The formation of these new sovereignties in America was important to us,
not only because of the cessation of colonial monopolies to that extent,
but because of the geographical relations to us held by so many new
nations, all, like ourselves, created from European stock and interested
in excluding European politics, dynastic questions, and balances of
power from further influence in the New World.
Thus the United States were forced into new lines of action, which,
though apparently in some respects conflicting, were really in harmony
with the line marked out by Washington. The avoidance of entangling
political alliances and the maintenance of our own independent
neutrality became doubly important from the fact that they became
applicable to the new Republics as well as to the mother country.
The duty of noninterference had been admitted by every President.
The question came up in the time of the first Adams, on the occasion
of the enlistment projects of Miranda. It appeared again under Jefferson
(anterior to the revolt of the Spanish colonies) in the schemes of Aaron
Burr. It was an ever-present question in the Administrations of Madison,
Monroe, and the younger Adams, in reference to the questions of foreign
enlistment or equipment in the United States, and when these new
Republics entered the family of nations, many of them very feeble, and
all too much subject to internal revolution and civil war, a strict
adherence to our previous policy and a strict enforcement of our laws
became essential to the preservation of friendly relations with them;
for since that time it has been one of the principal cares of those
intrusted with the administration of the Government to prevent piratical
expeditions against these sister Republics from leaving our ports.
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