 Clay and Adams hoped that the conference would inaugurate a "Good Neighborhood Policy" among the independent states of the Americas.However, the funding for a delegation and the confirmation of delegation nominees became entangled in a political battle over Adams's domestic policies, with opponents such as Van Buren impeding the process of confirming a delegation.Van Buren saw the Panama Congress as an unwelcome deviation from the more isolationist foreign policy established by President Washington, while many Southerners opposed involvement with any conference attended by delegates of Haiti, a republic that had been established through a slave revolt.