5

“This Sets Our Compass” : The Principles of 1823

Early-nineteenth-century Americans were peculiarly sensitive to revolution, a heritage which they understood and with which they had sympathy. Even as they were continuing to sort out relations with their former colonial masters in Great Britain and establishing stable relations with other European powers at the close of the first quarter of the century, revolutions against Spanish colonial rule broke out across South America, including in localities such as Buenos Aires (Argentina), Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. As news of these revolutions spread across the United States, American political opinion became overwhelmingly sympathetic to revolutionary brothers to the south.

The political issue presented to the government of the United States toward the close of James Monroe’s second term was whether these revolutionary governments warranted diplomatic recognition, and if so, what impact such recognition might have on U.S. relations with Spain and with Europe in general. America’s heart was with the new Latin republics; America’s head was with stable, long-term European relations. As Madison’s secretary of state, James Monroe led with his heart. He gave serious thought, if not serious advocacy, to recognition of the fledgling republics.

As president, however, Monroe heeded his head, recognizing the need to maintain the tenuous relationship with Spain, at least until troubling matters such as Florida and the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase were settled. Caution prevailed, and the Monroe policy toward South America was neutrality.¹ Indeed, Monroe approved language, in a draft letter from Secretary of State Adams to the Argentinean agent in Washington in 1818, that summarized the U.S. position to his and other conflicts as “impartial neutrality,” an interesting choice of language apparently meant to add a bit of spine to an otherwise less-than-robust policy. But Adams did remind the Argentinean emissary, Manuel de Aquirre, that his infant republic enjoyed virtually all the advantages of recognized nations, including commercial exchange and port access, open communications with the U.S. government, “national hospitality,” and “every attention to their representatives which could have been given to the accredited Officers of any Independent Power.”² Monroe had Adams insert language in this message indicating that he, the president, recognized that Buenos Aires “has afforded strong proof of its ability to maintain its Independence,” which would surely “gain strength with the powers of Europe,” but that, nevertheless, the United States found it necessary to “move with caution” on the question of full diplomatic recognition.

As cautious as Monroe was, in this instance Adams was even more cautious and consistently more nuanced. Adams thought his chief’s insistence on adding this language and in commenting at length in his annual congressional messages on the struggle between Spain and its South American possessions, which he characterized as “civil war,” was unnecessary and even counterproductive in that it called into question both the United States’ pronounced neutrality and its sincerity. However, Adams also acknowledged the pressure that the Monroe administration was receiving from congressional firebrands, Henry Clay particularly, to publicly avow its wholehearted commitment to the revolutionaries, and concluded that Monroe’s “impartial neutrality,” though leaning distinctly in the pro-revolutionary direction, had kept his congressional critics at bay.

All this diplomatic and political tightrope walking was occurring against the backdrop of ratification of the Transcontinental Treaty, signed in 1819. Monroe and Adams rightly believed that concluding the formal acquisition of Florida from Spain and establishing the United States’ claim of the Louisiana boundaries to the Pacific were of greater importance than recognizing the South American republics. It was a classic case of a clash between principle and interest. In the interest of securing southern and western borders, the principle of solidarity with republican revolutionaries could wait. Despite Adams’s reservations, however, in his 1820 message to Congress Monroe repeated his declaration of affinity with the South American republics. And, despite this declaration, Congress went further and demanded full recognition.

By February 1821, both the United States and Spain had fully ratified the Transcontinental Treaty, but it was not until more than a year later that Monroe formally declared a new policy of full recognition of the South American republics and requested congressional authorization of funds necessary to establish embassies and normal relations. Congress endorsed the new policy with only one dissenting vote. With presidential pressure, that vote was later rescinded.

The overarching significance of the struggle over diplomatic recognition of the new republics was twofold: it set the table for reconsideration of the perpetuation of colonial systems in the nineteenth century; and it laid the groundwork for redefining America’s larger relationship with Europe and of Europe’s relationship to the Western Hemisphere. Now that U.S. sovereignty over Florida and the western expanses of the Louisiana Purchase were formally established, and the United States had officially recognized revolutionary republics to its south, Monroe was at liberty to consider the broader question whether and how long the European powers should be able to continue to act out their rivalries on the Western Hemispheric stage.

To a degree, albeit a lesser degree, the other side of that coin—the role the United States should play in the affairs of Europe—also came into question. This was, all in all, a period of serious definition and redefinition of respective intercontinental rights and roles. And it proved to be a multilayered chess game. Before the Monroe administration recognized the South American republics, Adams received a note from Czar Alexander I’s government confirming the Russian monarch’s refusal to receive any minister from a new South American country and complimenting Monroe on his neutrality. In this respect Russia was stating the case of the Holy Alliance—Russia, Prussia, and Austria—on behalf of Spain’s claims to its South American colonies.

But the Russian intervention in South American issues came at a time of U.S.-Russian friction on relative rights and interests in the still uncertain Northwest. In the fall of 1821, the Russian imperial court issued a decree putting an area within one hundred miles of the Pacific coast north of the fifty-first parallel off-limits to foreign ships. Previous Russian claims had extended southward only to the fifty-fifth parallel. By the summer of 1823 Adams had challenged any Russian rights to territory on the North American continent and first asserted the principle that “the American continents are no longer subject for any new European colonial establishment.”³

The Holy Alliance had been formed, as much as anything else, as a response to the French Revolution and Bonapartism, to crush any semblance of revolt against the ancient monarchies in Europe. The French army had recently invaded Spain to put down an uprising in Cadiz and, in August 1823, had restored Ferdinand VII as the Spanish monarch. From there, it was a relatively small step to helping secure Spanish possessions in the Western Hemisphere, and the British soon warned the U.S. government that this was in the offing.

Within Monroe’s cabinet, Secretary of War Calhoun was credited with agitating the president about European intentions in South America. Not for the first time, Calhoun found himself at opposite ends of an issue from Secretary of State Adams, both of them among the several assumed rivals for succession to Monroe. Adams confided to his diary that “Calhoun is perfectly moon-struck by the surrender of Cadiz, and says the Holy Alliance, with ten thousand men, will restore all Mexico and all South America to the Spanish dominion.” But Adams no more believed that the Holy Alliance would undertake such a venture than that “the Chimborazo [an Ecuadorian mountain] will sink beneath the ocean.”⁴ Whether Calhoun ever came close to being right or not, and there is little evidence that he did, the intentions of Russia and the Holy Alliance added yet another dimension to the diplomatic chess game.

More important in the grand political equation were the interests of Great Britain, possessor of the world’s greatest navy, a navy that could most effectively project its power across the Atlantic as was so vividly demonstrated in 1814. The role of Great Britain in the evolution of the Principles of 1823, which defined America’s policy in the hemisphere for a century and a half to come, was a complex one. The framework for this role was established in a three-way exchange of diplomatic correspondence first between the British foreign secretary, George Canning, and the U.S. minister to Great Britain, Richard Rush, most of which occurred in a space of days in August of 1823, and then between Rush and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Canning opened the bidding on August 19, when, rather offhandedly at the conclusion of a lengthy interview in London with Rush, he asked what response the U.S. government might make to a proposal that Great Britain and the United States exchange commitments to keep France, and presumably the Holy Alliance, from intervening on Spain’s behalf to suppress rebellion in the South American colonies. According to Rush’s note to Adams regarding the interview, Canning

asked me what I thought my government would say to going hand in hand with this … not as he added that any concert in action under it could become necessary between the two countries, but that the simple fact of our being known to hold the same sentiments would … by its moral effect, put down the intention on the part of France, admitting that she should ever entertain it.⁵

Almost before Rush could send his notes of the conversation to his government, Canning memorialized his proposal in writing to Rush the following day. “Is not the moment come when our Governments might understand each other as to the Spanish American Colonies?” he asked. And if such an understanding could be achieved, he continued, “would it not be expedient for ourselves, and beneficial for all the world, that the principles of it should be clearly settled and plainly avowed?”⁶ For Great Britain, Canning outlined his government’s policy: Spain’s desire to recover the colonies was “hopeless”; the independent South American states should be recognized as “time and circumstance” dictated; Great Britain would by no means interfere if the former colonies chose to negotiate their status with Spain; Great Britain had no ambition to possess any portion of them; but transfer of any portion of them to any other power by Spain would not be met with indifference by Great Britain. “If these opinions and feelings are, as I firmly believe them to be, common to your government,” Canning concluded, “why should we hesitate mutually to confide them to each other, and to declare them in the face of the world?”⁷ From this correspondence, many historians have argued that the notion of the United States defining its principles regarding European intervention in the South American republics originated with the British foreign secretary.

Within three days, Rush responded that the U.S. government most certainly shared the sentiments contained in Canning’s note but that his diplomatic instructions did not extend to determining the means or manner for expressing them. By way of preface, he stated: “The government of the United States having, in the most formal manner, acknowledged the independence of the late Spanish provinces in America, desires nothing more anxiously than to see this independence maintained with stability.”⁸ The same day Rush forwarded Canning’s note to Adams with the observation that the “embarrassment” he felt in framing a response that accurately reflected U.S. policy would be alleviated if his answer “receives the President’s approbation.” In an immediate further exchange of notes, Rush reacted strenuously to Canning’s warning that if France successfully restored the South American colonies to Spain, it might seek to convene a congress of great powers in Europe to ratify its deeds. Rush stated that an early British guarantee of the independence of the new republics would greatly accelerate his own government’s pursuit of the same policy. A week later Canning responded, resisting any suggestion of an early British commitment to the South American republics.

In mid-October, upon the receipt of the Canning-Rush correspondence of August, Monroe, noting that it involved “interests of the highest importance,” sent it for comment and advice to his two immediate predecessors in the presidency, with Madison’s copies to be forwarded to him by Jefferson. Monroe acknowledged the “extent and difficulty of the questions” raised by the correspondence and asked for their respective opinions on the “vital” questions they contained. In his transmittal, Monroe gave it as his impression that the United States should “meet” the British proposal and make it known “that we would view an interference on the part of the European powers, and especially an attack on the [South American] Colonies, by them, as an attack on ourselves.”⁹ He thus raised the bidding from “impartial neutrality” to an extension of U.S. security interests to South America. This formulation—an attack on them is an attack on us—would find its counterpart 139 years later (almost to the day) during the Cuban missile crisis in John Kennedy’s public warning that any attack originating from Cuba on any nation in the hemisphere would be considered an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.

On October 24, Jefferson, in response, wrote: “The question presented by the letters you have sent me, is the most momentous which has been ever offered to my contemplation since that of Independence.” He then observed: “That made us a nation. This sets our compass and points the course which we are to steer thro’ the ocean of time.”¹⁰ Jefferson’s letter to Monroe also summarized what came to be known, only many years later, as the Monroe Doctrine: “Our first and fundamental maxim should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe,” an old and persistent Jeffersonian principle, and “our second never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with Cis-Atlantic [Western Hemisphere] affairs.”¹¹ Meanwhile, on October 23, Rush sent a message from London that the British had, “in a most extraordinary manner,” withdrawn from the chessboard. After the intense flurry of correspondence, sometimes two notes from Canning in a day, he had heard nothing for over a month and did not intend to “renew the topick” and would “decline going into it again” even if Canning raised it.

The diplomatic question, thus, was quickly migrating from very partial “impartial neutrality” toward the Spanish struggle with its South American colonies, to joint U.S.-British recognition of the independence of the new South American republics, to the possibility of a totally new understanding between the young United States and the much older European powers over their respective spheres of influence. It is difficult to imagine this American diplomatic and political transformation in the absence of the boundary settlements between the United States and Spain over Florida and the western Louisiana boundaries. America’s surge of self-awareness and self-definition was founded on the new security it had recently attained from the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819, whose final ratification had taken place only months before. Having defined its continental boundaries, at least until its war with Mexico two decades later, the United States was now presented the opportunity (if not also the necessity) by circumstances in South America to define its hemispheric security interests and to reiterate its lack of interest in the antique European quarrels.

The difference in response between Jefferson and Madison says much about the difference in outlook and political philosophy of the two men, if not also about the difference in the respective relationships between each man and Monroe. As seen from his comments above, Jefferson saw the question presented by the British initiative as epic. “Mr. Jefferson thinks them [the Rush-Canning exchange] more important than anything that has happened since our Revolution,” John Quincy Adams confided to his journal.¹² Now that America had won its independence, what role should it play in its hemisphere and, by extension, what role should it play in the world? Since Europe was devolving into “a domicile of despotism,” Jefferson told Monroe, America, North and South, should have as its objective to become “a hemisphere of freedom” and should have “a system of her own.”¹³ Great Britain was the nation that could do us the most harm, he remarked, but by joining us in support of the new South American republics it could also bring us closer together and do us the most good. Having once again disavowed any U.S. interest in Europe, Jefferson then raised the curious question as to whether we had any interest in acquiring a former Spanish province. In answering his own question, he suggested that it would be beneficial to add Cuba as another state in the Union, then added quickly, however, that the price of this acquisition—a war of conquest and alienation of the British—was not worth paying.¹⁴

For his part, Madison took a more nuanced and somewhat more practical position. From every point of view, he wrote, we must “defeat the meditated crusade” that Canning warned the French had in mind to restore Spain’s colonies to that nation. Madison agreed with Jefferson that the British offer presented a win-win situation; America could cement its ties to Great Britain while defeating European ambitions to the south. “It is particularly fortunate that the policy of G Britain tho’ guided by calculation different from ours, has presented a co-operation for an object the same as ours. With that co-operation we have nothing to fear from the rest of Europe; and with it the best reliance on success to our just & laudable views.”¹⁵ Besides, he reasoned, by allying with Britain the United States could temper Britain’s own maritime ambitions. Madison’s approach is much more focused on great-power relations, with an overlay of suspicion about British motives, than it is to long-term strategic positioning of the United States. In returning Monroe’s original letter to Jefferson, and forwarding his response to Monroe, Madison joined Jefferson in seeing the South American question as “the great struggle of the Epoch between liberty and despotism” playing itself out in “this hemisphere.”¹⁶ It was left to John Quincy Adams to summarize the arguments of the two revolutionary giants in his memoirs: “Mr. Jefferson … is for acceding to the [British] proposals with a view to pledging Great Britain against the Holy Allies; though he thinks the Island of Cuba would be a valuable and important acquisition to our Union. Mr. Madison’s opinions are less decisively pronounced, and he thinks, as I do, that this movement on the part of Great Britain is impelled more by her interests than by a principle of general liberty.”¹⁷

Great Britain having precipitated the South American issue with the Canning-Rush correspondence, conveyed to the American government through Adams, and Monroe having sought the wisdom of Jefferson and Madison, the stage was now set for both extensive and intensive debate within Monroe’s cabinet in November 1823. In addition to the president himself, the principal players were Adams, Calhoun, and other minor cabinet secretaries. The precipitating event was the president’s annual message to Congress, to be delivered on December 2. Although, as in the past, the message would be a tour d’horizon of domestic concerns, including issues such as internal improvements, Monroe would be required to report to Congress and the American people on the panoply of issues concerning relations with various nations and regions of the world, including perhaps foremost the status of the South American republics. In preparation, Monroe had asked Adams for a memorandum summarizing the range of foreign affairs. Adams, in his response and with particular reference to ongoing negotiations with Russia over conflicting U.S.-Russian interests along the northwest coast, suggested inclusion of the following language: “as a principle in which the rights and interests of the people of the United States are equally 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 Power.”¹⁸

The first of several cabinet meetings in preparation for the annual message took place on November 7. Whether Minister Rush’s October 23 note to Adams revealing the “extraordinary” silence from Canning, had yet arrived in the American capital is unclear, although the nature of the debate suggests that it had not. For a good deal of the discussion concerned whether the United States’ position should be unilateral or in collaboration with the British. Calhoun was for collaboration, even if the price were a U.S. commitment not to pursue the acquisition of either Texas or Cuba. Adams demurred, wanting to keep open the possibility that the people of either or both territories might one day seek union with the United States. Monroe was more focused on the main point, raising, perhaps for the first time, the issue of seeming to accept subordination to Great Britain if the United States were to agree to any joint declaration regarding the independence of the South American republics. In this Adams concurred, believing it to be “more candid, as well as more dignified” to notify both the Russians and the French directly and unilaterally of America’s resistance to any European intervention in North or South American affairs.

A week later the U.S. government had apparently not received Rush’s note, as Monroe—prompted by Calhoun, Adams thought—remained agitated as to how to respond to Canning. Calhoun, Adams thought, still held out the fear of the Holy Alliance intervening in South America on Spain’s behalf. Jockeying for position in the 1824 national election was already occurring, with Adams and Calhoun very much on the short list of succession to Monroe and another rival, Secretary of the Treasury Crawford, on the sidelines with what turned out to be a disqualifying stroke. Meanwhile, Rush’s dispatches arrived, and Monroe, for one, concluded that Canning’s recent silence on a joint declaration meant that the British foreign secretary no longer saw any real danger of a Holy Alliance intervention in South America. At a subsequent cabinet meeting on November 21, Adams informed his colleagues of his intention to deliver a message to the Russian minister to the United States, Baron de Tuyll, to the effect that the United States, while firmly committed to the principles upon which it was founded, had no intention of seeking to propagate them by force or to interfere in the politics of Europe, and in return would expect that “the European powers will equally abstain from the attempt to spread their principles in the American hemisphere, or to subjugate by force any part of these continents to their will.”¹⁹

Monroe then outlined his ideas for his annual message to Congress and made it clear, possibly for the first time, that, quite apart from diplomatic notes to Russia and Great Britain, he intended to present a declaration of principles regarding South America. It had been supposed up to this point that the pesky problems of relations to the new republics and denial of Russian claims to the Northwest were purely diplomatic affairs and therefore to be managed through diplomatic channels. Monroe saw these issues more profoundly and historically, as a unique and timely opportunity for the assertion of U.S. interest and power, a chance for self-definition. Originally, Monroe intended to settle any number of scores, publicly condemning France’s invasion of Spain and acknowledging the Greeks’ claim to independence from Turkey. In this he had Calhoun’s support and Adams’s opposition. Not surprisingly, Adams prevailed, and these references were removed in the final message. Perhaps thinking ahead to his own administration which he hoped would come, Adams argued that refusing to pick a fight with the French and the Holy Alliance would guarantee that Monroe’s administration would be remembered as “the golden age of this republic.”²⁰

During a series of cabinet meetings and conferences between Monroe and Adams in the following days, Monroe made an effort to get Adams to conform his diplomatic notes to both Russia and Great Britain to Monroe’s own message to Congress, the two occurring almost simultaneously. Consistency in foreign policy nuance was his goal. In pursuit of this consistency, Monroe successfully objected to a proposed paragraph in Adams’s draft note that stated America’s founding republican principles—one of liberty and dependence on the consent of the governed, and one of independence and resistance to outside imposition of a different form of government from that chosen by the governed.²¹ Some critics later saw this as Monroe’s “timidity,” and others viewed it as a mark of his maturity in refusing to invite a fight with the established European monarchies. Monroe and Adams did agree on a paragraph in the diplomatic notes that conformed to Monroe’s message delivered a few days later:

The United States of America, and their Government, could not see with indifference, the forcible interposition of any European Power, other than Spain, either to restore the dominion of Spain over her emancipated Colonies in America, or to establish Monarchical Governments in those Countries, or to transfer any of the possessions heretofore or yet subject to Spain in the American Hemisphere, to any other European Power.²²

On December 2, 1823, James Monroe submitted his seventh annual national report to Congress, and it included what were first known as the Principles of 1823 and later as the Monroe Doctrine. His statements were simply a presidential declaration of national principles and never codified in any statute, treaty, or proclamation. Given the importance of the principles, or doctrine, to U.S. diplomatic history, it is worthwhile to read the three paragraphs in which they are contained. The first statement is cast in the context of the ongoing negotiations with Russia.

At the proposal of the Russian Imperial Government, made through the minister of the Emperor residing here, a full power and instructions have been transmitted to the minister of the United States at St. Petersburg to arrange by amicable negotiation the respective rights and interests of the two nations on the northwest coast of this continent. A similar proposal had been made by His Imperial Majesty to the Government of Great Britain, which has likewise been acceded to. The Government of the United States has been desirous by this friendly proceeding of manifesting the great value which they have invariably attached to the friendship of the Emperor and their solicitude to cultivate the best understanding with his Government. In the discussions to which this interest has given rise and in the arrangements by which they may terminate, the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, 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 maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. (emphasis added)²³

The second principle was set in the context of America’s interest in European affairs, “from which we derive our origin,” but it stressed America’s steadfast resistance to being drawn into the wars of European nations. Monroe notes the different political systems—monarchy in Europe and a republican form of government in the United States—and concludes:

We owe it … 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 maintain 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. In the war between those new Governments and Spain we declared our neutrality at the time of their recognition, and to this we have adhered, and continue to adhere, providing no change shall occur which, in the judgment of the competent authorities of this Government, shall make a corresponding change on the part of The United States indispensable to their security.²⁴

Having stated America’s principles regarding European interposition in the Western Hemisphere, Monroe then continued to make clear that the United States would pursue its policy of remaining distant from European political affairs.

Our policy with regard to Europe, which was adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long agitated that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is, not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve those relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy, meeting in all instances the just claims of every power, submitting to injuries from none. But in regard to those continents circumstances are eminently and conspicuously different. It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent [North or South America] without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition in any form with indifference. If we look to the comparative strength and resources of Spain and those new Governments, and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will pursue the same course.²⁵

These excerpts from James Monroe’s message to Congress yield the following principles:

1. Neither North nor South America should any longer be considered subject to colonization by any European power.

2. Any effort by any European power to extend its monarchical system of government to any portion of the Western Hemisphere will be considered as a hostile act by the United States.

3. Although the United States will not interfere in existing South American colonial relations, any effort to reassert European power over those former colonies who have declared themselves to be independent republics, and have been recognized as such by the United States, will be seen as an unfriendly act by the United States.

4. The United States will remain neutral in any ongoing war between Spain and the new South American republics so long as new circumstances (presumably the intervention of the Holy Alliance) do not require additional steps by the United States to ensure their security.

5. The United States will continue to refrain from interference in the affairs of any European power and will seek to maintain cordial relations with all, but in turn will not itself accept being interfered with by them.

6. Allied European powers (that is, the Holy Alliance) should not seek to impose their monarchical system of government anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Believing the new South American republics will never be subdued by Spain, the United States will leave those parties to themselves and expects other powers to do the same.

Particular attention is due the fifth principle, which should be called the principle of reciprocity. The conventional, and traditional, understanding of the Monroe Doctrine has almost always been as a unilateralist declaration: Europe is no longer welcome in the Western Hemisphere. In fact, Monroe, and Adams, were stating that the United States also was declaring its policy of noninterference in European affairs, particularly its conflicts. “In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part,” Monroe states, “nor does it comport with our policy to do so.”²⁶ This was consequential in that, as the United States gained maturity, influence, and power, one or another side in the endless European struggles would be seeking alliance with it to add to its side of the scale of influence. Monroe further declared that, aside from South America, “with the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere.”²⁷ This might provide a degree of comfort to those in Europe who feared America as a militant firebrand with a self-appointed mission to stamp out colonialism, and monarchy, throughout the world. Monroe was saying, according to one historian, it was “only when American rights were menaced that the United States made preparation for defense.”²⁸ What made the difference between the American hemisphere and the rest of the world was the contrast of the two political systems: “It is impossible that the allied powers [European] should extend their political system to any portion of either continent [in the Western Hemisphere] without endangering our peace and happiness,” Monroe stated.²⁹ But he also made it clear the United States had no intention of imposing its political system on any who did not wish it.

Perhaps most significant to America’s role in the twenty-first-century world, with its superpower temptations to remake the world in its own image, is this conclusion by Monroe’s biographer Harry Ammon: “To Monroe (and his contemporaries) the declaration had only a moral character; it was not an assertion of imperial mission.”³⁰ Here indeed was as clear-cut and comprehensive a statement of U.S. foreign policy as any since the founding of the Republic. These principles defined America’s relationship with all Europe, including Great Britain, Spain, and the Holy Alliance. They encompassed the dispute between the United States and Russia over the northwest coast. These principles directly addressed U.S. policy toward the struggle between Spain and its former colonies in South America and warned the Holy Alliance against interposition in that continent. The principles sought friendly relations between all the European powers and the United States and restated an American commitment to remain apart from European politics. Most important, the principles established the entire Western Hemisphere as independent of European dominance. Given the history of the times, Monroe’s foreign policy principles were breathtaking in their sweep and comprehensiveness.

Methodologically, they were also important. Monroe chose to decisively separate the entire Western Hemisphere from Europe, thus ending more than three centuries of colonization, not through diplomatic notes and correspondence but by a bold public declaration to the peoples of the world. As Ammon notes, Monroe “focused attention upon his utterances as a declaration of national policy and achieved an impact which was far greater than if the same principles had been embodied in a series of diplomatic notes.”³¹ From the point of view of domestic politics, Monroe formulated his principles with little, if any, consultation with Congress. His advisory council seems to have been limited to Adams, Calhoun (whom he mostly ignored), one or two minor cabinet members, and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. And, perhaps most important, Monroe understood the importance of stating these policies independently from the British, further declaring American independence.

Of Monroe’s advisers, Adams clearly had the most influence, particularly in that he was also conducting the day-to-day bilateral diplomacy with all the principal nations involved; but even then Monroe prevailed in toning down much of Adams’s more confrontational rhetoric. Inevitably, scholars disagree about the degree of credit due Adams for the Monroe Doctrine. For the historian Robert Remini, “it was his [Adams’s] statesmanship that led directly to the formulation of one of the most basic and fundamental precepts of U.S. foreign policy, namely the Monroe Doctrine. In effect he established what Samuel Flagg Bemis has called the foundations of American foreign policy.”³² Other scholars are more inclined to see the doctrine as the result of a fateful collaboration, and still others give principal credit to Monroe. “The influence of the secretary of state on the final outcome was significant,” according to Noble Cunningham, “but it was Monroe who conducted the unrestrained cabinet deliberations and drafted—and redrafted—his message to Congress until he found a policy that he and his cabinet could support. While Adams influenced the content, it was Monroe who decided to announce the policy in his message to Congress, thus proclaiming it to the world.”³³

Monroe sent the text of his congressional message to Jefferson on December 4 with the following observation: with regard to South America, “I consider the cause of that country [sic] as essentially our own.” In separate correspondence to Jefferson, he justified his independence from America’s former colonial master by asserting that, had the United States joined Great Britain in stating certain of these principles, “it would have been inferr’d that we acted under her influence, & at her instigation, & thus have lost credit as well with our Southern neighbors, as with the Allied powers.”³⁴ Madison, in his response to Monroe’s message, concurred in his successor’s independent approach: “Whilst the English Govt very naturally endeavors to make us useful to her national objects, it is incumbent on us to turn … the friendly consultations with her, to ours [national objectives], which besides being national, embrace the good of mankind everywhere.”³⁵ The ideal of America as both the beacon and fountain of democracy had been asserted.

Very soon thereafter other American statesmen had occasion to refer to Monroe’s principles in other contexts. In 1825 Henry Clay, by then Adams’s secretary of state, in instructing his envoy to Mexico, Joel Poinsett, reminded him to draw to the attention of the Mexican government “certain important principles of intercontinental law” in reference to U.S.-European relations that were contained in Monroe’s message: “The first principle asserted … is that the American continents are not henceforth to be considered as subjects to future colonization by any European powers.” The other principle was that “whilst we do not desire to interfere in Europe, with the political system of the allied powers, we should regard as dangerous to our peace and safety any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this Hemisphere.”³⁶ Clay apparently thought that the simple declaration of an American president made it law. And a year later, Representative Daniel Webster, in a speech in the House, commented extensively on Monroe’s principles that “did great honor to the foresight and the spirit of the [United States] government, and … cannot now be taken back, retracted, or annulled, without disgrace.”³⁷

Speaking today, Monroe might have reduced his foreign policy principles to a single premise: we will resist hegemony without seeking hegemony. Since Monroe’s day, however, and with the growth of American political and military power in the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, what originated as the political principles of a fledgling republic has become a doctrine and subject to imperialistic interpretations.

Monroe’s declaration was directly linked to his search for national security through defined borders and political boundaries. He clearly regarded European intervention in South America as a potential threat to the nation’s security.³⁸ Note the benchmarks in his congressional message that had to do with behavior threatening to U.S. security: “our rights and interests,” “dangerous to our peace and safety,” “indispensable to security,” “submitting to injuries from none,” and “endangering our peace and happiness.” The theme of national security was a consistent one for Monroe. It related to the readiness of the standing forces; the adequacy of coastal fortifications; clearly defined borders and boundaries; and the rejection of European interference in the Western Hemisphere. Monroe went further than any of his four predecessors in linking foreign policy to security.

The degree to which James Monroe’s earlier experience as a diplomat, as George Washington’s minister to France and as Jefferson’s envoy to several European capitals, shaped his foreign policy and the Principles of 1823 is a matter for considerable speculation. During his career as a diplomat, notes Ammon, “Monroe had again and again been humiliated and frustrated by the contempt and indifference manifested by European governments toward the United States.”³⁹ Certainly, in the early days of the Republic, the stature of the United States, and therefore that of its emissary in an important European court, were not the highest. And Monroe’s assignment, as that emissary, came early in his career. He never achieved the diplomatic stature of a John Adams, a Benjamin Franklin, or a Thomas Jefferson. He lacked Adams’s gravitas, Franklin’s charm, and Jefferson’s erudition. He was neither worldly nor sophisticated. Particularly where the French were concerned, he surely seemed much more a naif and a rustic, a popular European stereotype and the kind of American found quaint by Old World sophisticates. He went overboard in his enthusiasm for the French revolutionaries and was later mocked by them for it and chastised by his head of state. As a man of limited dimensions, much more the soldier like Washington than the scholar like Jefferson, Monroe saw the world more literally and straightforwardly. Thus he could readily grasp the notion of an old European monarchical world, on the one hand, and a new American republican world in the Western Hemisphere, on the other. He took his republicanism literally and with little nuance. He would intuitively understand a division of the world into two spheres, the world of the past and the world, the American world, of the future. For him, the chance to draw an imaginary line somewhere in the Atlantic would have great appeal. By drawing that line, above all else, America would become more secure.

Monroe very much accepted the Jeffersonian notion that there were two systems of government: monarchical and Old World, republican and New World. The rise of revolutionary republicanism in South America, throwing off the yoke of Spanish tyranny very much as the North American republic had thrown off the yoke of British tyranny, made it possible for the first time to use geography to convert two political systems into two geographic spheres: Western Hemisphere and Europe.

As Jefferson, and Monroe, would not have the United States “entangle” itself in the “broils of Europe,” so they would not have Europe cross the Atlantic Ocean to “intermeddle with” American (North and South) affairs. Europe, at least for the time being, would remain monarchical, but the American continents would become a new world dedicated to the restoration of the republican ideal. Jefferson would plant this ideal in the American consciousness rhetorically; Monroe would make it a matter of official national principle.

Arguably, no pronouncement on American foreign policy has had the extended and controversial life that the Monroe Doctrine has had in the more than 180 years since its promulgation. As one historian of the doctrine concluded: “Nothing connected with the foreign policy of the United States has secured and maintained a stronger hold on the popular imagination than the Monroe Doctrine, yet comparatively few know what that ‘doctrine’ really is.”⁴⁰

This sense that Americans consider the Monroe Doctrine to be gospel, yet a gospel with which they are only familiar in passing, is reflected in the observation of Salvador de Madariaga, one of many twentieth-century Latin American observers who have viewed the doctrine not as protection but as a cloak for Yankee suffocation. “I only know two things about the Monroe Doctrine,” he observes, “one is that no American I have met knows what it is; the other is that no American I have met will consent to its being tampered with … . I conclude that the Monroe Doctrine is not a doctrine but a dogma, … not one dogma but two, to wit: the dogma of the infallibility of the American President and the dogma of the immaculate conception of American foreign policy.”⁴¹

Noting that the Monroe Doctrine was neither self-enforcing nor congressionally ratified, the eminent American historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., points out that, after an effort by Henry Clay to pass a congressional resolution of endorsement was withdrawn without a vote at the time, no move was made for the next three quarters of a century to place a congressional stamp of approval on the doctrine—that is, until the very end of the nineteenth century, when the Senate, without mentioning the doctrine by name, accepted a reservation to the Hague Convention of 1899 that “implied congressional acceptance of the Doctrine as national policy.” ⁴² “Still,” Schlesinger observes, “the Monroe Doctrine, if neither authorized nor ratified, was a notable and unchallenged national commitment.” Even so, Schlesinger notes further, there was no basis in the Constitution for Congress or the American people to be under any obligation “to treat improvident presidential declarations as sacred commitments.”⁴³

It would take the mid-twentieth-century struggle between democracy and communism, as played out in parts of Latin America, to bring the doctrine back to the fore. One historian of the doctrine, Dexter Perkins, wrote in 1955 that “Time and the course of events have altered the scope and perhaps have diminished the relevance of the Monroe Doctrine; but this protean idea is not to be pronounced extinct.”⁴⁴ As if to prove Perkins’s assertion, when the Soviet Union, declaring the Monroe Doctrine to be “dead,” warned the United States in 1960 to keep hands off Cuba, the State Department issued a press release stating: “The principles of the Monroe Doctrine are as valid today as they were in 1823 when the Doctrine was proclaimed.”⁴⁵

The saliency of the Monroe Doctrine in the twenty-first century is now being tested in a highly convoluted fashion. President George W. Bush’s effort to expand the reach of the doctrine globally represents a radical departure from Monroe’s original intent in two important ways: first, it extends U.S. hegemony from the Western Hemisphere to the entire globe; and, second, it shifts from U.S. rejection of European colonization in the Western Hemisphere to U.S. imposition of its values everywhere. Where Monroe sought to protect fledgling South American republics from European intrusion, Bush stands Monroe’s doctrine on its head by extending a form of democratic imperialism into the far corners of the planet. James Monroe would be the first to say that America as empire is no longer America as republic.