into the cause of the revolutionists. In fact our concern in the cause did not stop with the Atlantic. Dr. Samuel Howe joined the forces of the Greeks; and in 1824 Webster delivered an oration in their behalf. Sympathy with revolution was not unassociated with dread of the forces of oppression. Particularly was Roman Catholicism coming, in the popular mind, to be connected with Divine Right, and the European support of the American missions of that church was for many years regarded as an insidious attack on our institu- . tions.

To this popular interest in Spanish-American affairs the administration obviously could not give free rein without sacrificing the Spanish treaty, which was at Sympathy verthis time being negotiated. Yet we could not sus neutrality ignore a situation which filled the Caribbean with Spanish and Spanish-American warships and privateers, and with pirates who were taking advantage of the new flags. These vessels did not respect the rule of free ships, free goods, and some of them did not respect any, rule at all. As a maritime nation we were bound to recognize the divergence from the normal, but to induce Spain to make her cessions we must at the same time preserve the fairest appearance of neutrality. We were, in fact, confronted by a new aspect of neutrality which has troubled us often enough since, namely, our duty in a neighboring contest of forces less strong than our own. In 1815 the President issued a neutrality proclamation, and in 1817 Congress passed a new neutrality act, which, amended in 1818, set a new and higher standard of national obligations.

Fearful of having his hand forced by Congress under the leadership of Clay, Adams, in December, 1817, wrote to his friend Alexander Everett furnishing him with Neutrality verthe gist of a scathing indictment of the new resus recognition publics which he hoped he would put in form for the newspapers.1 He was not, as he explained later to the cabinet,

1 Letters to Everett, 1811-1837, Amer. Hist. Review, 1905, xi. 88-116.

willing to see the new governments fall, but they were not going to fall, and our record must be clear; the European powers were attempting peaceful mediation, which we must allow. In March, 1818, however, he told the cabinet that, since the Holy Alliance had had a free opportunity to attempt a peaceful adjustment and had failed, as he had believed it would, we must not commit ourselves against recognition of the new republics, for we should ultimately recognize them. At the same time, feeling confident that England sympathized with our position, he assured her minister that we would cooperate with her in preserving the independence of the states, though not in alliance. He had divined the separation of Great Britain from the allies, and he sought to widen the breach. From that date our recognition of the new republics hung on the Florida treaty, and it was not till March 8, 1822 after the final ratifications had been exchanged, that the President recommended it to Congress. Recognition did not, of course, mean a departure from neutrality, which we still professed. It was in this situation, with our Florida chestnuts out of the fire, without having by our acts given the allies any handle for interference, and with a comfortable assurance as to the position of England, that we awaited whatever action might be taken when the pacification of Europe was complete.

The enthusiasm of many of our statesmen for the revolutionary movement had been dampened by other considera

Our reversionary interests

tions than those of our relations with Spain.

Ever since our beginnings as a nation certain portions of Spanish America had been earmarked as ultimately ours: the Floridas, Texas, and certainly Cuba-it was unnecessary to define exactly. As early as 1790 we considered the question of asserting our reversionary interest in the Floridas, and from 1808 we were prepared to assert it in Cuba. Afraid that that island might fall either to France or to England, Jefferson wrote to Gallatin, May 17, 1808: "I shall sincerely lament Cuba's falling into any hands

but those of its present owners. Spanish America is at present in the best hands for us, and 'Chi sta bene, non si muove should be our motto."" In April, 1809, he wrote to Madison that Napoleon might let us have Cuba "to prevent our aid to Mexico and the other provinces. That would be a price," he added, "and I would immediately erect a column on the southernmost limit of Cuba, and inscribe on it a ne plus ultra as to us in that direction. . . . Cuba can be defended by us without a navy, and this develops the principle which ought to limit our views." We were clear that we could not with equanimity see Cuba taken by either France or England; but how inconvenient also would it be should that island, or indeed Texas and possibly California, fall from the hands of Spain, out of which we could so honorably rescue them, only to assume an independence which it would be sacrilege for us to violate! These views were embodied by Adams in a dispatch to Nelson, our minister to Spain, April 28, 1823. They have constituted the rift in the lute of our Spanish-American relations which has until to-day prevented those republics from dancing to our piping.

To the situation, already complex, another element was added by Russia's independent action. Her traders, coming south from Alaska, had in 1816 established a The Russian fort in what is now California. In 1821 the advance czar issued a ukase, or proclamation, giving to a Russian company exclusive right to territory as far south as the fifty-first parallel, and excluding foreigners from the sea for a distance of one hundred Italian miles from the coast. The Russian minister, Baron de Tuhl, also informed Adams that his sovereign would not recognize the independence of Spanish America, and on November 16, 1823, communicated to him a manifesto of the czar, as mouthpiece of the Holy Alliance, setting forth the advantages of Divine Right and the inadequacy of republics. The ukase was as distasteful to Great Britain as to us, and the ministers of the

two countries were ordered to coöperate in remonstrance. The manifesto was our own affair.1

It was at this juncture that Adams received from Rush, our minister at London, a proposal from Canning. The Canning's latter conceived that it was hopeless for Spain offer

to try to recover her colonies, but he was not opposed to an amicable arrangement between them and the mother country; the question of the recognition of their independence, he said, was one of time and circumstance. Great Britain, he declared, did not aim at the possession of any portion of Spain's territory herself, but she could not with indifference see the transfer of any portion of it to another power. He informed Rush that he had received unofficial notice that a proposal would be made "for a Congress [of the allied nations], or some less formal concert and consultation, especially upon the affairs of Spanish America." If the United States acceded to his views, a declaration to that effect, concurrently with England, would, he thought, be "the most effectual and the least offensive" mode of making known their joint disapprobation of the suggested interference of Europe in the affairs of America.

This proposal reached Washington October 9, 1823, and at once precipitated one of the most critical cabinet discussions in our history. There can now remain

Cabinet discussion

no doubt that the policy adopted was that continually and aggressively urged by Adams. Monroe was at first in favor of accepting the advance: Adams argued that England and the United States did not stand on an equal basis, because we had recognized the Spanish-American republics and she had not, because we did want portions of Spanish America, and, most significantly, because we were the most interested party. His attempt to put the question “to a test of right and wrong" reads curiously in view of his dispatch to Nelson regarding Cuba; and his objection to co

1 Georg Heinz, Die Beziehungen zwischen Russland, England und Nordmerika im Jahre 1823, Berlin, 1911.

operation on the ground that it was contrary to our policy of abstaining from entangling alliances seems hardly consistent with the union of American and British interests at St. Petersburg. Yet this latter point really constituted the chief ground of opposition to Canning's proposal; it restruck the note of isolation sounded by John Adams, Washington, and Jefferson. The negotiation with Russia might be defended on the basis that the territory threatened by Russia was legally in the joint occupation of the two countries; but to coöperate in a matter of this importance and publicity, where not special interest but general American policy was at stake, was to throw isolation overboard, to admit that Great Britain was a partner in American affairs. Moreover, coöperation was not essential. Since Great Britain was moved by permanent interests, these would not change because we refused to join her. The British fleet would still stand between Spanish America and united Europe.1

Basis of the

trine

The exclusion of coöperation with Great Britain carried with it the use of Canning's idea of a self-denying ordinance as the basis of objection to the proposed interference. It was necessary to find a different Monroe Docone, and that employed was none other than an extension of the very policy of isolation because of which we refused to coöperate with Great Britain. This policy was extended beyond the primary idea that we as a nation should not be involved in European wars; it was extended beyond Madison's instruction to Monroe that we ought to begin to broach the idea that the whole Gulf Stream is our waters; it was extended to include the whole of both the American continents. As a basis for this extension, and at the same time as an answer to the czar's defence of Divine Right, there was inserted in the President's message a declaration that the political systems of Europe and America were different and incompatible. "Our policy in regard to Europe,

1 W. C. Ford, "John Quincy Adams and the Monroe Doctrine," Amer. Hist. Review, 1902, vii. 676–696, viii. 28–52.

1