The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson

By Subject

FOREIGN RELATIONS / ACQUISITION OF FLORIDA

Here all is well. Our government is now so firmly put on its republican tack that it will not be easily monarchised by forms. You have made a mighty noise in Europe about our taking possession of some posts in Florida. The President's message delivered a few days ago will set you right on that subject, and show that no wrong was contemplated for a single moment. And what shows an honorable and comfortable trait in our nation was the universal uproar of our own people in the first moment of the apparent aggression and until they saw that their government had no such thing in view. I was delighted with this proof of moral principle in our citizens as to the conduct of their foreign relations and considered it as a pledge that they would never as a nation approve of any measure swerving from justice.

to Marquis de Lafayette, 23 November 1818