John Quincy Adams — 07 - Chapter 2A

SECRETARY OF STATE AND PRESIDENT

From the capitals of Russia and Great Britain to the capital of the United States was a striking change.

Washington, in its early struggle for existence, was so unattractive a spot, that foreigners must have been at a loss to discover the principle which had governed the selection.

It combined all the ugliness with all the discomfort of an unprosperous frontier settlement on an ill-chosen site.

What must European diplomats have thought of a capital city where snakes two feet long invaded gentlemen's drawing-rooms, and a carriage, bringing home the guests from a ball, could be upset by the impenetrable depth of quagmire at the very door of a foreign minister's residence.

A

description of the city given by Mr. Mills, a Representative from Massachusetts, in 1815, is pathetic in its unutterable horror:-- "It is impossible [he writes] for me to describe to you my feelings on entering this miserable desert, this scene of desolation and horror....

My anticipations were almost (p. 102) infinitely short of the reality, and I can truly say that the first appearance of this seat of the national government has produced in me nothing but absolute loathing and disgust."

If the place wore such a dreadful aspect to the simple denizen of a New England country town, what must it have seemed to those who were familiar with London and Paris?

To them the social life must have been scarcely less dreary than the rest of the surroundings.

Accordingly, with this change of scene, the Diary, so long a record of festivities sometimes dull and formal, but generally collecting interesting and distinguished persons, ceases almost wholly to refer to topics of society.

Yet, of course, even the foul streets could not prevent people from occasionally meeting together.

There were simple tea-drinkings, stupid weekly dinners at the President's, infrequent receptions by Mrs. Monroe, card-parties and conversation-parties, which at the British minister's were very "elegant," and at the French minister's were more gay.

Mons.

de Neuville, at his dinners, used to puzzle and astound the plain-living Yankees by serving dishes of "turkeys without bones, and puddings in the form of fowls, fresh cod disguised like a salad, and celery like oysters;" further, he scandalized some and demoralized others by having dancing on (p. 103) Saturday evenings, which the New England ladies had been "educated to consider as holy time."

Mr. and Mrs. Adams used to give weekly parties on Tuesday evenings, and apparently many persons stood not a little in awe of these entertainments and of the givers of them, by reason of their superior familiarity with the manners and customs of the best society of Europe.

Mrs. Adams was, "on the whole, a very pleasant and agreeable woman; but the Secretary [had] no talent to entertain a mixed company, either by conversation or manners;" thus writes this same Mr. Mills, whose sentiments towards Mr. Adams were those of respect rather than of personal liking.

The favorite dissipation then consisted in card-playing, and the stakes were too often out of all just proportion to the assets of the gamesters.

At one time Mr. Clay was reputed to have lost ,000, an amount so considerable for him as to weigh upon his mind to the manifest detriment of his public functions.

But sometimes the gentlemen resident in the capital met for purposes less innocent than Saturday evening cotillons, or even than extravagant betting at the card-table, and stirred the dulness of society by a duel.

Mr. Adams tells of one affair of this sort, fought between ex-Senator Mason, of Virginia, and his cousin, wherein the weapons used were muskets, and the distance was only six paces.

(p. 104) Mason was killed; his cousin was wounded, and only by a lucky accident escaped with his life.

Mr. Adams had little time and less taste for either the amusements or the dangers thus offered to him; he preferred to go to bed in good season, to get up often long before daybreak, and to labor assiduously the livelong day.

His favorite exercise was swimming in the Potomac, where he accomplished feats which would have been extraordinary for a young and athletic man.

The most important, perplexing, and time-consuming duties then called for by the condition of public affairs happened to fall within Mr. Adams's department.

Monroe's administration has been christened the "era of good feeling;" and, so far as political divisions among the people at large were concerned, this description is correct enough.

There were no great questions of public policy dividing the nation.

There could hardly be said to be two political parties.

With the close of the war the malcontent Federalists had lost the only substantial principle upon which they had been able vigorously to oppose the administration, and as a natural consequence the party rapidly shrank to insignificant proportions, and became of hardly more importance than were the Jacobites in England after their last hopes had (p. 105) been quenched by the failure of the Rebellion of '45. The Federalist faith, like Jacobitism, lingered in a few neighborhoods, and was maintained by a few old families, who managed to associate it with a sense of their own pride and dignity; but as an effective opposition or influential party organization it was effete, and no successor was rising out of its ruins.

In a broad way, therefore, there was political harmony to a very remarkable degree.

But among individuals there was by no means a prevailing good feeling.

Not held together by the pressure exerted by the antagonism of a strong hostile force, the prominent men of the Cabinet and in Congress were busily employed in promoting their own individual interests.

Having no great issues with which to identify themselves, and upon which they could openly and honorably contend for the approval of the nation, their only means for securing their respective private ends lay in secretly overreaching and supplanting each other.

Infinite skill was exerted by each to inveigle his rival into an unpopular position or a compromising light.

By a series of precedents Mr. Adams, as Secretary of State, appeared most prominent as a candidate for the succession to the Presidency.

But Mr. Crawford, in the Treasury Department, had been very near obtaining the nomination instead (p. 106) of Monroe, and he was firmly resolved to secure it so soon as Mr. Monroe's eight years should have elapsed.

He, therefore, finding much leisure left upon his hands by the not very exacting business of his office, devoted his ingenuity to devising schemes for injuring the prestige of Mr. Adams.

Mr. Clay also had been greatly disappointed that he had not been summoned to be Secretary of State, and so made heir apparent.

His personal enmity was naturally towards Mr. Monroe;

his political enmity necessarily also included Mr. Adams, whose appointment he had privately sought to prevent.

He therefore at once set himself assiduously to oppose and thwart the administration, and to make it unsuccessful and unpopular.

That Clay was in the main and upon all weighty questions an honest statesman and a real patriot must be admitted, but just at this period no national crisis called his nobler qualities into action, and his course was largely influenced by selfish considerations.

It was not long before Mr. Calhoun also entered the lists, though in a manner less discreditable to himself, personally, than were the resources of Crawford and Clay.

The daily narrations and comments of Mr. Adams display and explain in a manner highly instructive, if not altogether agreeable, the ambitions (p. 107) and the manoeuvres, the hollow alliances and unworthy intrigues, not only of these three, but also of many other estimable gentlemen then in political life.

The difference between those days and our own seems not so great as the _laudatores temporis acti_ are wont to proclaim it.

The elaborate machinery which has since been constructed was then unknown; rivals relied chiefly upon their own astuteness and the aid of a few personal friends and adherents for carrying on contests and attaining ends which are now sought by vastly more complex methods.

What the stage-coach of that period was to the railroads of to-day, or what the hand-loom was to our great cotton mills, such also was the political intriguing of cabinet ministers, senators, and representatives to our present party machinery.

But the temper was no better, honor was no keener, the sense of public duty was little more disinterested then than now.

One finds no serious traces of vulgar financial dishonesty recorded in these pages, in which Mr. Adams has handed down the political life of the second and third decades of our century with a photographic accuracy.

But one does not see a much higher level of faithfulness to ideal standards in political life than now exists.

[Illustration: Wm.

H.

Crawford.

] As has been said, it so happened that in Mr. Monroe's (p. 108) administration the heaviest burden of labor and responsibility rested upon Mr. Adams; the most important and most perplexing questions fell within his department.

Domestic breaches had been healed, but foreign breaches gaped with threatening jaws.

War with Spain seemed imminent.

Her South American colonies were then waging their contest for independence, and naturally looked to the late successful rebels of the northern continent for acts of neighborly sympathy and good fellowship.

Their efforts to obtain official recognition and the exchange of ministers with the United States were eager and persistent.

Privateers fitted out at Baltimore gave the State Department scarcely less cause for anxiety than the shipbuilders of Liverpool gave to the English Cabinet in 1863-64. These perplexities, as is well known, caused the passage of the first "Neutrality Act," which first formulated and has since served to establish the principle of international obligation in such matters, and has been the basis of all subsequent legislation upon the subject not only in this country but also in Great Britain.

The European powers, impelled by a natural distaste for rebellion by colonists, and also believing that Spain would in time prevail over the insurgents, turned a deaf ear to South American agents.

But in the United States it was different.

Here it was anticipated that the (p. 109) revolted communities were destined to win; Mr. Adams records this as his own opinion; besides which there was also a natural sympathy felt by our people in such a conflict in their own quarter of the globe.

Nevertheless, in many anxious cabinet discussions, the President and the Secretary of State established the policy of reserve and caution.

Rebels against an established government are like plaintiffs in litigation; the burden of proof is upon them, and the neutral nations who are a sort of quasi-jurors must not commit themselves to a decision prematurely.

The grave and inevitable difficulties besetting the administration in this matter were seriously enhanced by the conduct of Mr. Clay.

Seeking nothing so eagerly as an opportunity to harass the government, he could have found none more to his taste than this question of South American recognition.

His enthusiastic and rhetorical temperament rejoiced in such a topic for his luxuriant oratory, and he lauded freedom and abused the administration with a force of expression far from gratifying to the responsible heads of government in their troublesome task.

Apart from these matters the United States had direct disputes of a threatening character pending with Spain concerning the boundaries of Louisiana.

Naturally enough boundary lines in the half explored (p. 110) wilderness of this vast continent were not then marked with that indisputable accuracy which many generations and much bloodshed had achieved in Europe; and of all uncertain boundaries that of Louisiana was the most so.

Area enough to make two or three States, more or less, might or might not be included therein.

Such doubts had proved a ready source of quarrel, which could hardly be assuaged by General Jackson marching about in unquestionable Spanish territory, seizing towns and hanging people after his lawless, ignorant, energetic fashion.

Mr. Adams's chief labor, therefore, was by no means of a promising character, being nothing less difficult than to conclude a treaty between enraged Spain and the rapacious United States, where there was so much wrong and so much right on both sides, and such a wide obscure realm of doubt between the two that an amicable agreement might well seem not only beyond expectation but beyond hope.

Many and various also were the incidental obstacles in Mr. Adams's way.

Not the least lay in the ability of Don Onis, the Spanish Minister, an ambassador well selected for his important task and whom the American thus described:-- "Cold, calculating, wily, always commanding his own temper, (p. 111) proud because he is a Spaniard, but supple and cunning, accommodating the tone of his pretensions precisely to the degree of endurance of his opponent, bold and overbearing to the utmost extent to which it is tolerated, careless of what he asserts or how grossly it is proved to be unfounded, his morality appears to be that of the Jesuits as exposed by Pascal.

He is laborious, vigilant, and ever attentive to his duties; a man of business and of the world."

Fortunately this so dangerous negotiator was hardly less anxious than Mr. Adams to conclude a treaty.

Yet he, too, had his grave difficulties to encounter.

Spanish arrogance had not declined with the decline of Spanish strength, and the concessions demanded from that ancient monarchy by the upstart republic seemed at once exasperating and humiliating.

The career of Jackson in Florida, while it exposed the weakness of Spain, also sorely wounded her pride.

Nor could the grandees, three thousand miles away, form so accurate an opinion of the true condition and prospects of affairs as could Don Onis upon this side of the water.

One day, begging Mr. Adams to meet him upon a question of boundary, "he insisted much upon the infinite pains he had taken to prevail upon his government to come to terms of accommodation," and pathetically declared that "the King's Council was composed (p. 112) of such ignorant and stupid _nigauds_, grandees of Spain, and priests," that Mr. Adams "could have no conception of their obstinacy and imbecility."

Other difficulties in Mr. Adams's way were such as ought not to have been encountered.

The only substantial concession which he was willing to make was in accepting the Sabine instead of the Rio del Norte as the southwestern boundary of Louisiana.

But no sooner did rumors of this possible yielding get abroad than he was notified that Mr. Clay "would take ground against" any treaty embodying it.

From Mr. Crawford a more dangerous and insidious policy was to be feared.

Presumably he would be well pleased either to see Mr. Adams fail altogether in the negotiation, or to see him conclude a treaty which would be in some essential feature odious to the people.

"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 (p. 113) 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 (p. 114) 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 manoeuvres, and actually once saying to the courtly Spaniard that he "was so (p. 115) 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 (p. 116) 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 (p. 117) 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 (p. 118) 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 (p. 119) 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 (p. 120) 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; (p. 121) 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."