William Earl Weeks - John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire

Copyright 1992 by the University Press of Kentucky

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weeks, William Earl, 1957
John Quincy Adams and American global empire / William Earl Weeks.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8131-1779-8 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8131-9058-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. FloridaHistoryCession to the United States, 1819.
2. Spain. Treaties, etc. United States, 1819 Feb. 22. 3. Adams,
John Quincy, 1767-1848. 4. United StatesForeign relationsSpain.
5. SpainForeign relationsUnited States. I. Title.
F314.W44 1992
973.5'5'092dc20 91-39022

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America

I would like to thank the following people for their assistance during the evolution of this project from a gleam in my minds eye to a book:

Professors John S. Galbraith and Alexander DeConde, for their gracious support of an orphaned graduate student.

Professors H. Stuart Hughes, Earl Pomeroy, David Luft, Howard Kushner, Steven Hahn, Michael Parrish, Robert C. Ritchie, and Michael J. Hogan, all of whom influenced my development as a historian.

Mark and Marilyn Merrell, Jack and Michele Winn, Suzanne Kryder, Judy Warnock, Robert McDonell, Andrea Hattersley, Alice Green, Jeannie Whayne, Gail Shatsky, Jim Crosswhite, Bonnie and Gunnar Biggs, and Babar, friends who buoyed my spirits over the years.

Lucille Duvall, for rescuing me countless times from the graduate school bureaucracy.

Patricia and David Mendenhall, for allowing me to share a piece of ranching paradise.

Muriel Jones Weeks, my mother, and Susan, Nancy, and Elizabeth, my sisters.

Deborah Small, for her love and support over the years.

And finally, the late Armin Rappaport, who inspired my entry into the field of history and who first stimulated my interest in John Quincy Adams. May this work stand as a small tribute to his memory.

Quotations from the Adams Papers are from the microfilm edition by permission of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

This is a story about a man, a treaty, and a nation. The man is John Quincy Adams: son of a president, congressman, president and the greatest secretary of state in American history. The treaty is the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819, which acquired Florida, secured a western boundary extending to the Pacific Ocean, and, I argue, represented the first determined step in the creation of an American global empire. The nation is the United States, the most powerful nation-state in world history and a country in whose growth and development Adams perceived himself destined to play a crucial role.

Samuel Flagg Bemis writes that the historical figure of John Quincy Adams stands behind that of Abraham Lincoln in the history of this Union. suffered a personal crisis during the critical period of the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, found himself in the middle of the controversy surrounding the Louisiana Purchase, and wrestled throughout his life with the moral and practical dilemmas presented by black slavery. These and other aspects of Adamss life resonate strongly with the history of the nation. When he died at the climax of the Mexican War, the nation knew that an era had passed with him. This is great man history, although not in the traditional sense in which the term is used. Adamss historical significance may be seen less in his public achievements than in the ironies that characterized his life. Perhaps more than anyone of his time, John Quincy Adams lived at the intersection of the personal and the public; in a very real sense, the story of his life is the story of a nation.

I examine in detail Adamss greatest contribution to the American nation: the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819. A major event in a year that saw the beginning of the Missouri debates and the Panic of 1819, its significance has been underestimated by historians. The acquisition of Florida with which it is most often associated was in fact secondarily important to the transcontinental claim it secured and the global vision that informed its negotiation. The Transcontinental Treaty (along with the policies pursued during its negotiation) was the foundation of Monroes doctrine of American hemispheric dominance. Moreover, the acquisition of a claim to the Oregon territory in exchange for a claim to Texas established a dynamic that would determine the course of American expansionism until the Civil War. Adamss brilliant diplomatic achievement deserves renewed explication: his conduct of foreign affairs in the perilous circumstances of 1817 improved the nations position so as to allow Monroe to declare the Western Hemisphere off limits to further European colonization by December 1823. It is the skill with which Adams transformed the nations international position from one of relative weakness to one of relative strength which merits for him the title of Americas greatest secretary of state. His vision of empire persisted in the policies of William Seward and John Hay.

Map 1. The Transcontinental Treaty Line of 1819

During the conduct of the negotiations with Spain, Adams confronted the dilemmas that divided the nation and ultimately broke it apart. The interrelated problems of slavery, sectionalism, and impending financial crisis which influenced the outcome of the treaty forced Adams to compromise his personal integrity in ways that his personal myth forbade. In so doing, he gradually realized that the Founders dream of a virtuous republic in which the common good took precedence over individual self-interest was itself compromised and that the nation faced inevitable civil war.

This study is informed primarily by three areas of American historical scholarship. First, as a contribution to the history of American foreign relations, it seeks to occupy a place between Alexander DeCondes