Spain last Days

Officials in the James Monroe administration realized that unless Florida was obtained, the Southern frontier would remain an unsettled mess. John Quincy Adams sought out the Spanish Foreign minister de Onis with the offer to trade ownership of Florida for the claim by the United States that a section of Texas was part of the Louisiana Purchase. Spain rejected such a humiliating proposal as well as Adams' additional acceptance that the United States would pay all war damages caused by Jackson's Florida invasions and Indian attacks on Americans.

Two years passed before Spain was willing to send negotiator General Francisco Vives to New York to end Spain's two hundred forty year Florida rule. Vives became reluctant when he discovered that Northerners did not share Southerners desire to invade Florida. He backed away from a full commitment. It was not until 1821 that the Spanish Crown recognized there was no alternative to yielding Florida. They could not stop an American invasion, not with Spain's Latin American colonies in collapse.

In 1821, the Spanish yielded Florida to the United States. It meant the end of Spanish rule in North America along the Atlantic Ocean.