The Path of Empire, A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power | Page 7

the Government to refrain from interference in Europe, and its belief
that it was "impossible that the allied powers should extend their
political system to any portion of either continent [of America] without
endangering our peace and happiness." The message contained a strong
defense of the republican system of government and of the right of
nations to control their own internal development. It completed the
foreign policy of the United States by declaring, in connection with
certain recent encroachments of Russia along the northwest coast, that
the era of colonization in the Americas was over. The United States
was to maintain in the future that boundaries between nations holding
land in America actually existed and could be traced--a position which
invited arbitration in place of force.
Both Canning and Adams won victories, but neither realized his full
hopes. Canning prevented the interference of Europe in Spanish
America, broke up the Quadruple Alliance, rendered the Holy Alliance
a shadow, and restored a balance of power that meant safety for

England for almost a hundred years; but he failed to dictate American
policy. Adams on his part detached the United States from European
politics without throwing England into the arms of Europe. He took
advantage of the divisions of the Old World to establish the priority of
the United States in American affairs; but he failed in his later attempt
to unite all the Americas in cordial cooperation. Earnest as was his
desire and hard as he strove in 1825 when he had become President
with Clay as his Secretary of State, Adams found that the differences in
point of view between the United States and the other American powers
were too great to permit a Pan-American policy. The Panama Congress
on which he built his hopes failed, and for fifty years the project lay
dormant.
Under the popular name of the Monroe Doctrine, however, Adams's
policy has played a much larger part in world affairs than he expected.
Without the force of law either in this country or between nations, this
doctrine took a firm hold of the American imagination and became a
national ideal, while other nations have at least in form taken
cognizance of it. The Monroe Doctrine has survived because Adams
did not invent its main tenets but found them the dominating principles
of American international politics; his work, like that of his
contemporary John Marshall, was one of codification. But not all those
who have commented on the work of Adams have possessed his
analytical mind, and many have confused what was fundamental in his
pronouncement with what was temporary and demanded by the
emergency of the time.
Always the American people have stood, from the first days of their
migration to America, for the right of the people of a territory to
determine their own development. First they have insisted that their
own right to work out their political destiny be acknowledged and
made safe. For this they fought the Revolution. It has followed that
they have in foreign affairs tried to keep their hands free from
entanglements with other countries and have refrained from
interference with foreign politics. This was the burden of Washington's
"Farewell Address," and it was a message which Jefferson reiterated in
his inaugural. These are the permanent principles which have
controlled enlightened American statesmen in their attitude toward the
world, from the days of John Winthrop to those of Woodrow Wilson.

It was early found, however, that the affairs of the immediate neighbors
of the United States continually and from day to day affected the whole
texture of American life and that actually they limited American
independence and therefore could not be left out of the policy of the
Government. The United States soon began to recognize that there was
a region in the affairs of which it must take a more active interest. As
early as 1780 Thomas Pownall, an English colonial official, predicted
that the United States must take an active part in Cuban affairs. In 1806
Madison, then Secretary of State, had instructed Monroe, Minister to
Great Britain, that the Government began to broach the idea that the
whole Gulf Stream was within its maritime jurisdiction. The message
of Monroe was an assertion that the fate of both the Americas was of
immediate concern to the safety of the United States, because the fate
of its sister republics intimately affected its own security. This proved
to be an enduring definition of policy, because for many years there
was a real institutional difference between the American hemisphere
and the rest of the world and because oceanic boundaries were the most
substantial that the world affords.
Adams, however, would have been the last to claim that his method of
securing the fundamental purposes of the United States was itself
fundamental. It is