THE MONROE DOCTRINE (1821-1823)
The place of slavery in the westward expansion of the nation was not
the only burning question which the American people had to face in
the presidency of Monroe. Within a few years after that contest, the
problem of the independence of the New World and of the destiny of
the United States in the sisterhood of new American republics
confronted the administration. Should the political rivalries and
wars of Europe to acquire territory be excluded from the western
hemisphere? Should the acquisition of new colonies by European
states in the vast unsettled spaces of the two Americas be
terminated? These weighty questions were put to the mild Virginian
statesman; history has named his answer the Monroe Doctrine.
From the beginning of our national existence, the United States had
been pushing back Europe from her borders, and asserting neutrality
and the right to remain outside of the political System of the Old
World. Washington's farewell address of 1796, with its appeal to his
fellow-citizens against "interweaving our destiny with that of any
part of Europe," sank deep into the popular consciousness. It did
not interfere with the process by which, piece by piece, the United
States added to its domains fragments from the disintegrating
Spanish empire; for so long as European states held the strategic
positions on our flanks, as they did in Washington's day, the policy
of separation from the nations of the Old World was one difficult to
maintain; and France and England watched the enlargement of the
United States with jealous eye. Each nation, in turn, considered the
plans of Miranda, a Venezuelan revolutionist, for the freeing of
Spanish America. In 1790 the Nootka Sound affair threatened to place
England in possession of the whole Mississippi valley and to give
her the leadership in Spanish America. [Footnote: Turner, in Am.
Hist. Rev., VII., 704, VIII., 78; Manning, Nootka Sound Controversy,
in Am. Hist. Assoc., Report, 1904, p. 281; cf. Bassett, Federalist
System (Am. Nation, XI), chap. vi.] Two years later, France urged
England to join her in freeing the colonies of Spain in the New
World;[Footnote: Sorel, L'Europe et la Revolution Francaise, II.,
384, 418, III., 17.] and when Pitt rejected these overtures, France
sent Genet to spread the fires of her revolution in Louisiana and
Florida.[Footnote: Turner, in Am. Hist. Rev., III., 650, X. 259.]
When this design failed, France turned to diplomacy, and between
1795 and 1800 tried to persuade Spain to relinquish Florida and
Louisiana to herself, as a means of checking the expansion of the
United States and of rendering her subservient to France. The
growing preponderance of France over Spain, and the fear that she
would secure control of Spanish America, led England again in 1798
to listen to Miranda's dream of freeing his countrymen, and to sound
the United States on a plan for joint action against Spain in the
New World. [Footnote: Turner, in Am. Hist. Rev., X., 249 et seq.,
276.] The elder Adams turned a deaf ear to these suggestions, and
when at last Napoleon achieved the possession of Louisiana, it was
only to turn it over to the United States. [Footnote: Sloane, in Am.
Hist. Rev., IV., 439.] Jefferson's threat that the possession of
Louisiana by France would seal the union between England and the
United States and "make the first cannon which shall be fired in
Europe the signal for the tearing up of any settlement she may have
made, and for holding the two continents of America in sequestration
for the common purposes of the united British and American nations,"
[Footnote: Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), VIII., 145.] showed how
unstable must be the American policy of isolation so long as Europe
had a lodgment on our borders. [Footnote: Cf. Channing, Jeffersonian
System (Am. Nation, XII.), chap. v.]
The acquisition of Louisiana by the United States was followed by
the annexation of West Florida; and the Seminole campaign frightened
Spain into the abandonment of East Florida. [Footnote: Babcock,
American Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xvii.] While the
United States was thus crowding Europe back from its borders and
strengthening its leadership in the New World, Spanish America was
revolting from the mother-country. When Napoleon made himself master
of Spain in 1807, English merchants, alarmed at the prospect of
losing the lucrative trade which they had built up in the lands
which Spain had so long monopolized, supported the revolutionists
with money, while various expeditions led by English officers aided
the revolt. [Footnote: Paxson, Independence of the So. Am.
Republics, chap, iii.; Am. Hist. Rev., IV., 449, VI., 508.] At
first, failure met the efforts of the loosely compacted provinces,
made up of sharply marked social classes, separated by race
antagonisms, and untrained in self-government. Only in Buenos Ayres
(later the Argentine Confederation), where representatives of the
United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata declared their independence
in 1816, were the colonists able to hold their ground.
A new era in the revolt began, however, in 1817, when General San
Martin surprised the Spaniards by his march, from a frontier
province of La Plata, over a pass thirteen thousand feet above the
sea across the Andes to Chili. In the course of four years, with the
co-operation of Lord Cochrane (who relinquished the British service
in order to command the fleet of the insurgents on the Pacific), he
effected the liberation of Chili and of Peru. Meanwhile, in the
northern provinces the other great South American revolutionist,
Bolivar, aided by a legion of Irish and English veterans, won the
independence of Venezuela and Colombia. In July, 1822, these two
successful generals met in Ecuador; and San Martin, yielding the
leadership to the more ambitious Bolivar, withdrew from the New
World. By this date, America was clearly lost to the Latin states of
Europe, for Mexico became an independent empire in 1821, and the
next year Brazil, while it chose for its ruler a prince of the
younger line of the royal house of Portugal, proclaimed its
independence.[Footnote: Paxson, Independence of the So. Am.
Republics, chap. i.]
Although the relations between these revolutionary states and
England, both on the military and on the commercial side, were much
closer than with the United States, this nation followed the course
of events with keen interest. Agents were sent, in 1817 and 1820, to
various South American states, to report upon the conditions there;
and the vessels of the revolutionary governments were accorded
belligerent rights, and admitted to the ports of the United
States.[Footnote: Ibid., 121; Am. State Papers, Foreign, IV., 217,
818.] The occupation of Amelia Island and Galveston, in 1817, by
revolutionists, claiming the protection of the flags of Colombia and
Mexico respectively, gave opportunity for piratical forays upon
commerce, which the United States was unable to tolerate, and these
establishments were broken up by the government.[Footnote: McMaster,
United States, IV., chap. xxxiv.; Reeves, in Johns Hopkins Univ.
Studies, XXIII., Nos. 9, 10.]
President Monroe seems to have been inclined to recognize the
independence of these states on the earliest evidence of their
ability to sustain it; but the secretary of state, John Quincy
Adams, favored a policy of delay. He had slight confidence in the
turbulent, untrained republics of Latin-America, and little patience
with the idea that their revolution had anything in common with that
of the United States. At the close of 1817 he believed it
inexpedient and unjust for the United States to favor their cause,
and he urged a friend to publish inquiries into the political
morality and the right of the United States to take sides with a
people who trampled upon civil rights, disgraced their revolution by
buccaneering and piracy, and who lacked both unity of cause and of
effort. [Footnote: Letter to A. H. Everett, in Am. Hist. Rev., XI.,
112.] His own system was based on the theory that the United States.
should move in harmony with England, and, if possible, with the
other European powers in the matter of recognition; [Footnote:
Paxson, Independence of the So. Am. Republics, 149 (citing MSS. in
State Dept.)] and he perceived that Spain would be more likely to
yield Florida to the United States if the president did not
acknowledge the independence of her other provinces.
Henry Clay now came forward as the advocate of immediate recognition
of the revolutionary republics. In this he was undoubtedly swayed by
a real sympathy with the cause of freedom and by the natural
instincts of a man of the west, where antagonism to Spain was bred
in the bone. But his insistence upon immediate action was also
stimulated by his opposition to Monroe and the secretary of state.
Clay's great speech on recognition was made May 24 and 25, 1818. His
imagination kindled at the vastness of South America: "The loftiest
mountains; the most majestic rivers in the world; the richest mines
of the precious metals; and the choicest productions of the earth."
"We behold there," said he, "a spectacle still more interesting and
sublime--the glorious spectacle of eighteen millions of people
struggling to burst their chains and be free." He appealed to
Congress to support an American system by recognizing these sister
republics, and argued that, both in diplomacy and in commerce they
would be guided by an American policy and aid the United States to
free itself from dependence on Europe. His motion was lost by an
overwhelming majority, but the speech made a deep impression.
[Footnote: Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., 1 Sess., II., 1474.]
In the two years which elapsed between the negotiation and the
ratification of the Florida treaty, the president was several times
on the point of recommending the forcible occupation of Florida, but
he withheld the blow, hoping that the liberal Spanish government
established under the constitution of 1820 might be brought to give
its consent to the cession. The impetuous Clay chafed under this
delay, and on May 10, 1820, he broke forth in another speech, in
support of a resolution declaring the expediency of sending
ministers to the South American states. Charging the administration,
and especially John Quincy Adams, with subserviency to Great
Britain, he demanded that the United States should become the center
of a system against the despotism of the Old World and should act on
its own responsibility. "We look too much abroad," said he. "Let us
break these commercial and political fetters; let us no longer watch
the nod of any European politician; let us become real and true
Americans, and place ourselves at the head of the American system."
[Footnote: Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 1 Sess., II., 2727.]
Clay was steadily gaining support in his efforts to force the hands
of the administration: his resolutions won by a fair majority, and
again, in February, 1821, he secured the almost unanimous assent of
the House to a resolution of sympathy with South America. Another
resolution, expressing the readiness of that body to support the
president whenever he should think it expedient to recognize the
republics, passed by a vote of 86 to 68, and the triumphant Clay was
placed at the head of a committee to wait on the president with this
resolution.[Footnote: Ibid., 2229, and 2 Sess., 1081, 1091; Adams,
Memoirs, V., 268]
Although the victory was without immediate effect on the
administration, which refused to act while the Florida treaty was
still unratified, Adams perceived that the popular current was
growing too strong to be much longer stemmed; the charge of
dependence upon England was one not easy to be borne, and Clay's
vision of an independent American system guided by the United States
had its influence on his mind. Five months after Clay's speech, in
1820, extolling such a system, Adams set forth similar general ideas
in a discussion between himself and the British minister over the
regulation, of the slave-trade. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 182]
By 1822, Florida was in our possession. The success of the arms of
the revolutionists was unmistakable; several governments, of
sufficient stability to warrant recognition had been erected; and it
was patent to the world that Spain had lost her colonies. Acting on
these considerations, Monroe sent a message to Congress, March 8,
1822, announcing that the time for recognition had come, and asking
for appropriations for ministers to South America. [Footnote:
Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 116]
In the mean time, the secretary of state was confronted with
important diplomatic questions which, complicated the South American
problem. As Spanish America broke away from the mother-country, its
possessions in North America on the Pacific were exposed to seizure
by the rival powers. In 1821, when Stratford Canning, the British
minister to the United States, protested against a motion, in the
House of Representatives, that the United States should form an
establishment on the Columbia, Adams challenged any claim of England
to the shores of the Pacific. "I do not know," said he, "what you
claim nor what you do not claim. You claim India; you claim Africa;
you claim--" "Perhaps," said Canning, "a piece of the moon." "No,"
said Adams, "I have not heard that you claim exclusively any part of
the moon; but there is not a spot on THIS habitable globe that I
could affirm you do not claim; and there is none which you may not
claim with as much color of right as you can have to Columbia River
or its mouth." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 252.]
The time had arrived when Adams's familiarity with foreign
diplomacy, his belief that a new nation must assert its rights with
vigor if it expected to maintain them, his very testiness and
irascibility, his "bull-dog fighting qualities"--in short, the
characteristics that were sources of weakness to him in domestic
politics--proved to be elements of strength in his conduct of
foreign relations. The individualism, the uncompromising nature, the
aggressiveness, and the natural love of expansion, which were traits
of John Quincy Adams, became of highest service to his country in
the diplomatic relations of the next few years.
Hardly a year elapsed after this defiance to England when Adams met
the claims of Russia likewise with a similar challenge. On September
4, 1821, the Russian czar issued a ukase announcing the claim of
Russia on the Pacific coast north of the fifty-first degree, and
interdicting to the commercial vessels of other powers the approach
on the high seas within one hundred Italian miles of this claim.
[Footnote: U. S. Foreign Relations (1890), 439.] This assertion of
Russian monopoly, which would, in effect, have closed Bering Sea,
met with peremptory refusal by Adams, and on July 17, 1823, having
in mind Russia's posts in California, he informed the minister,
Baron Tuyl, "that we should contest the right of Russia to any
territorial establishment on this continent, and that we should
assume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no
longer subjects for any new European colonial establishments."
[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 163.] After negotiations, Russia
concluded the treaty of April 17, 1824, by which she agreed to form
no establishments on the northwest coast south of latitude 54
degrees 40', and the United States reciprocally agreed to make no
establishments north of that line. At the same time Russia abandoned
her extreme claim of maritime jurisdiction.
While the Russian claims were under consideration, the question of
the future of Cuba was also giving great concern. The Pearl of the
Antilles remained in the possession of Spain when she lost her main-
land colonies. By its position, commanding both the Gulf of Mexico
and the Caribbean Sea, it was of the highest importance to the
United States as well as to the West Indian powers, England and
France. From a party in Cuba itself, in September, 1822, advances
were made to the United States for annexation, and Monroe sent an
agent to investigate, meanwhile refraining from encouraging the
movement. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 69, 72.]
George Canning, who became premier of England in September, 1822,
was convinced that no questions relating to continental Europe could
be more immediately and vitally important to Great Britain than
those which related to America. [Footnote: Stapleton, Official
Corresp. of George Canning, I., 48.] Alarmed lest the United States
should occupy Cuba, Canning, in a memorandum to the cabinet in
November, questioned whether any blow that could be struck by any
foreign power in any part of the world would more affect the
interests of England. [Footnote: Ibid., 52; Royal Hist. Soc.,
Transactions (new series), XVIII., 89] He contented himself,
however, with sending a naval force to the waters of Cuba and Puerto
Rico, with the double purpose of checking American aggressions and
protecting English commerce. This action created suspicion on the
part of the United States, and Adams issued instructions (April 28,
1823) to the American minister at Madrid, declaring that, within a
half-century, the annexation of Cuba to the United States would be
indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself.
The laws of political gravitation would, in his opinion, ultimately
bring Cuba to this country, if, in the mean time, it were not
acquired by some other power. Adams's immediate policy, therefore,
favored the retention of Cuba and Puerto Rico by Spain, but he
refused to commit the United States to a guarantee of the
independence of Cuba against all the world except that power.
[Footnote: Wharton, Digest of Am. Int. Law, I., 361-366; Latane,
Diplomatic Relations with Lat. Am., chap. iii.]
The mutual jealousies of the nations with respect to the destiny of
Cuba became, at this time, entangled with the greater question of
the intervention of the Holy Alliance in the New World. At the
Congress of Verona, in November, 1822, Austria, France, Russia, and
Prussia signed a revision of the treaty of the Holy Alliance,
[Footnote: Snow, Treaties and Topics; Seignobos, Pol. Hist. of
Europe since 1814, 762.] which had for its objects the promotion of
the doctrine of legitimacy in support of the divine right of rulers,
and the doctrine of intervention, for the purpose of restoring to
their thrones those monarchs who had been deposed by popular
uprisings, and of rehabilitating those who had been limited by
written constitutions. At Verona, the allies agreed to use their
efforts to put an end to the system of representative government in
Europe, and to prevent its further introduction. Having already
suppressed uprisings in Naples and Piedmont, the Alliance empowered
France to send troops into the Spanish peninsula to restore the
authority of the king of Spain and to put down the revolutionary
constitution of 1820. Chateaubriand, the French representative,
desired the congress to go further and intervene in Spanish America,
but this question was postponed.
Alarmed by the prospect of French power in Spain and by the proposed
extension of the system of the allies to the New World, Canning
protested against the doctrine of intervention, and determined that,
if France was to become the mistress of Spain, she should at least
not control the old Spanish empire. In the spring of 1823 he made an
unsuccessful effort to secure a pledge from France not to acquire
any Spanish-American possessions, either by conquest or by cession
from Spain. But the French government maintained its reserve, even
after England disclaimed for herself the intention of acquiring
Spanish-American territory. [Footnote: Stapleton, Political Life of
Canning, I., 19.]
Having broken with the concert of the European powers, it was
natural that England should turn to the United States, and it is
very likely that the next step of Canning was influenced by the
dispatches of the British minister to the United States, who
reported a conversation with Adams, in June, 1823, in which the
secretary strongly set forth his belief that, in view of the virtual
dissolution of the European alliance, England and the United States
had much in common in their policy. "With respect to the vast
continent of the West," said he, "the United States must necessarily
take a warm and decided interest in whatever determined the fate or
affected the welfare of its component members." But he disclaimed
any wish on the part of this country to obtain exclusive advantages
there. He urged that England ought to recognize the independence of
the revolted provinces, and he deprecated the conquest or cession of
any part of them. [Footnote: Stratford Canning to George Canning,
June 6, 1823, MSS. Foreign Office, America, CLXXVI; Adams, Memoirs,
VI., 151; cf. Reddaway, Monroe Doctrine, 83.]
The first impression of the British minister, on hearing Adams's
emphasis on the community of interests between the two nations, was
that the secretary was suggesting an alliance; and it may well have
been that Canning was encouraged by the American attitude to make
overtures to Rush, the American minister, shortly after these
dispatches must have reached him. On August 16, 1823, and three
times thereafter, Canning proposed a joint declaration by England
and the United States against any project by a European power of "a
forcible enterprise for reducing the colonies to subjugation, on the
behalf or in the name of Spain; or which meditates the acquisition
of any part of them to itself, by cession or by conquest."
[Footnote: Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, II., 24; W. C.
Ford, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 415.]
Canning was willing to make public announcement that the recovery of
the colonies by Spain was hopeless; that the matter of recognition
was only a question of time; and that Great Britain did not aim at
the possession of any portion of them, but that it "could not see
any part of them transferred to any other power with indifference."
These professions Canning desired that the United States and England
should mutually confide to each other and declare "in the face of
the world."
Confronted with Canning's important proposition, Rush, who doubted
the disinterestedness of England, prudently attempted to exact a
preliminary recognition of the Spanish-American republics; if
Canning would agree to take this action, he would accept the
responsibility of engaging in such a declaration. [Footnote: Ford,
in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 420, 423.] Having
failed in four successive efforts to persuade Rush to join in an
immediate declaration, irrespective of prior recognition by England,
Canning proceeded alone, and, in an interview with Polignac, the
French minister in London, on October 9, 1823, he announced
substantially the principles which he had expressed to the American
minister. [Footnote: Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, II., 26.]
Polignac thereupon disclaimed for France any intention to
appropriate Spanish possessions in America, and abjured any design,
on the part of his country, of acting against the colonies by force;
but he significantly added that the future relations between Spain
and her colonies ought to form a subject of discussion between the
European powers. Acting on this idea, and in opposition to England's
wishes, an invitation was sent to Russia, Prussia, and Austria to
confer at Paris on the relations of Spain and her revolted
provinces.
Rush's despatches relating the overtures of Canning reached
President Monroe [Footnote: Ford, in Am. Hist. Rev., VII., 684.]
October 9, 1823, on the same day that Canning was interviewing
Polignac. Adams was absent from Washington at the time, and Monroe,
returning to Virginia, consulted ex-Presidents Jefferson and
Madison. He clearly intimated his own belief that the present case
might be an exception to the general maxim against entanglement in
European politics, and was evidently willing to accept the proposal
of the British government. [Footnote: Monroe, Writings, VI., 323.]
To Jefferson [Footnote: Ibid., VI., 394.] the question seemed the
most momentous since the Declaration of Independence. One nation,
most of all, he thought, could disturb America in its efforts to
have an independent system, and that nation, England, now offered
"to lead, aid, and accompany us in it." He believed that by acceding
to her proposition her mighty weight would be brought into the scale
of free government, and "emancipate a continent at one stroke."
Construing the English proposition to be a maintenance of our own
principle of "keeping out of our land all foreign-powers," he was
ready to accept Canning's invitation. He was even ready to yield his
desire for the annexation or independence of Cuba, in order to
obtain England's co-operation. Madison, [Footnote: Madison, Writings
(ed. of 1865), III., 339-341.] also, was prepared to accept the
English proposal, and to invite that government to join in
disapproval of the campaign of France in Spain and in a declaration
in behalf of the Greeks.
Thus, by a strange operation of fate, members of the "Virginia
dynasty," the traditional antagonists of England, were now willing
to accept her leadership in American affairs, and were inclined to
mingle in European concerns in opposition to the Holy Alliance. By
an equally strange chance, it was a statesman from New England, the
section traditionally friendly to British leadership, who prevented
the United States from casting itself into the arms of England at
this crisis, and who summoned his country to stand forth
independently as the protector of an American system.
When John Quincy Adams learned of Canning's proposals, he had just
been engaged in a discussion with the representative of the czar,
who informed him of the refusal of Russia to recognize the Spanish-
American republics, and expressed the hope that America would
continue her policy of neutrality.
While the cabinet had Rush's dispatches under consideration, Adams
received a second communication from the Russian minister,
expounding the reactionary ideas of the Holy Alliance. [Footnote:
Ford, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 378, 395,
402-408.] To the secretary of state this was a challenge to defend
the American ideas of liberty. Convinces that his Country ought to
decline the overture of Great Britain and avow its principles
explicitly to Russia and France, "rather than to come in as a cock-
boat in the wake of the British man-of-war," Adams informed the
president that the reply to Russia and the instructions to Rush in
England must be part of a combined system of policy. "The ground
that I wish to take," he said, "is that of earnest remonstrance
against the interference of European powers by force with South
America, but to disclaim all interference on our part with Europe;
to make an American cause and adhere inflexibly to that." [Footnote:
Adams, Memoirs, VI., 178, 194, 197, 199-212.]
In the cabinet he stood firmly against giving guarantees to England
with respect to Cuba. He heartened up his colleagues, who were
alarmed at the possibility of the spread of war to the United
States; but at the same time that he dismissed this danger as remote
he pictured to the cabinet the alarming alternatives in case the
allies subjugated Spanish America: California, Peru, and Chili might
fall to Russia; Cuba, to England; and Mexico, to France. The danger
was even at our doors, he declared, for within a few days the
minister of France had openly threatened to recover Louisiana.
[Footnote: Ibid., VI., 207; cf. Reeves, in Johns Hopkins Univ.
Studies, XXIII, Nos. 9, 10.] Such suggestions exhibit the real
significance of the problem, which in truth involved the question of
whether America should lie open to seizure by rival European
nations, each fearful lest the other gain an undue advantage. It was
time for the United States to take its stand against intervention in
this hemisphere.
Monroe was persuaded by Adams to change the first draught of his
message, in which the president criticized the invasion of Spain by
France and recommended the acknowledgment of the independence of the
Greeks, in terms which seemed to threaten war with Europe on
European questions. Even Webster and Clay, in fervent orations,
showed themselves ready to go far towards committing the United
States to an unwise support of the cause of the Greeks, which at
this time was deeply stirring the sympathy of the United States. On
the other hand, Adams stood firmly on the well-established doctrine
of isolation from Europe, and of an independent utterance, by the
United States, as the leader in the New World, of the principles of
a purely American system. In the final draught, these ideas were all
accepted, as well as the principles affirmed by Adams in his
conferences with the Russian minister.
When sent to Congress, on December 2, 1823, Monroe's message
asserted "as a principle in which the rights and interests of the
United States are involved, that the American continents, by the
free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain,
are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future
colonization by any European powers." This was in effect the
proclamation of the end of a process that began with Columbus,
Cabot, and Cartier--the rivalry of the nations of the Old World in
the discovery, occupation, and political control of the wild lands
of the western hemisphere. The interpretation by the next
administration left the enforcement of this general principle to the
various American states according to their interests. [Footnote: See
chap. xvi. below]
The message further dealt with the determination of the United
States not to meddle with European affairs. "It is only when our
rights are invaded or seriously menaced," said Monroe, "that we
resent injuries or make preparation for our defense. With the
movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately
connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened
and impartial observers. The political system of the allied powers
is essentially different in this respect from that of America." This
declaration expressed the consciousness that there was a real
American system contrasted with that of Europe and capable of
separate existence.
Finally, the message met the immediate crisis by a bold assertion of
the policy of the United States: "We owe it, therefore, to candor
and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and
those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their
part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as
dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or
dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall
not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their
independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on
great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could
not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or
controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power
in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly
disposition toward the United States." [Footnote: Richardson,
Messages and Papers, II., 207-218; cf. Hart, Foundations of Am.
Foreign Policy, chap. vii.] Herein was the assertion of the well-
established opposition of the United States to the doctrine of
intervention as violating the equality of nations. It was the
affirmation also of the equality of the Old and the New World in
diplomatic relations, and the announcement of the paramount interest
of the United States in American affairs. [Footnote: Moore, "Non-
Intervention and the Monroe Doctrine," in Harper's Mag., CIX., 857.]
This classic statement of the position of the United States in the
New World, therefore, applied an old tendency on the part of this
country to a particular exigency. Its authorship can hardly be
attributed to any single individual, but its peculiar significance
at this juncture lay in the fact that the United States came
forward, unconnected with Europe, as the champion of the autonomy
and freedom of America, and declared that the era of European
colonization in the New World had passed away. The idea of an
American system, under the leadership of the United States,
unhampered by dependence upon European diplomacy, had been
eloquently and clearly voiced by Henry Clay in 1820. But John Quincy
Adams also reached the conception of an independent American system,
and to him belongs the credit for the doctrine that the two Americas
were closed to future political colonization. His office of
secretary of state placed him where he was able to insist upon a
consistent, clear-cut, and independent expression of the doctrine of
an American system. Monroe's was the honor of taking the
responsibility for these utterances. [Footnote: Cf. Reddaway, Monroe
Doctrine, chap, v.; and Ford, in Am. Hist. Rev., VII., 676, VIII.,
28.]
Canning afterwards boasted, "I called the New World into existence
to redress the balance of the Old." [Footnote: Stapleton, Political
Life of Canning, III., 227.] Unquestionably his determination that
"if France had Spain it should not be Spain with the Indies,"
materially contributed to make effective the protest of the United
States, and he recognized the value of the president's message in
putting an end to the proposal of a European congress. "It was
broken," said he, "in all its limbs before, but the president's
message gives it the coup de grace." [Footnote: Stapleton, George
Canning and His Times, 395.]
Nevertheless, the assertion by the United States of an American
system independent of Europe, and the proposed exclusion of Europe
from further colonization were, in truth, as obnoxious to England as
they were to France. [Footnote: Reddaway, Monroe Doctrine, 98.] "The
great danger of the time," declared Canning in 1825, shortly after
the British recognition of Mexico, "--a danger which the policy of
the European system would have fostered--was a division of the world
into European and American, republican and monarchical; a league of
worn-out governments on the one hand and of youthful and stirring
nations, with the United States at their head, on the other. WE slip
in between, and plant ourselves in Mexico. The United States have
gotten the start of us in vain, and we link once more America to
Europe." On December 17, 1824, Canning wrote: "Spanish America is
free; and if we do not mismanage our matters sadly, she is English,
and novus saeclorum nascitur ordo." [Footnote: Festing, J.H. Frere
and His Friends, 267, quoted by E.M. Lloyd, in Royal Hist. Soc.
Transactions (new series), XVIII., 77, 93.]
Later events were to reveal how unsubstantial were the hopes of the
British minister. For the present, his hands were tied by the fact
that England and the United States had a common interest in
safeguarding Spanish America; and the form of Monroe's declaration
seemed less important than its effectiveness in promoting this
result. In the United States the message was received with
approbation. Although Clay, from considerations of policy, withdrew
a resolution which he presented to Congress (January 20,1824),
giving legislative endorsement to the doctrine, [Footnote: Annals of
Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1104, II., 2763.] there was no doubt
of the sympathy of the American people with its fundamental
principles. Together with the attitude of England, it put an end to
the menace of the Holy Alliance on this side of the ocean, and it
began a new chapter, yet unfinished, in the history of the
predominance of the United States in the New World.