ct had no reference to the
settlement of a colony on the coast of Africa; and that the acquisition
of Louisiana, and the settlement at the mouth of Columbia River, being
in territories contiguous to and in continuance of our own, could by no
reason warrant the purchase of countries beyond seas, or the
establishment of a colonial system of government subordinate to and
dependent upon that of the United States.

In July, 1819, Mr. Adams, writing concerning the failure at the
preceding session of Missouri to obtain admission as a state into the
Union, from the restriction, introduced by the House of Representatives,
excluding slavery from its constitution, thus expressed himself: "The
attempt to introduce that restriction produced a violent agitation among
the members from the slaveholding states, and it has been communicated
to the states themselves, and to the territory of Missouri. The
slave-drivers, as usual, whenever this topic is brought up, bluster and
bully, talk of the white slaves of the Eastern States, and the
dissolution of the Union, and of oceans of blood; and the Northern men,
as usual, pocket all this hectoring, sit down in quiet, and submit to
the slave-scourging republicanism of the planters."

Being urged to use his influence that the language and policy of the
government should be as moderate and guarded as possible, from the
consideration that both England and France were profoundly impressed
with the idea that we were an ambitious, encroaching people, Mr. Adams
replied: "I doubt if we should give ourselves any concern about it.
Great Britain, who had been vilifying us for twenty years as a
low-minded nation, with no generous ambition, no God but gold, had now
changed her tune, and was endeavoring to alarm the world at the gigantic
grasp of our ambition. Spain and all Europe were endeavoring to do the
same; being startled at first by our acquisition of Louisiana, and now
by our pretensions to extend to the South Sea. Nothing we can say will
remove this impression until the world shall be familiarized with the
idea of considering the continent of North America to be our proper
dominion. From the time we became an independent people, it was as much
a law of nature that this should become our pretension, as that the
Mississippi should flow to the sea. Spain had pretensions on our
southern, Great Britain on our northern borders. It was impossible that
centuries should elapse without finding them annexed t