On 3 January 1826 President John Quincy Adams sent this special message
to the United States House of Representatives:
In compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives the 23rd of last month,
I communicate herewith a report from the Secretary of War with the documents touching
the treaty with the Cherokee Indians ratified in 1819 by which the Cherokee title
to a portion of lands within the limits of North Carolina was extinguished.1
President Adams on January 9 sent a special message to the United States Senate
declaring that treaties were signed by the commissioners Brigadier-General Henry Atkinson
and Major Benjamin O’Fallon with the chiefs, headmen, and warriors of the Poncar tribe
on 9 June 1825, three Sioux tribes on June 22, Sinoe and Ogalla Sioux tribes on July 5,
the Cheyenne on July 6, Siounes on July 12, Hunkpapas on July 16, Ricara on July 18,
Mandan and Minnetaree on July 30, Ottoe and Missouri on September 25,
Pawnee on September 30, and the Maha on 6 October 1825.
On January 10 Adams transmitted a treaty that commissioners William Clark
and Lewis Cass signed with nine major tribes on 19 August 1825.
On January 30 Adams submitted treaties signed by commissioners Reeves, Sibley,
and Mather with Osage tribes on August 10 and the Kanzas tribe on 16 August 1825.
On 18 January 1826 President Adams wrote this in his Memoirs:
18th. The Secretary of War brought the first draft
of a new treaty with the Creek Indians, upon which
he has nearly agreed with them,
through the medium of Governor Cass.
Every attempt to prevail upon them to cede the whole of
their lands within the State of Georgia has proved abortive,
and after the deputation yesterday left the War Office,
under the impression that the negotiation was definitely
broken off, the first chief of the deputation,
Opothle Yoholo, attempted last evening to commit suicide.
This morning, however, a new effort has been made,
and they have consented not to depart from the line of the
Chattahoochee, but to take a more western branch
of it than they had hitherto been willing to yield.
Mr. Barbour said this was all he could expect to do,
and advised to conclude with them on these terms.
I agreed that he should.
I read over his draft and urged the expediency of some
supplementary provisions for the benefit of the other
portion of the Creek tribe, the friends of Mackintosh,
which Governor Barbour promised to introduce.2
On 19 January 1826 Adams wrote only this in his Memoirs for that day:
19th. Hodgson came to say he was preparing
to embark for Algiers, and to thank me
for the opportunity of going there.
My purpose is to attach to each of the consulates
in Barbary a young man for three years to learn
the Turkish and Arabic languages and the lingua Franca
with a view to have persons among our public officers
versed in those languages.
I have desired that Hodgson might be one of those persons,
as he has a fondness and a facility
for acquiring languages quite uncommon.
The other three students of this class
I suppose to select among the midshipmen
of the squadron in the Mediterranean.3
On January 31 President Adams transmitted to the
United States Senate this treaty with the Creek Nation:
I transmit herewith to the Senate, for their
consideration and advice with regard to its ratification,
a treaty concluded by the Secretary of War, duly
authorized thereto, with the chiefs and headmen of the
Creek Nation, deputed by them, and now in this city.
It has been agreed upon, and is presented to the
consideration of the Senate as a substitute for the treaty
signed at the Indian Springs on the 12th of February last.
The circumstances under which this received
on the 3rd of March last your advice and consent
to its ratification are known to you.
It was transmitted to me from the Senate on the
5th of March, and ratified in full confidence yielded to the
advice and consent of the Senate, under a firm belief,
rounded on the journal of the commissioners of the
United States and on the express statements in the letter
of one of them of the 16th of February to the then Secretary
of War, that it had been concluded with a large majority
of the chiefs of the Creek Nation and with a reasonable
prospect of immediate acquiescence by the remainder.
This expectation has not merely been disappointed.
The first measures for carrying the treaty into execution
had scarcely been taken when the two principal chiefs
who had signed it fell victims to the exasperation of the
great mass of the nation, and their families and dependents,
far from being able to execute the engagements on their
part, fled for life, safety, and subsistence from the
territories which they had assumed to cede, to our own.
Yet, in this fugitive condition, and while subsisting on
the bounty of the United States, they have been found
advancing pretensions to receive exclusively to themselves
the whole of the sums stipulated by the commissioners
of the United States in payment for all the lands of the
Creek Nation which were ceded by the terms of the treaty.
And they have claimed the stipulation of the eighth article,
that the United States would “protect the emigrating party
against the encroachments, hostilities, and impositions
of the whites and of all others,” as an engagement by
which the United States were bound to become the
instruments of their vengeance and to inflict upon
the majority of the Creek Nation the punishment of
Indian retribution to gratify the vindictive fury of an
impotent and helpless minority of their own tribe.
In this state of things the question is not
whether the treaty of the 12th of February last
shall or shall not be executed.
So far as the United States were or could be bound by it
I have been anxiously desirous of carrying it into execution.
But, like other treaties, its fulfillment depends upon
the will not of one but of both the parties to it.
The parties on the face of the treaty are the United States
and the Creek Nation, and however desirous one of
them may be to give it effect, this wish must prove
abortive while the other party refuses to perform
its stipulations and disavows its obligations.
By the refusal of the Creek Nation to perform their part
of the treaty the United States are absolved from all
its engagements on their part, and the alternative left them
is either to resort to measures of war to secure by force
the advantages stipulated to them in the treaty or to
attempt the adjustment of the interest by a new compact.
In the preference dictated by the nature of our
institutions and by the sentiments of justice and
humanity which the occasion requires for measures
of peace the treaty herewith transmitted has been
concluded, and is submitted to the decision of the Senate.
After exhausting every effort in our power to obtain
the acquiescence of the Creek Nation to the treaty
of the 12th of February, I entertained for some time
the hope that their assent might at least have been
given to a new treaty, by which all their lands within
the State of Georgia should have been ceded.
This has also proved impracticable, and although
the excepted portion is of comparatively small amount
and importance, I have assented to its exception so far
as to place it before the Senate only from a conviction
that between it and a resort to the forcible expulsion
of the Creeks from their habitations and lands within
the State of Georgia there was no middle term.
The deputation with which this treaty has been
concluded consists of the principal chiefs of the nation—
able not only to negotiate but to carry into effect
the stipulations to which they have agreed.
There is a deputation also here from the small party
which undertook to contract for the whole nation
at the treaty of the 12th of February, but the number
of which, according to the information collected
by General Gaines, does not exceed 400.
They represent themselves, indeed, to be far more
numerous, but whatever their number may be their interests
have been provided for in the treaty now submitted.
Their subscriptions to it would also have been
Received but for unreasonable pretensions raised
by them after all the arrangements of the treaty
had been agreed upon and it was actually signed.
Whatever their merits may have been in the facility
with which they ceded all the lands of their nation
within the State of Georgia, their utter inability to
perform the engagements which they so readily
contracted and the exorbitancy of their demands
when compared with the inefficiency of their own means
of performance leave them with no claims upon the
United States other than of impartial and rigorous justice.
In referring to the impressions under which I ratified
the treaty of the 12th of February last, I do not deem
it necessary to decide upon the propriety
of the manner in which it was negotiated.
Deeply regretting the criminations and recriminations
to which these events have given rise, I believe the
public interest will best be consulted by discarding
them altogether from the discussion of the subject.
The great body of the Creek Nation inflexibly
refuse to acknowledge or to execute that treaty.
Upon this ground it will be set aside, should
the Senate advise and consent to the ratification
of that now communicated, without looking back
to the means by which the other was effected.
And in the adjustment of the terms of the present treaty
I have been peculiarly anxious to dispense a measure
of great liberality to both parties of the Creek Nation, rather
than to extort from them a bargain of which the advantages
on our part could only be purchased by hardship on theirs.4
From 1 February 1826 to March 15 President Adams
sent fourteen short message to the Congress.
President Adams on 7 February 1826 wrote this in his Memoirs:
7th. Dr. Watkins spoke of the transformation
recently undergone by the newspaper
called the Washington City Gazette.
It has been sold by its publisher, Jonathan Elliot,
and Watkins says, purchased by John H. Eaton,
Senator from Tennessee.
Its name is changed to that of the United States Telegraph,
and its first number was published last week.
The prospectus avows a determined opposition to the
present Administration, and from a sample of bad English
peculiar to Calhoun, I have no doubt is from his hand.
Watkins asked me if I thought any notice
should be taken of this declaration of war.
I said, No.
Messrs. Rush, Barbour, Southard, and Wirt were in
Cabinet meeting upon Mr. Barbour’s letter to the
Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs
of the House of Representatives.
The letter was read, and variously commented
upon by the other members of the Administration.
Mr. Clay was absent, confined
to his house by a relapse of influenza.
Mr. Barbour’s plan is differently modified
from that which he had at first prepared.
He has given up the idea of incorporating the Indians
into the several States where they reside.
He has now substituted that of forming them all into
a great territorial Government west of the Mississippi.
There are many very excellent observations in the paper,
which is full of benevolence and humanity.
I fear there is no practicable plan by which they can be
organized into one civilized or half-civilized Government.
Mr. Rush, Mr. Southard, and Mr. Wirt all expressed their
doubts of the practicability of Governor Barbour’s plan;
but they had nothing more effective to propose,
and I approved it from the same motive.
Mr. Wirt told me he had heard in Court this day
that there was great excitement in the Senate at
the resolution adopted last Friday in the House of
Representatives, calling for the papers and
objects of the Panama mission, considering it
as a stimulant upon them, concerted between
the Executive and the majority of the House.
Mr. Wirt said he was told this by persons friendly
to the Administration, but declined naming them.
He suggested that it might be well to send a message
to the House to appease this excitement of the Senate.
The annual meeting of the Commissioners of the
Sinking Fund was held this morning,
and Calhoun there manifested his purpose of draining
the Treasury by applying the balance of the last year’s
appropriation to paying off debt,
beyond the ten millions a year appropriated by law.
He obtained no countenance to his scheme,
either from the Chief Justice or the Attorney-General.
The Secretary of State was absent.5
On 16 February 1826 President Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
16th. Mr. Lowrie brought me this morning the two
resolutions of the Senate adopted in Executive session.
The first declares that the question of the expediency
of the Panama mission ought to be debated in Senate
with open doors, unless the publication of the
documents to which it would be necessary to refer
in debate would prejudice existing negotiations.
The second is a respectful request to the President of the
United States to inform the Senate whether such objection
exists to the publication of all or any part of those
documents, and if so, to specify to what part it applies.
These resolutions are the fruit of the ingenuity of
Martin Van Buren and bear the impress of his character.
The resolution to debate an Executive nomination
with open doors is without example, and the
thirty-sixth rule of the Senate is explicit and
unqualified that all documents communicated
in confidence by the President to the Senate
shall be kept secret by the members.
The request to me to specify the particular documents
the publication of which would affect existing
negotiations, was delicate and ensnaring.
The limitation was not of papers the publication of which
might be injurious, but merely of such as would affect
existing negotiations; and this being necessarily a matter of
opinion, if I should specify passages in the documents as of
such a character, any Senator might make it a question for
discussion in the Senate, and they might finally publish the
whole, under the color of entertaining an opinion different
from mine upon the probable effect of the publication.
Besides, should the precedent once be established
of opening the doors of the Senate in the midst of
a debate upon Executive business, there could be
no prospect of ever keeping them shut again.
I answered the resolutions of the Senate by a
message, stating that all the communications
I had made to the Senate on this subject had been
confidential; and that, believing it important for the
public interest that the confidence between the
Executive and the Senate should continue unimpaired,
I should leave to themselves the determination of
a question upon the motives for which, not being
informed of them, I was not competent to decide.
W. H. Harrison called to speak about the case of Bissell,
and is extremely anxious that he should be
restored to the army with the rank that he had.
This was an old controversy between Mr. Monroe
and the Senate, in consequence of which the
office of Colonel of the Second Regiment of Artillery
has remained four years vacant.
The office of Adjutant-General had
remained in the same condition.
At the extra session of the Senate last March, I nominated
Colonel Jones to be the Adjutant-General, and the
Senate advised and consented to the appointment.
On the nomination of Bissell now, they have taken a
different course by passing a resolution that in the opinion
of the Senate Bissell is entitled to rank as Colonel in the
army from 1812, and Brigadier-General by brevet from
1814, and that the President may arrange him accordingly.
Which resolution assumes that the President is to act
according to the Senate’s opinion of the law, and that the
Senate are to inform him how he may perform his duty.
Harrison spoke also of their resolutions of yesterday
and apologized for having voted for them.6
Vice President Calhoun as president of the Senate appointed its committee members.
President Adams urged South Carolina to end preventive detention of visiting Negro sailors.
In 1825 cotton prices had fallen from 32 cents to 13 cents, and
South Carolina’s
legislature opposed internal improvements and protective tariffs as unconstitutional.
Calhoun spent seven months at home in South Carolina
and gave up his nationalism for states’ rights.
In 1826 Vice President Calhoun began debating the administration in newspapers.
On March 15 President Adams sent an 11-page letter to the House of Representatives
about the diplomatic convention in Panama with ministers from the
Republics of Colombia, Buenos Aires, Chile, and Mexico.
Here is the entire text including the quotation from the annual message to Congress
by President James Monroe on 2 December 1823:
To the House of Representatives of the United States:
In compliance with the resolution of the House of the
5th ultimo, requesting me to cause to be laid before
the House so much of the correspondence between
the Government of the United States and the new States
of America, or their ministers, respecting the proposed
congress or meeting of diplomatic agents at Panama,
and such information respecting the general character
of that expected congress as may be in my possession
and as may, in my opinion, be communicated without
prejudice to the public interest, and also to inform the
House, so far as in my opinion the public interest may allow,
in regard to what objects the agents of the United States
are expected to take part in the deliberations of that
congress, I now transmit to the House a report from
the Secretary of State, with the correspondence
and information requested by the resolution.
With regard to the objects in which the agents
of the United States are expected to take part in the
deliberations of that congress, I deem it proper to
premise that these objects did not form the only, nor even
the principal, motive for my acceptance of the invitation.
My first and greatest inducement was to meet in the
spirit of kindness and friendship an overture made in
that spirit by three sister Republics of this hemisphere.
The great revolution in human affairs which has
brought into existence, nearly at the same time,
eight sovereign and independent nations in our own quarter
of the globe has placed the United States in a situation not
less novel and scarcely less interesting than that in which
they had found themselves by their own transition from
a cluster of colonies to a nation of sovereign States.
The deliverance of the Southern American Republics from
the oppression under which they had been so long afflicted
was hailed with great unanimity by the people of this
Union as among the most auspicious events of the age.
On the 4th of May, 1822, an act of Congress made an
appropriation of $100,000 “for such missions to the
independent nations on the American continent as
the President of the United States might deem proper.”
In exercising the authority recognized by this act my
predecessor, by and with the advice and consent of the
Senate appointed successively ministers plenipotentiary to
the Republics of Colombia, Buenos Ayres, Chili, and Mexico.
Unwilling to raise among the fraternity of freedom
questions of precedency and etiquette, which even
the European monarchs had of late found it necessary
in a great measure to discard, he dispatched these
ministers to Colombia, Buenos Ayres, and Chili without
exacting from those Republics, as by the ancient
principles of political primogeniture he might have done,
that the compliment of a plenipotentiary mission should
have been paid first by them to the United States.
The instructions, prepared under his direction, to
Mr. Anderson, the first of our ministers to the southern
continent, contain at much length the general principles
upon which he thought it desirable that our relations,
political and commercial, with these our new neighbors
should be established for their benefit and ours
and that of the future ages of our posterity.
A copy of so much of these instructions as
relates to these general subjects is among
the papers now transmitted to the House.
Similar instructions were furnished to the ministers
appointed to Buenos Ayres, Chili, and Mexico,
and the system of social intercourse which it was
the purpose of those missions to establish from the
first opening of our diplomatic relations with those
rising nations is the most effective exposition of the
principles upon which the invitation to the congress at
Panama has been accepted by me, as well as of the
objects of negotiation at that meeting, in which it was
expected that our plenipotentiaries should take part.
The House will perceive that even at the date of these
instructions the first treaties between some of the southern
Republics had been concluded, by which they had stipulated
among themselves this diplomatic assembly at Panama.
And it will be seen with what caution, so far as it
might concern the policy of the United States,
and at the same time with what frankness and
good will toward those nations, he gave countenance
to their design of inviting the United States to this high
assembly for consultation upon American interests.
It was not considered a conclusive reason for declining
this invitation that the proposal for assembling such
a Congress had not first been made by ourselves.
It had sprung from the urgent, immediate, and momentous
common interests of the great communities struggling
for independence, and, as it were, quickening into life.
From them the proposition to us appeared respectful
and friendly; from us to them it could scarcely have
been made without exposing ourselves to suspicions
of purposes of ambition, if not of domination,
more suited to rouse resistance and excite
distrust than to conciliate favor and friendship.
The first and paramount principle upon which
it was deemed wise and just to lay the corner stone
of all our future relations with them was disinterestedness;
the next was cordial good will to them;
the third was a claim of fair and equal reciprocity.
Under these impressions when the invitation was formally
and earnestly given, had it even been doubtful whether
any of the objects proposed for consideration and discussion
at the Congress were such as that immediate and important
interests of the United States would be affected by the issue,
I should, nevertheless, have determined so far as it
depended upon me to have accepted the invitation
and to have appointed ministers to attend the meeting.
The proposal itself implied that the Republics by whom
it was made believed that important interests of ours
or of theirs rendered our attendance there desirable.
They had given us notice that in the novelty of their situation
and in the spirit of deference to our experience they would
be pleased to have the benefit of our friendly counsel.
To meet the temper with which this proposal was made
with a cold repulse was not thought congenial to that
warm interest in their welfare with which the people
and Government of the Union had hitherto gone hand
in hand through the whole progress of their revolution.
To insult them by a refusal of their overture, and then
invite them to a similar assembly to be called by ourselves,
was an expedient which never presented itself to the mind.
I would have sent ministers to the meeting
had it been merely to give them such advice
as they might have desired, even with reference
to their own interests, not involving ours.
I would have sent them had it been merely to explain
and set forth to them our reasons for declining any
proposal of specific measures to which they might
desire our concurrence, but which we might deem
incompatible with our interests or our duties.
In the intercourse between nations temper is
a missionary perhaps more powerful than talent.
Nothing was ever lost by kind treatment.
Nothing can be gained by
sullen repulses and aspiring pretensions.
But objects of the highest importance, not only
to the future welfare of the whole human race,
but bearing directly upon the special interests of this Union,
will engage the deliberations of the congress of Panama
whether we are represented there or not.
Others, if we are represented, may be offered
by our plenipotentiaries for consideration
having in view both these great results—
our own interests and the improvement
of the condition of man upon earth.
It may be that in the lapse of many centuries no other
opportunity so favorable will be presented to the
Government of the United States to subserve the
benevolent purposes of Divine Providence; to dispense
the promised blessings of the Redeemer of Mankind;
to promote the prevalence in future ages of peace on earth
and good will to man, as will now be placed in their power
by participating in the deliberations of this congress.
Among the topics enumerated in official papers published
by the Republic of Colombia, and adverted to in the
correspondence now communicated to the House,
as intended to be presented for discussion at Panama,
there is scarcely one in which the result of the meeting
will not deeply affect the interests of the United States.
Even those in which the belligerent States alone
will take an active part will have a powerful effect
upon the state of our relations with the American,
and probably with the principal European States.
Were it merely that we might be correctly and speedily
informed of the proceedings of the congress and of the
progress and issue of their negotiations, I should
hold it advisable that we should have an accredited
agency with them, placed in such confidential relations
with the other members as would insure the authenticity
and the safe and early transmission of its reports.
Of the same enumerated topics are the preparation
of a manifesto setting forth to the world the justice
of their cause and the relations they desire to hold
with other Christian powers, and to form a convention
of navigation and commerce applicable both
to the confederated States and to their allies.
It will be within the recollection of the House that
immediately after the close of the war of our independence
a measure closely analogous to this congress of Panama
was adopted by the Congress of our Confederation,
and for purposes of precisely the same character.
Three commissioners with plenipotentiary powers were
appointed to negotiate treaties of amity, navigation,
and commerce with all the principal powers of Europe.
They met and resided for that purpose about one year
at Paris, and the only result of their negotiations at that time
was the first treaty between the United States and Prussia—
memorable in the diplomatic annals of the world,
and precious as a monument of the principles,
in relation to commerce and maritime warfare,
with which our country entered upon her career as
a member of the great family of independent nations.
This treaty, prepared in conformity with the instructions
of the American plenipotentiaries, consecrated three
fundamental principles of the foreign intercourse which
the Congress of that period were desirous of establishing:
First, equal reciprocity and the mutual stipulation
of the privileges of the most favored nation
in the commercial exchanges of peace;
secondly, the abolition of private war upon the ocean,
and thirdly, restrictions favorable to neutral
commerce upon belligerent practices with
regard to contraband of war and blockades.
A painful, it may be said a calamitous, experience of more
than forty years has demonstrated the deep importance
of these same principles to the peace and prosperity of
this nation and to the welfare of all maritime States,
and has illustrated the profound wisdom with which they
were assumed as cardinal points of the policy of the Union.
At that time in the infancy of their political existence,
under the influence of those principles of liberty and of right
so congenial to the cause in which they had just fought
and triumphed, they were able but to obtain the sanction
of one great and philosophical, though absolute, sovereign
in Europe to their liberal and enlightened principles.
They could obtain no more.
Since then a political hurricane has gone over three-fourths
of the civilized portions of the earth, the desolation of which
it may with confidence be expected is passing away, leaving
at least the American atmosphere purified and refreshed.
And now at this propitious moment the new-born nations
of this hemisphere, assembling by their representatives
at the isthmus between its two continents to settle the
principles of their future international intercourse with
other nations and with us, ask in this great exigency
for our advice upon those very fundamental maxims
which we from our cradle at first proclaimed and partially
succeeded to introduce into the code of national law.
Without recurring to that total prostration of all
neutral and commercial rights which marked the progress
of the late European wars, and which finally involved
the United States in them, and adverting only to our
political relations with these American nations,
it is observable that while in all other respects those
relations have been uniformly and without exception
of the most friendly and mutually satisfactory character,
the only causes of difference and dissension between us
and them which ever have arisen originated in those
never-failing fountains of discord and irritation—
discriminations of commercial favor to other nations,
licentious privateers, and paper blockades.
I cannot without doing injustice to the Republics of
Buenos Aires and Colombia forbear to acknowledge
the candid and conciliatory spirit with which
they have repeatedly yielded to our friendly
representations and remonstrances on these subjects—
in repealing discriminative laws which operated to our
disadvantage and in revoking the commissions of their
privateers, to which Colombia has added the magnanimity
of making reparation for unlawful captures by some of
her cruisers and of assenting in the midst of war
to treaty stipulations favorable to neutral navigation.
But the recurrence of these occasions of complaint
has rendered the renewal of the discussions which
result in the removal of them necessary, while in
the meantime injuries are sustained by merchants
and other individuals of the United States which
cannot be repaired, and the remedy lingers in
overtaking the pernicious operation of the mischief.
The settlement of general principles pervading
with equal efficacy all the American States
can alone put an end to these evils, and can
alone be accomplished at the proposed assembly.
If it be true that the noblest treaty of peace ever
mentioned in history is that by which the Carthaginians
were bound to abolish the practice of sacrificing their own
children because it was stipulated in favor of human nature,
I cannot exaggerate to myself the unfading glory with
which these United States will go forth in the memory
of future ages if by their friendly counsel, by their
moral influence, by the power of argument and persuasion
alone they can prevail upon the American nations at
Panama to stipulate by general agreement among
themselves, and so far as any of them may be concerned,
the perpetual abolition of private war upon the ocean.
And if we cannot yet flatter ourselves that this
may be accomplished, as advances toward it the
establishment of the principle that the friendly flag
shall cover the cargo, the curtailment of contraband of war,
and the proscription of fictitious paper blockades—
engagements which we may reasonably hope will
not prove impracticable will, if successfully inculcated,
redound proportionally to our honor and drain
the fountain of many a future sanguinary war.
The late President of the United States, in his message
to Congress of the 2nd December, 1823, while announcing
the negotiation then pending with Russia, relating to the
northwest coast of this continent, observed that the occasion
of the discussions to which that incident had given rise
had been taken for asserting as a principle in which the
rights and interests of the United States were involved
that the American continents, by the free and independent
condition which they had assumed and maintained,
were thenceforward not to be considered as subjects
for future colonization by any European power.
The principle had first been assumed
in that negotiation with Russia.
It rested upon a course of reasoning
equally simple and conclusive.
With the exception of the existing European colonies,
which it was in nowise intended to disturb, the two
continents consisted of several sovereign and independent
nations, whose territories covered their whole surface.
By this their independent condition the United States
enjoyed the right of commercial intercourse
with every part of their possessions.
To attempt the establishment of a colony in those
possessions would be to usurp to the exclusion
of others a commercial intercourse which
was the common possession of all.
It could not be done without encroaching
upon existing rights of the United States.
The Government of Russia has never disputed
these positions nor manifested the slightest
dissatisfaction at their having been taken.
Most of the new American Republics have declared
their entire assent to them, and they now propose,
among the subjects of consultation at Panama,
to take into consideration the means of making
effectual the assertion of that principle, as well as
the means of resisting interference from abroad with
the domestic concerns of the American Governments.
In alluding to these means it would obviously be
premature at this time to anticipate that which is offered
merely as matter for consultation, or to pronounce upon
those measures which have been or may be suggested.
The purpose of this Government is to concur in none
which would import hostility to Europe
or justly excite resentment in any of her States.
Should it be deemed advisable to contract any conventional
engagement on this topic, our views would extend no
further than to a mutual pledge of the parties to the
compact to maintain the principle in application to its
own territory, and to permit no colonial lodgments or
establishment of European jurisdiction upon its own soil;
and with respect to the obtrusive interference from abroad—
if its future character may be inferred from
that which has been and perhaps still is
exercised in more than one of the new States—
a joint declaration of its character and exposure of it to the
world may be probably all that the occasion would require.
Whether the United States should or should not be parties to
such a declaration may justly form a part of the deliberation.
That there is an evil to be remedied needs little insight
into the secret history of late years to know, and that this
remedy may best be concerted at the Panama meeting
deserves at least the experiment of consideration.
A concert of measures having reference to the
more effectual abolition of the African slave trade
and the consideration of the light in which the
political condition of the island of Haiti is to be
regarded are also among the subjects mentioned
by the minister from the Republic of Colombia as
believed to be suitable for deliberation at the congress.
The failure of the negotiations with that Republic undertaken
during the late Administration, for the suppression of that
trade, in compliance with a resolution of the House of
Representatives, indicates the expediency of listening
with respectful attention to propositions which may
contribute to the accomplishment of the great end
which was the purpose of that resolution, while the result
of those negotiations will serve as admonition to abstain
from pledging this Government to any arrangement which
might be expected to fail of obtaining the advice and consent
of the Senate by a constitutional majority to its ratification.
Whether the political condition of the island of Haiti
shall be brought at all into discussion at the meeting
may be a question for preliminary advisement.
There are in the political constitution of Government
of that people circumstances which have hitherto
forbidden the acknowledgment of them by the Government
of the United States as sovereign and independent.
Additional reasons for withholding that acknowledgment
have recently been seen in their acceptance of a nominal
sovereignty by the grant of a foreign prince under
conditions equivalent to the concession by them of
exclusive commercial advantages to one nation,
adapted altogether to the state of colonial vassalage
and retaining little of independence but the name.
Our plenipotentiaries will be instructed to present these
views to the assembly at Panama, and should they not
be concurred in to decline acceding to any arrangement
which may be proposed upon different principles.
The condition of the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico is
of deeper import and more immediate bearing upon the
present interests and future prospects of our Union.
The correspondence herewith transmitted will show how
earnestly it has engaged the attention of this Government.
The invasion of both those islands by the united forces
of Mexico and Colombia is avowedly among the objects
to be matured by the belligerent States at Panama.
The convulsions to which, from the peculiar composition
of their population, they would be liable in the event
of such an invasion, and the danger therefrom
resulting of their falling ultimately into the hands
of some European power other than Spain,
will not admit of our looking at the consequences to
which the congress at Panama may lead with indifference.
It is unnecessary to enlarge upon this topic or to say more
than that all our efforts in reference to this interest will be
to preserve the existing state of things, the tranquility of
the islands, and the peace and security of their inhabitants.
And lastly, the congress of Panama is believed to present
a fair occasion for urging upon all the new nations of the
south the just and liberal principles of religious liberty;
not by any interference whatever in their internal concerns,
but by claiming for our citizens whose occupations or
interests may call them to occasional residence in their
territories the inestimable privilege of worshipping their
Creator according to the dictates of their own consciences.
This privilege, sanctioned by the customary law of nations
and secured by treaty stipulations in numerous national
compacts, secured even to our own citizens in the treaties
with Colombia and with the Federation of Central America,
is yet to be obtained in the other
South American States and Mexico.
Existing prejudices are still struggling against it,
which may perhaps be more successfully
combated at this general meeting than at the
separate seats of Government of each Republic.
I can scarcely deem it otherwise than superfluous to
observe that the assembly will be in its nature diplomatic
and not legislative; that nothing can be transacted there
obligatory upon any one of the States to be represented
at the meeting, unless with the express concurrence of
its own representatives, nor even then, but subject to
the ratification of its constitutional authority at home.
The faith of the United States to foreign powers
cannot otherwise be pledged.
I shall indeed in the first instance consider the assembly
as merely consultative; and although the plenipotentiaries
of the United States will be empowered to receive and
refer to the consideration of their Government any
proposition from the other parties to the meeting,
they will be authorized to conclude nothing
unless subject to the definitive sanction of
this Government in all its constitutional forms.
It has therefore seemed to me unnecessary
to insist that every object to be discussed
at the meeting should be specified with the
precision of a judicial sentence or enumerated with
the exactness of a mathematical demonstration.
The purpose of the meeting itself is to deliberate
upon the great and common interests
of several new and neighboring nations.
If the measure is new and without precedent,
so is the situation of the parties to it.
That the purposes of the meeting are somewhat
indefinite, far from being an objection to it
is among the cogent reasons for its adoption.
It is not the establishment of principles of intercourse
with one, but with seven or eight nations at once.
That before they have had the means of
exchanging ideas and communicating with
one another in common upon these topics
they should have definitively settled and
arranged them in concert is to require
that the effect should precede the cause;
it is to exact as a preliminary to the meeting that for the
accomplishment of which the meeting itself is designed.
Among the inquiries which were thought entitled to
consideration before the determination was taken to
accept the invitation was that whether the measure might
not have a tendency to change the policy, hitherto invariably
pursued by the United States, of avoiding all entangling
alliances and all unnecessary foreign connections.
Mindful of the advice given by the father of our country
in his Farewell Address, that the great rule of conduct for us
in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial
relations, to have with them as little political connection
as possible, and faithfully adhering to the spirit of that
admonition, I cannot overlook the reflection that the
counsel of Washington in that instance, like all the counsels
of wisdom, was rounded upon the circumstances in which
our country and the world around us were situated at the
time when it was given; that the reasons assigned by him
for his advice were that Europe had a set of primary
interests which to us had none or a very remote relation;
that hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies,
the causes of which were essentially foreign to our
concerns; that our detached and distant situation invited and
enabled us to pursue a different course; that by our union
and rapid growth with an efficient Government, the period
was not far distant when we might defy material injury from
external annoyance, when we might take such an attitude
as would cause our neutrality to be respected, and, with
reference to belligerent nations, might choose peace or war,
as our interests, guided by justice, should counsel.
Compare our situation and the circumstances
of that time with those of the present day,
and what from the very words of Washington then,
would be his counsels to his countrymen now?
Europe has still her set of primary interests,
with which we have little or a remote relation.
Our distant and detached situation with
reference to Europe remains the same.
But we were then the only independent nation of this
hemisphere, and we were surrounded by European colonies,
with the greater part of which we had no more
intercourse than with the inhabitants of another planet.
Those colonies have now been transformed into eight
independent nations, extending to our very borders,
seven of them Republics like ourselves, with whom
we have an immensely growing commercial, and must have
and have already important political connections;
with reference to whom our situation is neither distant
nor detached; whose political principles and systems
of government, congenial with our own, must and will
have an action and counteraction upon us and ours
to which we cannot be indifferent if we would.
The rapidity of our growth and the consequent
increase of our strength has more than realized
the anticipations of this admirable political legacy.
Thirty years have nearly elapsed since it was written,
and in the interval our population, our wealth,
our territorial extension, our power—
physical and moral—have nearly trebled.
Reasoning upon this state of things from the sound
and judicious principles of Washington, must we not say
that the period which he predicted as then not far off
has arrived; that America has a set of primary interests
which have none or a remote relation to Europe;
that the interference of Europe, therefore, in those
concerns should be spontaneously withheld by her upon the
same principles that we have never interfered with hers,
and that if she should interfere, as she may,
by measures which may have a great and dangerous
recoil upon ourselves, we might be called in defense of
our own altars and firesides to take an attitude which would
cause our neutrality to be respected, and choose peace
or war as our interest, guided by justice, should counsel.
The acceptance of this invitation, therefore,
far from conflicting with the counsel or the policy of
Washington, is directly deducible from and conformable to it.
Nor is it less conformable to the views of my immediate
predecessor as declared in his annual message to Congress
of the 2nd December, 1823, to which I have already
adverted, and to an important passage of which
I invite the attention of the House:The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments
the most friendly in favor of the liberty and happiness
of their fellow-men on that side of the Atlantic.
In the wars of the European powers in matters
relating to themselves we have never taken part,
nor does it comport with our policy to do so.
It is only when our rights are invaded
or seriously menaced that we resent injuries
or make preparation for our defense.
With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity
more immediately connected, and by causes which must
be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers.
The political system of the allied powers is essentially
different in this respect from that of America.
This difference proceeds from that which
exists in their respective Governments.
And to the defense of our own, which has been achieved
by the loss of so much blood and treasure,
and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened
citizens, and under which we have enjoyed
unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted.
We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable
relations subsisting between the United States and those
powers to declare that we should consider any attempt
on their part to extend their system to any portion of
this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.
With the existing colonies or dependencies of any
European power we have not interfered and shall not
interfere; but with the Governments who have declared
their independence and maintained it, and whose
independence we have on great consideration and
on just principles acknowledged, we could not view
any interposition for the purposes of oppressing them
or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any
European power in any other light than as the manifestation
of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.
In the war between those new Governments and Spain
we declared our neutrality at the time of their recognition,
and to this we have adhered and shall continue to adhere,
provided no change shall occur which in the judgment of
the competent authorities of this Government shall make
a corresponding change on the part of the
United States indispensable to their security.To the question which may be asked, whether this
meeting and the principles which may be adjusted
and settled by it as rules of intercourse between
the American nations may not give umbrage to the
holy league of European powers or offense to Spain,
it is deemed a sufficient answer that our attendance
at Panama can give no just cause of umbrage or
offense to either, and that the United States will
stipulate nothing there which can give such cause.
Here the right of inquiry into our
purposes and measures must stop.
The holy league of Europe itself was formed
without inquiring of the United States whether
it would or would not give umbrage to them.
The fear of giving umbrage to the holy league of Europe
was urged as a motive for denying to the American
nations the acknowledgment of their independence.
That it would be viewed by Spain as hostility to her
was not only urged, but directly declared by herself.
The Congress and Administration of that day
consulted their rights and duties, and not their fears.
Fully determined to give no needless displeasure
to any foreign power, the United States can estimate the
probability of their giving it only by the right which any
foreign state could have to take it from their measures.
Neither the representation of the United States at Panama
nor any measure to which their assent may be yielded
there will give to the holy league or any of its members,
nor to Spain, the right to take offense; for the rest
the United States must still, as heretofore,
take counsel from their duties rather than their fears.
Such are the objects in which it is expected that
the plenipotentiaries of the United States, when
commissioned to attend the meeting at the Isthmus, will
take part, and such are the motives and purposes with
which the invitation of the three Republics was accepted.
It was, however, as the House will perceive from the
correspondence, accepted only upon condition that the
nomination of commissioners for the mission should
receive the advice and consent of the Senate.
The concurrence of the House to the measure
by the appropriations necessary for carrying it
into effect is alike subject to its free determination
and indispensable to the fulfillment of the intention.
That the congress at Panama will accomplish all,
or even any, of the transcendent benefits of the
human race which warmed the conceptions of its
first proposer, it were perhaps indulging too
sanguine a forecast of events to promise.
It is in its nature a measure speculative and experimental.
The blessing of Heaven may turn it to the account of
human improvement; accidents unforeseen and
mischances not to be anticipated may baffle all its
high purposes and disappoint its fairest expectations.
But the design is great, is benevolent, is humane.
It looks to the melioration of the condition of man.
It is congenial with that spirit which prompted the
declaration of our independence, which inspired the
preamble of our first treaty with France, which dictated
our first treaty with Prussia and the instructions under
which it was negotiated, which filled the hearts and
fired the souls of the immortal founders of our Revolution.
With this unrestricted exposition of the motives
by which I have been governed in this transaction,
as well as of the objects to be discussed and of the ends,
if possible, to be attained by our representation
at the proposed congress, I submit the propriety
of an appropriation to the candid consideration
and enlightened patriotism of the Legislature.7
On 30 March 1826 President Adams sent this message
“To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States,”
By the second article of the general convention of peace,
amity, navigation and commerce between the United States
and the Republic of Colombia, concluded at Bogota on
3rd of October 1824, it was stipulated that the parties
engaged mutually not to grant any particular favor to
other nations in respect of commerce and navigation
which should not immediately become common to
the other party, who should enjoy the same freely
if the concession was freely made, or on allowing the
same compensation if the concession was conditional.
And in the third article of the same convention it was
agreed that the citizens of the United States might frequent
all the coasts and countries of the Republic of Colombia,
and reside and trade there in all sorts of produce,
manufactures and merchandise, and should pay no other
or greater duties, charges, or fees whatsoever than the
most favored nation should be obliged to pay, and should
enjoy all the rights, privileges and exemptions in navigation
and commerce which the most favored nations should
enjoy, submitting themselves, nevertheless, to the laws,
decrees, and usages there established, and to which
were submitted the subjects and citizens of the most
favored nations; with a reciprocal stipulation in favor of
the citizens of the Republic of Colombia in the United States.
Subsequently to the conclusion of this convention a treaty
was negotiated between the Republic of Colombia and
Great Britain, by which it was stipulated that no other
or higher duties on account of tonnage, light, or harbor
dues should be imposed in the ports of Colombia by
British vessels than those payable in the same ports by
Colombian vessels, and that the same duties should be
paid on the importation into the territories of Colombia
of any article the growth, produce, or manufacture of His
Britannic Majesty’s dominions, whether such importations
should be in Colombian or in British vessels, and that
the same duties should be paid and the same discount
(drawbacks) and bounties allowed on the exportation
of any articles the growth, produce, or manufacture of
Colombia to His Britannic Majesty’s dominions, whether
such exportations were in Colombian or in British vessels.
The minister of the United States to the Republic of
Colombia having claimed by virtue of the second and third
articles of the convention between the two Republics,
that the benefit of these subsequent stipulations should be
alike extended to the citizens of the United States upon the
condition of reciprocity provided for by the convention,
the application of those engagements was readily acceded
to by the Colombian Government, and a decree was issued
by the executive authority of that Republic on the 30th of
January last, a copy and translation of which are herewith
communicated, securing to the citizens of the United States
in the Republic of Colombia the same advantages in regard
to commerce and navigation which had been conceded to
British subjects in the Colombian treaty with Great Britain.
It remains for the Government of the United States
to secure to the citizens of the Republic of Colombia
the reciprocal advantages to which they are entitled
by the terms of the convention, to commerce from the
30th of January last, for the accomplishment of which
I invite the favorable consideration of the Legislature.8
Also on March 30 Virginia Senator John Randolph accused Adams
and Henry Clay of making a “corrupt bargain” to make Adams president.
Clay had renounced duels to support Lyman Beecher’s effort to ban them;
but even though he was a poor shot, he challenged Randolph.
On April 8 both men shot twice; Randolph shot at and missed Clay’s legs and in the air,
and Clay missed and then only put a hole in Randolph’s coat.
President Adams endeavored to maintain good communication with the
United States Congress which can be seen in his annual messages and special messages.
Like Monroe, Adams objected to the Senate changing the rank
of a nominated officer based on earlier experience.
Thus he sent them this special message on 11 April 1826:
On the 16th of January last I sent to the Senate
a nomination of Daniel Bissell to be colonel
of the Second Regiment of Artillery, and on the
3rd of February I received from the Secretary of
the Senate an attested copy of their proceedings in
relation to that nomination, laid before me by their order,
and closing with a resolution in these words:Resolved, That in the opinion of the Senate Daniel Bissell is
entitled to the place of colonel in the Army of the United States,
taking rank as much from the 15th of August 1812 with the brevet
of brigadier-general from the 9th of March 1814, and that the
President of the United States may arrange him accordingly.In the discharge of my own duties I am under
the necessity of stating respectfully to the Senate—
First. That I cannot concur in these opinions.
Secondly. That the resolution of the Senate,
having on its face no reference either to the nomination
or to the office for which it was made, leaves me
doubtful whether it was intended by the Senate
as their decision upon the nomination or not.
If intended as their decision, it imports that the Senate
do not advise and consent to the appointment of Daniel
Bissell as colonel in the Second Regiment of Artillery.
If intended as a mere expression of their opinions
superseding in their judgment the necessity of
their immediate decision upon the nomination,
it leaves the Senate still in possession of the
nomination and free to act upon it when informed
of my inability to carry those opinions into effect.
In this uncertainty I have thought it most
respectful to the Senate to refer the subject
again to them for their consideration.
The delay in the transmission of this communication
is attributable to the earnest desire which I have
entertained of acceding to the opinions and complying
with the wishes of the Senate, and to the long and
repeated reconsideration of my own impressions with
the view to make them, if possible, conform to theirs.
A still higher duty now constrains me to invite
their definitive decision upon the nomination.9
Congress did not confirm the nominations of Richard C. Anderson and John Sergeant
until 14 March 1826, and the House appropriated $40,000 for this mission on April 22.
Henry Clay for the United States on April 26 signed a treaty
of friendship, trade, and navigation with Denmark.
Clay signed a reciprocal or most-favored-nation commercial agreement with Mexico
in 1826, and on May 2 the United States recognized the republic of Peru.
Adams and Clay prepared instructions for good neighbor treaties by May 8.
Sergeant feared summer pestilence in Panama and resigned,
and Anderson got a tropical fever and died at Cartagena on July 24.
That left no representative from the United States at the Panama convention.
Adams on 3 July 1826 wrote in his Memoirs:
3rd. Mr. Dameille brought a subscription
paper for a discourse to be published by him,
containing his plan for civilizing the Indians.
His plan embraces a farm and a school,
and his object is to civilize the Indians
by securing to them settlement on the soil.
I asked him if he had communicated
his plan to the Secretary of War.
He said he had, and that he had a letter from
Mr. Hamilton, the Clerk in the Department, charged
during Mr. McKenney’s absence with Indian Affairs,
to the Governor of Arkansas, requesting his
assistance to promote his contemplated establishment.
I told him that his object was laudable,
but the means were not approved by the white people
settled in Arkansas, their very earnest object being
the removal of the Indians from their neighborhood.
I advised him to see the Secretary of War again
and make known to him his whole plan.10
On the jubilee celebration of the Declaration of Independence on July 4
President Adams led a procession to the Capitol from the President’s house,
which was now being called the “White House.”
Secretary of War James Barbour presented an oration that included a
plea to help Thomas Jefferson, who was gravely ill and died that day.
President Adams on July 6 wrote in his Memoirs:
6th. Governor Barbour brought information of
the decease of Mr. Jefferson at Monticello on the
4th inst. at ten minutes past one in the afternoon—
a strange and very striking coincidence.
It became a question whether the event should
not be noticed by some act of the Administration.
Several measures suggested themselves
and were taken for further consideration.
The precedent in the case of General Washington’s
decease was adverted to and examined.
But the Congress were then in session, and excepting
the orders for military honors, all was done at the
recommendation and by resolutions of that body.
We now concluded that general orders to the
army and navy would be proper and indispensable,
and would reflect till tomorrow on the expediency
of issuing a proclamation to the people.
Governor Barbour will prepare the order to the army,
and Mr. Rush, in the absence of Mr. Southard,
that to the navy, and I prepared this evening the
draft of a proclamation, but after writing it became
convinced in my own mind that no such paper should issue.
General Brown introduced to me three Quakers
from Ohio, one of whom, Elisha Bates, gave me a
book of his composition containing a summary of
the doctrine of that society, and an exhortation
which appeared to be an outpouring of the Spirit.11
On 11 July 1826 at Washington in an Executive Order from the
Adjutant-General’s Office President Adams had Secretary of War
James Barbour issue these two messages in the General Orders:
The President with deep regret announces to the
Army that it has pleased the Disposer of All Human Events,
in whose hands are the issues of life, to remove from
the scene of earthly existence our illustrious and
venerated fellow-citizen, Thomas Jefferson.
This dispensation of Divine Providence, afflicting us,
but the consummation of glory to him, occurred on the
4th of the present month—on the fiftieth anniversary
of that Independence the Declaration of which,
emanating from his mind, at once proclaimed the
birth of a free nation and offered motives of hope
and consolation to the whole family of man.
Sharing in the grief which every heart must feel
for so heavy and afflicting a public loss, and desirous
to express his high sense of the vast debt of gratitude
which is due to the virtues, talents, and ever-memorable
services of the illustrious deceased, the President directs
that funeral honors be paid to him at all the military stations,
and that the officers of the Army wear crape
on the left arm by way of mourning for six months.
Major-General Brown will give the necessary orders
for carrying into effect the foregoing directions.
J. BarbourIt has become the painful duty of the Secretary of War
to announce to the Army the death of another
distinguished and venerated citizen.
John Adams departed this life on the 4th of this month.
Like his compatriot Jefferson, he aided in drawing
and ably supporting the Declaration of Independence.
With a prophetic eye he looked through the impending
difficulties of the Revolution and foretold with what
demonstrations of joy and anniversary of the
birth of American freedom would be hailed.
He was permitted to behold the verification of his prophecy,
and died, as did Jefferson, on the day of the jubilee.
A coincidence of circumstances so wonderful gives
confidence to the belief that the patriotic efforts of
these illustrious men were Heaven directed, and furnishes
a new seal to the hope that the prosperity of these States
is under the special protection of a kind Providence.
The Secretary of War directs that the same funeral
honors be paid by the Army of the memory of the
deceased as by the order of the 11th instant were
directed to be paid to Thomas Jefferson,
and the same token of mourning be worn.
Major-General Brown is charged
with the execution of this order.
J. Barbour12
On 27 July 1826 President Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
27th. I received this morning letters from the
Secretary of War, Mr. Barbour, and the
Commissioner of the Land Office, G. Graham.
The former enclosed a letter from Governor Troup
of Georgia, complaining that the Cherokees had
stopped certain surveys ordered by the State
authority in the unsettled parts of the State—
meaning within the lands of the Cherokees;
and a letter from Mr. Fulton, the State Surveyor to him,
containing the statement of his being stopped by Hicks.
Troup says no more in his letter; but Governor Barbour
mentions what has appeared in the newspapers, that
Troup has ordered out the militia of the State to proceed
with his surveys; the object of which is to make a canal.
The members of the Administration at Washington
referred to me what was in this case to be done,
the Secretary of War having prepared and sent me
the draft of a letter to Hugh Montgomery, U. S. Agent
with the Cherokee Indians, directing him to urge them
by reasoning to permit the surveys to be made.
Deprived of the benefit of advising with the members
of the Administration, I was now compelled
to take counsel from my own reflections only.
After much meditation I prepared the draft of
an answer to Governor Troup’s letter, to be
signed with such modification or alteration by
the Secretary of War as he shall deem advisable.
Mr. Barbour was unwell and was to leave Washington for
Barboursville in Virginia, immediately after he wrote me.
Mr. Graham’s letter enclosed two proclamations for the
sale of lands in the Territory of Arkansas for my signature.
I signed them, filled the blank dates with the
1st of August and answered his letter.13
On August 2 Daniel Webster delivered a famous eulogy for two and a half hours
in Boston on Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
President Adams in his Memoirs on August 14 wrote:
14th. The Governor of the State of Maine,
Albion K. Parris, called upon me this morning to make
enquiries respecting the present state of the negotiation
with Great Britain concerning the boundary between
that State and the British Province of New Brunswick.
I told him that owing to the continued illness of
Mr. Rufus King since his arrival in England, and his
resignation, which has been accepted, no progress
had been made in the negotiation since it was left
unfinished by Mr. Rush; but that Mr. Gallatin had
received particular instructions on the subject and had
made himself fully master of it before he left this country;
that I was expecting daily to hear of his arrival in England,
where he would immediately apply to the
British Government to resume the negotiation.
Mr. Parris spoke of the deep interest which his State
had in the controversy; and although he expressed
full confidence that the Government of the United States
would consent to no stipulation injurious to the rights
of the State, yet, he said, they were not without
apprehensions that New York might be willing
to purchase Rouse’s Point at the expense of Maine.
He manifested a wish to be furnished with copies
of the arguments of the Agents and reports of the
Commissioners under the fifth article of the Treaty of Ghent,
which we declined giving heretofore, from an
apprehension that a permanent disclosure of them
might operate unfavorably upon the negotiation.
I told him that their great bulk was an obstacle
to the furnishing of copies, but that they had been,
and would still be, open to the inspection and
perusal of the Representatives and Senators
from Maine in Congress, and would be equally so
to the Governor of the State, if present.14
On 17 August 1826 Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
17th. A Colonel Beneski, who told me he was a
native of France, born at Marseilles, but of a Polish father,
came and delivered me a letter of introduction from
John Williams, Chargé d’Affaires of the United States
of Guatemala; and he also delivered me a verbal message
from the President of the Republic of Central America.
He afterwards came with Aaron H. Palmer of New York,
and they exhibited to me a contract made by Beneski,
for and in behalf of A. H. Palmer and Company with the
Ministry of the Treasury of Guatemala, and sanctioned
by the Congress of that republic, for opening a water
communication through the lake of Nicaragua from
the sea of the Antilles to the Pacific Ocean.
To this contract Colonel Beneski and Mr. Palmer solicited
the protection and patronage of the United States,
which I assured them should be given, so far as my
personal influence and constitutional power could assure it.
Mr. Palmer said an Act of Incorporation of the company
would be indispensable, and a question was,
whether it should be obtained from the
Legislature of New York or from Congress.
I advised Mr. Palmer to consult with the Representatives
and Senators from New York on the subject.
I thought that Congress was the only proper authority
to grant an Act of incorporation for objects thus interesting
to the whole Union, and even to the whole world.
But I told them Mr. Clay purposed returning to
Washington at the close of this or the beginning of
the next month, and advised them to address their
future communications to the Department of State.15
Albert Gallatin replaced Rufus King in England on September 1826,
and they signed a trade agreement on November 13.
On 5 October 1826 President Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
5th. Messrs. Lloyd and Hall came for an afternoon visit.
Lloyd profoundly alarmed for the Administration at
the probable consequences of a recent British Order
in Council interdicting the trade between the United States
and the British Colonies, as he said, in both hemispheres,
after the 1st of December next.
It is a new trial through which we are to pass,
and the issue of which is with higher powers.
I made light of it with Lloyd and said as the Georgia war
was extinct, there must be something to stir the blood of
the public, and it might as well be this as anything else.16
Adams wrote in his Memoirs on October 17:
There was much talk of the result of the recent
elections in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
In Jersey the tickets were avowedly Administration
and Jackson tickets, the former of which has been
successful beyond their most sanguine expectations,
having throughout the State a majority of upwards
of four thousand votes; the majority for the Jackson
electors two years ago having been about one thousand.
This change has been the most consoling
and encouraging event that has yet occurred.
They boasted of a similar change in Pennsylvania,
but it is not manifested by the issue of the elections here.
Sergeant himself was a candidate here and lost the
election by an equal vote, fifteen hundred and ninety-seven
with his principal competitor, Horn, a third federal candidate
taking off several hundred of Sergeant’s votes.
There is positive loss in Pennsylvania;
and those who call themselves the friends of the
Administration have neither concert nor courage.17
On 21 October 1826 President Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
Mr. Clay spoke of the negotiations with Great Britain,
which are in ill and threatening condition.
The British Government have assumed the new ground of
refusing to negotiate upon the subject of the Colonial trade.
They have also made a proposal to compromise
the Slave Indemnity question, by giving
two hundred fifty thousand pounds sterling,
which I desired Mr. Clay to authorize Gallatin to accept,
after using all reasonable efforts to obtain more.
I firmly believe we shall in no other way
ultimately obtain anything.
I agreed also that General P. B. Porter should be
authorized to consent that the British Commissioner
Barclay should refer to his Government an ultimatum
offered by Porter to fix our Northwestern boundary.18
On October 28 he wrote,
I think it best to wait some time longer before making any
removals, and I see yet no reason sufficient to justify a
departure from the principle with which I entered upon
the Administration, of removing no public officer for
merely preferring another candidate for the Presidency.19
In the 1826 elections for the United States Congress the Jacksonians
gained one seat in the Senate to give them 16 out of 48.
In the House of Representatives they took over 9 more seats to give them
a 113-100 majority over those supporting Adams.
On 1 November 1826 President Adams wrote in his Memoirs:
Mr. Clay spoke of the instructions to be given to
Mr. Gallatin and of the notice to be taken of
G. Canning’s note upon the interdiction by
Great Britain of our trade with her West India Colonies.
I said that as soon as Governor Barbour and Mr. Rush
would be able to attend, I should wish a consultation
with the members of the Administration to determine
what course it would be proper to take upon this
new turn of British policy, in which revenge
appears to be the predominant ingredient.
I observed to Mr. Clay that as this note not only refused
to negotiate upon the subject, but declared a determination
to adhere to the interdiction even if the United States
would now agree to remove all discriminating duties,
there was no alternative left us but resistance or
submission; that my own sentiment was in favor of
resistance, but that the choice must be left to Congress,
where it would occasion violent debate, and where it was
to be expected the opposition would take side against us.
It would be necessary to communicate to Congress
all the correspondence relating to this Colonial trade
for some years back, and I wished him to direct
the making of the copies at the Department of State
immediately, including the part of the instructions
to Mr. Gallatin relating to this subject.20
President Adams presented his Second Annual Message
to Congress on 5 December 1826.
Here is the complete text:
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and
of the House of Representatives:
The assemblage of the representatives of our Union
in both Houses of the Congress at this time occurs under
circumstances calling for the renewed homage of our
grateful acknowledgments to the Giver of All Good.
With the exceptions incidental to the most felicitous
condition of human existence, we continue to be
highly favored in all the elements which contribute
to individual comfort and to national prosperity.
In the survey of our extensive country we have generally
to observe abodes of health and regions of plenty.
In our civil and political relations we have
peace without and tranquility within our borders.
We are, as a people, increasing with unabated
rapidity in population, wealth, and national resources,
and whatever differences of opinion exist among us
with regard to the mode and the means by which
we shall turn the beneficence of Heaven to the
improvement of our own condition, there is yet a spirit
animating us all which will not suffer the bounties of
Providence to be showered upon us in vain, but will
receive them with grateful hearts, and apply them with
unwearied hands to the advancement of the general good.
Of the subjects recommended to Congress at their
last session, some were then definitively acted upon.
Others, left unfinished, but partly matured, will recur to
your attention without needing a renewal of notice from me.
The purpose of this communication will be to present
to your view the general aspect of our public affairs
at this moment and the measures which have been taken
to carry into effect the intentions of the Legislature
as signified by the laws then and heretofore enacted.
In our intercourse with the other nations of the earth
we have still the happiness of enjoying peace and a
general good understanding, qualified, however,
in several important instances by collisions of interest
and by unsatisfied claims of justice, to the settlement
of which the constitutional interposition of the legislative
authority may become ultimately indispensable.
By the decease of the Emperor Alexander of Russia,
which occurred contemporaneously with the commencement
of the last session of Congress, the United States have
been deprived of a long tried, steady, and faithful friend.
Born to the inheritance of absolute power and trained
in the school of adversity, from which no power on earth,
however absolute, is exempt, that monarch from his youth
had been taught to feel the force and value of public opinion
and to be sensible that the interests of his own Government
would best be promoted by a frank and friendly intercourse
with this Republic, as those of his people would be
advanced by a liberal intercourse with our country.
A candid and confidential interchange of sentiments
between him and the Government of the United States
upon the affairs of Southern America took place at a
period not long preceding his demise, and contributed to fix
that course of policy which left to the other Governments of
Europe no alternative but that of sooner or later recognizing
the independence of our southern neighbors, of which
the example had by the United States already been set.
The ordinary diplomatic communications between his
successor, the Emperor Nicholas, and the United States
have suffered some interruption by the illness,
departure, and subsequent decease of his minister
residing here, who enjoyed, as he merited, the
entire confidence of his new sovereign, as he had
eminently responded to that of his predecessor.
But we have had the most satisfactory assurances that the
sentiments of the reigning Emperor toward the United States
are altogether conformable to those which had so long
and constantly animated his imperial brother, and we have
reason to hope that they will serve to cement that harmony
and good understanding between the two nations which,
founded in congenial interests, cannot but result in the
advancement of the welfare and prosperity of both.
Our relations of commerce and navigation
with France are by the operation of the convention
of 24th of June 1822 with that nation,
in a state of gradual and progressive improvement.
Convinced by all our experience, no less than by the
principles of fair and liberal reciprocity which the
United States have constantly tendered to all the nations of
the earth as the rule of commercial intercourse which they
would universally prefer, that fair and equal competition
is most conducive to the interests of both parties, the
United States in the negotiation of that convention earnestly
contended for a mutual renunciation of discriminating
duties and charges in the ports of the two countries.
Unable to obtain the immediate recognition of this principle
in its full extent, after reducing the duties of discrimination
so far as was found attainable it was agreed that at the
expiration of two years from the 1st of October 1822,
when the convention was to go into effect, unless a notice
of six months on either side should be given to the other
that the convention itself must terminate, those duties
should be reduced one fourth, and that this reduction should
be yearly repeated, until all discrimination should cease,
while the convention itself should continue in force.
By the effect of this stipulation three-fourths of the
discriminating duties which had been levied by
each party upon the vessels of the other in its ports
have already been removed; and on the first of
next October, should the convention be still in force,
the remaining fourth will be discontinued.
French vessels laden with French produce will be received in
our ports on the same terms as our own, and ours in return
will enjoy the same advantages in the ports of France.
By these approximations to an equality of duties
and of charges not only has the commerce between
the two countries prospered, but friendly dispositions
have been on both sides encouraged and promoted.
They will continue to be cherished and cultivated
on the part of the United States.
It would have been gratifying to have had it in my power
to add that the claims upon the justice of the French
Government, involving the property and the comfortable
subsistence of many of our fellow citizens, and which
have been so long and so earnestly urged, were in a more
promising train of adjustment than at your last meeting;
but their condition remains unaltered.
With the Government of the Netherlands the
mutual abandonment of discriminating duties
had been regulated by legislative acts on both sides.
The act of Congress of the 20th of April 1818
abolished all discriminating duties of impost and tonnage
upon the vessels and produce of the Netherlands in the
ports of the United States upon the assurance given
by the Government of the Netherlands that all such duties
operating against the shipping and commerce of the
United States in that Kingdom had been abolished.
These reciprocal regulations had continued in force
several years when the discriminating principle was
resumed by the Netherlands in a new and indirect form
by a bounty of 10 percent in the shape of a return of
duties to their national vessels, and in which those
of the United States are not permitted to participate.
By the act of Congress of 7th January 1824, all
discriminating duties in the United States were again
suspended, so far as related to the vessels and
produce of the Netherlands, so long as the reciprocal
exemption should be extended to the vessels
and produce of the United States in the Netherlands.
But the same act provides that in the event of a restoration
of discriminating duties to operate against the shipping
and commerce of the United States in any of the foreign
countries referred to therein the suspension of
discriminating duties in favor of the navigation of
such foreign country should cease and all the provisions
of the acts imposing discriminating foreign tonnage
and impost duties in the United States should revive
and be in full force with regard to that nation.
In the correspondence with the Government of the
Netherlands upon this subject they have contended that
the favor shown to their own shipping by this bounty upon
their tonnage is not to be considered a discriminating duty;
but it cannot be denied that it produces all the same effects.
Had the mutual abolition been stipulated by treaty,
such a bounty upon the national vessels could scarcely
have been granted consistent with good faith.
Yet as the act of Congress of 7th January 1824 has not
expressly authorized the Executive authority to determine
what shall be considered as a revival of discriminating duties
by a foreign government to the disadvantage of the
United States, and as the retaliatory measure on our part,
however just and necessary, may tend rather to that
conflict of legislation which we deprecate than to that
concert to which we invite all commercial nations,
as most conducive to their interest and our own,
I have thought it more consistent with the spirit of our
institutions to refer to the subject again to the paramount
authority of the Legislature to decide what measure the
emergency may require than abruptly by proclamation to
carry into effect the minatory provisions of the act of 1824.
During the last session of Congress treaties of amity,
navigation, and commerce were negotiated and signed at
this place with the Government of Denmark in Europe, and
with the Federation of Central America in this hemisphere.
These treaties then received the constitutional sanction of
the Senate by the advice and consent to their ratification.
They were accordingly ratified on the part of the
United States, and during the recess of Congress have been
also ratified by the other respective contracting parties.
The ratifications have been exchanged, and they have
been published by proclamations, copies of which
are herewith communicated to Congress.
These treaties have established between the contracting
parties the principles of equality and reciprocity in their
broadest and most liberal extent, each party admitting
the vessels of the other into its ports, laden with cargoes
the produce or manufacture of any quarter of the globe,
upon the payment of the same duties of tonnage
and impost that are chargeable upon their own.
They have further stipulated that the parties shall hereafter
grant no favor of navigation or commerce to any other
nation which shall not upon the same terms be granted
to each other, and that neither party will impose upon
articles of merchandise the produce or manufacture of the
other any other or higher duties than upon the like articles
being the produce or manufacture of any other country.
To these principles there is in the convention with
Denmark an exception with regard to the colonies
of that Kingdom in the arctic seas, but none
with regard to her colonies in the West Indies.
In the course of the last summer the term to which our
last commercial treaty with Sweden was limited has expired.
A continuation of it is in the contemplation of the
Swedish Government, and is believed to be
desirable on the part of the United States.
It has been proposed by the King of Sweden that
pending the negotiation of renewal the expired treaty
should be mutually considered as still in force,
a measure which will require the sanction of Congress
to be carried into effect on our part, and which
I therefore recommend to your consideration.
With Prussia, Spain, Portugal, and in general all the
European powers between whom and the United States
relations of friendly intercourse have existed their condition
has not materially varied since the last session of Congress.
I regret not to be able to say the same of our
commercial intercourse with the colonial
possessions of Great Britain in America.
Negotiations of the highest importance to our common
interests have been for several years in discussion
between the two Governments, and on the part of the
United States have been invariably pursued
in the spirit of candor and conciliation.
Interests of great magnitude and delicacy had been
adjusted by the conventions of 1815 and 1818, while
that of 1822 mediated by the late Emperor Alexander,
had promised a satisfactory compromise of claims which
the Government of the United States, in justice to the rights
of a numerous class of their citizens, was bound to sustain.
But with regard to the commercial intercourse between
the United States and the British colonies in America,
it has been hitherto found impracticable to bring
the parties to an understanding satisfactory to both.
The relative geographical position and the respective
products of nature cultivated by human industry had
constituted the elements of a commercial intercourse
between the United States and British America, insular and
continental, important to the inhabitants of both countries;
but it had been interdicted by Great Britain upon a
principle heretofore practiced upon by the colonizing
nations of Europe, of holding the trade of their
colonies each in exclusive monopoly to herself.
After the termination of the late war this interdiction
had been revived, and the British Government declined
including this portion of our intercourse with her
possessions in the negotiation of the convention of 1815.
The trade was then carried on exclusively in British vessels
till the act of Congress concerning navigation of 1818
and the supplemental act of 1820 met the interdict by a
corresponding measure on the part of the United States.
These measures, not of retaliation, but of necessary
self-defense, were soon succeeded by an act of
Parliament opening certain colonial ports to the vessels
of the United States coming directly from them,
and to the importation from them of certain articles
of our produce burdened with heavy duties, and
excluding some of the most valuable articles of our exports.
The United States opened their ports to British vessels from
the colonies upon terms as exactly corresponding with those
of the act of Parliament as in the relative position of the
parties could be made, and a negotiation was commenced
by mutual consent, with the hope on our part that a
reciprocal spirit of accommodation and a common sentiment
of the importance of the trade to the interests of the
inhabitants of the two countries between whom it must
be carried on would ultimately bring the parties to
a compromise with which both might be satisfied.
With this view the Government of the United States had
determined to sacrifice something of that entire reciprocity
which in all commercial arrangements with foreign powers
they are entitled to demand, and to acquiesce in some
inequalities disadvantageous to ourselves rather than to
forego the benefit of a final and permanent adjustment
of this interest to the satisfaction of Great Britain herself.
The negotiation, repeatedly suspended by
accidental circumstances, was, however,
by mutual agreement and express assent,
considered as pending and to be speedily resumed.
In the meantime another act of Parliament,
so doubtful and ambiguous in its import as to have been
misunderstood by the officers in the colonies who were
to carry it into execution, opens again certain colonial ports
upon new conditions and terms, with a threat to close
them against any nation which may not accept those
terms as prescribed by the British Government.
This act, passed in July 1825, not communicated to the
Government of the United States, not understood by the
British officers of the customs in the colonies where
it was to be enforced, was never the less submitted
to the consideration of Congress at their last session.
With the knowledge that a negotiation upon the subject
had long been in progress and pledges given of its
resumption at an early day, it was deemed expedient
to await the result of that negotiation rather than
to subscribe implicitly to terms the import of which
was not clear and which the British authorities themselves
in this hemisphere were not prepared to explain.
Immediately after the close of the last session of Congress
one of our most distinguished citizens was dispatched
as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to
Great Britain, furnished with instructions which we could not
doubt would lead to a conclusion of this long controverted
interest upon terms acceptable to Great Britain.
Upon his arrival, and before he had delivered his
letters of credence, he was met by an order of the
British council excluding from and after the
1st of December now current the vessels of the
United States from all the colonial British ports
excepting those immediately bordering on our territories.
In answer to his expostulations upon a measure thus
unexpected he is informed that according to the ancient
maxims of policy of European nations having colonies
their trade is an exclusive possession of the mother country;
that all participation in it by other nations is a boon or favor
not forming a subject of negotiation, but to be regulated
by the legislative acts of the power owning the colony;
that the British Government therefore declines negotiating
concerning it, and that as the United States did not
forthwith accept purely and simply the terms offered
by the act of Parliament of July 1825 Great Britain
would not now admit the vessels of the United States
even upon the terms on which she has opened them
to the navigation of other nations.
We have been accustomed to consider the trade
which we have enjoyed with the British colonies
rather as an interchange of mutual benefits than
as a mere favor received; that under every
circumstance we have given an ample equivalent.
We have seen every other nation holding colonies negotiate
with other nations and grant them freely admission to the
colonies by treaty, and so far are the other colonizing
nations of Europe now from refusing to negotiate for trade
with their colonies that we ourselves have secured access
to the colonies of more than one of them by treaty.
The refusal, however, of Great Britain to negotiate leaves
to the United States no other alternative than that of
regulating or interdicting altogether the trade on their part,
according as either measure may affect the interests
of our own country, and with that exclusive object
I would recommend the whole subject
to your calm and candid deliberations.
It is hoped that our unavailing exertions to accomplish
a cordial good understanding on this interest will not
have an unpropitious effect upon the other great topics
of discussion between the two Governments.
Our northeastern and northwestern
boundaries are still unadjusted.
The commissioners under the seventh article of the treaty
of Ghent have nearly come to the close of their labors;
nor can we renounce the expectation, enfeebled as it is,
that they may agree upon their report to the
satisfaction or acquiescence of both parties.
The commission for liquidating the claims for indemnity
for slaves carried away after the close of the war
has been sitting with doubtful prospects of success.
Propositions of compromise have, however, passed
between the two Governments, the result of which
we flatter ourselves may yet prove unsatisfactory.
Our own dispositions and purposes toward Great Britain
are all friendly and conciliatory; nor can we abandon
but with strong reluctance the belief that they will
ultimately meet a return, not of favors, which we
neither as nor desire, but of equal reciprocity and good will.
With the American Governments of this hemisphere we
continue to maintain an intercourse altogether friendly, and
between their nations and ours that commercial interchange
of which mutual benefit is the source of mutual comfort and
harmony the result is in a continual state of improvement.
The war between Spain and them since the total expulsion
of the Spanish military force from their continental territories
has been little more than nominal, and their internal
tranquility, though occasionally menaced by the
agitations which civil wars never fail to leave behind them,
has not been affected by any serious calamity.
The congress of ministers from several of those nations
which assembled at Panama, after a short session there,
adjourned to meet again at a more favorable
season in the neighborhood of Mexico.
The decease of one of our ministers on his way to the
Isthmus, and the impediments of the season,
which delayed the departure of the other,
deprived United States of the advantage of being
represented at the first meeting of the congress.
There is, however, no reason to believe that any
transactions of the congress were of a nature to affect
injuriously the interests of the United States or to require
the interposition of our ministers had they been present.
Their absence has, indeed, deprived United States of the
opportunity of possessing precise and authentic information
of the treaties which were concluded at Panama;
and the whole result has confirmed me in the conviction
of the expediency to the United States
of being represented at the congress.
The surviving member of the mission, appointed
during your last session, has accordingly proceeded
to his destination, and a successor to his distinguished
and lamented associate will be nominated to the Senate.
A treaty of amity, navigation, and commerce has
in the course of the last summer been concluded
by our minister plenipotentiary at Mexico with the united
states of that Confederacy, which will also be laid before
the Senate for their advice with regard to its ratification.
In adverting to the present condition of our fiscal
concerns and to the prospects of our revenue
the first remark that calls our attention is that they
are less exuberantly prosperous than they were
at the corresponding period of the last year.
The severe shock so extensively sustained by the
commercial and manufacturing interests in Great Britain
has not been without a perceptible recoil upon ourselves.
A reduced importation from abroad is necessarily
succeeded by a reduced return to the Treasury at home.
The net revenue of the present year will not equal that
of the last, and the receipts of that which is to come
will fall short of those in the current year.
The diminution, however, is in part attributable to the
flourishing condition of some of our domestic manufactures,
and so far is compensated by an equivalent
more profitable to the nation.
It is also highly gratifying to perceive that the deficiency
in the revenue, while it scarcely exceeds the anticipations
of the last year’s estimate from the Treasury,
has not interrupted the application of more than
eleven millions during the present year to the discharge of
the principal and interest of the debt, nor the reduction of
upward of seven millions of the capital of the debt itself.
The balance in the Treasury on the 1st of January last was
$5,201,650.43; the receipts from that time to the
30th of September last were $19,585,932.50;
the receipts of the current quarter, estimated at $6,000,000,
yield with the sums already received a revenue of about
twenty-five millions and a half for the year;
the expenditures for the first 3 quarters of the year
have amounted to $18,714,226.66; the expenditures of the
current quarter are expected, including the two millions of
the principal of the debt to be paid to balance the receipts;
so that the expense of the year, amounting to upward of
a million less than its income, will leave a proportionally
increased balance in the Treasury on the
1st of January 1827, over that of the 1st of January last;
instead of $5,200,000 there will be $6,400,000.
The amount of duties secured on merchandise imported
from the commence of the year till September 30
is estimated at $21,250,000, and the amount that will
probably accrue during the present quarter is estimated
at $4,250,000, making for the whole year $25,500,000,
from which the drawbacks being deducted will leave a
clear revenue from the customs receivable in the year 1827
of about $20,400,000, which, with the sums to be received
from the proceeds of public lands, the bank dividends,
and other incidental receipts, will form an aggregate of
about $23,000,000, a sum falling short of the whole
expenses of the present year little more than the portion
of those expenditures applied to the discharge of the
public debt beyond the annual appropriation of
$10,000,000 by the act of the 3rd of March 1817.
At the passage of that act
the public debt amounted to $123,500,000.
On the 1st of January next it will be short of $74,000,000.
In the lapse of these ten years $50,000,000 of public debt,
with the annual charge of upward of $3,000,000
of interest upon them, have been extinguished.
At the passage of that act, of the annual appropriation
of ten millions seven were absorbed in the payment
of interest, and not more than $3,000,000
went to reduce the capital of the debt.
Of the same ten millions at this time scarcely four
are applicable to the interest and upward of six
are effective in melting down the capital.
Yet our experience has proved that a revenue
consisting so largely of imposts and tonnage
ebbs and flows to an extraordinary extent, with all the
fluctuations incident to the general commerce of the world.
It is within our recollection that even in the compass
of the same last ten years the receipts of the Treasury
were not adequate to the expenditures of the year,
and that in two successive years it was found necessary
to resort to loans to meet the engagements of the nation.
The returning tides of the succeeding years
replenished the public coffers until they have
again begun to feel the vicissitude of a decline.
To produce these alternations of fullness and exhaustion
the relative operation of abundant or unfruitful seasons,
the regulations of foreign governments, political revolutions,
the prosperous or decaying condition of manufactures,
commercial speculations, and many other causes,
not always to be traced, variously combine.
We have found the alternate swells and diminutions
embracing periods of from two to three years.
The last period of depression to us was from 1819 to 1822.
The corresponding revival was from 1823
to the commencement of the present year.
Still, we have no cause to apprehend a depression
comparable to that of the former period, or even to
anticipate a deficiency which will intrench upon the ability to
apply the annual ten millions to the reduction of the debt.
It is well for us, however, to be admonished of the
necessity of abiding by the maxims of the most vigilant
economy, and of resorting to all honorable and useful
expedients for pursuing with steady and inflexible
perseverance the total discharge of the debt.
Besides the seven millions of the loans of 1813 which will
have been discharged in the course of the present year,
there are nine millions which by the terms of the contracts
would have been and are now redeemable.
Thirteen millions more of the loan of 1814 will
become redeemable from and after the expiration
of the present month, and $9,000,000 other
from and after the close of the ensuing year.
They constitute a mass of $31,000,000, all bearing
an interest of 6 percent, more than twenty millions
of which will be immediately redeemable,
and the rest within little more than a year.
Leaving of this amount $15,000,000 to continue
at the interest of 6 percent, but to be paid off as far as
shall be found practicable in the years 1827 and 1828,
there is scarcely a doubt that the remaining sixteen millions
might within a few months be discharged
by a loan at not exceeding 5 percent,
redeemable in the years 1829 and 1830.
By this operation a sum of nearly $500,000 may
be saved to the nation, and the discharge of the
whole thirty-one millions within the four years
may be greatly facilitated if not wholly accomplished.
By an act of Congress of 3rd March 1835 a loan for the
purpose now referred to or a subscription to stock was
authorized at an interest not exceeding 4.5 percent.
But at that time so large a portion of the floating capital
of the country was absorbed in commercial speculations
and so little was left for investment in the stocks
that the measure was but partially successful.
At the last session of Congress the condition of the funds
was still unpropitious to the measure; but the change
so soon afterwards occurred that, had the authority
existed to redeem the nine millions now redeemable
by an exchange of stocks or a loan at 5 percent,
it is morally certain that it might have been effected,
and with it a yearly saving of $90,000.
With regard to the collection of the revenue of imposts,
certain occurrences have within the last year been
disclosed in one or two of our principal ports,
which engaged the attention of Congress at their last session
and may hereafter require further consideration.
Until within a very few years the execution of the laws for
raising the revenue, like that of all our other laws, has been
insured more by the moral sense of the community than
by the rigors of a jealous precaution or by penal sanction.
Confiding in the exemplary punctuality and unsullied integrity
of our importing merchants, a gradual relaxation from the
provisions of the collection laws, a close adherence to which
have caused inconvenience and expense to them, had long
become habitual, and indulgences had been extended
universally because they had never been abused.
It may be worthy of your serious consideration whether
some further legislative provision may not be necessary
to come in aid of this state of unguarded security.
From the reports herewith communicated of the
Secretaries of War and of the Navy, with the subsidiary
documents annexed to them, will be discovered the
present condition and administration of our military
establishment on the land and on the sea.
The organization of the Army having undergone no change
since its reduction to the present peace establishment
in 1821, it remains only to observe that it is yet found
adequate to all the purposes for which a permanent
armed force in time of peace can be needed or useful.
It may be proper to add that, from a difference of opinion
between the late President of the United States and the
Senate with regard to the construction of the act of Congress
of 2nd March 1821, to reduce and fix the military peace
establishment of the United States, it remains hitherto
so far without execution that no colonel has been
appointed to command one of the regiments of artillery.
A supplementary or explanatory act of the Legislature
appears to be the only expedient practicable
for removing the difficulty of this appointment.
In a period of profound peace the conduct of the
mere military establishment forms but a very
inconsiderable portion of the duties devolving upon
the administration of the Department of War.
It will be seen by the returns from the subordinate
departments of the Army that every branch of the service
is marked with order, regularity, and discipline;
that from the commanding general through all the
gradations of superintendence the officers feel themselves
to have been citizens before they were soldiers,
and that the glory of a republican army must consist
in the spirit of freedom, by which it is animated,
and of patriotism, by which it is impelled.
It may be confidently stated that the moral character
of the Army is in a state of continual improvement,
and that all the arrangements for the disposal
of its parts have a constant reference to that end.
But to the War Department are attributed other duties,
having, indeed, relation to a future possible condition of war,
but being purely defensive, and in their tendency
contributing rather to the security and permanency of
peace—the erection of the fortifications provided for by
Congress, and adapted to secure our shores from hostile
invasion; the distribution of the fund of public gratitude
and justice to the pensioners of the Revolutionary war;
the maintenance of our relations of peace and protection
with the Indian tribes, and the internal improvements
and surveys for the location of roads and canals,
which during the last three sessions of Congress have
engaged so much of their attention, and may engross so
large a share of their future benefactions to our country.
By the act of the 30th of April 1824 suggested
and approved by my predecessor, the sum of $30,000
was appropriated for the purpose of causing to be made
the necessary surveys, plans, and estimates of the routes
of such roads and canals as the President of the
United States might deem of national importance
in a commercial or military point of view,
or necessary for the transportation of the public mail.
The surveys, plans, and estimates for each,
when completed, will be laid before Congress.
In execution of this act a board of engineers was
immediately instituted, and have been since most
assiduously and constantly occupied in carrying it into effect.
The first object to which their labors were directed,
by order of the late President, was the examination of the
country between the tide waters of the Potomac, the Ohio,
and Lake Erie, to ascertain the practicability of a
communication between them, to designate the
most suitable route for the same, and to form plans
and estimates in detail of the expense of execution.
On the 3rd of February 1825 they made their first report,
which was immediately communicated to Congress,
and in which they declared that having maturely considered
the circumstances observed by them personally,
and carefully studied the results of such of the preliminary
surveys as were then completed, they were decidedly
of opinion that the communication was practicable.
At the last session of Congress, before the board of
engineers were enabled to make up their second report
containing a general plan and preparatory estimate for
the work, the Committee of the House of Representatives
upon Roads and Canals closed the session with a report
expressing the hope that the plan and estimate of the
board of engineers might at this time be prepared,
and that the subject be referred to the early and favorable
consideration of Congress at their present session.
That expected report of the board of engineers is prepared,
and will forthwith be laid before you.
Under the resolution of Congress authorizing the
Secretary of War to have prepared a complete system
of cavalry tactics, and a system of exercise and instruction
of field artillery for the use of the militia of the United States
to be reported to Congress at the present session;
a board of distinguished officers of the Army and
of the militia has been convened, whose report will
be submitted to you with that of the Secretary of War.
The occasion was thought favorable for consulting the
same board, aided by the results of a correspondence
with the governors of the several States and Territories
and other citizens of intelligence and experience,
upon the acknowledged defective condition of our militia
system, and of the improvements of which it is susceptible.
The report of the board upon this subject
is also submitted for your consideration.
In the estimates of appropriations for the ensuing year
upward of $5,000,000 will be submitted for the
expenditures to be paid from the Department of War.
Less than two-fifths of this will be applicable
to the maintenance and support of the Army.
A million and a half in the form of pensions goes
as a scarcely adequate tribute to the services and sacrifices
of a former age, and a more than equal sum invested
in fortifications; or for the preparations of internal
improvement, provides for the quiet, the comfort,
and happier existence of the ages to come.
The appropriations to indemnify those unfortunate
remnants of another race unable alike to share in the
enjoyments and to exist in the presence of civilization,
though swelling in recent years to a magnitude burdensome
to the Treasury, are generally not without their equivalents
in profitable value, or serve to discharge the Union
from engagements more burdensome than debt.
In like manner the estimate of appropriations
for the Navy Department will present an
aggregate sum of upward of $3,000,000.
About one-half of these, however, covers the
current expenditures of the Navy in actual service,
and one-half constitutes a fund of national property,
the pledge of our future glory and defense.
It was scarcely one short year after the close of
the late war, and when the burden of its expenses
and charges was weighing heaviest upon the country,
that Congress, by the act of 29th April 1816,
appropriated $1,000,000 annually for eight years
to the gradual increase of the Navy.
At a subsequent period this annual appropriation
was reduced to half a million for six years,
of which the present year is the last.
A yet more recent appropriation the last two years for
building 10 sloops of war has nearly restored the original
appropriation of 1816 of $1,000,000 for every year.
The result is before us all.
We have twelve line-of-battle ships, twenty frigates,
and sloops of war in proportion, which, with a few months
of preparation, may present a line of floating fortifications
along the whole range of our coast ready to meet any
invader who might attempt to set foot upon our shores.
Combining with a system of fortifications upon the
shores themselves, commenced about the same time
under the auspices of my immediate predecessor,
and hitherto systematically pursued, it has placed
in our possession the most effective sinews of war
and has left us at once an example and a lesson
from which our own duties may be inferred.
The gradual increase of the Navy was the principle of
which the act of 29th April 1816 was the first development.
It was the introduction of a system to act upon the character
and history of our country for an indefinite series of ages.
It was a declaration of that Congress to their constituents
and to posterity that it was the destiny and the duty
of these confederated States to become in regular process
of time and by no petty advances a great naval power.
That which they proposed to accomplish in eight years
is rather to be considered as the measure
of their means that the limitation of their design.
They looked forward for a term of years sufficient for
the accomplishment of a definite portion of their purpose,
and they left to their successors to fill up the canvas of
which they had traced the large and prophetic outline.
The ships of the line and frigates which they had
in contemplation will be shortly completed.
The time which they had allotted for the accomplishment
of the work has more than elapsed.
It remains for your consideration how their successors may
contribute their portion of toil and of treasure for the benefit
of the succeeding age in the gradual increase of our Navy.
There is perhaps no part of the exercise of the
constitutional powers of the Federal Government
which has given more general satisfaction
to the people of the Union than this.
The system has not been thus vigorously introduced and
hitherto sustained to be now departed from or abandoned.
In continuing to provide for the gradual increase of the Navy
it may not be necessary or expedient to add for the present
any more to the number of our ships; but should you deem
it advisable to continue the yearly appropriation of half a
million to the same objects, it may be profitably expended
in a providing a supply of timber to be seasoned and other
materials for future use in the construction of docks
or in laying the foundations of a school for naval education,
as to the wisdom of Congress either of those measures
may appear to claim the preference.
Of the small portions of this Navy engaged in actual
service during the peace, squadrons have continued to be
maintained in the Pacific Ocean, in the West India seas,
and in the Mediterranean, to which has been added a small
armament to cruise on the eastern coast of South America.
In all they have afforded protection to our commerce,
have contributed to make our country advantageously
known to foreign nations, have honorably employed
multitudes of our sea men in the service of their country,
and have inured numbers of youths of the rising
generation to lives of manly hardihood
and of nautical experience and skill.
The piracies with which the West India seas were
for several years infested have been totally suppressed,
but in the Mediterranean they have increased
in a manner afflictive to other nations, and
but for the continued presence of our squadron
would probably have been distressing to our own.
The war which has unfortunately broken out between
the Republic of Buenos Aires and the Brazilian Government
has given rise to very great irregularities among the
naval officers of the latter, by whom principles in relation
to blockades and to neutral navigation have been brought
forward to which we cannot subscribe and which our
own commanders have found it necessary to resist.
From the friendly disposition toward the United States
constantly manifested by the Emperor of Brazil,
and the very useful and friendly commercial intercourse
between the United States and his dominions,
we have reason to believe that the just reparation
demanded for the injuries sustained by several of our
citizens from some of his officers will not be withheld.
Abstracts from the recent dispatches of the commanders
of our several squadrons are communicated with
the report of the Secretary of the Navy to Congress.
A report from the Post-Master General is likewise
communicated, presenting in a highly satisfactory
manner the result of a vigorous, efficient, and
economical administration of that Department.
The revenue of the office, even of the year including
the latter half of 1824 and the first half of 1825, had
exceeded its expenditures by a sum of more than $45,000.
That of the succeeding year has been still more productive.
The increase of the receipts in the year preceding the
1st of July last over that of the year before
exceeds $136,000, and the excess of the receipts
over the expenditures of the year
has swollen from $45,000 to yearly $80,000.
During the same period contracts for additional
transportation of the mail in stages for about
260,000 miles have been made,
and for 70,000 miles annually on horseback.
Seven hundred and fourteen new post offices have been
established within the year, and the increase of revenue
within the last three years, as well as the augmentation
of the transportation by mail, is more than equal to
the whole amount of receipts and of mail conveyance
at the commencement of the present century, when the
seat of the General Government was removed to this place.
When we reflect that the objects effected by the
transportation of the mail are among the choicest
comforts and enjoyments of social life, it is pleasing
to observe that the dissemination of them to
every corner of our country has outstripped
in their increase even the rapid march of our population.
By the treaties with France and Spain,
respectively ceding Louisiana and the Floridas to the
United States, provision was made for the security of land
titles derived from the Governments of those nations.
Some progress has been made under the authority
of various acts of Congress in the ascertainment
and establishment of those titles, but claims
to a very large extent remain unadjusted.
The public faith no less than the just rights of individuals
and the interest of the community itself appears to require
further provision for the speedy settlement of those claims,
which I therefore recommend to the
care and attention of the Legislature.
In conformity with the provisions of the act of
19th May 1825 to provide for erecting a penitentiary
in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes,
three commissioners were appointed to select a site
for the erection of a penitentiary for the District,
and also a site in the county of Alexandria
for a county jail, both of which objects have been effected.
The building of the penitentiary has been commenced,
and is in such a degree of forwardness as to promise that it
will be completed before the meeting of the next Congress.
This consideration points to the expediency of maturing
at the present session a system for the regulation
and government of the penitentiary,
and of defining a system for the regulation and government
of the penitentiary, and of defining the class of offenses
which shall be punishable by confinement in this edifice.
In closing this communication I trust that
it will not be deemed inappropriate to the occasion
and purposes upon which we are here assembled
to indulge a momentary retrospect, combining in a
single glance the period of our origin as a national
confederation with that of our present existence,
at the precise interval of half a century from each other.
Since your last meeting at this place the 50th anniversary
of the day when our independence was declared has been
celebrated throughout our land, and on that day,
while every heart was bounding with joy and every voice
was tuned to gratulation, amid the blessings of freedom
and independence which the sires of a former age had
handed down to their children, two of the principal actors
in that solemn scene—the hand that penned the ever
memorable Declaration and the voice that sustained it
in debate—were by one summons, at the distance
of 700 miles from each other, called before the
Judge of All to account for their deeds done upon earth.
They departed cheered by the benedictions of their country,
to whom they left the inheritance of their fame
and the memory of their bright example.
If we turn our thoughts to the condition of their country,
in the contrast of the first and last day of that half century,
how resplendent and sublime is the
transition from gloom to glory!
Then, glancing through the same lapse of time,
in the condition of the individuals we see the first day
marked with the fullness and vigor of youth,
in the pledge of their lives, their fortunes, and their
sacred honor to the cause of freedom and of mankind;
and on the last, extended on the bed of death,
with but sense and sensibility left to breathe a last
aspiration to Heaven of blessing upon their country,
may we not humbly hope that to them too it was
a pledge of transition from gloom to glory,
and that while their mortal vestments were sinking
into the clod of the valley their emancipated spirits
were ascending to the bosom of their God!21
John Quincy Adams in his Memoirs on 5 December 1826 wrote,
The annual message to both Houses of Congress
was this day sent in at twelve o’clock.
They adjourned after reading it, and I had
visits before dinner from four Senators and
twelve members of the House of Representatives.
I received them in the parlor below, and in the intervals
between their visits continued the perusal of the proceedings
of the Court-martial upon the trial of Major Babcock.
Mr. Southard came with Colonel Ogden and introduced him.
He is here again, as he was at the last session of Congress,
as an agent for the officers of the Revolutionary War,
claiming the justice or the munificence of the nation.
He left with me a printed pamphlet stating the foundations
of their claim, which he requested me to peruse.22
The next day Adams wrote in the margin of his Memoirs the
names of 43 visitors who came to see him, and also he wrote,
6th. The day was again devoted to the
reception of visitors, of whom were the
Vice President, Calhoun, twelve Senators, and
twenty-five members of the House of Representatives.
Received them in the parlor, and whenever
an interval occurred I employed it in reading the
proceedings on Major Babcock’s Court-martial.
The visitors came one, two, or three at a time.23
On the 7th in his Memoirs he wrote there were
Morning visits from five Senators and
eleven members of the House of Representatives….
Governor Kent is the President of the Canal Convention
now sitting here, and came to introduce
about twenty of them here.
Mr. McKim came with eight or ten more….
Mr. Elgar, the Commissioner of Public Buildings, brought me
a copy of a resolution of the Senate of 29th January 1818,
requesting that the President would annually cause
a report to be made to Congress of the expenditures
upon the public buildings and of the progress
made towards completing them, and
Mr. Elgar left with me two copies of such a report.24
In the northwest the United States and Britain shared territory around the Columbia River.
At a meeting on December 19 King argued that the principle of contiguity
allowed people to claim land adjacent to settled territory.
On 13 December 1826 President Adams wrote
in his Memoirs about the difficulties of patronage:
And it is upon the occasion of appointments to office that all
the wormwood and the gall of the old party hatred ooze out.
Not a vacancy to any office occurs but there is a
distinguished federalist started and pushed home
as a candidate to fill it—always well qualified,
sometimes in an eminent degree, and yet so
obnoxious to the Republican party that he cannot
be appointed without exciting a vehement clamor
against him and against the Administration.
It becomes thus impossible to fill any appointment
without offending one-half the community—
the federalists, if their associate is overlooked;
the Republicans, if he is preferred.
To this disposition justice must sometimes
make resistance, and policy must often yield.25
In the fall Haden Edwards in Texas tried to remove squatting Americans and Mexicans
from his Mexican land grant, and Mexico’s government expelled him.
He gathered some men together, and with a red-and-white flag
they declared independence as the “Republic of Fredonia” on December 16.
President Adams wrote in the last portion of his Memoirs on December 16:
John A. King, late Secretary to the Legation of
Great Britain arrived bringing with him a Convention
concluded on the 13th of last month by Mr. Gallatin
with the British Plenipotentiaries Huskisson and Addington
by which, if it please God, the long controversy respecting
slaves carried away from this country in violation of the
first stipulation of the Treaty of Ghent will be closed by
a payment on the part of Great Britain of a sum a little
exceeding twelve hundred thousand dollars, to be distributed
by the American Government among the claimants.
I receive this intelligence with the
most fervent gratitude and joy.
Mr. Clay came to speak of the arrangements to be
made for sending the treaty to the Senate, for which
to avoid delay, many original papers must be sent.
J. A. King dined and spent the evening with me
and gave me information, as far as he was informed,
of the general state of affairs in Europe.
Mr. Gallatin is determined to return next May.26
On 21 December 1826 President Adams wrote this in his Memoirs:
Mr. Clay spoke of the ensuing Presidential election
and intimated that some of his friends, Eastern and Western,
had expressed a wish that he should be supported
as the candidate for the Vice-Presidency.
He said he thought the selection ought to be made
exclusively with reference to its influence upon the issue
of the election of the President; that for himself, he had
no wish either to be a candidate for the Vice-Presidency
or to withhold himself from it, if it should be thought
useful to the cause that he should be run for that office.
I told him that I had hitherto heard very little said
upon the subject; that if the failure of his health should
render the duties of the Department of State too oppressive
for his continuance in it, I should be satisfied if he should
be transferred to the Vice-Presidency; but otherwise
I should think it more advantageous both for the public
and personally for him that he should continue in the
far more arduous and important office of Secretary of State;
which in the event of his retiring from it,
I should find it extremely difficult to fill.
I said it was not my intention to compliment him,
but I must say it would be no easy matter
to supply his place in that Department.
He said he was entirely satisfied with it;
that without complimenting me, he would say that
he had found every facility in transacting business
under me; and he should be equally well pleased
to continue in the Department of State or to pass to
the Vice-Presidency, according as the general cause
of the Administration might be promoted by either event.
He said he had some time in the course of last summer
mentioned to Governor Barbour his own disposition
that the friends of the Administration might unite in
supporting him (Barbour) for the next Vice-Presidency,
and that he should be satisfied with that arrangement,
but he believed it would be expedient to come
to some definite understanding concerning it.27
Notes
1. A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, A 1789-1908,
Volume II ed. James D. Richardson, p. 321.
2. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams ed. Charles Francis Adams, Volume VII, p. 106.
3. Ibid., p. 106-107.
4. Messages and Papers of the Presidents, A 1789-1908, Volume II, p. 324-326.
5. Ibid., p. 113-114.
6. Ibid., p. 116-118.
7. Messages and Papers of the Presidents, A 1789-1908, Volume II, p. 329-340.
8. Ibid., p. 341-342.
9. Ibid., p. 344.
10. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Volume. VII, p. 119.
11. Ibid., p. 122.
12. Messages and Papers of the Presidents, A 1789-1908, Volume II, p. 347-348.
13. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Volume. VII, p. 136-137.
14. Ibid., p. 143-144.
15. Ibid., p. 144-145.
16. Ibid., p. 149-150.
17. Ibid., p. 154.
18. Ibid., p. 157.
19. Ibid., p. 163-164.
20. Ibid., p. 166.
21. Messages and Papers of the Presidents, A 1789-1908, Volume II, p. 350-364.
22. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Volume. VII, p. 198.
23. Ibid., p. 198.
24. Ibid., p. 199-200.
25. Ibid., p. 207-208.
26. Ibid., p. 213.
27. Ibid., p. 216-217.
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