The question of recognition was thus thrust into the foreground of discussion at a most inopportune time. The Florida treaty had not yet been ratified, for reasons best known to His Majesty the King of Spain, and the new Spanish Minister, General Vives, had just arrived in the United States to ask for certain explanations. The Administration had every reason at this moment to wish to avoid further causes of irritation to Spanish pride. It is more than probable, indeed, that Clay was not unwilling to embarrass the President and his Secretary of State. He still nursed his personal grudge against the President and he did not disguise his hostility to the treaty. What aroused his resentment was the sacrifice of Texas for Florida. Florida would have fallen to the United States eventually like ripened fruit, he believed. Why, then, yield an incomparably richer and greater territory for that which was bound to become theirs whenever the American people wished to take it?
But what were the explanations which Vives demanded? Weary hours spent in conference with the wily Spaniard convinced Adams that the great obstacle to the ratification of the treaty by Spain had been the conviction that the United States was only waiting ratification to recognize the independence of the Spanish colonies. Bitterly did Adams regret the advances which he had made to Great Britain, at the instance of the President, and still more bitterly did he deplore those paragraphs in the President's messages which had expressed an all too ready sympathy with the aims of the insurgents. But regrets availed nothing and the Secretary of State had to put the best face possible on the policy of the Administration. He told Vives in unmistakable language that the United States could not subscribe to "new engagements as the price of obtaining the ratification of the old." Certainly the United States would not comply with the Spanish demand and pledge itself "to form no relations with the pretended governments of the revolted provinces of Spain." As for the royal grants which De Onis had agreed to call null and void, if His Majesty insisted upon their validity, perhaps the United States might acquiesce for an equivalent area west of the Sabine River. In some alarm Vives made haste to say that the King did not insist upon the confirmation of these grants. In the end he professed himself satisfied with Mr. Adams's explanations; he would send a messenger to report to His Majesty and to secure formal authorization to exchange ratifications.