Peace—and nothing more? Much more, indeed, than appears in rubrics on parchment. The Treaty of Ghent must be interpreted in the light of more than a hundred years of peace between the two great branches of the English-speaking race. More conscious of their differences than anything else, no doubt, these eight peacemakers at Ghent nevertheless spoke a common tongue and shared a common English trait: they laid firm hold on realities. Like practical men they faced the year 1815 and not 1812. In a pacified Europe rid of the Corsican, questions of maritime practice seemed dead issues. Let the dead past bury its dead! To remove possible causes of future controversy seemed wiser statesmanship than to rake over the embers of quarrels which might never be rekindled. So it was that in prosaic articles they provided for three commissions to arbitrate boundary controversies at critical points in the far-flung frontier between Canada and the United States, and thus laid the foundations of an international accord which has survived a hundred years.
CHAPTER XIII. SPANISH DERELICTS IN THE NEW WORLD
It fell to the last, and perhaps least talented, President of the Virginia Dynasty to consummate the work of Jefferson and Madison by a final settlement with Spain which left the United States in possession of the Floridas. In the diplomatic service James Monroe had exhibited none of those qualities which warranted the expectation that he would succeed where his predecessors had failed. On his missions to England and Spain, indeed, he had been singularly inept, but he had learned much in the rude school of experience, and he now brought to his new duties discretion, sobriety, and poise. He was what the common people held him to be a faithful public servant, deeply and sincerely republican, earnestly desirous to serve the country which he loved.
The circumstances of Monroe's election pledged him to a truly national policy. He had received the electoral votes of all but three States. * He was now President of an undivided country, not merely a Virginian fortuitously elevated to the chief magistracy and regarded as alien in sympathy to the North and East. Any doubts on this point were dispelled by the popular demonstrations which greeted him on his tour through Federalist strongholds in the Northeast. "I have seen enough," he wrote in grateful recollection, "to satisfy me that the great mass of our fellow-citizens in the Eastern States are as firmly attached to the union and republican government as I have always believed or could desire them to be." The news-sheets which followed his progress from day to day coined the phrase, "era of good feeling," which has passed current ever since as a characterization of his administration.
* Monroe received 183 electoral votes and Rufus King, 34—
the votes of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware.
It was in this admirable temper and with this broad national outlook that Monroe chose his advisers and heads of departments. He was well aware of the common belief that his predecessors had appointed Virginians to the Secretaryship of State in order to prepare the way for their succession to the Presidency. He was determined, therefore, to avert the suspicion of sectional bias by selecting some one from the Eastern States, rather than from the South or from the West, hitherto so closely allied to the South. His choice fell upon John Quincy Adams, "who by his age, long experience in our foreign affairs, and adoption into the Republican party," he assured Jefferson, "seems to have superior pretentions." It was an excellent appointment from every point of view but one. Monroe had overlooked—and the circumstance did him infinite credit—the exigencies of politics and passed over an individual whose vaulting ambition had already made him an aspirant to the Presidency. Henry Clay was grievously disappointed and henceforward sulked in his tent, refusing the Secretaryship of War which the President tendered. Eventually the brilliant young John C. Calhoun took this post. This South Carolinian was in the prime of life, full of fire and dash, ardently patriotic, and nationally-minded to an unusual degree. Of William H. Crawford of Georgia, who retained the Secretaryship of the Treasury, little need be said except that he also was a presidential aspirant who saw things always from the angle of political expediency. Benjamin W. Crowninshield as Secretary of the Navy and William Wirt as Attorney-General completed the circle of the President's intimate advisers.
The new Secretary of State had not been in office many weeks before he received a morning call from Don Luis de Onis, the Spanish Minister, who was laboring under ill-disguised excitement. It appeared that his house in Washington had been repeatedly "insulted" of late-windows broken, lamps in front of the house smashed, and one night a dead fowl tied to his bell-rope. This last piece of vandalism had been too much for his equanimity. He held it a gross insult to his sovereign and the Spanish monarchy, importing that they were of no more consequence than a dead old hen! Adams, though considerably amused, endeavored to smooth the ruffled pride of the chevalier by suggesting that these were probably only the tricks of some mischievous boys; but De Onis was not easily appeased. Indeed, as Adams was himself soon to learn, the American public did regard the Spanish monarchy as a dead old hen, and took no pains to disguise its contempt. Adams had yet to learn the long train of circumstances which made Spanish relations the most delicate and difficult of all the diplomatic problems in his office.
With his wonted industry, Adams soon made himself master of the facts relating to Spanish diplomacy. For the moment interest centered on East Florida. Carefully unraveling the tangled skein of events, Adams followed the thread which led back to President Madison's secret message to Congress of January 3,1811, which was indeed one of the landmarks in American policy. Madison had recommended a declaration "that the United States could not see without serious inquietude any part of a neighboring territory [like East Florida] in which they have in different respects so deep and so just a concern pass from the hands of Spain into those of any other foreign power." To prevent the possible subversion of Spanish authority in East Florida and the occupation of the province by a foreign power—Great Britain was, of course, the power the President had in mind—he had urged Congress to authorize him to take temporary possession "in pursuance of arrangements which may be desired by the Spanish authorities." Congress had responded with alacrity and empowered the President to occupy East Florida in case the local authorities should consent or a foreign power should attempt to occupy it.
With equal dispatch the President had sent two agents, General George Matthews and Colonel John McKee, on one of the strangest missions in the border history of the United States.