John Quincy Adams: “It was not considered a conclusive reason for declining this invitation that the proposal for assembling such a Congress…”

I would have sent ministers to the meeting had it been merely to give them such advice as they might have desired, even with reference to their own interests, not involving ours.

Nothing was ever lost by kind treatment.

But objects of the highest importance, not only to the future welfare of the whole human race, but bearing directly upon the special interests of this Union, will engage the deliberations of the congress of Panama whether we are…

But an unsettled coast of many degrees of latitude forming a part of our own territory and a flourishing commerce and fishery extending to the islands of the Pacific and to China still require that the protecting power of the Union should…