand that we think
the European allies would act but a just and friendly part
towards the United States by a free and unreserved
communication to us of what they do, or intend to do
in the affair of Spain and South America.
That it is our earnest desire to pursue a line of policy
at once just to both parties in that contest,
and harmonious with that of the European allies.
That we must know their system, in order to shape
our own measures accordingly; but that we do not wish to
join them in any plan of interference between the parties,
and above all that we can neither accede to nor approve of
any interference to restore any part of the Spanish
supremacy in any of the South American provinces.8
Adams on May 20 wrote in his Memoirs about how he began organizing
the diplomatic papers in the State Department.
20th. Drafted a second dispatch to R. Rush.
The correspondence of the Department is in great confusion
for want of a proper system of order in conducting it.
I found none established, and when I entered the office,
no minute was kept even of the
letters received from day to day.
I began soon after by having such an entry
made in a book every day, and find it a
very useful record, but it is not sufficient.
I am constantly receiving notes from the foreign Ministers
residing here, and dispatches from the Ministers of the
United States abroad on an immense variety of subjects,
many of which require measures to be adopted
before answers can be given, and various delays.
Whenever a subject is postponed, the multiplicity
of affairs occurring from day to day expels it
from the memory, and without some thread by which
to return to it, no recollection of it is retained.
I have thus now eleven dispatches from Rush to answer
at once, and a number nearly equal from
J. Russell at Stockholm, from A. Gallatin at Paris,
and from G. W. Erving at Madrid,
besides Sumter, W. Pinkney, and W. Eustis.
I began by reading over all Rush’s dispatches
and made a short minute of their contents.
It has suggested to me the idea of keeping
an index of diplomatic correspondence in which
each dispatch from every Minister abroad shall be
entered as it is received, and a minute of its contents
and enclosures added preparatory to its being answered.
Also a similar register for the Consular correspondence,
and for that with the foreign Ministers here.9
On 22 May 1818 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
22nd. I read over the correspondence of
Jonathan Russell while negotiating the
Treaty of Commerce with Sweden,
but several of his letters are missing,
and not to be found on the files of the Department.
Among them are his most important letter on the
subject of claims on the Swedish Government,
and even the English translation of his Treaty
is nowhere to be found.
So it is with almost every correspondence
in the Department.
All in disorder and confusion.10
Secretary of State Adams was assigned a chief clerk and only ten clerks.
The Department’s records had been badly damaged when the British Army
burned the governmental buildings in August 1814.
Also on May 22 Secretary of State Adams wrote in another letter to Albert Gallatin:
The President is willing that the convention of 3 July 1815
should be continued for eight or even ten years as it stands.
Its operation has indeed been in some respects
disadvantageous to the United States and favorable to
Great Britain, owing to the revival of the interdiction
of access to our vessels to the British West India and
North American colonies, while our intercourse with
them has been exclusively confined to British vessels.
Yet that the injury to our navigation and shipping interest
has not been very essential, we have many indications,
among which one is the return of trade just received
from Liverpool for the last half year of 1817, a return
exhibiting the entry of 235 American vessels, and a
burden of 73,000 tons, at that port during that time;
to which the consul adds that a constant preference has
hitherto been shown to our vessels for freight from thence.
Another is the notice even now from our Southern ports,
that the shipping there is not sufficient
to take the produce ready for exportation.
A third is the fact that in our trade with the
British dominions in Europe the majority of vessels
and of tonnage has hitherto been American.
The moral effect of the equalization of duties on both
sides in softening national asperities has been unequivocal,
and is an object of much importance, deserving to
be cherished and improved by both governments.
The encouragement which the convention has given
to our trade with the British possessions in the East Indies
is more questionable, as that trade operates upon us
as a continual and embarrassing drain of specie.
But as it has been a trade of profitable returns,
and as it would still to a great extent be carried on with
the native states of India if we should be excluded,
or our intercourse should be burdened and restricted with
the British territories, the President will be satisfied to leave
it as it is, and subject to the increasing competition of the
British private traders with India, which will be likely to
affect the interests of the British company more than ours.
The other interests which the President hopes
may be adjusted by this negotiation are:
1. The intercourse with the British colonies
in the West Indies and North America.
You are well acquainted with the failure of the attempt
to extend the convention of 1815 to this intercourse at the
negotiation of the convention, and at a subsequent period,
when four additional articles were proposed on the
part of Great Britain—a copy of which you have.
There was reason to believe that Lord Castlereagh
was personally well disposed to a more liberal
expansion of the colonial intercourse,
although the Cabinet was not entirely prepared for it.
The manner in which he has recently avowed a liberal
commercial principle in Parliament, and the approbation
with which that avowal was received; the obvious though
not declared bearing which those sentiments had, both
upon the South American contest, and upon those relations
between the United States and the British colonies;
the free-port acts, which we understand have been
introduced into Parliament, and are even said to
have passed, strongly and concurrently indicate
that a change is taking place in the policy of the
Cabinet on this subject, and we hope that now is
precisely the favorable time for taking advantage of it.
Our own navigation act may perhaps contribute to
the same effect, and even should it operate otherwise,
and confirm them in their obstinate exclusion of our
vessels from those ports, as it will make their exclusion
from ours to the same extent reciprocal, it leaves us
the more free to agree to the renewal of the convention
of July 1815, if nothing more can be obtained.
2. Indemnity to the owners of the slaves carried
away from the United States by British officers after
the ratification of the peace of Ghent, and contrary
to a stipulation in the first article of that treaty.
Copies of the correspondence between
the two governments on this subject are
in the possession of Mr. Rush.
They disagreed in their construction of the stipulation
alluded to, and each party adhering to its own view of it,
a proposal was made nearly two years since on our part
to refer it to the arbitration of some friendly sovereign.
This proposal which Mr. Rush upon his arrival in
England renewed has now been accepted by the
British government, but with a further proposal to
refer it and two other subjects for arrangements in
the first instance to commissioners, like those under
the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th articles of the treaty of Ghent.
3, 4. These other subjects are the boundary line from
the northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods westward;
which you remember was all but agreed upon, and went
off upon a collateral incident at Ghent; and our title
to the settlement at the mouth of Columbia River.
The expediency of referring any of these
questions to two commissioners, one belonging
to each of the two countries, is very doubtful.
With regard to the slaves and to Columbia River,
it was scarcely to be expected that the commissioners of
either party would ultimately entertain an opinion different
from that already pronounced by his own government,
and if concession upon one point is to be made the condition
of corresponding concession upon the other, it may
with more propriety be effected by compromise between
two governments than by judiciary powers given by them to
individuals under allegiance to the two countries themselves.
As to the line from the Lake of the Woods, as some
dissatisfaction has already been excited here by the
expense occasioned by the two commissions already
employed in settling the boundary, another commission
to draw a line through the depth of the deserts, and to
an indefinite extent, would be still more liable to censure;
besides the apprehension which it might raise that the
issue of the commission would be to bring the British
territory again in contact with the Mississippi.
5. The fisheries.
The correspondence between the two governments
on this subject leaves it still in the unsettled state
in which it was left at the peace.
Two proposals have been made on the part of the
British government neither of which proving acceptable,
a counter proposal from us has been promised,
and will be contained in the further detailed instructions
which will be prepared and forwarded to Mr. Rush
to assist you in the conduct of the negotiation.11
On 29 May 1818 J. Q. Adams wrote this letter to Richard Rush:
The inexorable economy of the legislature in regard
to the expenses of foreign intercourse has been
manifested in various ways during the late session.
The expenditures of the existing commissions under
the Ghent Treaty occasioned so much dissatisfaction,
that after a thorough investigation by the Committee
of Ways and Means, and a still more minute investigation
by two special committees of enquiry, a resolution
actually passed the House of Representatives the
last evening of the session to request the President
to propose to the British government some mode of
accomplishing the business in a less expensive manner.
Want of time alone prevented the Senate from acting
upon this resolution and probably from concurring in it.
The appropriations proposed in the estimates for
agents for seamen and claims at Amsterdam and Madrid,
at salaries of $2,000 each, were struck out.
That for the agent at Copenhagen was equally omitted
in the appropriation bill reported by the Committee of
Ways and Means, and it was only upon a representation
that the agent actually there could not receive notice
of the discontinuance of his salary till a considerable
part of the year will have elapsed, that an appropriation
was finally agreed to of $1,500 for three-quarters
of the present year, after which it will cease.
Unequivocal evidence was manifested of an expectation
by Congress that the missions to Sweden and the
Netherlands should in the course of the present year
be reduced, and chargés d’affaires take the place of
the ministers plenipotentiary residing at those courts.
The arrangements of the executive had already
been made conformably to this provision.
Mr. Eustis is expected home within one or two months,
and Mr. A. H. Everett will be appointed as
chargé d’affaires to the Netherlands.
New credentials are transmitted to Mr. Russell at Stockholm;
but it is not supposed he will protract his residence
there beyond the present year, and on taking leave
he is to commit the charge of the affairs
of the legation to Mr. Hughes.
You see Congress are determined we shall have
a great revenue—magnum vectigal parsimonia.
Yet they have been bountiful to the remaining
warriors of our revolution; and for my own part,
when I consider the principles by which they were
actuated, both in their economy and their liberality,
I think them honorable to the legislature and to the country.
On a still broader scale, you will remark in reference to
the policy pursued towards foreign nations a well
tempered combination of liberality and of national spirit.
The negotiation for a commercial treaty with the
Netherlands, which had been attempted last summer
at The Hague, was unsuccessful, but the act of that
government exempting the vessels of the United States
from extra tonnage duty as foreigners has been met
by a regulation more than reciprocal on our part—
the act of Congress removing not only all extra tonnage
duties from the vessels of the Netherlands, but also
all extra duties upon the merchandise imported in them,
and looking back in bestowing this benefit to the time
when the regulations of the Netherlands in favor
of our navigation themselves commenced.
At the same time the British system of excluding
vessels from their colonial ports has been equally
met by a counteracting system of total exclusion.
This measure being merely experimental, it would be
presumptuous to reckon with much confidence upon its
effects; but the point of view in which you will take pleasure
in considering it is the prevalence of a national feeling over
those partial and sectional interests and prejudices which
heretofore prevented the experiment from being made.
How the British free-port act, which is said to have passed
in Parliament, will operate upon this measure, and whether
it was adopted in anticipation of the act of Congress,
you can perhaps assist us in forming a correct opinion.
In the public dispatches you will be informed of the
President’s view with regard to South American affairs.
Mr. Sumter writes that he sent a copy of his
correspondence with Casa Flores concerning
our three commissioners to Buenos Aires.
That Spanish Minister’s panic at the appearance of our
commissioners disclosed to us a secret worth knowing.
The European alliance appear to have been disposed
to settle affairs between Spain and South America
without asking our opinion, and without even
letting us know what they were about.
It may also disclose a secret quite as valuable to them—
that we have some concern with that question,
and that they ought not to settle it without consulting us.
We say they ought not to interfere at all, and most
especially not to restore any part of the dominions of Spain.
We think it impossible that they should interfere with
any effect to that end, and we believe that the
British government neither expects nor intends it.
If Count Palmella, the Portuguese minister, should be
still in London when you receive this, let me recommend
it to you to cultivate his acquaintance and friendship,
to converse with him on these affairs as freely
as you may find will be agreeable to him.
You may probably derive much useful information from him.
Have the goodness to bring me to his recollection,
with the assurance of the great respect and esteem
for his personal character that I entertain,
and the pleasure with which I remember the
acquaintance that I enjoyed with him in London.
The President’s health during the last winter has
been infirm, and he had one severe attack of illness
which confined him three weeks to his chamber.
He has however entirely recovered, and yesterday
left the city with the Secretaries of War and the Navy
upon a tour down the Chesapeake to Norfolk,
upon which he expects to be absent about three weeks.
He will not extend his journey further south this winter.
Mr. Pinkney arrived a few days since at Annapolis.
Mr. G. W. Campbell is appointed Minister to Russia,
and is to sail in the course of the next month
from Boston in the Guerriere for Cronstadt.
A copy of Mr. Wirt’s Life of Patrick Henry and two or three
copies of Mr. Pitkin’s statistical work will be sent you.12
The next day on May 30 Adams wrote in a letter to Richard Rush:
It is not our desire to embarrass the proposed
commercial negotiation with any of the questions of
maritime regulation adapted to a state of warfare.
We do not wish that blockades, contraband trade
with enemies of their colonies, or even impressment,
should be drawn into the discussion, unless such
a wish should be manifested on the British side.
Mr. Bagot has been informed that this negotiation
will be proposed, and that the event of its being
agreed to, another plenipotentiary will be joined
with you to confer and conclude with those who
may be appointed on the part of Great Britain.
He is not aware that there will be any objection to it;
but if there should be any, and the British government
should determine to keep the renewal of the commercial
convention distinct from every other subject to be
arranged between the two countries, you will
of course not give the notice to Mr. Gallatin to
repair to London mentioned in my last dispatch.
If the British cabinet agree to negotiate, it is hoped
that the special instructions to be prepared and
forwarded to you will reach you as soon as Mr. Gallatin
will find it convenient to meet you in London.
If the British cabinet prefer by a single article to renew the
convention of July 1815 for a term of eight, ten, or even
twelve years, or any shorter period, your full power
heretofore given will be still in force, and will enable you
to conclude such an article, subject to the ratification here
by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.13
In June 1818 John Quincy Adams became aware of a British effort to mediate
between
Spain and its colonies in the New World so that Spanish sovereignty could be restored.
Adams wrote to the United States Ministers in Europe advising them,
The interests of this nation are so deeply concerned,
and the feelings of the country are so much excited
on this subject that we have a just claim to be
informed of the intentions as well as the acts
of the European alliance concerning it.
We will not participate in and cannot
approve any interposition of other powers
unless it be to promote the total independence,
political and commercial, of the colonies.14
John Quincy in a letter to his father John Adams
on June 15 wrote,
The President has been nearly three weeks absent,
and is expected to return in the course of this week.
He will probably not remain here long;
but will visit his Estate in Virginia.
I am now preparing to dispatch Mr. G. W. Campbell
who goes as Minister to Russia.
He is to embark at Boston, in the Frigate Guerrière,
with his family.
His Lady is a daughter of your old friend
and Secretary of the Navy Stoddert.
I hope they will have time to go out
and pay you a visit before they sail.15
Adams on July 6 wrote in a letter to William Plumer:
I hope the appointment to Russia will prove
more satisfactory than your anticipations.
The difficulty of filling the foreign missions well
is great and increasing.
You are aware that the compensation allowed
to our ministers at the principal European courts
is not only inadequate, but to such a degree that
no man can accept and hold one of them more
than one or two years without the sacrifices of
private property which few of us are able to bear.
Mr. Pinkney with the advantage of a double outfit has been
driven home at the end of two years, by the excess of his
expenses as much as by the rigor of the Russian climate.
Our countrymen and Congress are not yet convinced
of the necessity of making further provision for the
support of the missions abroad; but men of the
first rate talents have discovered that they can
do better for themselves and their families at home.
The missions to England and to Russia
were both declined by men of whose
abilities you would have been fully satisfied.
This state of things will be felt in consequences
which may cost the nation millions for every
thousand saved by their parsimony in this instance.
I am no friend to profusion
for the payment of public service.
I am convinced that it is just and politic in
the people to make all their offices of high trust
and honors rather burdensome than lucrative.
Real patriotism will cheerfully bear some pecuniary
sacrifices, and the appetite of ambition for place
is sufficiently sharp set without needing the
stimulant dram of avarice to make it recur.
But in the missions abroad there are expenses and
a general style of living which your ministers cannot
avoid without personal and national degradation.
Men of affluent fortunes may be willing to accept
as a salary for a year that which will little more than
defray their necessary expenses for a quarter;
but throughout the United States how many men
are there able by their private resources
to be laid under this contribution?
And of that number, small as it is, how many
possess talents suited to represent the nation
with honor and to execute the trust of its most
important interests which must be confided to them?
The state of our relations with Spain
continues to be critical, and has rendered
more so by the recent events in Florida.
The dispatches from General Jackson which
will explain his motives for the capture of
Pensacola have not yet been received.
We are in daily expectation of the arrival
of two commissioners from South America.16
Secretary of State Adams wrote this letter to President James Monroe on 6 July 1818:
I had the honor of receiving this morning
your letter of the 6th instant.
The only letters received from the Commissioners
to South America are of 23 April, the day before
they sailed from Buenos Aires on their homeward journey,
and advising drafts upon the Department.
No dispatches from them have come to hand,
a circumstance which excites no small surprise.
Until I received your letter, I had supposed
they might have been addressed directly
to you and received since you left the city.
Yesterday the dispatches from General Jackson
to the War Department, containing the documents
relating to the capture of Pensacola, were
received by Mr. Hambly and forwarded to you.
Last evening I received a note from the Spanish
Minister informing me that he had just arrived here,
and requesting an interview as soon as possible on
affairs of the last importance to Spain and the United States.
He has been with me this day and delivered
to me a new note on the affair of Pensacola,
the translation of which is in hand.
Mr. de Neuville sent this morning to ask an interview
upon an affair of importance, and has also been with me.
Pensacola was also the burden of his song.
As there was something tragical in the manner of both
these gentlemen, I told them that they must take for nothing
whatever I said to them, until I should have the honor of
receiving your instructions; but that in my private opinion
you would approve General Jackson’s proceedings.
That we could not suffer our women and children on the
frontiers to be butchered by savages, out of complaisance
to the jurisdiction which the King of Spain’s officers avowed
themselves unable to maintain against those same savages,
and that when the governor of Pensacola threatened
General Jackson, to drive him out of the province by force,
he left him no alternative but to take from him
the means of executing his threat.
Onís for the first time since I have held communication
with him manifested symptoms of perturbation.17
On 11 July 1818 Adams wrote in his Memoirs about his negotiation with Minister Onís:
11th. Mr. Onís the Spanish Minister,
called on me at my house to talk of the negotiation.
He was more tractable upon the subject of Pensacola;
said General Jackson had misunderstood Governor Masot’s
allusion to force; that he had only meant to say that
if Jackson attacked him, he would repel force by force.
Onís said further that there was an article in the capitulation
which he had not seen when he wrote his note to me,
and which took away part of the aggravation of the case.
It was the promise to restore the place in suitable time.
He said he had felt it to be his duty to write the note, but
that it needed not interrupt the progress of our negotiations,
or of those between Mr. Pizarro and Mr. Erving,
if we preferred having the treaty concluded there.
I told him that was out of the question,
but that we were ready to conclude here.
He then said they were willing to give us the Floridas
for nothing, and, as there were large claims of indemnity
for depredations on both sides, they were willing to
set them off against each other, each of the
Governments undertaking to indemnify its own people.
For all this they would only ask of us to take the boundary
westward at the Calcasieu or Mermentan, from the mouth
to the source, thence a line to pass between Adeas and
Natchitoches to the Red River, and from that to the Missouri.
I told him all the other points would now be
easily adjusted, but this last which was impossible.
But we would adjust the rest, and leave that in the same
state as it has been hitherto, to be adjusted hereafter.
To this, however, he would not at all listen.
We parted without any prospect of approximating.18
This is what John Quincy Adams wrote in his Memoirs on 14 and 15 July 1818:
14th. I called upon the President at his house
and gave him the translation of Onís’s last note on the
capture of Pensacola and other papers of importance.
I find him very much embarrassed what
course to pursue in this transaction.
He directed a Cabinet meeting for tomorrow at noon.
15th. Attended the Cabinet meeting at
the President’s from noon till near five o’clock.
The subject of deliberation was General Jackson’s late
transactions in Florida, particularly the taking of Pensacola.
The President and all the members of the Cabinet,
except myself, are of opinion that Jackson acted
not only without, but against, his instructions;
that he has committed war upon Spain, which
cannot be justified, and in which, if not disavowed by
the Administration, they will be abandoned by the country.
My opinion is that there was no real, though an apparent,
violation of the instructions; that his proceedings were
justified by the necessity of the case, and by the
misconduct his proceedings were justified by the
necessity of the case, and by the misconduct
of the Spanish commanding officers in Florida.
The question is embarrassing and complicated,
not only as involving that of an actual war with Spain,
but that of the Executive power to authorize
hostilities without a declaration of war by Congress.
There is no doubt that defensive acts of hostility may
be authorized by the Executive; but Jackson was authorized
to cross the Spanish line in pursuit of the Indian enemy.
My argument is that the question of the constitutional
authority of the Executive is precisely there;
that all the rest, even to the order for taking the
Fort of Barrancas by storm, was incidental,
deriving its character from the object, which was not
hostility to Spain, but the termination of the Indian war.
This is the justification alleged by Jackson himself,
but he also alleges that an imaginary line of the thirty-first
degree of latitude could not afford protection to our frontiers
while the Indians could have a safe refuge in Florida, and
that all his operations were founded on that consideration.
Calhoun, the Secretary of War, generally of sound,
judicious, and comprehensive mind, seems in this case
to be personally offended with the idea that Jackson
has set at naught the instructions of the Department.
The President supposes there might be cases
which would have justified Jackson’s measures,
but that he has not made out his case.
Some of the newspapers, especially in Georgia and Virginia,
without waiting for the evidence of facts, have commenced
attacks, both upon the Administration and upon
General Jackson, and the fear of charges of usurpation,
of duplicity, and of war operates to such a degree that
there is not vigor to bear out the bold energy of Jackson;
and there seems a wish not only to disavow what
he had done, but to depreciate even the strong
reasons which he alleges for his justification.
Standing alone in my opinions, and finding that they
necessarily had little weight while counteracting
feelings as well as opinions, I developed them
not so fully as I might have done, but obtained an
adjournment of the question and meeting until tomorrow.19
Secretary of State Adams wrote in his journal about his views
on current issues in July 21-24, 1818:
20th. Received this morning a note from the President
requesting me to insert some additional paragraphs in the
letter to Mr. Onís, of which I accordingly prepared a draft.
Looking over General Jackson’s letters, it struck me there
was a new point of view in which his conduct in taking
Pensacola was defensible, and at the Cabinet meeting
I presented it again, and argued it with all the force I could.
It appeared to make some impression upon Mr. Wirt,
but the President and Mr. Calhoun were inflexible.
My reasoning was that Jackson took Pensacola only
because the Governor threatened to drive him out of the
province by force if he did not withdraw; that Jackson was
only executing his orders when he received this threat;
that he could not withdraw his troops from the province
consistently with his orders, and that his only alternative
was to prevent the execution of the threat.
I produced as authority Martens,
book 8, ch. 2, s. 226, and ch. 6, s. 267.
In insisted that the character of Jackson’s measures
was decided by the intention with which they were taken,
which was not hostility to Spain, but self-defense
against the hostility of Spanish officers.
I admitted that it was necessary to carry the
reasoning upon my principles to the utmost
extent it would bear to come to this conclusion.
But if the question was dubious, it was better to err
on the side of vigor than of weakness—on the side
of our own officer, who had rendered the most
eminent services to the nation, than on the side
of our bitterest enemies, and against him.
I glanced at the construction which would be given
by Jackson’s friends and by a large portion
of the public to the disavowal of his acts.
It would be said that he was an obnoxious man;
that after having the benefit of his services, he was
abandoned and sacrificed to the enemies of his country; that
his case would be compared with that of Sir Walter Raleigh.
Mr. Calhoun principally bore the argument against me,
insisting that the capture of Pensacola was not necessary
upon principles of self-defense, and therefore was both an
act of war against Spain and a violation of the Constitution;
that the Administration by approving it, would take all the
blame of it upon themselves; that by leaving it upon his
responsibility they would take away from Spain all pretext
for war, and for resorting to the aid of other European
powers—they would also be free from all reproach of
having violated the Constitution; that it was not the
menace of the Governor of Pensacola that had determined
Jackson to take that place; that he had really resolved
to take it before; that he had violated his orders, and
upon his own arbitrary will set all authority at defiance.
The President heard with candor and good humor
all that I said, but without any variation from his
original opinion, and my draft of a note to Onís,
with all its amendments, was finally fixed precisely
on the grounds of the President’s original sketch.
21st. The pressure of business, anxiety of mind,
and the heat of the weather, combining, affect my health,
and especially the repose of the night.
I was the last night quite unwell.
At noon I had an interview at the office with Mr. Bagot,
when he again enquired if I could furnish him with copies
of the proceedings of the Courts-martial upon the
two British subjects executed by General Jackson.
These papers have not yet been received.
I promised him, when they should come,
to give him immediate notice of them.
He complained of the manner in which Arbuthnot
had been taken, as treacherous, and repeated to me
the story that Onís had told me before, and which
he doubtless had from the Commandant of St. Marks.
I avoided discussion with him on the subject
as much as possible, but I saw that he felt
strong resentments against Jackson.
There was a Cabinet meeting at which the second draft
of my letter to Mr. Onís was read and finally fixed.
Mr. Wirt read what he called a second edition
of his article for the National Intelligencer.
I strenuously re-urged my objections, especially to a
paragraph declaring that the President thought he had no
constitutional power to have authorized General Jackson
to take Pensacola; and to another holding out a hope
to the public that, notwithstanding this collision between
the officers of the two Governments in Florida, yet we
shall soon have an amicable settlement of all our differences
with Spain and obtain the cession of the Floridas too.
But I could make no more impression upon either
of these points than upon those in the note to Onís.
To all my objections, offers were made to
vary the phrase, or to strike out parts of sentences,
but still adhering to the disclaimer of power.
I finally gave up the debate, acquiescing
in the determination which had been taken.
The Administration were placed in a dilemma
from which it is impossible for them to escape censure
by some, and factious crimination by many.
If they avow and approve Jackson’s conduct,
they incur the double responsibility of having commenced
a war against Spain, and of warring in violation
of the Constitution without the authority of Congress.
If they disavow him, they must give offense
to all his friends, encounter the shock of his popularity,
and have the appearance of truckling to Spain.
For all this I should be prepared.
But the mischief of this determination lies deeper:
1. It is weakness, and a confession of weakness.
2. The disclaimer of power in the Executive is
of dangersous example and of evil consequences.
3. There is injustice to the officer in disavowing him,
when in principle he is strictly justifiable.
These charges will be urged with great vehemence
on one side, while those who would have censured
the other course will not support or defend
the Administration for taking this.
I believe the other would have been a safer,
as well as a bolder course.
Calhoun says he has heard that the Court-martial
at first acquitted the two Englishmen,
but that Jackson sent the case back to them.
He says also, that last winter there was a company
formed in Tennessee, who sent Jackson’s nephew to
Pensacola and purchased Florida lands, and that Jackson
himself is reported to be interested in the speculation.
I hope not.
22nd. My letter to Mr. Onís being now prepared,
I sent for Mr. Hyde de Neuville, who came
to the office, and gave it to him to read.
He professed to be very well satisfied with it and said he
would go tomorrow for his seat in the Jerseys and would
spend two or three days with Onís at Bristol on his way.
He would use all his influence with him to persuade him
to make his proposals and urge his conviction that
if they are not made, it will be impossible to get through the
next winter without a war between this country and Spain.
He added that Onís had said something to him about an
article stipulating not to acknowledge the South Americans,
but he thought he could not insist upon that.
I told him it must be altogether out of the question.
Spain could not ask for such a stipulation
of any European nation, and we certainly
should not set the example of agreeing to it.
If Mr. Onís persevered in this suggestion,
it would afford complete proof that neither
he nor his Government intend an adjustment of
their differences with the United States at present.
23rd. I was with the President from noon till
past three o’clock, taking his directions upon various
objects which cannot be acted upon without his orders.
I gave him my draft of instructions to Mr. Gallatin
and Mr. Rush for the proposed special negotiation,
which I had finished this morning.
My letter to Mr. Onís was dispatched this morning.
I had also made a draft of a proclamation declaring the
discriminating tonnage duties repealed with regard to
the vessels of Bremen, which he approved, and directed a
similar proclamation with regard to the vessels of Hamburg.
24th. Finished the draft of instructions for A. H. Everett
as Chargé d’Affaires in the Netherlands,
which I took to and left with the President.
He returned me the draft of instructions for
Gallatin and Rush with a few observations;
but the Florida business and General Jackson absorb
so much of his cares and anxieties, that every other subject
is irksome to him, so that he can give little attention to it.
He had given Gates, one of the editors of
the National Intelligencer, the paragraph
prepared for that purpose by Mr. Wirt.
Gales had told him it had got abroad that
there was a division of opinion among the
members of the Administration on the point of
approving or disavowing Jackson’s proceedings.
He had answered there had been diversity of opinion,
as naturally happened upon all important measures,
but that all were agreed upon the result,
and he said Gales wanted to add that the opinion of the
members of the Administration had been unanimous.
I observed that I had acquiesced in the ultimate
determination, and would cheerfully take my share
of the responsibility for it; but I could not with truth
say it had been conformable to my opinion, for that
had been to approve and justify the conduct of Jackson;
whereas it was disavowed, and the place that
he had taken was to be unconditionally restored.
The President thought we had justified Jackson
as far as was possible.20
On 23 July 1818 Adams wrote a long letter to the Spanish Minister
Luis de Onís and quoted the fifth article of the treaty with Spain
on 27 October 1795 that contained this stipulation:
The two high contracting parties shall, by all the means
in their power, maintain peace and harmony among the
several Indian nations who inhabit the country adjacent
to the lines and rivers which, by preceding articles, form
the boundaries of the two Floridas; and, the better to
obtain this effect, both parties oblige themselves expressly
to restrain by force all hostilities on the part of the Indian
nations living within their boundaries, so that Spain will not
suffer her Indians to attack the citizens of the United States,
nor the Indians inhabiting their territory; nor will the
United States permit these last mentioned Indians to
commence hostilities against the subjects of his Catholic
Majesty or his Indians in any manner whatever.
Next Adams made this charge:
Notwithstanding this precise, express, and solemn
compact of Spain, numbers, painful to recollect, of the
citizens of the United States inhabiting the frontier—
numbers, not merely of persons in active manhood,
but of the tender sex, of defenseless age, and helpless
infancy, had at various times been butchered with all
the aggravations and horrors of savage cruelty by
Seminole Indians and by a banditti of negroes sallying
from within the Spanish border, and retreating to it
again with the horrid fruits of their crimes.21
Adams concluded that letter this way:
I am instructed by the President to inform you that
Pensacola will be restored to the possession of any
person duly authorized on the part of Spain to receive it;
that the fort of St. Mark, being in the heart of the Indian
country, and remote from any Spanish settlement,
can be surrendered only to a force sufficiently strong
to hold it against the attack of the hostile Indians;
upon the appearance of which force it will also be restored.
In communicating to you this decision, I am also
directed to assure you that it has been made under
the fullest conviction, which he trusts will be felt by
your government, that the preservation of peace
between the two nations indispensably requires that
henceforth the stipulations by Spain to restrain by force
her Indians from all hostilities against the United States
should be faithfully and effectually fulfilled.22
On July 28 Secretary of State Adams in Washington sent 15 pages of instructions
to Albert Gallatin and Richard Rush on various issues, and on the 30th he wrote
asking Gallatin to go to London to negotiate with the British government.
On August 12 Adams wrote a letter to President James Monroe that begins:
I have the honor of enclosing the following letters
and documents which have just been received, and of
requesting concerning them the favor of your instructions.
1. A letter from the Spanish Minister Onís in reply to
that by which he was informed of your determination
that Pensacola should be restored, with three enclosures.
2. Translation of a letter from Dom. M. H. de Aguirre,
the agent from Buenos Aires.
3. A letter from the Governor of Georgia, giving the
information that Captain Obed Wright had made his escape.
4. A letter from Mr. King of the Senate.
5. A letter from Mr. Eustis,
late Minister to the Netherlands.
6. A letter from George Sullivan, requesting authority to
commence a certain suit in the name of the United States.23
On September 20 John Quincy Adams wrote in his Memoirs
how he became aware that Henry Clay was opposing him:
Mr. Monroe, just before he made the appointment of
Secretary of State, wrote a note to Judge Story, requesting
to see him, and when Story went to him, he said it had been
his intention to appoint me Secretary of State,
but Mr. Clay had objected to the appointment on the
allegation that I was not a Republican, and that
Mr. Crowninshield and Jonathan Russell
had assured the President that it was so:
I was not a Republican.
So it would seem that Story undertook
to answer for my Republicanism.
Whether my appointment was for my own good,
or for that of my country, is known only to God.
As yet I have far more reason to lament than
to rejoice at the event; yet I feel not the less
the obligation of Mr. Monroe’s confidence in me,
and the duty of personal devotion to the success
of his Administration which it imposes upon me.
That Clay should have taken pains to prevent
my appointment is as natural as that
he should have coveted it himself.
Mr. Crowninshield’s opposition to me arose no doubt
from party, and Russell’s from personal motives.
That Clay should have had the talent of making tools of
those men for his purposes is no mean proof of his address.
His mind is of a very superior cast to theirs,
but in his management of his opposition to me there is
a total disregard not only of generosity but of fairness.24
The Convention of 1818 between the United States and Great Britain
was signed on October 20 and became effective on 30 January 1819.
The treaty was negotiated in Europe by United States Minister Gallatin
in France and by Richard Rush in England.
Article 1 established fishing rights near Newfoundland and Labrador.
Article 2 set the border between the United States and
British Canada on the 49th parallel north latitude.
Article 3 allowed both nations to use Oregon country for ten years.
Article 4 extended the Anglo-American Commerce Convention of 1815 for ten more years.
In Article 5 they agreed to settle property issues including slaves
that the Treaty of Ghent had exposed.
Article 6 required ratification within six months of the treaty signing.
Abigail Adams, the mother of John Quincy Adams, died on 28 October 1818,
and on Sunday November 1 he wrote in his Memoirs:
My mother was an angel upon earth.
She was a minister of blessing to all human beings
within her sphere of action.
Her heart was the abode of heavenly purity.
She had no feelings but of kindness and beneficence; yet
her mind was as firm as her temper was mild and gentle.
She had known sorrow, but her sorrow was silent.
She was acquainted with grief,
but it was deposited in her own bosom.
She was the real personification of female virtue,
of piety, of charity, of ever active
and never intermitting benevolence.
Oh God! Could she have been spared yet a little longer!
My lot in life has been almost always
cast at a distance from her.
I have enjoyed but for short seasons, and at long,
distant intervals, the happiness of her society;
yet she has been to me more than a mother.
She has been a spirit from above watching over me
for good, and contributing by my mere consciousness
of her existence to the comfort of my life.
That consciousness is gone, and without her
the world feels to me like a solitude.
Oh! what must it be to my father, and how will he
support life without her who has been to him its charm?
Not my will, heavenly Father, but thine be done.25
November 5 Adams wrote this in his Memoirs:
5th. I collected the passages from the Amelia Island
documents published by Congress at their last session,
and those in the proceedings on the trial of Ambrister,
showing the connection between McGregor’s expedition
and the Seminole War, and took them
to Mr. Calhoun and to the President.
Calhoun thought that in the message the whole
history should be traced, from the time of
Nicholls’s expedition during the late war to the
time of the trial of Arbuthnot and Ambrister.
I was of the same opinion.
At the President’s I met Mr. Crawford.
The President read to us the additional paragraphs
of the draft of his message that he is preparing.
The paragraph respecting our relations
with Spain is nearly finished.
That concerning South America is not yet begun.
Some desultory conversation
concerning it took place between us.26
On the 8th and 9th of November 1818 Secretary of State Adams
reviewed his position on the actions of General Jackson in East Florida.
He wrote in his Memoirs,
8th. I began the draft of a dispatch to G. W. Erving in
which I propose to give a succinct account of the late
Seminole War from its origin, and to trace the connections
between Arbuthnot, Ambrister, Woodbine, Nicholls, and
McGregor with that war, in such a manner as completely
to justify the measures of this Government relating to it,
and as far as possible the proceedings of General Jackson.
The task is of the highest order:
may I not be found inferior to it!
I made some progress in the draft,
but it must be the work of several days.
9th. I received a note from the President asking me
to call upon him at twelve o’clock with the statement
of General Jackson’s allegation against the Governor
of Pensacola and the Commandant of the fort of
St. Mark’s, and also as he wished to show me
the modification of certain parts of the message.
I went accordingly with Jackson’s letter of 23rd May
to the Governor of Pensacola.
The new paragraph for the message related to the
mediation of the allies between Spain and South America,
and was entirely conformable to the views that
I had presented by Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Crawford.
Mr. De Neuville came and spent the evening with me.
His object was to talk over with me the state of our
negotiation with Spain, to ascertain whether we would yield
anything further on the western boundary, and whether
we contemplated any hostile measure towards Spain.
I told him that as to the western boundary we had
retreated to the wall; we had given our ultimatum
to Mr. Onís, and only wished
from him an explicit answer, yes or no.
He said he was extremely sorry to find us still so wide apart.
He had had a long conference this morning with Mr. Onís,
who could not agree to our terms.
His powers would not authorize him to agree to them.
But he might make other propositions to us,
if there was any chance of their being accepted.
I told him that if relating to the western boundary,
they would be useless.
He said Mr. Onís wanted him to interpose by a note or a
declaration of France in favor of Spain, but intimated that he
had declined, and told him that if he did give a declaration,
it would displease both parties, for it would be against the
United States upon the Florida and French Consular points,
and against Spain upon the western boundary.
As to the indemnities for French Consular and privateering
depredations in Spain, neither Spain nor the United States
could have any claim upon France on that account;
that was quite out of the question.27
John Quincy Adams had published his 21-page
“Defense of General Jackson’s Conduct in the Seminole War”
at the Department of State in Washington
on 28 November 1818 which included this paragraph:
The conduct of the Governor of Pensacola as not
less marked by a disposition of enmity to the United States,
and by an utter disregard to the obligations of the treaty
by which he was bound to restrain by force
the Indians from hostilities against them.
When called upon to vindicate the territorial rights and
authority of Spain by the destruction of the Negro fort,
his predecessor had declared it to be not less annoying and
pernicious to the Spanish subjects in Florida, than to the
United States, but had pleaded his inability to subdue it.
He, himself, had expressed his apprehensions that
Fort St. Marks would be forcibly taken by the savages
from its Spanish garrison: yet at the same time he had
refused the passage up the Escambia river, unless upon
the payment of excessive duties, to provisions destined as
supplies for the American army, which by the detention of
them, was subjected to the most distressing privations.
He had permitted free ingress and egress at Pensacola
to the avowed savage enemies of the United States.
Supplies of ammunition, munitions of war and
provisions had been received by them from thence.
They had been received and sheltered there
from the pursuit of the American forces,
and suffered again to sally thence, to enter upon
the American territory and commit new murders.
Finally, on the approach of General Jackson to Pensacola,
the Governor sent him a letter denouncing his entry
upon the territory of Florida as a violent outrage upon
the rights of Spain, commanding him to depart and
withdraw from the same and threatening in case of
his non-compliance to employ force to expel him.28
Adams also in November wrote a letter of 29 pages
on various issues to George William Erving.
On November 30 Adams wrote an 8-page letter to Minister Onís in which he noted,
Reserving then all the rights of the United States to
the ancient western boundary of the colony of
Louisiana by the course of the Rio Bravo del Norte,
I am yet authorized to conclude a convention or treaty
with you upon the other subjects of existing difference.29
Also on November 30 Adams explained in a letter to Albert Gallatin
the actions of General Andrew Jackson in Florida:
As from the tenor of your dispatches it appears
that the capture of Pensacola and those executions
of Arbuthnot and Ambrister together with that of the
hostile Indian chiefs had excited a sensation peculiarly
unfavorable in France, and even in other parts of Europe;
and as you know the solicitude of the President, that every
act of his government in its relations with other powers
and with the Indians should be not only conformable to
the established laws and usages of nations, but peculiarly
marked with a just deference to the well-considered
opinion of the world, and to the principles of the most
enlightened humanity, your attention is particularly
invited to those parts of the statement and of the
vouchers which have reference to those transactions.
You will find that neither of them had been anticipated
in the orders and instructions given to General Jackson.
Their justification rests upon the reasons which he has
himself assigned for resorting to those measures,
and upon the facts disclosed in the vouchers
furnished by him in vindication of them.
Your observations to the Duke de Richelieu, and to the
ministers of other powers having influence over Spain,
as reported in your No. 84 were perfectly correct,
excepting that without imputing to Spain the unjustifiable
and hostile conduct of her commanding officers in Florida.
General Jackson’s proceedings were founded on the
presumption that the fault was in those officers themselves.
Had the situation and the duties of these officers
been those of ordinary neutrality, their conduct
would still have been altogether unwarrantable.
But in the fifth article of our treaty of 1795 with Spain,
which you transmitted to the Duke de Richelieu,
he must have seen that this was a war to which
she ought not to have been neutral.
It was a war against hostilities, which
she was in the most explicit and unqualified
terms bound herself to prevent by force.
General Jackson was performing that which Spain
by solemn stipulation was bound to perform herself.
The least that he could expect, therefore, was
that every facility possible should be afforded
by the Spanish commanders to his operations.
That no assistance, supplies or shelter would
be afforded by them to our savage enemies,
who by the very tenor of the treaty were also theirs.
Instead of which he found the commandant of St. Marks
holding at his own quarters councils of war with the hostile
Indians; contracting with them for the purchase of future
plunder, to be robbed from the inhabitants on our borders;
holding white men, Spanish subjects, settled in Florida,
taken prisoners by the Indians, as prisoners for them;
and confidentially corresponding with and harboring
a pretended British agent (Arbuthnot), the mover,
instigator and conductor of the Indians
in their war against the United States….
The white men, as subjects of a European power
with which we were at peace, could not be held
as prisoners; a demand upon their own government
to punish them would have been fruitless, their own
government having no jurisdiction for the trial of their crime.
To dismiss them with impunity would have been
not only to let them loose to renew the same intrigues
and machinations; but to leave their example a
pernicious temptation to others to offend in like manner;
an ignominious punishment, sparing life, would have
little or no effect upon men to whom infamy
was scarcely equivalent to any punishment at all.
The Indian wars that we have suffered by the
instigations of such characters, the hundreds
and thousands of our citizens of either sex and
of every age butchered with every horrible aggravation
of savage cruelty, under the stimulus of these disavowed
and unauthorized agents, are also to be considered.
The necessity of a signal example
was urgent and indispensable.
It has been given; and if its operation should be,
as we trust it will, to deter unauthorized foreign intruders
from intermeddling between the United States and the
Indians, it will be the greatest benefit ever conferred
by a white man upon their tribes, since it will be the only
possible means of redeeming them from the alternative
otherwise unavoidable of their utter extermination.30
John Quincy Adams in his Memoirs on
December 8, 28, 29 and 30 in 1818 Adams wrote:
8th. At the President’s.
He had received a new old map of Louisiana from
New Orleans, which he sent over to the Department.
I urged him to the immediate nomination
of Ministers to Rio de Janeiro and to Spain.
He desired me to see Mr. Graham and ask his definitive
determination whether he will go to Brazil; and as to Spain,
he told me he had not thought of any person yet.
He had said so to me before,
and asked me to think of a person.
I now mentioned to him Mr. Middleton, whom
Mr. Calhoun had spoken of and recommended to me.
Upon which the President said—“or Mr. Forsyth.”
I have a strong impression that the latter will be the man.
The President also said Mr. Jefferson had told him
it was Mr. Gallatin’s intention to come home next year,
and added that it would soon be necessary
to select some Eastern man for a foreign mission.
“Je vois venir.”
There is what in vulgar language is called an undertow
always working upon and about the President—
what used in England to be called a back-stairs influence—
of which he never says anything to me,
and which I discover only by its effects.
I gave him the dispatches yesterday received
from Forbes and G. W. Campbell, and Jonathan Russell,
who is an Eastern man, and if Gallatin comes home,
will, I suppose, be the competitor with the other
Eastern man, whose expectation have really more
solid foundation than I had thought possible….
28th. I received the Convention with Great Britain,
signed on the 29th of October last by A. Gallatin and R. Rush
with copies of all the documents of the negotiation,
which I immediately took over to the President.
I read to him the Convention and the letter from
Messrs. Gallatin and Rush, of 20th October,
giving a general account of the negotiation.
The protocols of the conferences and other documents,
which are voluminous, I took home with me, and
am to send them tomorrow morning to the President.
Mr. Hyde de Neuville came after dinner and
requested to have some private conversation with me.
He was apparently under great agitation, laboring
with something which he meant to communicate to me,
and yet afraid of expressing to me all his feelings.
There was an incoherent jumble of a multitude of objects
national and individual, working at once upon his passions,
and producing a perfect chaos of confusion in his mind.
The main object of his coming, professedly, was to enquire
whether the remarks that I made to him on the 12th
of this month concerning the recognition of the
independence of Buenos Aires, were intended to
consult the opinion of the French Government, or
merely to give notice of the intentions of the United States.
I told him it was partly both: it was to inform France
of our opinions as to the proper course to be pursued,
and to offer to France the opportunity of moving
in concert with us—an offer which we had
at the same time made to Great Britain….
29th. At the President’s I met Mr. Crawford.
The President, in sending the Convention to the Senate
with a message, proposed to present to their consideration
a question whether the appointment of Plenipotentiaries
during their recess, and consequently without their sanction,
was of such a nature as required any declaration
of reservation of their rights by them.
I told him I thought there was no question, and that
if they thought there was, it was for them to make it,
and not for the Executive to suggest it to them.
He accordingly said nothing about it.
But I think some of the Senators have been
whispering to him, and that he expects
some question will be made about it in the Senate.
30th. Mr. Selma Hale, a member of Congress
from New Hampshire, called at the office with
a letter from Governor Plumer, requesting three copies
of the fifth volume of the last edition of the Laws.
Mr. Hale spoke also of General Jackson’s campaign
in Florida, and of my two letters to G. W. Erving, which
are published in the National Intelligencer of this day.
Jackson’s conduct is now arraigned with extreme virulence
in every quarter of the Union, and, as I am his official
defender against Spain and England, I shall from
the time of this publication come in for my share
of the censure so lavishly bestowed upon him.31
On December 31 Adams began a letter to David C. de Forrest by writing:
Mr. Adams presents his compliments to Mr. De Forrest,
and has the honor of assuring him by direction of the
President of the United States, of the continued interest that
he takes in the welfare and prosperity of the provinces of
La Plata, and of his disposition to recognize the independent
government of Buenos Aires as soon as the time shall have
arrived when the step may be taken with advantage to the
interests of South America as well as of the United States.32
Notes
1. Memoirs of Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848
by John Quincy Adams ed. Charles Francis Adams, Volume IV, p. 35-37.
2. Writings of John Quincy Adams, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford,
Volume VI 1816-1819, p. 286-288.
3. Memoirs by John Quincy Adams, Volume IV, p. 61-62, 62-63, 64-65.
4. Writings of John Quincy Adams, Volume VI, p. 301-304.
5. From John Quincy Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 14 April 1818 (Online).
6. Writings of John Quincy Adams, Volume VI, p. 306-310.
7. Memoirs by John Quincy Adams, Volume IV, p. 87.
8. Writings of John Quincy Adams, Volume VI, p. 313-318.
9. Memoirs by John Quincy Adams, Volume IV, p. 98.
10. Ibid., p. 100.
11. Writings of John Quincy Adams, Volume VI, p. 332-336.
12. Ibid., p. 339-343.
13. Ibid., p. 344-345.
14. Quoted in John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People
by Randall Woods, p. 386.
15. To John Adams from John Quincy Adams, 15 June 1818 (Online).
16. Writings of John Quincy Adams, Volume VI, p. 381-383.
17. Ibid., p. 383-384.
18. Memoirs by John Quincy Adams, Volume IV, p. 106-107.
19. Ibid., p. 107-109.
20. Ibid., p. 112-117.
21. Writings of John Quincy Adams, Volume VI, p. 387.
22. Ibid., p. 393-394.
23. Ibid., p. 429.
24. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Volume IV, p. 130-131.
25. Ibid., p. 155.
26. Ibid., p. 163-164.
27. Ibid., p. 168-169.
28. Speeches & Writings by John Quincy Adams ed. David Waldstreicher, p. 190-191.
29. Writings of John Quincy Adams, Volume VI, p. 504.
30. Ibid., p. 511-513.
31. Memoirs by John Quincy Adams, Volume IV, p. 187, 198-199, 201.
32. Writings of John Quincy Adams, Volume VI, p. 514-515.
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