With regard to the objects in which the agents of the United States are
expected to take part in the deliberations of that congress, I deem it
proper to premise that these objects did not form the only, nor even the
principal, motive for my acceptance of the invitation. My first and
greatest inducement was to meet in the spirit of kindness and friendship
an overture made in that spirit by three sister Republics of this
hemisphere.
The great revolution in human affairs which has brought into existence,
nearly at the same time, eight sovereign and independent nations in our
own quarter of the globe has placed the United States in a situation not
less novel and scarcely less interesting than that in which they had
found themselves by their own transition from a cluster of colonies to a
nation of sovereign States. The deliverance of the Southern American
Republics from the oppression under which they had been so long
afflicted was hailed with great unanimity by the people of this Union as
among the most auspicious events of the age.
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