, Nos. 9, 10.]
President Monroe seems to have been inclined to recognize the
independence of these states on the earliest evidence of their
ability to sustain it; but the secretary of state, John Quincy
Adams, favored a policy of delay. He had slight confidence in the
turbulent, untrained republics of Latin-America, and little patience
with the idea that their revolution had anything in common with that
of the United States. At the close of 1817 he believed it
inexpedient and unjust for the United States to favor their cause,
and he urged a friend to publish inquiries into the political
morality and the right of the United States to take sides with a
people who trampled upon civil rights, disgraced their revolution by
buccaneering and piracy, and who lacked both unity of cause and of
effort. [Footnote: Letter to A. H. Everett, in Am. Hist. Rev., XI.,
112.] His own system was based on the theory that the United States.
should move in harmony with England, and, if possible, with the
other European powers in the matter of recognition; [Footnote:
Paxson, Independence of the So.
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