destiny.............................

     Adams had many reasons for unconditionally backing Jackson's Florida campaign.  He had been horrified by reports of Seminole atrocities, which included grisly tales of Indians seizing children by the ankles and dashing out their brains against the sides of boats.  At this point in his life, it would not have occurred to Adams that the Seminoles had the right to defend their own territory against the ceaseless depredations of US settlers and soldiers;  he regarded them more as part of the order of nature than as individuals endowed with rights.  He admired Jackson's martial vigor, and he recoiled at much of the criticism of the campaign, which he regarded - rightly in some cases - as partisan.  He shared Jackson's view of America as an inexorable force destined to spread across the continent, and , like Jackson, he was inclined to favor any course that enhanced American power.  Adams himself was engaged at this very moment in his own diplomatic effort to win a vast expanse of territory from Spain.  Jackson's campaign of brutal intimidation only tipped the balance further between the rising and the declining power.  It is striking that so self-consciously moral and Christian a figure as Adams was prepared to excuse bellicose behavior in the name of national self-aggrandizement.  For Adams, American destiny had a moral force of its own.

James Traub,  John Quincy Adams:  Militant Spirit