This section is from "The American Cyclopaedia", by George Ripley And Charles A. Dana. Also available from Amazon: The New American Cyclopędia. 16 volumes complete..
Though as a senator Adams had voted against the Louisiana treaty, on the ground that the federal constitution gave no power to acquire territory, he now as secretary of state pushed American claims under that treaty to the ex-tremest lengths, insisting that this cession included not merely Florida to the Perdido, but Texas to the Rio Grande. Finally, in consid-eration of the cession of Florida, the United States agreeing to pay $5,000,000 for it, to be applied to the extinction of American mercantile claims against Spain, Adams compromised matters by agreeing to the Sabine, the Red river, the upper Arkansas, the crest of the Rocky mountains, and the parallel of 42° N. lat., as the boundary of Louisiana; and upon this basis a treaty was arranged. This treaty was his principal achievement as secretary of state. After some hesitation, Mr. Adams finally yielded to the policy warmly urged by Henry Clay of recognizing the independence of the late Spanish American colonies. An elaborate report which he made in his official capacity on weights and measures secured him the credit of extensive scientific acquirements.
Toward the close of Monroe's first term came up the great question of the admission of Missouri as a slave state, and the extension of slavery or its prohibition throughout the unsettled territory north and west of Missouri. The Missouri compromise having at length, after violent agitations at Washington and throughout the country, received the sanction of congress, Monroe, upon being called upon to sign the bill, submitted two questions to his cabinet: First, had congress the constitutional power to prohibit slavery in a territory ? and second, was the term "for ever," used in the prohibitive clause of the Missouri bill, to be understood as referring only to the territorial condition of the district embraced in it, or must it be understood to extend to such states as might be erected out of it? These questions grew out of the circumstance that the southern members of congress had denied any power in congress to prohibit slavery in a state, and therefore any right to refuse to admit Missouri into the Union on the ground that her constitution established slavery. Those of them who supported the compromise admitted, however, a power of imposing conditions on territories; as necessarily implied in the power to erect them.
On the first of these questions all the cabinet declared themselves in the affirmative. As to the second question, Adams thought that the term "for ever" must be understood to mean for ever, and that the prohibition of slavery, instead of ceasing with the territorial condition of the district, would under the act of congress extend to any states that might at any time be erected out of it. The other members of the cabinet, including Thompson of New York (except Adams, the only other northern man in it, and soon after made judge of the supreme federal court), were all of opinion that the "for ever" in question was only a territorial for ever, and that it did not and would not operate to prevent any states that might be organized out of this territory from establishing or prohibiting slavery as they chose. But to prevent this delicate point from being mooted, and to give to the cabinet an appearance of unanimity, at Mr. Calhoun's suggestion the second question was modified so as to read, " Is the proviso as it stands in the bill constitutional?" To this question all the members returned the brief answer "Yes," and on the strength of their apparently unanimous opinion (ordered to be deposited in the archives of the state department, whence, like some other valuable historical papers, it has since disappeared), Monroe signed the bill.
We owe this piece of secret history to an extract which has been published from Mr. Adams's diary, from which it also appears that he still strongly entertained the same sentiment of opposition to southern ideas, institutions, and predominancy, which had led him to vote against the annexation of Louisiana. But the time was not yet come for the open avowal of his opinions or for acting upon them. Least of all were the present crisis and Adams's position favorable to such a course. - No sooner had Monroe entered upon his second term of office (1821) than the question of who should be his successor began to be vehemently agitated. Of the five members of his cabinet, no fewer than three, Adams, Crawford, and Calhoun, were brought forward as candidates, as were also, outside the cabinet, Gen. Jackson and Henry Clay. Crawford obtained the congressional caucus nomination, according to the usage which then prevailed; but this nomination had no weight with the partisans of the other candidates. To support Adams, the federal party of Massachusetts - the only state in which that party could be said to maintain an organized existence, and even there it had lately lost the control of the state government - amalgamated with the democratic party of that state; and the same union took place throughout New England, and partially in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. All the federalists, however, did not come into this arrangement.
Some of the more persistent among them refused to support Adams. The aged Timothy Pickering, his former senatorial colleague, made a violent attack upon him in a printed pamphlet, founded on his former separation from the federal party. As a general thing, however, the greater part of the old federalists throughout the country gave in their adhesion to Adams - a circumstance urged by his opponents as going to show that he was still but a federalist in a democratic disguise, and not entitled to the support of the democratic party. From the earliest history of the United States as an independent nation, Virginia and New England ideas had contended for predominancy and control. Notwithstanding his former abandonment of New England at the time of the embargo, in the present contest Mr. Adams represented the New England which was in fact synonymous with the federal idea. Of course he suffered greatly from that bitter dislike of New England, which in the preceding quarter of a century had been laboriously and assiduously instilled into the people not merely of the southern but of the western states, and which he had himself, as we have seen, contributed to aggravate.
 
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