the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in the
Territories, and denied that either Congress or a state government
could establish slavery as a new institution in any State in which it
was not already existing and recognized by law.

This agitation of the slavery question made itself felt in a way
personally interesting to Mr. Adams, by the influence it was exerting
upon men's feelings concerning the still pending and dubious treaty
with Spain. The South became anxious to lay hands upon the Floridas
and upon as far-reaching an area as possible in the direction of
Mexico, in order to carve it up into more slave States; the North, on
the other hand, no longer cared very eagerly for an extension of the
Union upon its southern side. Sectional interests were getting to (p. 123)
be more considered than national. Mr. Adams could not but recognize
that in the great race for the Presidency, in which he could hardly
help being a competitor, the chief advantage which he seemed to have
won when the Senate unanimously ratified the Spanish treaty, had
almost wholly vanished since that treaty had been repudiated by Spain
and was now no longer desired by a large proportion of his own
countrymen.

Matters stood thus when the new Spanish envoy, Vives, arrived. Other
elements, which there is not space to enumerate here, besides those
referred to, now entering newly into the state of affairs, further
reduced the improbability of agreement almost to hopelessness. Mr.
Adams, despairing of any other solution than a forcible seizure of
Florida, to which he had long been far from averse, now visibly
relaxed his efforts to meet the Spanish negotiator. Perhaps no other
course could have been more effectual in securing success than this
obvious indifference to it. In the prevalent condition of public
feeling and of his own sentiments Mr. Adams easily assumed towards
General Vives a decisive bluntness, not altogether consonant to the
habits of diplomacy, and manifested an unchangeable stubbornness which
left no room for discussion. His position was simply that Spain might
make such a treaty as the United States demanded, or might take (p. 124)
the consequences of her refusal. His dogged will wore out the
Spaniard's pride, and after a fruitless delay the King and Cortes
ratified the treaty in its original shape, with the important addition
of an explicit annulment of the land grants. It was again sent in to
the Senate, and in spite of the "co