This Day in American History

February 22, 1819—The Adams-Onis Treaty, also called the Transcontinental Treaty, was signed between the United States and Spain, drawing a definite boundary between Spanish-held lands in North America and the United States.

In the election of 1824, supporters of Andrew Jackson claimed that John Quincy Adams secured enough votes in the House of Representatives to win the Presidency through a “corrupt bargain.” In exchange for being appointed Secretary of State, they alleged, Henry Clay threw his support behind Adams. The charge led four years later to an even more vitriolic Jackson-Adams rematch that Adams lost.

What has often been forgotten in the years since is that before their Presidential ambitions divided the two men, Adams had not only done Jackson a good turn, but had even saved his career. I’ve always felt that it was a particular blind spot that Jackson, usually loyal to a fault, did not appreciate what Adams did for him.

In a larger, more important sense, Adams converted an embarrassing international incident into a diplomatic triumph for the United States. It is just one of several achievements that have led many diplomatic historians to regard him as America’s greatest Secretary of State.

In 1817, the Seminole tribe launched raids into Georgia from Spanish-held East Florida. President James Monroe, believing that the Pinckney Treaty required Spain to restrain Native American incursions, believed that moderate pressure could eventually persuade the faded colonial power to cede the land to the United States.

Into this situation stepped Jackson, who on January 6, 1818, blithely offered the President his views on how to handle the situation: Not only could Amelia Island, an outpost for pirates, slave traders and smugglers, be taken, but East Florida as a whole could be taken to indemnify the U.S. for past outrages. “This can be done without implicating the government. Let it be signified to me through any channel…that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished.”

The letter received no response. Monroe, seriously ill, passed it along to acting Secretary of War William Crawford and the incoming secretary, John C. Calhoun. Six months later, the President arrived in Washington to discover a media firestorm about the general. In late April, Jackson had executed two British subjects for inciting the Native Americans against the United States, then, less than a month later, had attacked Pensacola, forcing the departure of the Spanish governor and his troops to Havana.

The Spanish representative to the United States, Luis de Onis y Gonzalez , hastened to Washington from his vacation to lodge a bitter protest. Monroe conferred with his cabinet in July to consider what to do.

Most, including, most vehemently, Crawford and Calhoun, called for publicly repudiating Jackson, believing it to be an act of war. Adams disagreed. In subsequent discussions with Onis, the Secretary of State insisted that if Spain could not restrain the Native Americans, they should yield the land to a country that could: the United States. The trump that Adams held was growing colonial unrest that sapped the Spanish monarchy’s will.

Under the treaty that Adams negotiated, the U.S. gained possession of Florida for $5 million, to be paid to Americans with claims against Spain; the boundary between the Louisiana Purchase region and Spanish Texas was set to American advantage; and Spain surrendered any claim to Oregon.

The agreement removed major impediments to U.S. expansion westward—and by persuading Monroe that Jackson need only be privately chastised for exceeding orders rather than publicly repudiated, Adams spared his boss a political mudbath and the general a possible loss of his command and the prestige he had won with the Battle of New Orleans. Not a bad piece of work, all around.