f the troops of the United States
were removed. Onis said he could give none, except a promise to write to
the Governor of Havana for troops; but he admitted that, if sufficient
force could there be obtained, six or seven months might elapse before
they could be sent to Amelia Island. A continuance of the present
occupation by the United States was thus rendered unavoidable. The
consideration of the question of restoring it to Spain was postponed in
the cabinet, and the message of the President to Congress was so
modified as to state his intention of keeping possession of it for the
present.

During the remainder of this session Mr. Clay took opposition ground on
all the cardinal points maintained by the President, especially on the
constitutional question concerning internal improvements, and upon South
American affairs. His course was so obviously marked with the design of
rising on the ruins of Mr. Monroe's administration, that one of his own
papers in Kentucky publicly stated that "he had broken ground within
battering distance of the President's message." In a speech made on the
24th of March, 1817, on the general appropriation bill, he moved an
appropriation of eighteen thousand dollars as one year's salary and an
outfit for a minister to the government of Buenos Ayres. This was only a
mode of proposing a formal acknowledgment of that government. The motion
was soon after rejected in the House of Representatives by a great
majority, and his attempt to make manifest the unpopularity of the
administration proved a failure.

In July, 1818, news came that General Jackson had taken Pensacola by
storm,--a measure which excited universal surprise. But one opinion
appeared at first to prevail in the nation,--that Jackson had not only
acted without, but against, his instructions; that he had commenced war
upon Spain, which could not be justified, and in which, if not disavowed
by the administration, they would be abandoned by the country. Every
member of the cabinet, the President included, concurred in these
sentiments, with the exception of Mr. Adams. He maintained that there
was no real, though an apparent violation of his instructions; that his
proceedings were justified by the necessity of the case, and the
misconduct of the Spanish commandant in Florida. Mr. Adams admitted that
the question was embarrassing and complicated, as involving not merely
an actual war with Spain, but also the power of the executive to
aut