h its
necessary efficiency:

It was a vain and dangerous delusion (he said) to believe that in the
present or any probable condition of the world, a commerce so extensive as
ours could exist without the continual support of a military marine--the
only arm by which the power of a confederacy could be estimated or felt by
foreign nations, and the only standing force which could never be
dangerous to our own liberties.

The enlargement of our navy, under the influence of these opinions, is
among the measures of national consolidation we owe to him; and the
institution for naval education we enjoy, is a recent result of his early
suggestions.

But John Quincy Adams relied for national security and peace mainly on an
enlightened and broad system of civil policy. He looked through the future
combinations of States, and studied the accidents to which they were
exposed, that he might seasonably remove causes of future conflict. His
genius, when exercised in this lofty duty, played in its native element.
He had cordially approved the measures by which Washington had secured the
free navigation of the Mississippi. He approved the acquisition of
Louisiana, although with Jefferson he insisted on a preliminary amendment
of the constitution for that purpose. He had no narrow bigotry, concerning
the soil to which the institutions of our fathers should be confined, and
no local prejudice against their extension in any direction required by
the public security, if the extension should be made with justice, honor,
and humanity.

The acquisition of Louisiana had only given us additional territory,
fruitful in new commerce, to be exposed to dangers which remain to be
overcome. Spain still possessed, beside the Island of Cuba, the Peninsula
of the Floridas, and thus held the keys of the Mississippi. The real
independence, the commercial and the moral independence, of the United
States, remained to be effected at the close of the European wars, and of
our own war with England. Our political independence had been confirmed,
and that was all. John Quincy Adams addressed himself, as Secretary of
State, to the subversion of what remained of the colonial system. He
commenced by an auspicious purchase of the Floridas, which gave us
important maritime advantages on the Gulf of Mexico, while it continued
our Atlantic sea-board unbroken from the Bay of Fundy to the Sabine.

The ever-advancing American Revolution was at the same time opening the