Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/77

1805. the same time the difficulty of obtaining it without a like security to her of ours. If she is to be bound, we must be so too, either to the same thing,—that is to join her in the war,—or to do what she will accept as equivalent to such an obligation. What can we offer to her? A mutual guaranty, unless so shaped as to involve us pretty certainly in her war, would not be satisfactory. To offer commercial regulations or concessions on points in the law of nations as a certain payment for aids which might never be received or required, would be a bargain liable to obvious objections of the most serious kind. Unless, therefore, some arrangement which has not occurred to me can be devised, I see no other course than such an one as is suggested in my last letter."

In this state of things, the remaining members of the Cabinet were asked for their opinions; and in the course of a few days the President received written papers from Gallatin and Robert Smith. Gallatin was annoyed at the results of Jefferson's diplomacy. Emphatically a Northern man, he cared little for Florida; and a war with Spain would have been in his eyes a Southern war. He made no concealment of his opinion that the whole negotiation rested on a blunder; and he told Madison as much, with a bluntness which the secretary could scarcely have relished.


 * "The demands from Spain were too hard," said he, "to have expected, even independent of French interference,