political affairs; but I saw at once the whole evil of this great sacrifice, and instantly raised my voice against it in articles published in the St. Louis newspapers, and in which were given, in advance, all the national reasons against giving away the country, which were afterwards, and by so many tongues, and at the expense of war and a hundred millions, given to get it back. I denounced the treaty, and attacked its authors and their motives, and imprecated a woe on the heads of those who should continue to favor it. "The magnificent valley of the Mississippi is ours, with all its fountains, springs and floods; and woe to the statesman who shall undertake to surrender one drop of its water, one inch of its soil, to any foreign power." In these terms I spoke, and in this spirit I wrote, before the treaty was even ratified. Mr. John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State, negotiator and ostensible author of the treaty, was the statesman against whom my censure was directed, and I was certainly sincere in my belief of his great culpability. But the declaration which he afterwards made on the floor of the House, absolved him from censure on account of that treaty, and placed the blame on the majority in Mr. Monroe's cabinet, southern men, by whose vote he had been governed in ceding Texas and fixing the boundary which I so much condemned. After this authoritative declaration, I made, in my place in the Senate, the honorable amends to Mr. Adams, which was equally due to him and to myself. The treaty was signed on the anniversary of the birth-day of Washington, and sent to the Senate the same day, and unanimously ratified on the next day, with the general approbation of the country, and the warm applause of the newspaper press. This unanimity of the Senate, and applause of the press, made no impression upon me. I continued to assail the treaty and its authors, and the more bitterly, because the official correspondence, when published, showed that this great sacrifice of territory, rivers, and proper boundaries, was all gratuitous and voluntary on our part – "that the Spanish government had offered us more than we accepted;" and that it was our policy, and not hers, which had deprived us of Texas and the large country, in addition to Texas, which lay between the Red River and Upper Arkansas. This was an enigma, the solution of which, in my mind, strongly connected itself with the Missouri controversy then raging (1819) with its greatest violence, threatening existing political parties with subversion, and the Union with dissolution. My mind went there – to that controversy – for the solution, but with a misdirection of its application. I blamed the northern men in Mr. Monroe's cabinet: the private papers of General Jackson, which have come to my hands, enable me to correct that error, and give me an inside view of that which I could only see on the outside before. In a private letter from Mr. Monroe to General Jackson, dated at Washington, May 22d, 1820 – more than one year after the negotiation of the treaty, written to justify it, and evidently called out by Mr. Clay's attack upon it – are these passages: "Having long known the repugnance with which the eastern portion of our Union, or rather some of those who have enjoyed its confidence (for I do not think that the people themselves have any interest or wish of that kind), have seen its aggrandizement to the West and South, I have been decidedly of opinion that we ought to be content with Florida for the present, and until the public opinion in that quarter shall be reconciled to any further change. I mention these circumstances to show you that our difficulties are not with Spain alone, but are likewise internal, proceeding from various causes, which certain men are prompt to seize and turn to the account of their own ambitious views." This paragraph from Mr. Monroe's letter lifts the curtain which concealed the secret reason for ceding Texas – that secret which explains what was incomprehensible – our having refused to accept as much as Spain had offered. Internal difficulties, it was thus shown, had induced that refusal; and these difficulties grew out of the repugnance of leading men in the northeast to see the further aggrandizement of the Union upon the South and West. This repugnance was then taking an operative form in the shape of the Missouri controversy; and, as an immediate consequence, threatened the subversion of political party lines, and the introduction of the slavery question into the federal elections and legislation, and bringing into the highest of those elections – those of President and Vice-President – a test which no southern candidate could stand. The repugnance in the northeast was not merely to territorial aggrandizement in the southwest, but to the consequent extension of slavery in that quarter; and to allay that repugnance, and to prevent the slavery extension question from becoming a test in the presidential election, was the true reason for giving away Texas, and the true solution of the enigma involved in the strange refusal to accept as much as Spain offered. The treaty was disapproved by Mr. Jefferson, to whom a similar letter was written to that sent to General Jackson, and for the same purpose – to obtain his approbation; but he who had acquired Louisiana, and justly gloried in the act, could not bear to see that noble province mutilated, and returned his dissent to the act, and his condemnation of the policy on which it was done. General Jackson had yielded to the arguments of Mr. Monroe, and consented to the cession of Texas as a temporary measure. The words of his answer to Mr. Monroe's letter were: "I am clearly of your opinion, that, for the present, we ought to be contented with the Floridas." But Mr. Jefferson would yield to no temporary views of policy, and remained inflexibly opposed to the treaty; and in this he was consistent with his own conduct in similar circumstances. Sixteen years before, he had been in the same circumstances – at the time of the acquisition of Louisiana – when he had the same repugnance to southwestern aggrandizement to contend with, and the same bait (Florida) to tempt him. Then eastern men raised the same objections; and as early as August 1803 – only four months after the purchase of Louisiana – he wrote to Dr. Breckenridge: "Objections are raising to the eastward to the vast extent of our boundaries, and propositions are made to exchange Louisiana, or a part of it, for the Floridas; but as I have said, we shall get the Floridas without; and I would not give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any foreign nation." So that Mr. Jefferson, neither in 1803 nor in 1819, would have mutilated Louisiana to obtain the cession of Florida, which he knew would be obtained without that mutilation; nor would he have yielded to the threatening discontent in the east. I have a gratification that, without knowing it, and at a thousand miles from him, I took the same ground that Mr. Jefferson stood on, and even used his own words: "Not an inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any nation." But I was mortified at the time, that not a paper in the United States backed my essays. It was my first experience in standing "solitary and alone;" but I stood it without flinching, and even incurred the imputation of being opposed to the administration – had to encounter that objection in my first election to the Senate, and was even viewed as an opponent by Mr. Monroe himself, when I first came to Washington. He had reason to know before his office expired, and still more after it expired, that no one (of the young generation) had a more exalted opinion of his honesty, patriotism, firmness and general soundness of judgment; or would be more ready, whenever the occasion permitted, to do justice to his long and illustrious career of public service. The treaty, as I have said, was promptly and unanimously ratified by the American Senate; not so on the part of Spain. She hesitated, delayed, procrastinated; and finally suffered the time limited for the exchange of ratifications to expire, with out having gone through that indispensable formality. Of course this put an end to the treaty, unless it could be revived; and, thereupon, new negotiations and vehement expostulations against the conduct which refused to ratify a treaty negotiated upon full powers and in conformity to instructions. It was in the course of this renewed negotiation, and of these warm expostulations, that Mr. Adams used the strong expressions to the Spanish ministry, so enigmatical at the time, "That Spain had offered more than we accepted, and that she dare not deny it." Finally, after the lapse of a year or so, the treaty was ratified by Spain. In the mean time Mr. Clay had made a movement against it in the House of Representatives, unsuccessful, of course, but exciting some sensation, both for the reasons he gave and the vote of some thirty-odd members who concurred with him. This movement very certainly induced the letters of Mr. Monroe to General Jackson and Mr. Jefferson, as they were contemporaneous (May, 1820), and also some expressions in the letter to General Jackson, which evidently referred to Mr. Clay's movement. The ratification of Spain was given October, 1820, and being after the time limited, it became necessary to submit it again to the American Senate, which was done at the session of 1820-21. It was ratified again, and almost unanimously, but not quite, four votes being given against it, and all by western senators, namely: Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky; Colonel John Williams, of Tennessee; Mr. James Brown, of Louisiana, and Colonel Trimble, of Ohio. I was then in Washington, and a senator elect, though not yet entitled to a seat, in consequence of the delayed admission of the new State of Missouri into the Union, and so had no opportunity to
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