Mr. Buchanan used to relate, in after years, that at this juncture, the friends of the bill were dismayed by the course of Mr. Everett, who was then a young member from Massachusetts, and who wished to make and insisted upon making a rhetorical speech. The friends of the bill remonstrated with him, that all had been said that needed to be said; and that the only thing to be done was to vote down the amendment, after which the bill was almost certain to be passed. But Mr. Everett persisted, and made his speech while the amendment was pending.[19] He “demanded” of the House to pass the bill, and by passing it as proposed to be amended by his colleague to give the survivors of the Revolution “all they ask and _more_ than they ask.” The consequence was that the appropriation was increased. Then a member from New York moved to extend its provisions to every militia-man who had served for a certain time. Then other amendments embraced widows and orphans, artificers and musicians, the troops who fought at Bunker Hill, the troops raised in Vermont, those of the battles of Saratoga and Bennington, and of the Southern battles. The enemies of the original measure promoted this method of dealing with it, and finally, when thus loaded down with provisions not at all germane to its real principle, it was recommitted to the Committee and was therefore lost. The first important subject of contention on which the opposition put forth their strength against the administration of Mr. Adams related to what was called “The Panama Mission.” In his Message of December, 1825, the President made the following announcement: “Among the measures which have been suggested to the Spanish-American Republics by the new relations with one another resulting from the recent changes of their condition, is that of assembling at the Isthmus of Panama, a Congress at which each of them should be represented, to deliberate upon objects important to the welfare of all. The republics of Colombia, of Mexico, and of Central America, have already deputed plenipotentiaries to such a meeting, and they have invited the United States to be also represented there by their ministers. The invitation has been accepted, and ministers on the part of the United States will be commissioned to attend at those deliberations, and to take part in them, so far as may be compatible with that neutrality from which it is neither our intention nor the desire of the other American States that we should depart.”