Contrasted with Clay's glowing enthusiasm, the attitude of the Administration, directed by the prudent Secretary of State, seemed cold, calculating, and rigidly conventional. For his part, Adams could see little resemblance between these revolutions in South America and that of 1776. Certainly it had never been disgraced by such acts of buccaneering and piracy as were of everyday occurrence in South American waters. The United States had contended for civil rights and then for independence; in South America civil rights had been ignored by all parties. He could discern neither unity of cause nor unity of effort in the confused history of recent struggles in South America; and until orderly government was achieved, with due regard to fundamental civil rights, he would not have the United States swerve in the slightest degree from the path of strict neutrality. Mr. Clay, he observed in his diary, had "mounted his South American great horse... to control or overthrow the executive."
President Monroe, however, was more impressionable, more responsive to popular opinion, and at this moment (as the presidential year approached) more desirous to placate the opposition. He agreed with Adams that the moment had not come when the United States alone might safely recognize the South American states, but he believed that concerted action by the United States and Great Britain might win recognition without wounding the sensibilities of Spain. The time was surely not far distant when Spain would welcome recognition as a relief from an impoverishing and hopeless war. Meanwhile the President coupled professions of neutrality and expressions of sympathy for the revolutionists in every message to Congress.
The temporizing policy of the Administration aroused Clay to another impassioned plea for those southern brethren whose hearts--despite all rebuffs from the Department of State--still turned toward the United States. "We should become the center of a system which would constitute the rallying point of human freedom against the despotism of the Old World.... Why not proceed to act on our own responsibility and recognize these governments as independent, instead of taking the lead of the Holy Alliance in a course which jeopardizes the happiness of unborn millions?" He deprecated this deference to foreign powers. "If Lord Castlereagh says we may recognize, we do; if not, we do not.... Our institutions now make us free; but how long shall we continue so, if we mold our opinions on those of Europe? Let us break these commercial and political fetters; let us no longer watch the nod of any European politician; let us become real and true Americans, and place ourselves at the head of the American system."