On 10 January 1820 Secretary of State Adams wrote
about the Missouri Compromise in his Memoirs:
10th. The Missouri question has taken such hold of
my feelings and imagination that, finding my ideas
connected with it very numerous, but confused for
want of arrangement, I have within these few days begun
to commit them to paper loosely as they arise in my mind.
There are views of the subject which have not yet been
taken by any of the speakers or writers by whom it has
been discussed—views which the time has not yet arrived
for presenting to the public, but which in all probability
it will be necessary to present hereafter.
I take it for granted that the present question is
a mere preamble—a title-page to a great tragic volume.
I have hitherto reserved my opinions upon it,
as it has been obviously proper for me to do.
The time may, and I think will, come when
it will be my duty equally clear to give my opinion,
and it is even now proper for me to begin
the preparation of myself for that emergency.
The President thinks this question
will be winked away by a compromise.
But so do not I.
Much am I mistaken if it is not destined to survive
his political and individual life and mine.1
Adams on 16 January 1820 wrote in his Memoirs about his discussion with a
southern politician on the emerging controversy over the Missouri territory.
16th. In my walk for exercise before dinner,
I paid several visits and called upon Mr. Lowndes,
with whom I had a long conversation upon public affairs.
I told him the President wished that the instructions
to the late Commodore Perry should be communicated
to him, but thought there might be some inconvenience
in making them public, which they must be
if given to Congress or even to the Committee.
Lowndes said that in that case it would perhaps be better
that he should not see them, because it would be difficult
to use any information contained in them in debate without
giving rise to suspicions and to allusions, which would rather
counteract than promote the views of the Administration.
We had also much conversation
upon the Missouri or slave question.
Lowndes, who is from South Carolina and a large
slave-holder, is of course on the slavery side of the
question, which there is now every appearance will
be carried by the superior ability of the slavery party—
for thus much is certain, that if institutions are to be
judged by their results in the composition of the
councils of this Union, the slave-holders are much
more ably represented than the simple freemen.
With the exception of Rufus King, there is not
in either House of Congress a member from
the free States able to cope in powers of the
mind with William Pinkney or James Barbour.
In the House of Representatives the freemen have none to
contend on equal terms either with John Randolph or Clay.
Another misfortune to the free party is, that some
of their ablest men are either on this question
with their adversaries or lukewarm in the cause.
The slave men have indeed a deeper immediate
stake in the issue than the partisans of freedom,
their passions and interests are more profoundly
agitated, and they have stronger impulses to
active energy than their antagonists, whose only
individual interest in this case arises from its bearing on
the balance of political power between North and South.2
Adams wrote this in his Memoirs on January 22:
After returning to my office,
Dr. Morse and the Vice President, Mr. Tompkins,
called successively upon me.
Dr. Morse has been appointed by a Scotch Missionary
Society to some agency for civilizing the Indians,
and has in view particularly the Cherokees.
He was desirous of obtaining the cooperation of
the Government, and had already had an interview
with Mr. Calhoun, the Secretary of War, on the subject.
He told me it was his intention to close his pastoral
connection with his parish at Charlestown next May,
and to devote his time in future to this Indian agency
and to literary labors, among which was that of completing
a History of the United States, begun by Dr. Trumbull of
Connecticut, and of which one volume has been published.
He said it was a history written with particular reference
to the special providences which have befallen this country.
He requested to have access, as far as might be proper,
to the archives in the Department of State,
which I promised him he should have.
In speaking of Indian affairs, he told me that
he had particularly noted the discussion of the
rights of Indians to territorial possessions, in my oration
delivered at Plymouth the 22nd December 1802.
I told him the same question had been more fully debated
on a more important occasion, namely, at the negotiation
of Ghent, and referred him to the notes in which
it was controverted, which are published
in Wait’s collection of state papers.3
At the end of a fairly long Memoir on 11 February 1820 Adams wrote:
We attended an evening party at Mr. Calhoun’s,
and heard of nothing but the Missouri question
and Mr. King’s speeches.
The slave-holders cannot hear them
without being seized with cramps.
They call them seditious and inflammatory,
when their greatest real defect is their timidity.
Never since human sentiments and human conduct
were influenced by human speech was there
a theme for eloquence like the free side of this
question now before the Congress of this Union.
By what fatality does it happen that all the most
eloquent orators of the body are on its slavish side?
There is a great mass of cool judgment and plain sense
on the side of freedom and humanity, but the
ardent spirits and passions are on the side of oppression.
Oh, if but one man could arise with a genius capable of
comprehending, a heart capable of supporting, and an
utterance capable of communicating those eternal truths
that belong to this question, to lay bare in all its nakedness
that outrage upon the goodness of God, human slavery,
now is the time, and this is the occasion, upon which such
a man would perform the duties of an angel upon earth!4
On 20, 23 and 24 February 1820 John Quincy Adams wrote in his Memoirs
about the Missouri question in the Congress and the future of slavery:
The territory of Missouri is a part of the Louisiana cession.
At the session of Congress before the last,
a bill was introduced for enabling its inhabitants
to form a State Constitution.
There was then not time to pass the bill, which was
referred over, and brought forward again at the last session.
When it was under debate at the second meeting in
committee of the whole, an amendment was proposed
by General James Talmadge, seconded by John W. Taylor,
both members from the State of New York, making
one of the conditions of the admission of Missouri
that the further introduction of slavery should be
prohibited, and that slaves hereafter born there
shall be free at the age of twenty-five.
This amendment excited a very angry debate,
but was adopted by the House, disagreed to
by the Senate, and each House adhering to its views,
the bill was lost between them.
When the amendment was first presented,
its importance and consequences were certainly foreseen
by no one, not even by those who brought it forward.
Its discussion disclosed a secret: it revealed
the basis for a new organization of parties.
Clay had been two years laboring, first upon
South American patriotism and then upon the Seminole War,
first in defiance of Crawford and then
as a subaltern to him, to get up a new party.
In both instances he had failed.
But here was a new party ready formed, but of no
pleasing aspect to either Clay or Crawford, terrible to
the whole Union, but portentously terrible to the South—
threatening in its progress the emancipation of all their
slaves, threatening in its immediate effect that Southern
domination which has swayed the Union for the last
twenty years, and threatening that political ascendency
of Virginia, upon which Clay and Crawford both had
fastened their principal hopes of personal aggrandizement.
The failure of the bill, and the attempt to exclude
slavery from the future State of Missouri, produced
great fermentation there and in the Southern States,
but particularly in Virginia.
North and East it excited less feeling, but Mr. King,
who had taken a considerable part in the debate
at the last session in the Senate, in the course of
the summer set on foot and organized a concert
of measures which have resulted in the struggle
which now shakes the Union to its center.
Bloomfield, though a member from New Jersey,
took at the last session the Southern side of this question,
and still adheres to it.
But he says he received yesterday a letter from a
very sober and respectable neighbor of his,
who asks him whether a civil war would not be preferable
to the extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi.
This is a question between the rights of human nature
and the Constitution of the United States.
Probably both will suffer by the issue of the controversy.
23rd. A. Livermore and W. Plumer, Junior, members of
the House of Representatives from New Hampshire, called
upon me, and conversing on the Missouri slave question,
which at this time agitates Congress and the nation, asked
my opinion of the propriety of agreeing to a compromise.
The division in Congress and the nation
is nearly equal on both sides.
The argument on the free side is the moral and political
duty of preventing the extension of slavery in the immense
country from the Mississippi River to the South Sea.
The argument on the slave side is that Congress
has no power by the Constitution to prohibit slavery
in any State, and the Zealots say, not in any Territory.
The proposed compromise is to admit Missouri, and
hereafter Arkansas, as States, without any restriction
upon them regarding slavery, but to prohibit the
future introduction of slaves in all Territories of the
United States north of the 36° 30′ latitude.
I told these gentlemen that my opinion was: the question
could be settled no otherwise than by a compromise.
The regulation, exclusion, or abolition of slavery in the
system of our Union is among the powers reserved to the
people of the several States by their separate Governments,
though I have no doubt that Congress has
Constitutional powers to prohibit any internal traffic
in slaves between one State and another.
In the States where slavery does not exist,
neither Congress, nor the State Legislature,
nor the people have any rightful power to establish it.
For the admission into the Union of a State where
no slavery exists, Congress may prescribe as a condition
that slavery shall never be established in it, as they have
done to the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; but
where it exists, and where there are already slaves
in great numbers, as in Missouri or Arkansas, the power
of extirpating it is not given to Congress by the Constitution.
To proscribe slavery, therefore, in Missouri or Arkansas,
I believe to be impracticable.
But if a provision can be obtained excluding the
introduction of slaves into future Territories,
it will be a great and important point secured.
I apprehend, however, that Livermore and Plumer
did not concur with me in my opinion.
24th. I had some conversation with Calhoun
on the slave question pending in Congress.
He said he did not think it would produce a
dissolution of the Union, but if it should,
the South would be from necessity compelled to form
an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain.
I said, that would be returning to the colonial state.
He said, yes, pretty much,
but it would be forced upon them.
I asked him whether he thought, if by the effect
of this alliance, the population of the North should
be cut off from its natural outlet upon the ocean,
it would fall back upon its rocks bound hand and foot,
to starve, or whether it would not retain its powers
of locomotion to move southward by land.
Then he said, they would find it necessary
to make their communities all military.
I pressed the conversation no further;
but if the dissolution of the Union should result from
the slave question, it is obvious as anything that can be
foreseen of futurity, that it must shortly afterwards be
followed by the universal emancipation of the slaves.
A more remote but perhaps not less certain consequence
would be the extirpation of the African race on this
continent by the gradually bleaching process of intermixture,
where the white portion is already so predominant,
and by the destructive progress of emancipation which,
like all great religious and political reformations,
is terrible in its means, though happy and glorious in its end.
Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American
Union, and it is a contemplation worthy of the most exalted
soul whether its total abolition is or is not practicable:
if practicable, by means it may be effected,
and if a choice of means be within the scope of the object,
what means would accomplish it
at the smallest cost of human sufferance.
A dissolution, at least temporary, of the Union,
as now constituted, would be certainly necessary,
and the dissolution must be upon a point
involving the question of slavery, and no other.
The Union might then be reorganized
on the fundamental principle of emancipation.
This object is vast in its compass, awful in
its prospects, sublime and beautiful in its issue.
A life devoted to it would be nobly spent or sacrificed.5
John Quincy Adams in this writing was prophetic for his country and for his own life.
John Quincy Adams wrote regularly in a journal, and his extensive writing was edited
and published later as his Memoirs by his youngest son Charles Francis Adams.
The 5th volume begins with March 1, 2 and 3 in 1820:
March 1st, 1820.—I was at the President’s.
The Missouri slave question has come
to its crisis in Congress.
The majorities in the two Houses are on opposite sides, and
there are Committees of Conference to effect a compromise.
2nd. The compromise of the slave question
was this day completed in Congress.
The Senate have carried their whole point, barely
consenting to the formality of separating the bill
for the admission of the State of Maine into the Union
from that for authorizing the people of the
Territory of Missouri to form a State Government.
The condition that slavery should be prohibited
by their Constitution, which the House of
Representatives had inserted, they have abandoned.
Missouri and Arkansas will be slave States
but to the Missouri bill a section is annexed,
prohibiting slavery in the remaining part of
the Louisiana cession north of latitude 36° 30′.
This compromise, as it is called, was finally carried
this evening by a vote of ninety to eighty-seven
in the House of Representatives, after successive
days and almost nights of stormy debate.
3rd. Went with Mrs. Adams to the Capitol Hill,
and viewed Sully’s picture of the passage of the
Delaware by General Washington, 25th December 1776,
now exhibited in the building lately occupied
by the two Houses of Congress.
As a picture of men, and especially of horses
as large as life, it has merit, but there is
nothing in it that marks the scene or the crisis.
The principal figure is the worst upon the canvas—
badly drawn, badly colored,
without likeness and without character.
While we were there, Jeremiah Nelson, a member
of the House from Massachusetts, came in and told us
of John Randolph’s motion this morning to reconsider
one of the votes of yesterday upon the Missouri bill,
and of the trickery by which his motion was defeated
by the Speaker’s declaring it not in order when first made,
the journal of yesterday’s proceedings not having been
then read; and while they were reading, the Clerk of
the House carried the bills as passed by the House to
the Senate, so that when Randolph, after the reading
of the journals, renewed his motion, it was too late,
the papers being no longer in the possession of the House.
And so it is that a law for perpetuating slavery in Missouri,
and perhaps in North America, has been
smuggled through both Houses of Congress.
I have been convinced from the first starting
of this question that it could not end otherwise.
The fault is in the Constitution of the United States, which
has sanctioned a dishonorable compromise with slavery.
There is henceforth no remedy for it but a new
organization of the Union, to effect which a
concert of all the white States is indispensable.
Whether that can ever be accomplished is doubtful.
It is a contemplation not very creditable to human nature
that the cement of common interest produced by slavery
is stronger and more solid than that of unmingled freedom.
In this instance the slave States have clung together in one
unbroken phalanx, and have been victorious by the means
of accomplices and deserters from the ranks of freedom.
Time only can show whether the contest may
ever be with equal advantage renewed.
But so polluted are all the streams of legislation in
regions of slavery, that this bill has been obtained only by
two as unprincipled artifices as dishonesty ever devised:
one, by coupling it as an appendage to the bill for
admitting Maine; and the other, by this outrage
perpetrated by the Speaker upon the rules of the House.
When I came this day to my office, I found there a note
requesting me to call at one o’clock at the President’s house.
It was then one, and I immediately went over.
He expected that the two bills for the admission of Maine
and to enable Missouri to make a Constitution, would
have been brought to him for his signature,
and he had summoned all the members of the
Administration to ask their opinions in writing, to be
deposited in the Department of State upon two questions:
1, Whether Congress had a Constitutional right
to prohibit slavery in a Territory; and
2, Whether the eighth section of the Missouri bill
(which interdicts slavery forever in the Territory
north of thirty-six and a half latitude) was
applicable only to the Territorial State,
or could extend to it after it should become a State.
As to the first question, it was unanimously agreed
that Congress has the power to prohibit slavery in the
Territories; and yet neither Crawford, Calhoun, nor Wirt
could find any express power to that effect given in
the Constitution; and Wirt declared himself very
decidedly against the admission of any implied powers.
The progress of this discussion has so totally merged
in passion all the reasoning faculties of the slave-holders,
that these gentlemen, in the simplicity of their hearts, had
come to a conclusion in direct opposition to their hearts, had
come to a conclusion in direct opposition to their premises,
without being aware or conscious of inconsistency.
They insisted upon it that the clause in the Constitution,
which gives Congress power to dispose of and
make all needful rules and regulations respecting
the territory and other property of the United States,
had reference to it only as land and conferred
no authority to make rules binding upon its inhabitants;
and Wirt added the notable Virginian objection, that
Congress could make only needful rules and regulations,
and that a prohibition of slavery was not needful.
Their argument, as Randolph said of it in the House,
covered the whole ground, and their compromise,
measured by their own principles,
is a sacrifice of what they hold to be the Constitution.
I had no doubt of the right of Congress to interdict slavery
in the Territories, and urged that the power contained in
the term “dispose of” included the authority to do everything
that could be done with it as mere property, and that
the additional words, authorizing needful rules and
regulations respecting it, must have reference to
persons connected with it, or could have no meaning at all.
As to the force of the term “needful,”
I observed, it was relative and must always
be supposed to have a reference to some end.
Needful to what end?
Needful in the Constitution of the United States
to any of the ends for which that compact was formed.
Those ends are declared in its preamble;
to establish justice, for example.
What can be more needful for the establishment of justice
than the interdiction of slavery where it does not exist?
As to the second question, my opinion was that the
interdiction of slavery in the eighth section of the bill
forever would apply and be binding upon the State
as well as the Territory, because by its interdiction
in the Territory, the people, when they come to form
a Constitution, would have no right to sanction slavery.
Crawford said that in the new States which have
been admitted into the Union upon the express
condition that their Constitutions should consist
with the perpetual interdiction of slavery; it might
be sanctioned by an ordinary Act of their Legislatures.
I said that whatever a State Legislature
might do in point of fact, they could not,
by any rightful exercise of power, establish slavery.
The Declaration of Independence not only asserts
the natural equality of all men and their inalienable
right to liberty, but that the only just powers of
government are derived from the consent of the governed.
A power for one part of the people to make slaves
of the other can never be derived from consent,
and is therefore not a just power.
Crawford said this was the opinion
that had been attributed to Mr. King.
I said it was undoubtedly the opinion
of Mr. King, and it was mine.
I did not want to make a public display of it
where it might excite irritation, but,
if called upon officially for it, I should not withhold it.
But the opinion was not peculiar to Mr. King and me.
It was an opinion universal in the States
where there are no slaves.
It was the opinion of all those members of Congress
who voted for the restriction upon Missouri,
and of many of those who voted against it.
As to the right imposing the restriction upon a State,
the President had signed a bill with precisely
such a restriction upon the State of Illinois.
Why should the question be made now
which was not made then?
Crawford said that was done in conformity to the compact
of the Ordinance of 1787; and besides the restriction was
a nullity not binding upon the Legislatures of those States.
I did not reply to the assertion that a solemn compact,
announced before heaven and earth in the Ordinance of
1787, a compact laying the foundation of security to the
most sacred rights of human nature against the most odious
of oppressions, a compact solemnly renewed by the Acts
of Congress enabling the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
to form State Governments, and again by the acts of
admitting those States into the Union, was a nullity,
which the Legislatures of either of those States
may at any time disregard and trample under foot.
It was sickening to my soul to hear the assertion;
but to have discussed it there would have been useless,
and only have kindled the bosom of the Executive the same
flame which had been raging in Congress and in the country.
Its discussion was unnecessary to the decision
of the question proposed by the President.
I therefore only said that the Ordinance of 1787
had been passed by the old Congress of the Confederation
without authority from the States, but had been tacitly
confirmed by the adoption of the present Constitution
and the authority given to Congress in it to make
needful rules and regulations for the Territory.
I added that in one of the numbers of The Federalist
there was an admission that the old Congress had passed
the ordinance without authority under an impulse of
necessity, and that it was used as an argument in favor of
the enlarged powers granted to Congress in the Constitution.
Crawford said it could therefore
have little weight as authority.
I replied that it was not wanted as authority;
that when the old Confederation was adopted,
the United States had no territory.
Nor was there in the Act of Confederation,
in which the powers of Congress under it
were enumerated, a word about territory.
But there was a clause interdicting to Congress
the exercise of any powers not expressly given them.
I alluded to the origin of the Confederation with our
Revolution; to the revolutionary powers exercised
by Congress before the Confederation was adopted;
to the question whether the Northwestern Territory
belonged to the United States or the separate States;
to the delays occasioned by that question in the
acceptance of the Confederation, and to the
subsequent cessions of territory by several
States of the Union, which gave occasion
for the Ordinance of 1787;
to all which Crawford said nothing.
Wirt said that he perfectly agreed with me,
that there could be no rightful power
to establish slavery where it was “res nova.”
But he thought it would not be the force of the
Act of Congress that would lead to this result;
the principle itself being correct, though Congress might
have no power to prescribe it to a sovereign State.
To this my reply was that this power of establishing
slavery, not being a sovereign power but a wrongful and
despotic power, Congress had a right to say that no State
undertaking to establish it “de novo” should be admitted
into the Union; and that a State which should undertake to
establish it would put herself out of the pale of the Union
and forfeit all the rights and privileges of the connection.
The President said that it was impossible to
exclude the principle of implied powers
being granted to Congress by the Constitution.
The powers of sovereignty were distributed
between the General and State Governments.
Extensive powers were given in general terms; all detailed
and incidental powers were implied in the general grant.
Some years ago Congress had appropriated
a sum of money to the relief of the inhabitants
of Caraccas, who had suffered by an earthquake.
There was no express grant of authority
to apply public money to such a purpose.
It was by an implied power.
The material question was only when the power
supposed to be implied came in conflict
with rights reserved to the State Governments.
He inclined also to think with me, that
the rules and regulations which Congress was
authorized to make for the Territories must
be understood as extending to their inhabitants.
And he recurred to the history of the Northwestern
Territory, the cessions by the several States to the Union,
and the controversies concerning this subject
during our Revolutionary War.
He said he wished the written opinion of the members
of the Cabinet without discussion in terms as short
as it could be expressed, and merely that it might
be deposited in the Department of State.
I told him that I should prefer a dispensation from
answering the second question, especially as I should
be alone here in the opinion which I entertained;
for Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Navy, cautiously
avoided giving any opinion upon the question of natural
right, but assented to the slave-sided doctrine that the
eighth section of the bill, word forever and all, applied only
to the time and condition of the Territorial Government.
I said therefore that if required to give my opinion upon
the second question, standing alone, it would be necessary
for me to assign the reasons upon which I entertained it.
Crawford saw no necessity for any reasoning about it,
but had no objection to my assigning my reasons.
Calhoun thought it exceedingly desirable that
no such argument should be drawn up and deposited.
He therefore suggested to the President the idea of
changing the terms of the second question,
so that it should be whether the eighth section of the bill
was consistent with the Constitution; which the other
members of the Administration might answer affirmatively,
assigning their reason, because they considered it applicable
only to the Territorial States, while I could answer it
also affirmatively without annexing any qualification.
To this the President readily assented,
and I as readily agreed.
The questions are to be framed accordingly.
This occasion has remarkably manifested
Crawford’s feelings, and the continually
kindling intenseness of his ambition.
I have had information from the Governor of the State
of Indiana that there is in that State a party countenanced
and supported by Crawford, whose purpose it is to
introduce slavery into that State, and there is reason to
believe that the same project exists in Ohio and Illinois.
This avowed opinion that in defiance of the Ordinance of
1787 and of the laws admitting those States into the Union,
slavery may be established in either of those States
by an ordinary Act of its Legislature, strongly confirms
the impressions of him communicated to me
by the Governor of Indiana.
It is apparent that Crawford is already aware
how his canvass for the Presidency
may be crossed by this slavery contest.
The violence of its operation upon his temper
is such that he could not suppress it.
After this meeting I walked home with Calhoun,
who said that the principles which I had avowed
were just and noble; but that in the Southern country,
whenever they were mentioned, they were always
understood as applying only to white men.
Domestic labor was confined to the blacks,
and such was the prejudice, that if he,
who was the most popular man in his district,
were to keep a white servant in his house,
his character and reputation would be irretrievably ruined.
I said that this confounding of the ideas of servitude
and labor was one of the bad effects of slavery; but he
thought it attended with many excellent consequences.
It did not apply to all kinds of labor—
not for example to farming.
He himself had often held the plough; so had his father.
Manufacturing and mechanical labor was not degrading.
It was only manual labor—the proper work for slaves.
No white person could descend to that.
And it was the best guarantee to equality among the whites.
It produced an unvarying level among them.
It not only did not excite, but did not even
admit of inequalities by which one white man
could domineer over another.
I told Calhoun I could not see things in the same light.
It is in truth all perverted sentiment
mistaking labor for slavery and dominion for freedom.
The discussion of this Missouri question
has betrayed the secret of their souls.
In the abstract they admit that slavery is an evil;
they disclaim all participation in the introduction of it and
cast it all upon the shoulders of our old Grandam Britain.
But when probed to the quick upon it,
they show at the bottom of their souls
pride and vainglory in their condition of masterdom.
They fancy themselves more generous and noble-hearted
than the plain freemen who labor for subsistence.
They look down upon the simplicity of a Yankee’s
manners because he has no habits of overbearing
like theirs and cannot treat negroes like dogs.
It is among the evils of slavery that
it taints the very sources of moral principle.
It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice;
for what can be more false and heartless than
this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights
of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin?
It perverts human reason and reduces man endowed
with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned
by the Christian religion, that slaves are happy and
contented in their condition, that between master and slave
there are ties of mutual attachment and affection,
that the virtues of the master are refined and exalted by the
degradation of the slave, curse Britain for having given them
slaves, burn at the stake negroes convicted of crimes for the
terror of the example, and writhe in agonies of fear at the
very mention of human rights as applicable to men of color.
The impression produced upon my mind by the progress
of this discussion is that the bargain between freedom and
slavery contained in the Constitution of the United States
is morally and politically vicious, inconsistent with the
principles upon which alone our Revolution can be justified;
cruel and oppressive, by riveting the chains of slavery,
by pledging the faith of freedom to maintain and
perpetuate the tyranny of the master; and grossly unequal
and impolitic by admitting that slaves are at once
enemies to be kept in subjection, property to be secured
or restored to their owners, and persons not to be
represented themselves, but for whom their masters are
privileged with nearly a double share of representation.
The consequence has been that this slave
representation has governed the Union.
Benjamin portioned above his brethren
has ravined as a wolf.
In the morning he has devoured his prey,
and at night he has divided the spoil.
It would be no difficult matter to prove by reviewing
the history of the Union under this Constitution,
that almost everything which has contributed to the
honor and welfare of the nations has been accomplished
in despite of them or forced upon them, and that everything
unpropitious and dishonorable, including the blunders
and follies of their adversaries may be traced to them.
I have favored this Missouri compromise,
believing it to be all that could be effected
under the present Constitution, and from
extreme unwillingness to put the Union at hazard.
But perhaps it would have been a wiser as well as
a bolder course to have persisted in the restriction upon
Missouri, till it should have terminated in a convention
of the States to revise and amend the Constitution.
This would have produced a new Union
at thirteen or fourteen States unpolluted with slavery,
with a great and glorious object to effect,
namely, that of rallying to their standard the other States
by the universal emancipation of their slaves.
If the Union must be dissolved, slavery is precisely
the question upon which it ought to break.
For the present, however, this contest is laid asleep.6
At a cabinet meeting on March 13 they discussed what to do on two subjects.
The first subject considered was the case of a number
of pirates now under sentence of death at Baltimore,
Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans—
all cases of privateers under the South American colors.
The whole number is forty-five.
The opinion was unanimous that some
of them must be executed, but that a large
proportion of them should be reprieved.
The papers relating to them were read with
a view to ascertain the individuals who, by any
extenuating circumstances, might have any claim
to be considered fit subjects for mercy….
It was concluded that the public justice and example
required the execution of two at each place, and that
the rest might be reprieved and ultimately pardoned.
Some question was made by Mr. Crawford whether
the power of the President extended to a commutation of
punishment; but it was not determined, and should,
I think, be taken up and deliberately decided hereafter.
Wirt said the power of the King to commute punishment
was exercised only by special statutes.
The second subject discussed was the application
from the Governor of Georgia for treaties to be
held with the Creek and Cherokee Indians.
Calhoun expressed himself to me very much averse
to the measure; he said, and now repeated, that
those nations had lately made very sensitive cessions,
and with great reluctance; that the attempt now to
obtain further cessions would certainly not succeed,
unless we should bully them, and at a great expense.
A treaty would cost fifty thousand dollars,
and we should be obliged to pay very nearly
the full value for the lands if we obtained them.
To all this Crawford assented, but said there
would be great dissatisfaction in the State
if the application should be rejected.
There was an expedient proposed of holding one
of the treaties with the Creeks, the Cherokees being
still more reluctant at making any further cession.
The President finally asked me what was my opinion.
I said the United States were bound by compact with the
State of Georgia to obtain the cessions as soon as possible,
and my opinion was that we ought to do precisely
what the State of Georgia asked us to do.
It was accordingly so determined, and that a message
should immediately be sent to Congress recommending
that provision be made by law for holding the treaty.7
On March 21 J. Q. Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
Crawford declared himself in favor of the measure
more frankly and explicitly than I expected,
though he saw, and with us all remarked that it was
subject to much misconception and misrepresentation….
He also thought that the distressed condition of the
Spanish Government was a circumstance of
considerable weight to urge forbearance on our part.
He knew it was the feeling of several members of Congress
and named particularly Mr. Walker of Alabama as having
expressed the sentiment to him.
I added that this motive appeared to me
to be of great power; perhaps of itself
sufficient to justify the whole change.
As a real motive it was magnanimous;
and true magnanimity was, in my opinion,
the highest wisdom of a nation.
Nor had I any doubt that we should get some credit for it—
not indeed in the opinions or acknowledgment
of our envious enemies, but in that of all those
who are disposed to befriend us.
So, too, we should get credit from Russia
and France for manifesting and avowing
a deference for their opinion and wishes.8
John Quincy Adams wrote about a cabinet meeting on March 29:
The President proposed for consideration the question,
upon the proposal of Manuel Torres, that the
Government should sell upon credit to the
Republic of Colombia any number short of
twenty thousand stand of arms to enable them to extend
the South American Revolution into Peru and Mexico….
Well, the question was first discussed whether the
Executive could sell at all, without a special authority
from Congress, arms belonging to the public.
This was principally between Mr. Crawford and Mr. Calhoun.
The right of the Executive to sell was maintained
by Calhoun entirely upon the ground of usage,
and yet he adduced no well-authenticated precedent
of a sale without a special authority by law….
There was a strong wish expressed by Calhoun and
Thompson that we might furnish these arms if we could.
Crawford was less explicit and more shy.
I gave no opinion till directly appealed to by him—
observing that it was a question particularly
involving Foreign Relations, and of the
resort of the Department of State.
What says Mr. Adams?
I said there was no hesitation in my mind.
To supply the arms professedly for the purpose set
forth in the memorial of Torres would be a direct
departure from neutrality, an act of absolute hostility
to Spain, for which the Executive was not competent
by the Constitution without the authority of Congress.
This was enough for me.
But I would go further.
It would in my opinion be not only an act of war,
but of wrongful and dishonorable war committed
in the midst of professions of neutrality.
It would also be as impolitic
as wrongful and unconstitutional.
Neutrality to foreign wars had from the establishment
of the Constitution of the United States been justly
and wisely fixed as the permanent policy of this nation.
It was of the utmost importance to
adhere inflexibly to that system.
Between it and that of mingling in every European national
war I saw no middle term; and if we once departed from it,
I saw no other prospect for this nation than a
career of washing their blood-stained hands in blood.
Upon every principle therefore of right, of justice, of policy,
and of humanity, I was opposed to the measure….
A remark that I have occasion frequently to make
is that moral considerations seldom appear to have
much weight in the minds of our statesmen,
unless connected with popular feelings.
The dishonorable feature of giving secret aid
to the revolutionists, while openly professing
neutrality was barely not denied.
The President admits it.
No one else seems to think that it ought to stand
in the way of measures otherwise expedient,
especially if supported by popular prejudice.
My own deliberate opinion is, that the more of
pure moral principle is carried into the policy
and conduct of Government, the wiser
and more profound will that policy be.
If it is not the uniform course of human events that virtue
should be crowned with success, it is at least the uniform
will of Heaven that virtue should be the duty of man.9
On 7 April 1820 Secretary of State Adams wrote in his Journal:
7th. General Don Francisco Dionisio Vivés, the person of
confidence whom the King of Spain promised to send to ask
explanations about the Florida Treaty, has arrived at
New York in the packet-ship James Monroe from Liverpool.
I received this day dispatches from A. Gallatin of
15th February, and from R. Rush of 25th February, showing
that Vivés had passed through Paris and London on his way.
Gallatin had seen him, and says he has not with him
the Spanish ratification, but is empowered,
if the explanation should be satisfactory,
to agree that the United States should take possession
without waiting for the ratification from Madrid.
Rush had not seen him; but by comparing the two
statements, it appears that Vivés told Pasquier,
the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, that
the subject of the grants would be accommodated,
but the principal difficulties would be in relation
to the piracies and to South America; and a very
few days afterwards told Lord Castlereagh that
he should be able to convince the American Government
that Onís had exceeded his instructions.
I took these dispatches to the President and observed
to him that as Vivés did not bring the ratification, and as
he appeared to have told one story at Paris and another
at London, it gave strong grounds for suspicion that the real
object of his mission was to procrastinate and come to no
conclusion: it would therefore be necessary to anticipate
that result and determine upon the course to be pursued
both with him and afterwards on the supposition that
we are to bring to a speedy close the negotiation with him.
The President said he really did not think
we ought to go to war for Florida, or that the nation
would be willing to proceed to that extremity.
This was also my opinion.
But after what had passed, I believed Florida might be
occupied without risking a war, and it would deserve
consideration whether any other course could be
taken consistently with the honor of the nation.
The President desired me to send the dispatches to the
other members of the Administration, and said he would
afterwards have a consultation upon the subject.10
Secretary of State Adams wrote in his Diary about
newspapers and politics on 12 May 1820:
May 12. — Pennsylvania has been for about twenty years
governed by two newspapers in succession: one, the Aurora
edited by Duane, an Irishman, and the other, the
Democratic Press edited by John Binns, an Englishman.
Duane had been expelled from British India for sedition,
and Binns had been tried in England for high treason.
They are both men of considerable talents and
profligate principles, always for sale to the highest bidder,
and always insupportable burdens by their
insatiable rapacity to the parties they support.
With the triumph of Jefferson in 1801, Duane,
who had contributed to it, came in for his share,
and more than his share, of emolument and patronage.
With his printing establishment at Philadelphia
he connected one in this city; obtained by extortion almost
the whole of the public printing, but being prodigal and
reckless, never could emerge from poverty, and always
wanting more, soon encroached upon the powers of
indulgence to his cravings which the heads of Departments
possessed, and quarreled both with Mr. Madison and
Mr. Gallatin for staying his hand from public plunder.
In Pennsylvania too he contributed to bring in McKean,
and then labored for years to run him down
contributed to bring in Snyder and soon turned against him.
Binns in the meantime had come after his trial as a fugitive
from England and had commenced editor of a newspaper.
Duane had been made by Mr. Madison a colonel in the
army; and as Gibbon, the captain of Hampshire militia,
says he was useful to Gibbon, the historian of the
Roman Empire, so Duane, the colonel, was a useful auxiliary
to Duane the printer, for fleecing the public by palming
upon the army, at extravagant prices, a worthless
compilation upon military discipline that he had published.11
On 28 May 1820 John Quincy Adams wrote this letter to Albert Gallatin:
I have the honor of enclosing herewith copies of the
public documents relating to the negotiation with Spain,
which have been recently communicated to Congress;
together with copies of letters which have since
passed between General Vivés and this Department.
Upon the result of that minister’s mission
and the deficiency of his powers,
no comment can now be necessary or useful.
You will observe that he has not only denied that
he was authorized in any event to give a pledge
of the ratification of the treaty by consenting to the
immediate occupation of Florida by the United States,
but also that he ever stated either to you or to
Baron Pasquier that he had such an authority.
In communicating the documents to Congress,
as the material question for their consideration
arising from them was, whether the case under
all its circumstances required that the legislature
in the exercise of their exclusive constitutional powers
should substitute action to negotiation in our relations
with Spain, it was thought necessary to make known
to them every fact in the possession of the executive
which might have an important bearing on the question.
The facts stated in your letter of 15 February, as asserted
by General Vivés to Baron Pasquier and to you in separate
conversations at different times, apparently further
confirmed by intimations from the Spanish Ambassador, the
Duke of Fernan Nuñez, were of such a character, compared
with the explicit declarations of General Vivés here, that the
communication of them to Congress was thought advisable.
Even on the supposition that General Vivés had been
misunderstood both by Baron Pasquier and yourself,
it appeared to be more expedient that the apparent
disagreement between his declaration at different times and
places should be publicly known, subject to such elucidations
as might afterwards be offered, than that the disclosure
of what had been understood to say at Paris should be
withheld, with the chances of its being disavowed hereafter,
and appearing to be an incident of material significancy
to the real objects of the General’s mission, and to the
attitude of the two nations with reference to each other.
It is proper to advise you that in the communication of
these representations of General Vivés by Baron Pasquier
to the French legation here, he is understood to have
expressed himself in terms not altogether positive,
but to have intimated that he had reason to believe
the General possessed the power above mentioned….
Under the change of government which has taken
place in Spain, it appears to be uncertain how the
diplomatic relations between that country and
the other European states will be affected.
As the events which produced the revolution appear to be
considered in a published speech of Baron Pasquier, chiefly
with reference to their bearing upon military discipline,
probably the intercourse between France and Spain may
be less cordial for some time than it has been; and the
influence of the former at Madrid less ostensibly respected.
It is to be presumed, however, that a main object
of the Cortes government will be to conciliate the
acquiescence of their neighbors, and that they will be
particularly disposed to cultivate the friendship of France.
We are convinced that through the whole of this
negotiation the intention and good offices of France have
been friendly to both parties; and although they have been
inefficacious to operate upon Spain, and cannot be expected
to carry with them hereafter even so much weight as
before, we have no doubt they will be used as far as
they can with propriety be applied, and the President
requests continuance of the useful attention which
you have constantly bestowed upon these concerns.12
John Quincy Adams on June 4 wrote in his Diary:
June 4 — Among the letters received this day
was one from Josiah Quincy, Corresponding Secretary
to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
at Boston, announcing to me that the Society
had at their annual meeting on the
30th of last month, elected me their President.
I answered the letter and accepted the office,
because I thought there would be an
appearance of affectation in refusing it.
The arts and sciences have been objects
of my admiration through life.
I would it were in my power to say they have
been objects of my successful cultivation!
Honors like this produce in my mind
humiliation as well as pride.13
On 5 June 1820 John Quincy Adams wrote this short response to Josiah Quincy:
Under the encouragement of your obliging promise
to supply in the discharge of the duties of this office
the deficiencies unavoidable, from the circumstances
of my present situation, I accept it with a grateful sense
of the favor by which it has been conferred upon me.
If an ardent attachment to the arts which contribute
to the comfort and elegance of life, and a deep
veneration for the sciences which adorn and dignify
the human character, could alike supply the deficiencies
which admit of no substitute, I should receive with
unmingled pleasure this allotment of one of the highest
distinctions to which virtuous ambition can aspire.14
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams on June 7 wrote this letter to Henry Middleton:
As it will be impossible to prepare for the mail of
Tomorrow, the papers and documents which are to be
furnished you, those only which will be indispensably
necessary to enable you to proceed upon your mission
will be now forwarded to you, and the rest will be
transmitted to you in duplicates one to London, which
it is hoped may arrive there soon after yourself,
and the other directly to St. Petersburg to meet you there.
The Emperor of Russia has consented to act
as the arbitrator between the United States and
Great Britain on the question relating to the slaves.
A joint application from the ministers of the two
governments will be necessary to
introduce the subject to him in form.
Mr. Bagot, as you know, is the British ambassador
newly appointed to Russia, and as he was to
leave London to proceed upon his mission in May,
he will probably reach St. Petersburg not long before you.
As you pass through London it may be convenient that
you should see Lord Castlereagh, and either directly or
through the medium of Mr. Rush, prepare in concert
with him the form of an application to be signed,
either jointly or in the same terms separately
by you and the British plenipotentiary.
A full power is enclosed among your papers
to perform any act or acts relating to this transaction.
It is apprehended that a similar full power will be
necessary for Mr. Bagot, but this may perhaps
not have occurred to the British government.
Have the goodness to suggest it to Lord Castlereagh.
Should he accede to the idea and furnish Mr. Bagot
with such a power, copies of both should be
interchanged between you and him and also
communicated to the Russian government.
Mr. Bagot by his diplomatic rank as Ambassador will of
course in all ordinary cases take precedence of yours;
but as a plenipotentiary for the transaction of this business,
he will have no such pretension, and you will take care to
observe in the signature of all papers and the arrangement
of the parties in all documents, the rules prescribed by
your instructions of insisting upon the alternative.
In all cases of mediations, it is an admitted practice
that papers requiring the signature of all the parties
should be signed first by the mediators.
The principle will undoubtedly extend to this case,
and will no doubt be readily agreed to
on the part of the British government.
You will claim the alternative, therefore,
only with regard to the British plenipotentiary,
and not to the persons representing the empire.
The most important documents relating to this claim
are contained in the printed message of the President
of 7 February 1817, a copy of which is now transmitted.
The amount of property involved in it is so considerable,
and the right of the case is so clear on our side, that the
President feels a deep interest in its successful termination.
I beg leave to recommend it to your most earnest attention
and that nothing may be omitted to present it in the
clearest possible light to the Emperor’s government.
It is also desirable that it should be pursued without delay,
and therefore that your detention in England
should be as short as possible.
In the proceedings relating to this affair
everything is committed to your discretion,
and every reliance placed upon the vigilance
and care with which it will be managed by you.
I regret exceedingly to be deprived of the opportunity
of a personal interview with you before your departure,
and of the satisfaction with which I should have
communicated to you every information which might
be useful to you on your arrival at St. Petersburg.
I shall write you further as soon as possible, and in the
meantime have only to assure you of my most earnest
good wishes that your voyages may be prosperous to
yourself and your family, and your mission equally
satisfactory to you and advantageous to our country.15
On 15 June 1820 Secretary of State Adams wrote this letter to President James Monroe:
On receiving your letter of the 9th instant by the return of
the messenger, I immediately sent to request the Secretary
of the Treasury and of War, the only other members of
the administration then in the city, to call at the office of
this Department; when your letter concerning Rosewaine
and the papers relative to the case were considered,
and the opinion in concurrence with yours being unanimous
I answered the letter of Marshal Prince accordingly.
Under the instructions in your letter of the 2nd instant,
and in pursuance of the principles decided by you after full
deliberation heretofore, pardons were made out for
Samuel Poole and Francis Oglesbee (whose real name is
Speir), under sentence of death for piracy at Richmond.
It had been determined that the whole number convicted
at that place should be reprieved with the exception of two,
and the Chief Justice and the district attorney were
requested to give information, if there was extenuating
circumstances in the cases of any of the individuals
recommending them to mercy more than the others.
The letters received from those officers
are herewith enclosed.
In the Richmond Enquirer of the 6th, received
here on the morning of the 9th, there was a long
statement and representation addressed to you
invoking the exercise of mercy in behalf of all
the persons under sentence at Richmond.
On consideration of that paper, together with the letters
of the Chief Justice and Mr. Stanard, which left it scarcely
possible to distinguish who should be the two sufferers of
fourteen, and that those indicated by the order of the list
were, one a foreigner, and the other a man of color, it was
presumed by Mr. Crawford, Mr. Calhoun, and me, that you
would approve the extension of the reprieve to them all:
and as there would have scarcely been time to give you this
information, to receive your orders, and then to transmit
the reprieve till further order was made out for the whole
fourteen, and forwarded to the marshal on the 11th.
After it was gone, Mr. Fenwick of Richmond came with
petitions, signed by many highly respectable names, praying
for the extension of clemency to all those unfortunate men.
It was his intention to have proceeded with them to
your residence in Albermarle; but upon my informing
him that the pardon and reprieve issued, he concluded
to return to Richmond, leaving with me the petitions
and other papers herewith enclosed.
I have now the honor to forward a statement of all the
persons who were under sentence at the time when you left
the city, and of the disposal which has been made of them.
There have been two executions at Baltimore,
two at Charleston, one at Savannah, two at New Orleans,
and this day is fixed for three at Boston.
Seven have been pardoned, and thirty-four are under
reprieves till further order, to be kept in close confinement
until you shall give further directions concerning them.
This was thought safer as well as more convenient
than further definite respites for two months,
which would have required the issuing of new
warrants every time that the term for a final decision
concerning them should have been prolonged.
A letter from the mother of Ralph Clintock,
respited till further order at Savannah, has been received by
me, and is likewise among the papers herewith forwarded.
Clintock is the person by whose disclosures the
conduct of the collector of Savannah, and still more
that of his brother, have been so deeply implicated.
Colonel Freeman called a few days since to enquire
if the confidential papers submitted by him
could be returned to him.
When you shall have come to a decision whether any,
and if any, what measure is to be taken upon these
indications, I request the return of the papers
which you will recollect you took with you.
From the evidence on the trial it appeared that the
instructions to the captain of the privateer in which
Clintock sailed were, if they took any vessel other
than Spanish, they should send her in with orders
to the prize master to personate the original captain
of the vessel in making the entry at the custom house.
The Nordberg, a Danish vessel, was taken,
and the prize master did personate the Danish
captain in making entry of her at Savannah.
Clintock’s story is that these instructions were in the
handwriting of the brother of the collector at Savannah.
These instructions were among the papers
produced and filed in court upon the trial.
But when searched for after Clintock’s disclosures, they
had disappeared from the files and were not to be found.16
Secretary Adams wrote on 5 July 1820 in a letter to
Henry Middleton, a representative of South Carolina:
The present political system of Europe is founded upon
the overthrow of that which had grown out of the French
Revolution, and has assumed its shape from the body
of treaties concluded at Vienna in 1814 and ’15 at Paris,
towards the close of the same year 1815,
and at Aix la Chapelle in the autumn of 1818.
Its general character is that of a compact between the five
principal European powers: Austria, France, Great Britain,
Prussia, and Russia for the preservation of universal peace.
These powers having then just emerged victorious from
a long portentous and sanguinary struggle against the
oppressive predominancy of one of them under the
revolutionary sway, appear to have bent all their faculties
to the substitution of a system which should preserve
them from that evil; the preponderancy of one power
by the subjugation, virtual if not nominal, of the rest.
Whether they perceived in its full extent, considered in
its true colors, or provided by judicious arrangements for
the revolutionary temper of the weapons by which they
had so long been assailed, and from which they had so
severely suffered, is a question now in a course of solution.
Their great anxiety appears to have been
to guard themselves each against the other.
The League of Peace, so far as it was a covenant
of organized governments, has proved effectual
to its purposes by an experience of five years.
Its only interruption has been in this hemisphere, though
between nations strictly European, by the invasion of the
Portuguese on the territory claimed by Spain, but already
lost to her on the eastern shore of the Rio de la Plata.
This aggression too the European alliance have
undertaken to control, and in connection with it
they have formed projects, hitherto abortive,
of interposing in the revolutionary struggle
between Spain and her South American colonies.
As a compact between governments it is
not improbable that the European alliance will last
as long as some of the states who are parties to it.
The warlike passions and propensities of the
present age find their principal aliment, not in
the enmities between nation and nation, but in the
internal dissensions between the component parts of all.
The war is between nations and their rulers.
The Emperor Alexander may be considered as the
principal patron and founder of the league of peace.
His interest is the most unequivocal in support of it.
His empire is the only party to the compact
free from that internal fermentation which
threatens the existence of all the rest.
His territories are the most extensive,
his military establishment the most stupendous,
his country the most improvable and thriving of them all.
He is, therefore, naturally the most obnoxious to the
jealousy and fears of his associates, and his circumstances
point his policy to a faithful adhesion to the general system,
with a strong reprobation of those who would resort to
special and partial alliances, from which any
one member of the league should be excluded.
This general tendency of his policy is corroborated by
the mild and religious turn of his individual character.
He finds a happy coincidence between the dictates
of his conscience and the interest of his empire.
And as from the very circumstance of his preponderancy
partial alliances might be most easily contracted by him
from the natural resort of the weak for the succor to the
strong, by discountenancing all such partial combinations, he
has the appearance of discarding advantages entirely within
his command, and reaps the glory of disinterestedness,
while most efficaciously providing for his own security.
Such is accordingly the constant indication of
the Russian policy since the peace of Paris in 1815.
The neighbors of Russia, which have the most to dread
from her overshadowing and encroaching powers are
Persia, Turkey, Austria, and Prussia, the two latter of which
are members of the European and even of the Holy Alliance,
while the two former are not only extra-European
in their general policy, but of religions which excluded them
from ever becoming parties, if not from ever
deriving benefit from that singular compact.
The political system of the United States
is also essentially extra-European.
To stand in firm and cautious independence of all
entanglement in the European system, has been a
cardinal point of their policy under every administration
of their government from the peace of 1783 to this day.
If at the original adoption of their system there
could have been any doubt of its justice or its wisdom,
there can be none at this time.
Every year’s experience rivets it more deeply
in the principles and opinions of the nation.
Yet in proportion as the importance of the United States
as one of the members of the general society of civilized
nations increases in the eyes of the others, the difficulties
of maintaining this system, and the temptations
to depart from it increase and multiply with it.17
On 24 July 1820 Secretary of State Adams wrote in his Memoirs about how
he instructed American diplomats in the State Department that were in foreign nations.
24th. I was engaged upon the draft of a form of
instruction for Ministers of the United States going abroad.
The documents to be furnished them—the particulars
relating to their compensation—those relating to the keeping
and transmission of their accounts, and to the mode of
writing their dispatches, are the same for all; and there are
several other objects upon which it has occurred to me that
standing and common instructions to all would be proper:
such as their corresponding with each other; their
deportment to the sovereign to whom they were accredited,
and to the Diplomatic Corps of the same Court;
their relations with the Consuls of the United States
in the same countries; their duties with regard to granting
passports; to insist upon the alternative in signing treaties,
and to decline accepting presents usually given by Kings
on the conclusion of treaties and to departing Ministers.
I have included all these in the form which I am now
preparing, and in making provision to furnish them
with a set of the United States Laws, Nile’s Register,
Wait’s State Papers, and the Commercial Digest,
lately published, have appropriated them to the missions,
and added an instruction to furnish any supplementary
information that they can collect respecting the
commercial regulations of foreign countries.18
On July 29 John Quincy Adams wrote this letter to President Monroe:
Three letters from Mr. Parker, United States
District Attorney at Charleston, South Carolina,
upon which I beg to be honored with your instructions.
Judge Johnson seems to have discovered an agent from
Buenos Aires here, of whom I never heard—a Mr. La Borde.
But the Wilson alias the United States brig Enterprise, alias
the Bolivar, is not now a Buenos Airean but a Colombian.
Weedon, the surgeon, whom they caught at Charleston,
is pleading his cause in the newspapers and insists that
no court has a right to try him but the court at Margarita.
He is for being tried only by his peers.
I hope Judge Johnson will show a little of his indignation
in his decision of the case, and also in that of the
mutineers of the General Rondeau, and above all that
the indignation will be pointed to the right quarter.
I take the liberty to propose that orders should be
given to the Navy Department to purchase the
Valiente and send her to cruise for Baltimore
South Americans, and especially for any
vessel commanded by José Almeida,
be her name or flag what it may.
I would also suggest that the collector at Norfolk
be requested to give information how so notorious
a pirate as Almeida could be permitted to refit his vessel
and recruit men and go to sea under the nose
of all the revenue officers in the United States,
merely by the paltry evasion of calling his vessel the Wilson,
and his co-pirate George Wilson her commander.
Weedon says that the ship from Porto Rico
bound to Baltimore which they took in the waters
of the United States was a slave trader.
That if true is some consolation.19
Secretary of State Adams wrote on 30 August 1820
this letter to President James Monroe:
I had an interview yesterday with Mr. Correa,
the Portuguese Minister, according to his request.
He strongly urged the proposal contained in his note
which I forwarded to you, for the appointment of
commissioners to investigate the complaints of
Portuguese subjects, owners of vessels and cargoes
taken by privateers fitted out in our ports and chiefly
officiated and manned by citizens of the United States.
I suggested to him that there were difficulties
opposed to the appointment of such a commission.
That it would be in its nature a judicial tribunal.
That the constitution and laws of the United States
had already provided tribunals for the trial of all such
cases as could be brought before such a commission.
That if there had been any misconduct in the judges
of the existing courts, they were liable themselves
to trial by impeachment; but that it was hardly to
be expected commissioners should be appointed
to perform the duties of those judges without
any allegation of complaint against them.
He insisted that it was impossible for Portuguese subjects
to obtain justice from our courts as now constituted.
That to impeach and remove the judges
would be no satisfaction, if it could take place.
That whether they should be impeached and punished
was for the exclusive consideration of this government itself.
But what Portugal had a right to claim was
indemnity for the wrongs of her subjects
committed by citizens of the United States.
It was notorious that great numbers of Portuguese
subjects had been ruined by these depredations,
and that at the very moment when the message
of the President at the commencement of the
last session of Congress was sent to that body,
there were seven privateers in the port of Baltimore,
known to be privateers waiting only for a wind to sail.
These things had produced such a temper both
in Portugal and in Brazil against the people
and government of the United States that he was
unwilling to tell me the proposal which had been
formally made in the king’s council concerning them.
That five or six years ago the people of the United States
were the nation of the earth for whom the Portuguese
felt the most cordial regard and friendship.
They were now those whom they most hated, and if the
government had considered the peace of the two countries
as at an end, they would have been supported in the
declaration by the hearty concurrence of the people.
That if no other consequence should follow from this
disposition, commercial restrictions would be certain.
That if the feelings of resentment should remain unalloyed,
and should even not disclose themselves in
overt acts at present, they would rankle and
occasions always present themselves in a
course of time when they may produce effect.
The desire of the king was to be upon good terms with the
United States, but the property of his subjects was robbed
upon the high seas by pirates sallying from the ports of the
United States without the trouble to assume a disguise.
This practice was continued year after year, in the midst of
professions of friendship from the American government.
It was impossible that he should put up with it.
I told him that you would take the proposal into
the most serious consideration, but probably would
come to no final determination until after returning
to this city and consulting the members of the
administration, after which I should answer his note.
He said he should be obliged to embark in the
course of next month for Rio de Janeiro,
but should present Mr. Amado as chargé d’affaires,
and the answer might be transmitted through him.
The encounters herewith are a letter and a
recommendation to mercy in behalf of W. Cornell,
from one or two of the jurymen by whom he was tried,
and a second letter from Mr. Byers to General Parker
concerning the new discovered island in the South Seas.20
On September 8 John Quincy Adams wrote this letter to President Monroe:
I now enclose a dispatch from Mr. Gallatin, No. 151
of 11 July with a note which he had already addressed
to Baron Parquier concerning the extra duties on both sides
in the navigation between the United States and France.
It appears from his letter that he was doubtful
whether they would enter into a negotiation
with him at all, but that as soon as the Legislative
Assemblies should rise, the king would lay a duty of
100 francs a ton upon American vessels which shall
have entered the French ports after the first of July.
There will be very few, if any of them, for such a
measure was apprehended by our merchants after the
act of Congress passed, and scarcely any vessel went.
Their numbers had been declining every year;
I might say almost every month, and another year
of the French system unresisted would have excluded them
almost as effectually as the hundred francs tonnage duty.
If after laying this new tonnage duty, they decline
negotiating, there will be neither French nor American
vessels in the trade, which will all be carried by the English.
I regret the publication of parts of Mr. Gallatiin’s letters,
as they may affect his personal consideration there.
But they were necessary to justify
the act of Congress and the nation.
It is proper to observe to you that, excepting with
regard to the question of special privilege in Louisiana,
I have neither sent nor drawn up the special instructions
concerning the negotiation which Mr. Gallatin expects.
Indeed they could not be prepared without particular
directions from you, nor probably without a general
consultation of the members of the administration by you.
The general principles which we proposed were reciprocity
of equal duties, as in our convention with Great Britain.
But there were
1. The above mentioned Louisiana privilege question.
2. The restoration of deserting mariners.
3. The consular convention.
4. The claims of our citizens for indemnities.
5. The question about the brokers at Havre.
6. Questions about the admission of our cotton
and tobacco upon favorable terms in France.
On all of which it has been impossible for me
to send detailed instructions until the principles on which
they were to be predicated should be settled by you.
Concluding that this could not be done in the dispersion
of the summer months I have not attempted to draft
those special instructions for the formation of a treaty,
and I have trusted they would be in time, after we
should know that the French government would negotiate.
I now mention these particulars, that you may
revolve them in your mind and determine what
course with regard to them you will think best to
take in the draft of special instructions for negotiation.
If they lay the hundred franc tonnage duty, which it seems
the king does not venture to propose to the chambers,
and cannot do of his own authority while they are in session,
after having gratified their spleen, I suppose they will
begin to think of coming to terms, and if so, it will be
important that Mr. Gallatin should be instructed upon
all the points above noted and perhaps some others.21
On 5 October 1820 Adams analyzed the character of William H. Crawford who had
been a United States Senator from Georgia 1807-13, Minister to France 1813-15,
Secretary of War 1815-16, and would be Treasury Secretary 1816-25:
Mr. Frye called likewise at the office with
Governor Clark’s pamphlet against Mr. Crawford.
It is bitter and presents Crawford’s
character in a very odious light.
In one respect it has the same fault
that it charges upon Crawford.
Clark declares his belief that Crawford is confederate
with Mitchell in his slave smuggling speculations.
This I do not believe, and Clark adduces no evidence
to support the charge but Crawford’s endeavors
to screen Mitchell from punishment.
But this I ascribe, as well as the more exceptionable
screening of others, to ambition and not avarice.
Crawford’s intense passion is unbridled ambition,
and he has great address in his conduct,
though he has exposed to so many the nakedness
of his heart that he cannot be called very profound.
His ambition has been inflamed by success far beyond
either his services or his talents—
the former of which are very slight,
and the latter much overrated.
His principal merit is firmness.22
Adams on October 14 wrote in his journal:
14th. I began this morning the final draft of my
report to the Senate upon weights and measures.
I also extracted from the statute books of New Jersey
containing the Acts passed before and during the
American Revolution, their laws relating to the subject.
The Governor of New Jersey, in answer to Rush’s letter
requesting the information required by the resolution
of the Senate wrote him that there was no statute
of the State concerning it; but he was mistaken.
There are several.
I also called on the Attorney-General Wirt
with papers relating to the case at Savannah.
I found him engaged in the papers of the Indian Agent,
who, he said, was the most impudent rascal that he had
ever had any knowledge of; and if he was not guilty,
there was no evidence in human testimony.
But Mitchell had nevertheless, got so complete an
ascendency over Mr. Crawford that he believed him entirely
innocent, and he had written so here; and he (Crawford)
had requested that at all events the decision, whatever
it might be, should be made before his return to the city.
Crawford’s efforts to screen Mitchell
from punishment are marked with desperation.
It is impossible he should believe him innocent.
But at heart he thinks slave smuggling no crime,
and supposes his own political fortune
depends upon Mitchell being cleared.23
On October 16 Adams wrote,
16th. Manuel Torres, the Chargé d’Affaires from
the new republic of Colombia, called this morning at
my house, having arrived last evening from Philadelphia.
He comes to renew his old propositions for a
recognition of the republic of Colombia,
and his request for a supply of muskets.
He gave me, in his way, a long history of the
campaign in Caraccas and New Granada,
and requested to have another conversation with me,
for which I appointed tomorrow at two o’clock.
He told me that the Agents of South America
who had been at Gibraltar and organized the revolt
of Quiroga were new members of the Cortes in Spain.
At one o’clock I presented Mr. Stratford Canning,
as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary
from Great Britain, to the President, to whom he delivered
a credential letter from the King of Great Britain, together
with two others; one being the letter announcing the recall
of Sir Charles Bagot from the mission to the United States,
and the other, the decease of the Duchess of York.
Mr. Canning was accompanied by Mr. Antrobus,
who took leave as Chargé d’Affaires,
and by Mr. Wilmot and Mr. Parish,
whom he presented as persons attached to the Legation.
He addressed the President in a formal, though short,
complimentary speech, which the President
answered with simplicity and propriety.
Canning’s speech was high-charged both
with compliments and with professions.
These are formalities, of course, of which
I have delivered and heard so many
that they seem to me flat and unprofitable.
Mr. Canning told me he wished to have another
conversation with me on the slave-trade propositions.
I appointed the day after tomorrow
at two o’clock to receive him.
Mr. Calhoun was also at the office with a letter
from General Flournoy, a Commissioner for
negotiating a treaty of cession from the Creek Indians.
There are two Commissioners of the United States
and two on the part of the State of Georgia.
Flournoy writes that the Georgia Commissioners
claim to join in holding the treaty, and desires the
Secretary of War to write to him that it can be held
only by the Commissioners of the United States.
Mr. Calhoun came with direction from the President
that I should write to the same effect to Governor Clark.24
John C. Calhoun was Secretary of War 1817-25.
On 20 October 1820 Adams wrote:
20th. Mr. Canning came and spent
about three hours at the office.
We went again over the ground of all his proposals
relating to the slave-trade.
I explained fully to him the nature of the difficulty
arising from the Constitution of the United States
to the establishment of any tribunal before whom
citizens of the Union should be amenable upon
penal statutes, from which tribunal there should
be no appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States,
and the Judges of which should not be impeachable
by our House of Representatives and before our Senate.
I also went largely into the objection arising from the
analogy between the right of visitation and search proposed
to be given by the Convention, and the claim of Great Britain
to the right of visitation and search to impress men.
The conversation was altogether free and unreserved,
the discussion invariably temperate,
and on his part, full of courtesy.
He suggested various expedients for obviating the
Constitutional difficulty; thought that the American members
of the tribunal might be subject to impeachment as
officers of the United States; alleged by way of precedent
the Commissions to which we had agreed by treaty to
submit questions of property and territorial rights,
and could not clearly discern the difference between
these questions of property and trials for forfeitures.
He contested the analogy between the right of search and
seizure proposed, and the claim of search for impressment;
hinting some regret that we should even harbor the
sentiment that there was any analogy between them,
or bring that subject into view at all in this case, which I told
him I should certainly not have done on its own account,
but observed that it was indispensable to unfold with candor
and sincerity all our objections to the proposed Convention.
He finally suggested that, if we could not agree to the
proposals of Great Britain for cooperation, his Government
wished us to offer any proposals on our part tending
to the same object; upon which I told him the
President would deliberately consider the subject,
and if any proposal should occur to him as suitable
to be made, I should communicate it to him hereafter.25Adams Diplomacy in November-December 1820
John Quincy described a cabinet meeting with President Monroe on 1 November 1820:
November 1st. There was a meeting of the members
of the Administration at the President’s, and a discussion
of the proposals made by the French Government to
Mr. Gallatin concerning the tonnage question, and that
upon the eighth article of the Louisiana cession Treaty.
The proposals are that as upon a system of reciprocity
the carriage of all the commerce between two countries
would be in our ships, because the French shippers
cannot stand an equal competition with ours,
we should consent to an amount of discriminating
duties against us sufficient to restore the balance, and
give the French shipping an equal share of the carriage.
The opinion was unanimous that
we could not accept this proposal.
The case of the pretended
port of St. Joseph was considered.
Immediately after the commencement of the
new tonnage duty upon French vessels, a ship
called the Apollon came and entered the river
St. Mary’s, keeping on the Spanish side of the water.
The captain took his papers to St. Augustine,
and there made a formal entry of the ship.
The Governor of Florida then in collusion with this man
and with a person named Clarke, a Spanish Consular
Agent at St. Mary’s, constituted a pretended port of
St. Joseph, immediately opposite to St. Mary’s on the Florida
side of the river at a place where there is no settlement.
Clarke was made captain and commander of the port of
St. Joseph, and the plan was to furnish a port both for
French and British vessels, to come and receive their
cargoes from St. Mary’s in evasion and defiance of our laws.
Clarke wrote Colonel James Forbes two letters disclosing
the whole plan, and inviting him to take a share in it.
Forbes enclosed the letters confidentially to me.
The purpose of defeating altogether the operation
of our navigation and French tonnage laws, and the
hope of keeping open the tariff quarrel with France by it,
are distinctly avowed in Clarke’s letters.
More than two years since, when the Navigation Act
partially interdicting the trade with the British
West India Islands in British vessels was made;
there had been an attempt by a British vessel
to enter the river St. Mary’s, and remaining
on the Spanish side, to trade with our port in that way.
The Collector was then instructed by the Secretary
of the Treasury to permit no such vessel to go there,
and in cases where the intention to evade or defeat
the law was manifest, to warn them off, and if
they disregarded the warning, to seize the vessel.
At that time the purpose was given up.
When the Apollon came last summer, the Collector of
St. Mary’s wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury,
requesting new instructions, and enquiring
whether those given two years before were
to be considered as applying to this case.
When the Collector’s letter was received here at
the Treasury, Mr. Crawford was absent in Georgia.
The President was in Virginia.
The Comptroller Anderson asked my opinion, and I gave it,
that the instructions on the former occasion
were applicable to this case.
The Apollon was accordingly seized,
after being allowed an opportunity to go away;
but her captain chose to protest and give up his vessel.
Mr. Roth, the French Chargé d’Affaires,
took up the affair very seriously and
wrote me a high-tone note on the subject.
At the meeting this day it was determined that the
District Attorney of the United States in Georgia
should be directed by the Secretary of the Treasury
to libel the Apollon for a violation of the revenue laws
of the United States, and in case the decision of the
cause should be against the Government, which was
thought probable, he was to bring it by appeal
to the Supreme Court to be decided there.
My opinion was that, as a case of flagrant conspiracy
against the law of the United States, the Court would
probably sustain the seizure and decide in favor of the
Government; but even if the decision should be adverse,
it cannot take place within fourteen months
from this time, and in the interval the fraudulent
and spurious port of St. Joseph will not be accessible
to a multitude of vessels for a resort to defeat both
our French tonnage laws and our Navigation Acts.
I was directed to send copies of Clarke the Spanish
Agent’s letters to Forbes to the District Attorney,
with directions to him to produce them at the proper
time on the trial, and in the meantime to keep them secret.
After I returned from the President’s, I received dispatches
from A. Gallatin, from which it appears that he has come
to a stand in negotiating with the French Government, and
that they have determined to send Mr. Hyde de Neuville
back here, and to transfer the negotiation to this place.26
On 12 November 1820 Adams wrote:
12th. I called upon Mr. Calhoun, the Secretary of War,
and rode with him to the President’s.
As we were riding, Calhoun spoke to me with great
concern at the reappearance of the question upon
the admission of Missouri as a State into the Union.
After all the difficulty with which it was compromised
at the last session of Congress, the Convention which
made their Constitution has raised a new obstacle by an
article declaring it to be the duty of the Legislature to pass
laws prohibiting negroes and persons of color from coming
into the State; which is directly repugnant to the article in
the Constitution of the United States which provides that
the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges
and immunities of citizens of the several States.
Calhoun said that he did not know how this difficulty
could be surmounted, unless by considering the
article in the Missouri Constitution as null and void
upon the very principle of its repugnancy.
And he did not know whether
even that could be sufficient.27
On November 29 Secretary of State Adams wrote this in his Memoirs:
29th. I returned Mr. Baldwin’s visit and had a long
conversation with him on the subject of the Missouri
question of the present session, which he agreed
was a totally different question from that of the last.
He said, however, that those who now objected
to the admission of Missouri on the ground of
the exceptionable article in her Constitution,
connected the restriction question of the last session
with it and wished to reopen the whole controversy.
I told him I believed there would be a very small portion
of the House for that, and I thought it would be quite
unjustifiable; but the article in the Missouri Constitution
was directly repugnant to the rights reserved to every
citizen of the Union in the Constitution of the United States.
Its purport went to disfranchise all the people
of color who were citizens of the free States.
The Legislatures of those States were bound in
duty to protect the rights of their own citizens;
and if Congress by the admission of Missouri with
that clause in her Constitution, should sanction this
outrage upon those rights, the States, a portion of
whose citizens should be thus cast out from the pale of
the Union, would be bound to vindicate them by retaliation.
And if I were a member of the Legislature of one
of those States, I would move for a declaratory act,
that so long as the article in the Constitution of Missouri
depriving the colored citizens of the State, say of
Massachusetts, of their rights as citizens of the
United States within the State of Missouri, should subsist,
so long the white citizens of the State of Missouri should be
held as aliens within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
not entitled to claim or enjoy within the same
any right or privilege of a citizen of the United States.
And I would go further and declare that Congress,
having by their sanction of the Missouri Constitution,
by admitting that State into the Union without excepting
against that article which disfranchised a portion of the
citizens of Massachusetts, had violated the Constitution
of the United States; wherefore until that portion of the
citizens of Massachusetts whose rights are violated by the
article in the Missouri Constitution should be reintegrated
in the full enjoyment and possession of those rights,
no clause or article of the Constitution of the United States
should within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts be so
construed as to authorize any person whomsoever to claim
the property or possession of a human being as a slave.
And I would prohibit by law the delivery of any
fugitive slave upon the claim of his master.
All which I would do, not to violate, but to redeem
from violation the Constitution of the United States.
It was indeed to be expected that such laws would again
be met by retaliatory laws of Missouri and the other
slave-holding States, and the consequence would be the
dissolution “de facto” of the Union, but that dissolution would
have commenced by the article in the Missouri Constitution.
That article was in itself a dissolution of the Union.
If acquiesced in, it would change the terms
of the federal compact—change its terms
by robbing thousands of citizens of their rights.
And what citizens?
The poor, the unfortunate, the helpless.
Already cursed by the mere color of their skin, already
doomed by their complexion to drudge in the lowest offices
of society, excluded by their color from all the refined
enjoyments of life accessible to others, excluded from the
benefits of a liberal education, from the bed, from the table,
and from all the social comforts of domestic life,
this barbarous article deprives them of the little remnant
of right yet left them—their rights as citizens and as men.
Weak and defenseless as they are, so much the more
sacred is the obligation of the Legislature of the States
to which they belong to defend their lawful rights;
and I would defend them should the
dissolution of the Union be the consequence.
For it would not be the defense; it would be the
violation of their rights, to which all the consequences
would be imputable; and if the dissolution of the Union
must come, let it come from no other cause but this.
If slavery be the destined sword in the hand of the
destroying angel which is to sever the ties of the Union,
the same sword will cut in sunder the bonds of slavery itself.
A dissolution of the Union for the cause of slavery would
be followed by a servile war in the slave-holding States,
combined with a war between the
two severed portions of the Union.
It seems to me that its result must be the extirpation
of slavery from this whole continent; and calamitous and
desolating as this course of events in its progress must be,
so glorious would be its final issue, that as God shall
judge me, I dare not say that it is not to be desired.28
On Christmas Day in 1820 Adams reflected on his life and professions writing:
Literature has been the charm of my life,
and could I have carved out my own fortunes,
to literature would my whole life have been devoted.
I have been a lawyer for bread and
a statesman at the call of my country.
In the practice of law I never should have
attained the highest eminence, for the
want of natural and spontaneous eloquence.
The operations of my mind are slow,
my imagination sluggish, and my powers
of extemporaneous speaking very inefficient.
But I have much capacity for, and love of, labor,
habits on the whole of industry and temperance and a
strong and almost innate passion for literary pursuits.29
Notes
1. Memoirs of Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848
by John Quincy Adams ed. Charles Francis Adams, Volume IV, p. p. 502-503.
2. Ibid., p. 505-506.
3. Ibid., p. 510-511.
4. Ibid., p. 524-525.
5. Ibid., p. 528-531.
6. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams ed. Charles Francis Adams,
Volume V, p. 3-6, 8-9, 12.
7. Ibid., p. 19-20, 21.
8. Ibid., p. 28-29, 30.
9. Ibid., p. 45-47.
10. Ibid., p. 59-60.
11. Diary of John Quincy Adams 1794-1845, p. 240.
12. Writings of John Quincy Adams, Volume VII 1820-1823,
ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford, p. 34-36.
13. Ibid., p. 242.
14. Ibid., p. 36.
15. Ibid., p. 37-39.
16. Ibid., p. 43-45.
17. Writings of John Quincy Adams, Volume VII 1820-1823, p. 46-49.
18. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Volume V, p. 166-167.
19. Ibid., p. 57-58.
20. Ibid., p. 68-71.
21. Ibid., p. 71-73.
22. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Volume V, p. 185.
23. Ibid., p. 185-186.
24. Ibid., p. 186-187.
25. Ibid., p. 189-190.
26. Ibid., p. 195-197.
27. Ibid., p. 199.
28. Ibid., p. 208-210.
29. Ibid., p. 219-220.
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