John Quincy Adams (30 page)

 

John Quincy Adams as secretary of state, an office considered “the stepladder to the presidential chair.”
(AFTER THOMAS SULLY AND GILBERT STUART, NATIONAL PARKS SERVICE, ADAMS NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK)

By the time John Quincy was ready to return to America, he and Lord Castlereagh had grown closer and learned to trust each other enough to discuss most remaining issues between their two nations—and both were eager to reach agreement. Britain wanted to focus on European affairs without fear of friction with the Americans, and the United States, in turn, needed to deal with the Spanish menace in the south without fear of a British attack in the north. After several months of complicated give-and-take on both sides, John Quincy Adams and Richard Rush, the new
American minister in London, finally worked out an agreement with the British that solved a few things, postponed others, and, most importantly, produced lasting peace between the two nations.

Under the agreement signed in 1818, the British agreed to ban impressment for ten years, restore American inland fishing rights along the Canadian coast, and allow Czar Alexander I of Russia to mediate the slave-compensation issue.
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The historic treaty also fixed, for the first time, the American-Canadian frontier from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains, giving the United States undisputed sovereignty over the so-called Adams Strip. By extending the boundary line along the Forty-ninth Parallel westward from the northwesternmost tip of Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota to the Rocky Mountains, the Americans acquired a 150-mile-wide strip across northern Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana. (See map on page 134.) Recognition of the Adams Strip as American territory established a precedent for eventually extending the northern border line to the Pacific Ocean, giving the United States sovereignty over Puget Sound and the mouth of the Columbia River. In the meantime the Oregon Territory west of the Rockies would remain open to both English and Americans, to trade with each other freely and come and go as they pleased, with neither nation claiming sovereignty over them or their lands.

In a subsequent discussion with John Quincy, however, Stratford Canning, the British minister to the United States, seemed to dismiss the agreement by claiming British ownership of the mouth of the Columbia River. When John Quincy disagreed, Canning replied sharply, “Why? Do you not
know
we have a claim?”

“I do not
know
what you claim nor what you do not claim,” John Quincy snapped back. “You claim India, you claim Africa—”

“Perhaps,” Canning interrupted, “a piece of the moon.”

“No,” John Quincy replied angrily. “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 light as you can have to Columbia River or its mouth.”

“And how far would you consider this exclusion of right to extend?” Canning asked.

“To all the shores of the South Sea [Pacific Ocean],” John Quincy asserted.
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In the end, the British Foreign Office disavowed Canning's claim of British sovereignty at the mouth of the Columbia River, thus ensuring peace along the U.S. frontier with Britain. Free to turn its attention to the conflict with Spain, the Monroe administration ordered Secretary of War John C. Calhoun to organize two military expeditions—one to crush pirates on Amelia Island and another to pursue and attack Indians and renegade slaves in Florida.

Two weeks later, General Edmund P. Gaines led troops to Amelia Island, while Tennessee militia commander General Andrew Jackson led a campaign into northern Florida, with President Monroe exhorting Jackson that “great interests are at issue, and until our course is carried through triumphantly . . . you ought not to withdraw your active support from it.”
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The President made it clear that he considered acquisition of the Floridas essential to the security of the United States. With the Spanish army attempting to suppress wars of independence in Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama, President Monroe did not believe Spain would be able to spare enough troops to defend the Floridas.

Aware that his mission was a de facto declaration of war, Jackson at first refused to violate the Constitution by warring against another nation without a congressional mandate. Before setting out for Florida, he demanded a letter from the President clarifying his mission, but he never received one and invaded Florida without it. After seizing Spanish posts at St. Marks,
about forty miles south of the Georgia border, he and his men swept eastward to the Sewanee River, where he captured the Seminole village of Bowleg's Town and burned three hundred houses. He then marched his force westward across the panhandle, leveling every Seminole fort and black village he could find. To terrify the population into submission, he hanged two captured Creek chieftains.

“They will foment war no more,” Jackson declared.
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On May 24, Jackson's troops marched into Spanish-controlled Pensacola, on the Gulf of Mexico near the Alabama border, effectively taking control of the entire Florida panhandle. He also captured two British traders, one of them a shipowner, and accused them of aiding the enemy. He hanged the shipowner from the yardarm of his own ship in front of a group of terrified Indians and ordered a firing squad to execute the other. On June 2, Jackson sent a message to Monroe that he had won the Seminole War, and if the President would send him the Fifth Infantry, he would march his men eastward to deliver Fort St. Augustine. “Add another regiment and one frigate,” he boasted, “and I will insure you Cuba in a few days.”
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“The President and all the members of the cabinet except myself,” John Quincy was surprised to find, “are of opinion that Jackson acted not only without, but against his instructions; that he has committed war against Spain. The question is embarrassing and complicated, not only as involving an actual war with Spain, but that of the executive power to authorize hostilities without a declaration of war by Congress.” John Quincy stood alone in disagreement, arguing that Jackson's actions were “justified by the necessity of the case and by the misconduct of the Spanish commanding officers in Florida.” John Quincy insisted that Jackson “was authorized to cross the Spanish line in pursuit of the Indian enemy” and that the Constitution authorized the executive to wage “defensive acts of hostility” without notifying Congress.

Although John Quincy failed to convince the rest of the cabinet, he convinced the President that Jackson had actually strengthened America's international standing by demonstrating a will to defend national interests.
Switching to John Quincy's position, Monroe rewarded Jackson by naming him governor of Florida—to the cheers of the overwhelming majority of Americans. The Spanish king, of course, protested, as did English and European government leaders and newspapers, all condemning Jackson's invasion of Florida as brutal, runaway imperialism.

On June 13, Speaker of the House Henry Clay added his voice to the chorus of criticisms, charging Jackson with undermining the constitutional authority of Congress to declare war. “Efforts were forthwith made in Congress,” John Quincy explained, “to procure a vote censuring the conduct of General Jackson, whose fast increasing popularity had, in all probability excited the envy of politicians . . . but the President himself, and Mr. Adams . . . warmly espoused the cause of the American commander.”
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With President Monroe now giving him free rein on the Florida issue, John Quincy sent instructions to the American minister in Madrid to present the Spanish government with an ultimatum: cede Florida or act decisively to prevent further attacks on American territory by Florida-based renegades. John Quincy then called Spanish minister Don Luis de Onis y Gonzales to the State Department. He did not like the fifty-five-year-old Spaniard, called him “wily Don” in private, and disparaged him as “cold, calculating . . . supple and cunning . . . overbearing . . . careless of what he asserts or how grossly it is proved to be unfounded.”

President Monroe then prepared to go before Congress for his second annual address, in which he planned to answer his critics. He instructed John Quincy to prepare a single policy statement that would respond to the king of Spain, to critics in England and Europe, and to the American Congress. John Quincy had no sooner started working on a draft, however, when a letter arrived from his son John II that left him all but prostrate
with shock and grief: Abigail Adams had died on October 28, 1818, two weeks short of her seventy-fourth birthday.

“Oh, God!” he cried out, tears streaming down his face. “Oh, God! My mother, beloved and lamented more than language can express, yielded up her pure and gentle spirit to its creator.”

After recovering his composure, he wrote to his “Ever Dear and Revered Father”:

He signed it, “Your distressed but ever affectionate and dutiful son.”
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Although President Monroe was deeply sympathetic, only a few days remained before he would have to justify the attack and seizure of Florida to the world and obtain retroactive approval from Congress. As Thomas Jefferson had predicted of the Monroe-Quincy relationship, John Quincy's “pointed pen”—despite the sorrow of its holder—prepared a response that articulated the President's thoughts better than the President could have done himself. Using John Quincy's carefully considered words, the President
hailed Jackson's attack as “an act of patriotism, essential to the honor and interests of your country.” Brushing aside constitutional issues, Monroe declared that

The message scoffed at the Spanish king's portrayal of Jackson's assault as an outrage and Jackson himself as lacking “honor and dignity.” Monroe then quoted a letter from a survivor of one of the Indian attacks on settlers.

President Monroe went on to cite the law of nations [
le droit des gens
] as drafted by Swiss jurist Emmerich von Vattel, who wrote, “When at war with a ferocious nation which observes no rule and grants no quarter, they may be chastised by the persons of them who may be taken.”
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As for the Englishmen that Jackson ordered hung, John Quincy's response for the President called them “accomplices of savages, and, sinning against their better knowledge, worse than savages.”