Thus Adams argued in the sessions of the Cabinet, quite ignorant of the correspondence which had passed between the President and his mentors. Confident of his ability to handle the situation, he asked no more congenial task than to draft replies to Baron Tuyll and to Canning and instructions to the ministers at London, St. Petersburg, and Paris; but he impressed upon Monroe the necessity of making all these communications "part of a combined system of policy and adapted to each other." Not so easily, however, was the President detached from the influence of the two Virginia oracles. He took sharp exception to the letter which Adams drafted in reply to Baron Tuyll, saying that he desired to refrain from any expressions which would irritate the Czar; and thus turned what was to be an emphatic declaration of principles into what Adams called "the tamest of state papers."
The Secretary's draft of instructions to Rush had also to run the gauntlet of amendment by the President and his Cabinet; but it emerged substantially unaltered in content and purpose. Adams professed to find common ground with Great Britain, while pointing out with much subtlety that if she believed the recovery of the colonies by Spain was really hopeless, she was under moral obligation to recognize them as independent states and to favor only such an adjustment between them and the mother country as was consistent with the fact of independence. The United States was in perfect accord with the principles laid down by Mr. Canning: it desired none of the Spanish possessions for itself but it could not see with indifference any portion of them transferred to any other power. Nor could the United States see with indifference "any attempt by one or more powers of Europe to restore those new states to the crown of Spain, or to deprive them, in any manner whatever, of the freedom and independence which they have acquired." But, for accomplishing the purposes which the two governments had in common--and here the masterful Secretary of State had his own way--it was advisable THAT THEY SHOULD ACT SEPARATELY, each making such representations to the continental allies as circumstances dictated.
Further communications from Baron Tuyll gave Adams the opportunity, which he had once lost, of enunciating the principles underlying American policy. In a masterly paper dated November 27, 1823, he adverted to the declaration of the allied monarchs that they would never compound with revolution but would forcibly interpose to guarantee the tranquillity of civilized states. In such declarations "the President," wrote Adams, "wishes to perceive sentiments, the application of which is limited, and intended in their results to be limited to the affairs of Europe.... The United States of America, and their government, could not see with indifference, the forcible interposition of any European Power, other than Spain, either to restore the dominion of Spain over her emancipated Colonies in America, or to establish Monarchical Governments in those Countries, or to transfer any of the possessions heretofore or yet subject to Spain in the American Hemisphere, to any other European Power."
