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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO B. STODDERT, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 8 (Letters and State Papers 1782-1799) [1853]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 8.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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TO B. STODDERT, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

The combination of a very few ideas has been sufficient to excite apprehensions that the West India Islands would soon become a scene of piracy. The dissolution of all principles of morals, government, and religion, the formal repeal of the ten commandments, by which it is become as lawful to covet, steal, kill, as it is to profane the Sabbath or commit adultery, the proclamation of liberty to the negroes in the West India Islands, and the policy of one or more nations of Europe to erect predatory powers in the West Indies, to be employed against the United States, as the Barbary powers in Europe have long been supported and encouraged against the small maritime states, have long ago raised suspicions and forebodings, that the most desperate wretches in Europe would be allured to the Islands, and give direction to the mass of African bones and sinews which is now in liberty and idleness, or trained to military discipline.

The buccaneering establishment on the Key near Matanzas must be broken up. I wish the Secretary of State to represent this intelligence to the Spanish minister at Philadelphia, and to our minister at Madrid. I am glad the Secretary of State intends to write to the Governor of the Havana.

I am heartily disposed to concur with you in the most spirited counsels, and active exertions, which the laws will authorize, to check and to punish this execrable establishment.1

[1 ]Mr. Stoddert in furnishing the information that such an establishment as is here described was about to be formed at a spot about sixty miles from the Havana, and was threatening the trade to Spanish America, advised the equipment of one frigate and two or three smaller vessels, with a land force of three hundred men, to break it up, in case the Governor of the island should decline to act.