Contrasted with Clay's glowing enthusiasm, the attitude of the Administration, directed by the prudent Secretary of State, seemed cold, calculating, and rigidly conventional. For his part, Adams could see little resemblance between these revolutions in South America and that of 1776. Certainly it had never been disgraced by such acts of buccaneering and piracy as were of everyday occurrence in South American waters. The United States had contended for civil rights and then for independence; in South America civil rights had been ignored by all parties. He could discern neither unity of cause nor unity of effort in the confused history of recent struggles in South America; and until orderly government was achieved, with due regard to fundamental civil rights, he would not have the United States swerve in the slightest degree from the path of strict neutrality. Mr. Clay, he observed in his diary, had "mounted his South American great horse... to control or overthrow the executive."
President Monroe, however, was more impressionable, more responsive to popular opinion, and at this moment (as the presidential year approached) more desirous to placate the opposition. He agreed with Adams that the moment had not come when the United States alone might safely recognize the South American states, but he believed that concerted action by the United States and Great Britain might win recognition without wounding the sensibilities of Spain. The time was surely not far distant when Spain would welcome recognition as a relief from an impoverishing and hopeless war. Meanwhile the President coupled professions of neutrality and expressions of sympathy for the revolutionists in every message to Congress.
The temporizing policy of the Administration aroused Clay to another impassioned plea for those southern brethren whose hearts—despite all rebuffs from the Department of State—still turned toward the United States. "We should become the center of a system which would constitute the rallying point of human freedom against the despotism of the Old World.... Why not proceed to act on our own responsibility and recognize these governments as independent, instead of taking the lead of the Holy Alliance in a course which jeopardizes the happiness of unborn millions?" He deprecated this deference to foreign powers. "If Lord Castlereagh says we may recognize, we do; if not, we do not.... Our institutions now make us free; but how long shall we continue so, if we mold our opinions on those of Europe? Let us break these commercial and political fetters; let us no longer watch the nod of any European politician; let us become real and true Americans, and place ourselves at the head of the American system."
The question of recognition was thus thrust into the foreground of discussion at a most inopportune time. The Florida treaty had not yet been ratified, for reasons best known to His Majesty the King of Spain, and the new Spanish Minister, General Vives, had just arrived in the United States to ask for certain explanations. The Administration had every reason at this moment to wish to avoid further causes of irritation to Spanish pride. It is more than probable, indeed, that Clay was not unwilling to embarrass the President and his Secretary of State. He still nursed his personal grudge against the President and he did not disguise his hostility to the treaty. What aroused his resentment was the sacrifice of Texas for Florida. Florida would have fallen to the United States eventually like ripened fruit, he believed. Why, then, yield an incomparably richer and greater territory for that which was bound to become theirs whenever the American people wished to take it?
But what were the explanations which Vives demanded? Weary hours spent in conference with the wily Spaniard convinced Adams that the great obstacle to the ratification of the treaty by Spain had been the conviction that the United States was only waiting ratification to recognize the independence of the Spanish colonies. Bitterly did Adams regret the advances which he had made to Great Britain, at the instance of the President, and still more bitterly did he deplore those paragraphs in the President's messages which had expressed an all too ready sympathy with the aims of the insurgents. But regrets availed nothing and the Secretary of State had to put the best face possible on the policy of the Administration. He told Vives in unmistakable language that the United States could not subscribe to "new engagements as the price of obtaining the ratification of the old." Certainly the United States would not comply with the Spanish demand and pledge itself "to form no relations with the pretended governments of the revolted provinces of Spain." As for the royal grants which De Onis had agreed to call null and void, if His Majesty insisted upon their validity, perhaps the United States might acquiesce for an equivalent area west of the Sabine River. In some alarm Vives made haste to say that the King did not insist upon the confirmation of these grants. In the end he professed himself satisfied with Mr. Adams's explanations; he would send a messenger to report to His Majesty and to secure formal authorization to exchange ratifications.
Another long period of suspense followed. The Spanish Cortes did not advise the King to accept the treaty until October; the Senate did not reaffirm its ratification until the following February; and it was two years to a day after the signing of the treaty that Adams and Vives exchanged formal ratifications. Again Adams confided to the pages of his diary, so that posterity might read, the conviction that the hand of an Overruling Providence was visible in this, the most important event of his life.
If, as many thought, the Administration had delayed recognition of the South American republics in order not to offend Spanish feelings while the Florida treaty was under consideration, it had now no excuse for further hesitation; yet it was not until March 8, 1822, that President Monroe announced to Congress his belief that the time had come when those provinces of Spain which had declared their independence and were in the enjoyment of it should be formally recognized. On the 19th of June he received the accredited charge d'affaires of the Republic of Colombia.
The problem of recognition was not the only one which the impending dissolution of the Spanish colonial empire left to harass the Secretary of State. Just because Spain had such vast territorial pretensions and held so little by actual occupation on the North American continent, there was danger that these shadowy claims would pass into the hands of aggressive powers with the will and resources to aggrandize themselves. One day in January, 1821, while Adams was awaiting the outcome of his conferences with Vives, Stratford Canning, the British Minister, was announced at his office. Canning came to protest against what he understood was the decision of the United States to extend its settlements at the mouth of the Columbia River. Adams replied that he knew of no such determination; but he deemed it very probable that the settlements on the Pacific coast would be increased. Canning expressed rather ill-matured surprise at this statement, for he conceived that such a policy would be a palpable violation of the Convention of 1818. Without replying, Adams rose from his seat to procure a copy of the treaty and then read aloud the parts referring to the joint occupation of the Oregon country. A stormy colloquy followed in which both participants seem to have lost their tempers. Next day Canning returned to the attack, and Adams challenged the British claim to the mouth of the Columbia. "Why," exclaimed Canning, "do you not KNOW that we have a claim?" "I do not KNOW," said Adams, "what you claim nor what you do not claim. You claim India; you claim Africa; you claim—" "Perhaps," said Canning, "a piece of the moon." "No," replied Adams, "I have not heard that you claim exclusively any part of the moon; but there is not a spot on THIS habitable globe that I could affirm you do not claim; and there is none which you may not claim with as much color of right as you can have to Columbia River or its mouth."
With equal sang-froid, the Secretary of State met threatened aggression from another quarter. In September of this same year, the Czar issued a ukase claiming the Pacific coast as far south as the fifty-first parallel and declaring Bering Sea closed to the commerce of other nations. Adams promptly refused to recognize these pretensions and declared to Baron de Tuyll, the Russian Minister, "that we should contest the right of Russia to ANY territorial establishment on this continent, and that we should assume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establishments." *
* Before Adams retired from office, he had the satisfaction
of concluding a treaty (1824) with Russia by which the Czar
abandoned his claims to exclusive jurisdiction in Bering Sea
and agreed to plant no colonies on the Pacific Coast south
of 54 degrees 40 minutes.