June 29—At a meeting of President James Monroe’s cabinet on November 7, 1823, then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams argued forcefully against the proposed strategic alliance of the young American republic with Great Britain, which had been suggested by British Foreign Secretary George Canning. “It would be more candid, as well as more dignified,” Adams argued, “to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war.”