With such principles on the subject of war, he regarded the establishment of a system of national defence as a necessary policy for consolidating the Republic.  He prosecuted, therefore, on a large scale, the work of fortification, and defended against popular opposition the institution for the cultivation of military science, which has so recently vindicated that early favor through the learning, valor, patriotism and humanity exhibited by its pupils on the fields of Mexico.  But with that jealousy of the military spirit which never forsakes the wise republican statesman, he cooperated in reducing the army to the lowest scale commensurate with its necessary efficiency: 

It was a vain and dangerous delusion (he said) to believe that in the present or any probable condition of the world, a commerce so extensive as ours could exist without the continual support of a military marine—­the only arm by which the power of a confederacy could be estimated or felt by foreign nations, and the only standing force which could never be dangerous to our own liberties.

The enlargement of our navy, under the influence of these opinions, is among the measures of national consolidation we owe to him; and the institution for naval education we enjoy, is a recent result of his early suggestions.

But John Quincy Adams relied for national security and peace mainly on an enlightened and broad system of civil policy.  He looked through the future combinations of States, and studied the accidents to which they were exposed, that he might seasonably remove causes of future conflict.  His genius, when exercised in this lofty duty, played in its native element.  He had cordially approved the measures by which Washington had secured the free navigation of the Mississippi.  He approved the acquisition of Louisiana, although with Jefferson he insisted on a preliminary amendment of the constitution for that purpose.  He had no narrow bigotry, concerning the soil to which the institutions of our fathers should be confined, and no local prejudice against their extension in any direction required by the public security, if the extension should be made with justice, honor, and humanity.

The acquisition of Louisiana had only given us additional territory, fruitful in new commerce, to be exposed to dangers which remain to be overcome.  Spain still possessed, beside the Island of Cuba, the Peninsula of the Floridas, and thus held the keys of the Mississippi.  The real independence, the commercial and the moral independence, of the United States, remained to be effected at the close of the European wars, and of our own war with England.  Our political independence had been confirmed, and that was all.  John Quincy Adams addressed himself, as Secretary of State, to the subversion of what remained of the colonial system.  He commenced by an auspicious purchase of the Floridas, which gave us important maritime advantages on the Gulf of Mexico, while it continued our Atlantic sea-board unbroken from the Bay of Fundy to the Sabine.