[Sidenote: The Haytian question at the congress.]
It is true that Mr. Salazar said in his communication something about the status of Hayti being a subject of deliberation for the congress. It was also true that Hayti had been for thirty years in a state of chronic insurrection and revolution, and that the former negro slave population had, by the assassination of their former masters and mistresses, freed themselves from bondage, taken possession of the country, and were reducing it to barbarism at a rapid { 152} pace. It is furthermore true that the slaveholders in the United States did not wish their own homes to be made the scenes of any such ruin and savagery, or themselves or their families to be made subject to any such fate; and, it may be confidently hazarded, that no Northerner, at that day, viewed such possibilities with anything but aversion and horror. It required a quarter of a century of radical abolition recklessness, the blunder-crime of secession, and the desperation of long-continued, and at first unsuccessful, war, to make the men of the North regard without sympathy such dangers to their Southern brethren. The North and the South simply could not have divided, at that time, upon the question of the relation to Hayti. There was only one view upon that subject, and that was that the example and influence of Hayti must be held far away from these shores. This could have been accomplished, however, as well by attending the congress as by staying away, perhaps better. At least, the Haytian question was no chief ground of opposition to the mission, and certainly no chief ground in favor of the mission.
It is more probable that one of the reasons which moved President Adams and Mr. Clay to urge attendance upon the congress was to be in a position to restrain the Spanish-American states from attempting to seize Cuba and Porto Rico. During the latter half of the year 1825, at the very moment when the Government was communicating with the Spanish-American states in regard to the congress, Mr. Clay was urging the Czar of Russia, on the one side, to exercise his influence upon the Spanish court for the cessation of hostilities on the part of Spain against the revolting American colonies, on the ground that Spain could never resubjugate them, and would by a continuance of hostilities exasperate them and excite them to attack { 153} Cuba and Porto Rico with the purpose of expelling the Spanish power from these islands, and was urging the Spanish-American states, on the other side, to refrain from such an attack, on the ground that if they did attempt to seize these islands the Czar would not only cease his good offices with the Spanish King to end the war, but might bring the entire power of the Holy Alliance to the aid of the Spanish King for the resubjection of his former American colonies. The policy of President Adams' Administration was clearly opposed to the occupation of Cuba and Porto Rico, either by the Spanish Americans or by any European state other than Spain herself. In this matter, also, the Administration and the opposition held the same view.