[Footnote:
Ford, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 378, 395,
402-408.] To the secretary of state this was a challenge to defend
the American ideas of liberty. Convinces that his Country ought to
decline the overture of Great Britain and avow its principles
explicitly to Russia and France, "rather than to come in as a cock-
boat in the wake of the British man-of-war," Adams informed the
president that the reply to Russia and the instructions to Rush in
England must be part of a combined system of policy. "The ground
that I wish to take," he said, "is that of earnest remonstrance
against the interference of European powers by force with South
America, but to disclaim all interference on our part with Europe;
to make an American cause and adhere inflexibly to that." [Footnote:
Adams, Memoirs, VI., 178, 194, 197, 199-212.]
In the cabinet he stood firmly against giving guarantees to England
with respect to Cuba. He heartened up his colleagues, who were
alarmed at the possibility of the spread of war to the United
States; but at the same time that he dismissed this danger as remote
he pictured to the cabinet the alarming alternatives in case the
allies subjugated Spanish America: California, Peru, and Chili might
fall to Russia; Cuba, to England; and Mexico, to France.
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