· · · TEXAS, LOUISIANA, OKLAHOMA · · ·
Mr. Onis … was willing that the boundary line with the United States should extend to the South Sea [Pacific Ocean].… [But] we would yield something of the western line we had proposed … that she might have a barrier for Santa Fe. I told him … if Spain had come to the determination. to begin the line at the Sabine. I could not express the disgust with which I was forced to carry on a correspondence with him upon subjects which it was ascertained that we could not adjust.
—SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN QUINCY ADAMS1
John Quincy Adams is widely remembered for the use of his middle name, distinguishing him from his more famous father, who is widely remembered for doing the things the Founding Fathers did. One thing the Founding Fathers indisputably did was to leave the next generation a tough act to follow. This challenge was vividly illustrated in the life stories of John Adams’s three sons: one rose to become, like his father, a president; the other two failed to sustain successful careers and died as alcoholics.
As this second generation moved into the presidential ranks, the major rival to John Quincy Adams was Andrew Jackson. Adams was seen as representing the upper class from which all the previous presidents had come, and even as a bit monarchical, being the eldest son of a president. Jackson, on the other hand, represented the prototypical American, newly minted by democracy, whose citizens possessed no class (in both senses of the phrase). Both men, however, despite their differences, played key roles in establishing what is today the eastern border of Texas.
The event that ultimately resulted in today’s eastern border of Texas was the Louisiana Purchase. When President Thomas Jefferson acquired this region from France in 1803, John Quincy Adams was a thirty-six-year-old senator from Massachusetts and Andrew Jackson, the same age, was a judge in Tennessee. The document conveying the land described its boundaries as being “the Colony or Province of Louisiana with the same extent that it has now.” Other than the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, the extent of the “Colony or Province of Louisiana” was debatable at the time with both Spain to the west and England to the north. Sixteen years would pass before those borders were finally specified.
A primary reason for the delay was the fact that the young United States and England were still not on the best of terms, particularly when relations deteriorated into the War of 1812. Spain, therefore, was in no hurry to dicker, figuring it would do better if it waited, aided the British here and there, and then negotiated its border with a bruised and battered United States.
Adams and Jackson, meanwhile, were taking on increasingly significant roles in what would ultimately determine that Spanish border. Jackson, now a general, became a national hero for his victory during the war at the Battle of New Orleans. Technically, his victory was after the war since, unbeknownst to him, the war had ended two weeks earlier when American emissary John Quincy Adams negotiated the Treaty of Ghent.
Ironically, Spain was now far more battered and bruised. Between 1810 and 1819 (the year of the treaty creating the present-day eastern border of Texas), Spain lost control of Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. More important, in terms of the United States, twice during this period the United States seized portions of Spanish Florida. At the outset of the war, the Florida Panhandle had extended all the way to the banks of the Mississippi River opposite New Orleans; by the time Adams had concluded the Treaty of Ghent, the Panhandle ended underneath Alabama, where it remains today.
With its empire in the Americas beginning to crumble, Spain decided the time had come to reduce the extent of its colonial claims in order to shore up what remained. Thus in 1818 it commenced negotiations over where the Louisiana Purchase ended and the Spanish colony of Mexico began. To give itself leverage in that negotiation while, at the same time, reducing its colonial claims, Spain also offered to sell Florida to the United States as part of the deal.
John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) (photo credit 18.1)
The United States, meanwhile, had emerged from the War of 1812 far less battered than Spain had hoped. Its new president, James Monroe, was even preparing to draw a boundary around all the Americas, in effect posting a sign—the Monroe Doctrine—saying “Europe Keep Out.” The text of the doctrine would be written by the man with whom Spain was now to negotiate, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.
Adams and his Spanish counterpart, Don Luis de Onís González Lopez y Vara, had barely said their hellos when Andrew Jackson came crashing through. General Jackson was in Florida, where he had just crushed a rebellion by the Seminole Indians. He had been authorized to cross into Florida, a Spanish possession, since the United States maintained that Spain had not lived up to its agreed-upon obligation to stop Indians in its colony from crossing into the United States to engage in attacks. Jackson now moved his troops to Pensacola—where there were no rebellious Seminoles but there was Spain’s principal fortification—and conquered the fort. He then quickly took control of the Florida Panhandle, claiming it was necessary to keep the Seminoles subdued.
“Last night I received a note from the Spanish Minister,” Adams wrote to President Monroe, “requesting an interview on affairs of the last importance to Spain and the United States.”2 Señor de Onís was furious: General Jackson’s attack was an act of war. Spain demanded to know if the president had authorized the general’s actions. If the president had not, Spain demanded to know what the president intended to do to General Jackson.
The diplomat in Adams viewed Jackson as a loose cannon. In his journal he wrote that the general’s actions in Florida were “embarrassing.” Still, the politician in Adams recognized shrewdness in those same actions, further noting in his journal that if one publicly criticized what Jackson had done, one would “give offense to his friends, [and] encounter the shock of his popularity.” Most significant, the secretary of state in Adams noted a valuable nugget in the dustup: Spain, not having retaliated, was apparently weaker than the United States had thought.3
Adams consequently decided to stake out an ambitious opening bid in his negotiations over the border. “I would henceforth never recede an inch from the [Rio] Bravo,” he wrote, referring to the river now known as the Rio Grande, which he proposed as the new southern boundary of the United States.4 This boundary would follow the Rio Grande to its source in the Rocky Mountains, then follow the Rockies north to the Colorado River, then follow the Colorado River to the Gulf of California. In 1848 all this would become part of the United States (with the exception of Baja California). In 1818, however, it was a hefty opening bid.
Adams-Onis Treaty, 1819
Amazingly, Onís did not immediately say no. Adams’s reading of Jackson’s actions in Florida and the reactions to them had been accurate. Realizing that the Americans perceived its weakness, Spain sought to cover up by claiming that when Adams had referred to the Colorado River, they had thought that meant the Red River. “How this mistake could have been made is inconceivable to us,” Adams wrote, in conferring with the U.S ambassador in Spain, “inasmuch as we know of no maps which call the Red River of Natchitoches the Colorado.”5 The Colorado River and the Red River, being on opposite sides of the Rockies, would make for rather different borders.
Jackson, meanwhile, remained in hot water, facing a congressional investigation into whether or not he had disobeyed orders. Though he and Adams were both eyeing the 1824 presidential election, no personal enmity yet existed. Adams invited Jackson to dine at his home, an invitation Jackson declined, saying that he was accepting no social engagements during the investigation. Shortly thereafter, Jackson made a point of apologizing for declining the invitation.
Regarding the situation with Spain, Adams and Jackson continued not only to work well together but to see eye to eye. “I called on General Jackson,” Adams wrote in his diary, “and mentioned in confidence to him the state of the negotiations with the Spanish Minister, and what we had offered him for the western boundary, and asked what he thought of it.” The two men continued these discussions the following day at Adams’s home, where they could speak more privately.
Adams and Onís proposed and counterproposed for another twelve months as they honed in on a boundary, much of which remains today in the eastern border of Texas. Adams’s eventual success, which helped propel his nomination for president in 1824, was due in no small measure to the assist he had received from Jackson’s adventure in Florida. Jackson’s military successes likewise propelled his nomination in the same election. Still, their relations remained good—so good that Adams and his wife hosted a ball in Jackson’s honor in January of that year, to help refute the view that Jackson was uncouth and slovenly. “It is the universal opinion,” Mrs. Adams wrote afterward, “that nothing has ever equaled this party here, either in brilliancy of the preparation or elegance of the company.”6
Two other candidates ran in the 1824 presidential election: Speaker of the House Henry Clay and Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford. As it turned out, none of the four received the necessary majority of votes in the Electoral College, so the decision went to the House of Representatives. Despite the fact that Jackson had won the plurality of electoral votes, the House chose John Quincy Adams.
The political manipulations behind this decision set the stage for an Adams-Jackson rematch in the 1828 election. This was a campaign that set a new low for mudslinging, stooping even to insinuations regarding Jackson’s wife. Today’s campaigns look tame by comparison. This time around, Jackson won.
Then as now, the candidates were hardly as evil as the opposition’s claims. Likewise, the mudslingers were not necessarily in the control of the candidates. Adams disclaimed any connection to the accusations made about Mrs. Jackson. Jackson, however, knew for a fact that Adams was responsible, according to press reports quoting “an anonymous source.”7 As for the truth, Adams lamented in his diary, “In the excitement of contested elections and of party spirit, judgment becomes the slave of will. Men of intelligence, talents, and even of integrity on other occasions, surrender themselves up to their passions.”
The bottom line in politics is always a complicated line. In this case, we can actually see that complicated line. It is the eastern border of Texas.