expressed by
Monroe and now included in the modern doctrine as a part in the whole,
but a principle more fully identical with the imperial one of to-day
had been conceived and shaped by Mr. Adams before the delivery of (p. 130)
Monroe's famous message. As has just been remarked, he looked forward
to the possession of the whole North American continent by the United
States as a sure destiny, and for his own part, whenever opportunity
offered, he was never backward to promote this glorious ultimate
consummation. He was in favor of the acquisition of Louisiana, whatever
fault he might find with the scheme of Mr. Jefferson for making it a
state; he was ready in 1815 to ask the British plenipotentiaries to
cede Canada simply as a matter of common sense and mutual convenience,
and as the comfortable result of a war in which the United States had
been worsted; he never labored harder than in negotiating for the
Floridas, and in pushing our western boundaries to the Pacific; in
April, 1823, he wrote to the American minister at Madrid the significant
remark: "It is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that the
annexation of Cuba to our Federal Republic will be indispensable to
the continuance and integrity of the Union." Encroachments never
seemed distasteful to him, and he was always forward to stretch a
point in order to advocate or defend a seizure of disputed North
American territory, as in the cases of Amelia Island, Pensacola, and
Galveston. When discussion arose with Russia concerning her (p. 131)
possessions on the northwest coast of this continent, Mr. Adams
audaciously told the Russian minister, Baron Tuyl, July 17, 1823,
"that we should contest the rights of Russia to _any_ territorial
establishment on this continent, and that we should assume distinctly
the principle that the American continents are no longer subjects for
any new European colonial establishments." "This," says Mr. Charles
Francis Adams in a footnote to the passage in the Diary, "is the first
hint of the policy so well known afterwards as the Monroe Doctrine."
Nearly five months later, referring to the same matter in his message
to Congress, December 2, 1823, President Monroe said: "The occasion
has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the
rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the
American continents, by the free and independent condition which they
have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not