CHAPTER I


FOUNDATIONS OF CONTROVERSY, 1803-1816
 DnP x Ic CoMxPEXITEs
SA TIANSCONTmNENTAIr BONTIE our brilliant if cantan-
 kerous secretary of state and an able, suave Spanish min-
 ister struggled in 1818 and 1819. John Quincy Adams and
Luis de Onis, the diplomatic combatants, faced controversies in-
volving territories from the Floridas to Oregon, as well as complex
maritime difficulties. Their treaty of February 22, 1819, concluded
a quarter-century of kaleidoscopic diplomatic and frontier rival-
ries.1 For the United States this agreement involved the longest
border concerned in any negotiation since her founding, and
marked the end of the first great wave of territorial expansion
with her first treaty title to land on the Pacific. For Spain it was
a phase of a desperate conflict to protect her American colonies at
once from foreign intrusions and from seething internal uprisings,
and to maintain her own prestige.
 The negotiations took place during a postwar period of colonial
 uprisings, maritime competitions, economic rivalries, and anxious
 efforts to avoid another war. There were difficulties enough to test
 the abilities not only of such famous statesmen as Adams and
 Castlereagh, but also of Onis, Pizarro, and Erving, men whose
 names have until now been obscure but who merit real attention
 in Spanish and United States history.
 Despite these complexities Adams and Onis managed to secure
 the following major settlements: the session of the Floridas to the
 United States, a disposition of numerous claims growing out of
 the European wars, and (the issue most prominent in the final
 stages of the negotiations) the delineation of the international
 boundary from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Northwest.
 It will be seen that in the three years of his actual official nego-
 tiations with our secretaries of state Onis considered the solution
 of the territorial problems to be a vital factor in the larger field of
 Spanish colonial and foreign policy. To give the colonies a well-
 defined border line on the north would help in defending and con-
 trolling them, and would set a limit at which, it was hoped, restless
 1For note to chap. see pp. 26-88.
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