John Quincy Adams / American Statesmen Series

by Jr. John T. Morse

"That all his conduct [wrote Mr. Adams] is governed by his views to the Presidency, as the ultimate successor to Mr. Monroe, and that his hopes depend upon a result unfavorable to the success or at least to the popularity of the Administration, is perfectly clear.... His talent is intrigue. And as it is in the foreign affairs that the success or failure of the Administration will be most conspicuous, and as their success would promote the reputation and influence, and their failure would lead to the disgrace of the Secretary of State, Crawford's personal views centre in the ill-success of the Administration in its foreign relations; and, perhaps unconscious of his own motives, he will always be impelled to throw obstacles in its way, and to bring upon the Department of State especially any feeling of public dissatisfaction that he can, ... and although himself a member of the Administration, he perceives every day more clearly that his only prospect of success hereafter depends upon the failure of the Administration by measures of which he must take care to make known his disapprobation."

President Monroe was profoundly anxious for the consummation of the treaty, and though for a time he was in perfect accord with Mr. Adams, yet as the Spanish minister gradually drew nearer and nearer to a full compliance with the American demands, Monroe began to fear that the Secretary would carry his unyielding habit too far, and by insistence upon extreme points which might well enough be given up, would allow the country to drift into war.

Fortunately, as it turned out, Mr. Adams was not afraid to take the whole responsibility of success or failure upon his own shoulders, showing indeed a high and admirable courage and constancy amid such grave perplexities, in which it seemed that all his future political fortunes were involved. He caused the proffered mediation of Great Britain to be rejected. He availed himself of no aid save only the services of Mons. de Neuville, the French minister, who took a warm interest in the negotiation, expostulated and argued constantly with Don Onis and sometimes with Mr. Adams, served as a channel of communication and carried messages, propositions, and denials, which could better come filtered through a neutral go-between than pass direct from principal to principal. In fact, Mr. Adams needed no other kind of aid except just this which was so readily furnished by the civil and obliging Frenchman. As if he had been a mathematician solving a problem in dynamics, he seemed to have measured the precise line to which the severe pressure of Spanish difficulties would compel Don Onis to advance. This line he drew sharply, and taking his stand upon it in the beginning he made no important alterations in it to the end. Day by day the Spaniard would reluctantly approach toward him at one point or another, solemnly protesting that he could not make another move, by argument and entreaty urging, almost imploring, Mr. Adams in turn to advance and meet him. But Mr. Adams stood rigidly still, sometimes not a little vexed by the other's lingering manœuvres, and actually once saying to the courtly Spaniard that he "was so wearied out with the discussion that it had become nauseous;" and, again, that he "really could discuss no longer, and had given it up in despair." Yet all the while he was never wholly free from anxiety concerning the accuracy of his calculations as to how soon the Don might on his side also come to a final stand. Many a tedious and alarming pause there was, but after each halt progress was in time renewed. At last the consummation was reached, and except in the aforementioned matter of the Sabine boundary no concession even in details had been made by Mr. Adams. The United States was to receive Florida, and in return only agreed to settle the disputed claims of certain of her citizens against Spain to an amount not to exceed five million dollars; while the claims of Spanish subjects against the United States were wholly expunged. The western boundary was so established as to secure for this country the much-coveted outlet to the shores of the "South Sea," as the Pacific Ocean was called, south of the Columbia River; the line also was run along the southern banks of the Red and Arkansas rivers, leaving all the islands to the United States and precluding Spain from the right of navigation. Mr. Adams had achieved a great triumph.

On February 22, 1819, the two negotiators signed and sealed the counterparts of the treaty. Mr. Adams notes that it is "perhaps the most important day of my life," and justly called it "a great epoch in our history." Yet on the next day the "Washington City Gazette" came out with a strong condemnation of the Sabine concession, and expressed the hope that the Senate would not agree to it. "This paragraph," said Mr. Adams, "comes directly or indirectly from Mr. Clay." But the paragraph did no harm, for on the following day the treaty was confirmed by an unanimous vote of the Senate.

It was not long, however, before the pleasure justly derivable from the completion of this great labor was cruelly dashed. It appeared that certain enormous grants of land, made by the Spanish king to three of his nobles, and which were supposed to be annulled by the treaty, so that the territory covered by them would become the public property of the United States, bore date earlier than had been understood, and for this reason would, by the terms of the treaty, be left in full force. This was a serious matter, and such steps as were still possible to set it right were promptly taken. Mr. Adams appealed to Don Onis to state in writing that he himself had understood that these grants were to be annulled, and that such had been the intention of the treaty. The Spaniard replied in a shape imperfectly satisfactory. He shuffled, evaded, and laid himself open to suspicion of unfair dealing, though the charge could not be regarded as fully proved against him. Mr. Adams, while blaming himself for carelessness in not having more closely examined original documents, yet felt "scarce a doubt" that Onis "did intend by artifice to cover the grants while we were under the undoubting impression they were annulled;" and he said to M. de Neuville, concerning this dark transaction, that "it was not the ingenious device of a public minister, but 'une fourberie de Scapin.'" Before long the rumor got abroad in the public prints in the natural shape of a "malignant distortion," and Mr. Adams was compelled to see with chagrin his supposed brilliant success threatening to turn actually to his grave discredit by reason of this unfortunate oversight.

What might have been the result had the treaty been ratified by Spain can only be surmised. But it so befell—happily enough for the United States and for Mr. Adams, as it afterwards turned out—that the Spanish government refused to ratify. The news was, however, that they would forthwith dispatch a new minister to explain this refusal and to renew negotiations.

For his own private part Mr. Adams strove to endure this buffet of unkindly fortune with that unflinching and stubborn temper, slightly dashed with bitterness, which stood him in good stead in many a political trial during his hard-fighting career. But in his official capacity he had also to consider and advise what it behooved the administration to do under the circumstances. The feeling was widespread that the United States ought to possess Florida, and that Spain had paltered with us long enough. More than once in cabinet meetings during the negotiation the Secretary of State, who was always prone to strong measures, had expressed a wish for an act of Congress authorizing the Executive to take forcible possession of Florida and of Galveston in the event of Spain refusing to satisfy the reasonable demands made upon her. Now, stimulated by indignant feeling, his prepossession in favor of vigorous action was greatly strengthened, and his counsel was that the United States should prepare at once to take and hold the disputed territory, and indeed some undisputed Spanish territory also. But Mr. Monroe and the rest of the Cabinet preferred a milder course; and France and Great Britain ventured to express to this country a hope that no violent action would be precipitately taken. So the matter lay by for a while, awaiting the coming of the promised envoy from Spain.

At this time the great question of the admission of Missouri into the Union of States began to agitate Congress and the nation. Mr. Adams, deeply absorbed in the perplexing affairs of his department, into which this domestic problem did not enter, was at first careless of it. His ideas concerning the matter, he wrote, were a "chaos;" but it was a "chaos" into which his interest in public questions soon compelled him to bring order. In so doing he for the first time fairly exposes his intense repulsion for slavery, his full appreciation of the irrepressible character of the conflict between the slave and the free populations, and the sure tendency of that conflict to a dissolution of the Union. Few men at that day read the future so clearly. While dissolution was generally regarded as a threat not really intended to be carried out, and compromises were supposed to be amply sufficient to control the successive emergencies, the underlying moral force of the anti-slavery movement acting against the encroaching necessities of the slave-holding communities constituted an element and involved possibilities which Mr. Adams, from his position of observation outside the immediate controversy, noted with foreseeing accuracy. He discerned in passing events the "title-page to a great tragic volume;" and he predicted that the more or less distant but sure end must be an attempt to dissolve the Union. His own position was distinctly defined from the outset, and his strong feelings were vigorously expressed. He beheld with profound regret the superiority of the slave-holding party in ability; he remarked sadly how greatly they excelled in debating power their lukewarm opponents; he was filled with indignation against the Northern men of Southern principles. "Slavery," he wrote, "is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union, and it is a contemplation worthy of the most exalted soul whether its total abolition is or is not practicable." "A life devoted to" the emancipation problem "would be nobly spent or sacrificed." He talks with much acerbity of expression about the "slave-drivers," and the "flagrant image of human inconsistency" presented by men who had "the Declaration of Independence on their lips and the merciless scourge of slavery in their hands." "Never," he says, "since human sentiments and human conduct were influenced by human speech was there a theme for eloquence like the free side of this question.... Oh, if but one man could arise with a genius capable of comprehending, and an utterance capable of communicating those eternal truths that belong to this question, to lay bare in all its nakedness that outrage upon the goodness of God, human slavery; now is the time and this is the occasion, upon which such a man would perform the duties of an angel upon earth." Before the Abolitionists had begun to preach their great crusade this was strong and ardent language for a statesman's pen. Nor were these exceptional passages; there is much more of the same sort at least equally forcible. Mr. Adams notes an interesting remark made to him by Calhoun at this time. The great Southern chief, less prescient than Mr. Adams, declared that he did not think that the slavery question "would produce a dissolution of the Union; but if it should, the South would be from necessity compelled to form an alliance offensive and defensive with Great Britain."

Concerning a suggestion that civil war might be preferable to the extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi, Adams said: "This is a question between the rights of human nature and the Constitution of the United States"—a form of stating the case which leaves no doubt concerning his ideas of the intrinsic right and wrong in the matter. His own notion was that slavery could not be got rid of within the Union, but that the only method would be dissolution, after which he trusted that the course of events would in time surely lead to reorganization upon the basis of universal freedom for all. He was not a disunionist in any sense, yet it is evident that his strong tendency and inclination were to regard emancipation as a weight in the scales heavier than union, if it should ever come to the point of an option between the two.

Strangely enough the notion of a forcible retention of the slave States within the Union does not seem to have been at this time a substantial element of consideration. Mr. Adams acknowledged that there was no way at once of preserving the Union and escaping from the present emergency save through the door of compromise. He maintained strenuously the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in the Territories, and denied that either Congress or a state government could establish slavery as a new institution in any State in which it was not already existing and recognized by law.