ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
Slavery and Silence. Paul D. Naish
Читать онлайн.Название Slavery and Silence
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780812294309
Автор произведения Paul D. Naish
Издательство Ingram
The Panama Congress debates followed in the wake of the divisive four-way presidential race of 1824—in which there had been no clear winner—which had been resolved when Clay threw his support behind John Quincy Adams, spoiling the chances of Andrew Jackson, the popular favorite. Adams subsequently appointed Clay secretary of state, an arrangement Adams’s pro-Jackson adversaries branded a “corrupt bargain.” (John Randolph, already quoted at the beginning of this chapter, characterized the relationship between the president and his secretary of state as “an alliance, offensive and defensive, … got up between Old Massachusetts and Kentucky, between the frost of January, and young, blithe, buxom May—the eldest daughter of Virginia—young Kentucky—not so young, however, as not to make a prudent match, and sell her charms for their full value.”35) But the new president scarcely acknowledged his lack of a mandate. His first message to the Nineteenth Congress in December 1825 presented a startling presumption of presidential power. He proposed that the national government take the lead in constructing canals and turnpikes, fund a national university, and build astronomical observatories (the latter immediately pilloried with his own locution, “lighthouses of the skies”). Europe was harnessing the power of government to effect similar ends, and the United States ought not to fall behind. Adams’s mention that the United States had been invited to participate in a Pan-American conference, and his request for congressional approval of the designated plenipotentiaries and funding for their trip, should have been the least contested of Adams’s proposals. Richard C. Anderson of Kentucky, who would be tapped to be a minister plenipotentiary, predicted in July 1825 that “probably some more specific statement of the questions to be discussed there is required, before a decisive step is taken.”36 Anderson seriously underestimated the obstacles that lay ahead. In fact, Adams’s proposal for participation in the Panama Mission blew up among accusations of secrecy and continued for much of the Congress’s first session, to expose serious reservations about the universal applicability and potential exportability of American ideals.
Adams had an agenda for participating in the Panama Congress that he acknowledged in his diary: cementing good relations with the nation’s southern neighbors might help facilitate the eventual purchase of Texas and smooth the way for an interoceanic canal through the Isthmus of Panama.37 In his public defense of attendance at the Panama Congress, however, Adams focused on three other themes: the duty to extend a neighborly hand to the new republics, the wisdom of providing a good example and steering the infant nations from self-inflicted hazards and external dangers, and the practical benefits of neutrality and commerce to be gleaned from participation in the meeting.38 When they were not actively engaged in deflecting the attacks of Adams’s critics, his supporters in the Senate and the House of Representatives amplified each of these points.
First, the argument seemingly most colored by goodwill and least tainted by self-interest was that the United States ought to acknowledge the great accomplishment of the Spanish republics in winning their independence and recognize them with what Representative Charles Miner of Pennsylvania called “parental regard.”39 The invitation to the congress had been tendered in a spirit of friendliness and sincerity, with no hidden conditions the president’s supporters could discover; to refuse the outstretched hand of amity was to risk offense.40 Francis Johnson, Representative from Kentucky, pointed out that there was no shame in being called a friend of liberty.41
Second, many of the politicians who spoke in Adams’s defense alluded to the ways the United States might help Latin America avoid pitfalls in establishing republican governments. “Let us be first to meet them, and, if in our power, afford them useful advice as to the improvement of their condition, and in perpetuating their independence and liberty,” urged Representative John Reed of Massachusetts.42 It was in the best interests of the United States, so long as it could avoid active involvement in foreign military affairs, to help position the new republics on a footing secure enough for them to be free of threat of reconquest by Spain or the Holy Alliance of Catholic countries in Europe. Furthermore, as the president himself had suggested, a gentle nudge from the United States might encourage the new nations to turn away from a policy of established religion, specifically Roman Catholicism.43
Third, the potential profits of trade played no small part in the calculations of those who advocated sending representatives to Panama. “These South American States contain twenty millions of freemen: they will require the supply of manufactured goods to the amount of one hundred millions of dollars,” predicted Representative Silas Wood of New York.44 If American industry needed a goad to expansion, here it was. The vast market would stimulate American manufacture better than any tariff. Senator Asher Robbins of Rhode Island estimated the population of South America still higher, at thirty million, and pointed out that nations of freemen were energetic and prosperous—a natural market for the products of the United States.45
Even among the administration’s supporters there was a limit to assertions of fellowship with Latin America. In their defense of attendance at the assembly, they refrained from suggesting that ministers from the United States would sit down with their equals. Despite their calls for friendliness and courtesy, in the remarks of the mission’s advocates a damning-with-faint-praise undertone hinted that the emerging Latin American nations were unformed if not slightly foolish. Representative Daniel Webster of Massachusetts spoke firmly in favor of attendance in the congress of “sister Republics,” among the “great American family of nations,” but at the same time he made clear their lowly status: they were “pupils” in a school from which the United States had presumably graduated with honors.46 Rejecting the opposition’s refrain that the United States might somehow be contaminated by association with its neighbors south of the border, the Adams men suggested that their superiority would prevent their being flecked with pitch even if they touched it. The upstart republics existed not simply at an earlier stage of political development. They belonged to a wholly distinct order. The problems that might plague them and the diseases to which they might succumb represented no danger to the United States, a member of another species entirely and therefore not susceptible to infection.
Far more colorful than the defenders of the Panama Mission were speakers from the opposition. The objections to the Panama assembly were striking in their variety. Among the charges were these: Adams’s actions bore the hallmarks of the tyrant. There were no precedents for attendance at this congress. By appearing at Panama, the United States would find itself committed to undesirable, expensive, or dangerous policies. The United States would be drawn into war with Spain. The Panama Congress would encourage instability in the strategically significant—and nearby—Caribbean. And perhaps most damningly: the abolition of slavery in Latin America would exert a demoralizing effect on white Southerners and a dangerous influence on U.S. slaves.
Actually the opposition was more organized than it appeared. The forging of a unified coalition out of these assorted objections was the work of New York senator and future president Martin Van Buren, who took it up as a convenient Adam’s rib around which to fashion a new political coalition made up of the enemies of John Quincy Adams.47 Besides the outrageous John Randolph of Virginia, Van Buren’s allies included Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, Robert Hayne of South Carolina, John Holmes of Maine, John Berrien of Georgia, and Adams’s own vice president, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a geographically assorted group, each member of which addressed a critical aspect of an opposition position that Van Buren skillfully stitched together. In Van Buren’s efforts to unify Adams’s enemies, it is possible to see him erecting the foundation of the nation’s second party system, to achieve through political organization what Clay attempted through his integrated economic program. One of many people who understood and feared the growing sectionalism exposed by the Missouri crisis, Van Buren believed party politics might distract the citizenry from sectional fragmentation over the issue of slavery.48 Later in 1826 Van Buren would begin his party-building project in earnest, but he laid the groundwork here. The irony of his attempt to escape sectional animosity was that among the assorted agendas he hoped