In the first place, the movements of Russia in the North Pacific had created grave apprehensions. At the close of the first decade of the century the Russian American Company put forward a claim to the territory of the North American continent along the Pacific coast from Behring's Strait to the mouth of the Columbia River, and even to points south of the Columbia. Really this claim came into conflict only with the rights of Great Britain and Spain, but the United States, having the presentiment of its future, if not a legal claim to any part of this territory as a part of Louisiana, regarded the Russian movement with jealous discontent. And when, on September 16th, the Russian Czar issued an edict, asserting Russia's rights to the North Pacific territory from Behring's Strait to the fifty-first parallel of north latitude, it was natural that this discontent should become hostile in its nature. The Government of the United States declared its dissent from the Russian pretensions, and the matter rested momentarily with that.
| The Holy Alliance. |
At the same time the other danger was developing. The European reaction against the terrible excesses of the Revolution and the despotism of Bonaparte had assumed the form of an alliance between the Governments of the great continental states, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and France, for the purpose of maintaining each by the power of all against the reappearance of revolutionary movements anywhere. Great Britain had scented in this Holy Alliance a combination of continental powers which might prove, in some degree at least, as dangerous to her continental relations as the commercial system of Bonaparte had been. There is no doubt, too, that there was a large party in England which repudiated the fundamental political doctrine of the Holy Alliance Powers, the doctrine of the jure divino monarchy. England had, in fact, repudiated that doctrine at the close of the seventeenth century. For these reasons the British Government had declined to enter the Holy League, and regarded it with suspicion and ill-concealed hostility.
| The Congress at Verona. |
The United States Government paid little attention to its workings so long as they were confined to purely European relations, but when, in 1822, at the congress of these powers at Verona, which had been assembled to consider the question of aiding the Spanish Government to suppress the insurrection against its authority in Spain, the subject of aiding that Government to re-establish its authority over Spain's revolting colonies in North and South America was discussed, serious apprehensions were roused in both Great Britain and the United States. It was stated, and generally believed, in the United States, that the plan was the re-establishment of the Spanish power over all of Spain's American possessions, except Mexico and California, and the cession of Mexico to France, and of California to Russia, in consideration of the military aid to be rendered to Spain by these two great powers in the work of restoration.
| Mr. Adams' declaration to Baron Tuyl. |
To the United States the supposed intentions of Russia in respect to the Pacific coast appeared the more immediate danger, and the United States Government addressed its diplomacy to this question first. On July 17th, 1823, the Secretary of State, Mr. John Quincy Adams, declared to the Russian Minister at Washington, Baron Tuyl, 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."