continent. Clay's instructions to Middleton, the American Minister at St. Petersburg, setting forth the arguments to be submitted to the Emperor, were, in this respect, a remarkable piece of reasoning and persuasiveness.
At the Panama Congress all was then to be done to prevent the designs of Mexico and Colombia upon Cuba and Porto Rico from being executed. On the whole, that Congress was to be regarded only as a consultative assembly, a mere diplomatic conference, leaving the respective powers represented there perfectly free to accept and act upon the conclusions arrived at, or not, as they might choose. There was to be no alliance of any kind, no entangling engagement, on the part of the United States. This was the character in which the Panama mission was presented to Congress.
The first thing at which the Senate took offence was that the President in his message had spoken of “commissioning” ministers at his own pleasure. A practical issue on this point was avoided when Adams sent to the Senate the nominations of the ministers to be appointed. Then the policy of the mission itself became the subject of most virulent attack. The opposition was composed of two distinct elements. One consisted of the slave-holding interest, which feared every contact with the new republics that had abolished slavery; which scorned the thought of envoys of the United States sitting in the same assembly with the representatives of republics that had negroes
