In 1821, when Stratford Canning, the British
minister to the United States, protested against a motion, in the
House of Representatives, that the United States should form an
establishment on the Columbia, Adams challenged any claim of England
to the shores of the Pacific. "I do not know," said he, "what you
claim nor what you do not claim. You claim India; you claim Africa;
you claim--" "Perhaps," said Canning, "a piece of the moon." "No,"
said Adams, "I have not heard that you claim exclusively any part of
the moon; but there is not a spot on THIS habitable globe that I
could affirm you do not claim; and there is none which you may not
claim with as much color of right as you can have to Columbia River
or its mouth." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 252.]
The time had arrived when Adams's familiarity with foreign
diplomacy, his belief that a new nation must assert its rights with
vigor if it expected to maintain them, his very testiness and
irascibility, his "bull-dog fighting qualities"--in short, the
characteristics that were sources of weakness to him in domestic
politics--proved to be elements of strength in his conduct of
foreign relations.
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