_Don Joaquin de Anduaga to the Secretary of State_.
[Translation.]
PHILADELPHIA, _April 26, 1822_.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS,
_Secretary of State_.
SIR: I have received your note of the 15th instant, in which you are
pleased to communicate to me the reasons which induce the President
not only to refuse to His Catholic Majesty the satisfaction which he
demanded in his royal name for the insults offered by General Jackson
to the Spanish commissaries and officers, but to approve fully of the
said chief's conduct.
Before answering the contents of the said note I thought it my duty to
request instructions from my Government, and therefore without delay I
have laid it before them. Until they arrive, therefore, I have confined
myself to two observations:
First. If in my note of the 18th of November last I said that as General
Jackson had not specified the actions which had induced him to declare
the Spanish officers expelled from the Floridas criminal, nor given
proof of them, I thought myself authorized to declare the accusation
false, I did not this through inadvertency, but upon the evident
principle that every person accused has a right to declare an accusation
destitute of proof false, and, much more, an accusation not pretended
to be proved. This assertion of mine does not presume that I am not
persuaded of the merit of the said General and of the claim which he has
upon the gratitude of his country; but although it is believed the duty
of his country to eulogize and reward his eminent services, yet it will
be lawful for the representative of a power outraged by him to complain
of his conduct. I can not persuade myself that to aggravate my said
expression you could have thought that I had been wanting in due
respect, it not being possible for that opinion to have entered your
mind, when by his orders Mr. Forsyth had sent to the Spanish minister
on the 1st of September last a note, in which, complaining of the
Captain-General of the island of Cuba, he accuses him of dishonorable
pecuniary motives in not having delivered the archives, without giving
any proof of so injurious an assertion; and I must remark that the rank
of General Mabry in Spain is at least as elevated as that of General
Jackson in the United States, and that the services performed by him to
his country have rendered him as worthy as he of its consideration and
respect.
Second. Although you are pleased to tell me that part of the papers
taken from Colonel Coppinger are ready to be delivered, which the
American commissioners, _after having examined them_, have adjudged to
be returned to Spain, I do not think myself authorized to admit their
return in this manner, but in the mode which I demanded in my note of
the 22d of November last.
As I have seen by the public papers that the President has communicated
to Congress the note which you were pleased to address to me, dated
the 15th instant, and that it has been ordered to be printed, I take
the liberty of requesting that you will have the goodness to use your
influence that this my answer may be treated in the same manner, that
Congress and the public may be informed that if I have not answered the
first part of it as respects the general business, it is only to wait
for the instructions of my Government, but that I have answered what
was personal.